Posted on 09/16/2026 9:48:38 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
The Institute for Family Studies (IFS) recently estimated that the gap between unmarried and married men under the age of 40 continues to widen—with 15 million more bachelors than husbands between the ages of 20 to 39 in 2025.
The gap has widened by 12.4 million since 2000, when the gap between married and unmarried stood at 2.6 million.
IFS also reports, according to a General Social Survey, 11 percent of young adults in the early 2000s said they were “not too happy.” That percentage is now at 26 percent. During the same period, the number of married men ages 20–39 dropped by 15 percent.
Leading the unhappiness charge are single men, who are either postponing or rejecting marriage, or not perceived as a suitable marriage partner by single women because of various societal changes.
This is a serious problem for American society.
In his book, “Men and Marriage,” (an expanded edition of his 1973 work “Sexual Suicide”) George Gilder wrote: “Men lust, but they don’t know what for; they wander, and lose track of the goal; they fight and compete, but they forget the prize; they spread seed but spurn the seasons of growth; they chase power and glory but miss the meaning of life.”
Brad Wilcox of IFS agrees with Gilder: “Such men are more likely to be lonely, prone to deaths of despair and unhappy. It’s never good for a society to have large numbers of unattached, dispirited, and unhappy young men.”
A Wall Street Journal article from last year titled, “American Women are Giving Up on Marriage,” touches on several reasons why women are not getting married—whether it be trouble finding a suitable man or choosing a career over marriage.
Disillusioned with the current state of what they perceive to be suitable and available men, they say they are more content with singleness than their male counterparts. A commonly heard complaint is that in their search of a suitable man to marry, they are only finding a world of “man-children.”
So, why has this happened? Why are there so many unmarried young men and why are women having a hard time finding a suitable partner in what would seemingly be an abundant harvest?
First, many of these young men have no idea of what it takes to be a husband or father because they had no one to model that for them. This is just another symptom of the breakdown of the family, a culture of divorce, and a society that has economically awarded single parent families while placing financial burdens on traditional two-parent families.
Secondly, especially among working class men, the jobs that would have traditionally provided for a family have either not kept up with inflation, or in some cases, simply disappeared. In addition, our educational system is no longer providing the needed training for these men to enter the workplace and succeed. Meanwhile, the number of men attending college, the ticket to good paying and stable jobs, continues to decrease.
Finally, numerous voices in our culture have sent a message that women can succeed without having a husband—“A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle,” as the saying goes. But when men are not marrying, there is a ripple effect that impacts all aspects of our society.
For example, according to the Centers for Disease Control, the percentage of children born outside of marriage has risen from 33.2 percent of all live births in 2000 to 39.5 percent in 2024. This means a much higher percentage of young people are growing up in single parent households. And single parent households are often more dependent upon government assistance, with boys who grow up without a father often ending up failing socially and economically.
Those numbers also indicate that we’re hurtling toward a demographic disaster. Married couples not only provide a nurturing environment for children but also are more likely to have children.
It is not that young men have given up on marriage. Pew Research reported in 2023 that 74 percent of teenage boys want to be married someday. The problem is that many have no internal road map or GPS to help them get there.
As a society, we need to equip these young men with the skills, personal discipline, and sense of purpose to make them “marriage material.” It is a time for us, as a society, to return to a time when men have purpose—to be faithful husbands, loving fathers, and good providers.
This is going to be a long process, and it will require a long-term societal investment in affirming healthy, traditional two-parent families with engaged fathers who model such discipline and purpose to their sons. Boys do not have a choice when it comes to the families they are born into, but adults can make the right choices to help them flourish and thrive.
Men, women, and our society will be much better off as a result.
unread: The "male" in western world has allowed himself to become a weak and cowardly creature. Rather than "Bead Winners", we have become bedwetters.
unread, you have failed to address the points of Adder's post. You didn't even simply deny it!
Instead, you merely present your own thesis - which I expect you think is a counter-thesis.
So, again. TRUE or FALSE:
We [the collective West] spent the last decades demonizing men, mocking men, and rewarding misandry with cultural applause.Please first either affirm or deny that statement, so we can know where you stand. If you deny that statement, perhaps you could provide some supporting arguments / point out how it is untrue.
Then we can deal with your counter-statement (i.e., calmly examine its truth-content, and discuss what might possibly have led to the sorry state of affairs you describe).
Regards,
Well, then the "elites" are doing a piss-poor job of it in Africa!
The continent is bursting at the seams with babies!
Regards,
Actually, what you've described is a shill.
The "mark" is the victim.
Regards,
Africans are apparently their invading forces.
Notice they don’t invade China
Nobody wants to become a mandatory kidney donor.
"unread, you have failed to address the points of Adder's post. You didn't even simply deny it!"
"Instead, you merely present your own thesis - which I expect you think is a counter-thesis."
Cause and effect.
The cause: We spent the last decades demonizing men, mocking men, rewarding misandry with cultural applause.
The effect: The "male" in western world has allowed himself to become a weak and cowardly creature. Rather than "Bread Winners", we have become bedwetters.
See how that works.? Have a very nice day in Germany Alex...picking your nits.. :)
So it's like Medieval Europe (kinda).
Another matter is that in China, neither the people nor the power elites subscribe to „multiculturalism“, „anti-racism“ or other such hot air. To the average Chinese, it’s all Western eccentricity.
I guess the "elites" must also think that sending anti-malarial and anti-HIV drugs to Africa is all part of the plan to control their population numbers. But certain people never let facts or the real world stand in the way of a good conspiracy theory.
Additionally, the conspiracy theorists consistently ignore the obvious fact that in our current system, the elites can only get fat off cheap labor. The way to guarantee cheap labor is to have a large surplus population - when workers are scarce, they can demand high wages, not so much when you have billions of unemployed or underemployed in the Third World. But again, certain types won't let basic economics stand in the way of conspiracy theories.
In medieval Europe there would be the Church and abbeys and buildings to build. Friars and brothers as well as Priesthood.
All that is sadly gone.
What’s interesting is that under Maoism, China adopted a form of “feminism” in which women were supposed to do the same factory and farm work as men, i.e. minimizing social differences between the sexes. Despite this social engineering, they don’t have the pathological form of feminism nor the “gender” schizophrenia that’s taken hold here.
That is A GOOD point. They are brighter than we are on average.
Sure.
All that baloney was hatched by the educated fools of the socalled Frankfurt school, whose teachings were never taken seriously by the Chinese - and rightfully so.
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