Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The data are clear: The boys are not all right

washingtonpost.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 1001 posts

Re: The data are clear: The boys are not all right

#91

Post by mandmandam »

frankbreetz wrote: post #5

>>Median wages for men have declined since 1990 in real terms. Roughly one-third of men are either unemployed or out of the workforce. I wonder how much of this is because more women are joining the workforce. If men are leaving the workforce by their own free will because their wife is working and they are staying home with the kids, both of these facts could be true, but seems like a win in both gender equality ter…

This isn't mysterious. The people sucking money out of the wage pool are the 1% class, not women.

20 trillion in debt for illegal and stupid wars probably didn't help either, though it does tie in once again with the 1% class.

Re: The data are clear: The boys are not all right

#92

Post by Zigurd »

lph wrote: post #46

Andrew Yang makes some good points in this piece, particularly about positive masculinity and role models. Whether fair or not, the perception that the left is hostile to men has driven recruitment for the far right, and that merits some reflection. But he's also really facile about underlying economic causes. It's easy to blame problems on "our culture has been broken by the wokes!", but many of the problems of youn…

As with any challenged population, blaming the victim is unfair in the majority of cases, is unproductive in finding solutions, and it creates division where it is unwarranted. But the phrase "positive masculinity" is fraught.

Ease in befriending and reaching real camaraderie with women does not depend on masculinity at all. It depends on seeing others as equals. I sure don't think about masculinity and whether I'm doing it right. What would that do?

I doubt the kind of masculinity advice Jordan Peterson is slinging helps any of the men who listen to him. Instead, they find comfort and self-justification in that advice. It isn't changing their outcomes. It isn't the on-ramp to good relationships. It is the on ramp to the "intellectual dark web" and that will keep your dick dry more reliably than anything.

Re: The data are clear: The boys are not all right

#93

Post by mrtksn »

commandlinefan wrote: post #29

> As men’s unemployment rises, their romantic prospects decline. Conversely: as young men's potential future employability rises, their romantic prospects also decline. That is - the men who'll grow up to be stable and reliable have lonely teenage years.

> men who'll grow up to be stable and reliable have lonely teenage years.

You are describing nerds having high paying tech jobs, right?

I find that little bit short sighted, there are huge number(probably the majority) of people with balanced lifestyles who are employed in stable jobs, just not really in a trendy high paying or high status sectors.

There are also a sizeable number of people who don't posses the nerdy characteristics at all and still are good in academics and business. Colleges are actually full of that kind of people, they all end up in good jobs.

Re: The data are clear: The boys are not all right

#94

Post by jeffbee »

zozbot234 wrote: post #71
bmj wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You do realize that a career in the skilled trades can lead to very good pay, right? Yes, the work can be hard, and the hours sometimes long, but there are very clear paths to working independently, or for small shops/contractors that provide a nice degree of independence and good pay. I think high school kids in the U.S. should be exposed to STEM, the humanities, and the trades. We have pushed college/academic achie…

> You do realize that a career in the skilled trades can lead to very good pay, right? Only if you can start your independent business, which few can do pretty much by definition. That's still a recipe for bimodal outcomes. And the U.S. has pushed "college achievement" on paper, but their K-12 education still sucks. There's no way that this isn't a drag on college outcomes.

I knew people who started oilfield welding businesses at the age of 18 right out of high school, bought houses and started families. Yeah that is a boom-and-bust business but then again so is machine learning.

Re: The data are clear: The boys are not all right

#95

Post by ketzo »

rhino369 wrote: post #84
commandlinefan wrote: post #29

> As men’s unemployment rises, their romantic prospects decline. Conversely: as young men's potential future employability rises, their romantic prospects also decline. That is - the men who'll grow up to be stable and reliable have lonely teenage years.

A lot of stable and reliable men have really good teenage years. There is definitely an arc-type of socially awkward boys who grow up to be engineers, accountants, etc. But within that group, romantic prospects are positively correlated with employment prospects. An awkward guy w/ a job is better than an awkward guy w/o one.

Yeah, the idea that employability necessitates a decline in romantic prospects is so comically backwards that it's hard to even take seriously.

Re: The data are clear: The boys are not all right

#97

Post by ok_dad »

mekal wrote: post #81
ok_dad wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally, I would love to quit working and take care of my family at home. I find much more joy in that than working a programming career. I think a lot of men have been conditioned to think we have to be the provider much like women have been conditioned to think they have to be a homemaker.

I'm in the same boat as you, but I think it's important to remember another factor besides conditioning. It's much easier to say "I would love to quit" when you have a job than it is to be happy not having a job when you aren't sure if you could actually get one to begin with. Similarly, if you know you could take someone in a fight, and they challenge you in public...its easier in that case to "take the high road" a…

I don't really understand your comment, sorry! However, in my case, I think taking care of my family would be my "real job" since it actually takes a lot of effort! My wife does a lot around here, and I consider her work as integral to our family's well-being as my work; maybe even moreso.

Re: The data are clear: The boys are not all right

#98

Post by mjevans »

Jtsummers wrote: post #42
Spooky23 wrote: post #26

Of course. We treat females like they are a marginalized minority. My son’s school has a “Girls Can Code” program. All collateral features women and girls. (Boys are welcome though) I worked at a place where a C-level executive hosted company endorsed dinners at her home for female managers to mentor them for executive roles. If I setup a boys club for computers at school or hosted a men’s IT society at work, that wo…

> If I setup a boys club for computers at school or hosted a men’s IT society at work, that wouldn’t end well. Maybe not, but nearly every Users Group I've attended may as well have been a men's IT society for all the women I've seen attend, despite specific outreach efforts to get them there.

While I share your first hand observations here, I'll note that (from my limited perspective) there was nothing obviously catering to non-females or any particular gender in these groups. Many of the groups I've attended also had 'professional standards'.

So what is the discrepancy? What has changed and what is being done differently between the groups where 'boys' can optionally attend and ones that 'girls' appear to self select against attendance? We should reach for a world that doesn't require discrimination.

Re: The data are clear: The boys are not all right

#99

Post by tokamak-teapot »

Spooky23 wrote: post #26

Of course. We treat females like they are a marginalized minority. My son’s school has a “Girls Can Code” program. All collateral features women and girls. (Boys are welcome though) I worked at a place where a C-level executive hosted company endorsed dinners at her home for female managers to mentor them for executive roles. If I setup a boys club for computers at school or hosted a men’s IT society at work, that wo…

Girls and women are marginalised in the area of technology. This site in particular has hosted terabytes of discussion of this problem. If you look back at some of the stories about conferences and why codes of conduct have been set up, you will see at least part of the publicly visible part of this.

This is why it’s perfectly socially acceptable to set up a specific group to give women and girls a chance to learn skills in an environment where they feel safe from sneering, lewd comments, and other such behaviour which is not conducive to learning, or simply having a good time.

The article under discussion here is important, because boys and men face a great many difficulties in life, but the Venn diagram of difficulties faced by men and women has problems unique to each and problems shared by both.

Complaining about people getting help in areas where they face a disproportionate struggle just seems unkind.

Re: The data are clear: The boys are not all right

#100

Post by buscoquadnary »

rhino369 wrote: post #59
bmj wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As the father of 18 year old who is not going to college and instead working as a carpenter, I don't think lumping 18 year olds with 25+ year olds makes much sense. Perhaps I have an antiquated view of family, but I don't feel his "independence" has everything to do with where he lives. I'm more than happy to have him around the house if it allows him to save money and live a better life at, say, 21.

It absolutely makes sense. The idea that an 18 year old would start their own household is an artifact from a small period in our history when 18 year olds could easily get an unskilled job that would afford a decent modest lifestyle. But that only really started in the late 40's and was over by the 70's.

You know one thing I find interesting is you specifically call out "unskilled job", which I think has a point but the OP mentions specifically his son studying to be a carpenter that I would consider a "high skilled" job, even if it is blue collar, and then you suggest there was a small period of time when an 18 yo could provide for a family with unskilled labor.

I then realized that for much of history up until recently by the time a young man was 18 years old he was already a skilled craftsman at his craft to a large extant. The young man would've been training with his father at his craft from the time he was ten years old and so by the time he was 18 would be proficient in what he had to do.

I wonder then is part of the issue we face due to the fact that we spend so much time trying to instill a modern education into youth until they are adults that they have to spend an additional 4-8 years acquiring an actual skill in order to be able to provide value in the workforce?

Post reply on HN