That's certainly a thing today. Like, I know people that have gotten pregnant out of wedlock, freak out, have a quick marriage, then lie to both their parents and say that the baby was born a month early.
Anecdotes and all, and primarily related to more rural communities, but it's an attitude and behavior pattern that's still very much alive.
Yeah I can attest to that, seems to very much happen in urban life too. All of my girlfriends schoolmates from when she was in NJ have had babies from 15-25. Only about 10% of them haven't at this point. Not sure if it's more in relation to the "poor" socioeconomic status of them though, which is probably likely the case.
not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
I suspect that there's also a link here between "preadulthood" and the fact that more and more women are waiting later in life to have children. Throw in some social acceptance of contraceptives, too.
I mean, in the traditional family model, isn't the reason that you had to "grow up" because you couldn't keep your dick in your pants and knocked a girl up?
Can we all agree that "preadulthood" is a gooseshit term that needs to die?
First of all, the implications from Hymowitz's book. The first being the notion that men require a woman to validate and "civilize" them (quoting from a previous poster). Maybe I am going out on a limb here, but if this were accurate, wouldn't we logically expect that gay men, lacking any female validation, would be amongst the biggest neckbeards and manchildren, certainly far and away more so than their straight counterparts. Now I'm not sure if there have been any studies on this, but I don't expect you would find it to be the case. The characterization is certainly that the "manchild" is a straight guy. Without stats, that's not necessarily a refutation of her point, but it seems odd that it wasn't considered. If gay guys are indeed less likely to be these failing manchildren, then that would lend credence to the idea that gender roles are a factor here.
Second thing, concerning "pre-adulthood". I'm a 30-something guy in an MBA program, I work in banking in a major city, and so these "pre-adults" are a major element of my peer group. What seems glaring to me is that, by and large, the men and women in this group have more or less the same sorts of interests as they did when they were teenagers. Insofar as these interests are gendered (for instance, my interest in playing video games), the male interests are "juvenile" and the female interests aren't. This applies even to masculine interests that are more traditionally male, like sports or cars (which are often referred to as "toys"). Traditionally female interests, even ones manifested by 13 year old girls, are "mature". This suggests to me that the labels applied around the maturity of an activity are essentially arbitrary and are really being divided along gender lines. A notable example would be the popularity of young adult fiction (i.e. Twilight, Hunger Games) with adult women. This even transcends the "pre-adult" demographic (for instance, "Twilight moms" certainly don't fit in that category). I hope this doesn't spawn an entirely different tangent, but I'll go ahead and assert that Twilight is unarguably a very juvenile piece of literature if anything is deserving of that designation, but you certainly won't see public hand-wringing and questions about why women can't just grow up and stop reading books intended for teenage girls.
On the subject of gender roles, I agree with the idea that men basically haven't made much progress at breaking out of traditionally gender roles, and we have failed to do so to our detriment (to our own health and happiness if nothing else). What progress has been made is largely on the backs of the feminist movement and queer theory (which is about the only area where you'll find academically rigorous work being done by men on the subject of redefining male gender roles). The "man box" has pretty solid walls and these are reinforced not only by men themselves, but also by women. I expect to catch some flack for this, but there is an impossible standard developing for men that parallels the one developing for women. I'm referring to the concept of "having it all" (which essentially boils down to having a high powered career, a family, a model domestic life, and maintaining a high standard of physical fitness and beauty), something women have been confronting for ages. The male version consists of conforming to traditional gender roles surrounding career and accomplishment coupled with willingness to be an equal partner in domestic and parenting responsibilities, and of course maintaining a "healthy" physique. This boils down to men being failures if they are anything other than Brad Pitt lookalikes who manage to find time away from the office (where they're a partner at an investment bank) to take the kids to Yoga for Tots. Essentially this is a mirror image of same unrealistic expectations placed on women, and it's certainly more recent, but the irony is that much of it is being driven by the same opinion makers who are openly critical of the more established female version.
Second thing, concerning "pre-adulthood". I'm a 30-something guy in an MBA program, I work in banking in a major city, and so these "pre-adults" are a major element of my peer group. What seems glaring to me is that, by and large, the men and women in this group have more or less the same sorts of interests as they did when they were teenagers. Insofar as these interests are gendered (for instance, my interest in playing video games), the male interests are "juvenile" and the female interests aren't. This applies even to masculine interests that are more traditionally male, like sports or cars (which are often referred to as "toys"). Traditionally female interests, even ones manifested by 13 year old girls, are "mature". This suggests to me that the labels applied around the maturity of an activity are essentially arbitrary and are really being divided along gender lines. A notable example would be the popularity of young adult fiction (i.e. Twilight, Hunger Games) with adult women. This even transcends the "pre-adult" demographic (for instance, "Twilight moms" certainly don't fit in that category). I hope this doesn't spawn an entirely different tangent, but I'll go ahead and assert that Twilight is unarguably a very juvenile piece of literature if anything is deserving of that designation, but you certainly won't see public hand-wringing and questions about why women can't just grow up and stop reading books intended for teenage girls.
This is a good point. Hobbies such as Sports/Cars/Video Games/Action Films are considered juvenile where as Celebrity Gossip/Fashion/Romance Films/Novels are not?
Also, I'm embarrassed to say that I just "got" your username.
Can we all agree that "preadulthood" is a gooseshit term that needs to die?
Eh... no? Call it what you want, there is a marked increase of frat boys and party girls going on 30. I'm not judging it one way or another. But it's noticeable. It isn't just about accidental pregnancies. It's also rejecting the idea that once college is over, it's time to get married and have kids. It's a rejection of going to school to get your M.R.S. And it's creating a culture that is fairly new and noticeable. Noticeable for its many similarities to adolescence.
Can we all agree that "preadulthood" is a gooseshit term that needs to die?
Eh... no? Call it what you want, there is a marked increase of frat boys and party girls going on 30. I'm not judging it one way or another. But it's noticeable. It isn't just about accidental pregnancies. It's also rejecting the idea that once college is over, it's time to get married and have kids. It's a rejection of going to school to get your M.R.S. And it's creating a culture that is fairly new and noticeable. Noticeable for its many similarities to adolescence.
I don't think he likes the term. To me it's just the same as calling it early adulthood, just with it's own unique verbiage.
not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
I suspect that there's also a link here between "preadulthood" and the fact that more and more women are waiting later in life to have children. Throw in some social acceptance of contraceptives, too.
I mean, in the traditional family model, isn't the reason that you had to "grow up" because you couldn't keep your dick in your pants and knocked a girl up?
Can we all agree that "preadulthood" is a gooseshit term that needs to die?
I don't know if it's the best term, but it is describing a real stage of life, just as "teenager" describes a real stage of life that exists now but didn't in the past.
I expect to catch some flack for this, but there is an impossible standard developing for men that parallels the one developing for women. I'm referring to the concept of "having it all" (which essentially boils down to having a high powered career, a family, a model domestic life, and maintaining a high standard of physical fitness and beauty), something women have been confronting for ages. The male version consists of conforming to traditional gender roles surrounding career and accomplishment coupled with willingness to be an equal partner in domestic and parenting responsibilities, and of course maintaining a "healthy" physique. This boils down to men being failures if they are anything other than Brad Pitt lookalikes who manage to find time away from the office (where they're a partner at an investment bank) to take the kids to Yoga for Tots. Essentially this is a mirror image of same unrealistic expectations placed on women, and it's certainly more recent, but the irony is that much of it is being driven by the same opinion makers who are openly critical of the more established female version.
I'm snipping out this specific piece because I don't think this is recent at all. At least as far as American Media has been concerned, we've ALWAYS had a pretty strict expectations of conformance to unrealistic ideals of manhood in our entertainment and advertising; it's only more recent that we've started throwing "sensitive husband and father" on top of the existing pile of "protector, breadwinner, physical paragon", etc.
IMO, it's likely to be blamed in large part on marketing initiatives looking to capitalize on increased female buying power by appealing to "feminist" ideals of "gender equality". Quotes used because advertisers are horrible people that will push any meme or trope to make a buck, regardless of the truth or lies inherent.
I'm almost at the point of starting a "modern male" thread, since I just launched into a giant tangent, but realized it was outside the bounds of this thread's focus on education and young professionals and thus deleted it.
I suspect that there's also a link here between "preadulthood" and the fact that more and more women are waiting later in life to have children. Throw in some social acceptance of contraceptives, too.
I mean, in the traditional family model, isn't the reason that you had to "grow up" because you couldn't keep your dick in your pants and knocked a girl up?
Can we all agree that "preadulthood" is a gooseshit term that needs to die?
I don't know if it's the best term, but it is describing a real stage of life, just as "teenager" describes a real stage of life that exists now but didn't in the past.
It's a gooseshit term because it attempts to promulgate the conceit that you are not a "real" adult until you are married, have 2.5 children and a mortgage, and conform to traditional concepts of adulthood as put forth by Very Serious People.
could be because every damn class assigns hours of homework. It's like working two jobs, there's just too much busy work from every subject and each year is a re-hash of the previous. No wonder kinds in general can't give a shit about education.
I suspect that there's also a link here between "preadulthood" and the fact that more and more women are waiting later in life to have children. Throw in some social acceptance of contraceptives, too.
I mean, in the traditional family model, isn't the reason that you had to "grow up" because you couldn't keep your dick in your pants and knocked a girl up?
Can we all agree that "preadulthood" is a gooseshit term that needs to die?
I don't know if it's the best term, but it is describing a real stage of life, just as "teenager" describes a real stage of life that exists now but didn't in the past.
It's a gooseshit term because it attempts to promulgate the conceit that you are not a "real" adult until you are married, have 2.5 children and a mortgage, and conform to traditional concepts of adulthood as put forth by Very Serious People.
The term itself is bullshit and carries inherent judgment. That's why I keep putting it in quotes. Unfortunately, at this exact moment, we don't have a better term to describe the trend of post-college young adults primarily focused on hedonistic pursuits, so I'll keep using it in quotes until we do.
could be because every damn class assigns hours of homework. It's like working two jobs, there's just too much busy work from every subject and each year is a re-hash of the previous. No wonder kinds in general can't give a shit about education.
This sort of hit me in the tail end on my way out of school. Yeah I remember doing more work at school than I have ever done at work. It would literally take me from 3:00 until almost 9:00 at night to finish it all. If there was a project or essay, forget about it, midnight or later most of the time.
Block scheduling helped alleviate that a huge bit, but we only got that our last 2 years so I really can't comment on it.
I think it had more to do with shifting from one teacher controlling the entirety of the student's learning plan in grade school, to having 4+ teachers a day with no actualization of what is going on in the rest of the subjects, timing, or otherwise.
I can see the argument for this.
bowen on
not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
I suspect that there's also a link here between "preadulthood" and the fact that more and more women are waiting later in life to have children. Throw in some social acceptance of contraceptives, too.
I mean, in the traditional family model, isn't the reason that you had to "grow up" because you couldn't keep your dick in your pants and knocked a girl up?
Can we all agree that "preadulthood" is a gooseshit term that needs to die?
I don't know if it's the best term, but it is describing a real stage of life, just as "teenager" describes a real stage of life that exists now but didn't in the past.
It's a gooseshit term because it attempts to promulgate the conceit that you are not a "real" adult until you are married, have 2.5 children and a mortgage, and conform to traditional concepts of adulthood as put forth by Very Serious People.
The term itself is bullshit and carries inherent judgment. That's why I keep putting it in quotes. Unfortunately, at this exact moment, we don't have a better term to describe the trend of post-college young adults primarily focused on hedonistic pursuits, so I'll keep using it in quotes until we do.
Nominating "Hedos" for new term.
How about just calling them young adults, since that's what they are.
A lot of this need to define Millennial young adults with these labels comes from the fact that many Millenials are rejecting prior norms that previous generations took as the way of the world, and that these previous generations feel that they have to label this conduct as aberrant. Needless to say, I reject that.
I suspect that there's also a link here between "preadulthood" and the fact that more and more women are waiting later in life to have children. Throw in some social acceptance of contraceptives, too.
I mean, in the traditional family model, isn't the reason that you had to "grow up" because you couldn't keep your dick in your pants and knocked a girl up?
Can we all agree that "preadulthood" is a gooseshit term that needs to die?
I don't know if it's the best term, but it is describing a real stage of life, just as "teenager" describes a real stage of life that exists now but didn't in the past.
It's a gooseshit term because it attempts to promulgate the conceit that you are not a "real" adult until you are married, have 2.5 children and a mortgage, and conform to traditional concepts of adulthood as put forth by Very Serious People.
The term itself is bullshit and carries inherent judgment. That's why I keep putting it in quotes. Unfortunately, at this exact moment, we don't have a better term to describe the trend of post-college young adults primarily focused on hedonistic pursuits, so I'll keep using it in quotes until we do.
Nominating "Hedos" for new term.
How about just calling them young adults, since that's what they are.
A lot of this need to define Millennial young adults with these labels comes from the fact that many Millenials are rejecting prior norms that previous generations took as the way of the world, and that these previous generations feel that they have to label this conduct as aberrant. Needless to say, I reject that.
Because the specific behavioral patterns we're talking about are not exhibited by all young adults; is there harm in specifying a simple way to refer to the sample group we are examining? Also, I always understood "young adult" to be another term for "late teens".
I suspect that there's also a link here between "preadulthood" and the fact that more and more women are waiting later in life to have children. Throw in some social acceptance of contraceptives, too.
I mean, in the traditional family model, isn't the reason that you had to "grow up" because you couldn't keep your dick in your pants and knocked a girl up?
Can we all agree that "preadulthood" is a gooseshit term that needs to die?
I don't know if it's the best term, but it is describing a real stage of life, just as "teenager" describes a real stage of life that exists now but didn't in the past.
It's a gooseshit term because it attempts to promulgate the conceit that you are not a "real" adult until you are married, have 2.5 children and a mortgage, and conform to traditional concepts of adulthood as put forth by Very Serious People.
The term itself is bullshit and carries inherent judgment. That's why I keep putting it in quotes. Unfortunately, at this exact moment, we don't have a better term to describe the trend of post-college young adults primarily focused on hedonistic pursuits, so I'll keep using it in quotes until we do.
Nominating "Hedos" for new term.
I dunno, "hedonistic" is pretty laden with value judgment as well. The other thing is that it can be applied to other non-traditional adults, like my personal heroes, the DINKs (dual income, no kids).
Edith_Bagot-Dix on
Also on Steam and PSN: twobadcats
0
mrt144King of the NumbernamesRegistered Userregular
I suspect that there's also a link here between "preadulthood" and the fact that more and more women are waiting later in life to have children. Throw in some social acceptance of contraceptives, too.
I mean, in the traditional family model, isn't the reason that you had to "grow up" because you couldn't keep your dick in your pants and knocked a girl up?
Can we all agree that "preadulthood" is a gooseshit term that needs to die?
I don't know if it's the best term, but it is describing a real stage of life, just as "teenager" describes a real stage of life that exists now but didn't in the past.
It's a gooseshit term because it attempts to promulgate the conceit that you are not a "real" adult until you are married, have 2.5 children and a mortgage, and conform to traditional concepts of adulthood as put forth by Very Serious People.
The term itself is bullshit and carries inherent judgment. That's why I keep putting it in quotes. Unfortunately, at this exact moment, we don't have a better term to describe the trend of post-college young adults primarily focused on hedonistic pursuits, so I'll keep using it in quotes until we do.
Nominating "Hedos" for new term.
How about just calling them young adults, since that's what they are.
A lot of this need to define Millennial young adults with these labels comes from the fact that many Millenials are rejecting prior norms that previous generations took as the way of the world, and that these previous generations feel that they have to label this conduct as aberrant. Needless to say, I reject that.
I am referring to baby boomers as "ruiners" so I don't see the problem.
I suspect that there's also a link here between "preadulthood" and the fact that more and more women are waiting later in life to have children. Throw in some social acceptance of contraceptives, too.
I mean, in the traditional family model, isn't the reason that you had to "grow up" because you couldn't keep your dick in your pants and knocked a girl up?
Can we all agree that "preadulthood" is a gooseshit term that needs to die?
I don't know if it's the best term, but it is describing a real stage of life, just as "teenager" describes a real stage of life that exists now but didn't in the past.
It's a gooseshit term because it attempts to promulgate the conceit that you are not a "real" adult until you are married, have 2.5 children and a mortgage, and conform to traditional concepts of adulthood as put forth by Very Serious People.
The term itself is bullshit and carries inherent judgment. That's why I keep putting it in quotes. Unfortunately, at this exact moment, we don't have a better term to describe the trend of post-college young adults primarily focused on hedonistic pursuits, so I'll keep using it in quotes until we do.
Nominating "Hedos" for new term.
I dunno, "hedonistic" is pretty laden with value judgment as well. The other thing is that it can be applied to other non-traditional adults, like my personal heroes, the DINKs (dual income, no kids).
Unfortunately yeah, Hedonistic carries baggage as well, but it's not inherent to the word itself, merely the byproduct of a puritanical society.
I suspect that there's also a link here between "preadulthood" and the fact that more and more women are waiting later in life to have children. Throw in some social acceptance of contraceptives, too.
I mean, in the traditional family model, isn't the reason that you had to "grow up" because you couldn't keep your dick in your pants and knocked a girl up?
Can we all agree that "preadulthood" is a gooseshit term that needs to die?
I don't know if it's the best term, but it is describing a real stage of life, just as "teenager" describes a real stage of life that exists now but didn't in the past.
It's a gooseshit term because it attempts to promulgate the conceit that you are not a "real" adult until you are married, have 2.5 children and a mortgage, and conform to traditional concepts of adulthood as put forth by Very Serious People.
The term itself is bullshit and carries inherent judgment. That's why I keep putting it in quotes. Unfortunately, at this exact moment, we don't have a better term to describe the trend of post-college young adults primarily focused on hedonistic pursuits, so I'll keep using it in quotes until we do.
Nominating "Hedos" for new term.
How about just calling them young adults, since that's what they are.
A lot of this need to define Millennial young adults with these labels comes from the fact that many Millenials are rejecting prior norms that previous generations took as the way of the world, and that these previous generations feel that they have to label this conduct as aberrant. Needless to say, I reject that.
I am referring to baby boomers as "ruiners" so I don't see the problem.
Good call. They had a lot to prove, nothing to lose, and my fucking world is wearing their disease.
I suspect that there's also a link here between "preadulthood" and the fact that more and more women are waiting later in life to have children. Throw in some social acceptance of contraceptives, too.
I mean, in the traditional family model, isn't the reason that you had to "grow up" because you couldn't keep your dick in your pants and knocked a girl up?
Can we all agree that "preadulthood" is a gooseshit term that needs to die?
I don't know if it's the best term, but it is describing a real stage of life, just as "teenager" describes a real stage of life that exists now but didn't in the past.
It's a gooseshit term because it attempts to promulgate the conceit that you are not a "real" adult until you are married, have 2.5 children and a mortgage, and conform to traditional concepts of adulthood as put forth by Very Serious People.
The term itself is bullshit and carries inherent judgment. That's why I keep putting it in quotes. Unfortunately, at this exact moment, we don't have a better term to describe the trend of post-college young adults primarily focused on hedonistic pursuits, so I'll keep using it in quotes until we do.
Nominating "Hedos" for new term.
How about just calling them young adults, since that's what they are.
A lot of this need to define Millennial young adults with these labels comes from the fact that many Millenials are rejecting prior norms that previous generations took as the way of the world, and that these previous generations feel that they have to label this conduct as aberrant. Needless to say, I reject that.
I am referring to baby boomers as "ruiners" so I don't see the problem.
Hah I'm gonna tell me dad that one.
After he lends me £100.000 interest free for 7 years so that I can finally get on the god damb ruined property market in the UK.
I suspect that there's also a link here between "preadulthood" and the fact that more and more women are waiting later in life to have children. Throw in some social acceptance of contraceptives, too.
I mean, in the traditional family model, isn't the reason that you had to "grow up" because you couldn't keep your dick in your pants and knocked a girl up?
Can we all agree that "preadulthood" is a gooseshit term that needs to die?
I don't know if it's the best term, but it is describing a real stage of life, just as "teenager" describes a real stage of life that exists now but didn't in the past.
It's a gooseshit term because it attempts to promulgate the conceit that you are not a "real" adult until you are married, have 2.5 children and a mortgage, and conform to traditional concepts of adulthood as put forth by Very Serious People.
The term itself is bullshit and carries inherent judgment. That's why I keep putting it in quotes. Unfortunately, at this exact moment, we don't have a better term to describe the trend of post-college young adults primarily focused on hedonistic pursuits, so I'll keep using it in quotes until we do.
Nominating "Hedos" for new term.
I dunno, "hedonistic" is pretty laden with value judgment as well. The other thing is that it can be applied to other non-traditional adults, like my personal heroes, the DINKs (dual income, no kids).
Unfortunately yeah, Hedonistic carries baggage as well, but it's not inherent to the word itself, merely the byproduct of a puritanical society.
The thing is that we're not hedonistic so much as rejecting past norms that demanded that we put ourselves second to the image that society expected us to conform to.
I expect to catch some flack for this, but there is an impossible standard developing for men that parallels the one developing for women. I'm referring to the concept of "having it all" (which essentially boils down to having a high powered career, a family, a model domestic life, and maintaining a high standard of physical fitness and beauty), something women have been confronting for ages. The male version consists of conforming to traditional gender roles surrounding career and accomplishment coupled with willingness to be an equal partner in domestic and parenting responsibilities, and of course maintaining a "healthy" physique. This boils down to men being failures if they are anything other than Brad Pitt lookalikes who manage to find time away from the office (where they're a partner at an investment bank) to take the kids to Yoga for Tots. Essentially this is a mirror image of same unrealistic expectations placed on women, and it's certainly more recent, but the irony is that much of it is being driven by the same opinion makers who are openly critical of the more established female version.
I'm snipping out this specific piece because I don't think this is recent at all. At least as far as American Media has been concerned, we've ALWAYS had a pretty strict expectations of conformance to unrealistic ideals of manhood in our entertainment and advertising; it's only more recent that we've started throwing "sensitive husband and father" on top of the existing pile of "protector, breadwinner, physical paragon", etc.
IMO, it's likely to be blamed in large part on marketing initiatives looking to capitalize on increased female buying power by appealing to "feminist" ideals of "gender equality". Quotes used because advertisers are horrible people that will push any meme or trope to make a buck, regardless of the truth or lies inherent.
I'm almost at the point of starting a "modern male" thread, since I just launched into a giant tangent, but realized it was outside the bounds of this thread's focus on education and young professionals and thus deleted it.
While agree with regard to advertising, I'm talking about broader social expectations. In the bad old days, the main social expectation was breadwinner, and the other two were secondary at best - you could certainly be considered successful if you had a high income but were largely absent (especially if it was due to professional obligations) and plain looking and out of shape. There's a noticeable change today in finance (my field), for instance. It used to be, unless you were a client facing type like an investment banker, looks really didn't matter, and you could certainly be a fat slob and a trader in the 1980s and no one gave a shit as long as you made money. There is much more pressure to be fit and athletic looking in the industry today (and that's one dominated by men - before getting into finance I was a programmer working on video games, and the trading floor is as much a sausage fest as EA was). This is a reflection of social pressure that comes from outside industry, and I think it's reflective of the same sort of pressures faced by professional women being placed on professional men as well, and in part it is driven by the values of those same professional women, who certainly recognize the unfair pressures they face in that regard, but simultaneously insist that their male peers conform to an equally exacting standard.
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TerribleMisathrope23rd Degree IntiateAt The Right Hand Of The Seven HornsRegistered Userregular
edited July 2012
This is an intrguing topic as an under-performing ex-boy. Certainly, I have suffered the arousal addictions and those didn't help with performance, but the pattern of needing newness even applies to music and reading material for me and simply isn't limited to porn and video games. Luckily, I was still smart enough to excel in literally everything I've ever attempted, but I lose interest quickly and so I definitely under-perform, despite being a high performer in sports, school, music, art and work whenever I want.
Frankly, I think part of the problem is the exceptionally slow pace of early education, and an education system that seeks to force you to match everyone else's pace instead of letting you grab hold of the reigns and explore your interests. For most of my life I've been able to excel with little to no actual effort and many of my very smart, but under-performing, male friends grew up the same way. Boredom was a fact of life in most courses, not really because of the material, but because the expectations were minimal and pathetically easy to meet. With this constant boredom I naturally turned towards books, video games, porn, and many other pursuits to try to try and solve for that very painful problem. I personally find boredom at least as psychologically harmful as actual traumatic incidences in my life, and have been on a continuous search to solve for it.
I think boys are also a bit more sensitive to any lack of encouragement in course-work, and I personally found classes much more boring where I was not actively encouraged in by the teachers.
I don't know the answer, but I would venture to suggest that the fairer sex is simply superior in most areas except raw strength, and that we are only rediscovering this because we have stopped actively discouraging them from excellence thanks to cultural and social change. I've personally observed that women often seem more willing to work through boredom, and seem willing to work harder and longer hours despite a lack of encouragement. For example, I know numerous females that worked far more hours than I could and successfully gone to school at the same time, and who have certainly taken larger course loads than I would be able to manage, and I would suggest that this willingness to push themselves in the absence of real encouragement is what is giving them the edge at this time.
They are relentless, as any husband can tell you, and their ability to self motivate beats most men easily.
I would also point out that female genetics are much less fragile than males, who lose an X chromosome for the much smaller and more fragile Y, and perhaps this has a more profound impact than we would like to admit. After all, males also die at higher rates at every age, and this genetic weakness could be part of the disparity in Autism rates.
However, ADHD is a different and very sad story. I think ADHD is far too often used to give adults a way to crush the will and exuberance of young men who find school boring and not worth their time or effort, rather than providing good outlets for their attention, such as music and sports. The raw energy of young men, I think is simply medicated out of existence and treated as a disease, when they simply would rather be doing other things, because giving them Ritalin is easier than teaching them to hunt or play a sport or music. Frankly, many clinical psychologists recognize that most ADHD diagnoses are incorrect, because the actual disease is associated with learning disabilities, but most males that are given that diagnosis show no signs of learning disability, and actually excel in school. There have been many NPR stories about the ADHD epidemic, and it always seems to come down to huge numbers of misdiagnoses because parents and teachers don't know how to deal with male exuberance and energy. IMO, the correct way to deal with that is by giving them leaders that they will follow and respect as teachers, and to actively challenge them to excel at all times, instead of giving them the time to be bored at school and come up with ways to make the teacher's lives a living hell.
Although they seem generally less likely to fall prey to the time-wasting of video games and porn, in Facebook and texting I think that women have found their equivalent time-waster, so I don't find the arousal addiction hypothesis particularly compelling.
Please take my comments with a grain of salt and YMMV.
I suspect that there's also a link here between "preadulthood" and the fact that more and more women are waiting later in life to have children. Throw in some social acceptance of contraceptives, too.
I mean, in the traditional family model, isn't the reason that you had to "grow up" because you couldn't keep your dick in your pants and knocked a girl up?
Can we all agree that "preadulthood" is a gooseshit term that needs to die?
I don't know if it's the best term, but it is describing a real stage of life, just as "teenager" describes a real stage of life that exists now but didn't in the past.
It's a gooseshit term because it attempts to promulgate the conceit that you are not a "real" adult until you are married, have 2.5 children and a mortgage, and conform to traditional concepts of adulthood as put forth by Very Serious People.
The term itself is bullshit and carries inherent judgment. That's why I keep putting it in quotes. Unfortunately, at this exact moment, we don't have a better term to describe the trend of post-college young adults primarily focused on hedonistic pursuits, so I'll keep using it in quotes until we do.
Nominating "Hedos" for new term.
I dunno, "hedonistic" is pretty laden with value judgment as well. The other thing is that it can be applied to other non-traditional adults, like my personal heroes, the DINKs (dual income, no kids).
Unfortunately yeah, Hedonistic carries baggage as well, but it's not inherent to the word itself, merely the byproduct of a puritanical society.
The thing is that we're not hedonistic so much as rejecting past norms that demanded that we put ourselves second to the image that society expected us to conform to.
Perhaps I'm creating a false dichotomy between "traditional adult behaviors" and "millenial adult behaviors", but I thought that the point was that there is a trend of 20-30 something males with little interest in education, career, or family who instead focus on various social or solo entertainment pursuits, such as drinking, partying and/or media consumption. Is it not fair to say that the rejection has taken the form of mild hedonism in many individual cases?
Also, the more I read about gender roles today the more depressed I become. I need an 80s action movie and a stiff drink. :P
0
mrt144King of the NumbernamesRegistered Userregular
I expect to catch some flack for this, but there is an impossible standard developing for men that parallels the one developing for women. I'm referring to the concept of "having it all" (which essentially boils down to having a high powered career, a family, a model domestic life, and maintaining a high standard of physical fitness and beauty), something women have been confronting for ages. The male version consists of conforming to traditional gender roles surrounding career and accomplishment coupled with willingness to be an equal partner in domestic and parenting responsibilities, and of course maintaining a "healthy" physique. This boils down to men being failures if they are anything other than Brad Pitt lookalikes who manage to find time away from the office (where they're a partner at an investment bank) to take the kids to Yoga for Tots. Essentially this is a mirror image of same unrealistic expectations placed on women, and it's certainly more recent, but the irony is that much of it is being driven by the same opinion makers who are openly critical of the more established female version.
I'm snipping out this specific piece because I don't think this is recent at all. At least as far as American Media has been concerned, we've ALWAYS had a pretty strict expectations of conformance to unrealistic ideals of manhood in our entertainment and advertising; it's only more recent that we've started throwing "sensitive husband and father" on top of the existing pile of "protector, breadwinner, physical paragon", etc.
IMO, it's likely to be blamed in large part on marketing initiatives looking to capitalize on increased female buying power by appealing to "feminist" ideals of "gender equality". Quotes used because advertisers are horrible people that will push any meme or trope to make a buck, regardless of the truth or lies inherent.
I'm almost at the point of starting a "modern male" thread, since I just launched into a giant tangent, but realized it was outside the bounds of this thread's focus on education and young professionals and thus deleted it.
While agree with regard to advertising, I'm talking about broader social expectations. In the bad old days, the main social expectation was breadwinner, and the other two were secondary at best - you could certainly be considered successful if you had a high income but were largely absent (especially if it was due to professional obligations) and plain looking and out of shape. There's a noticeable change today in finance (my field), for instance. It used to be, unless you were a client facing type like an investment banker, looks really didn't matter, and you could certainly be a fat slob and a trader in the 1980s and no one gave a shit as long as you made money. There is much more pressure to be fit and athletic looking in the industry today (and that's one dominated by men - before getting into finance I was a programmer working on video games, and the trading floor is as much a sausage fest as EA was). This is a reflection of social pressure that comes from outside industry, and I think it's reflective of the same sort of pressures faced by professional women being placed on professional men as well, and in part it is driven by the values of those same professional women, who certainly recognize the unfair pressures they face in that regard, but simultaneously insist that their male peers conform to an equally exacting standard.
Not being a trader or in an sector with an abundance of men (IT in the tourism and hospitality world), I have to wonder if a lot of this driven by the competitive nature of men in your industry itself. It's not enough to make 6 figures and have shiny objects since they are easily attainable in that world, the next step is achieving differentiation through stuff that can't be bought and paid for and requires an exceptional level of dedication.
At my office, I'm one of 6 males out of 60 employees on site. And if anything I feel like I can get away with more shit appearance wise because they aren't a social check on what I'm doing at all. They don't influence me and I don't look to them for office norms.
mrt144 on
0
mrt144King of the NumbernamesRegistered Userregular
I suspect that there's also a link here between "preadulthood" and the fact that more and more women are waiting later in life to have children. Throw in some social acceptance of contraceptives, too.
I mean, in the traditional family model, isn't the reason that you had to "grow up" because you couldn't keep your dick in your pants and knocked a girl up?
Can we all agree that "preadulthood" is a gooseshit term that needs to die?
I don't know if it's the best term, but it is describing a real stage of life, just as "teenager" describes a real stage of life that exists now but didn't in the past.
It's a gooseshit term because it attempts to promulgate the conceit that you are not a "real" adult until you are married, have 2.5 children and a mortgage, and conform to traditional concepts of adulthood as put forth by Very Serious People.
The term itself is bullshit and carries inherent judgment. That's why I keep putting it in quotes. Unfortunately, at this exact moment, we don't have a better term to describe the trend of post-college young adults primarily focused on hedonistic pursuits, so I'll keep using it in quotes until we do.
Nominating "Hedos" for new term.
I dunno, "hedonistic" is pretty laden with value judgment as well. The other thing is that it can be applied to other non-traditional adults, like my personal heroes, the DINKs (dual income, no kids).
Unfortunately yeah, Hedonistic carries baggage as well, but it's not inherent to the word itself, merely the byproduct of a puritanical society.
The thing is that we're not hedonistic so much as rejecting past norms that demanded that we put ourselves second to the image that society expected us to conform to.
Perhaps I'm creating a false dichotomy between "traditional adult behaviors" and "millenial adult behaviors", but I thought that the point was that there is a trend of 20-30 something males with little interest in education, career, or family who instead focus on various social or solo entertainment pursuits, such as drinking, partying and/or media consumption. Is it not fair to say that the rejection has taken the form of mild hedonism in many individual cases?
Also, the more I read about gender roles today the more depressed I become. I need an 80s action movie and a stiff drink. :P
I don't have an interest in career because careers are a means to an end. I don't want to be CIO or Director of IT because more money isn't worth the stress and responsibility and takes away from spending time with my wife, my cat and my friends. If there is one lesson a lot of people have picked up from their parents, it's that working hard and trying to rise to the top still doesn't guarantee happiness and/or stability.
I suspect that there's also a link here between "preadulthood" and the fact that more and more women are waiting later in life to have children. Throw in some social acceptance of contraceptives, too.
I mean, in the traditional family model, isn't the reason that you had to "grow up" because you couldn't keep your dick in your pants and knocked a girl up?
Can we all agree that "preadulthood" is a gooseshit term that needs to die?
I don't know if it's the best term, but it is describing a real stage of life, just as "teenager" describes a real stage of life that exists now but didn't in the past.
It's a gooseshit term because it attempts to promulgate the conceit that you are not a "real" adult until you are married, have 2.5 children and a mortgage, and conform to traditional concepts of adulthood as put forth by Very Serious People.
The term itself is bullshit and carries inherent judgment. That's why I keep putting it in quotes. Unfortunately, at this exact moment, we don't have a better term to describe the trend of post-college young adults primarily focused on hedonistic pursuits, so I'll keep using it in quotes until we do.
Nominating "Hedos" for new term.
I dunno, "hedonistic" is pretty laden with value judgment as well. The other thing is that it can be applied to other non-traditional adults, like my personal heroes, the DINKs (dual income, no kids).
Unfortunately yeah, Hedonistic carries baggage as well, but it's not inherent to the word itself, merely the byproduct of a puritanical society.
The thing is that we're not hedonistic so much as rejecting past norms that demanded that we put ourselves second to the image that society expected us to conform to.
Perhaps I'm creating a false dichotomy between "traditional adult behaviors" and "millenial adult behaviors", but I thought that the point was that there is a trend of 20-30 something males with little interest in education, career, or family who instead focus on various social or solo entertainment pursuits, such as drinking, partying and/or media consumption. Is it not fair to say that the rejection has taken the form of mild hedonism in many individual cases?
Also, the more I read about gender roles today the more depressed I become. I need an 80s action movie and a stiff drink. :P
I cannot speak to graduate programs across all disciplines, but in philosophy it is still definitely male-skewed even among the younger cohorts. I was born in 1986, which I take to put me solidly in the putatively failing generation of men, and my graduate class has 6 men and 2 women.
There are 3 times as many male philosophy majors as female philosophy majors?
Men are failing at life!
That's nothing! I'm wrapping up a history MA, and I'd say, despite being at an overwhelmingly "White middle-class woman" school (the University of Georgia), the male graduate students outnumber their female counterparts between 3 and 4 to 1. For comparison, that's a far greater ratio than, say, male to female departments members past the graduate level (i.e. the professors, assistant professors, associated professors, etc.).
To address the OP, the balancing of gender and education may mean that men can no longer ride on the merit of simply being men, and will have to actually deliver results. I also think that the worry of male demise is another form of fighting gender equality and a great way to turn away from social gender issues and make it all about men again.
I certainly found this article interesting. Though, to be honest, I try to think about oppression and societal tropes as little as possible, because it's an incredibly depressing topic. I know that I exhibit many "man box" patterns and have internalized many of it's tropes, but at the same time, I don't really want to think to hard about it because prolonged self-examination always leaves me with a pile of faults and flaws on the table, a lack of solutions for dealing with them, and a stubborn ingrained male ideal of invincibility and emotional detachment that ultimately leads to me putting the toys away and not dealing with them until the next time the topic comes up and I depress myself all over again.
As to the topic at hand, the "decline" of men, this is not the first time I've come across Hymowitz' book, and just like every other time I try to dig into any of the concepts held within, I can't get past my burning desire to punch her straight in the ovaries (misogynist language chosen intentionally.) Excerpts always seem to carry a tone of both blame and shaming, a critique that men whom don't meet misandrist standards of behavior have something wrong with them while simultaneously praising women for breaking misogynist molds. Perhaps I'm overly defensive at critics against my gender due to aforementioned male emotional insecurity, but when the thesis of your book is "grow up", well, fuck off.
That said, there is a trend of "preadulthood" that seems to carry with it a perception of young males who shun responsibility in favor of hedonism, but take a look around at current pop-culture and tell me we're not training them to emulate that shit. I tap my foot to Party Rock as much as the next guy, but at least I'm cognizant that the core message in a lot of these songs is pretty selfish and inconsiderate.
Drink all Day, Play all Night, Let's get it Poppin'... I'm in Miami Bitch.
That's the sort of reaction that Hymowitz's book should elicit. Again, it's a 21st century spin on the old model where men are inherently mercurial and wild, and so need to be "tamed" by means of matrimony. Which is an incredibly offensive way to see things for both genders. But, it reinforces the classic model the right wants to cram us all into, so she gets backed by the usual suspects.
I disagreed with you earlier about men not needed women to 'domesticate' them, but I didn't realize the depth you are imbuing the word with.
I was just referring to the fact that it takes a romantic relationship to really shape up a young man's appearance, cleanliness and grooming.
I mean, most young men do fine, but give'em a girlfriend (or boyfriend) for a couple of weeks and they're looking 100% better, and actually doing their dishes.
"More fish for Kunta!"
--LeVar Burton
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mrt144King of the NumbernamesRegistered Userregular
Give them a few years and they've regressed back into the unkempt state
I suspect that there's also a link here between "preadulthood" and the fact that more and more women are waiting later in life to have children. Throw in some social acceptance of contraceptives, too.
I mean, in the traditional family model, isn't the reason that you had to "grow up" because you couldn't keep your dick in your pants and knocked a girl up?
Can we all agree that "preadulthood" is a gooseshit term that needs to die?
I don't know if it's the best term, but it is describing a real stage of life, just as "teenager" describes a real stage of life that exists now but didn't in the past.
It's a gooseshit term because it attempts to promulgate the conceit that you are not a "real" adult until you are married, have 2.5 children and a mortgage, and conform to traditional concepts of adulthood as put forth by Very Serious People.
The term itself is bullshit and carries inherent judgment. That's why I keep putting it in quotes. Unfortunately, at this exact moment, we don't have a better term to describe the trend of post-college young adults primarily focused on hedonistic pursuits, so I'll keep using it in quotes until we do.
Nominating "Hedos" for new term.
I dunno, "hedonistic" is pretty laden with value judgment as well. The other thing is that it can be applied to other non-traditional adults, like my personal heroes, the DINKs (dual income, no kids).
Unfortunately yeah, Hedonistic carries baggage as well, but it's not inherent to the word itself, merely the byproduct of a puritanical society.
The thing is that we're not hedonistic so much as rejecting past norms that demanded that we put ourselves second to the image that society expected us to conform to.
Perhaps I'm creating a false dichotomy between "traditional adult behaviors" and "millenial adult behaviors", but I thought that the point was that there is a trend of 20-30 something males with little interest in education, career, or family who instead focus on various social or solo entertainment pursuits, such as drinking, partying and/or media consumption. Is it not fair to say that the rejection has taken the form of mild hedonism in many individual cases?
Also, the more I read about gender roles today the more depressed I become. I need an 80s action movie and a stiff drink. :P
I don't have an interest in career because careers are a means to an end. I don't want to be CIO or Director of IT because more money isn't worth the stress and responsibility and takes away from spending time with my wife, my cat and my friends. If there is one lesson a lot of people have picked up from their parents, it's that working hard and trying to rise to the top still doesn't guarantee happiness and/or stability.
I can attest to that. My primary career "drives" are vainly attempting to prevent boredom and making more money so I can pay bills easier. Of course, I'm sitting here posting in this and other threads at work, so the boredom half of the equation I seem to be failing at. >.>
I'm in a weird place. I was born in 1980, and so I share many qualities with both Gen X and Millennials, but don't really fit in with either. I am the sole income for a family of four. I feel strongly the responsibility to succeed monetarily so that I can provide for my family, but also the responsibility to do so with a minimum of time investment so as to be accessible as a husband and father. Like the stereotypical male gender role demands, I have trained myself to be logical and emotionless, a rock standing against the waves of an ever-stormier world. Growing up as an un-athletic and socially awkward nerd, I have refined this emotional detachment to a level of apathy that I sometimes find curiously shocking; I often feel more regret over my lack of feeling than for the loss that triggered the examination in the first place. I feel no drive to succeed beyond ensuring that my responsibilities are met, yet those responsibilities take up the majority of my life. I am smart, I learn fast, and will devour a new subject with all-encompassing enthusiasm, only to completely drop it a few days or weeks later in search of something new to obsess over. My sole "hobby" is video games, of which I purchase more than I have time to play, and what little time I play I tend to feel guilt for, as it is a waste of resources (time and money) that could have been better spent engaged in fulfilling responsibilities. I have learned to interact with people socially, but I find it difficult to make friends. It is not uncommon to reflect to myself that all people are inherently alone, and that life is pain to be endured.
So when I see a thread like this, which hints at trends that may or may not apply to me personally, I fall into the trap of self-examination to determine what similarities there are between myself and the rest of the world. Is this trend of bucking social norms by millennial adults "normal", or a problem to be corrected? If I empathize with portions of this, where does that place my standing in the world as a whole? Why in the hell do I even care?
Again, I need that drink. And it's only 10am.
Houn on
0
TerribleMisathrope23rd Degree IntiateAt The Right Hand Of The Seven HornsRegistered Userregular
edited July 2012
Well, since my previous post was obviously a TL;DR let me re-iterate what I think and add a couple of things:
Autism disparity: X chromosome beats Y-chromosome
ADHD disparity: mostly misdiagnoses to deal with young males overabundance of energy. A better approach would take these potentially high performers and show them better ways to be energetic and to give them alphas to follow in school.
Educational success disparity: school is geared toward forms of learning that favor women slightly, because courses are not challenging and females are better self motivators
Work success disparity: women are more able to work through boredom, and are better self motivators.
Other thoughts: Most American women are actively told that they can do anything and encouraged to go out and succeed by society at large, but only the best of the best of males are encouraged at all. Arousal addictions are not a convincing hypothesis of the root cause of the disparities between young men and young women in terms of educational and work success. Social adaptation problems seem to have a lot to do with the mixed messages that males receive about what kind of person they should be and the fact that males tend to be less psychologically resilient. Personally, I don't make friends easily because I've found that almost no one I've ever known is a true friend. Hard experience has taught me that no one has my back, except sometimes my wife.
Edit: @Houn: That is a great post and I'm right there with you dude, although I'm basically a teetotaler. :^:
I suspect that there's also a link here between "preadulthood" and the fact that more and more women are waiting later in life to have children. Throw in some social acceptance of contraceptives, too.
I mean, in the traditional family model, isn't the reason that you had to "grow up" because you couldn't keep your dick in your pants and knocked a girl up?
Can we all agree that "preadulthood" is a gooseshit term that needs to die?
I don't know if it's the best term, but it is describing a real stage of life, just as "teenager" describes a real stage of life that exists now but didn't in the past.
It's a gooseshit term because it attempts to promulgate the conceit that you are not a "real" adult until you are married, have 2.5 children and a mortgage, and conform to traditional concepts of adulthood as put forth by Very Serious People.
The term itself is bullshit and carries inherent judgment. That's why I keep putting it in quotes. Unfortunately, at this exact moment, we don't have a better term to describe the trend of post-college young adults primarily focused on hedonistic pursuits, so I'll keep using it in quotes until we do.
Nominating "Hedos" for new term.
I dunno, "hedonistic" is pretty laden with value judgment as well. The other thing is that it can be applied to other non-traditional adults, like my personal heroes, the DINKs (dual income, no kids).
Unfortunately yeah, Hedonistic carries baggage as well, but it's not inherent to the word itself, merely the byproduct of a puritanical society.
The thing is that we're not hedonistic so much as rejecting past norms that demanded that we put ourselves second to the image that society expected us to conform to.
Perhaps I'm creating a false dichotomy between "traditional adult behaviors" and "millenial adult behaviors", but I thought that the point was that there is a trend of 20-30 something males with little interest in education, career, or family who instead focus on various social or solo entertainment pursuits, such as drinking, partying and/or media consumption. Is it not fair to say that the rejection has taken the form of mild hedonism in many individual cases?
Also, the more I read about gender roles today the more depressed I become. I need an 80s action movie and a stiff drink. :P
I don't have an interest in career because careers are a means to an end. I don't want to be CIO or Director of IT because more money isn't worth the stress and responsibility and takes away from spending time with my wife, my cat and my friends. If there is one lesson a lot of people have picked up from their parents, it's that working hard and trying to rise to the top still doesn't guarantee happiness and/or stability.
yeah but I think Houn is more talking about those (like me) who don't really do anything. I don't have a gf, much of a job or study very hard or shit like that.
I suspect that there's also a link here between "preadulthood" and the fact that more and more women are waiting later in life to have children. Throw in some social acceptance of contraceptives, too.
I mean, in the traditional family model, isn't the reason that you had to "grow up" because you couldn't keep your dick in your pants and knocked a girl up?
Can we all agree that "preadulthood" is a gooseshit term that needs to die?
I don't know if it's the best term, but it is describing a real stage of life, just as "teenager" describes a real stage of life that exists now but didn't in the past.
It's a gooseshit term because it attempts to promulgate the conceit that you are not a "real" adult until you are married, have 2.5 children and a mortgage, and conform to traditional concepts of adulthood as put forth by Very Serious People.
The term itself is bullshit and carries inherent judgment. That's why I keep putting it in quotes. Unfortunately, at this exact moment, we don't have a better term to describe the trend of post-college young adults primarily focused on hedonistic pursuits, so I'll keep using it in quotes until we do.
Nominating "Hedos" for new term.
I dunno, "hedonistic" is pretty laden with value judgment as well. The other thing is that it can be applied to other non-traditional adults, like my personal heroes, the DINKs (dual income, no kids).
Unfortunately yeah, Hedonistic carries baggage as well, but it's not inherent to the word itself, merely the byproduct of a puritanical society.
The thing is that we're not hedonistic so much as rejecting past norms that demanded that we put ourselves second to the image that society expected us to conform to.
Perhaps I'm creating a false dichotomy between "traditional adult behaviors" and "millenial adult behaviors", but I thought that the point was that there is a trend of 20-30 something males with little interest in education, career, or family who instead focus on various social or solo entertainment pursuits, such as drinking, partying and/or media consumption. Is it not fair to say that the rejection has taken the form of mild hedonism in many individual cases?
Also, the more I read about gender roles today the more depressed I become. I need an 80s action movie and a stiff drink. :P
I don't have an interest in career because careers are a means to an end. I don't want to be CIO or Director of IT because more money isn't worth the stress and responsibility and takes away from spending time with my wife, my cat and my friends. If there is one lesson a lot of people have picked up from their parents, it's that working hard and trying to rise to the top still doesn't guarantee happiness and/or stability.
yeah but I think Houn is more talking about those (like me) who don't really do anything. I don't have a gf, much of a job or study very hard or shit like that.
If your not one of the best of the best males, society seems to say: "why bother", so you are one of millions, but that's just my personal speculation.
Would you care to speculate on why you are in the situation you describe? Do you just not see any point to all that, or what?
That's interesting, I can only count one person who would have my back and I'd have his too. I never really boiled down my friends like that.
That's the only true friend you have then.
OK that was maybe a shitty way to put it: I personally consider that the only kind of true friend. I've categorized the people I know on that basis for most of my life, so it just comes naturally to me. Most people I've met are merely friendly acquaintances.
I suspect that there's also a link here between "preadulthood" and the fact that more and more women are waiting later in life to have children. Throw in some social acceptance of contraceptives, too.
I mean, in the traditional family model, isn't the reason that you had to "grow up" because you couldn't keep your dick in your pants and knocked a girl up?
Can we all agree that "preadulthood" is a gooseshit term that needs to die?
I don't know if it's the best term, but it is describing a real stage of life, just as "teenager" describes a real stage of life that exists now but didn't in the past.
It's a gooseshit term because it attempts to promulgate the conceit that you are not a "real" adult until you are married, have 2.5 children and a mortgage, and conform to traditional concepts of adulthood as put forth by Very Serious People.
The term itself is bullshit and carries inherent judgment. That's why I keep putting it in quotes. Unfortunately, at this exact moment, we don't have a better term to describe the trend of post-college young adults primarily focused on hedonistic pursuits, so I'll keep using it in quotes until we do.
Nominating "Hedos" for new term.
I dunno, "hedonistic" is pretty laden with value judgment as well. The other thing is that it can be applied to other non-traditional adults, like my personal heroes, the DINKs (dual income, no kids).
Unfortunately yeah, Hedonistic carries baggage as well, but it's not inherent to the word itself, merely the byproduct of a puritanical society.
The thing is that we're not hedonistic so much as rejecting past norms that demanded that we put ourselves second to the image that society expected us to conform to.
Perhaps I'm creating a false dichotomy between "traditional adult behaviors" and "millenial adult behaviors", but I thought that the point was that there is a trend of 20-30 something males with little interest in education, career, or family who instead focus on various social or solo entertainment pursuits, such as drinking, partying and/or media consumption. Is it not fair to say that the rejection has taken the form of mild hedonism in many individual cases?
Also, the more I read about gender roles today the more depressed I become. I need an 80s action movie and a stiff drink. :P
I don't have an interest in career because careers are a means to an end. I don't want to be CIO or Director of IT because more money isn't worth the stress and responsibility and takes away from spending time with my wife, my cat and my friends. If there is one lesson a lot of people have picked up from their parents, it's that working hard and trying to rise to the top still doesn't guarantee happiness and/or stability.
I can attest to that. My primary career "drives" are vainly attempting to prevent boredom and making more money so I can pay bills easier. Of course, I'm sitting here posting in this and other threads at work, so the boredom half of the equation I seem to be failing at. >.>
I'm in a weird place. I was born in 1980, and so I share many qualities with both Gen X and Millennials, but don't really fit in with either. I am the sole income for a family of four. I feel strongly the responsibility to succeed monetarily so that I can provide for my family, but also the responsibility to do so with a minimum of time investment so as to be accessible as a husband and father. Like the stereotypical male gender role demands, I have trained myself to be logical and emotionless, a rock standing against the waves of an ever-stormier world. Growing up as an un-athletic and socially awkward nerd, I have refined this emotional detachment to a level of apathy that I sometimes find curiously shocking; I often feel more regret over my lack of feeling than for the loss that triggered the examination in the first place. I feel no drive to succeed beyond ensuring that my responsibilities are met, yet those responsibilities take up the majority of my life. I am smart, I learn fast, and will devour a new subject with all-encompassing enthusiasm, only to completely drop it a few days or weeks later in search of something new to obsess over. My sole "hobby" is video games, of which I purchase more than I have time to play, and what little time I play I tend to feel guilt for, as it is a waste of resources (time and money) that could have been better spent engaged in fulfilling responsibilities. I have learned to interact with people socially, but I find it difficult to make friends. It is not uncommon to reflect to myself that all people are inherently alone, and that life is pain to be endured.
So when I see a thread like this, which hints at trends that may or may not apply to me personally, I fall into the trap of self-examination to determine what similarities there are between myself and the rest of the world. Is this trend of bucking social norms by millennial adults "normal", or a problem to be corrected? If I empathize with portions of this, where does that place my standing in the world as a whole? Why in the hell do I even care?
Again, I need that drink. And it's only 10am.
This sounds very similar to my life situation in many ways.
I was born in 1977. I don't have any kids, but I've been the breadwinner fore basically the entirety of my six year relationship with my partner. She worked a low end service job when we got together, and after relocating (for my career) and her having no luck finding something new (this was during the lead up to the financial crisis), I encouraged her to go back to school and financed the whole thing. Right now I pay two tuitions (my MBA and her degree), the mortgage, the works. This is only possible because I've always held relatively high income jobs (video game programmer, then programmer and team lead at a tech start up, now a risk analyst at a major bank). I would say I am pretty conscious of the fact that I am fulfilling an assigned gender role, and I am not super thrilled about that. I was also an unatheltic (and fat) nerd, but as my career has progressed there's a lot of pressure to be healthy, so I eat food I'm super fond of and reluctantly spend a lot of my free time in the gym. Nonetheless, I consider myself pretty lucky, because I'm in a relationship with a woman who doesn't give me grief about my appearance or my spending money on nerdy hobbies (but like you, buying a video game and taking the time to play it generates a guilt response). This contrasts with the attitudes of a lot of the women in my peer group (the potential mates mentioned by Hymowitz) - for instance, one of the career services advisers in my MBA program suggested leaving the fact that I was a video game programmer off my resume, because anything to do with video games suggests I'm immature (okay) and lazy (yeah, I worked at EA and averaged about 80 hours a week there, how's that lazy again). Obviously that's pretty terrible advice, though, but it's indicative of some of the attitudes I'm talking about. I also have had years of low level conflict with my mother over my choice of partner (she would much prefer some one more suited to being the other half of a power couple, and probably resents being proven wrong about the whole "no woman will want you if you keep playing those stupid games" narrative she had going).
I suspect that there's also a link here between "preadulthood" and the fact that more and more women are waiting later in life to have children. Throw in some social acceptance of contraceptives, too.
I mean, in the traditional family model, isn't the reason that you had to "grow up" because you couldn't keep your dick in your pants and knocked a girl up?
Can we all agree that "preadulthood" is a gooseshit term that needs to die?
I don't like the term but the concept it signifies is important.
The more economically developed a culture, the longer it takes to achieve adulthood. The amount of time, resources, and education it takes to bring somebody from a child to a fully independent adult by first world standards is far greater than the amount of time, resources and education it takes to bring somebody from a child to a fully independent adult by pre-industrial standards.
This is exacerbated by income inequality, where it's harder for people starting out to accumulate wealth; and it's also exacerbated by longer lifespans, which reduces the amount of wealth (and responsibility) flowing from older generations to younger generations.
We legally define adults as 18 year olds, but the number of 18 year olds who are actually capable of starting a career, home, and family is a tiny minority. Adulthood is more likely to start sometime in our mid-to-late 20s.
every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.
I suspect that there's also a link here between "preadulthood" and the fact that more and more women are waiting later in life to have children. Throw in some social acceptance of contraceptives, too.
I mean, in the traditional family model, isn't the reason that you had to "grow up" because you couldn't keep your dick in your pants and knocked a girl up?
Can we all agree that "preadulthood" is a gooseshit term that needs to die?
I don't know if it's the best term, but it is describing a real stage of life, just as "teenager" describes a real stage of life that exists now but didn't in the past.
It's a gooseshit term because it attempts to promulgate the conceit that you are not a "real" adult until you are married, have 2.5 children and a mortgage, and conform to traditional concepts of adulthood as put forth by Very Serious People.
The term itself is bullshit and carries inherent judgment. That's why I keep putting it in quotes. Unfortunately, at this exact moment, we don't have a better term to describe the trend of post-college young adults primarily focused on hedonistic pursuits, so I'll keep using it in quotes until we do.
Nominating "Hedos" for new term.
I dunno, "hedonistic" is pretty laden with value judgment as well. The other thing is that it can be applied to other non-traditional adults, like my personal heroes, the DINKs (dual income, no kids).
Unfortunately yeah, Hedonistic carries baggage as well, but it's not inherent to the word itself, merely the byproduct of a puritanical society.
The thing is that we're not hedonistic so much as rejecting past norms that demanded that we put ourselves second to the image that society expected us to conform to.
Perhaps I'm creating a false dichotomy between "traditional adult behaviors" and "millenial adult behaviors", but I thought that the point was that there is a trend of 20-30 something males with little interest in education, career, or family who instead focus on various social or solo entertainment pursuits, such as drinking, partying and/or media consumption. Is it not fair to say that the rejection has taken the form of mild hedonism in many individual cases?
Also, the more I read about gender roles today the more depressed I become. I need an 80s action movie and a stiff drink. :P
I don't have an interest in career because careers are a means to an end. I don't want to be CIO or Director of IT because more money isn't worth the stress and responsibility and takes away from spending time with my wife, my cat and my friends. If there is one lesson a lot of people have picked up from their parents, it's that working hard and trying to rise to the top still doesn't guarantee happiness and/or stability.
yeah but I think Houn is more talking about those (like me) who don't really do anything. I don't have a gf, much of a job or study very hard or shit like that.
I'm fully willing to give that I may be misinformed on what behavioral traits are being examined here; the original data had to do with the idea that boys are "failing" in society, with a variety of supporting data regarding drop-out rates, college admission/graduation rates, career statistics, etc. I suppose I've been digging a bit harder into the behaviors exhibited by these individuals as an examination as to what their motivations are, but it's entirely possible now that I'm thinking about it that Hymowitz' postulate that it's all a bunch of immature man-children who she finds unsuitable as mates may have poisoned my initial conception of who exactly we're discussing here.
Well, since my previous post was obviously a TL;DR let me re-iterate what I think and add a couple of things:
Autism disparity: X chromosome beats Y-chromosome
ADHD disparity: mostly misdiagnoses to deal with young males overabundance of energy. A better approach would take these potentially high performers and show them better ways to be energetic and to give them alphas to follow in school.
Educational success disparity: school is geared toward forms of learning that favor women slightly, because courses are not challenging and females are better self motivators
Work success disparity: women are more able to work through to work through boredom, and are better self motivators.
Other thoughts: Most American women are actively told that they can do anything and encouraged to go out and succeed by society at large, but only the best of the best of males are encouraged at all. Arousal addictions are not a convincing hypothesis of the root cause of the disparities between young men and young women in terms of educational and work success. Social adaptation problems seem to have a lot to do with the mixed messages that males receive about what kind of person they should be and the fact that males tend to be less psychologically resilient. Personally, I don't make friends easily because I've found that almost no one I've ever known is a true friend. Hard experience has taught me that no one has my back, except sometimes my wife.
Edit: @Houn: That is a great post and I'm right there with you dude, although I'm basically a teetotaler. :^:
Eh, I'm not much of a drinker, either. I've never drank my way past a mild buzz. I have recently, however, been training myself to drink more, because it seemed like a good coping mechanism in moderation, as well as socially acceptable.
You're spot-on with the encouragement thing, though, which is why I go out of my way to encourage both my children as fairly as I can. I'm simultaneously flattered and saddened when my son tells me that all he wants to be when he grows up is a dad like me; while I guess that means I'm doing a good job as a father, I luckily have plenty of time yet to hopefully show him that there is a whole world of options out there beyond just what he sees of me, and if he really wants to make that a goal in his adult life, it should be because he chose it from all the options out there, not because he wants to emulate me.
He is only (almost) 7, though, so I may be overthinking it.
Posts
That's certainly a thing today. Like, I know people that have gotten pregnant out of wedlock, freak out, have a quick marriage, then lie to both their parents and say that the baby was born a month early.
Anecdotes and all, and primarily related to more rural communities, but it's an attitude and behavior pattern that's still very much alive.
Can we all agree that "preadulthood" is a gooseshit term that needs to die?
First of all, the implications from Hymowitz's book. The first being the notion that men require a woman to validate and "civilize" them (quoting from a previous poster). Maybe I am going out on a limb here, but if this were accurate, wouldn't we logically expect that gay men, lacking any female validation, would be amongst the biggest neckbeards and manchildren, certainly far and away more so than their straight counterparts. Now I'm not sure if there have been any studies on this, but I don't expect you would find it to be the case. The characterization is certainly that the "manchild" is a straight guy. Without stats, that's not necessarily a refutation of her point, but it seems odd that it wasn't considered. If gay guys are indeed less likely to be these failing manchildren, then that would lend credence to the idea that gender roles are a factor here.
Second thing, concerning "pre-adulthood". I'm a 30-something guy in an MBA program, I work in banking in a major city, and so these "pre-adults" are a major element of my peer group. What seems glaring to me is that, by and large, the men and women in this group have more or less the same sorts of interests as they did when they were teenagers. Insofar as these interests are gendered (for instance, my interest in playing video games), the male interests are "juvenile" and the female interests aren't. This applies even to masculine interests that are more traditionally male, like sports or cars (which are often referred to as "toys"). Traditionally female interests, even ones manifested by 13 year old girls, are "mature". This suggests to me that the labels applied around the maturity of an activity are essentially arbitrary and are really being divided along gender lines. A notable example would be the popularity of young adult fiction (i.e. Twilight, Hunger Games) with adult women. This even transcends the "pre-adult" demographic (for instance, "Twilight moms" certainly don't fit in that category). I hope this doesn't spawn an entirely different tangent, but I'll go ahead and assert that Twilight is unarguably a very juvenile piece of literature if anything is deserving of that designation, but you certainly won't see public hand-wringing and questions about why women can't just grow up and stop reading books intended for teenage girls.
On the subject of gender roles, I agree with the idea that men basically haven't made much progress at breaking out of traditionally gender roles, and we have failed to do so to our detriment (to our own health and happiness if nothing else). What progress has been made is largely on the backs of the feminist movement and queer theory (which is about the only area where you'll find academically rigorous work being done by men on the subject of redefining male gender roles). The "man box" has pretty solid walls and these are reinforced not only by men themselves, but also by women. I expect to catch some flack for this, but there is an impossible standard developing for men that parallels the one developing for women. I'm referring to the concept of "having it all" (which essentially boils down to having a high powered career, a family, a model domestic life, and maintaining a high standard of physical fitness and beauty), something women have been confronting for ages. The male version consists of conforming to traditional gender roles surrounding career and accomplishment coupled with willingness to be an equal partner in domestic and parenting responsibilities, and of course maintaining a "healthy" physique. This boils down to men being failures if they are anything other than Brad Pitt lookalikes who manage to find time away from the office (where they're a partner at an investment bank) to take the kids to Yoga for Tots. Essentially this is a mirror image of same unrealistic expectations placed on women, and it's certainly more recent, but the irony is that much of it is being driven by the same opinion makers who are openly critical of the more established female version.
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This is a good point. Hobbies such as Sports/Cars/Video Games/Action Films are considered juvenile where as Celebrity Gossip/Fashion/Romance Films/Novels are not?
Also, I'm embarrassed to say that I just "got" your username.
Eh... no? Call it what you want, there is a marked increase of frat boys and party girls going on 30. I'm not judging it one way or another. But it's noticeable. It isn't just about accidental pregnancies. It's also rejecting the idea that once college is over, it's time to get married and have kids. It's a rejection of going to school to get your M.R.S. And it's creating a culture that is fairly new and noticeable. Noticeable for its many similarities to adolescence.
I don't think he likes the term. To me it's just the same as calling it early adulthood, just with it's own unique verbiage.
I don't know if it's the best term, but it is describing a real stage of life, just as "teenager" describes a real stage of life that exists now but didn't in the past.
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I'm snipping out this specific piece because I don't think this is recent at all. At least as far as American Media has been concerned, we've ALWAYS had a pretty strict expectations of conformance to unrealistic ideals of manhood in our entertainment and advertising; it's only more recent that we've started throwing "sensitive husband and father" on top of the existing pile of "protector, breadwinner, physical paragon", etc.
IMO, it's likely to be blamed in large part on marketing initiatives looking to capitalize on increased female buying power by appealing to "feminist" ideals of "gender equality". Quotes used because advertisers are horrible people that will push any meme or trope to make a buck, regardless of the truth or lies inherent.
I'm almost at the point of starting a "modern male" thread, since I just launched into a giant tangent, but realized it was outside the bounds of this thread's focus on education and young professionals and thus deleted it.
It's a gooseshit term because it attempts to promulgate the conceit that you are not a "real" adult until you are married, have 2.5 children and a mortgage, and conform to traditional concepts of adulthood as put forth by Very Serious People.
The term itself is bullshit and carries inherent judgment. That's why I keep putting it in quotes. Unfortunately, at this exact moment, we don't have a better term to describe the trend of post-college young adults primarily focused on hedonistic pursuits, so I'll keep using it in quotes until we do.
Nominating "Hedos" for new term.
This sort of hit me in the tail end on my way out of school. Yeah I remember doing more work at school than I have ever done at work. It would literally take me from 3:00 until almost 9:00 at night to finish it all. If there was a project or essay, forget about it, midnight or later most of the time.
Block scheduling helped alleviate that a huge bit, but we only got that our last 2 years so I really can't comment on it.
I think it had more to do with shifting from one teacher controlling the entirety of the student's learning plan in grade school, to having 4+ teachers a day with no actualization of what is going on in the rest of the subjects, timing, or otherwise.
I can see the argument for this.
How about just calling them young adults, since that's what they are.
A lot of this need to define Millennial young adults with these labels comes from the fact that many Millenials are rejecting prior norms that previous generations took as the way of the world, and that these previous generations feel that they have to label this conduct as aberrant. Needless to say, I reject that.
Because the specific behavioral patterns we're talking about are not exhibited by all young adults; is there harm in specifying a simple way to refer to the sample group we are examining? Also, I always understood "young adult" to be another term for "late teens".
I dunno, "hedonistic" is pretty laden with value judgment as well. The other thing is that it can be applied to other non-traditional adults, like my personal heroes, the DINKs (dual income, no kids).
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I am referring to baby boomers as "ruiners" so I don't see the problem.
Unfortunately yeah, Hedonistic carries baggage as well, but it's not inherent to the word itself, merely the byproduct of a puritanical society.
Good call. They had a lot to prove, nothing to lose, and my fucking world is wearing their disease.
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Hah I'm gonna tell me dad that one.
After he lends me £100.000 interest free for 7 years so that I can finally get on the god damb ruined property market in the UK.
The thing is that we're not hedonistic so much as rejecting past norms that demanded that we put ourselves second to the image that society expected us to conform to.
While agree with regard to advertising, I'm talking about broader social expectations. In the bad old days, the main social expectation was breadwinner, and the other two were secondary at best - you could certainly be considered successful if you had a high income but were largely absent (especially if it was due to professional obligations) and plain looking and out of shape. There's a noticeable change today in finance (my field), for instance. It used to be, unless you were a client facing type like an investment banker, looks really didn't matter, and you could certainly be a fat slob and a trader in the 1980s and no one gave a shit as long as you made money. There is much more pressure to be fit and athletic looking in the industry today (and that's one dominated by men - before getting into finance I was a programmer working on video games, and the trading floor is as much a sausage fest as EA was). This is a reflection of social pressure that comes from outside industry, and I think it's reflective of the same sort of pressures faced by professional women being placed on professional men as well, and in part it is driven by the values of those same professional women, who certainly recognize the unfair pressures they face in that regard, but simultaneously insist that their male peers conform to an equally exacting standard.
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Frankly, I think part of the problem is the exceptionally slow pace of early education, and an education system that seeks to force you to match everyone else's pace instead of letting you grab hold of the reigns and explore your interests. For most of my life I've been able to excel with little to no actual effort and many of my very smart, but under-performing, male friends grew up the same way. Boredom was a fact of life in most courses, not really because of the material, but because the expectations were minimal and pathetically easy to meet. With this constant boredom I naturally turned towards books, video games, porn, and many other pursuits to try to try and solve for that very painful problem. I personally find boredom at least as psychologically harmful as actual traumatic incidences in my life, and have been on a continuous search to solve for it.
I think boys are also a bit more sensitive to any lack of encouragement in course-work, and I personally found classes much more boring where I was not actively encouraged in by the teachers.
I don't know the answer, but I would venture to suggest that the fairer sex is simply superior in most areas except raw strength, and that we are only rediscovering this because we have stopped actively discouraging them from excellence thanks to cultural and social change. I've personally observed that women often seem more willing to work through boredom, and seem willing to work harder and longer hours despite a lack of encouragement. For example, I know numerous females that worked far more hours than I could and successfully gone to school at the same time, and who have certainly taken larger course loads than I would be able to manage, and I would suggest that this willingness to push themselves in the absence of real encouragement is what is giving them the edge at this time.
They are relentless, as any husband can tell you, and their ability to self motivate beats most men easily.
I would also point out that female genetics are much less fragile than males, who lose an X chromosome for the much smaller and more fragile Y, and perhaps this has a more profound impact than we would like to admit. After all, males also die at higher rates at every age, and this genetic weakness could be part of the disparity in Autism rates.
However, ADHD is a different and very sad story. I think ADHD is far too often used to give adults a way to crush the will and exuberance of young men who find school boring and not worth their time or effort, rather than providing good outlets for their attention, such as music and sports. The raw energy of young men, I think is simply medicated out of existence and treated as a disease, when they simply would rather be doing other things, because giving them Ritalin is easier than teaching them to hunt or play a sport or music. Frankly, many clinical psychologists recognize that most ADHD diagnoses are incorrect, because the actual disease is associated with learning disabilities, but most males that are given that diagnosis show no signs of learning disability, and actually excel in school. There have been many NPR stories about the ADHD epidemic, and it always seems to come down to huge numbers of misdiagnoses because parents and teachers don't know how to deal with male exuberance and energy. IMO, the correct way to deal with that is by giving them leaders that they will follow and respect as teachers, and to actively challenge them to excel at all times, instead of giving them the time to be bored at school and come up with ways to make the teacher's lives a living hell.
Although they seem generally less likely to fall prey to the time-wasting of video games and porn, in Facebook and texting I think that women have found their equivalent time-waster, so I don't find the arousal addiction hypothesis particularly compelling.
Please take my comments with a grain of salt and YMMV.
try this
Perhaps I'm creating a false dichotomy between "traditional adult behaviors" and "millenial adult behaviors", but I thought that the point was that there is a trend of 20-30 something males with little interest in education, career, or family who instead focus on various social or solo entertainment pursuits, such as drinking, partying and/or media consumption. Is it not fair to say that the rejection has taken the form of mild hedonism in many individual cases?
Also, the more I read about gender roles today the more depressed I become. I need an 80s action movie and a stiff drink. :P
Not being a trader or in an sector with an abundance of men (IT in the tourism and hospitality world), I have to wonder if a lot of this driven by the competitive nature of men in your industry itself. It's not enough to make 6 figures and have shiny objects since they are easily attainable in that world, the next step is achieving differentiation through stuff that can't be bought and paid for and requires an exceptional level of dedication.
At my office, I'm one of 6 males out of 60 employees on site. And if anything I feel like I can get away with more shit appearance wise because they aren't a social check on what I'm doing at all. They don't influence me and I don't look to them for office norms.
I don't have an interest in career because careers are a means to an end. I don't want to be CIO or Director of IT because more money isn't worth the stress and responsibility and takes away from spending time with my wife, my cat and my friends. If there is one lesson a lot of people have picked up from their parents, it's that working hard and trying to rise to the top still doesn't guarantee happiness and/or stability.
That's a bit of a return to form.
And from the 1890's:
That's nothing! I'm wrapping up a history MA, and I'd say, despite being at an overwhelmingly "White middle-class woman" school (the University of Georgia), the male graduate students outnumber their female counterparts between 3 and 4 to 1. For comparison, that's a far greater ratio than, say, male to female departments members past the graduate level (i.e. the professors, assistant professors, associated professors, etc.).
It's rampant, I tell ya!
I disagreed with you earlier about men not needed women to 'domesticate' them, but I didn't realize the depth you are imbuing the word with.
I was just referring to the fact that it takes a romantic relationship to really shape up a young man's appearance, cleanliness and grooming.
I mean, most young men do fine, but give'em a girlfriend (or boyfriend) for a couple of weeks and they're looking 100% better, and actually doing their dishes.
--LeVar Burton
I can attest to that. My primary career "drives" are vainly attempting to prevent boredom and making more money so I can pay bills easier. Of course, I'm sitting here posting in this and other threads at work, so the boredom half of the equation I seem to be failing at. >.>
I'm in a weird place. I was born in 1980, and so I share many qualities with both Gen X and Millennials, but don't really fit in with either. I am the sole income for a family of four. I feel strongly the responsibility to succeed monetarily so that I can provide for my family, but also the responsibility to do so with a minimum of time investment so as to be accessible as a husband and father. Like the stereotypical male gender role demands, I have trained myself to be logical and emotionless, a rock standing against the waves of an ever-stormier world. Growing up as an un-athletic and socially awkward nerd, I have refined this emotional detachment to a level of apathy that I sometimes find curiously shocking; I often feel more regret over my lack of feeling than for the loss that triggered the examination in the first place. I feel no drive to succeed beyond ensuring that my responsibilities are met, yet those responsibilities take up the majority of my life. I am smart, I learn fast, and will devour a new subject with all-encompassing enthusiasm, only to completely drop it a few days or weeks later in search of something new to obsess over. My sole "hobby" is video games, of which I purchase more than I have time to play, and what little time I play I tend to feel guilt for, as it is a waste of resources (time and money) that could have been better spent engaged in fulfilling responsibilities. I have learned to interact with people socially, but I find it difficult to make friends. It is not uncommon to reflect to myself that all people are inherently alone, and that life is pain to be endured.
So when I see a thread like this, which hints at trends that may or may not apply to me personally, I fall into the trap of self-examination to determine what similarities there are between myself and the rest of the world. Is this trend of bucking social norms by millennial adults "normal", or a problem to be corrected? If I empathize with portions of this, where does that place my standing in the world as a whole? Why in the hell do I even care?
Again, I need that drink. And it's only 10am.
Autism disparity: X chromosome beats Y-chromosome
ADHD disparity: mostly misdiagnoses to deal with young males overabundance of energy. A better approach would take these potentially high performers and show them better ways to be energetic and to give them alphas to follow in school.
Educational success disparity: school is geared toward forms of learning that favor women slightly, because courses are not challenging and females are better self motivators
Work success disparity: women are more able to work through boredom, and are better self motivators.
Other thoughts: Most American women are actively told that they can do anything and encouraged to go out and succeed by society at large, but only the best of the best of males are encouraged at all. Arousal addictions are not a convincing hypothesis of the root cause of the disparities between young men and young women in terms of educational and work success. Social adaptation problems seem to have a lot to do with the mixed messages that males receive about what kind of person they should be and the fact that males tend to be less psychologically resilient. Personally, I don't make friends easily because I've found that almost no one I've ever known is a true friend. Hard experience has taught me that no one has my back, except sometimes my wife.
Edit: @Houn: That is a great post and I'm right there with you dude, although I'm basically a teetotaler. :^:
try this
yeah but I think Houn is more talking about those (like me) who don't really do anything. I don't have a gf, much of a job or study very hard or shit like that.
Would you care to speculate on why you are in the situation you describe? Do you just not see any point to all that, or what?
try this
OK that was maybe a shitty way to put it: I personally consider that the only kind of true friend. I've categorized the people I know on that basis for most of my life, so it just comes naturally to me. Most people I've met are merely friendly acquaintances.
try this
This sounds very similar to my life situation in many ways.
I was born in 1977. I don't have any kids, but I've been the breadwinner fore basically the entirety of my six year relationship with my partner. She worked a low end service job when we got together, and after relocating (for my career) and her having no luck finding something new (this was during the lead up to the financial crisis), I encouraged her to go back to school and financed the whole thing. Right now I pay two tuitions (my MBA and her degree), the mortgage, the works. This is only possible because I've always held relatively high income jobs (video game programmer, then programmer and team lead at a tech start up, now a risk analyst at a major bank). I would say I am pretty conscious of the fact that I am fulfilling an assigned gender role, and I am not super thrilled about that. I was also an unatheltic (and fat) nerd, but as my career has progressed there's a lot of pressure to be healthy, so I eat food I'm super fond of and reluctantly spend a lot of my free time in the gym. Nonetheless, I consider myself pretty lucky, because I'm in a relationship with a woman who doesn't give me grief about my appearance or my spending money on nerdy hobbies (but like you, buying a video game and taking the time to play it generates a guilt response). This contrasts with the attitudes of a lot of the women in my peer group (the potential mates mentioned by Hymowitz) - for instance, one of the career services advisers in my MBA program suggested leaving the fact that I was a video game programmer off my resume, because anything to do with video games suggests I'm immature (okay) and lazy (yeah, I worked at EA and averaged about 80 hours a week there, how's that lazy again). Obviously that's pretty terrible advice, though, but it's indicative of some of the attitudes I'm talking about. I also have had years of low level conflict with my mother over my choice of partner (she would much prefer some one more suited to being the other half of a power couple, and probably resents being proven wrong about the whole "no woman will want you if you keep playing those stupid games" narrative she had going).
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I don't like the term but the concept it signifies is important.
The more economically developed a culture, the longer it takes to achieve adulthood. The amount of time, resources, and education it takes to bring somebody from a child to a fully independent adult by first world standards is far greater than the amount of time, resources and education it takes to bring somebody from a child to a fully independent adult by pre-industrial standards.
This is exacerbated by income inequality, where it's harder for people starting out to accumulate wealth; and it's also exacerbated by longer lifespans, which reduces the amount of wealth (and responsibility) flowing from older generations to younger generations.
We legally define adults as 18 year olds, but the number of 18 year olds who are actually capable of starting a career, home, and family is a tiny minority. Adulthood is more likely to start sometime in our mid-to-late 20s.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
I'm fully willing to give that I may be misinformed on what behavioral traits are being examined here; the original data had to do with the idea that boys are "failing" in society, with a variety of supporting data regarding drop-out rates, college admission/graduation rates, career statistics, etc. I suppose I've been digging a bit harder into the behaviors exhibited by these individuals as an examination as to what their motivations are, but it's entirely possible now that I'm thinking about it that Hymowitz' postulate that it's all a bunch of immature man-children who she finds unsuitable as mates may have poisoned my initial conception of who exactly we're discussing here.
Eh, I'm not much of a drinker, either. I've never drank my way past a mild buzz. I have recently, however, been training myself to drink more, because it seemed like a good coping mechanism in moderation, as well as socially acceptable.
You're spot-on with the encouragement thing, though, which is why I go out of my way to encourage both my children as fairly as I can. I'm simultaneously flattered and saddened when my son tells me that all he wants to be when he grows up is a dad like me; while I guess that means I'm doing a good job as a father, I luckily have plenty of time yet to hopefully show him that there is a whole world of options out there beyond just what he sees of me, and if he really wants to make that a goal in his adult life, it should be because he chose it from all the options out there, not because he wants to emulate me.
He is only (almost) 7, though, so I may be overthinking it.