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 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.
It's been so long since the personnel world was normal that people forget: Married men are more productive and hard-working than unmarried men or women. George Gilder's Men and Marriage has excellent stats on this, and there are no doubt more recent sources, too.
Hiring is a process where you estimate future behavior as well as past experience and qualifications. That's why a married man, in the real world, gets extra points for being who he is.
Ignoring "life-style" factors in a hire is objectively insane, but employers are under immense legal and cultural pressure to pretend that a married man who lives in the suburbs and a single gal with a nose ring who lives in a bad part of Brooklyn and goes to clubs at night—who happen to have gone to the same college—are equally qualified. From an employer's point of view, she's more of a risk for being unreliable, but he's not supposed to take that into account.
The cultural logic of today's human-resources culture:
Failing to discriminate against men = artificially propping men up.
No, it is not insulting to men of past generations. I can remember when women didn't work, at all, there was no birth control, and marriage was promoted by shotgun.