Free Republic

The warning signs have been there for decades. Back in 1983, American author Barbara Ehrenreich wrote a powerful book — The Hearts of Men: American Dreams and the Flight from Commitment — arguing that a male revolt was underway. Since the 1950s, she suggested, men had begun rebelling against the breadwinner ethic, inspired by Playboy culture, the counterculture and a desire for personal freedom. They were rejecting the cultural ideology that had shamed them into tying the knot and becoming a good provider, lest they be seen as immature, irresponsible and less than a real man.Ehrenreich understood that marriage was...

It's a bit weird to think of dating or marriage as a market — but this is a newsletter that tries to make sense of the world through economics. And, like any market, shifts in supply and demand can reshape romantic outcomes in pretty profound ways. First, a dating story that illustrates this dynamic. Then we'll get to a fascinating new study that may help explain why getting married has become harder for many American women. But first, the story. If you haven't heard of him, Jack Antonoff is a musician and super-producer. He, for example, produced a slew of...

In a strange way—or in fact a not-so-strange way—conservative Christians who deny the importance of what’s happening to men today on a biological level mirror the attitudes and rhetoric of left-wingers, radical feminists, and men-haters, who label testosterone a poison or “toxin” we should be glad is disappearing. For the radical misandrists, a group that includes many men too, the suffering and plight of men today is a necessary evil on the road to a fairer, more equal society. And not even a form of evil, because many of them enjoy seeing men suffer. It’s a punishment for hundreds of...

As the U.S. birth rate continues to plummet to record lows, data shows that a significant percentage of liberals are deprioritizing the importance of marriage and having children, especially among teens. Among conservatives, however, the phenomenon does not appear to be occurring. In an article published last week by the Institute for Family Studies (IFS), sociologists Brad Wilcox and Grant Bailey highlight how the aspirations that many liberals claim to have about marrying and having children are not lining up with their real-world behavior, which appears to be heavily influenced by negative media narratives. They note that mainstream media outlets...

The University of Washington's women's soccer team were humiliated last week after losing to a group of 14-year-old boys. Last season the Washington Huskies finished as the sixth-ranked team in women's college soccer following an impressive run to the Elite Eight stage of the playoffs, with their 15-3-7 record going down as the best in program history. Yet despite their incredible year in 2025, the Huskies were brought crashing down to earth after suffering an embarrassing defeat to Crossfire under-14 boys last Thursday. The scrimmage took place in Seattle on April 30, and ended in a 2-1 victory for Crossfire...

European Great Tits and 36 other bird species on the continent are more afraid of women than they are of men, according to a recent study—and researchers have no idea why. In the study, men could get about a meter closer to birds than women could before the animals flew away, according to the results. This pattern remained regardless of what the men and women were wearing, what their height was or how they tried to approach the creatures. That suggests birds may be able to suss out the sex of a human, though the researchers aren’t sure how. “I...

Raise your hand if someone close to you – friend, relative, co-worker – has been personally touched by divorce. Sadly, I’ve been able to raise my hand for all three at certain points of my life, and I wouldn’t be surprised if you can as well. Perhaps you’ve even been divorced yourself. The prevalence of divorce in our culture is likely why so few say anything against it. Afraid of stepping on toes, we dance around the topic, telling divorcees that they’re “so brave” for separating from their partner, or that they did the right thing to get out and...

Britain’s ‘missing babies’ can be blamed on immature men who are delaying responsibilities until later in life, according to a report. Research from the Centre for Social Justice (CSJ) think tank predicts around 600,000 young women may miss out on motherhood partly because men don’t feel ready for children until they get older. In the report, called Baby Bust, the organisation says there are a range of reasons for falling birth rates including the cost of childcare, wanting to move into a larger house, prioritising a career or not finding the right partner. But it also attributes some of the...

As if dating in this tech-obsessed era wasn’t difficult enough, women on social media have decided that those who favor meat as a pizza topping are walking red flags. As surface level as that sounds, women like Esme Hewitt (@esmehewitt) have a strong case for this way of thinking, stressing that their views on pizza toppings are more about a person’s empathy toward the environment and the state of our climate. In a TikTok video with almost 500,000 views, the content creator elaborated, saying, “I personally think that if you can’t reduce your meat intake, then you are selfish. What...

AFTER DONALD TRUMP was sworn in as president on January 20, 2025, he issued a flurry of executive orders that eventually saw online information from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention scrubbed from the Internet. Thousands of pages and datasets disappeared. Resources like “RSV Vaccine Guidance for Pregnant People,” “Preventing HIV with PEP,” and more, vanished. Suddenly, Americans could no longer turn to the nation’s premier public health organization for reliable information.

A Brazilian veterinary student could spend up to a decade behind bars, merely for expressing her views of gender ideology on social media. At the heart of the matter are two social media posts published in 2020 that questioned prevailing claims about gender ideology. For example, Isadora said that a man who identifies as a woman is still “born male” and “retains their birth DNA.” For statements like that, prosecutors are now seeking a sentence that could stretch to ten years in prison.

....So, to see the United States men's hockey team finally win Olympic gold in my lifetime was a dream come true. What has happened since has been nothing short of a disappointment. As the celebrations from the 2-1 overtime win over Canada spilled off the ice and behind closed doors, FBI director Kash Patel joined Team USA in the locker room in a leaked video that has since gone viral. In the video, Patel is seen celebrating and drinking beer with the team, whose victory came on the same day an armed man breached the perimeter at President Donald Trump's...

Late night host Bill Maher urged young men who are struggling with women to look inward and address the underlying causes of their situation, while also acknowledging that they were "born in a society that said just being male was toxic." During Friday's episode of "Real Time," Maher argued that while some of today's most notable female pop stars are "practically screaming that they can't get no satisfaction," the problem all women are facing is that "they're living in a world full of guys who are afraid to even make eye contact without an NDA."

There’s a clip going around where some obnoxious woman decides that a guy walking out of a Quik-i-Mart is a nice guy and she takes it upon herself, being the heroine and the main character of the epic saga that is her life, to knock his cup of coffee from his hands. He’s a fairly big guy, fit, and he doesn’t lay her out across the parking lot with a right cross. It’s not that she doesn’t deserve it – she does. It’s that he is still defaulting to the male role in a chivalry system that no longer exists....

“I approached this bastard and in my hands I had my old Remington Model 11 autoloader crammed with 00 buckshot. Frank Pachmayr had put an extension on the magazine which ran right out to the muzzle and this gave me a reserve of fire which sometimes proved quite advantageous.

Many young Trump voters think women 'should follow' men, poll finds

"Being a male is a matter of birth. Being a man is a matter of choice." —Edwin Louis Cole The day the Democratic Party lost testicle #1 was in 2016. They limped by for another eight years and severed part #2 in the summer of 2024. Both times, the root cause of its neutering was exactly the same: The Dems tried to rig a presidential election to help a female candidate. Historians, I suspect, will credit the Democratic Party’s PR emasculation to two events. The first was rigging the 2016 primaries in favor of Hillary Clinton. All the grassroots liberals...

Modern relationships between men and women are dysfunctional. But to understand why, we cannot examine them through the lens of emotion or morality. We need to look at something far more fundamental, our biology. If you look at the natural world, you'll see that there are three distinct categories that demonstrate how two organisms relate to each other. The first is competition, where you are fighting over a limited resource. This is the lion and the hyena fighting over the same carcass. One party's gain is the other party's loss. This dynamic is the classic power struggle where one needs...

Is marriage financially penalized in the US for low-income couples, esp. on welfare, or not [mainly asked in analyzing reasons for long term "cohabitation" (fornication) esp. among low-income parents] Marriage is often penalized for low-income couples in the US, especially those receiving welfare or means-tested benefits.Welfare and Tax PenaltiesMeans-tested benefits: Welfare programs like SNAP (food stamps), Medicaid, housing assistance, and Supplemental Security Income (SSI) calculate eligibility and award levels based on household income. When two low-income adults marry and combine incomes, their joint income frequently exceeds program thresholds, causing sharp reductions or complete loss of benefits.1234SSI marriage penalty: Married disabled...

According to a global survey of 130 countries conducted in 2019 (Kramer 2019), the US had the highest rate of children living in single-parent households of any nation in the world, at about 23%, or more than three times the worldwide level of 7% (Figure 1).The prevalence of these cases was markedly lower in neighboring Canada and Mexico (15% and 7%, respectively), and much lower in developing countries, all below 5%.For decades, the share of U.S. children living with a single parent has been rising, accompanied by a decline in marriage rates and a rise in births outside marriage (Livingston...