The role of the 26 year-old man in society

NPR ran a piece yesterday about how the lifestyle of the late college male is changing. The officious expert on the show referred to them as Boy-Men because they were in a sort of second adolescents. There was an air of condemnation in her attitude. This made me think and I got back to Milton; hence the previous post.

On January term about 1992 or 1993 I took a “Male Studies” class with Professor Paul. Generally it was an interesting class as we examined gender roles for men and other related topics. The relevant portion here is the observation that several scholars had made that while the 1960’s on feminist movement had redefined the role of gender women in America, it had largely ignored how this might change the gender role of men. For example, while in 1990 most people, if asked, would have expressed the idea that a woman could be just as good a business manager as a man, but would still pick a woman child care provider over a man because the woman seemed safer. Inherent in this is a notion that for a man to want to be a day care worker, something must be wrong with him (more prone to being a pervert). If challenged though the person would have backed up the “safer” assertion by pointing out that most sexual predation is, in fact, committed by men.

Another example from one of our texts: The author noted that when he was a boy, his father had rather roughly explained on the way to church one morning that gentlemen walked behind the ladies when going down the sidewalk. Thus, the author was amused in a faculty cocktail party to hear one of his female colleagues explain how it was so sexist in Japan where they made the women walk behind the men.

Also commented on in the texts was the idea of the Super-Mom. We’ve all seen her in the advertisements. She comes breezing home from her office, changes the oil in her car, fixes little Betty’s sled, makes dinner, and works around the obstacle presented by her well-meaning but inept man, all with hyper-competence. She is, of course, married to the guy who can’t work the toaster, who does not understand basic home products, or whose idea of “making dinner” is screwing it up and then secretly ordering out. In other words, this is a woman who has successfully “invaded” the traditional provinces of the male counter-pointed with a male who is completely inept at anything resembling the traditional provinces of the female. (Once someone points it out and you start looking for it, you see it everywhere too. Pet peeve here.) Think about the message that conveys for a minute. Think about what that tells young men about who or what they are supposed to be.

Why is this relevant?

The liberation of women allowed them to move into the work place. Being less focused on raising a family, women were marrying less and at older ages; something remarked upon by many Hollywood types recently as they discussed trying to balance career with their desire to have children. Consider that, largely, if the young women are not getting married and having children, then their male peers probably are not either. Society is not, however, suggesting to these young men that they need to go out and vigorously pursue a career to prove that they can, nor is society really offering these young men alternate gender roles. They are, largely, adrift.

So they fill their time playing xbox and PS3 and watching “guy movies.” It seems kind of disingenuous to praise young women for being liberated, yet look scornfully at the result this creates in their male counterparts.