Posted on 01/04/2014 4:59:57 AM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
In my work as an anthropologist, I’ve become convinced that American lifestyles are increasingly diverging between “hyper-achievers” trained early on to succeed, and those often labeled “slackers” whose lives revolve around entertainments of various sorts. You won’t be surprised to learn that a disproportionate percentage of “slackers” are men. Males, particularly in the working class, are working less, earning less, and are increasingly disconnected from families and from society as a whole. The future prospects for many working-class men seem very dim.
In analyzing these trends, many point to the effects of economic restructuring, with its loss of well-paying working-class jobs that resulted in a bifurcation of high-paying jobs for the educated and low-paying jobs for the uneducated. But men are struggling even when well-paying working-class jobs are available, and many have problems just graduating from high school or getting needed technical training. Early on, they fall behind females in school, and they never catch up: women earn a growing majority of college and graduate degrees, as the below chart shows. Some colleges even resort to a type of male affirmative action in order to keep gender proportionality somewhat equal. Women are getting more education, whereas men are not, at a time when it is economically imperative. What is going on?
Dr. Leonard Sax’s Boys Adrift lists video games among the causes of boys’ school struggles, not because they drive boys to violence, but because they create a need for stimulation, crowd out reading, and lessen boys’ focus in school and other activities. (Boys play console games, commonly used for sports and violent games, at four times the rate of girls.) Rates of ADHD have skyrocketed, and the causes of this are unclear, but overstimulation may play a role. These patterns can also lead later in life to heavy television viewing, often of sports (witness the domination ESPN has over the male gaze), and heavy online activity, such as viewing porn.
After we go to school, we need to look at family. One explanation for poor and working-class men’s instability points to the fact that so many were raised with single parents, as economists David Autor and Melanie Wasserman report. This has created a vicious cycle contributing to generational poverty, since education lags in these homes and children often fall behind their peers from two-parent families. With low rates of marriage and high rates of divorce among less-educated Americans, men raised by single parents are unlikely to reap the gains of a lasting marriage themselves. “What happens to a lot of guys who become unmoored from family life, they become unmoored from everything…they are just living without attachments and by the time they are 40 or 50 years old, the things that kept these men from falling away—family and community life—are gone,” according to Kathryn Edin.
These unstable family dynamics lead individuals to seek connections and groups where they can fit in, and contemporary society offers a plethora of subcultures that supply this need. In the inner city, gangs are often a family substitute, a way to connect with other males. White working-class males are prone to take on a “southern rebel identity” that rejects middle-class roles and education, career and family. This particular form of masculinity opposes authority, promotes drinking and using drugs, and can be misogynistic, as ethnographer Jason Eastman describes.
The origins of various subgroups can sometimes be found in high school cliques, such as “cowboys,” “skaters,” “burnouts,” “stoners,” or others. They are tied together by common activities, music or other symbols and forms of popular culture. Men also tend to be attracted to more risk-taking activities, whether in leisure or crime, which sociologist Stephen Lyng describes as “edgework.” Once men get criminal records, as many in gangs and other marginal groups do, it’s much harder for them to obtain jobs—which reinforces their place on the edge of society.
All of these things mentioned above—early reliance on stimulating entertainment, lower educational attainment, disconnection from families and role models, and the attractions of different, “edgy” subcultures—contribute to a widening gulf between those more connected to family, work, and society, and those without these commitments. While men are losing connections, women continue to participate in the labor force, attend religious services more often, and belong to other community and civic organizations. This is partly because many have dependent children and need to support them, whereas men can to a large extent avoid this responsibility.
Men who are not committed to families enjoy all the options that a consumer culture gives them, have more independence and freedom, and thus are found in a wider array of subcultural activities that take men away from consistent work and commitment to families. At the same time that non–college-educated men have fewer economic opportunities, they have more opportunities to indulge in various consumerist activities. That’s a recipe for ever-widening gaps between these men and the rest of society.
The only place I see younger men now is the gym. They walk around lost in their headphones and playing on their phones. Those I’ve talked to simply do no read. These are mostly college kids as the school is next door. So, they’re getting an education but although I have two degrees, I poured books down. They’re getting a degree, but with the absolute minimum of extra curricular reading.
These kids have the impression they have lots of friends, but they often don’t know their sir names, what they do for a living or anything about their families. They remind me of a cartoon I saw. A woman and a man are standing in front of an open coffin in a room full of empty chairs. The woman says, “I don’t understand this. He had 6,000 friends on Facebook.”
Guess this guy has never met Dalrock.
This phenomenon is by now quite far advanced, and has been dissected expertly by "Dalrock", and many others.
In brief, struggling in your teens and early twenties to get somewhere, and then competing to be the best, only makes sense if you get the girl at the end. Since getting a (real) wife is proving quite difficult these days, and since if you do get one there's a very significant chance that after baby #2 she gets a restraining order and cashes out, leaving you with 18-25 years of support for children who are taught to hate you, a lot of guys are electing not to play.
Rates of ADHD haven’t skyrocketed just the hand out of drugs at the request of the parents who are to stupid to know the difference or want to deal with their kids.
Working “MEN” usually have family and that’s why they’re working.
Having a degree is way over rated and you can do exceptionally well without a degree if you find your “niche” and want to excel at it.
Some folks don’t care about getting ahead or doing better in life and are content on just getting by paying their bills.
Then you have the chronically “want-to-be” unemployed who are useless members of society by choice.
Then you you have the low end of the spectrum.. democrats that f—k up everything they touch and make things worse for everyone.
We’re all born equal, what you choose to do with that is up to you.
People who stayed in the hometown got jobs, started businesses, often settling down with the HS sweetheart. They kept the community strong and raised families. There was a sense of decency and inclusion, and problems were usually solved from the sidelines by concerned adults and reasonable peers.
We felt secure in our futures. Ike warned us and our parents about the military-industrial complex, but the threat seemed far away.
It seems as if the globalist adventure in VietNam is what irreversibly changed all of that.
Just had my 50th HS reunion last summer. It's our culture's version of a pilgimmage to Mecca once in a lifetime. You know what? Those who settled into that promised life of 50 years ago have had good lives.
How could things have irreversibly and horribly changed over the last 50 years? I would call our class, the HS Class of 1963, the last of the post baby boomers, as perhaps the last group to fully live the American Dream.
Well paying working class jobs are available ...
WHERE?????
I think it all starts in kindergarten. The girls are way more ready to sit still and color, and so they are taught to and encouraged more. They learn to like school right away.
My girl is 6. I started her late on purpose (mama giving her a competitive edge:) She feels at least two years older than the poor little guys in her class that can’t write their names.
It’s so unfair from the start.
http://www.indeed.com/jobs?q=warehouse&l=76208
http://www.indeed.com/jobs?q=assembly&l=76208
http://www.indeed.com/jobs?q=sales&l=76208
http://www.indeed.com/jobs?q=construction&l=76208
http://www.indeed.com/jobs?q=technician&l=76208
Sorry about that
Exhibit A
No, it doesn’t. To me, middle-class and upper middle class kids seem just as slackery as poor and working-class kids. They read bad books based on movies, play video games and behave just as rudely in the malls as do the working class boys. I just finished “The Book of Matt,” the new true crime story of Matthew Shephard and he was the very illustration of an upper middle class slacker. But he had wealthy parents who pulled him out of one incident after another - arson, perhaps, and certainly car theft.
The working class kids are left rot.
“Falling Behind” how? I’ve got WAY more ammo than most of the girls I know!
The only winning move is not to play
After we go to school, we need to look at family. One explanation for poor and working-class men’s instability points to the fact that so many were raised with single parents, as economists David Autor and Melanie Wasserman report. This has created a vicious cycle contributing to generational poverty, since education lags in these homes and children often fall behind their peers from two-parent families.
I would venture a guess that it also applies to middle- and upper-class men, perhaps not to the point of poverty, but earning less than the previous generation.
The other consequences of being raised by a single parent are more damaging than lower income. Males are not learning how to be men; an example is pajama boy. Conversely, women are not allowed to be feminine due raising families, working, etc. There are so few women that I can tolerate these days. They need to be strong in the work place and they carry that into their personal lives. It almost seems like there is a gender reversal, with feminine, weak girly boys and bitchy, dikish women. Fortunately, my wife's family and my family, all come from two parent homes. This is also true of my few closest friends now that I think about it.
I agree.....I have 2 grandsons, both good looking young men in their 20s....but that is where it ends, hopelessly lost in the real world....I suggested to one, when he finished high school...go and join the marines, reply: grandpa, they make me cut my hair...he, at 27, still lives in mom’s basement...the second grandson, 21, stills lives at mom’s home, can’t hold a job, watches porn on the computer...both are in single family situations....
Women have been taught over last 30 years, they can do it all, and there is need for men....well, they can’t.
‘Where?’ I used to arrange speakers to come to the high school and talk to kids about Real Jobs. The HVAC guys, and guys in any kind of construction and trades, CADCAM/drafting - were DYING for help. These are services everyone needs, there is always work, it pays well.
With no shop classes, kids aren’t learning to work with their hands. Those who are gifted in that are funneled into academics instead. Does every student really need to learn Algebra 2? Go to college? Not everyone is cut out for that.
> The only winning move is not to play
I agree. So much of these types are reports are propaganda drawn on data
(or even completely false data) sets that support a premise or opinion that the author wants to project anyway. The progressives have been so busy trying to mold others thoughts lately you just “change the channel”. Of course we know what they’re up to but they’re like 0’s flies. They just won’t leave you alone.
If you take a look at the source of the information, The Institute for Family Studies, you will find that their staff is comprised of professors with heavy MSM connections; suspect to say the least. I’m guessing they recieve government funding for their research and are probably also involved in “gender studies” and promoting anything that has to do with the destruction of the American Family. The progressives are busy pulling shennanigans once again.
Still, I'd say the reason blue collar men are falling behind is:
1) Automation continues to render physical labor obsolete.
2) Mexicans can do whatever physical labor is required domestically for much cheaper.
3) Chinese/Globalization provides a cheap labor pool for anything that doesn't require onsite physical labor.
4) Blacks continue to be ill served by public schools and race pimping politicians, and by their own embrace of the government plantation culture.
Go ahead and ban me for saying it.
Around here, “Real Jobs” are performed by illegals.
And in my school, slackers don’t last a semester.
I’ve failed more than a few.
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