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NEETs and Basement Dwellers: Are Men Today Taking Longer to Grow Up?
Glyph
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
http://www.npr.org/2011/02/28/134134731/As-America-Changes-Manhood-Does-Too
How accurate is this assessment? I read a similar article about how young Japanese males are abandoning the salary-man lifestyle of their parents' generation to pursue hobbies and careers that allow for more individual expression. And I've personally seen a lot more men my age in recent years still living with their parents or with girlfriends who work multiple jobs to provide for the both of them right here in America.
Is this just a passing trend or an emergent paradigm of our generation?
Once upon a time in America, boys "became men" when they went to war or started a family. Those milestones still hold true for some, but Kay Hymowitz, author of Manning Up: How The Rise Of Women Has Turned Men Into Boys, says too many young men today are stuck in a stage of extended adolescence. In the new "pre-adulthood," she argues, young men are choosing video games or reruns on the Cartoon Network over adult responsibilities — namely, marriage.
The resulting message to young men, says Hymowitz, "is that they're sort of optional to family life. And I think when you tell a whole generation of men [that] we can take them or leave them, you're going to get a rebellion on their part."
How accurate is this assessment? I read a similar article about how young Japanese males are abandoning the salary-man lifestyle of their parents' generation to pursue hobbies and careers that allow for more individual expression. And I've personally seen a lot more men my age in recent years still living with their parents or with girlfriends who work multiple jobs to provide for the both of them right here in America.
Is this just a passing trend or an emergent paradigm of our generation?
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As for the issue of marriage and family, why is that automatically an indication of growing up? I'm married with kids, but that was a personal decision on my part. It wasn't some conscious attempt to become an adult. Where is it written that people have to marry and start having kids at a certain age?
Rigorous Scholarship
Disclaimer: I am married. Full time, well paying job. Also working on having a kid at some point soon. I also have all 3 consoles and a 61" TV I enjoy them on. My Christmas present from my wife last year was a trip to PAX East.
The concept of the guy who hits 18, gets a job and a wife, buys a house and settles down is an antiquated 1950s ideal that never existed in the first place. Men don't have to do anything. We can be as mature or immature as we please, or in some cases, as overprotective or over-enabling parents/significant others allow us to.
I've always hated the idea that that was supposed to be my goal in life. I coulda had kids when I was 15, and got married right after, then what?
And for every dude "in a basement" or living with his parents there are two more quietly doing their shit without any fanfare or hoopla, while still playing video games.
Fuck
That
Shit
If a guy wrote a book bemoaning the fact that women weren't in the kitchen making him a sandwich he'd be burned at the stake.
And, to be honest, when it comes to marriage and children, guys have plenty of flexibility. They can wait until they're 35-40 and marry a woman in her 20's without any real issues regarding fertility. Historically, it's been pretty common that men waited until they were established in life and then married a younger woman. It's only relatively recently that the norm has become marrying someone of a similar age.
Rigorous Scholarship
Absolutely. The authors won't be taken to task for this article, though.
Here, fill in the blank: Fitzwilliam Darcy : Masculinity :: _________ : Femininity
Pretty much this. The "concerns" being raised largely seem to be filtered through the lens that women should be able to have it all in all endeavors in life, even when it comes to the behavior of their partner and said partner's perceived role in society. Just as she wouldn't accept some one suggesting that women need to have "an understanding of their role in society", she probably also wouldn't accept the aspects of the traditional male role in society that she finds offensive. This kind of thing is akin to some neckbeard whining that all women are worthless because he can't find one who looks like a centerfold and is sexually available, but simultaneously isn't put off by his odious personal habits and also shares his deep appreciation for Naruto.
Also on Steam and PSN: twobadcats
The second article in the OP implies the men who dick around aren't men anymore. Some women who were shaped by the constant "I am a strong and independent woman" mantras of feminism must not be able to turn the mantra's echo off in their minds - they are more disgusted with seeing any adult be dependent on another than should be reasonable.
Will the feminist movement branch out and now start uplifting men as well as women?
It seems the author misses something. She claims men find themselves optional to family life, with out stopping to consider if it's not family life that is the option. An option many decide not to take.
Translation: "I've made bad choices about who I've dated and I'm seeking to blame society for this."
Fuck everything about this.
There is also the question of fertility. An unmarried 35 year-old woman who wants to have kids will start to panic, as her fertility is on a downward slope at that point. Her 35 year-old male contemporary doesn't have the same biological concerns, and he has no real reason to worry about her issues. He can always go marry some younger woman in a couple of years if he wants kids.
Rigorous Scholarship
Screw you, man! She'll answer my eHarmony profile any day now!
/HOTPOCKET
/NOMNOM
This woman sounds like zero fun. Her idea of a fun time probably involves bed-skirt shopping at Bed Bath and Beyond, followed by some antiquing. She likely only gives blowjobs on birthdays.
Rigorous Scholarship
Frankly after reading a bit about her and reviews of her other works, I'm beginning to believe she really has no basis for any of her beliefs and doesn't really back up any of her "statistics." Like reading about how she doesn't think there is a marriage crisis (well, so long as you're a college educated, high income white woman; if you're black or poor then you don't even wait for the paint to dry to get out), she says that the number of white, college educated women getting a divorce has fallen, but then doesn't say whether or not the number getting married has increased, decreased or stayed the same.
You don't. That's a sexist stereotype that belittles hard-working women who merely want to look decent and eat fish tacos at that diner one or two nights a week. Women are not vapid, women are strong and independent, women are strong and independent.
I do want to throw out there, though, that despite this article, adolescence in the first-world is taking longer than in prior generations. Part of this is because we spend more time in school before we can enter the workforce. Part of this is because we have higher expectations for "adulthood" now - it's not strictly unique to US, western europe, & Japan to expect each generation to live in a new home detached from prior generations, but it is a little unusual. In a lot of cultures, there's nothing juvenile at all about sharing a home with your parents (and/or your grandparents).
This may be a good thing or a bad thing, but if it's a bad thing, it's certainly not a bad thing for the reasons described in the article.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Movies now have a maximum age limit as well as a minimum one? Star Wars is for kids? My girlfriend is going to be heartbroken to hear this! Video games are absolutely juevenille pursuits, despite research showing that women of all ages are picking up gaming of one sort or another in greater numbers every year? Why the hell would going to Vegas be a bad thing? What's wrong with Chipolte (as a quick bite to eat, not something I'd suggest for an anniversary or something)? Why is having a bike and riding it where it's supposed to be ridden a bad thing? Where else would one ride it? The sidewalk where it's not supposed to be?
Also, that bit about being "more like the kids we babysat than the dads who drove us home" comes across as kind of creepy.
Edit: gentlemen, let's not be uncouth about this. You know who you are.
Any guy who ends up involved with this woman will quickly find himself cut off and isolated from his friends and browbeaten into giving up his interests and hobbies. It's kind of a trope of movies and TV, and women who do that are portrayed in a mildly negative manner, while guys who do so are considered to be borderline abusive.
No kidding.
Rigorous Scholarship
Very true. I know more than a few of them. I guess I just find it striking how contradictory the whole thing is, because the kind of man who meets the requirements is much more likely to perceive himself as the dominant partner in a relationship and less likely to want to be in a relationship where the other party is trying to set the agenda.
By way of analogy - in my household, I've always been the breadwinner, and in some ways the relationship is very traditional. My partner doesn't even drive a car. I pay all the bills and handle all the money, even her money. I've always pulled down a decent salary, and I'm headed back to school to get an MBA. But apparently I'm still a "boy" because my idea of a good time is yakking about Star Wars and video games while my buddies and I split a pizza (we don't have Chipolte around here) over a game of Dungeons and Dragons. Somehow, if I swapped that out for a game of golf with the exact same group of guys (because the biggest slacker is a radiology tech, and we've got a doctor and a lawyer in the group), I'd be a "man". It's a ridiculous standard.
Definitely going to go home from work today and tell my significant other how much I love her, though.
Also on Steam and PSN: twobadcats
The author seems to think that men are somehow worse than women when it comes to their maturity level, and that the level of male immaturity is approaching epidemic levels.
Rigorous Scholarship