Hanna Rosin on America's Male Identity Crisis

Submitted by Mastodon on Sat, 2013-01-05 11:18

Article here. Excerpt:

'Rosin: What young people learn in church can no longer be reconciled with the realities of their lives. Yet men and women alike are finding it immensely difficult to accept their changed roles. This is why marriages are failing, and mothers are raising their children alone. Many women would rather remain alone than marry a man who can't contribute anything to the family's income.
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SPIEGEL: That sounds very optimistic. But in your book, you describe couples for whom the fact that the woman was suddenly earning more money than the man caused considerable tension.

Rosin: That's true. These arrangements are so new that both men and women often have mixed feelings about them, and you don't have to dig very deep to find those feelings. I think one young man from Canada put it very well when he told me that theoretically and politically he believes in the idea of a househusband 100 percent -- he just doesn't want to be one himself.'

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"Many women would rather remain alone than marry a man who can't contribute anything to the family's income."

Men have been paying women for literally millenia to be wives and mothers and hardly noticing the high premium it was. Suddenly women could start returning the favor and drop the "opportunity" to do so w/out a second thought. Possibly because they know the plain truth: If you work and your mate doesn't, you're getting rooked.

It's not that women are being ungrateful for millenia of support given them by men; after all, women alive today aren't the same ones who were alive a thousand years ago, or with rare exception, even 100. But they see the game for what it is and wisely avoid falling into the same morass that men have been in: you work, she gets paid. It's the "man-as-provider" trap. Men could and should take a lesson from today's women's unwillingness to get involved with a man who doesn't work. If she doesn't work and wants a "traditional marriage", it's a big warning flare to the man: Danger Ahead!

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Submitted by Matt on Sat, 2013-01-05 15:55

The biggest problem with reversing roles on a large scale is that women would have to take on the financial obligation of supporting a man. Women have been relieved of most of their traditional responsibilities--they call it "liberation"--so why should they take on the obligation of supporting a man?

Men have supported women because it was one of the few ways they could get women to take them seriously. Today, the motivation of earning money in order to have a wife and family is waning because of the legal risks of marriage and fatherhood.

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Submitted by el cid on Sat, 2013-01-05 20:49