As if men and women don't already have enough to bicker about, the media is now gleefully stoking a made-up battle over who matters more: men or women?
In her new book The Richer Sex, for example, journalist Liza Mundy musters reams of data to show that women are becoming a more powerful economic force than men. Inside the covers, she points out that this trend could benefit men as well as women. Yet the provocative title suggests a winner-take-all competition between the two genders, an oversimplified meme that has set off plenty of hyperventilating in the media.
Marriage isn't cool any more, as sociologist Eric Klinenberg points out in his recent book, Going Solo. More women are forging careers and having children without a male partner, as if a dab of sperm is all they really need from men. Later this year, we'll get to debate anew whether we've really reached "the end of men," as Hanna Rosin will argue in a forthcoming book derived from a controversial 2010 story in The Atlantic. And of course Mitt Romney and Barack Obama will keep us on high gender alert with their ongoing battle over who's more hostile to women.
I'm not going to summon more mind-numbing data to refute the idea of a gender war, because on debates like this there's usually "expert" evidence supporting both sides, which leads precisely nowhere. Practically everybody ends up believing what they started out believing, because they find a factoid or a pundit to validate their view.
Instead of that, how about simply applying some common sense to the whole question. Are gender wars really a common family problem? Do families break apart and relationships falter because men are irrelevant and fail to recognize their own obsolescence? Do men and women really tussle over who is the dominant economic power?
Many of us can point to a personal anecdote or two about dropout Dads, breadwinner Moms or gender-bent household arrangements. But on the whole, what I seen happening among men and women -- Moms and Dads -- is a pragmatic and sensible effort to optimize opportunity, pool resources and achieve outcomes that are best for everybody. If there's a war, it's rather civil.
Women, for example, now earn the majority of bachelor's and advanced degrees. Plus, they tend to work in growing fields such as healthcare, whereas men are overrepresented in stagnant or shrinking fields like construction, manufacturing and middle management. That's why women are a growing economic force, as they have been for 20 years. But this is hardly a socially destructive trend. Instead, it gives many families an additional source of income and more options for getting ahead.
What happens in most families is a kind of negotiation among partners and spouses, who recognize the changing prospects of men and women in real time and make rational adjustments. If a woman can earn more than her husband, she's likely to work more than he does, while the man stays home and handles more of the household chores. It doesn't always work smoothly, but it does give a family more choices than they'd have in a rigid setup where only the man worked. In a business, that would be considered efficient allocation of resources. In a family, it's a gender revolution.
Single women these days seem to represent an even more emphatic rejection of the traditional role they once played. In the new TV series Girls, twentysomething women have depersonalized sex just like men, shucking the guilt of their forbears to the foot of the bed. These, presumably, are same women who will raise kids without even expecting a man to be involved, and perhaps make it all the way to old age without ever having to rely on a man.
You go girl! Just keep in mind that in real life, it can be kind of nice to have a man around every now and then. Anybody who knows a single Mom, especially one who works, knows that the power and the glory of depending on nobody evaporates as soon as a kid gets sick, there's a call from the authorities or it suddenly seems impossible to keep up with everything that goes wrong with kids. The same goes for single Dads, who don't generate as many book titles but still represent a meaningful sliver of our fragmenting society. Everybody needs help and companionship. Sometimes, a lot.
The bottom line is that people need people. There are fewer social rules than there were a generation or two ago, which has given men and women both more freedom to find flexible arrangements that work for them. What's really going on is a lot of trial and error, as men and women experiment with new roles. Unlike a war, however, this sometimes-messy experiment is heading toward a new equilibrium that may just make everybody better off. But don't tell the pundits. It will ruin their storyline.
Follow Rick Newman on Twitter: www.twitter.com/rickjnewman
Image that, men allowing their wives and daughters to be killed on a whim while they stand by idly and do nothing. There is no hope for some people. "
To which I must reply that you also need to work on your reading comprehension. If you take a moment to reread what I wrote it MIGHT become apparent to you that I spoke of men not doing anything to stop other men from killing THEIR OWN wives and daughters, not someone standing by while THEIR wife or daughter is killed by someone else. How you managed to get THAT from my comment eludes me but it also tells me a lot about where your head is at... and it's not a pretty place.
I hear it/read it all of the time
You can't even listen to the radio without hearing it
For middle-class professionals, there isn't a problem. For working class families there is.
Despite all the numbers on women earning college degrees, most women right now earn less than their husbands. And you're right, it isn't a war between men and women. Women want their husbands to be able to get work.
Agree. We're both just muddling through.
Btw, I decided against the relationship with my friend L. Thought about it long and hard. Too risky. I think I would have ended up with zippy in the end. She is disappointed. Now I will wait for her wrath!
When in doubt, don't.
Why is this ironic? If he out-earned you, you wouldn't even have to ask for alimony because it would just be given to you, because you're a woman.
Yes, I'm looking at you, sister.
Any data that shows that men are better at things is just sexist generalization.
Any data that shows that women are better at something is gospel.
Saying that men need women in just common sense.
Saying that women need men is patriarchal tyranny.
These people are the real sexists and care only for advantage not fact or truth.
And I'm just fanning you now? :)
If you have made mistakes are in danger of becoming obsolete, try this: Put your significant other first for ninety days, work on reestablishing love in the marriage and see where you can compromise on conflicts because you will never agree about everything. Don't take your family for granted; give them the gift of making the effort.
With normal women this is probably good advice, but if you are unlucky enough to have married someone with Borderline Personality Disorder (an estimated one in nine women have it), then prepare to be abused and abandoned.
Mental issues with today's "modern" women is on the rise. It's steadily increasing with their depression.
For instance, there have been a plethora of books about why the educational system is failing today's boys. Many are well-researched and also intuitive. There have also been a similar number of books about why the educational system is unfair to today's girls. Again, well-researched, etc. So parents of sons are up in arms about the schools favoring girls, and the parents of daughters are furious that their girls aren't being given a fair shot. But... maybe it's not about boys vs. girls, rather about an educational system that has become obsolete. Perhaps we need to focus on completely revamping the educational system, from the ground up, to meet the needs and challenges of todays' kids. Or we could just continue to see it as a gender issue.
Whenever you bring up boys falling behind in school to a modern feminist...she will...
A- say it's boy's fault for being lazy (sexist generalizations).
B- ask what men are going to do for those boys....because you know...it's Team Pink vs. Team Blue...so here they expose the emptiness of their claim that feminism stands for equality for all.
Not surprisingly the very notion of a strong man was for decades made out to be a threat to women's rights. The dominant male was assumed to be bad for society and males were encouraged to be submissive and follow dominant females. The idea of a proud male identity was seen as backwards and sexist, while the proud female was heralded as an icon of modernity.
Feminism was not about equality which it viewed as a intermediate stage on the way to their Utopian ideal of a female lead society. It assumed superior female leadership would solve the worlds problems and still does. It made men out to be uniquely bad people who had caused most of the problems for thousands of years. Feminism as a ideology has been as sexist as the cultural memes it replaced half a century ago.
Men need to grow up and show up.
Women are waiting.
How dare they think they their thoughts, feelings, wants or desires matter...
I think men decided to go their own way instead of trying to live up to want women want from them. Have you considered men might be doing what they want to do or are they not allowed?
Don't strip a people of their respect and dignity and expect them to work themselves to the bone for your benefit.
Women can take care of themselves, and if they can afford it they can do for men what men used to and still do for them.
Also the mature and stable type are exactly the kind of men who are getting divorced left and right when their women get bored.
Great article, and the above quote hit the nail on the head! All this nonsense about men and women being at war has always been, in my mind, over hyped pontificating over non issues lead by special interest groups, media and politicians vying for power during an election year. Nothing more - nothing less.
If equality is something we hope to achieve as a society, then we have to stop drawing lines for people to cross. Just continue to work with each other and we'll get there, dragging the older generation, kicking and screaming all the way. Relax, you won't remember all the hate in a few years anyway...
Especially if you want to stay at home and take care of the kids like in the recent, stupid issue created for warring politicians. The government gets into the act and now wants the public to act as the "marriage" partner, providing insurance and income to those that want to be stay at home parents, but don't want a partner.
It's so much easier to say it than to live with it.