Posted on 07/03/2011 9:53:55 AM PDT by Diana in Wisconsin
(One author says the man-child trend isn't just material for Seth Rogen, it's a nationwide epidemic.)
Has the rise of powerful women turned men into boys? This is the question author Kay Hymowitz asks in her provocative new book, Manning Up. Hymowitz argues that men today are free from the traditional tests of manhood—marrying and providing for children—and this freedom comes at a price: an increasing number of men are stuck in a state of permanent adolescence.
The statistics are shocking. Colleges are reducing the standards for male applicants to balance out the majority of incoming women. Among Americans 25 to 34, 34 percent of women have bachelor's degrees compared to 27 percent of men. Young women in major cities earn more than fifteen times more than their male peers. And before you think this is good news for women, it also means that the field of eligible bachelors is dwindling while the demand for Seth Rogen comedies is exploding.
So, why are men failing to grow up? Is it the fault of radical feminists? Is it the fault of the media? ...Should we blame Canada?
Hymowitz argues that the real problem is our changing culture, which has become detrimental to men. Fifty years ago, men in their mid-to-late twenties were expected to be financially independent, married, and well on their way to starting families. Society expected men to grow up—so they did.
The "knowledge economy" has changed all that. The modern world encourages people to stay in school well into their twenties, all the while accumulating debt that makes it even harder to become financially independent and start a family. Plus, the skills required by a knowledge economy are skills that come more naturally to women. Jobs like those in the design and communication fields emphasize traditionally feminine skill sets. Even the traditional male bastions of law and management are becoming increasingly dominated by women.
Instead, today's men are tending to live lives free of most responsibility. Hymowitz criticizes the empty male culture of Maxim magazine, Spike TV, and lives lived with frat-boy abandon. Instead of shouldering responsibility, many American males have become experts at shirking it.
It's easy for women to say that the turnabout is fair play, but the fact is this: our economy and our culture are not well-served by a lost generation of American men. A healthy society needs a mix of masculine and feminine values. It was stereotypically masculine daring that invented the Internet and landed men on the moon, and women have reasons of self-interest to want a change in affairs, not the least being the desire for a responsible, dependable romantic partner.
Hymowitz observes how many women are finding the dating scene filled with men who are far from marriageable material. Biology and culture have conspired to make women naturally want to seek higher-status males—a natural biological imperative to find mates that can take care of future offspring. In other words, women don't usually want to "marry down." But what happens when the supply of marriageable men is incredibly low? We are about to find out.
I'd like to see some backup to this statistic. I'm not sure what they mean by "young" for example. I've worked in a major city for over ten years with hundreds of companies and for the most part the men have the offices and the women have the cubicles.
lol
^This.
Ive been in engineering departments in the US, Canada and Australia and there are by far more men than women. The problem is though that most of the men arent American, in fact you find more asians (chinese and indian being the majority) and even in some cases more arabs than americans. Its kind of pathetic.
I’d say the biggest reason, aside from the costs of being an independent and mature adult has become so great and the benefits from doing so have become so small that it’s actually more beneficial for many to not go down that path.
And they don't realize it nor care.
But there a a lot fewer offices than cubicles.
>>>,..and what the Playboy philosophy pushed is now a reality ......boys and men have endless opportunities for sexual gratification....the only “cost” to them is their manhood and their souls....<<<
I’m taking a risk here, but I’d imagine that you’re a woman.
Just speaking from the male experience, your post was generally correct until this paragraph. In the current culture, women choose the men that they’ll “hook up” with, and that means most men are excluded. A situation with “endless opportunities for sexual gratification” only exists inside a monogamous marriage, and even then, the opportunities aren’t endless, they’re negotiated. Being single for most men now means an empty apartment without any female companionship at all.
What you’re missing here is the atmosphere of quiet despair and bitterness in the lives of men facing this kind of situation. I speak with many men in their marriageable years and they tell me over and over that it is impossible to find a partner, too. It’s not just a pornfest for happy men. In fact, you could argue that porn makes the situation worse by portraying sexuality at a distance, reminding men of what they lack in reality. In any case, the only place where there are endless opportunities for men is with masturbation.
The despair of men is made even worse by the normalization of bastard children. A woman can have a ready-made family with little effort and a willing sperm donor. A man has to struggle for it. By the time the man is in his late 20s, many women have already had kids without a father, and it is interesting (anecdotally) that there are a minority of men with children from several women, thereby leaving out most of the other men. When a man marries, the expectation is that he’ll have progeny, which is eliminated when the woman comes to the marriage with a set of kids already.
What you see as fun, free, and easy is actually a slow suicide using alcohol, drugs, and video games to numb the pain. I’m doing my best to make sure that my son doesn’t experience this, but it is pervasive and difficult to battle a social trend. However, it’s nothing like a sexual paradise for men.
Not really, and that's irrelevant unless the author it claiming there are 15 times as many women working in the city and that means they have 15 times the earning potential.
Beg to differ.
A woman/girl is more than just her body.
Some cultures do have a "coming of age" ceremony for females. The Latin cultures have their quincenara. Our American culture once had the "Sweet Sixteen" party for middle-class girls or the more formal presentation to society for debutantes. I think such a ceremony about the mantle of adulthood and all its responsibilities should be retained and encouraged for young women. Female maturity is not just "Oh, your body is capable of making babies now, now this means you're a grown-up woman. " No. It's so much more than that.
As someone who’s 45 and not married, who is a selling writer of short stories and continues to pursue publication of novels while I work with boys removed from abusive homes and/or who have drug and/or criminal backgrounds...
I liked the book, but after a while I started skimming. The author has good things to say, but while talking about how boy/men live in a world of computer games and college fratboy humor well into their thirties (she’s right on her descriptions of boys who don’t grow up), she has a really annoying habit of using examples from movies and celebrity culture as examples of how things should be. It’s like her problem isn’t with boy/men, but that they don’t watch the right TV shows.
Women are pretty much perfect and just frustrated with the men, according to the book, but her oversimplification of so many issues was frustrating. I see and work with the types of males who are the problem she talks about, but she keeps hitting on this narrow view of what a man HAS to conform to in order to have a ‘real’ life.
Well, no. There are options for all. Folks like me are outside the norm, and I am a decent citizen who isn’t playing video games and watching TV. I didn’t expect the book to talk about folks like me, but I was a little startled by her repetition of the illustration of these awesome, smart, grown-up women, and all these darned MEN who won’t do what she wants them to do.
The author should have been more comprehensive, or she should have made this an op-ed piece. In the end, I thought she missed a great opportunity to show how media, as a previous poster mentioned, has become all-consuming ni the lives of males AND females. All their references are pop culture, with so little connection to local community, physical labor, non-organized sporting, reading the classics AND reading for pleasure. We’re sexualizing kids, both girls AND boys, and telling them that gender is just a construct of the patriarchy, that all religions are the same, etc. etc.
There are so many things to incorporate in this kind of study, and she kept the focus on these boy-men playing their video games. That’s not the whole story by a mile.
Typical female point of view. In a more robust and clear-eyed age, the "traditional test of manhood" had more to do with joining the military and putting one's life on the line for his country. Nowadays, "Call to Duty" is merely a videogame.
Does this article report a truth? Every aspect of Western Civilization is under assault and that of course includes the relations between the sexes. Whatever is happening reflects the constant assault through all aspects of the media such as film, TV, the schools, the courts, the bureaucracy
Which is why many men, at 40, might still live with their parents. What’s the point of getting your own apartment when how you live won’t change, except cost you an extra 600 dollars a month.
As the public sector expands, it competes with men for the role of provider. Another factor is the Bubble in the University Machine —there are no consumer protection laws for college loans, and many loans are federally backed. Another factor is the natural synergy between feminism and academia —some men are smeared as rapists, but to PAY to be so smeared is definately taking things up a couple notches.
It is better to go to war than pay for that clap-trap.
I hated to be a buzzkill but PC has ruined our American companies.
Personally, I did a lot of studying Women in college. The lab-work was particularly fun.
Oh, you meant FORMAL COURSEWORK. Nevermind. . . (evil grin)
Falling behind? Men won’t obediently sit and nod their way through the PC pap that passes for “education today. The girls have degrees, but you get those today mainly for showing up and conforming, whether it is high school or college.
In addition, the education system didn’t fail women. It just wasn’t producing the gender-equality results they wanted. Consequently, the entire system was re-structured to impose a largely non-cognitive curriculum.
Affirmative action has also ensured that marginal women advance ahead of more talented men in all institutions. And Hymowitz is wondering why young men might not be motivated? Not so smart as she thinks she is...
Ya, studying women can be fun. I worded that in an awkward way didn’t I???? Yep, of course we mean the formal coursework, not the after hours type of study...........
Long ago, when there was a divorce, women lost big-time. But now, family law is robust, and by and large it favors women; men often must really fight for shared custody.
Often men now end up in a position of shouldering responsibilities of marriage, but none of the privileges.
This has gone on for some decades, and now before marrying, men weigh that risk very carefully.
Sorry to say it but the demographic winners here are cultures where women have little education or rights; Middle-East, Africa, and (to a lesser extent) Latin America.
I have worked for one engineering company that hired people with non-technical degrees (never mind non-engineering degrees) for engineering positions. Like teaching degrees. NO technical background at all. And most of these types were women. Just PC filler to show they were a “women-friendly” company. And yes, they moved up the ladder.
Buzzword Bingo. Not played at my company. Countered with “Get to the point” (the real version can be salty at times)
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