We have discussed before on this blog that we live in a culture where maturity is often significantly delayed. In fact there are many in our culture who never grow up. One paradigm of our culture is to that it is fixated on teenage years. Fixation is a psychological description of a person who has not successfully navigated one of the stages of infancy or youth and thus remains stuck in the thinking and patterns of that stage, to one degree or another. Out culture’s fixation on teenage issues and attitudes is manifest in some of the following:
- Irrational aversion to authority
- Refusal to use legitimately use the authority one has
- Titillation and irresponsibility regarding sexuality
- General irresponsibility and a lack of personal accountability
- Demanding all of one’s rights but avoiding most of one’s responsibilities
- Blaming others for one’s own personal failings
- Being dominated by one’s emotions and carried away easily by the passions
- Obsession with fairness evidenced by the frequent cry, “It’s not fair!”
- Expecting others and government agencies to do for me what I should do for myself
- Aversion to instruction
- Irrational rejection of the wisdom of elders and tradition
- Obsession with being and looking young, aversion to becoming or appearing old
- Lack of respect for elders
- Obsession with having thin and young looking bodies
- Glorification of irresponsible teenage idols in culture.
- Inordinate delay of marriage, widespread preference for the single life.
I have often been accused when writing in this manner, especially by younger men that I have little idea what they really face. I do plead to being guilty of being less sensitive to the struggle of men simply because I am a man. I don’t generally like to hear men make excuses, as a man it alarms me. Men tend to tell each other to make no excuses and to “be a man.”
But I was alerted recently to two other articles on this subject. One of them is by a woman who has some good insights to the lack of male maturity today. Sometimes it takes someone on the outside to better grasp the dynamics. I think she shows a little more understanding (in both the intellectual and sympathetic sense of the word), and if it helps male readers to experience greater insight than I have to offer, I offer here an excerpt with comments by me in red:
Not so long ago, the average American man in his 20s had achieved most of the milestones of adulthood: a high-school diploma, financial independence, marriage and children. Today, most men in their 20s hang out in a novel sort of limbo, a hybrid state of semi-hormonal adolescence and responsible self-reliance. This “pre-adulthood” has much to recommend it, especially for the college-educated.
So she coins a term here called “pre-adulthood.” I have tended just to call this “extended adolescence” but her terms does capture the fact that many of the immature men (and some women too) do live away from parents and do have jobs, but otherwise are not so different from adolescents and college preppies. So her term does include a necessary distinction.
But it’s time to state what has become obvious to legions of frustrated young women: It doesn’t bring out the best in men….They are more like the kids we babysat than the dads who drove us home…..
Exactly. I have had many women tell me how tedious young men are. I usually reply that a feminized culture has largely produced them. So has a culture fixed on teen themes. Men also get mixed messages from both women and culture to the effect “Be a man, but don’t do it in a manly way…Show some leadership but get out of the way…. Many men are rightly confused, especially younger men who are some two generations removed from anything resembling a patriarchal family structure. Today matriarchy is the norm almost everywhere, and if there is even a whiff of Patriarchy it is round mocked and even punished legally. Ms Hymowitz will develop this more.
Among “pre-adults,” (again, her word for the extension of adolescence) women are the first sex. They graduate from college in greater numbers (among Americans ages 25 to 34, 34% of women now have a bachelor’s degree but just 27% of men), and they have higher GPAs. As most professors tell it, they also have more confidence and drive. These strengths carry women through their 20s, when they are more likely than men to be in grad school and making strides in the workplace. In a number of cities, they are even out-earning their brothers and boyfriends….Their male peers often come across as aging frat boys…
Yes the feminists in our culture have long ago succeed in emasculating culture and making male proclivities almost criminal. In schools young boys who show the traditional spit and vinegar are declared ADHD and medicated. They are forbidden the rough and tumble that used to be usual fare for growing boys. Leadership and the aggression (within proper limits) that often fuels male leadership is excoriated etc. In this strange land of largely feminine run schools boys are poorly formed and it makes sense that they under-achieve. Nevertheless, despite decades of this, most feminists still claim victim status and continue to double-down on further feminizing the scene. Gone are the days when Father Flanagan caught two boys fighting and issued them boxing gloves and set the time for a proper fight between gentlemen after school.
For a long time, the poor and recent immigrants were not part of adolescent life; they went straight to work, since their families couldn’t afford the lost labor and income….today’s pre-adults have been wait-listed for adulthood. Yes this phenomenon is quite recent and rooted in western affluence and to some degree decadence.
Marketers and culture creators help to promote pre-adulthood as a lifestyle…. Precisely.
Pre-adulthood has also confounded the primordial search for a mate. It has delayed a stable sense of identity, dramatically expanded the pool of possible spouses, mystified courtship routines and helped to throw into doubt the very meaning of marriage.
In 1970, to cite just one of many numbers proving the point, nearly seven in 10 25-year-olds were married; by 2000, only one-third had reached that milestone… In 1974 there were 400,000 weddings in Catholic Parishes in the USA. In 2004 there were 199,000 weddings. Cut more than in half and it has dropped like a rock since.
It’s been an almost universal rule of civilization that girls became women simply by reaching physical maturity, but boys had to pass a test. They needed to demonstrate courage, physical prowess or mastery of the necessary skills. The goal was to prove their competence as protectors and providers. Today, however, with women moving ahead in our advanced economy, husbands and fathers are now optional, and the qualities of character men once needed to play their roles—fortitude, stoicism, courage, fidelity—are obsolete, even a little embarrassing.
George Guilder made this same point in a landmark Book Men and Marriage. Ms. Hymowitz does a remarkable job in just two sentences of describing the remarkable toll the break down of the family has had on men. Along with expansive (Mommy State) government usurping a provider role and the general feminization of culture, men are in a cauldron of confusion and obsolescence, a kind of perfect storm.
Today’s pre-adult male is like an actor in a drama in which he only knows what he shouldn’t say. He has to compete in a fierce job market, but he can’t act too bossy or self-confident. He should be sensitive but not paternalistic, smart but not cocky….
Why should they grow up? No one needs them anyway. There’s nothing they have to do. They might as well just have another beer. Wow.
The full article is here: WSJ: Where have the Good Men Gone?
The article is Adapted from “Manning Up: How the Rise of Women Has Turned Men Into Boys” by Kay S. Hymowitz, to be published by Basic Books on March 1. Copyright © by Kay S. Hymowitz. Printed by arrangement with Basic Books Kay Hymowitz, Wall Street Journal
I realize both Ms Hymnowitz’s remarks and mine too are not without controversy, especially my remarks about the feminizing of culture. I saying this I do not mean to say there is no value in femininity, only that things have gone out of balance for men. Comments are open.
I have also written more on this topic here:
Raising Boys in a Culture Often Hostile to them
Here’s a silly song from another era entirely.
Msgr. Pope, your comments are excellent and accurate, but they hardly scratch the surface. One huge demotivating element that was not covered is no-fault divorce. Its destabilizing influence on our culture cannot be overstated. Men do not like the odds and they are voting with their feet–even successful, mature guys. It’s sad.
Good point, Greg. A man can do everything right – be good to his wife, be a good provider, a good father, etc., but he can still lose out. His wife can still divorce him, take the kids, the home, a lot of his salary, etc. Some might argue (naively) that if a man really is doing all the right things, then no wife would leave him. Alas, this is not true. In our feminized world of today, a lot of decent men are perceived by women as boring. Women are told that they can do better – that they can have a more wonderful man who can give them a more exciting life. Bored women sometimes react by cheating, which leads to divorce. In a legal/cultural environment like this, it’s not surprising that a lot of men are reluctant to get married.
This is why the Church should be as vociferously opposed to divorce as it is to abortion. No-fault divorce leads to the destruction of families which leads, eventually, to the destruction of society. If a man cannot rely on his wife to stick with him through thick and thin, then he really does not have much incentive to “grow up”.
You are EXACTLY CORRECT, sir.
We raise girls in America to be entitled — to a nice house, car, exciting job, exciting husband, kids, etc.
Girls are competing with each OTHER for this dream life.
Such competitiveness makes them lonely, of course. It also makes them ferocious micro-managers of everything in sight.
So, the stress leads to divorce, of course.
Either he doesn’t live up to her expectations, or she doesn’t live up to his.
At REGINA Magazine — where we covered Msgr Pope’s officiating at the September wedding of Imre and Kathleen De Habsbourg-Lorraine — we are taking on this very question, along with a whole HOST of cultural ills.
From an authentic Catholic perspective, loyal to the Magisterium.
http://issuu.com/champion13/docs/regina_volume_one_feb_2013
Beverly De Soto
Editor, Regina Magazine
Dear Ms. De Soto,
Thank you for your kind comments. Your magazine looks interesting. I wish you all the best.
One of the strangest things I’ve noticed among women of my age group (45-50) who are single parents, is a constant need for a man to mother. They neglect their own children seeing the needs and crisis of their new “man” as all important. I guess what I mean to say, is the crisis in regards to maturity is not relegated simply to men.
When a college counselor asked my nephew what were his great obstacles in going to college, his response was, I’m a white male and my parents are married. It seems, in this day, one’s greatest chance of getting a scholarship is not scholarship, it is being a part of a “victimized” class.
This is a key part of the agenda to weaken people so that they pose no threat to authority. The would-be world controllers have planned and succeeded over a number of decades in an attempt to weaken the family, and especially, men, who pose more of a threat than women do. Dependency, weakness, is the desired state. The agenda is carried forward in enormous amounts of estrogen the FDA and others know is in the food and drink, and other chemicals Bhisphenol A being a chief one. If one looks around, at least when I do… here in Honolulu, I definitely see that younger men – coming out of the high school I pass as I bike home from teaching public school in another area, look androgynous (pardon spelling if incorrect; it’s late here): no shoulders, slender builds. THe older men look far more masculine. I am glad to see however, that in spite of everything arrayed against it, the family in certain parts of our society is still strong. This is such an enormous topic: the deliberate sabotage of humanity. It is necessary to understand that it IS going on. It is necessary to note, also, that the emphasis on degrading morality is NOT necessarily shared by those who are creating it…. see who is in control in Hollywood, and check out the attitude toward gentiles – the target of all efforts, there. The target is NOT that same group’s traditional morality……..This was brought home to me by Brother Nathanael on youtube – worth listening to and watching as he is intimately acquainted with the views of the group into which he was born, but which he has left for Catholicism…..
Don’t older men generally look more masculine than high school kids? I’m not saying there aren’t hormones in the water, but…
I second Greg’s sentiment. Divorce is the elephant in the room.
Uh, no, it is the lack of a prayer life because an active campaign to disparage the very idea of God, that leads to a collapse of all institutions dependent upon God. Marriage is one of these institutions.
Our son graduated from High School and I asked him what he was going to do? He replied he didn’t know, he was tired of school and he was going to continue to work at his job busing tables. I said, “fine, rent starts on August 1.” He joined the Air Force in July, he was in the first Gulf war, got out of the Air Force, went to college, received his degree and is now working as a plant manager in Washington State. The point i’m trying to make is that parents must shoulder a lot of the blame for boys not becoming men, the military certainly helped mold him but as parents we must help them make the tough decisions. My son and I are still very close and I receive calls from him when he has a ‘sticky problem’ and he is looking for a bit of old advice.
Msgr. Pope an excellent post.
You make an excellent point. parents have, for the most part, failed to foster the character development in their male children. When my oldest boy began getting himself in trouble with the wrong group, he left home and was homeless deliberately for a few months. Though my heart broke, i encouraged him to trust in God’s plan for him. Within a very short time, he got a job, which led to a highly lucrative job and he is moving forward with a wife and child. In other words, he manned up, took responsibility for his own actions and with God’s help he became an adult This was a child born autistic, who we were told would never be able to walk, talk or feed himself. But i turned him over to God, worked with him in prayer and love every day-just look at him now!
I agree with Kay’s sentiments for the most part, and being a male in his 20’s, I do notice the trend that a lot of my friends have simply not grown out of their “college phase.” There are many factors at play, and certainly western affluence plays a huge role, as men are not forced into the work force anymore. I think the biggest factor, however, is impurity in the sexual realm, and that includes pre-marital sex, lust, and especially pornography use. The acceptance of pornography especially among young males is highly prevalent, and it is something hinders well intentioned males as well. It is hard to live a virtuous life if you are tied down by the weight of sin!
I think Kay’s article would have been better if she pointed out where the good men are! Certainly there is a problem with young men, but there are also many young men who ARE living virtuous lives. I am in a group called The King’s Men whose sole purpose is to grow as men so we can be better providers and better Catholics.
I must say that this is all tied to the contraception mentality. In the past it use to be – Marriage, sex and baby. In the past, young men had responsibilities. Truly, why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free. And why settle with one cow when you can get your milk from different cows too! Yes, contraception foster that. Liberal women really have themselves to blame for this and they promote their stupid ideas to men and society at large. So don’t be crying liberal women. YOU created your own little hell on earth. Contraception didn’t bring about the consequence free sex at all. So let’s really blame Margaret Sanger and her little demonic helpers. Through the Pandora Box of contraception, all hell broke loose!
Oh please! You really don’t mean to give the men who are sampling from “different cows” a free pass do you? The notion that boys will be boys and they can’t be any other way is a fallacy. Men are every bit as capable of moral sexual behavior as women. “Liberal” men are every bit as much to blame as “liberal” women for the sad state of modern sexuality.
Which is the egg? Which is the chicken? Are we to blame immoral male behavior as the root cause for the feminist movement? Sorry, that’s a 1960’s argument. And it avoids acknowledging what is happening in our culture now.
Outstanding! Thank You for your wise thoughts, Msgr.
There is a front page article in the New York Times today that Pope Francis advocated for civil unions to head off gay marriage legislation in Argentina. Although not the same issue as discussed in the your article it is somewhat related. Any thoughts before the tsunami of opinions begins?
Monsignor, your blog is spot-on. I am an educator and have found an unfortunate trend increasing in recent years, particularly regarding adolescent boys. Their mothers are hyper-involved, to the point of being over-protective, and the fathers (if they are present in the home) take secondary roles in their sons’ lives. These boys are getting a skewed formation; quite simply, no one is demonstrating what it means to be a man.
Msgr. Pope, I’ve seen a number of articles recently on this topic, which I have also discussed with my husband. I agree that the feminist movement has had a very negative impact on our culture, but it also seems to me (at least here in the South) that most women are not feminists. They do want to be treated with respect – by that I don’t mean the traditional opening doors-type thing. For me, growing up in the 1960s, my dad and my brothers would talk animatedly about world events, etc., but if my mom or I had anything to say on the topic, we were dismissed or ridiculed. The TV shows from that period,too, treated women as if either they were not too bright, or else they were evil. (I think of Star Trek as a typical show. I remember not thinking that was particularly noteworthy when I was young, because it was commonplace.) Also, in the years before I married, when dating, I felt a lot of the men who asked me out had absolutely no interest in me as an intelligent, individual human being – they either hoped for sex, or if they were “decent”, they seemed to be looking only for a nice looking woman on their arm who would make a good wife – not a real partner with any kind of intellectual value. I think there is some backlash, some anger, in our culture, from the days when women were not given credit for being intelligent or having a “personhood” worthy of consideration. It has gone too far, I know – revenge is never good. But I think both perspectives are worthy of attention.
With all due respect, the “personhood” for women has led to 50,000,000 abortions (They were 100% the woman’s choice) and a 50% divorce rate with the woman filing for divorce 65% of the time.
If you want to save this country and change this culture, you’d advocate repealing the 19th Amendment before it is too late.
Well, look, to be fair, many women I personally know were led to abortions and pressured to do so. We cannot oversimplify here. It is true that the “women’s rights” movement is in evil consort with the abortion on demand movement. But it does not follow that abortions are “100% the woman’s choice.” Your final comments are so extreme as to make me think you are simply trolling.
It doesn’t matter if they were pressured or not. It remains her choice. A man has no legal say in the matter.
Women voting has led directly to the Welfare State in this country. Women recieve a majority of the government benefits and payouts that are mostly paid by men. What happens is that good decent men earn money but get ignored by these women, instead the women chase the badboys and get pregnant by them and expect the decent, job holding men to pick up the slack.
Oversimplification in abundance here.
Just found your blog. Excellent! and thank you. Regarding over simplification, I think ar10308 has a point. Women have a lot of control in the home and now voting. Why do you think a political party is “targeting” women? Women are very sensitive, more than sensible. And it is easy to win their hearts. All the way form the sex revolution, leaving the home to work, contraception, abortion, now free pills with HHS – all the propaganda is directed to pull your heart strings and women equality, women rights. And most women are buying it. They are even buying the homosexual “equality” propaganda, more than men are. I think it would be useful to write about being a real woman, who can see thru all the propaganda and make wise decisions, which coincidentally, are the same that the church teaches.
Right, because there are no pro-life women…I thought it was just the other side that bought that nonsense.
How rude, and deliberately misunderstanding of my point! The word I used, “personhood”, has nothing to do with abortion, or the desire for it. I HAVE a “personhood” – as do YOU. It is a cultural refusal to accept a woman’s value as a person, separate from a man, that I was complaining about. I am not complaining about men as a whole. Why do you feel the need to attack women as a whole? My complaint was about a cultural norm, which I felt contributed toward feminism. I did say that the feminists are wrong, because they act out of vengeance, which is always sinful. I also said most women, in my experience, are not feminists. The feminists are just louder and pushier. Many people (not just women) no longer know how to think logically and critically, so just go along with the loud and pushy people because they don’t know why they are wrong, and so think they must be right.
There arent any jobs for young men. In my teens and twenties I worked a variety of retail and construction jobs (late 60’s early 70’s). Now, those retail jobs are held by adults with families to support and in the case of construction, all illegal immigrants.
My boys are left wth no jobs.
Was it Mick Jagger who said “don’t trust anyone over 30?” I wonder what he thinks of that statement now that he’s pushing 70 (if he’s not already past it).
Women still need men and men still need women, despite what any contributor to the WSJ may say.
Well said, Monsignor.
Cultural images of men certainly have been feminized. It is hard to find a strong male image in the movies or on television. Individualism is certainly on the “outs”.
I think this has something to do with the way the feminist and gay movements have presented their case over the past 30 or 40 years. To be successful, the family structure had to be minimized or abandoned. Clearly this has been accomplished by use of the liberal machine. The courts, traditionally surrendering what is best for the children to the parents, are using outside sources (government, schools and even the courts themselves) to determine what is in the best interest of the child. All this is kind of a “it takes a village” (not a family) mentality. There is no societal consensus on what is the appropriate criteria to be used (subjective). Clearly, respect for the family is suffering losses.
The self image of these young men has been tainted by the cultural norms that reduce one’s ability to speak out, defend or protect in traditional male ways. A strong male figure is not needed when the system has been leveled for uniformity purposes. Whats more, we are multicultural (multi-sexual) secularists without the right to take any exception to anything at large. There is no right or wrong, only shades of grey. Clearly the message is “Gladiators need not defend anything, especial their families or religious beliefs”. Government and the courts will decide for you. All are equal and the same.
Message to men? Not necessarily needed for marriage, not necessarily needed for defense and, clearly, not needed for work . . . let’s face it, they are not needed. They have been neutered in every way.
All this is a compelling reason to be Catholic. The Church is one of the last stronghold of commitment and belief. It builds strong people and is, so far, relatively untouched by the destructive forces of the secular world. After all, Jesus is the ultimate individual and a great role model for all of us. Mary and, as we were reminded yesterday, Joseph also teach us well.
Excellent analysis!
1. It does take a village, as the clishe goes. Anyone who tells you otherwise is just wrong. The problem is the village. I pray for an orthodox Catholic school to come to my town to teach my children as I am quite apprehensive about the PS system…or at least what it has become. The Church community, or village, where godparents, friends, families interact….amazingly beneficial. To be surrounded by this environment, this village, is exactly what we lost. What was taken over. We need to recreate it back into Gods image of the man or woman, family, community…village.
2. The parents are the ones in the trenches. If they aren’t keeping guard keeping a good offense and guarding against attacks, what chance do the kids have?
3. And as everyone else has been saying…the family is the brick that our culture..or village is built upon. Weak bricks make for a weak culture. The bricks are just weirdly composed right now. I have no idea where were heading.
Very clear and articulate.
Msgr.,
With all due respect, the clergy need to fix their own house on this issue. Get rid of the altar girls, the pantsuited old ladies distributing Communion, etc. Restore the masculine in the Church.
You make many great points but, in addition to overlooking divorce, the article overlooks the pill. Most middle class women don’t want families – or maybe want one kid when they are in their late thirties. It’s not just that men are acting like frat guys…women act like frat guys too these days. Why would a man get married to someone who doesn’t want kids and can leave with half your money the minute she gets bored? Men are making rational (albeit not holy) choices in response to what is available to them. Your typical American marriage is contractual friends with benefits – something you can already get with ease without signing papers.
I usually find that when someone starts a comments “with all due respect” I aint gettin any 🙂 The ommissions you mention are due not to me, I am commenting on the article written by someone else. Its always fun and easy to blame the clergy. But to be fair, one article does not cover it all and we have discussed all the matters you raise extensively on this blog.
I didn’t mean to imply that the clergy were responsible for all these problems, only that they could take some steps to help address this issue within the Church itself.
Feminists fretted that a man should be more like women, he should “get in touch with his female side” they said. And lo, there’s your 16-point list Msgr. Pope!
After 50 years of feminists knocking men (Betty Friedan published The Feminine Mystique in 1963), I laugh to hear Ms. Hymnowitz demanding that young men “man up”.
So what’s the female counterpart to men “manning up”? Getting pregnant? (Or to put it in female-speak, “finding herself pregnant” – as if it never happens without her active will to make it happen, bah!) That would explain a lot about the flowering of the hookup culture, the female urge to solicit sperm, and out of wedlock pregnancies.
What’s interesting is that if you lay aside all the feminist triumphalism, who’s really won the “gender wars” (horrible phrase!)? Perhaps men have been neutrered (arguable – I’m overlooking a construction site full of busy-bee definitely unneutred men as i write this!) but women don’t seem any happier! Destroy the big rules of life and you don’t get happiness – you get chaos.
“women don’t seem any happier”
Actually, there is academic research that shows that the reported happiness of American women has declined in both absolute terms and relative to men over the past 35 years:
http://www.nber.org/papers/w14969
Not only does feminism wreak havoc on family life and eliminate significant incentives for males to “grow up”, but it also makes women unhappy. At the risk of being accused of “all or nothing thinking”, I don’t think it’s unfair to say that feminism is the work of the devil.
As the aunt of 3 young boys (2, 2 and 4), this article breaks my heart.
There is another major reason that everyone seems to be ignoring here that plays a pretty significant role in the ability of young men and women to act as “fully grown adults” — the majority of young adults — or “pre-adults” as you refer to them — are downing in student debt and are unable to secure full-time employment in the areas for which they are trained (largely because much of the older population is not retiring at the ages that they used to). When these young men barely make enough money to support themselves they are less likely to jump into a marriage where they feel their role as a man is to support. Couples are also wary of combining their student debt. And how much does a traditional wedding cost today? Who will be paying for that?
I think it is pretty pathetic to blame women for the current situation. Excuse us for trying to support ourselves in today’s economic environment. I am a young woman in the workplace, I assure you this world is not run by women. Feminism hasn’t won. Far from it. We are still marginalized in the workplace and the majority of leadership roles both in politics and the boardrooms across america are held by men. The feminine argument for the lack of adult responsibility in men is just a weak one….and frankly an offending one to women.
Sarah has hit on a major point. Much of the problem isn’t one of gender but one of generation. Baby boomers refuse to leave the economy and the transformation in technology means that they don’t need to. That means that the traditional path whereby young people have moved into the workforce and then moved up quickly enough to afford a home and a marriage simply isn’t happening (the boomers and early-Gen Xers want to keep employed in high-end jobs and make more money). As a result of less job supply, demand for certifications have skyrocketed, and those of us under 35 are now required college degrees for most jobs (it’s no exaggeration that I’m currently finishing up my master’s so that I can stop having unpaid internships with second jobs and get my STARTING job in historical museum work). For most folks, that means a mountain of debt that previous generations never had to consider which affects marriage decisions.
As for the success of women? The transformation of the economy and the skills market has helped women — the old pink-collar market is the new white-collar market as Industrial America becomes Services-Office America. A lot of men — the ones who would have gotten physical work in a different era — aren’t fit for that. I personally applaud that women are getting good work and good pay (as well as being in collegiate and graduate programs — I’m the odd man out literally in my program of study and field of work), but it’s a tragedy that that’s coupled with the collapse of those parts of the economy that support men, because it leads to a lot of sociological issues that the successful older generation, vacationing with their executive incomes with the jobs they refuse to hand over like their own parents did, can’t understand (and so they blame the youth instead of often themselves — likewise, they do nothing to try and alleviate issues; and I’m not talking handouts, I’m talking helping to cause societal change).
We also get the problem, when we scandalize all men like this, that those of us who aren’t reprobates are painted with too broad of a brush. As I said, I’m too poor given my choice of careers and the certification crisis to be considered worthwhile for any woman (as they realize when they walk out of dates with me, or leave with other men). Yet, I happen to be a conservative young Catholic man who’s caretaker for his elderly widower father. And there are a lot of men in my generation (tail end of Gen X, those early Millennials who still miss being called Gen Y) who have a similar tale. We’ve been hit by credentialization and the economy, but it’s unfair to assume that every man is a man-child in the same way that it’s unfair to assume untoward things or every young woman one meets.
The lesson is that we have neither any real personal power nor certainly any institutional power in this current climate. However, rather than assist us, those with institutional clout in other generations just argue over how to scandalize us and generalize how bad the young are (weren’t you guys the libidinous freaks making out in cars and listening to rock music instead of getting real man-jobs, as I recall?)…
May I ask why some commenters have so much animosity toward feminists? These are the women who paved the way for me to be where I am: A young woman in her 20s with a deeply fulfilling job, where both my male and female colleagues respect me. I really don’t think I could be where I am if I were born even just a generation ago. I thank God for the brave women who came before, and there are many, many of us young women who are more fulfilled than our mothers because of the opportunities we have. That has nothing to do with emasculating men or anything else. I pray to God for more and stronger feminists so we can come together in equal love with our brothers in Christ, no more or less.
You may ask, but I will respond with a question: Why do you call it animosity? What you call progress includes high abortion rates, marriages in the shredder, children raised in single parent families, or sent to daycare. Second question: Is this progress? You may thank God and think women have made progress but I wonder if the 35 million women killed in abortion since 1973 would agree with your progress. And of the survivor women who don’t get killed but are raised by single moms, et al. anything but a traditional family. Here too, I ask, is this progress. I’m glad you have a job, money and all that goes with it. But a final question: what cost have others paid for your progress. You lived to see it but you’re a survivor. Most of your sisters in progress never made it out of the womb and were killed inthe name of of women’s rights, feminism etc.
A valid point, and perhaps more a question of semantics. For me feminism has always been about equal rights for women, but not, God forbid, the right to kill our children or let our families disintegrate. And you are right, that families have crumbled, but I would argue that is due to taking God out of our families, neglect of church, prayer, and so forth, and not because of women. I completely agree that abortion is a terrible scourge on our society. But in other areas, there has been progress that we should welcome. My husband, for example, is very different from his father. He takes an equal role in cooking, household chores, and wants to spend time on child care in a way that his father never did. I feel taken care of, and have more time to pray and volunteer in my community. Call it feminization, I call it blessing from God. By the way, Sarah, you make a great point too and I’m glad there are people like you commenting.
Lauren you are not the face of the feminist movement. The feminist movement is almost universally atheist. When was the last time you spoke up feminist the way you are here? All you do is go around defending their false teachings and false religion. My mother, my wife, and three older daughters are successful in spite of [feminism], not because of it. They are and were women to the fullest extent of the word. All thanks go to God!
The feminist movement makes me ill. I wish I didn’t have to work an outside job. Keeping the house clean and taking care of all the other aspects of a household is a full-time job. We can’t all afford maids and my husband IS very manly and doesn’t do dishes and such. He drives a cement truck and usually works 70 hours a week and lots of Saturdays and what time he does have off I want him to spend with me and not sweeping the floor. We both have to work in order to make ends meet. It takes me an hour to get to work and an hour to get home. The 8 hour work day really isn’t to begin with. With lunch included it’s 8.5 or 9 hours and lunch is mandatory per the government. I’m gone 10.5 to 11 hours every day. When I get home I’m tired, I barely have time to see my husband before he goes to sleep since he has to be at work at 3am, barely have time to cook or clean or do laundry. I can’t stay organized. All the things we can’t do during the week such as car repairs take up the whole of the weekend. And a day of rest? When can I possibly do that? I don’t have much time to see to other people’s needs, much less my own, and volunteer? I sing in the choir which means I’m gone Wednesday nights, church on Sunday morning, I have group therapy on Tuesday nights, what’s left? Making time to read my Bible and pray blocks out any other time. Way to go feminists.
Lauren:
Allow me to reply to your question, “May I ask why some commenters have so much animosity toward feminists?”
The answer is often, “Because feminists have acted with such animosity towards them.”
Now, the correct reply to that is: “Not all feminists!” Precisely: Not all. Not Phyllis Schlafly, for example, or Lucianne Goldberg, or Ann Coulter, or Michelle Malkin, or Pam Geller, or Mary Katherine Ham, or Michelle Malkin, or Nikki Haley, or Sarah Palin, or Mother Teresa or Mother Angelica. Not, in short, a whole crowd of women who have asserted their gifts powerfully and who take no guff from anyone, but who in doing so have maintained a connection to traditionalism through Christianity in some form, or conservatism in some form, or both. That connection prevents them from going over the edge of turning assertive femininity into antagonism towards men.
(I should probably point out that I do not intend to express wholesale approval of every action or word of every person I just listed, apart from the two consecrated ladies. That was not my point.)
I was making two points, actually. First, that there are some powerful women out there who demonstrate daily that they get along just fine without leaning on a male protector but who do not, simultaneously, treat men and maleness as enemies. So it’s totally true to say that not all feminists — if we define the word as “assertive powerful women” — are antagonistic towards men.
But my second point is this: The loudest feminists, who occupy the most recognizable roles in the panoply of feminism, who are most recognized as representative of feminism, would NOT consider any of the powerful, assertive, independent women listed above to be “real feminists.” Quite the contrary: The “core feminists” would tend to assert that the women in the list above don’t even qualify as “real women,” let alone “real feminists.”
In short, the feminist movement has a core, a sort of Magisterium, and that core takes ideological leftism in general and hatred of / contempt for men and masculinity in particular as a sort of litmus test for membership in “real feminism” and even “real womanhood.”
So feminism, as popularly understood and perceived in our culture, is anti-male: It is the wellspring of the aggrieved class warfare (long out-of-date; women have been the privileged ones for a couple of decades now). It is the wellspring of the “a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle” mantras. It perpetuates those “Handmaid’s Tale”/”Stepford Wives” lenses through which all culture and religion and marriage must be viewed, if one is to be an approved, “real” feminist.
So it’s no surprise that a man, on hearing a woman describe herself as a “feminist,” does not often think of her as “an intelligent, competent, independent woman who’ll be fun to have as a life partner.” Only a dupe would think that way, in this day-and-age.
He’s more likely to think “there’s some small chance that this woman is an intelligent, competent, independent woman who’ll be fun to have as a life partner…and a vastly greater chance that this woman is an entitled, self-absorbed user who’ll expect loyalty from me but who’ll show me none. The moment I cease to tickle her fancy — or that she thinks she can snag a guy with a better income — she’ll divorce me, take my kids, take my stuff, and move on to some other guy. She’ll keep doing that right up to the point when her looks begin to fade. At that point she’ll either stick with the last guy, or, if that falls through, she’ll settle into bitter single-hood but complain about how no men want to date her…and she’ll still resent me for not living up to her Disney-influenced standards of marital bliss.”
Men are increasingly accustomed to this pattern: It is the norm for the American dating scene today, especially in large cities. Marriage is a sucker’s game, so men increasingly say, “Thanks, but NO THANKS” …and remind themselves to get their jollies from dating a series of women but never to get hooked into one. A man must keep his distance; otherwise, he’s likely to get used, discarded, and spend the rest of his years paying alimony and seeing his kids on weekends.
I’m very blessed: I married a very good woman early. She’s homeschooling our kids, even though she could earn a good income outside the house if she chose. Unless she gets some brain injury that unexpectedly reverses her personality, I’m confident that she and I will grow old together and that our grandchildren won’t have to visit us at two different houses.
But I haven’t enough fingers and toes to count the men I’ve known who weren’t so lucky. It started just after college: My friend Glenn and his wife of two years went to marriage counseling, and the first thing he heard from her was, “I don’t think I want to be married any more.” Done. Just like that. And the drumbeat continued. In all but one case the guy would have stuck it out; the woman would have none of it.
Why should a guy be loyal? Loyal men are stationary targets: They get knifed in the back all the more easily. It happens ALL THE TIME.
Now, I love Jesus Christ. So I know perfectly why a guy should be loyal…even if it means taking a knife in the back. But my less-well catechized brothers? They’d have a really hard time articulating a reason to sacrifice for women, after said women have demonstrated a tendency to treat them like dirt!
You say, “I really don’t think I could be where I am if I were born even just a generation ago.”
Hmm. What’s a “generation?” Thirty years? Aw, sure you could. (If you doubt that, what sort of lies have you been told? That all earlier decades were The Dark Ages? Heck, the Dark Ages weren’t even the Dark Ages, but that’s another story.)
Forty years? Okay, it would have been somewhat more challenging then. Fifty years? Okay, yes, now you’re talking. But even fifty years ago is, well, the sixties. Lots of women were already in the work force by then, though the “glass ceiling” was a genuine reality. All this to say: Don’t underestimate the equality women had as far back as 25 years ago. I’d say that was about when we reached the tipping-point in the education system: The systematic discouraging of masculinity made boys start falling behind their sisters. And the reason men no longer make equal pay for equal work (when experience, hours, and risk are factored in) is because today’s men were the schoolboys of 25 years ago.
You say, “I pray to God for more and stronger feminists so we can come together in equal love with our brothers in Christ, no more or less.”
I reply that in that case, you should not pray for more and stronger feminists, but more and stronger assertive and successful women.
Because, as I observed earlier, “feminists” are a pretty well-defined group in society, and they go to great lengths to purge their own ranks of anyone who doesn’t meet their tests for ideological purity, which means they are ever more sharply defined as a group. And the crowd who’re most prominently defined as “feminists” at the present time — I think I can correctly identify Sandra Fluke as their current mascot (Hillary Clinton now being a bit too old for the role), Eve Ensler as their artistic director, Nancy Pelosi as their legislative arm, and Maureen Dowd as their complaints department — are precisely the folks who’re least likely to rectify the oppressive anti-maleness of the divorce, child custody, and alimony laws, or to implement Affirmative Action to equalize the number of men and women who get to college.
And as for “feminists” acting to oppose abortion…! Fugheddaboudit!
One more word to consider: Hypergamy.
If women are disgruntled today, it’s because they prefer to “marry up.” They want a man who earns more than they do. Perfectly natural instinct.
But the problem with that is…all this tilting of the playing-field to offer preferences to women has now made men who earn more than women too rare for most women to find! (Oops.)
So they’re stuck with a dating pool of low-earning “losers” and “nice guys” who wind up stuck in the friend zone…right up until the woman’s age starts showing. At that point she panics and “settles” for one of the nice guys. Or, at least, she settles until and unless a wealthier guy — her boss at the office, perhaps? — comes along and shows some interest. Watch her chuck the nice guy then!
Welcome to America, 2013.
R.C.
This is a superb, fearless and honest analysis.
I need a writer for Regina Magazine. Can you please send me an email at [email protected]?
Regina is a new Catholic lifestyle and culture e-magazine, published from Europe. Click below to view our first issue.
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Two generations of ‘disconnect’ …no make that three generations. My sixties peers are grandparents and their grandchildren are being raised pretty much by the media and the state. There is simply no ‘going back’, you can’t put thousands of years of carefully nurtured wisdom and civilization ‘back together again’. The family is veering toward extinction or irrelevance. We are living in the middle of a 24/7 Porn Palace Freak Show.
The elephant in the room, as far as I can see, is single women raising boys. Men and women are so very different in their approach to parenting. Our first child, a boy, is now learning to walk. My husband and I have very different reactions when he falls down. I rush to comfort and cuddle and sweep him up into my arms with “Poor baby, are you ok? ” Dad walks over, plops him back on his feet and says, “You’re alright. ” When we’re in the room together and he falls, he looks at Daddy, then at me. When he catches my eye, *then * he starts to cry. It’s become a standing household joke, but also demonstrates the important role fathers play in the day to day of child rearing. I can’t help that I’m a softie, but, there’s a balancing effect between us. How can I teach my son about manhood? I can’t. I’m not a man.
Emma, What you have said is so true. There are unfortunately too many that refuse to accept the differences, or think that it would be better if we do not have them. These differences between men and women are so important. It will be a very bland and boring society if those experiments in Sweden in “genderless” raising of children are deemed “successful”. I can’t imagine what kind of unforeseen consequences will result from that mentality.
Obviously, this article was writteby a female-hating misogynist who does NOT support a wife and/or children….
The article in question was actually written by a woman, if your had perhaps taken the time to read more carefully you would surely have noted this. I found it necessary to delete the rest of your remark as it was filled with hateful and unnecessarily personal denunciations of others.
Our culture promoted men getting in touch with ‘their feminine side’ and women ‘manning up’ and now we see the consequences. Femininity in men and masculinity in women take on negative, not positive attributes even when the intention is good. Men become petty and miserly while women become aggressive and shrewish. It brings out the worst in each. Men by nature are meant to give generously (a masculine trait) while women by nature are to receive graciously while distributing the blessings in charity and love. Our culture has turned our nature upside down and brought out the worst in us. We need to get back to a faith that influences our culture instead of our culture permeating our faith, our lives and our church!
Yes, we have turned nature upside down
It seems obvious to me that contraception is at the root of our problems. All the other problems mentioned by your readers are products of our contraceptive culture, e.g. high divorce rates, single mothers, abortion, pornograhy, etc. Yes, as one of your male readers pointed out, many women use the pill because they do not want children. That is true. But it works the other way too: men are encouraged to be adolescent in the use of their sexuality because of the availability of the pill (think Hugh Hefner). There is no reason for men to grow up if women are willing to take the pill. I agree with the reader that says that the large amount of student loan debt that most young Americans now carry contributes mightily to their inability to marry and start families while still in their 20s. But I would not be surprised to learn of a connection between are diminishing fertility, and our current economic problems, between our economic problems and the astronomical cost of college. I am not an economist, but I feel that there must be a connection. As you can see, I do not like contraception. I taught natural family planning for a number of years. I have young children now and have taken a break from teaching, but I intend to go back to it. It is time for our society to recognize contraception for what it is, a pandora’s box whose poisons are becoming increasingly hard to ignore. Not only are we reaping the social effects of contraception, but on an individual level I do not know how we convinced women that the birth control pill would be their source of liberation. It is misogynistic to tell women that their fertility, a beautiful sign of good health, is in fact a disease in need of a pill, a pill that causes blood clots, diminished libido and cancer.
Young men today need to discover the virtue of chastity. Properly lived, it is a demanding virtue, for it promotes virility. Until he discovered the virtue of chastity, St. Augustine was not very different from the 20 and 30 something adolescents of our own day.
Very good sir. One can point to very real efforts on the part of feminist gender ideologues to make society treat men unfairly, and they also bully everyone into silence about it. But you are also correct in that men must pursue the right path, and other men must help them do that.
I’d be interested in your views on how these same feminist gender ideologues have been steering women to make poor choices.
I haven’t read all the replies and mine probably won’t be read because I’m late getting in to the subject BUT
I have a lot of Amish around me. Their religion is not sane, but their community life is. They go to school through the 8th grade. Too much schooling is nonsense! They all learn a craft from their fathers or they get a job in the line they wish to learn. Then they have this community fund that helps them start a business. Even the women start businesses now and rightly so because actually some of them do not get married. Most do not farm anymore. Those young people start early in learning to earn a living – and what else is schooling for?
If the young person goes to high school and college on the “backs” of the parents income, what better way to teach them irresponsibility. I ‘ve heard of some parents sending their kids to college and saying ” have fun”! And they probably had a lot of fun then too. Kids are not geared to being independent of their free money or learning to earn to being responsible to a family.
Get them out early in the business world, let them learn from a job and they will be responsible. If a person wants to be a doctor(and hopefully it’s not an MD because they are led by the big pharm cos.) or engineer etc. they must get schooling but most prefessions do not need even beyong the 8th grade. My mother only had an 8th grade ed. and she had about 3 businesses in her lifetime. She died with $130,000 in the bank! What more does anyone want?!
PLEASE GOD ENLIGHTEN YOUR “SHEEP”!!
Yes, feminism is the overpronounced swing of the pendulum, for which both sexes share in the blame. I agree that many women today consider men to be irrelevant, but just as many of those men have revelled in the role of perennial boy. Remember the bumper sticker, He Who Dies With the Most Toys Wins? There are a multitude of reasons offered in this blog for why boys age but don’t grow up, no-fault divorce, parental mailaise or overprotective mommies, Hollywood, pornography, too much estrogen in the water, same-sex attraction, etc. All have played their part, but ultimately we must come back to personal responsibility. If any one or all of these reasons were eliminated today, some other cause would quickly usurp its place. We must get back to basics: One man and one woman who enter into a sacramental marriage, with Christ at its center, open to the possibility of life, with a true devotion to raising Godly children to adulthood. Does that seem undoable? There are marriages like this within Catholic and non-Catholic Christian churches, not the majority, but I believe people are waking up to the consequences of our grasping, aquisitive, irresponsible, vulgar, materialistic secular society, as evidenced by most of the coments here. We know what doesn’t work, so now let us, as parents and grandparents, instruct our young men (and young women) in the ways to live holy, productive, holistic lives, in God.
“I believe people are waking up to the consequences of our grasping, aquisitive, irresponsible, vulgar, materialistic secular society, as evidenced by most of the coments here.”
Alas, Patti, we who post comments at this blog are but a small minority. I just returned from a weekend in New York City. If there is a more materialistic, decadent city on God’s green Earth, I am unaware of it. Millions of people go there every year to buy expensive clothes and accessories and to engage in other hedonistic pursuits. St. Patrick’s Cathedral is a nice oasis of peace and calm in the midst of a materialistic orgy, but, like those who comment on this blog, those who really appreciate St. Patrick’s Cathedral are a minority.
While we’re herding elephants… authority within marriage and family is a huge issue.
Good point, Andrew. One of the many pernicious effects of feminism is that it undermines the Biblical mandate of male headship of families.
My daughter attends a small, solidly and faithfully Catholic college. At such a place you would think that you’d find a large number of those “good men” the article is looking for. My daughter has not found that to be the case. Granted, there are more serious young men there than on the “outside,” but she has found a high number of immature, commitment phobic, women-fearing young men in the orthodox Catholic sphere. We’re talking young men who usually come from two-parent, large family Catholic homes. That wasn’t the case when I went to a similar Catholic college 25 years ago. There were immature, frat-Cat (as in Catholic) boys, but they were a small percentage; the numbers appear to be rising. My daughter and I are not the only ones who have noticed this alarming phenomenon. I’ve seen many attractive, delightful, intelligent, serious Catholic single women approaching 30 wondering “where are all the good men?” They date seriously, but can’t get a commitment. I think part of it is parents’ over emphasis on “security” and not enough on divine providence. It scares men. My husband and I married soon after we graduated from college. We knew that was our vocation and we wanted to get started on our life together. We didn’t wait until we had saved up X dollars, had a career, could afford a home and new car. My husband got a job, we had a baby the first year of our marriage, we struggled and we were happy. I wouldn’t trade those early years for anything. We trusted that God would provide everything for the vocation He had called us to. And in our 26 years of marriage He has always provided for our growing family. Young men need to have that trust. We tell our own sons, “Look, you have three options – priesthood (or religious life), marriage or a single life committed to some cause. A single life lived for oneself is not an Christian option. As soon as you know what you are being called to, do it! Don’t wait until everything is perfect. It never will be.”
Maybe your daughter is too serious?
Most girls at the Catholic School I went to in the 80’s, judged men on money first and foremost: if a man is not a millionaire by 30 can he be a good Catholic husband?
Who’s fault is that?
I’ll charge that the blame lies at the feet of a huge proportion of Christendom.
The policies the social-justice types have pushed have done more to damage Christianity than any pagan Roman Emperor could have ever had hoped to do.
Any woman who is halfway attractive can walk into any bar any night of the week, hook up,get pregnant, go on welfare for the rest of that child’s youth.
Meanwhile millions of men throughout the western world spend years preparing themselves to be a provider and at the end of the long road they find that so many women in their group have gone on to be single mothers.
They don’t get to have a wife or family, but must spend their entire lives alone getting taxed into slavery in order to pay for the bastard children of other men.
The church calls this dynamic “social justice.”
Before you say “It takes two to tango”, There is a growing amount of evidence that the ratio of baby daddy’s to babby mommies is significantly less than one.
In short, a relatively smaller number of socially adept “player” men are impregnating multiple women, while a growing number of single men are forced to finance the very behavior that denies them a family of their own.
Middle and lower class women are being lured away from marriage and family with plentiful welfare benefits.
Wealth redistribution is primary reason why the bastardy rate has climbed to approx 50% throughout the western world. It has destroyed the nuclear family, any sense of community, and its destroying the churches as all the damaged children of single mothers are unlikely to be raised in any faith.
Yet, the churches support all of this in the name of preventing abortions and helping “poor families”. Is this strategy even effective? Is a few generations of forcible wealth redistribution to “help the poor” worth the collapse of civilization?
Instead of forcing women to bear the consequences of their bad decisions, which would severely curtail their bad behavior, they have created in the western world what has never existed before in any civilization.
Namely millions upon millions of men who despite having a decent income, have absolutely no hope of ever having a family of their own. What these rootless males eventually do is not clear. Some are dropping out of society entirely, some are looking to emigrate to non western countries.
Some may just decide to take revenge on a society and religion that has betrayed them in the most cruel way.
Some further reading…
‘Brides of the State’ and the Family Man
The public policies that created this situation were largely supported by the RC church (and many other religious denominations) throughout the western world.
The Gospel of envy was preached and the churches are getting what they asked for.
American Catholicism’s Pact With the Devil
This article concerns the church in the USA, but its also true for other countries including Europe where the church is in terminal decline largely due to the destruction of the family at the hands of the welfare state.
Ayn Rand was only partially correct. Its not the Captains of Industry who are “going galt”, rather its the legions of middle and lower class men who have seen their access to family life cut off and dropping out of society. The sheer numbers of men who are doing this is very dangerous for the stability of civilization.
Okay, but what about those of us who kept our skirts at our knees?
I didn’t hook up with random men. I didn’t get pregnant and go on welfare. In fact, I couldn’t even qualify for food stamps when I was unemployed/ underemployed for three years straight… Because I’m too responsible, the main reason I couldn’t get food stamps? Because I have no dependants.
All I ever wanted was a man who loves God, would respect that sex is a sacred gift, and that we were compatible.
Every single catholic man that I met couldn’t get his act together to even date me — meaning, call me and make a date after the first couple meetings. – how a man with an annulment isn’t ready for a relationship is beyond me.
How is it so many men can sit across from very attractive, smart, godly women… And just twiddle their thumbs is beyond us.
No I’m over 40 , single with no children. I’ll never know the beauty of being pregnant or nursing a child.. Naming a child or even taking one to their first day of school. Nothing. Just because the available men out there are so scared. We’re 40. Stop being scared. Start being brave. Start putting your trust in God!
I’ve approached Godly women before (the few that I could find). I’d wager most “modern men” wouldn’t even find these women attractive but I’m the type of guy who is attracted to a woman for who she is in her entirety (Appearance, Personality, Intelligence, etc.) and in that regard these women were amazing… Unfortunately, “I’m not looking for a relationship right now” was a common theme among them
I would consider myself to be a “grown up”. I have a good heart, a great career, I’ve accumulated a fair amount of wisdom over the years, and I have the desire to find a good woman to marry but in my experience, women are the one’s who continue to put relationships on hold. Repeated rejections have definitely eaten away at my confidence so I find that I’m becoming less and less inclined to approach women. I have no interest in dating an atheist but the godly one’s won’t have me. The problem is, the longer I go without a relationship the more experienced the women around me become and the further I am left behind. To a woman who’s already had 3-4 long term relationships, a rookie like me is a bad investment.
Which brings us back to the issue of men needing to grow up. Where some men have been drowning in female attention from a young age and refuse to grow up because “life is good”, I am sitting here trying to do the honorable thing, but after repeated rejections, the resulting lack of experience with women has left me feeling like a kid at the age of 29. It’s rather ironic actually.
Okay, but what about those of us who kept our skirts at our knees?
I didn’t hook up with random men. I didn’t get pregnant and go on welfare. In fact, I couldn’t even qualify for food stamps when I was unemployed/ underemployed for three years straight… Because I’m too responsible, the main reason I couldn’t get food stamps? Because I have no dependants.
All I ever wanted was a man who loves God, would respect that sex is a sacred gift, and that we were compatible.
Every single catholic man that I met couldn’t get his act together to even date me — meaning, call me and make a date after the first couple meetings. – how a man with an annulment isn’t ready for a relationship is beyond me.
How is it so many men can sit across from very attractive, smart, godly women… And just twiddle their thumbs is beyond us.
Now I’m over 40 , single with no children. I’ll never know the beauty of being pregnant or nursing a child.. Naming a child or even taking one to their first day of school. Nothing. Just because the available men out there are so scared. We’re 40. Stop being scared. Start being brave. Start putting your trust in God!
Good Bless Trs.
Monsignor Pope, I have two phrases for you to study and write on: no-fault divorce and hypergamy. Through these two factors among others, men find the deck stacked against them. As a man (and Catholic) of a certain age, whenever I run into a young man contemplating marriage, I interview him hard around whether he has properly vetted himself and his prospective fiance for suitability in marriage.
In the face of such poor odds and prospects for remaining married in the shadow of family laws that discriminate against men, men are told to “man up” and marry those girls anyway. In other words, they go blindly into the breach just on the women’s say-so. But what are we to make of young men who have grown up in a feminized school and college environment that is toxic to malehood, who may have been drugged with Ritalin and other ADHD drugs in order to conform with said school environments, whose testosterone levels are noticeably lower than previous generations, too many of whom grow up in two households or fatherless homes as a result of divorce, too many of whom grow up without good male role models, who see that sluts are no longer shamed even in churches, who see that cads and players are celebrated, who are attending college in smaller numbers than women, and so on? It’s no wonder many men act as Msgr Pope has described.
Before pointing the finger at these men, one has to ask: is it the chicken or the egg? Also remember when one points the finger at these men that three fingers are pointing back at oneself.
For MamaK’s benefit, I will strongly suggest to find out what your daughter is attracted to. Chances are very good she is passing over numerous acceptable men because she can’t find anything to be attracted to them about. If you don’t believe me, I suggest you google for the OK Cupid survey that showed that 80% of men were considered below average in attractiveness to women. In other words, most women consistently aim for the top 20% of men and the other 80% might as well be invisible to them. But there’s a shortage of such men who will commit to satisfy all women who want one, thus the lamentation “where have all the good men gone?” when many of the “good men” exist among the “invisible” 80%. I don’t believe this is different for even good girls as all girls are alike in wanting the highest status man they can marry. Yes even good Catholic girls do this. She needs to learn to see the good in a man instead of automatically looking for reasons to cut him off. Many men still won’t make the cut, sure, but just maybe there are one or more men out there that she has previously overlooked.
Excellent point, RA. It is unwise to take the frequently heard lament “where have all the good men gone?” without a grain of salt. There are good men out there, it’s just that they are all but invisible to women.
For the benefit of other readers, here is the link to the OK Cupid study that says that women rate 80% of men as “below average”:
http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/your-looks-and-online-dating/
On Catholic Match, I think 70 % of the ‘Catholic’ women admitted that a boyfriend being unemployed could end a realtionship. So even though most good men will still struggle with jobs and sometimes take jobs they don’t like, they need to be aware that if they are going tough time the good ‘Catholic’ women is likely to kick thme when they are down?
For my part, the things that keep me from getting married are (1) no-fault divorce (2) VAWA. I don’t even allow women into my home. I have digital surveillance in key external access points around my home in the event a female solicitor drop by (not that I’d ever let one in). I don’t engage in conversations with women at work except when necessary. I never go to work without a voice activated digital recorder for fear of workplace harassment charges. One false charge and your life and/or career can be ruined. There are no longer any disincentives for people to behave badly. In fact, it’s just the reverse now. Betrayal and fraud can bring huge dividends. You need only be bored or vindictive to destroy someone else’s life. Finally, there is no way to tell the difference between those that are just out to use you and genuinely good people. Narcissists and sociopaths are often very extraverted, charismatic and charming people.
The Brian Banks story is getting a fair amount of attention in the media. Falsely accused of rape and imprisoned for five years. He was advised to plead no contest because of his size and color, which he did. The worry was that if he didn’t accept the plea deal, he could risk life in prison. In his situation, I would have plead the same way. His accuser won a 3/4 million settlement from the university he attended and later admitted to the false charges. The accuser’s biggest worry was not having to pay back the settlement she was awarded. There was no DNA evidence to prove he raped this women, yet there was a high risk he could be imprisoned for life had he fought the charges. There have been many cases like this in the recent past. This is the world men now face. This is how simple it is to destroy a man’s life. I’ll have no part of it.
I have a really good friend who deeply loved his wife. They were both successful professionals and were building what seemed to be a very prosperous life together. Upon discovering her affair, his wife told him that she never really cared for him and that she was only interested in the financial investments. The man nearly went insane. As it turns out, the ‘other man’ was far wealthier than he. After she moved out, she filed a temporary protective order against him over his repeated attempts to contact her and reconcile. He could not control his attempts to contact her and emailed her during the temporary restraining period, for which he was arrested and charged. The judge rightly denied the full protective order, but because he had violated the temporary protective order, he had to go to court yet again. The judge cited his wife’s ‘fear’ as justification for implementing a full protective order and he was convicted of a misdemeanor for violating the preliminary protective order. This is the fraud of no-fault divorce and VAWA. She needed only invoke her right to no-fault divorce, dump him and marry up and state fear as a reason to mar this man’s record for life. Why would anyone get married knowing that this could happen to them?
Why any guy would get married today is beyond the pale for most of us guys. And if marriage is no longer the expectation for guys, why should a guy “grow up?”
Through betrayal and disillusionment, we’re freed of illusions, enchantments and false beliefs. This is the awakening. After that, if you’re wise, comes the greatest gift of all. It may be that betrayal and disillusionment are God’s way of telling us we need to grow.
As a pro life feminist, I find all the feminist bashing in this post & the combox inadequately informed. First: yes Virginia, there is a pro life feminist. There is a whole large organization of us: Feminists for Life, an organization that Planned Parenthood views as a major threat. We are dedicated to provide better options to abortion and to return feminism to its pro life roots. Feminism by definition is a movement or theory that supports the rights of women. If you disagree with the definition your argument is not with me , it is with the dictionary. If you have a problem with women having rights, I’ll try to be patient with you. If abortion “rights” are your only problem then I’m your ally. Feminism had nothing to do with abortion till the late 1960s when a pair of men, one of them Bernard Nathanson MD, and another man terrified at overpopulation convinced the world that abortion was the only way for women to achieve equality & for the planet to avoid the “population explosion”. Both these ideas have been exposed as false, & Nathanson, as many know, had a dramatic conversion in the early 1990s. Still by then, the popular notion of feminism had been hijacked by the abortion sellers. However, a remnant of pro-life feminists has always remained, committed to improving the lot of women without murdering their children. One of our slogans is “Women deserve better than abortion.” Women deserve respect, avoidance of sexual coercion, & support in bringing new life into the world. I recommend visiting the FFL website & watching the video of FFL’s president Serrin Foster’s landmark speech “The Feminist Case Against Abortion.”
I also recommend that men stop blaming feminists & successful women for their own academic, professional, personal, & social failures. If you were playing foosball (or video games) instead of doing your lab write up, that’s not my fault. It’s yours. It is no easier for women to succeed than it is for men. The difference is that in many cases in our modern world, more women try. When men try, they succeed.
Lest you think I’m talking through my hat, I will offer my family to you. I am a family physician married for 33 years to an artist blacksmith/museum director. When our 3 children were young he took on the role of primary at home parent as his schedule was far more flexible than mine, and he had far more of the organizational skills required for running a family than I. We offerred all our children (2 boys & a girl) dolls & trucks & building stuff to play with. Our daughter took to the dolls. The boys skipped over the dolls, trucks & building stuff & went straight to guns. Both of our boys went to West Point. The oldest graduated, did a masters in public health while waiting for his fiancee to graduate from West Point. then they married & went off to the military medical school together & are now in their internships in an army hospital. The younger brother is graduating from West Point this May & starting at the military medical school in September. Our daughter graduated from our state university & now teaches at her old high school. My boys occasionally made fun of their feminazi mom, but don’t seem to have been hindered in their development by my profession, my feminism, or my husband’s assumption of the homemaking responsibilities.
Good point about the student debt.
I know its very late to respond to this but i liked the article so i have to write something. I am giving my opininion as an guy and i have to say that feminism is a blessing to all men. This is not only my opinion but also of my male friends. We no longer feel any pressure to get married,take up the responsibilities of beign a breadwinner or any of that kind of stuff. We now have the choice to get jobs that we like even if they dont pay as much because men dont need that much money to survive,that is why there is a huge drop in men getting college degrees.l and a spike in guys doing blue collar jobs. I cant even count how many of my male friends have dropped tgeir white collar jobs and are doing blue collar ones all because they are avoiding the stress of working in an office. Another thing also is that look at iceland its one of the most feminost countries in the world and men there live longer than any other country in the world. Only old school guys are complaining now but otherwise the new generation is quite happy about it. Women have the right to do whatever they want and no man should have the right to tell them what to do. I personally could not have hit my twenties t a better period in all the years people have been around, i dont have to get married and i can also do what loved the most which is become a classic car restorer and do my strongman competitions. I feel free unlike my father who suffered a lot. By the way this is not only my view nearly all the guys i went with to high school a couple of years back are not even in a relationship right now,its just these flings here and there and thats it.
And anyways do any of you know how hard it is for a guy to get a job these days? women in my country get scholarships with 3D’s and below while for a guy you need 3A’s. Is that equality and even if we wanted to get a job unless you are a woman i dont see it happening. By the way im from Africa so dont think that its only happening in the US.