Gosh. I obviously struck a nerve. I was trying to state that in the 50’s and 60’s (and earlier) the division of labor in households was generally pretty well-defined. Maybe my use of the word, “role,” was ill-advised. I also acknowledged it wasn’t an ideal set up and that many (both men and women) probably didn’t like it. What I thought I said was in general, in that era men went to work and women stayed home. Men’s role/purpose/function/contribution to the household was to go to work every day and provide financial support while women took care of the house and kids. Do you disagree with that premise?
The point (that I clearly failed to make) was that it was easy to know what was expected of men in that era. And perhaps that traditional structure is rooted in religion. There is no assumed structure today. There is a wide variety of household structures and divisions of labor today. That’s perfectly fine!
Perhaps I should have written that women no longer need men for financial support in this era as they did in the past.
I was also trying to point out that the sequencing of establishing a household/family was also generally defined. Now that can be very different. Couples buy houses, have children, and get married in many different orders now. No one thinks a thing about it.
There are no longer societal, “rules,” about such things. I think that makes it harder for anybody to know what to do. I think that leads to struggling. It’s just an opinion.
Sorry, my post wasn’t meant to be an attack on you, it was about the concept of “roles” that people, at some point, decided were male. I wasn’t raised that way and neither were our children.
Do I wish I earned enough that my wife could stop working and volunteer her time instead? Yup. The difference is, for the vast majority of people in this country reality gets in the way. Two incomes are important. I wish my wife made more money than me. She deserves to make more money than me. Regardless, we’d both keep working.
I have an issue with portions of society seeking to put humans in neat little boxes by sex. Boxes are flimsy and box cutters are cheap.
My wife left 25 minutes ago to gather with her coworkers at their bosses house for a dinner party. I just finished ironing both of our outfits for tomorrow. I do that every workday night. Am I in the wrong box?
Thankfully, there are no longer right and wrong boxes. But boxes, imo, were simpler. People struggle less with simple than they do with complex.
I had to laugh at the ironing though. Before dh and I were dating (we were co-workers who married - don’t think that happens much these days, but idk), we were out in a big group of co-workers at a bar, and I told him, “Your shirt needs to become acquainted with an iron.” He married me anyway
Who we really need to hear from are actual 18-35 year old men.
XD
I’ve been a voracious reader of this thread, and as an 18-35 year old man, it’s fascinating to see what others have to say about us. The most fascinating being what people in the non “18-35 year old men” demographic paint as “bad things”.
Most of my college friends have never been in a relationship and are not currently seeking one, never been intimate, and sit in front of a computer 8-10 hours a day with 4 of those hours being video games and anime. All are brilliant people. None of them have much of an interest in partying and drinking. They wouldn’t have their life any other way – they’re simply having a great time. Back home, some of my friends are unemployed/don’t have concrete plans for the future. They’re living their lives to the fullest as well.
When people say that we’re “struggling”, how are we measuring that? Are we “struggling” to find happiness (we’re definitely in a slump from covid)? Or are we struggling to prop up the capitalist system, which demands that we work from graduation to 65+ and reproduce to create the next generation of workers?
If your username represents your major, that’s one where traditionally men have not struggled (at least financially) although some in the Class of 2024 have found it difficult to get the jobs they wanted, and that’s likely true for the Class of 2025 as well.
Can you clarify whether you are still in college or have left? I ask because there are ample social opportunities in college, whereas that’s not always the case afterwards, depending on the location and company.
Thank you for your honest response. I guess my response would be that I find that version of life you describe to be so cramped, narrow, and low. People shouldn’t aspire to be cattle in a barn, they should aspire to do something with themselves, do their duty (Roman Stoicism, Confucianism) or serve God or serve their neighbor and families. This self-centered nihilism is no good and will make these young men miserable. I don’t believe they’re happy. I see it. They’re pacified on weed, SSRIs, and games. There is a difference.
References to biological differences between the sexes makes many people uncomfortable because these differences have often been used to justify depriving women of full equal rights. I understand that.
What I’m going to say is controversial, but I think women’s biology gives them a purpose. The book alluded to upthread, “Promises I Can Keep,” describes this well. These poor women became mothers to give their lives purpose, even though they could not find a man to share the great project of childrearing with. They accept that all that men are good for in their experience is to be a sperm donor. Fatherhood is culturally defined, motherhood is a biological fact. Your body keeps your child alive in a very real and tangible sense, in some cases for 2 years or so. For many women, this gives them the best reason to get up in the morning (and in the middle of the night lol). It gives their life dignity and meaning it would not otherwise have: existential necessity.
That sounds very like one of the pieces I quoted upthread:
“…young men will only do what’s expected of them.
And a lot did use to be expected. There were social norms to work hard, provide, take care of loved ones, and so on.
Today, these norms have largely dissolved.
Young men have responded accordingly.”
My question is how do your friends who are unemployed and/or don’t have concrete plans for the future provide for themselves while they are “living their lives to the fullest”? If they are “back home” then it sounds like their parents are supporting them? How does that work out for less privileged, poor young men or those without family support? Don’t you think they might “struggle” (financially and otherwise) if they don’t have any money or anywhere to live?
I think it’s important for us to understand that there may be a fundamental misunderstanding between generations (what’s new?), with the older generations assuming that the younger generation is unhappy when perhaps they are not. What makes my early 30’s S happy is not necessarily what made his dad happy at that age. And that’s okay.
There is some concern here about young men who aren’t self supporting and young men who are unhappy with their lives. Do you have any insight into these concerns?
My S has acquaintances who are sitting around in their parents’ basements, but not many - and he has nothing in common with them anymore because the rest of the group grew up. Just like some guys I knew growing up who themselves never quite launched. He knows guys who were huge burnouts in high school, guys who I’m sure a lot of people thought would never “amount to anything,” who got their stuff together over time and are doing fine. In fact, S remarked that he thought that the fact that their lives had been difficult probably contributed to the fact that they worked through things and eventually figured it all out.
The incel movement and the Andrew Tate types blame feminism for the plight of young men. It’s politically reactionary, of course, but there is a kernel of truth to the critique. The legal, economic, and political emancipation of women in the West is based on the industrial revolution, which basically eliminated the value of the male physical strength premium. As the saying goes, “God made man and woman. Colonel Colt made them equal.” This is a vulgar way of expressing that technology has allowed women to participate as equals in the marketplace by removing their need to rely on men for provisioning and protection, and birth control allows women to control their fertility, because constant childbearing and childrearing makes competition in the employment market with men impossible for women. Up until 1960 or so, society was structured to make marriage pretty much mandatory for women in order to have economic security and a social identity. Now, however, Charlotte Lucas does not have to marry Mr. Collins anymore; she can go to law school, move to London, and buy a flat without being a shame or a burden on her family. This is bad for the Mr. Collinses of the world, who are legion. Men now have to offer more than protection and provision to get a mate. They have to be attractive and charming too, or at the very least be able to provide an individual woman with something she could not otherwise get on her own. This is an unpalatable reality, and young men now are paying in some ways for the sins of their (great-grand)fathers. They rightly are angry that they are bearing the burden of that historical guilt when they did nothing to cause it.
Certainly, people do adapt, and overall the emancipation of women is a good thing. But there are tradeoffs in everything, and it’s useful to identify them to see how we got here.
Telling young men today to just suck it up is not helpful. We can handle things a better way.
Thank you for sharing your perspective @ucla_CS_god; it is very much appreciated.
Statistics like the following (most of which were cited by Scott Galloway):
Young men being
3-4x more likely to kill themselves as young women
4x more likely to be addicted
3x more likely to overdose (source)
12x more likely to be incarcerated
I think that most people on this thread think that if an individual is able to support themselves financially, that they are not struggling. So if a person can pay for their food, shelter, healthcare, clothing, and other necessities, that they are not struggling. As @Twoin18 asked,
So if your friends are able to support themselves financially, then I would not classify them as struggling. If they are dependent on someone else’s largesse in order to have their basic needs met, then I think that there are reasons to be concerned.
I am confused by this statement. I ran it by my husband who is in his 60’s (he was in college in the 1970’s) and he says that was pretty much the expectations he had at that age (though he was far less cynical). For that matter, it was my expectations, too. Although we had children because we wanted to, not because we were raising them to work for some kind of system.
So why is this different now? What do these guys expect to do?
I teach young men from 17 to 30 at my regional college, and they are mostly working class and ethnic minorities. They aren’t so different from the rich young men of that age that I know! I think that young men want to devote a good part of their lives to leisure and entertainment (and to be honest, young women would too, if they felt they could do it). That doesn’t mean there aren’t a huge number of hardworking or devoutly religious or ambitious people in these ranks. It’s just that no one used to think they could actually devote a good part of their lives to leisure. My young men who fail out of my class are nearly always the ones who show up at least a few times reeking of weed and obviously high. Weed is a huge problem, because people think it’s not addictive, and that you can get high almost every day and still go about your regular business. More and more people who do service jobs are high while they do them. When people figure out that they can’t reach the highly affluent, spending-and-traveling class, they settle for the weed-and-screens comfortable lifestyle. I wish our current society could offer them more in terms of purpose and fulfillment.
Thanks for posting. Very interesting to hear about the lives of your group and that it is working out well for you. I grew up at a time when it was taken as a given that young people were into “sex, drugs, and rock and roll.” So it’s kind of nice to hear that has changed.
While I disagree, I think this statement captures what we are talking about in this thread. It is about a clash of values. More particularly, It is about the desire to impose one’s own values on the next generation, or to return to values of previous generations. In a word, conservatism.
The claims about genetics, the “purpose” of women, boy vs. girl behavior, etc? It is rhetoric, with the message of: Behave like I want you to behave, or our society will collapse around us.
Same was said (and is still said by many of the same people) concerning race. Nature dictates a certain social order, and it just so happens to correspond with what I desire for society. Funny how it always works out that way.
It’s actually terrible to hear that young men are no longer into “sex, drugs, and rock and roll” (although as @Snowball2 pointed out it sounds like quite a few do care rather too much about drugs). Video games are designed to be addictive and porn can replace real world sex. Aldous Huxley was prescient when writing about the effects of soma in Brave New World. Those citizens also thought they were “living their best life”.
Sex has always been a huge motivator to “grow up” and impress a potential partner. And rock and roll also used to be an important source of social connection. It is always amazing to look back at videos of concerts from the 1960s through the 1990s, before everyone had smartphones, and see how present the audience was.
Huh. My son in that age bracket just sent me an essay about my and DH’s failings as parents. He said it’s very long. I don’t think I should even look at it. Good grief.
I’ll assume that the 2 users who are arguing each other, and/or then flagging each other’s posts, are done. Or will continue the conversation via PM. College Confidential is not a debate society.
I don’t think I should even look at it. Good grief.