The phrase "are somehow lacking" is correct and usable in written English.
It can be used to describe a situation or quality that is deficient or insufficient in some way, often implying a sense of uncertainty about the reasons for the deficiency.
Example: "Despite their efforts, the results of the project are somehow lacking in clarity and depth."
Alternatives: "are somewhat deficient" or "are missing something".
Furthermore, the insinuation that without paid employment our lives are somehow lacking erodes the value of parenting in general.
So ingrained is our sense that universities are somehow lacking if they omit these things from their curricula, it has become vaguely blasphemous to assert that they shouldn't teach students the skills they need at work.
The suggestion that the organizations that have emerged from the Black Lives Matter protests are somehow lacking because they have rejected the old style of leadership misses what makes this movement most powerful: its cultivation of skilled local organizers who take up many issues beyond police violence.
To claim that Lionel Messi or Cristiano Ronaldo are somehow lacking something as footballers seems almost perverse.
Rather, it is their killers who determined their gender identity and took the lives of transgender people because the killers felt that transgender people are somehow lacking.
It's easy to begin feeling you are somehow lacking because you haven't achieve the success or fortune of others, especially when we are constantly regaled with stories about the rich and famous in the news.
The prevailing – if unspoken – view was that if you needed to use the net to find a partner, you were somehow lacking, or weird, or both.
Lurking beneath is a sense of probity and steely resolve, the idea that the person who hasn 't already "got over it" is somehow lacking in inner purpose.
But there is something off-putting in the way the Mountain View start-up implies that photographs during the years B.L. (Before Lytro) were somehow lacking.
The more I see of Batumi, the more I like it; there's an energy and self-confidence here that was somehow lacking in Tbilisi.
