Love in the Time of Darwinism

[SallyMander]

Earlier this year, I published an article in City Journal called “Child-Man in the Promised Land.” The piece elicited a roaring flood of mailed and blogged responses, mostly from young men who didn’t much care for its title (a reference to Claude Brown’s 1965 novel Manchild in the Promised Land) or its thesis: that too many single young males (SYMs) were lingering in a hormonal limbo between adolescence and adulthood, shunning marriage and children, and whiling away their leisure hours with South Park reruns, marathon sessions of World of Warcraft, and Maxim lists of the ten best movie fart scenes.

It would be easy enough to hold up some of the callow ranting that the piece inspired as proof positive of the child-man’s existence. But the truth is that my correspondents’ objections gave me pause. Their argument, in effect, was that the SYM is putting off traditional markers of adulthood—one wife, two kids, three bathrooms—not because he’s immature but because he’s angry. He’s angry because he thinks that young women are dishonest, self-involved, slutty, manipulative, shallow, controlling, and gold-digging. He’s angry because he thinks that the culture disses all things male. He’s angry because he thinks that marriage these days is a raw deal for men.

Here’s Jeff from Middleburg, Florida: “I am not going to hitch my wagon to a woman . . . who is more into her abs, thighs, triceps, and plastic surgery. A woman who seems to have forgotten that she did graduate high school and that it’s time to act accordingly.” Jeff, meet another of my respondents, Alex: “Maybe we turn to video games not because we are trying to run away from the responsibilities of a ‘grown-up life’ but because they are a better companion than some disease-ridden bar tramp who is only after money and a free ride.” Care for one more? This is from Dean in California: “Men are finally waking up to the ever-present fact that traditional marriage, or a committed relationship, with its accompanying socially imposed requirements of being wallets with legs for women, is an empty and meaningless drudgery.” You can find the same themes posted throughout websites like AmericanWomenSuck, NoMarriage, MGTOW (Men Going Their Own Way), and Eternal Bachelor (“Give modern women the husband they deserve. None”).

Full article: http://www.city-journal.org/2008/18_4_darwinist_dating.html


I posted this because I thought it could generate some interesting discussion. I think there are a whole lot of baloney gender stereotypes and generalizations in here, along with a healthy misunderstanding of "Darwinism" that is rampant in our scientifically-illiterate culture. However, I also thought it was an interesting addendum to the discussion on gay marriage and Prop 8 that's been going on here. It gets to the idea of what people want about marriage... what (if anything) makes it "sacred," and if it's so great, then shouldn't we (as a society) be encouraging anyone who WANTS marriage to GET married??

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

1. The idea I didn't care for...

was the suggestion that married men with kids are more mature, ideal, and healthier then bachelors.

I didn't get through the rest of the crap.

[mrreowwr_kittty]

5. Unmarried women with no kids get the same rap.

It's bullshit. As long as an adult is self-supporting if s/he wants to while away the hours playing Warcraft or drinking martinis and traveling, rather than follow some prescribed life script it's no one else's business. And even with the ones sponging off Mom and Dad, if the parents are dumb enough to support it, then so be it.

[CBGLuthier]

2. Horrible writer

Forget the stupidity of her argument I want to know why she puts the word "an" before the acronym SYM.

It grates on my ears even if I flesh it out as "an single young male."

I have been married for 23 years and am so glad I don't have to even think about this nonsense. There have always been jerks and there have always been women who prefer them. So what.

[Berry Cool]

6. You're meant to read and pronounce it as the abbreviation

so when you do that, the first sound is a vowel sound (the "e" sound of the "ess").

The rule is to put "an" before abbreviations whose first letter is pronounced with a vowel sound and "a" before those whose first letter is pronounced with a consonant sound. "S" is pronounced "ess," so it starts with a vowel sound.

If you insist on fleshing out the word and want to complain about the author because of that, well, you have no one to blame but yourself.

Not meaning to necessarily defend her any other way, but that's the logic behind what she did with the "an."

[SoCalDem]

3. Two divergent thoughts on this article

1) Child-men of today are the latchkey-boys of yesterday, who maybe had a part-time/divorced Dad.. Hard to get consistent role-modeling or a glimpse of "normal" marriage in that kind of household. Boys in that kind of household, learn to "escape" into games and pleasures for themselves. Children who raise themselves, often do not get the parental nudges to share, to open-up, to work hard..

2) Child-men who were over-indulged may have grown up always-entertained..always scheduled ..always being taken to this event or that.. Maybe as they "age out" of teen years, they finally see a chance to just veg out..and may see a wife as a "possible overbearing Mom-figure"..

[SallyMander]

9. Interesting

Especially #2 :hi:

[Taverner]

4. I am sick of this gender division. There are both child-men and child-women

I've known both.

If you know a 30-something who WANTS TO GET MARRIED, but never has because Mr. Right never came along, and every man she ever dated had some problem or another - THIS IS A CHILD WOMAN

If you know a 30-something guy who thinks women are only good as a conquest - THIS IS A CHILD MAN

[SallyMander]

10. I don't understand your first point

If a woman wants to get married, but hasn't met the right guy yet, how does that make her a child-woman?

[iamahaingttta]

7. "He’s angry because..."

...he wants to join Fight Club, but it doesn't really exist.

[madmom]

8. My daughter is 25, she has no desire to get married or have children because "I have

things I want to do first" so how is that being a "child" I would say that's being responsible because she knows she's not ready. She also said all the "good ones" she's met so far are either already taken or gay.

[SallyMander]

11. I agree with you

I think this article was a bunch of hooey... interesting how many people have a stake in perpetuating these gender/lifestyle conflicts...