When Factory Jobs Vanish, Men Become Less Desirable Partners

https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/03/manufacturing-marriage-family/518280/?utm_content=buffer73ece&utm_medium=social&utm_source=linkedin.com&utm_campaign=buffer&single_page=true

by hunglee2 • 9 years ago

272 412 9 years ago

theatlantic.com

PunchTornado• 9 years ago

Too many things are linked to jobs. It will be a hard thing to break.

I wonder if the universal basic income will be enough to make the societal shift needed in this case.

daodedickinson• 9 years ago

Well, what do you think the cause of hypergamy is?

mirimir11• 9 years ago

Natural selection, I think. It's not a term that I was familiar with, but a little digging found this:[0]

The other, minor difference is that men are polygamous, not hypergamous. A man’s imperative is not (necessarily) to get the best woman. It’s to get as many women as possible with as little investment and commitment as possible. If he can do it, he would love to get as many women as possible at and a little below his own SMV, and have sex with as many of them as possible for as long as possible, without committing to or investing in any of them. That’s spinning plates. Most men don’t do this, because they can’t, because they’re not attractive enough, but that’s a different post.

OK, so I'm a guy, and I can say for sure that this is what I always wanted. Most of the time, I wasn't attractive enough, because I was too self-conscious and nerdy. But I did manage it for a few years, until STDs took me down :(

Anyway, there's also this about women:

A woman’s imperative is to get the best one man she can get for sex and for provisioning. That’s why you don’t see many women “dating” (i.e. having sex with) several different men at the same time. Women don’t spin plates; they pick the best plate they can and take care of it as best they can. Instead of trying to collect plates, they just change out the plates, one for another, when a bigger, better one comes along.

That's consistent with what the parent article concludes, I think. It's just that there aren't many good plates left.

0) https://therationalmale.com/category/hypergamy-2/

Edit: Responding to therpe1, I'm no evolutionary biologist, and I get that I've quoted a guy with quite an agenda. Still, the distinction that he draws fits will with the biology that I learned, and my personal experience. But please, do cite evidence.

Red_Tarsius3• 9 years ago

I fear that universal basic income might be the nail in the coffin of marriage and monogamy. Basically, government would replace any need for a male provider.

It's a recipe for disaster. Civilization is built on monogamous relationships: children being raised by a couple (statistically a far better environment than single parenthood), young men and women focusing their energy for the betterment of society.

rimantas2• 9 years ago

Repeating a statement will not make it a fact.

tomjen32• 9 years ago

Under ubi, which I don't support, the males will still bring in money and three will still be an advantage to having an extra caretaker.

sheepmullet3• 9 years ago

Universal basic income would allow us to get rid of child support and alimony.

vertex-four7• 9 years ago

Really, the issue is that people in general no longer have a "script" to play to - study until 16/18, get a job, work your way up, get engaged, get married, buy/inherit a house, have three kids, care for them until 18, work a few more years and then settle down for a comfy retirement partially paid for by one's now-adult kids. Oh, and present oneself as a good Christian all the while.

Here's the thing though - not having a script is a good thing. It allows people to discover what matters to them and what humanity and society is to them. If it's something other than the current state of things - then it should've been changed a long time ago, rather than putting pressure on people to conform to an ideal that nobody wants when they're allowed to think for themselves. It's also what LGBT people have been dealing with for a long time, so you might want to ask how they deal with it, rather than asserting it's the end of society.

Single parenthood isn't the only alternative to being raised by a couple. In fact, those being the only two options is a fairly recent thing. It used to be that children were broadly brought up by communities - to the point that food would be served by whoever happened to have the kids nearby when it was served. Still happens in some places, even in the middle of huge cities - I was brought up like that. Now, for some reason (fear?), parents attempt to keep a tight leash at all times, and the only interaction with one's community a kid might get is through approved and strictly regulated extracurricular activities.

pokemongoaway11• 9 years ago

This is a very reasonable hypothesis... Has really no one studied this formally?

princeb• 9 years ago

I fear that universal basic income might be the nail in the coffin of marriage and monogamy

brave new world. maybe it will take the shape of "Universal Basic Soma".

orgy porgy!

godmodus13• 9 years ago

Again this link?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13791645

saycheese• 9 years ago

It happens, if I were you I'd just repost that comment here as another top level comment.

rmason• 9 years ago

I'm not sure if those living on the coast can relate, but that article sure explains what I've seen over the last 35 years here in Michigan.

brohoolio• 9 years ago

Reminds me of the book Tally's Corner. The lack of consistent work caused all sorts of interesting outcomes for society.

meric• 9 years ago

The article claims the effect of varying employment levels on society are different depending on gender- lower male employment means lower marriage rates. Lower women employment means higher marriage rates. Lower marriage rates imply higher numbers of children born out of wedlock. Children born out of wedlock are more likely to have disadvantaged backgrounds. But increasing number of single mothers reduce the stigma of being a single mother, and allowing single mothers to "soldier on".

Red_Tarsius3• 9 years ago

Civilization is built on monogamy. People might not like the sound of it, but that's the reality of the situation. This is why all successful cultures and religions promote marriage, while tagging everything else as 'degeneracy'. You can't build a society if 90% of men are frustrated, disenfranchised and blow things up, and children are raised by single parents. You need a social contract that gives men a purpose and a legacy (sex), so that they can focus their efforts toward the development of the tribe.

EDIT: To clarify, I do NOT condone violence toward non-traditional arrangements. Sorry if I came off that way.

yummyfajitas12• 9 years ago

At this point the men you discuss are sitting around playing video games and doing oxy. They don't seem to be threatening society in any way.

https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/our-miserable-21...

godmodus13• 9 years ago

Uhm, monogamy is just one way to ensure offspring survival in times of strife, and reduce Std transmission.

That said, infedility is also a corner stone of our civilisation.

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/210277.php

http://bit.ly/2n1QoVx

maze-le3• 9 years ago

Interesting that you mention "the tribe" as basic unit of society. We have abandoned the concept of tribalism gradually in favour of (1.) feudalism, (2.) absolute monarchy and finally (3.) the nation state. Today, we don't have to deal with "the development of the tribe", because the greater family has become utterly unimportant [wich is a good thing IMO, because we can focus on more important issues].

Moreover most tribal societies in Western/Central Europe up until the 7th century -- in Scandinavia until the 10th century -- were polygamous. Some of these societies were highly successful. The Vikings for example weren't just barbarous brutes and pirates, but also tradesmen and farmers with highly sophisticated technologies like metallurgy, coinage and shipbuilding.

So no, I don't think that "Civilization is built on monogamy". If anything, monogamy as a family model is built on the roman church, and it's the heritage of the roman church our society is based upon.

mariodiana5• 9 years ago

Historically, I don't think there is any more volatile demographic than unmarried young men with no prospects.

phkahler4• 9 years ago

> The article claims the effect of varying employment levels on society are different depending on gender- lower male employment means lower marriage rates. Lower women employment means higher marriage rates.

That's not a claim, it's a fact. You need to study evolutionary psychology. Women seek a man to provide and protect. Period. Other qualities are in play too, but I'm talking about an evolved need. You take away the ability of a man to provide and protect and he becomes shit to a woman. You take away the womans ability to provide for herself and she becomes more dependent on marriage to get by. Why does this gender difference exist? Because being pregnant and caring for children both make women more vulnerable and detract from their self preservation ability. Hence the evolved family structure that works.

danharaj4• 9 years ago

Are you implying that the nuclear family is a result of natural selection?

Do you have any idea what the social structures of paleolithic humans were?

DaUR8• 9 years ago

But increasing number of single mothers reduce the stigma of being a single mother, and allowing single mothers to "soldier on".

Is that a good thing? Is it something we should pursue?

http://www.fathers.com/statistics-and-research/the-consequen...

It's much more complex than "we need to accept everybody! Every arrangement is just as good as any other!"

crdoconnor2• 9 years ago

This parallels what's happened in Japan, too (the decline of Salarymen, rise in temp work and the decline in birthrate + marriage & relationships).

kalleboo• 9 years ago

Doesn't Japan have low unemployment and a relatively strong manufacturing sector?

crdoconnor2• 9 years ago

As does the United States. It's not about overall unemployment, it's about the ratio of shitty jobs : non-shitty jobs.

bitL• 9 years ago

Some people from former Yugoslavia mentioned that during the war all women clustered around the few men that had means for survival and who led gangs or were involved in all kinds of shady business bringing in resources. I guess the effect described in the article is similar.

hunglee22• 9 years ago

It would be interesting to see studies on this. Intuitively this makes sense - in times of societal breakdown, the ability to violently compete for resources will return as a key signal of fitness

gotchange4• 9 years ago

I hate to sound this much politically incorrect but women in these times of social unrest and upheaval turn into resources themselves and this clustering, as you described it, would be more of involuntary and less of at will.

This doesn't mean that women in these situations wouldn't tend to gravitate toward the most power male with the largest resources in the pack but in most case it's the other way around.

pasquinelli3• 9 years ago

Which is really more politically incorrect to say, that women are basically looking for a man to provide for them, or that, more or less, pimps are survivors?

curun1r2• 9 years ago

It's similar to the entirety of human history, minus the last little bit. The notion of most men finding female partners is a relatively recent development. Throughout most of our history, most men haven't procreated. There was a story posted here a while back that cited DNA analysis to show that humans have roughly twice as many female ancestors as male ancestors. Apparently, the historical averages are around 80% of females that reproduced and only around 40% of males that did. It sounds like we experienced a brief period of middle-class prosperity that made that phenomenon far less pronounced and we're now seeing a regression back to the norm.

I'm not making a value judgment or saying we should want this disparity, just pointing out that throughout our history, it's mostly been this way.

1897234234• 9 years ago

Modern life is just bizarre, and especially so for men. We used to perform tasks that were immensely valued by women. Our rewards were directly dependent on our abilities. We worked hard and we achieved goals. Modern life is none of those things for most men. There is very little difference between the pay in many jobs, whether they are typically performed by men or women. These jobs often don't reward you for your abilities but rather reward you for who you know or how good your are at politics. Most jobs are also boring. With the money obtained, whether you are male or female, you can go and buy your meat at the supermarket and pay someone to build your house and so on.

Men seem to have been replaced by a master-slave relationship with masses of people working for a small group of large companies that provide for both men and women. It is like large businesses are the new man. I feel like they are a middle-man that simply should be replaced. I tend to agree with the unabomber in that modern life simply isn't compatible with humans.

empath752• 9 years ago

When you say sentences like the last one, you might want to consider getting psychological help. There are all kinds of critics of modern life one could reference that aren't mass murderers.

tomp• 9 years ago

Why the ad hominem? Just because he was a terrorist doesn't mean that all his opinions were invalid.

kentrado• 9 years ago

That's an ad hominem. Just because he is a murderer, it does not invalidate everything that he ever said.

We should do well to recognize criminals as fellow human beings, instead of mindlessly reject everything about them, just so that we can follow the predictable and tiresome ritual of shunning the deviant so we ourselves can be perceived as good.

Fifer82• 9 years ago

You might be surprised at what this says about yourself.

iiii_iivii_iiii• 9 years ago

The unabomber wasn't a mass murderer.

dang4• 9 years ago

It was arguably a tasteless bit of trolling, but you made the thread even worse with a personal swipe. Please don't do that on HN.

watwut10• 9 years ago

The article is about lack of factory jobs. Those were literally mass of people working for few. Then wife went to supermarket to buy meat.

toyg• 9 years ago

Utopia never existed. Until about 250 years ago, your outcomes depended overwhelmingly on what family you came from, no matter your skills. Children of peasants would become peasants; children of artisans would become artisans; and so on and so forth. Rebelling to that state of thing would likely get you hanged or ostracized.

The industrial revolution and global colonization changed that, injecting opportunities for an ever-growing section of men; and genocidal mass-war eventually did the same for women. This land of mirth and honey where every man has an opportunity to bootstrap himself is a somewhat fantastical invention. Social mobility might have been higher than average in the US between 1850 and 1950, but anywhere else "where you come from" was always the most important factor in anyone's fortunes.

watwut10• 9 years ago

Moreover, men were happy to support and fight those genocidal wars in part because lives for many of them were shitty.

cancancan2• 9 years ago

Indeed, especially in the 1850s. You could always sell your Negroes and start a new exciting career.

https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/07/the-wee...

flexie2• 9 years ago

Cheer up. Contrary to what many believe, men's chances in life have never been better than now.

Life used to be rough and unfair for most us men. Maybe the oldest son had a chance to inherit the farm or shop of his father so he could provide for a wife and family. Many men, however, had no such luck and went through life without marrying, many without ever dating or being with a woman.

Western women don't need men to provide an income to the same extent as before, and that opens up a lot of other possibilities for us men.

Guys can actually get married although they only earn enough to support half a family or 40% of a family. I even know several guys that makes less than 10% of the family income (and that's through welfare). What chance would a stay home dad have had in 1920? What chance would an unemployed guy have had?

And equally important, we can date women without providing them anything else than a bit of romance. It has still only been a couple of generations in which a majority of us dated for years without having to marry.

Some women still look at earning ability but many women also look at other traits nowadays. Looks, intellect, humour, family skills, interests etc. Work on that and be grateful you weren't born at any point in human history before the 1950s.

belorn2• 9 years ago

While there exist women that don't look at earning ability of men, and there exist men who don't look at the age and appearance of women, both of those seems to be depressingly small minority when ever I see studies on it. I recall a poll from example china where 80% of women answered that they could never date a man who earned less than a set amount (which is above average pay), and a majority who considered that a man should not even be allowed outside if they didn't earn that much. They should be inside studying or working.

Why is post-1950 men better off in this regard than pre-1950?

pessimizer3• 9 years ago

Cheer up. Contrary to what many believe, men's chances in life have never been better than now.

Not for men without college degrees.

golergka3• 9 years ago

I respect your sentiment, but your comment is bullshit. There are plenty of interesting jobs with different pay that depends on your ability - if anyone, a HN user should be well-aware of that. And while all negative things you mention exist to some extent, they're at their lowest in human history, not the either way around.

I feel that you rely more on interpretations of personal experience instead of objective look at the world.

wingless• 9 years ago

The solution is actually quite simple. Being able to choose your child's sex. If women have happier and easier lives, parents will prefer having daughters which will in turn increase the female population and decrease their value, bringing the value of sexes to an equilibrium.

mirimir11• 9 years ago

That's very clever! The men will for sure be happier.

cousin_it• 9 years ago

Wow! I never thought of it that way, but it makes sense. Though if unhappy men are mostly invisible to society, that might lead to parents choosing boys under a wrong impression.

AFrogInCanada2• 9 years ago

Eric Zemmour, a French political writer and polemist (he has controversial views on immigration and such, but is right on other topics), speaks about this in great detail in his book "The First Sex" (a reference to Simone de Beauvoir's "The Second Sex") He explains how capitalism has taken the "useful idiots" of feminism and used them to first turn women into workers (hence doubling the amount of consumers as it created a population with a newfound salary) and then feminised men to turn them into passive materialists. Men are no longer the authority, they are less and less the breadwinner, they are encouraged to be more feminine, to be more passive than aggressive, to be sensitive and open with their feelings, all emasculating them even further. Then he cites studies of the sharp rise of men who have trouble getting an erection, of the sharp rise in divorces and people no longer wanting to have a family of their own. He connects, in a somewhat Marxian manner (without the communist solution that Marx proposes) that unbridled capitalism destroys the nuclear family under the false kings of individualism and liberty. If you're interested in this stuff, Freud also talks about this: he claims Civilisation should channel men's aggressive tendencies, not suppress them (as we are doing now). The result in doing the latter will mean men will find other ways to rebel, and it will be against civilization instead of being used to enhance it.

cmdrfred6• 9 years ago

It seems to me that communism would make that problem worse, not better. If the state is the breadwinner in your family, why do you need men at all?

watwut10• 9 years ago

"They found that manufacturing declines significantly affected the supply of what they termed “marriageable” men—men who are not drinking or using drugs excessively and who have a job. (...) the numbers of marriageable men relative to women declined, because men had migrated elsewhere, joined the military, or fallen out of the labor force."

How many in which category? The article treats men who moved away as the same problem as being junkie. Social problems like alcoholism and drugs are talked about as if they would be same as being unemployed. It is odd conflation, it is not the same, not even nearly.

taurath• 9 years ago

Tells you how far society would have to go to ever accept able bodied people not working for a living.

Razengan2• 9 years ago

The root problem seems to be that we have made money (or rather, the ability to make some) an ends instead of a means.

I don't know how all of the 8 billion people on this planet can be expected to meaningfully contribute to something (that can't be done better and more cheaply for everyone by automation) and "earn" their money, without seriously crippling technological advancement (e.g. the advent of self-driving vehicles, or robot lawyers/doctors.)

mariodiana5• 9 years ago

Able bodied men.

mcguire7• 9 years ago

I assure you, anyone able bodied and not working who can afford not to live in their parents' basement is very acceptable.

synicalx• 9 years ago

If they're not a burden on the rest of society, then there's nothing wrong with that. I take issue with able-bodied people not working, and collecting welfare while contributing nothing - which is a problem worth billions of dollars in my country.

golergka3• 9 years ago

Social problems like alcoholism and drugs are talked about as if they would be same as being unemployed. It is odd conflation, it is not the same, not even nearly.

When comparing two things, it's useful to understand what is the comparison being made. Of course these things aren't the same in general sense of things - but as far as making a man "unmarriable" (as in statistically desired by either gender for a long-term relationship and partnership), they have a pretty similar effect, don't they?

beaconstudios• 9 years ago

in the gender model of man-as-provider, the real disqualifier is the unemployment.

watwut10• 9 years ago

I haven't seen the statistics, so I do not know. However,for pregnant young women, marring alcoholic or junkie is freaking stupid idea. Marrying unemployed to soldier on together makes more sense.

pokemongoaway11• 9 years ago

No, because this ignores the cause & effect reality of nature. If people are turning to drug-based stimuli for the purpose of numbing and unfulfilled life of 1) no sexual partners 2) few job prospects, then we should not act as if the drugs are the first-tier causes of their predicament...

Anyone who has seen the upper echelons of society knows how many drugs are used up there too - and therefore knows that they are not first tier-causes (of being on the bottom) in every use case.

andai4• 9 years ago

Ms. Semuels, it seems, places them in the same mental category.

mirimir11• 9 years ago

Yeah, I guess. But actually, that's a pretty standard characterization, I think.

Me, I'm amused by the title of George Lakof's Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things: What Categories Reveal About the Mind . But actually, it turns out that "Women are not dangerous things", according to Plaster and Polinsky (2007).[0]

0) http://scholar.harvard.edu/mpolinsky/files/Dyirbal.pdf

pessimizer3• 9 years ago

AIDS causes deaths, and car crashes cause deaths. Am I putting them in the same category? Is that wrong to do? Getting breast implants requires general anesthesia and a lung transplant requires general anesthesia. Am I putting them in the same category? Is that wrong to do?

Birds fly and planes fly.

Waterluvian• 9 years ago

I can't tell if you agree or disagree. But yes, those things. :)

watwut10• 9 years ago

For instance, dudes that joined military or found work in different city are not on local marriage market, but they are marriageable wherever they currently are.

jessaustin6• 9 years ago

From the perspective of a woman who'd like to marry, those are the same thing.

I'd challenge TFA's "men less desirable" summary, however. Some men are less desirable, but that would seem to make others that much more desirable.

g00gler• 9 years ago

that would seem to make others that much more desirable.

I was thinking the same thing. Hooray for being marriage material.

falcolas2• 9 years ago

Well, given the 18 -> 40% single mother increase, it's not a zero sum game. Not all women who would have married from the factory worker pool are now marrying into the white collar pool; many of them are simply choosing not to marry.

77pt779• 9 years ago

TFA

Not familiar with that acronym.

Care to elucidate?

drpgq• 9 years ago

Isn't that just what PUA types describe as alpha? More and more female attention going towards a smaller pool of males?

mcguire7• 9 years ago

The remainder of the paragraph and the next:

"Fewer men were working in manufacturing, which tended to mean their wages were lower than they had been when manufacturing had more of a presence in their area. And their wages were not significantly higher than women’s wages, which they had been during the heyday of manufacturing. (Fewer women worked in manufacturing in the first place, so they were less affected by the shocks.)

"This made the men less appealing to the women, the authors suggest—so there were fewer marriages. They find that trade shocks reduced the share of young women who were married, and reduced the number of births per woman."

In terms of marriage candidates, those are the same problem (except those who had moved elsewhere).

godmodus13• 9 years ago

I disagree with the title and message with its overall sentiment.

Yes, old school partnerships are dying, but that doesn't make males more disposable.

If anything,it gives men and women more options and opens up our society to fine tuning. (effects of large scale single momhood/dadhood, competetive job markets and novel family and supporting social structures) the old was nice, but if a single unit can function and achieve what a complex unit used to, wed all benefit. Supposing the experiment doesn't end in failure and twist society. Though even if it does, we'll self correct. After all, nature still rules us.

It's a culture of work hard, fuck-young and marry-old(er) for partnership for the coming future, we'll see where that takes us.

127• 9 years ago

I don't see how factory jobs vanishing give men more options. Yes, for the lucky few who still have marketable jobs that aren't subsidized by the public sector, they have more money and options. For the vast majority of men, the job market is a much more brutal place than it was before with a lot fewer actual options.

godmodus13• 9 years ago

I understand your argument, but it assumes humans don't adapt.

So what if the coal mines close down?

We dont live in aculture where needs stop evolving. Where there's a need, there's industry of some sort.

Humans brains adapt, especially generationally.

I dont see Germany suffering any detrimental consequences of the modern workplace (where I am right now) and infact it's flourishing.

That Said, the education system and the industrial system works close together here, and it's a better system than most. So countries need to pitch in to the effort if educating it's populace for modern day jobs

TheOtherHobbes2• 9 years ago

It doesn't give men more options. It puts a lot of unexpected pressure on men to adapt.

And adaptation is a real challenge, because it may mean learning completely new technical skills as well as completely new social and political skills as well as being unusually creative and inventive - and most men have to attempt this after a very poor education and little or no mentoring or modelling of the possibilities.

In the past, men could get by fairly passively because the job-market was full of ready-made slots for them. They could turn up and fill a slot and money would start flowing.

Now the slots have to be invented before they can be filled. That immediately disenfranchises the 90% or so of the population who aren't particularly creative or entrepreneurial.

And even if a slot is invented, the odds of lasting success aren't great. Most projects fail, and failure isn't tolerated well.

So we've gone from an open job market with limited selection pressure and relatively easy rewards to a very closed and challenging job market which only works for maybe 5% of the male population - specifically unusually intelligent, creative/inventive, socially connected and/or wealthy, or just plain sociopathic men.

It's a huge, huge change, and I don't think we've even started to see the effects.

AnthonyMouse8• 9 years ago

Supposing the experiment doesn't end in failure and twist society. Though even if it does, we'll self correct. After all, nature still rules us.

Well that's the problem, isn't it? The self-correction is for nature to destroy us so that something else can take our place.

It's completely possible for births to be below the population replacement rate until the people die out. It already is in first world countries save for immigration, and that can't save you if the third world industrializes and automates to the point they're in the same situation.

If we don't want that to happen we may have to start finding ways to enable people to marry and have more children.

andrewclunn• 9 years ago

Wait, what? In a world where the population keeps increasing, automation is and will continue to drive unemployment, and environmental destruction is rampant... you're concerned that we're going to die out for lack of breeding?

lhnz2• 9 years ago

The title is a simple quantifiable assertion taken directly from the conclusion of the research [0] while your comment is just an opinion. I encourage you to read the conclusion to the paper and its supporting analysis - and then to argue with the data, or to at least propose something falsifiable.

[0] http://www.nber.org.sci-hub.cc/papers/w23173.pdf

xiphias3• 9 years ago

Wow, I just looked at the title of the paper, and it's the opposite of the HN title: one is about marriage (yes, of course jobs matter a lot), the other is about relationships. Number of married years per person is declining, number of relationships without babies are increasing.

facepalm2• 9 years ago

What are the options for men who want to have a family/live with their children?

I guess men who just want to have sex might benefit, because they can just sleep with women and then leave, and society takes care of the single moms. Likewise, women can have more sex with varying partners.

The downside is not having a family or having a stressful family life (as a single mom).

And for the absent dads, the state will try to get the money back from them, so their outlook isn't pretty. They'll bend up being poor and lonely.

DaUR8• 9 years ago

The main downside is for the children. Believe me, you would not want to be the child of such a man or such a woman.[0] This is worse than lack of iodine, lead in the pipes, or congenital deformities from pregnant drug abuse. It's a societal time-bomb.

[0] http://www.fathers.com/statistics-and-research/the-consequen...

Some statistics:

Children living in female headed families with no spouse present had a poverty rate of 47.6 percent, over 4 times the rate in married-couple families.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services states, “Fatherless children are at a dramatically greater risk of drug and alcohol abuse.”
Children of single-parent homes are more than twice as likely to commit suicide.
Children age 10 to 17 living with two biological or adoptive parents were significantly less likely to experience sexual assault, child maltreatment, other types of major violence, and non-victimization type of adversity, and were less likely to witness violence in their families compared to peers living in single-parent families and stepfamilies.

The "gender roles" crowd is deeply dogmatic and misguided, and it's having incredible consequences.

DaUR8• 9 years ago

That doesn't take into account the fact that (through no fault of their own, and meriting no shame), single parents are pretty systematically worse statistically than bioparents in a nuclear household. Take into account the impact of parental "abandonment" on the child, which is traumatic regardless of whether the abandonment was voluntary or not, and regardless of whether it's one parent no longer seeing a child at all, or the other parent seeing the child less because she has to work harder to provide; both count as "abandonment" emotionally, and can be traumatizing.

Single-parent families, step-families all require better parenting, management, and communication skills, since they're more complex, and these parents aren't more skilled than the average, with predictable consequences.

Check the statistics on "fatherless" households, children of single mothers perform worse on every single metric. Worse academically, commit more crime (and much more rape), more runaways, more addictions, the list goes on.

Yes, old school partnerships are dying, but that doesn't make males more disposable.

Implies that "old school partnerships" are dying, but being replaced by something new. That's not the case. It's not a case of old-thing-evolving-into-a-new-thing. It isn't being replaced by anything, just being destroyed. I'll bet you single mothers are much less happy than married women, especially in their 50s and 60s, not to mention the increased likelihood of being abused by dates, strings of failed relationships, increased stress, and loneliness.

godmodus13• 9 years ago

tbh you're preaching to the choir here, i believe in 2-parent models for the sake of spending more time with the child and nurturing it better.

that said, ill add that single parents of the past are often a result of a broken house hold. the single parents of the future will do so by choice, this will give rise to interesting dynamics, i think.

it isn;t replaced by anything right now, but crises leads to break through, we might/(most likely will?) deal with is, as nature would have us, by either coming up with a new paradigm, or breaking then reverting to (a better?) version of the old.

maybe im an optimist, but ive seen so much shit, and the world is knee deep in shit these days that i need to believe that we'll make it.

to deal with this issue i personally would suggest community (kibutz style?) child care, which ironically echoes a communist tint, to deal with time-not-spent with children. top that with corporate/workplace restructuring (ala sweden with mandatory father-time as well as mandatory mom-time off for birth) and we'd be on our way.

one issue i do see is old age and loneliness. i see so many lonely old people here in europe. for now, females are growing older and finding it more difficult to find a partner after choosing not to marry. the men are reluctant to take an older woman as a partner, and while i understand hypergamy, im not sure i understand why the older men are not taking mid-30-smth women as partners.

also, i dont understand why can't couples marry and support each other's careers and just have kids later. is it so unnatural? it might boil down to the socioeconomics of hypergamy, which is a thought that leaves a bitter taste in my mouth, to think that our females are "programmed" as such is no comforting notion.

closeparen• 9 years ago

If you're ever in doubt about tech's sexism problem, revisit one of the HN comment threads where gender roles come up and marvel at the unchecked support for the idea that women should be stay-at-home mothers. Then, for bonus points, check out a divorce thread.

Civilization was built on all sorts of identity-based subjugation relationships and as we chip away at them, in the long run, it gets better.

If your implicit assumption is true (women only stay in relationships because they require a partner's income to survive) then we have a moral imperative to provide escape hatches from those toxic relationships as quickly as possible.

jules• 9 years ago

This is what's wrong with politics today. Every question gets moralised. Every opinion gets evaluated on a scale from angel to bigot instead of true to false.

Infinitesimus• 9 years ago

It is a bit problematic that the original comment doesn't seem to consider women as potential provider for a family and the narrative is centered around a male provider.

tnone• 9 years ago

If you're ever in doubt about the regressive left's tunnel vision and lack of critical thinking, just visit one of these threads, and watch the people unable to distinguish descriptive from normative claims come out of the woodwork, dropping the mandatory moralising chastisement about toxicity and sexism.

From the article it seems the problem is that women continue to seek providers, despite what decades of feminism have tried to tell them they should want.

pokemongoaway11• 9 years ago

Do you see what you did here? Someone comes up with a hypothesis that is scientific and not a moral question, and you succeed in politicizing and moralizing it in one fell swoop. Why is it important to derail this line of questioning? If government and welfare systems effect the organization of families, relationships, reproduction, courtship - and the like - then isn't that a worthy thing to study?

vertex-four7• 9 years ago

Actually, the GP made a pretty blatant assertion, not "we should study this" but "this is the way I believe it is".

watwut10• 9 years ago

It was not scientific hypothesis nor proposal for research, it was statement of opinion presented as fact.

idiot_stick• 9 years ago

revisit one of the HN comment threads where gender roles come up and marvel at the unchecked support for the idea that women should be stay-at-home mothers.

As someone who's hung around this place along time, I'd love to see a link of a discussion with "unchecked" claims that women should stay home.

eli_gottlieb4• 9 years ago

If you're ever in doubt about tech's sexism problem, revisit one of the HN comment threads where gender roles come up and marvel at the unchecked support for the idea that women should be stay-at-home mothers. Then, for bonus points, check out a divorce thread.

And then look how many people have ideas about what's "natural" that come straight out of Victorian etiquette books.

dang4• 9 years ago

There's no "unchecked support" for anything on HN, let alone "the idea that women should be stay-at-home mothers". HN is divided the way society at large is. All sorts of comments appear here, and inevitably some are noxious. This is what happens with any large-enough sample of people, especially on the internet.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13795530 and marked it off-topic.

mvitorino5• 9 years ago

I find it odd that the article manages to completely ignore/miss the effect of welfare and the change in incentives it may result in. Also, it appears that statistically, single mothers are much more likely to vote Left than Right.

In the sci-fi movie Advantageous, a future society with a lot more automation, has high unemployment rates. Recruitment (which in the movie is mostly done by AI) eventually evolves to a consensus whereby most jobs are assigned to men because otherwise society would become a lot more dangerous to everyone.

EDIT: References:

[1] 74% of single mothers voting Democrat

[2] one quarter voting Republican

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/single-mothers-give-... [2] http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/27/opinion/sunday/single-moth...

Drumlin2• 9 years ago

Also, it appears that statistically, single mothers are much more likely to vote Left than Right.

If you're married to the state, then you vote for more of the state. It's one of the many examples where liberty has been eroded in recent decades, but few talk about it because it's a sensitive topic.

mvitorino5• 9 years ago

Absolutely. For a country referred to as "the land of the free" you surely have a lot of "sensitive topics". As soon as I posted my comment, I started getting down-voted. I believe the post was quite factual, not offensive in any way or prejudicial, so I can only imagine it was affecting someone's sensitivity.

stephancoral• 9 years ago

Ah yes, the sweet liberty of being unable to provide for your children. Welfare is a pitifully small percent of the budget compared to military, health, and education not to mention the massive amounts of corporate welfare that happens ("I'll get those taxes down for you"). But you're right it's the left voting single moms that erode our liberty. What about the right-voting single moms? Are they "welfare queens" eroding our liberty too or are they just good people who had to make a tough choice?

curun1r2• 9 years ago

Or, you know, given how wed conservatives have been to the Evangelicals, you tend not to vote for people that tell you you're a sinner and demonize your lifestyle. Homosexuals similarly vote more Left than Right.

htns• 9 years ago

I'm not convinced of the effect, especially in the context of single mothers and divorce. Welfare would seem to decrease the incentive to divorce an unemployed husband. I've also seen claims that just 100-150 years ago a lower proportion of men were married, and far more died childless, which would go against the narrative trend if true (but who knows if they are).

mvitorino5• 9 years ago

I tend to agree with you in that case. Was not aware of your historical claims. Interesting to know.

nikdaheratik2• 9 years ago

That's because women don't decide to have children in order to get welfare, they decide to get welfare because they got pregnant. Also, as a community starts to go downhill, couples often have less access to birth control and other family planning options, especially those who are "just getting by" to begin with.

The only people who actually seem to think that welfare causes these problems, are the ones who don't think we should be paying welfare. People who are on welfare or know those on that kind of assistance know better.

jahaja2• 9 years ago

Presenting a rose-tinted view of american history must be HN's national sport.

dang4• 9 years ago

Please don't post generalizations about HN as a rhetorical device. Plenty of differing views on American history get expressed here—unfortunately often leading to flamewars. That's in the nature of inflammatory material, and your comment certainly doesn't help.

We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13795608 and marked it off-topic.

jahaja2• 9 years ago

That is not a "differing view". It's a blatantly incorrect view - as indicated by the reply of the account you subsequently banned.

But I accept your disapproval of my jibe towards HN.

andai4• 9 years ago

Well, I guess us guys will just have to start marrying each other!

imgabe• 9 years ago

It sounds like manufacturing jobs left, so the men have no jobs, but the women still have jobs. Yes?

Why won't the men compete for the jobs the women are getting?

Alternatively, the men could stay home and take care of the kids while the women work at the jobs they have, providing the stable two-parent household.

It seems like a large portion of the problem is tied up in men's idea of what constitutes a "manly" role. I don't mean to trivialize the difficulty of changing one's perspective, but changing diapers has to be a better option than dying from an Oxycontin overdose doesn't it?

smhost• 9 years ago

It's not just a changing of one's perspective. It's the destruction of your whole identity. It feels incredibly jarring and like you're going insane. It's what people with personality "disorders" have to go through to "fix" themselves to fit society.

ro_sharp• 9 years ago

Is it just men's idea of a "man's role" that's a problem? The article seems to suggest women's preferences are also in play.

TheOtherHobbes2• 9 years ago

No matter how much feminism pretends otherwise, women are not keen to form lasting relationships with unemployed men.

The reality on the ground is that many women consider extended unemployment a good-enough reason to end a marriage.

A cynical but not unrealistic view is that humans tend to display loyalty to performed roles in relationships, not to individuals.

If one individual stops performing their assigned role, the relationship ends.

EliRivers3• 9 years ago

Feminism, the advocation of equal social and political rights for women? What does that have to do with wanting to form lasting relationships with unemployed men?

techdragon• 9 years ago

It's not even an issue of feminism or any other -ism.

It's statistics and sociology.

The last time I saw data on this, that was one of the most common causes.

gotchange4• 9 years ago

Good point but there's nothing that precludes these assigned/expected roles in a LT relationship from changing or evolving in the future and for persons in the relationship to adapt to the new dynamics and realities.

xiphias3• 9 years ago

This may be true now, but there's a trend of women accepting that a man earns less (or even sometimes doesn't have a job) as long as she doesn't yet want to have a baby, and the man looks hot. It's still all about supply and demand.

booleandilemma• 9 years ago

I read an article recently saying that women want men to be the breadwinners and they also want them to do the housework. We can't win.

http://on.mktw.net/2li9AOT

vostok• 9 years ago

No matter how much feminism pretends otherwise, women are not keen to form lasting relationships with unemployed men.

I am a feminist man and I would not be keen to form a lasting relationship with an unemployed woman unless she was already wealthy.

pasquinelli3• 9 years ago

Maybe, but a lot of shit heads are unemployed, and a lot of men who become unemployed become shit heads too. I read in a related article posted here that most prime aged men who've given up on the labor market aren't doing more child care, aren't doing more work around the house, are watching more TV and using alcohol and drugs more. So, basically, they're shit heads, either because they're out of work or with that cause and effect flipped.

Edit, forgot to include the article: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13795397

mcguire7• 9 years ago

"...feminism pretends otherwise..."

Source?

bigmanwalter2• 9 years ago

Women who don't date men without a job are like men won't date a woman with a career. There's plenty of sexism on both sides.

77pt779• 9 years ago

A cynical but not unrealistic view is that humans tend to display loyalty to performed roles in relationships, not to individuals.
If one individual stops performing their assigned role, the relationship ends.

This is a very succinct way to describe reality.

Thank you for stating it so clearly.

anexprogrammer• 9 years ago

Did you ever hear of a man losing his job, or getting ill, then shortly after his wife leaving? It's quite common.

It's very much both sex's perspective of role. Clichéd it may be, but there's a truth behind women preferring men with money, power or strength, or a combination of all.

0x4454424• 9 years ago

Yeah, I've been saying this for 25 years... And that "Better Homes and Gardens" is just porn for females.

enraged_camel• 9 years ago

It's worth noting that job loss often results in depression, especially if finding another job isn't easy for the person. That also tends to be a reason for divorce.

ntsplnkv3• 9 years ago

Did you ever hear of a man losing his job, or getting ill, then shortly after his wife leaving? It's quite common.

Okay well how exactly "common" is it?

but there's a truth behind women preferring men with money, power or strength, or a combination of all.

And men prefer attractive women...so what?

The majority of these men are uneducated and unemployed. The article states many are HIGH SCHOOL drop outs.

I'm a male. and I can tell you right now that I probably would not marry a female high school drop out.

The problem to me is not the women. it's that boys are being left behind in school and more work needs to be done to educate and re-purpose males from unskilled drones to skilled or white collar workers.

owebmaster4• 9 years ago

The thing is, if men switch roles with women, they will not be picked by them. Men are not selected for their capacity to stay at home raising kids. This will not change. So while what makes women attractive to men is still working (more than ever! Just look at Instagram), the opposite isn't holding true anymore. What is the man women are looking for now? The one with hundreds of thousands of instagram followers and gorgeous pictures. They just wanna enjoy this same fake happiness online together. How long is this behavior be mainstream? I don't know. What comes next can be even worse.

philipov• 9 years ago

Humans are half-way between a tournament species and a pair-bonding species. Pair-bonding species certainly do select males for their ability to raise children. So to you I say, not all women!

gotchange4• 9 years ago

You seem to conflate flicks or one-night stands and LT relationships. From my experience, women tend to choose marriage partners who are well-off and this is very understandable esp. in societies which are barely above the survival level or where women don't enjoy the full benefits and opportunities available to men.

ratacat3• 9 years ago

I'm dating a gorgeous inspired woman. She doesn't have a Facebook account or an Instagram. I don't have a full time job. We have been living with my parents to save money during the winter, and bike touring / camping during the summer.

facepalm2• 9 years ago

You think it is men deciding not to marry, as in "no thanks, I'd rather be alone and unemployed than change diapers"?

The article said it is women making the decision.

ThomPete2• 9 years ago

Women marry up not down.

true_religion2• 9 years ago

Or sideways. There's this tendency to look at the lower classes of history and assume that since we too are not 'the rich' our behaviour should follow the same patterns of our class in the past.

Today, the burden of household work has been cut to 1/10th of what it used to be, jobs are primarily intellectual, and education is paramount. The model to compare against is not the factory worker who was poor in the 1900s, and somehow due to a quirk of history became middle class in the 1950s.

We ought to compare against the gentleman class---those who in the 1900s had maids, butlers, personal transportation, and intellectual jobs akin to what we do today: management, clerking, accountancy, licensed professions, etc.

In those cases, people married sideways---intellectual women marrying men then helping to run the estate, daughters of merchants marrying other merchants and participating in the businesses, 'professional' socialites giving the entire clan a leg up by creating situations where networking was possible.

This is the position we have inherited, and if we must take lessons from the past--we should take lessons from the right class.

pokemongoaway11• 9 years ago

Wait, you actually think that men are just so tied up in their gender role of "manliness" to enjoy the benefits of all of the reproductive success that low-paying jobs would afford them? So basically, you think men are given the following scenarios, but are choosing option A?

A) Be a man, don't compete for women's jobs, drink beer instead of going to work, likely don't have a girlfriend or get laid because you don't have your finances in order...

B) Be less of a man, compete for women's jobs, drink less beer and more wine at dinner parties, bite your tongue about the manliness and receive willing girlfriends and sexual partners...

Anyone with any sense will laugh at this above false choice implicitly being promoted.

ratacat3• 9 years ago

Or what about, examining the sense of bitterness in yourself, so that you can hold yourself in esteem at dinner parties regardless of your work, or what you happen to be drinking, and enjoy the personal connections that develops, even if they don't result in getting laid

pmorici• 9 years ago

Women are a lot more likely to go to college than men. [0] If you work in a factory, or planned to, you probably didn't go to college.

For all the attention that is given to the lack of women in CS and Engineering the story in aggregate for all majors is that women outnumber men at colleges. It's been that way since 2000 and the trend has continued in the past 17 years. Its to the point where women outnumber men two to one at some large schools like UNC which are, for example, 60% female. [1]

[0] https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=72

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/07/fashion/07campus.html

douche4• 9 years ago

Unfortunately one of the results of that trend has been a lot of young women with less-than-useful degrees and mountains of student loan debt, working rather low-paying jobs. Which, to be brutally honest, makes them rather unattractive marriage partners, all other things being equal.

hunglee22• 9 years ago

Very important point. Unequal distribution in higher education will exacerbate the issues raised in this post. Unfortunately, we are looking at a near future where increasingly large percentage of unemployed people in the West will be young, sexually unsuccessful males.

Spooky23• 9 years ago

The women don't have jobs either. But the state will provide a basic living if she has a child.

It's a real mess everywhere.

analog31• 9 years ago

I haven't researched it deeply, but I wonder if it's better to assume that most two-parent families simply need two wage earners. Women tend to earn less than men, and might not be able to support kids plus a non employed husband on their income.

Anecdotally, I know at least two families in my neighborhood, in which the father stays home with the kids. One of the moms is a physician, and the other is a business executive.

tajen2• 9 years ago

is tied up in men's idea of what constitutes a "manly" role.

or in women's idea of what constitutes a "manly" role.

cd_cd3• 9 years ago

That is incredibly naive. Most women with a stay-at-home man become resentful and see them as a drain on their resources. They rarely succeed even if the man does the child raising household chores etc. Of course there are plenty of successful cases but they're in the minority. The reason why women don't marry men who don't earn more than them is because they want a successful guy, and by that they mean one that can earn more than them.

mcguire7• 9 years ago

zxcvvcxz• 9 years ago

Why won't the men compete for the jobs the women are getting?

Because different people are suited to different jobs. Why didn't (and don't) women generally compete for manufacturing jobs? Because being a creative designer or HR professional or pre-school teacher or dental hygienist is something much preferred for certain types of people. Just look at the numbers [1].

Men not only don't want to do certain types of jobs, but in many cases can't - they're not well-suited for them. So even if/when they compete, they'll lose to less experienced women just entering the workforce. And vise-versa for other types of jobs with flipped genders. There are gender differences, plain and simple. You can argue why they exist, but for this discussion it's not as relevant at this point.

I would like to note that the next "industrial wave" could affect women pretty hard as well: artificial intelligence. Recruiting and HR software, health-care robotics technologies, therapist chatbots, etc, could upend the female-dominated jobs listed in [1].

Alternatively, the men could stay home and take care of the kids while the women work at the jobs they have, providing the stable two-parent household.

Heh, I guess you haven't read many women's online dating profiles for what is acceptable in a mate and what isn't. You generally have to be higher up on the ladder (education, wealth, status, etc) to attract a woman for mating in the first place. How this manifests in data: 80% of guys are "below average"! [2]

But who needs data, ask your grandfather if he could have "stayed home and taken care of the kids while the woman works" and he'd laugh at you and tell you to stop being a sissy. They may not have been able to explain it, but older generations have typically understood more about human nature than we give them credit for.

[1] https://www.dol.gov/wb/stats/occ_gender_share_em_1020_txt.ht...

[2] https://theblog.okcupid.com/your-looks-and-your-inbox-8715c0...

mjevans4• 9 years ago

What 'average' is being highlighted? Is this an actual average, or a perceived one? Either way it sounds harsh and reminds me of that XKCD comic that concluded there was no way to win 'the game of love'.

cmdrfred6• 9 years ago

8,000 years ago they estimate that 17 women reproduced for every 1 man[0]. In a society without work for most men, I suspect a similar ratio to arise again. Especially if we continue to tell young men to stop behaving like young men in order to attract women.

[0]https://psmag.com/8-000-years-ago-17-women-reproduced-for-ev...

mirimir11• 9 years ago

Wow, that is fascinating! I'm guessing polygamy plus slavery.

S4M• 9 years ago

Out of topic but...

This group includes Olivia Alfano, a 29-year-old single mother living in Evansville, Indiana, where she works as a waitress at Red Lobster. The money is pretty good, she told me: She drives a BMW and was able to buy a house last year.

Am I the only one who is surprised by that? (I don't live in the US)

Neliquat• 9 years ago

In some towns, Red Lobster is a very popular resturant. Its pretty terrible, but is seen as a splurge for the lower class. With the splurge status, tips are often decent compared to other family friendly establishments. Homes are pretty cheap outside the city there. Used bmw's are dirt cheap here, for any doubt see LeMons racing, which is packed with em, at a $500 budget (sans safety gear).

JBiserkov3• 9 years ago

I was rather surprised as well (I don't live in the US either), but the Wikipedia page for the city offers several clues: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evansville,_Indiana#Economy

scandox• 9 years ago

I was surprised by this too. Childcare especially is very expensive where I live. It would hardly be worth going to work here.

Edit: incoherence

0x4454424• 9 years ago

In addition to the other replies we have this interesting social custom in the U.S. where certain jobs have been arbitrarily recognized as worthy of extra compensation by the paying customers (tipping). So with a number of states raising minimum wage combined with tips and given the right conditions of cost of living, frugal living, and money management I could see it being pulled off.

mcguire7• 9 years ago

As a general rule, the minimum wage does not apply to "tipped" jobs.

"The American federal government requires a wage of at least $2.13 per hour be paid to employees that receive at least $30 per month in tips. If wages and tips do not equal the federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour during any pay period, the employer is required to increase cash wages to compensate. As of May 2012, the average hourly wage – including tips – for a restaurant employee in the United States that received tip income was $11.82."

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tipped_wage_in_the_United_St...

alecco• 9 years ago

This article is quite full of narrative.

I bet she has a gigantic pile of debt and gets a lot of help from state. And alimony.

obstacle1• 9 years ago

Millions of Americans were "able to" buy houses in the mid-2000s. The problem is they bought these houses entirely on credit, wholly without the means to eventually pay for them. Cars are also a type of purchase Americans typically take on debt for. It is slightly more difficult to obtain a loan you shouldn't qualify for these days, but there's plenty of opportunity in the US for those who want to get in over their head.

The problem with a story like the quoted is that it presents the superficial elements of someone's lifestyle without giving any actual insight into the fundamentals (i.e., budget) on which the lifestyle is based.

So, I guess stuff like this might seem surprising to those unfamiliar with US culture. But my point is it may only seem surprising if the assumption is the person actually paid for those things. It's highly unlikely that a house, car, and kids are in the clear on a part-time waitress salary, and more likely that the person is up to her eyeballs in debt and neglected to mention it.

falcolas2• 9 years ago

Probably all on credit. If your debit to income ratio (ironically, not a measure of your actual debit to income, but of how much money you have to pay off debts every month) is good enough, and your credit score is good enough (influenced mostly by using your credit and paying things on time), you can get some pretty huge loans out of the system.

IOW, it matters less if you're living with less than a month's worth of savings, so long as you can afford the payments and have a history of making payments; so here's a BMW.

Paul_S• 9 years ago

Why is it surprising? She gets alimony. In Europe she'd also get extensive state help.

selimthegrim• 9 years ago

In the comments it was mentioned that she was arrested for involvement in a Haitian cocaine distribution ring out of Miami 7 years ago (as per an FBI press release)

defen• 9 years ago

It's hard to say. The given information is consistent with either "nothing strange at all", OR someone who is living far above her means using credit, or has sketchy / black-market income sources.

For the "nothing strange at all" argument: Median home value in Evansville Indiana is $105700 [1] - even with a bog-standard 30 year mortgage at 4% with no down payment that's a monthly payment of only $505. A relatively small down payment ($20K via help from parents), and/or some fancy (unwise) 5/1 ARM financing could probably get you below $400/month mortgage payment. Depending on age and model and condition, a used BMW can be had for under $3K.

If she owns an above-average home and a new/expensive BMW, then I would say there are important details being left out.

[1] https://www.zillow.com/evansville-in/home-values/

mywittyname• 9 years ago

An attractive woman could probably make $40,000 a year there, maybe a good bit more.

I worked at an similar restaurant back in the 2000s and cleared $25k a year working part time, mostly weekends. I'm an unattractive man. The attractive women I worked with would clear double what I made each shift.

Evansville is a cheap place to live, relative to the rest of the US. It's doable to raise a family on that salary with help from family for child care.

wink• 9 years ago

This article confused me a little, I think it's neither here nor there regarding a main point.

I mean, I get the basic facts, but I find it oddly jumping around between the men's situation, interjecting manual labor in fields that are dominated by women and then going off in the direction of single parents. Not that I would expect any kind of mentioning possible solutions, but this piece left me scratching my head a little .

sergiotapia• 9 years ago

"Women cannot go backwards in lifestyle."

"She may not leave you the day you lose it, but the countdown has begun."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KiZSG2vDMIo

loydb• 9 years ago

For a really deep dive (albeit an overly-scholastic one) into this topic, check out _Those Who Work, Those Who Don't: Poverty, Morality, and Family in Rural America_ by Jennifer Sherman. It's a fascinating book (and makes me happy not to have been a logger).

sauronlord• 9 years ago

I am ashamed that tax dollars were used for such a study.

Poor men cannot afford weddings and children. Shocking.

cd_cd3• 9 years ago

This articles is a bit flippant. The study apparently outlines a problem in these regions both socially and economically. The articles then goes on to pick a single case in order to imply that it's actually good news for women - and by inference nothing for us to be concerned about.

kstoneman• 9 years ago

The article implies that it's solely the woman's decision to marry, but the reality is more complicated. Many men are choosing not to marry since it is fraught with economic risk to do so. This has been building for a generation.

“You don’t want to marry a man who is in all likelihood not economically viable, because it’s not a free lunch,” Autor said.

"Not economically viable" is the exact phrase used in the movie "Falling Down" by the man who was denied a loan by a bank and was arrested while the Michael Douglas character looks on sympathetically. His wife ditched him, too.

uptime• 9 years ago

A lot of the lessons here need to be built into the raising of young men. I can't claim to know all the topics we need to master, but hyping up and honoring any domestic labor has to be up there. Keeping a household running well is no joke. If you give any population a limited set of options for self and social worth, you're gonna have a bad time.

caseydurfee• 9 years ago

Sadly, I feel like a great number of comments in this thread could be summarized as:

If a woman prefers a man with wealth or status, she's a gold-digger, and feminism is wrong about women -- they want traditional gender roles. Women are just naturally drawn to wealth and status despite what feminism says they should want.

If a woman has sex with a man regardless of his wealth or status, she's a slut. Feminism is wrong about women -- they are naturally attracted to "bad boys", not "Good guys" who are responsible and work hard. "Good guys" are being cheated out of sex by women. If they support feminism despite the fact that women no longer value social/economic status, which reduces their chances to have sex, they are "white knights".

If a woman won't have sex with a man, it's because she's a frigid bitch -- feminism has made men irrelevant. Feminism is responsible for suicide bombers and spree killers because they couldn't get sex from women.

It's amazing to me how much pseudoscience and entrail-reading comes into discussions of gender. It's so tightly linked to our experience of the world that it's almost impossible not to spin one's own experiences into quasi-rational explanations.

For example, this quote from the article: "A substantial number go on to have children with a second partner, or even a third, creating complex and unstable family lives that are not good for children."

Says who? Human beings have pretty much always lived in extended clans with "complex family lives". The nuclear family is a pretty recent invention in the history of homo sapiens. The whole article seems to be trying to paint a picture that humans lived in nuclear families from the dawn of time to just a few years ago -- that it is taking children away from the way they are meant to be raised. In fact, this is bringing humans closer to the way they've pretty much always lived, in extended clans with complex family trees, with incredibly complex language for describing those relations.

"This creates challenges for the people (usually women) who have to raise a child without the economic or social support of a partner. Their struggles are why the authors see such an uptick in children living in poverty in the aftermath of a decline in manufacturing employment."

This is just terrible writing. Women raising children without support of a partner would, by definition, not be affected by the decline in jobs for men. The whole article (and many of the comments here about it) are filled with these kinds of self-refutations and self-fulfilling prophecies. People just start with a conclusion when it comes to gender and work backwards.

I'm wary to offer my own opinions on these issues, because they might be just as full of confirmation bias, question begging, and social proof-seeking. Maybe human beings are just really bad at discussing this topic.

Paul-ish• 9 years ago

For example, this quote from the article: "A substantial number go on to have children with a second partner, or even a third, creating complex and unstable family lives that are not good for children."
Says who? Human beings have pretty much always lived in extended clans with "complex family lives". The nuclear family is a pretty recent invention in the history of homo sapiens.

I think the article is saying complex AND unstable, not complex THEREFORE unstable. The assumption being instability is bad, complexity alone isn't bad, but both together can be worse than instability alone.

"This creates challenges for the people (usually women) who have to raise a child without the economic or social support of a partner. Their struggles are why the authors see such an uptick in children living in poverty in the aftermath of a decline in manufacturing employment."
This is just terrible writing. Women raising children without support of a partner would, by definition, not be affected by the decline in jobs for men.

I think the assumption there is that before these women would have a partner with a full time job, but instead they have no partner and have to work + raise a child. This isn't saying that women who didn't have a partner before are worse of now, it is talking about a demographic shift from having a partner to not.

am_i_down• 9 years ago

My dog doesn't care that my factory job vanished.

usmeteora• 9 years ago

As a female engineer perpetually in male dominated environments whether at work or at a bar being served mostly by male bartenders who I have come to build a repore with. It ends up being a casual mutually beneficial way to exchange banter and discuss social life but get perspectives and experiences from people who lead very different lives, and here is what I find. I find that most lower middle class men struggling to find jobs who have a complaint about this DO NOT have an issue finding women. They have an issue with women who do not financially contribute, and trap them into paying child support for a kid they never planned on having, and women who feel entitled to men being the sole provider, stripping away their freedom, and them men are trying to get away from women and commitments, not towards them. They are looking to travel and have experiences and do things they enjoy instead of repeating the failures they saw their parents go through. Theyve seen their parents fight over money, their dads lose jobs, their parents get divorced and I don't know who is asking for that life back but I think its the older men who lost everything because I don't know any noneducated man my age that actually wants that, they are running away from it at all costs.

I not only find this with lower middle class men but men I work with as well. They are getting sick and tired of being manipulated by women and trapped into families they never planned to or agreed to and being expected to do all the work financially for the rest of their lives...

I find in male dominated environments with men of higher socioeconomic status, that they end up dating financially needy women who are incentivized to lock them into a long term financial relationship because theres not enough economically independent women to date.

Additionally, I find women like me tend to be much more attractive to them for the reason that working women doing well and climbing the socioeconomic ladder by ourselves are attractive because we have ambition, which in their socioeconomic stratus is not something they are conditioned to, so not only is it attractive because you have more in common to talk to someone about, but its also from their point of view rather exotic and rare, and thus instantly more desireable. While a comment below stating chinese stats is generally worriesome, in America, the issue is not that lower income men can't get women, its that they cant get the women that they want. While most of the comments talk about how these women need to be more openminded, I find myself as a socioeconomic 26yr old woman progressing in my technical career in engineering and software development, I find that there is not nearly enough women, and that we need many more.

IF this happens (and that happening whether its happening and causes behind it happening or not is a WHOLE different discussion) over time then the standards men have for women will raise. While these men are pining after women who in reality don't exist in great numbers, just highly highlighted, the other 95% of women are incentivized to compete on a personal and economic level if they find men on their level and above their socioeconomic level are choosing women who make their own money, and they will begin to understand they are the only ones providing for themselves and over time women will seep into previously considered male dominated environments and take on more management and leadership roles.

Over the long run, this will hopefully allow men and women to engage in short or long term relationships or whatever they choose as we all become more accepting and openminded based on the person and less on the economic benefits they can provide. Progress is painful, and as one of the few women pioneering in it, I get pressure form men i work with to date and marry, men who serve me drinks to date and marry, and I get hate and drama from all the girls who are mad at me for making more money than them (who have no problem dating men with money but lots of problems with women making money, and can't seem to solve that issue in their head)

In general, its not as glamorous as it seems if you are actually a full time, preference for low drama female with your career as your first priority. Women like us are highlighted as the pain point of the issue, but we are not the cause of it, and over time hopefully the solution.

The other complaint I have about this whole argument is if women are getting a higher socioeconomic status while men complain they don't have jobs, then there are clearly jobs, they are just stereotypically female jobs, so instead of men complaining that the universe isnt entitling and providing them to the (in the grand scheme of things incredibly fleeting and nonpermanent manufactoring jobs) they should be more open to becoming nurses, teachers, government jobs and other jobs that are clearly in a great shortage for that women are not only working full time side jobs while taking night classes to become nurses and etc but raising kids while doing it often times as a single parent.

If they can do it men can do it, they just don't want to because its an uncomfortable stereotype to break, but in WWII many women stepped into manufactoring jobs to fill the void in America, so men need to do the same thing.

For now its a bit of an awkward phase for men because they are used to being the ones that get to choose and women have always been very willing to compete in looks and otherwise to get access to that financial stability as it was the only socially acceptable way to do so for so long without permanently striating yourself into a considered deplorable condition.

Men need to realize over time women becoming more independent is a good thing for everyone. Gorwing pains will always exist in society, its how we adapt to them that makes both men and women successful and competitive candidates in the working field and in the personal relationship realm.

This ongoing complaint I keep hearing about men wanting to fall back into manufactoring jobs and women getting jobs is a more a complaint about how they wish things would never change and how they want people to accomodate them instead of steering the dicsussion to how to adapt to reality.

When Factory Jobs Vanish, Men Become Less Desirable Partners

Related Stories