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The data are clear: The boys are not all right

washingtonpost.com

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

#221

Post by sulam »

babyshake wrote: post #102
UncleMeat wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this actually true? This feels a bit like a post-facto generalization from specific situations. "I was a nerd and didn't go on dates. Being a nerd got me into software and now I make a lot of money. Therefore people who are on the path to high earning are not getting dates." My experience has been that a lot of the stereotypical jocks ended up in finance and are doing quite well and that software is no longer domi…

A lot of popular kids and jocks end up in management in tech while the loners and kids of immigrants are the ones actually creating the software.

source?

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

#222

Post by jeffrallen »

tomjakubowski wrote: post #50
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.

Interesting. I'm just one person, but: I've enjoyed stable employment as a programmer since I was 23, and my teenage years and early 20s were easily my most socially (and romantically) active, and I rarely felt lonely then. I've felt most lonely in my late 20s and early 30s. I sometimes wonder if my career destroyed my ability to make and keep friends.

> wonder if my career destroyed my ability to make and keep friends

You spend thousands of hours at your job. It is inevitable that it will change your personality.

Choose wisely.

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

#223

Post by klodolph »

lph wrote: post #206
humanrebar wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 young men are not unique to them. Fewer women are entering college, also. Women are dropping out of the workforce, also. More young women are living with their parents, also. Is that because they lacked strong masculine role models? You're not wrong ,…

I disagree, and here's why: Andrew Yang is ignoring the elephant in the room. It's not just that the concerns I brought up are another factor, it's that they are by far the dominant factor in why young men are dropping out and discontent. At least in my opinion. To use another analogy: it's like going to the ER for a sucking chest wound and being told you should reduce your cholesterol. They're not wrong , but this i…

Yes, exactly. This is a recurring problem with Yang... he talks about a lot of subjects, but it's clear that he's barely scratching the surface of the problems he's talking about. My impression is that his way of engaging with a topic evolved on mainstream Twitter, and he's applying those same Twitter-oriented techniques in other avenues.

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

#224

Post by rhino369 »

n4r9 wrote: post #105
rhino369 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

FYI I think "archetype" is the word you intended.

Thank you!

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

#225

Post by marcellus23 »

kevinob11 wrote: post #82

I'm a white straight male, grew up middle class near Seattle. I'm now in my mid-30s and have 3 kids. Semi-recently I had an (maybe my first?) experience where I wasn't the favored party in a situation. My kids have made focus more difficult, and I work in an industry (tech consulting) where focus is a big deal, and the idea that I'm not the perfect person for the job was a foreign feeling. I no longer felt "I was mad…

> Semi-recently I had an (maybe my first?) experience where I wasn't the favored party in a situation

You're mid-30s and you might have just experienced your first thing like that? Man or woman, that's hard to believe. And more importantly, I'm not sure your experience can be generalized to all men.

As someone who has experienced situations like that frequently, and knows other men who have, it's a bit frustrating to see the implication that we all feel like "we're perfect for this" or "we're made for this" all the time.

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

#226

Post by ninkendo »

TylerLives wrote: post #137
thrway99 wrote: post #61

My observation is that we are going to have a radical rebalancing of who reproduces and who doesn’t. Lot of men and women who are generally not too motivated to seek out a companion, lose weight, put in the work to make it happen just…won’t pass on genetics. Children are a lot of work and energy. I’m highly introverted and high earning. My wife was the aggressor in my case. She pretty much made it all happen. I think…

IQ has been declining for a while now - https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1718793115

For males, in Norway, from 1962-1991, and with a range of roughly three points. Got anything a little more widespread/recent to back up that claim?

Here's what Our World in Data says: https://ourworldindata.org/intelligence

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

#227

Post by tsol »

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…

Are there a lot of stay at home dads? I personally don't know any. I don't believe that's a large societal trend. I agree it would be a good thing if it were that way, but I don't see any indication to think that

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

#228

Post by csa »

worik wrote: post #110
csa wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Legal marriage also leads to pathological complications in terms of seperation in some states. This cannot be overstated. True even with a prenup.

In civilised jurisdictions these rules apply to unmarried couples too. The amount of economic violence, historically, perpetrated by men over women has been huge. The worm has turned

> In civilised jurisdictions these rules apply to unmarried couples too. The amount of economic violence, historically, perpetrated by men over women has been huge.

I’m guessing we are talking about two different things.

I will also add that, in my circle, women are getting screwed as much by this as men, so “the worm has turned” might better be “be careful what you wish for”.

I largely have no issues with approximately equal division of assets acquired during a marriage.

The two main issues I have are:

1. Determining what counts as an asset.

2. The method of contesting anything in a contested divorce.

For 1, appreciation of any asset counts as an asset that should be divided.

If you came into a marriage with $1 million in ETFs and a $1.5m house free and clear, and those go up to $1.7m etfs and $2.5m house, spouse gets half of $1.7m asset appreciation for…. I struggle to answer this question in a way that us not “being lucky”.

Note that they do not owe half of losses if assets lose value.

Meanwhile, somehow inheritance is treated as largely untouchable money. How does that make sense?

For 2, if a divorce is not amicable, sometimes the party that feels scorned takes a scorched earth approach and basically is willing to give a ton of money to lawyers (“spouse doesn’t get it!”) while also freezing assets.

I’ve seen some very asset rich people be cash poor because their former spouse just wouldn’t let them sell anything, even when they split the proceeds. This was just nothing other than malice. Sure, you can go to court to force them to let you sell for cash, but this is just another example of a pathological aspect of our current system.

This aspect can also create complications in things like limited partnerships and other businesses in which it can be really hard to assign values to the asset and even harder divide the value of the asset without simultaneously destroying that value.

Pre-nups can help, but they largely make the outcome slightly more certain while still leaving much to be contested via litigation if the party that feels scorned chooses to do so.

I know a lot of these rules are in place because of the historical economic shenanigans that men have subjected women to, but that doesn’t mean that the system is reasonable, fair, or not pathological for certain (perhaps many or even most) cases.

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

#229

Post by [deleted] »

ytwombly wrote: post #150

US-based cis-hetero white man here. The data reinforce the impression you get glancing at the headlines or spending a day out anywhere in America observing other men. Dare I say it even reinforces what I know from painful firsthand experience as a man, at the lowest points in my life. I was lucky though, with a supportive family who helped me through the confusing years of early adulthood. You can point to the declin…

[deleted]

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

#230

Post by rhino369 »

buscoquadnary wrote: post #100
rhino369 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 rece…

When I said unskilled, I meant to distinguish the OP's carpenter son from unskilled jobs. I don't think there has ever been a time before 1945 when the average man was a skilled laborer. A liner worker in a factory or farm-hand isn't skilled labor. For most of history, those people were exploited.

Craftsman usually had a decent living because it took training and there was generally demand. But if you train twice as many electricians, its not like there will be twice as many electrician jobs created. So learning a craft or trade is a great personal strategy, but it not a solution we can universally apply.

I do think we force way too many people into college-track for little benefit and quite a bit of harm.

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