When I first got to Shoreline, I coined myself the Official Baby Promotion Specialist...mostly because I was always telling the married couples that they should start having babies...or trying to encourage anyone out of college to settle down already so we could have some kids in the church. I was so young, so naive.
Turns out, maybe we need more marriage and family promotion. A friend sent me this article, one of those ask-the-specialist columns, that discusses another article about SYM's (Single Young Men) and what a grand problem they are creating for society.
The first article, titled "Child-Man in the Promised Land," attempts to explain the Peter Pan Syndrome...that men nowadays "just won't grow up." The writer, Kay Hymowitz, has plenty of pop culture support and thoughtful proof that there is seriously a problem. It's worth a read if you have the time, but the crux of the argument seems to be the following:
"It is marriage and children that turn boys into men. Now that the SYM can put off family into the hazily distant future, he can—and will—try to stay a child-man."
And more insultingly, "Men are 'more unfinished as people,'...Young men especially need a culture that can help them define worthy aspirations. Adults don’t emerge. They’re made."
Expert "Dr. Helen," adds some of her own analysis:
"I guess everyone has their blind spot when it comes to why men don’t toe the line and provide society with what it needs or wants despite little reward and plenty of headache for being a modern day husband and father...Nowadays, for many men, the negatives of marriage for men often outweigh the positives. Therefore, they engage in it less often. Not because they are bad, not because they are perpetual adolescents, but because they have weighed the pros and cons of marriage in a rational manner and found the institution to be lacking for them. It’s a sensible choice for some and the video games, magazines, and humor websites that Hymowitz disses are a way to fill one’s time with fun activities that don’t tell you that you suck, are an “unfinished person,” emotionally detached or on your way to jail for fake domestic violence charges. People used to treat men better than this."
I don't know that I have much more to add that these two haven't covered. I wanted to link to the articles because I think they say it better than I could.
Regardless, the whole dramatic affair just reminds me that there are a lot of problems in this world. I don't want to be the nagging, bitter, feminist type (while I am undoubtedly grateful to feminism for giving me the opportunities I have today), so I'd be curious to hear more male voice on the subject. I understand why marriage would be worth it for me, and I hope that I can make marriage worth it for a man someday. Perhaps we need more married men to speak out about why it's a good thing to be "tied down." And as a woman, are there ways that I am spinning or imagining marriage that will one day put too much pressure on the guy I'm with? I know that girls are all relational and whatnot, but don't guys benefit from the intimacy of marriage as well?
When I first moved out here, I thought I had a pretty good grasp on all things relational. I probably did. But I was a couple of decades off in my calculations.
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There have been some great aspects of feminism. But just as it gave women choices, in doing so, it also gave men choices, and some have chosen to use women mainly for sex only, without any strings or expectations.
I'm a father of a little girl.
Culturally, the horse is out of the barn, thanks to feminism, the sexual revolution, and the government-as-dad.
As numerous other people have noted, too many boys are being raised without the model of a happy, married father in their home, and they have almost no "male only" instutions left to be socialized as manly men, husbands, and fathers. Everything now is co-ed and geared towards the sensitivities and needs of women.
Young men have been taught that women don't need men, but they see that plenty of women WILL use men, mainly for their money.
At the same time, they've noticed that even (actually, especially) being an unreliable jerk, they can get easy casual sex from many different women with nothing expected or demanded by the women except the physical interaction. And their male relatives, friends, and coworkers who DO get married are often miserable in the marriage or financially and emotionally scarred by divorce, usually initiated by the wife, who then takes his kids and alienates them from their father.
So what will I teach my little girl? Marriage and family-minded men and women should seek each other out and avoid the "fish in the sea" who are either hedonistic, or do not want to be dedicated spouses or parents. Don't even try playing both sides of the fence, like the women who will gladly let a man pay their way, even though they have no intention of marrying him, but will instead, at the end of their dates, dismiss him and call over a "child-man" for a no-strings encounters. Then, when they have accumulated enough debt and become bored with sex, they will finally pick a "nice" guy to rescue them.
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