The data are clear: The boys are not all right • Hacker News Board

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

#261

Post by erdos4d » Wed, Feb 09, 2022, 9:30 PM UTC

fiftyfifty wrote: post #112

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…

I've coached high school sports teams, both boys and girls, for the last two decades. I've seen some of these trends unfold over the years with my student athletes. My observation is girls are just more motivated than boys, even for something fun like sports practices and workouts, girls in general will show up more consistently than boys. The teachers I've spoken to at the school where I coach have confirmed the sam…

Has this ever not been the case? I remember that girls were way more mature than boys in HS quite well, it was common knowledge and nobody questioned it. They just don't mature as fast.

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

#262

Post by ramesh31 » Wed, Feb 09, 2022, 9:31 PM UTC

jimbokun wrote: post #181

ramesh31 wrote: post #27

Men's comparative advantage, throughout human history, has always been their physical strength. It was the one thing a man could count on to provide value to society. That is no longer the case in our modern economy. You need intelligence, emotional intellect, and analytical skills. All of which men and women are on an equal footing at. So when you remove the ability to generate a viable income through physical labor…

> it's pretty obvious why a good portion of men are now left without anything useful to contribute. Well that went downhill quickly. You start out with men and women on equal footing. Then the next sentence men no longer have anything useful to contribute. Shouldn't the obvious conclusion be that men and women have equally as much to contribute? And therefor you would expect an equal number of men and women succeedin…

>Shouldn't the obvious conclusion be that men and women have equally as much to contribute?

Not really, because what men traditionally had to contribute was their physical strength to perform labor. Having that as a requirement for many lucrative positions like manufacturing and resource extraction is what allowed men to out earn women with their labor in the past. Women never filled those jobs with physical requirements en masse, and so they now already occupy a far greater portion of the other parts of the workforce that men must now compete for.

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

#263

Post by rayiner » Wed, Feb 09, 2022, 9:35 PM UTC

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…

Respectfully, this is kind of a privileged take, both economic and intellectual. For the majority of men who aren’t going to college, they’ve spent a lot longer than a couple of years feeling like they’re not “the favored party” in a situation.

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

#264

Post by throwaway6532 » Wed, Feb 09, 2022, 9:36 PM UTC

paulpauper wrote: post #111

The crisis, if there is one, is that society has less use for males who have IQs between 90-105 or so, who cannot cut it in STEM, and who are finding it hard to cope with increasingly competitive economic conditions and higher overall costs like rent, and is why many men are delaying family formation or moving back with parents (but also due to careerism for women). Men are just dropping out rather than doing low-pai…

This is my analysis too. We're hitting a phase-shift where behavior of the system becomes non-linear due to these types of factors.

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

#265

Post by erdos4d » Wed, Feb 09, 2022, 9:38 PM UTC

alphabettsy wrote: post #20

Purely anecdotal, but it was uncool, dorky, nerdy, etc. where I grew up for boys to be interested in math or even English, but “more manly stuff” like working with your hands was highly encouraged. It seems that kind of culture will result in men being less likely to end up in higher paying careers.l than girls who are being encouraged to pursue STEM.

I used to teach calculus in university and I would always find a way to tell my classes how much a plumber makes just to show up at your house and their hourly rate. Almost without exception they were amazed that they would make less as an engineer unless they got lucky and were hired by a top end firm. Definitely the local shipyard which hired most of our graduates couldn't compete with that rate.

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

#266

Post by jessaustin » Wed, Feb 09, 2022, 9:39 PM UTC

robertlagrant wrote: post #122

mandmandam wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> The people sucking money out of the wage pool are the 1% class, not women What does that mean?

The wealthy determine how the rest of us in USA are governed. Inevitably, they decide that they will get more and we will get less.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-poli...

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

#267

Post by andrewclunn » Wed, Feb 09, 2022, 9:40 PM UTC

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…

No post body was provided.

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

#268

Post by bart_spoon » Wed, Feb 09, 2022, 9:40 PM UTC

lph wrote: post #184

fiftyfifty wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've coached high school sports teams, both boys and girls, for the last two decades. I've seen some of these trends unfold over the years with my student athletes. My observation is girls are just more motivated than boys, even for something fun like sports practices and workouts, girls in general will show up more consistently than boys. The teachers I've spoken to at the school where I coach have confirmed the sam…

I have two elementary-aged children, a boy and a girl. They fit the pattern you describe to a T, and I think most teachers' experience would agree. So anecdotally, the theory that (in general) boys need more nudging than girls from someone in their life in order to be successful rings true. But what would account for a modern change? Are there fewer people pushing, now? Are boys more resistant to it now, or maybe mor…

> Are boys more resistant to it now, or maybe more distracted?

Or perhaps parents are more distracted. Much has been made of how our digital age has made us, as individuals, more distracted and less connected to individuals in our life. For a parent, it doesn't seem unlikely that that would translate to being less invested in their child, or at least not as proactive in this kind of nudging.

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

#269

Post by rayiner » Wed, Feb 09, 2022, 9:40 PM UTC

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…

> You can point to the decline of organized religion and with it traditional gender roles, but then what explains the relative stability in post-Christian Europe?

As far as I can tell, Europe isn’t all that post-Christian. Even countries that have low levels of people actively practicing religion still carry a strong cultural legacy from Christianity: https://www.europenowjournal.org/2019/10/02/the-catholic-nes...

Counterintuitively, America’s lack of a generous welfare system tends to destabilize traditional gender roles. Among women with children under 18, 56% would prefer a “homemaker” role if they were “free” to do either: https://news.gallup.com/poll/186050/children-key-factor-wome.... Contrast with just 26% of men. 39% of women without kids would also prefer to stay home if they had the choice. Even out of women who are currently employed, but have children under 18, the majority would prefer not to work.

Contrast say the Netherlands. It is an egalitarian, post-Christian place, for example, but 60% of working Dutch women only work part time, versus 20% of working Dutch men.

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

#270

Post by cedws » Wed, Feb 09, 2022, 9:41 PM UTC

zozbot234 wrote: post #49

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.

Surely one's romantic prospects should not be set in the teenage years. Or even be affected all that much by contingent employment status, when future potential might be far more relevant.

As another reply touches on, there's a developmental process to romance. A guy in his thirties dating for the first time will have a seriously hard time because of his inexperience. I'm not saying that it's impossible at that point but missing the boat in your teenage years can stunt this development. I think Jordan Peterson has described this in one of his lectures (it's an interesting idea regardless of what you think of his character).