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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

#331

Post by Gortal278 »

_bkr9 wrote: post #294
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…

A note on fitness. Any pressure I've had to lose weight or whatnot has come from me . All female partners have said that they don't care about my weight, and some actually like some belly to rest on. That said, they have commented favourably on other physical features, and I'm not particularly overweight. I say all this just to try and fight the idea that crops up that if you're male and don't fit some jacked or "Cha…

I think the op was talking of being obese, which it sounds like you are not.

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

#332

Post by paulryanrogers »

grvdrm wrote: post #286
paulryanrogers wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IDK starting the baby making process isn't terribly difficult once one has a partner. It's the carrying to term and everything after that is a lot of time, money, and energy. Some folks will struggle more with the partnering aspect than others. Or mustering the will and resources to begin parenting.

Spend some time reading about infertility at the start of the baby making process and I think you’ll find that it can terribly difficult. Especially as you progress into your mid/late 30s (women). And it is that starting process that can also cost lots of money, time, and energy.

Great call out. I forgot about some struggles in this regard myself, though IME dwarfed by the aftermath.

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

#333

Post by [deleted] »

marcellus23 wrote: post #225
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…

[deleted]

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

#334

Post by 8f2ab37a-ed6c »

I don't see how we'll be able to make people care about this issue at the current zenith of The Future Is Female zeitgeist in the West.

Given the current cultural and moral fashions, I can't think of many things that would be harder to empathize with than the laments of straight working-age men. There are so many more groups that are higher on the oppression totem pole that there's no way anybody will ever make it far enough down to care about boys.

People have been sounding those alarms for years to perfectly deaf ears, and there's nothing in the current culture that would indicate that we are ready to start listening anytime soon. Nobody cares, and help is not coming.

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

#335

Post by dlsa »

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…

The picture is nowhere near this neat and tidy. Plenty of men can't get jobs. They want jobs but can't get them. Life circumstances are far more complex. Its not always solved by learning to code either. Not everyone can do that. Offshoring jobs was not good for societal structures at all. It was all about short term profit.

Less men in employment is not a good thing. It isn’t some kind of passing the torch to women happy event. Its just mass unemployment of a significant number of people in their prime earning age. Its societal failure.

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

#336

Post by gryfft »

_bkr9 wrote: post #294
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…

A note on fitness. Any pressure I've had to lose weight or whatnot has come from me . All female partners have said that they don't care about my weight, and some actually like some belly to rest on. That said, they have commented favourably on other physical features, and I'm not particularly overweight. I say all this just to try and fight the idea that crops up that if you're male and don't fit some jacked or "Cha…

>It's like a self-harm club based on false premises.

My only sticking point with your comment is it's not like that, it is that.

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

#337

Post by krona »

ninkendo wrote: post #226
TylerLives wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

This should keep you busy: https://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=An...

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

#338

Post by wolverine876 »

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…

People have been finding partners and having children ... for the entire history of homo sapiens, and our homo ancestors, and their ancestors back to the dawn of sexual reproduction. In fact, there is probably nothing we are better evolved to do than find a partner, make babies, and raise them.

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

#339

Post by scarmig »

justinpombrio wrote: post #118
rajeshp1986 wrote: post #87

I went to a local college few days back and I noticed that there were more girls than boys. I think part of the reason is due to high college debt many young men are choosing to take jobs and skipping college all together. This will translate to less men in the knowledge based/corporate jobs.

There have been more women than men in college in the US since the 80s. It varies from college to college and from subject to subject (e.g. STEM is much more male, MIT more male, humanities-focused colleges more female). A graph from a random internet search result: https://educationalpolicy.org/hello-world/

STEM is (barely) more female than male [0]. It only seems disproportionately male if you take the idea that 60%+ of people in a major should be female as a given, or if you pick very particular subfields in STEM and take them to represent all of STEM.

[0] https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/gender-gap-in-stem-women-are-...

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

#340

Post by einpoklum »

tasha0663 wrote: post #326
einpoklum wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is either a homunculus argument, or an excuse to blame social phenomena on individual moral/ethical failings.

> an excuse to blame social phenomena on individual moral/ethical failings The aggregate of individual moral/ethical choices manifests as social phenomena.

> The aggregate of individual moral/ethical choices manifests as social phenomena.

That's not entirely false, but it's misleading. The personal choices follow relevant distributions, which are themselves not aggregates. Also, such choices are made in circumstances and under constraints that are not up to individual choice.

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