Posted on 03/01/2011 4:34:44 PM PST by Mrs. Don-o
We keep hearing that young men are failing to adapt to contemporary life. Their financial prospects are impaired—earnings for 25- to 34-year-old men have fallen by 20 percent since 1971. Their college enrollment numbers trail women's: Only 43 percent of American undergraduates today are men. Last year, women made up the majority of the work force for the first time. And yet there is one area in which men are very much in charge: premarital heterosexual relationships.
[snip]
What many young men wish for—access to sex without too many complications or commitments—carries the day. If women were more fully in charge of how their relationships transpired, we'd be seeing, on average, more impressive wooing efforts, longer relationships, fewer premarital sexual partners, shorter cohabitations, and more marrying going on.
Instead, according to the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (which collects data well into adulthood), none of these things is occurring. Not one...
To better understand what's going on, it's worth a crash course in "sexual economics"...
[snip]
Yes, sex is clearly cheap for men. Women's "erotic capital," as Catherine Hakim of the London School of Economics has dubbed it, ... can't assure her love and lifelong commitment. Not in this market. ...Michelle, a 20-year-old from Colorado, said ..."I had an ex-boyfriend of mine who said that, um, he didn't know if he was ever going to get married because, he said, there's always going to be someone better." [snip]
And yet while young men's failures in life are not penalizing them in the bedroom, their sexual success may, ironically, be hindering their drive to achieve in life. Don't forget your Freud: Civilization is built on blocked, redirected, and channeled sexual impulse, because men will work for sex. Today's young men, however, seldom have to.
[snip]
(Excerpt) Read more at slate.com ...
My view?
Just further proof than humanity is fallen.
A really good prenup, premarital property held in trust and a woman from a culture that actually values motherhood and raising children over competing with men ... that might work.
My total guess is that Popman (don’t know him) has less sympathy for his sons’ wives or girlfriends because he is not in love with them.
I have seen fathers-in-law take a very dim view of their daughters-in-law. In my opinion they are often too hard. They are not charmed or impressed by her youth or her beauty, and will ascribe mistakes, idiosyncracies and occasional excesses to great evil mastermind plots. It is not always so.
The girl is young, the son is young, they will both take advantage of each other to some extent without being insatiably evil. If the son is happy and not being robbed blind, let him enjoy his wife and don’t be suspicious of every thing she does. She’ll be raising your grandchildren. Be nice.
You got it.
Millennia ago, a system was invented which resulted in men getting motivated to build civilizations. This system was called "patriarchy" by some. It involved making sure that any productive male had a chance to acquire a wife, and that wife would provide him with children who he could have reasonably high confidence of being his. In exchange for this, men would work hard to provide for their wives and offspring, and in so doing would create a viable civilization. The way this was accomplished was by restricting the Alpha Males to only having one woman. Maybe a wife and one mistress if he's really wealthy. The women then had to make their best deal at an early age, and stick with who they chose.
See, here's a fact of life with respect to civilizations: in the absence of a wife and offspring worth providing for, a man generally has little motivation to work more than is needed to procure basic food and shelter, and purchase entertainment (which might include some purchased female companionship). You see the phenomenon in full bloom in our "inner cities".
Women are a big part of the work force, but are severely under-represented in the jobs that actually are vital to keeping the civilization running. If men are not motivated to wok hard to keep things going, they might just decide to shrug -- to just let it all fall down and laugh at the show it makes when it crashes.
Rent "Fight Club" sometime for a view of what happens when men get sufficiently alienated.
‘Not one iota similar to the Christian version of marriage.’
Didn’t imply that it was. If high status Muslim men have dozens of children, and monopolize the most desirable women, and similar American non-Muslim men have one or no children, and you continue this for centuries, you get the transformation of the Eastern Roman Empire into the Caliphate.
put her to work and go fishing!!
“If high status Muslim men have dozens of children, and monopolize the most desirable women, and similar American non-Muslim men have one or no children, and you continue this for centuries, you get the transformation of the Eastern Roman Empire into the Caliphate.”
Yes, that’s assuming no other conditions.
I know birthrate has a big impact.
But polygamy does not work, mathematically. There are not enough wives for the men within a generation. The boys get essentially thrown out.
Also, practicing Muslims marry their cousins a lot and that creates many problems.
Also, the use of houris and lots of homo sex makes STDs rampant, which of course result in death and sterility.
Also, the jihad mentality means a lot of men get lost in war.
So there are other factors than just the high status Muslim.
But aren’t there some men who have careers and work hard anyway, even if it is only for themselves? Smart guys will realize they will need money in old age.
You nailed it!
‘There are not enough wives for the men within a generation. The boys get essentially thrown out. . . . . the jihad mentality means a lot of men get lost in war.’
So one of the problems leads to its own solution, with the side benefit of large armies, whose soldiers can die without leaving orphans. This process worked pretty well to transform the people of North Africa, Asia Minor, the Middle East, Central and much of South and Southeast Asia, Malaysia and Indonesia (most populous of all Muslim countries) from non-Muslim to Muslim, in only 1000 years.
‘Smart guys will realize they will need money in old age.’
We are talking Obama voters here, proxy.
Only to us taxpayers, who end up paying for the unwed offspring of the "protected class (baby daddies)," who the government rarely goes after for child support payments (of course they'll come after the rest of us with the full power of the State, should we dare procreate and not stay chained to the mother until they are 18 yrs old.)
No wonder the demographics favor the "protected classes" over what used to be Joe Average American - the economics of the family unit are unfavorable by government design. They are driving America into the socioeconomic model of the 3rd world.
Hmph!! For us older guys, sex is INCREDIBLY expensive!
I'm in a contented, fond and respectful marriage, by grace alone. But looking around me, I see men angry at all womankind; women angry at all mankind. Peace-love-joy-happiness at an all-time low. Cynicism, callousness, and contempt all around. And they say the Sexual Revolution was a bloodless revolution? What a debacle.
For the most part, you are right.
Feminism was not about empowering women, it was about making them cheap sluts.
“Men are but useful objects to be molded and manipulated.”
It would seem that way. But they’re not entirely stupid: note the drop in marriage rates. On the one hand, by staying single they can play the field. On the other hand, if they get married the potential economic penalties (marriage tax, so-called family courts, loss of assets if marriage fails) are dramatic.
The irony is that women’s liberation ended up liberating men instead.
“The world today teaches males at a young age that women have “options”, men have obligations.”
Yup. And men are reacting predictably: they’re going on strike. None dare call what’s happening a marriage strike, but at it’s heart, that’s what it is.
Post of the day....
I can only say that I am tired of being nothing more than a boy toy for hundreds of beautiful women.
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