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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

#651

Post by [deleted] »

dlsa wrote: post #346
johncessna wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> More U.S. men ages 18 to 34 are now living with their parents than with romantic partners. and > Research shows that one significant factor women look for in a partner is a steady job. As men’s unemployment rises, their romantic prospects decline. Unsurprisingly, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of data from 1960 to 2010, the proportion of adults without a college degree who marry plummeted from just ove…

If most women are optimising unemployed men out of dating / marriage then men being unemployed has far more significant consequences for men than women. Women are all about equality for access to employment but then complain that there aren't enough suitable men with jobs. The more a woman earns the smaller her dating pool becomes. Perhaps she could be more flexible in partner selection? There are outliers but the da…

[deleted]

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

#652

Post by nova22033 »

at_a_remove wrote: post #237
emerged wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

White, straight male in my 40s who worked hard to build a decent career. The feeling that this culture hates me based on each of those categories, completely without knowing me, is hard to ignore much longer without a response. The feeling comes from being on the losing side of every action the government and popular culture takes. Being told that you can’t even be involved in a conversation about that fact.

Go look at Google's Mother's Day doodles. Go look at Google's Father's Day doodles (if you can find them, suspiciously absent for a while). "Men are trash." "Men are awful." Then look up on Wikipedia the "Women are wonderful" effect. And of course the ever-popular "dick is abundant and low-value." You get suggestions like white people should be vaccinated last. And so on and so on. It just never stops. It's hard to b…

Go look at Google's Father's Day doodles

Maybe stop relying on google front page doodles for your own sense of self-worth?

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

#653

Post by wwweston »

TimTheTinker wrote: post #586
wwweston wrote: post #511

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. A total lack of belief to the point of nihilism is a crisis of meaning, to be sure, but it tends to collapse towards either hedonism or depression rather than monomaniacal infliction of harm on the rest of the world. True determined harm usually requires ideological zeal.

> True determined harm usually requires ideological zeal. That's not what I think motivated all the US school shootings in the last 25 years. Ideological zeal that pursues actively harming others is something I don't think the US has much of, culturally speaking. No one preaches "those people need to die" or "we need to harm those people".

It's certainly worth considering mass shootings. They're unsettling and the apparently growth in frequency is alarming, and I think you could fairly attribute them to personal crises in meaning that lead to a path of resentment ("if I'm suffering, why shouldn't others suffer too?") that does germinate into a plan to inflict arbitrary harm.

Still, as far as I can tell, even with the increase in frequency these are not common events. ~600 per year. No number of them is rare enough, but imagine if even 1 in 1000 of the estimated number of Americans who suffer from major depression (around 16 million) did a mass shooting. Running amok may be the exception that proves the rule.

I'd also point out that ideological zeal may play a role here. Ideology seems to underly policy of not only refusing to examine potential further restrictions on access but to broadly increasing access to arms/gear that make them easier. Characterizations of these events as mental health crises don't seem to lead to social policy supporting mental health. Certainly not the whole story, but probably plays a role in paving the way for harm.

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

#654

Post by RickJWagner »

I'm generally conservative, but I find much of what Yang has written here agreeable.

If we looked even farther and studied how many fatherless boys grow up to have legal problems (i.e. become incarcerated), the scope of the problem becomes even more alarming.

Kudos to the author. I think the area is ripe for bipartisan study and hopefully constructive change.

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

#655

Post by Mikeb85 »

prawn wrote: post #603
AdrianB1 wrote: post #515

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why do you get to say what someone's purpose is? Why is being a provider necessarily the purpose in life? Because this was the case for the last 10,000 years and you cannot change it overnight, unless you are in Soviet Russia and send people to Gulag for re-education. It is built into men's biological nature to be provider (like most mammals in the nature), you cannot change it because society decided less than a g…

I asked someone up thread, but what's stopping males being a provider? The original suggestion was a change from traditional roles is the issue, but I don't think that's it.

>what's stopping males being a provider?

Economics. There's not enough jobs for men in society. Women are preferred for most entry level office jobs, industrial jobs were always the go-to for uneducated men, but those have been mostly eliminated. High achievers will always do well, but by definition not everyone can be a high achiever.

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

#656

Post by ravel-bar-foo »

mandmandam wrote: post #91
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.

Is there an argument that women in the workforce suck money out of the economy? I thought the argument was that their participation in the workplace increases the supply of labor, thus reducing the value of any individual's labor.

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

#657

Post by tootahe45 »

prawn wrote: post #603
AdrianB1 wrote: post #515

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why do you get to say what someone's purpose is? Why is being a provider necessarily the purpose in life? Because this was the case for the last 10,000 years and you cannot change it overnight, unless you are in Soviet Russia and send people to Gulag for re-education. It is built into men's biological nature to be provider (like most mammals in the nature), you cannot change it because society decided less than a g…

I asked someone up thread, but what's stopping males being a provider? The original suggestion was a change from traditional roles is the issue, but I don't think that's it.

Probably this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_J8dHLe1Vc

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

#659

Post by cgriswald »

barry-cotter wrote: post #437
wolverine876 wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And having very few adults to talk to, no status, no career advancement (in fact, the opposite), and little recognition.

Most people do not care about their jobs. And they have jobs, not careers. They work because they get paid. Occasionally they get a brief flicker of satisfaction. More often they enjoy the company of their co-workers. Occasionally they hate their jobs so much that they engage in unhealthy behaviors s as a coping mechanism, like alcoholism, or they quit. Basically everyone who doesn’t stay heavily involved in their pr…

Well, sure, but take a few years off of your "job" and you'll find that your prospects for another job are far fewer and for less pay. I think that's generally what people mean by a career even if they aren't particularly chasing advancement.

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

#660

Post by CyberDildonics »

betwixthewires wrote: post #380
tharne wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is spot on. Multigenerational housing used to be the norm, not a symbol of failure. Why we all think it's a great idea to leave our families at 18 and pay high rents so that we can live with strangers we found on the internet is beyond me.

The thing is, the people that do the systems planning of our economy and social structure have an incentive for every man to move into a productive lifestyle the minute he turns 18. But there's a misalignment of incentives; what appears productive for society is not productive for the young men in question. So of course, in print, there's a crisis of young men staying at home with their parents til they're 30. But fo…

the people that do the systems planning of our economy and social structure

Who are these people and are they in the room with us now?

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