Sounds like some young men need to pick themselves up, study up, research up, and vote in 2026 midterms.
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76% of people in South Korea say there is tension between men and women in the country â the highest of 30 countries surveyed on this question.
I understand about the South Korean tension. I adored the South Korean students at my school. I got to know some women quite well, and they all mentioned that they didnât want to do what they were expected to do ⊠their families happily sent them overseas for an education, and then they were expected to go back, get married and raise kids. They felt trapped, because it was a demand rather than a choice. One woman I knew was in her mid 30âs, and she was embarrassed that she had never married ⊠she was actually worried she might not get a visa because she was (in her words) middle aged and unmarried. She didnât want to get married, but she was told that she needed to be married and to have children (by the end of her studies, she had gotten over being embarrassed). Itâs a cultural thing that will surely change as the younger women buck the status quo.
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My S26 has been approached online by a variety of misogynistic, incel, alt right, MAGA sorts since he was in middle school. Happens in video gaming communities, YouTube and Instagram comment threads, discord, etc. It doesnât surprise me at all that his generation might have fallen prey to this divisive way of thinking. Anyone who has been left online without very intentional parental guidance and oversight would have to be quite strong minded to avoid itâsomething that might be tough to do when youâre too young and are up against predatory adults, or adults abusing an online platform with their misinformation. Iâm very grateful that my son has strong opinions about equal rights, and that he took us seriously when we talked about keeping safe online, but heâs distanced himself from former friends that he said have âfallen down the alt-right pipelineâ
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I think itâs best if we extend empathy to young men who may have unrealistic expectations concerning women. I hesitate to make statements about certain podcasts because I personally donât listen to the ones that tell me women must behave a certain way. Imo the narrative theyâre selling isnât very convincing outside of their target audience.
I actually donât mind if theyâre complaining because I believe women are changing and it can be difficult when reality conflicts with expectations. Itâs the people/entities that manipulate and financially benefit from stoking fear and anger that I find sad.
Something will surely change, as South Korea will become essentially extinct on current trends. Current projections are for a population decline of between 70% and 85% over the next hundred years.
But as I pointed out in another thread, one might also reason that most of the people still having kids will be those with traditionalist (conservative) attitudes and in the long term the progressive kid free group will (literally) die outâŠ
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Sorry, I canât work up any empathy.
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Yeah, it stops being just a difference in opinion when what it boils down to is that one side thinks entire groups of people donât deserve equal human rights. Thatâs not even a topic of debate for me.
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Good news about my 30-year-old son who has been adrift for awhile. Months ago, he applied to the University of Warsaw for a graduate program. They told him that LEBANON had to certify his diploma from the American University of Beirut. WTH!? Why would a government thatâs falling apart want to help an American? He did call them, and they told him he would have to prove his high school competency and take a test! He knew that even if he jumped through all their hoops, they might still deny his request.
So he contacted AUBâs office in NYC and after putting him off for awhile, he called their Office of Development because he knew THEY would answer the phone. Sure enough, they helped him. Long story short, UW agreed that if he could get certification from the US Department of State, they would accept it. So he gave his younger sister some money and she made a trip to NYC to get everything taken care of (it was a lot of work, involving a trip to the AUB office, the State Department, a notary, Fed Ex, etc).
UW accepted the documentation and he has been accepted to a program in sustainability (I have no idea what that means, but heâs excited about it). I am SO HAPPY he is doing this. I really think his ranting about our being horrible parents was that he was dissatisfied with his life and needed to blame someone. Iâm hoping he will be back on track now.
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And I donât believe you must. I just happen to believe that waiting to judge an individualâŠwho perhaps may have unrealistic expectations concerning women rather than a real deep-seated hatred of womenâŠis prudent.
In my opinion empathy is trying to understand why a person feels a certain way, but doesnât necessarily mean you have to excuse bad/hostile behavior. Iâm with you there.
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Curious as to the relevance this has to a thread on whether under 35 males are struggling and what can be done about it?
Is it that some struggling under 35 males tend view reproduction from this reductive, pronatalist perspective or other skewed and disturbing perspectives?
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@Twoin18 -I know plenty of left leaning couples who are having children. Having liberal opinions does not preclude wanting a family.
Some of these young guys with â traditional â attitudes are going to have to wake up. Many young women will not be interested in a relationship with them. And itâs awfully difficult to support a family on a single income these days. And thatâs a lot of self imposed pressure to earn a lot of money.
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Interestingly, my teen daughter asked me yesterday about the âepidemic of young men strugglingâ and what I thought of it. She says that her tik-tok algorithm tries to feed her a steady diet of how young men are struggling, and how Gen Z men and women canât relate, and how young men are lonely and discriminated against and all the same stuff we middle age people are talking about here on CC. Sheâs pretty savvy about these things, and her take is that this is largely a manufactured crisis with a lot of manufactured outrage, and that it is probably being pushed for political reasons.
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Iâd say yes and no, given my experience raising both a daughter and son in a very liberal, well off Bay Area town (which is limiting in and of itself).
Yes, it is most certainly being exaggerated for political gains. And a steady diet of any kind of TikTok food should be regarded with skepticismâgood for your D for recognizing it.
However, even in my community, the differences between raising my son and daughter were quite obvious to me. This started as early as first grade, where I was a volunteer in my Dâs classroom. The teachers were overwhelmed by an ever-growing class size, often had difficulty managing the classroom energy. Boys were often being criticized or they were in trouble for misbehaving, getting distracted or running off their energy inside the classroom. When weâd walk to and from the library, Iâd listen to teachers complain to each other about the misbehaving boys. My own boy later became one of those boys who struggled to sit still in class and I was called into many a âparent meetingâ to discuss my unruly 7 year old son. There was nothing wrong with my son other than the fact that sitting still and staying âon taskâ on a worksheet was not in his skill set at 7 (perhaps worth noting that he has mastered this at 17). But criticism takes its toll. My biggest job as his parent was to protect his love of learning in a classroom that seemed hell bent to beat it out of him. Conversely, my daughter was beloved for her obedience and desire to please her teachers. My biggest job with her was to help her find her own passions that didnât involve pleasing anyone but herself. The trickle down effects of these differences is easy to see.
So, it doesnât surprise me at all that the ratio of young men to young women in colleges is 40 / 60. Our overburdened public elementary and secondary school systems favor well behaved, calm children and girls are socialized this way from birth (obviously not all girls or all boys are any which way). If the path to success has grown over time to favor the way we have socialized girls and women, one response to this is to try to aggressively âtake it back.â
Of course, I take issue with any notion that the success of one comes at the expense of another. Thereâs plenty of room for all. But as patriarchy gasps for breath, those that feel marginalized for being left behind in school or in life, are going to blow air into its lungs. And itâs going to look ugly. Boosting a damaged self-esteem with venom and hatred for the rising success of women is vile, but I think it might be appealing to a subset of boys (who become men very quickly) who feel like they canât do anything right. This doesnât excuse the behaviorâbut my fundamental belief is that the way out of this seemingly growing divide starts way back in the early childhood experiences of boys and girls.
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I too, have both a daughter and a son.
My daughter was basically ignored in school. ( not by the other students, she always has been very social). She was a well behaved little girl and the teachers/ administrators were happy with that. I had to fight to get her advanced in math ( she was bored to tears) which took a big toll on her confidence though she continued to get top grades.
My s had a different experience. While he was one of the boys who was difficult, his academic ability was always praised and commented on. Basically the adults at the school hated him ( with a few exceptions) but acknowledged him for being academically talented.
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In an ideal world, teachers would be given more training on biases, more support in the classroom to allow for individual student strengths and needs to be addressed, and there would be more pay and more male teachers in elementary grades so that they could be role models to more children. We seem very far away from that place these days, I am sad to say.
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Well as long as we are sharing anecdotes, I would say that my son and daughter were treated equally well in high school. But girls overall performed better. A majority of the top 10 students were girls in each of their graduation years.
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@Wjs1107, very interesting and thought provoking observations.
What I get stuck on is that your description seems to be the same as it ever was, except now girls have more opportunities. Fifty years ago teachers were complaining about âmisbehaving,â disruptive, âunrulyâ boys who couldnât sit still or stay on task. This was even true in all-boys schools.
It seems a significant percentage of boys have always struggled with these issues in school, so it is hard for me to causally connect their âstrugglesâ with any sort cultural shift favoring girls. Seems more like when given similar opportunities, a smaller percentage of girls are held back by issues with which many boys have always struggled.
So what about the ratio of boys to girls attending college? Historically, the changing ratio has been driven by increases in the percentage of female high school graduates attending college, not decreases in the percent of male high school graduates attending college. (The last few years may indicate a change in the trend, but historically the data is very noisy, so It is hard to say.). In other words, even though a higher percentage of boys now go to college than used to, they havenât kept up with the girls.
Note that I am not suggesting that we should ignore the struggling boys, but I do doubt that their struggles are the result of some cultural shift, or feminization of schools, or favoritism toward girls, or any of the other reasons the traditionalists and conservatives push. I think you and I agree on that point, but I am to sure others see it that way.
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Along the same lines, I am still waiting for someone to explain to me when was it that young males were NOT struggling? Seems like the struggling started with Adam, continued with Cane and Abel, and hasnât let up since.
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I hear you. And I agree with a lot of what youâre saying.
It is true that there are boys who have always struggled and the net new is really the growth of opportunity for girls/women.
I think the nuance hereâwhatâs different, from my observationâis that watching women succeed creates difficult feelings in a certain type of boy or man. If the undercurrent of their upbringing is that men are strong, successful, provider types who thrive in competition and who are inherently supposed to preside over women and families, it can be one thing if they themselves donât live up to that ideal. But what makes that feeling worseâand intolerable, if they are already feeling like a loserâis watching a woman win at the life theyâre aspiring to. An extra layer of anger then mixes into their self hate.
None of this suggests that I agree with or am justifying that reaction. But I worry that some of this extreme thinking comes from a place of deep shame. And, not knowing what else to do, boys can fall prey to dangerous people who want to capitalize on their vulnerability. My own kid has watched former childhood friends fall in with these kinds of groupsâusually because theyâve found podcasts, instagram reels or threads led by people espousing a narrative that makes them feel better about themselves, at the expense of others. Itâs very scary and very sad.
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In a perfect world parents would trust teachers judgement and send children to school that could behave.