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Fewer young men are in the labor force, more are living at home

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531–540 of 1001 posts

Re: Fewer young men are in the labor force, more are living at home

#531

Is anybody advocating for them or encouraging them in any way? I can’t think of a single group which aims to highlight men, uplift men, and encourage masculine behavior. These guys grew up in a school system of almost entirely women teachers, and popular media tells them that if they are successful in any way, it is due to oppression. It’s no wonder why they’re not succeeding. We spent the last 15 years telling them…

Your argument reads like Palahniuk's satircal message in Fight Club. These concepts of masculinity our culture pines for are destructive and unproductive. A woman is no less qualified to raise a man than a man. No one has told them their success is evil. You're conflating women being told their success is success with men being shunned. There's a perception that women and minority groups have somehow gained an advant…

>A woman is no less qualified to raise a man than a man.

It's not that women aren't qualified, it's that children need father figures as much as they need mother figures:

>72% of juvenile murderers, and 60% of rapists came from single mother homes. Chuck Colson, “How Shall We Live?” Tyndale House , 2004, p.323

>“The strongest predictor of whether a person will end up in prison, is that they were raised by a single parent”. C.C. Harper and S.S. McLanahan, “Father Absence and Youth Incarceration”, Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Assoc., San Francisco, CA, 1998

>“After controlling for single motherhood, the difference between black and white crime rates disappeared.” Progressive Policy Institute, 1990, quoted by David Blankenhorn, “Fatherless America: Confronting Our Most Urgent Social Problem,” New York, Harper Perennial, 1996, p.31

Way more stats here: https://www.fixfamilycourts.com/single-mother-home-statistic...

Re: Fewer young men are in the labor force, more are living at home

#533

Is anybody advocating for them or encouraging them in any way? I can’t think of a single group which aims to highlight men, uplift men, and encourage masculine behavior. These guys grew up in a school system of almost entirely women teachers, and popular media tells them that if they are successful in any way, it is due to oppression. It’s no wonder why they’re not succeeding. We spent the last 15 years telling them…

Oh please. There's nothing wrong with the way female teachers teach.

>Teachers 'give higher marks to girls'

>When it comes to teachers' marking, the study says there is a consistent pattern of girls' work being "marked up".

>Teachers are said to reward "organisational skills, good behaviour and compliance" rather than objectively marking pupils' work.

https://www.bbc.com/news/education-31751672

Re: Fewer young men are in the labor force, more are living at home

#534

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What are the things that motivates them, and what do they themselves want to do in life? I suspect quite a few people are looking at the odds of achieving various goals, and simply changing the goals. Such as owning a home in desirable areas, or having kids if you cannot afford a food school district or a job that allows you to be home for dinner. Or if you have experienced income instability, and you do not feel c…

> Or if you have experienced income instability, and you do not feel comfortable bringing children into the world. Yet poorer developing nations have higher birth rates than developed nations. Is it because they have lower expectations for what their children need to live a "good" life, that they just have more hope that things will work out somehow, or that they somehow don't care about these concerns?

I would think that the regulations around childcare/childbirth in the third world are basically nil.

if I don't provide for my children in America, I enter the legal system.

Re: Fewer young men are in the labor force, more are living at home

#535

I've got two nephews aged 34 and 32 who still live at home and play video games all the time and rarely leave their rooms. Neither has ever had a job that lasted more than a month or so. Neither ever learned to drive even though they live in a town with little or no public transit. They haven't had any education beyond high school. They seem wholly unprepared to navigate life without their parents. It's a slow motion…

Well maybe they're smart enough to know that, in a world where most things have either been automated or offshored, the only purpose most jobs serve in the grand scheme of things is to increase the velocity of capital. If you had a choice between the fake purpose offered by an office job where you get to be a peon, versus the fake purpose offered by a video game where you get to be a hero: which would you choose?

Re: Fewer young men are in the labor force, more are living at home

#536

I don't think it's a tragedy. The overly dramatic media and pundits get this all wrong in labeling it such. Young people are simply responding to incentives to live at home longer. Living expenses keep going up relative to inflation and wages, such as home prices, rent, insurance, etc. Living at home is a good way save money, even for the employed. Family formation is expensive and fraught with risks such as divorce…

More succinctly, why work when we have nothing to work for? Anecdotally, I just graduated from university and am gainfully employed. I'm really happy to be employed, yet I quickly realized that I have no idea what I want to do with all this money. I'm never going to be able to buy a house. I'm not particularly enthusiastic about having kids, and don't think I can afford children in the first place. I have no major li…

I'm few years into similar reasoning. I'm just hoarding in hope that I'll find something to do in life later.

Re: Fewer young men are in the labor force, more are living at home

#537
post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I deal with a lot of 18-19 year olds as my primary job is teaching first year engineering students. I will tell you it is a LOT more complicated than this. This type of single point simplification and pronouncement about 'coddling' is decidedly unhelpful. For starters, if you grow up in two working parent household, both parents can easily come home completely exhausted and unable to provide the extended engagement n…

Fully agree with this for 18-19 year olds, but at some point (25? 30?) it really does seem like coddling, or enabling at least. At some point you have to move out and support yourself.

Why does it seem like coddling? What do you mean by coddling?

Re: Fewer young men are in the labor force, more are living at home

#538

I'm in the labor force, but live at home. I can absolutely afford to purchase a home. Why don't I? Because I'm not spending $250,000+ on 1400sq ft. These types of articles make it seem like some huge mystery as to why society is the way it is today. It's no mystery. Houses cost to much and employers don't pay enough.

Dang, only $250k for 1400 sqft? That would easily be $1.25M+ here.

lmao yeah that was my first thought too, and heck that'd be a teardown of a house where I live too. A nice new one much more...

Re: Fewer young men are in the labor force, more are living at home

#539

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The idea that every able bodied person has to work is not supposed to be the way our society functions; at least not in the last 100,000 years. What? I was under the impression that particularly in agrarian societies, everyone who was able to work, worked. Are you saying that surpluses allowed for a large class of people to just not work at all?

Agrarian societies had cyclic work. Some societies could be especially arduous, but the most successful and populated areas weren't. For large chunks at a time throughout the year the farming population didn't have more than daily chores and personal projects. But of course during planting and harvesting they would work their asses off. A lot of the rest of the time was personal preference. You could make your house…

Romans had statues why cant we have our own arts revolution

Re: Fewer young men are in the labor force, more are living at home

#540

I've got two nephews aged 34 and 32 who still live at home and play video games all the time and rarely leave their rooms. Neither has ever had a job that lasted more than a month or so. Neither ever learned to drive even though they live in a town with little or no public transit. They haven't had any education beyond high school. They seem wholly unprepared to navigate life without their parents. It's a slow motion…

I may be projecting here but your nephews, if they are like some of my relatives, may not be neurotypical (for example they may have Aspergers disorder). If this is the case their behavior may be better understood in that context that a social one.
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