Posted on 03/31/2006 4:35:06 AM PST by Timeout
The romantic comedy "Failure to Launch," which opened as the No. 1 movie in the nation this month, has substantially exceeded pre-launch predictions, taking in more than $64 million in its first three weeks.
[snip]
...a young man who is affable, intelligent, good-looking -- and completely unmotivated. He's still living at home and seems to have no ambitions beyond playing video games, hanging out with his buddies (two young men who are also still living with their parents) and having sex.
[snip]
...According to the Census Bureau, fully one-third of young men ages 22 to 34 are still living at home with their parents -- a roughly 100 percent increase in the past 20 years. No such change has occurred with regard to young women. Why?
[snip]
...We've batted around lots of ideas. Maybe the problem has to do with the way the school curriculum has changed. Maybe it has to do with environmental toxins that affect boys differently than girls (not as crazy an idea as it sounds). Maybe it has to do with changes in the workforce, with fewer blue-collar jobs and more emphasis on the service industry. Maybe it's some combination of all of the above, or other factors we haven't yet identified.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Mr. Sax will host an online discussion at noon today. I submitted the following. We'll see if he answers it.
I hope some of you will go to the WaPo and submit your comments.What's happened to boys? There's an obvious answer you didn't mention: diminished societal expectations.
Forty years ago parents, teachers, coaches and society aligned in various ways to instruct young men that they would carry a heavy future burden: supporting a family. They would be the bread winners, the protectors. It was a strong motivator. The most rambuctious boys usually turned it around in their early 20's, settling into careers and family lives. Conformity required it, not to mention that potential wives (and parents-in-law) expected it.
With the feminist movement that changed to a message that women didn't need them. They could raise the children without a husband. Employers would no longer promote a young man with family obligations in mind. There would be no good ole boys club to aspire to. Is it now considered "quaint" to inculcate one's son with the idea that HE will be responsible for his family's well-being?
Whether right or wrong, it seems apparent that young men are simply living up to the diminished expectations our culture has set for them.
I seem to recall a similar trend starting in Japan about 10 years ago. Men living at home with their mothers.
Perhaps we could look at some of the causes discussed there?
Be sure to read the last paragraph of the column. In a case of delicious irony, Mr. Sax actually brushes up against Ayn Rand and totally misses the import of the quote he uses.
save
Ritalin! Of course.
You should submit that for the noon discussion.
It's not boys will be boys anymore. It's keep them drugged and controllable so they don't do anything useful but drool. It's all about government control of the masses through oppression of producers and providers of the family.
So they did not promote on merit and these young men can't compete without being artificially propped up?
That is very insulting to the men of past generations. I hope you didn't mean it that way.
I found this article:
http://72.14.203.104/search?q=cache:t_LBG__RD8sJ:www.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/makeprfy.pl5%3Ffl20000407a1.htm+japan+men+living+with+their+mother&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=6
Liberal teachers trying to turn them into girls !!!
Or is that too deep ??
I don't know a whole lot about motivating a young person to change their attitude, but I know some parents who need to give their kids two weeks notice and reserve a moving truck. I know somebody who did that. They told the little 20-something, "We can have your stuff moved into a place you found to live or we can haul it to the city dump. That's your call, I suggest you get moving."
And where do the boys end up? I see them every day in court... during the criminal session. This is in a court where the judge, the DA, the DA's assistants, almost all of the clerks and the CPCS attorneys are women.
A few days back, a woman called Rush and told him about the estrogen being injected into cattle to make them beefier is probably playing a part in boys' metrosexuality--combined with daily indoctrination by feminist ideology.
I didn't mean it as an insult. It's a hard concept to describe, but I'll try. There used to be a certain reward in the workplace for presenting oneself to the world as a mature, responsible family man. One can denigrate it is as "conformity". But it was definitely a consideration in promotions and hiring. It wasn't insulting. It was the natural inclination of the promoter (who was probably a man---sorry) to consider all aspects of the candidates on his list. He might give preference to a married man with two babies as opposed to one who was still single and playing the field. That's all I was saying.
Isn't it obvious? The old saying is true: "People rise to meet the expectations set for them".
This is true of children, adults, men, women.
It's universal.
It's human nature, for cryin' out loud!
Permissive parents get undisciplined children.
What's so hard about that?!
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