What may well happen is a vicious cycle: as the supply of marriageable college-educated men dwindles, more and more women will decide that they just don’t need men in their lives. This is already starting to happen. There is an increasing trend of women choosing to become single mothers. And the more women who opt out of marriage, the more it encourages men to do the same.
What can we do to arrest these trends? Firstly, we need to fix our educational system. Right now, 60 percent of new college entrants are women, and men are falling further and further behind. This is not a tolerable outcome. Our education system is failing American men in the same way that it once failed women. Secondly, we need a cultural shift. Popular culture may not be the driving reason men are falling behind, but it certainly doesn’t help. Culture needs to put more value on men as husbands and fathers rather than man-children.
People in today’s society are marrying and having children later than ever before, and we don’t really understand the effect that has on society as a whole. Hymowitz’s warnings may be overblown, but leaving an entire generation of American males in a state of semi-adolescence serves neither men nor women.
Part of this is also due to people’s attitudes in other areas of life. For example, many twenty something and even thirty something single young people still live with parents. Living with parents well into adulthood can really put someone in perpetual adolescence.
I’m sure part of that is due to saving money by living with Mom and Dad, however, past generations wanted to live independently and establish their adult lives. And take responsibility for the fact that they would have to manage their money to make ends meet if they were living on their own and being self supporting.
I was talking to a 27 year old unmarried woman, friend of the family recently about marriage. She’s not seeing anybody, and not looking at marriage and family as a goal. She was surprised to hear that a friend from school a couple years younger than her was married. She said she couldn’t imagine being married at only 25.
We could even talk about sex. Between a hook-up culture and birth control enabling casual encounters with little risk, people think about sex differently. Young people look at sex as something that they want to participate in, but don’t consider the marriage relation to that subject.
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.
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...