[Timeout]

Environmental toxins?! Gimme a break. The answer is so obvious. These elitist, metrosexual, politically correct snobs just don't want to admit it.

Mr. Sax will host an online discussion at noon today. I submitted the following. We'll see if he answers it.

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 hope some of you will go to the WaPo and submit your comments.

WaPo discussions page

[RangerM]

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?

[Timeout]

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.

[cyborg]

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.

[Harmless Teddy Bear]

Employers would no longer promote a young man with family obligations in mind.

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.

[IrishMike]

Liberal teachers trying to turn them into girls !!!


Or is that too deep ??

[Excuse_My_Bellicosity]

I've got plenty of co-workers in the 45-60 age group who have kids in their mid-20s sitting around their house eating their food, living there for free, and refusing to move out and get a job. Just unbelievable.

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."

[bella1]

What's the matter with boys? The real question is what's the matter with their parents? If a fully grown, able-bodied male still lives at home, its mommy and daddys fault.

[finnigan2]

"What's happened to boys? There's an obvious answer you didn't mention: diminished societal expectations."

- I believe you have stated the core issue but I think that the reasons for this diminuation go beyond just the role expected of boys in a breadwinner/family situation.
I despaired of my two sons when they spent most of their twenties in aimless odd jobs, mooching about in an aimless manner.
In their late twenties, for different reasons, they both got their act together and now hold responsible jobs and are doing better than I did after 30 years of work. But somewhere in the mix, they both lost about a decade of their lives before they finally got it together.
So far, I don't think the situation has gotten hopeless, but boys are taking longer to "grow up" and take on responsibility that they once had to when they turned eighteen.
The reasons are complex, but the educational system must take a lot of the blame along with the increased affluence they see around them which lowers their sense of priority for the need to, "earn a living".

[SouthernFreebird]

Shew Lord, I love my boys but come 18 or 19 they're out the door and on their own. They will learn to work out of necessity. I'd lay the blame on parents.

[mo]

shoot....my parents had me out of the house every am at age 10 doing a paper route....by high school working two summer jobs...would'nt even have had the nerve to think about returning home after college....my father raised my brother and I to be independent and proud of it.

[Fintan]

 

"Environmental toxin"????

[MacDorcha]

Saved

[bondjamesbond]

Maybe it has to do with the fact that young men have no responsibility. They can live at home and have free food, laundry service, Mama's pampering, and all the sex they can handle from single women who don't want committment.

What reason is there for a young man to do any different?

Even if he finds the girl of his dreams, she's going to want to delay marriage until she's played the field, delay children until she has established a carreer, and delay setting up a permanent household until she has exhausted all the entertaining options of city life.

Unless a fellow is a complete self-starter, there is no compelling reason for him to strike out on his own.

[doc30]

The only reasons a man in that age group should be living at home with parents are 1) disabled and unable to function independently or 2) in Grad or Med school and is staying at home to save money. I was at home until I was 23. THat's when my scholarisp for my PhD kicked in and I got out ASAP. I really feel pity for the guys I knew that did stay at home and worked their fingers to the bone on the buttons of their game pad.

[NewJerseyJoe]

>> other factors we haven't yet identified

For example....

• Widespread acceptance of divorce, so boys don't grow up with a male role model in close proximity?
• Skyrocketing out-of-wedlock children, so boys grow up with NO male role model at all?
• Forty years of feminism, teaching boys to be wusses instead of MEN?
• Forty years of liberalism in national politics, giving boys the example of playing games and goofing off when there is important work ahead -- instead of growing up, stepping up to the plate, and getting things done?

Could go on, but I think you get the idea......

[theBuckwheat]

Clueless WaPo writer laments that boys are not men, yet works for the top tier of media advocates supporting ideologies and policies that helped to feminine males over decades of trying to make women equal to men.

Will the WaPo now look to "undocumented workers" (code for illegal Mexican immigrants) to move into male roles that "Americans won't do"?

We have long since passed the point where most college graduates are female.

Liberals go around trashing and destroying the things from which our power and prosperity come from and then are clueless when things turn out exactly opposite to the desired outcome.

[Vision]

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

I just think that's male instinct

[July 4th]

What about discrimination at every turn? I am a male in my mid-20s, and am a lawyer. Firm politics are biased towards women, because the firm is in deep $h!t if the women attorneys complain about anything.

So, I want to leave and start my own business. You'd think I wouldn't have any problem with discrimination then, right? Wrong. I had considered producing/selling a product that would be right at home on the shelves of Wal-Mart/Walgreens. But even their purchasing departments want to know whether you have a minority or woman-owned business, since they have internal preferences. Can't a guy catch a break?

[rarestia]

I'm 26 and have to move back in with my mother. It sucks, but it has to happen. I work a white collar job, making a very good living, but I'm a single white male. The job market in the Tampa Bay area is atrocious, and I just can't find a place to live. This article is bunk, because it paints people like me as being lazy and unmotivated compared to my female counterparts.

[sergeantdave]

If I had a son past 21 years of age still living at home, his bed would be moved to the old coal bin, meals would be $10 a pop, showers $5 and parking $3.50 an hour.