The American Man: R.I.P.?

Hanna Rosin got a little carried away when she entitled her recent article: "The End of Men." Link here.

Rosin does make reference to other countries and cultures, but she is focusing primarily on the decline and fall of the American man.

If so, this development seems less a natural socio-economic progression and more the effect of decades of social engineering.

Of course, women the world over are gaining new freedoms and new opportunities. And yet, what seems to be uniquely American is that this is taking place at the expense of men.

Creating the conditions where women and girls will be able to compete fairly in the classroom and the marketplace is not the same as systematically demoralizing men and boys to the point where they will not be able to compete effectively.

Rosin's article is comprehensive. It is not just another exercise in feminist mythmaking. Still, it has its shortcomings.

For example, Rosin does not ask whether women are working more because they want to or because they have to.

If it is true that 65% of working mothers would prefer to stay at home with their children, this suggests that they are working by necessity more than by choice. Link here.

More dubious yet is Rosin's assertion that "modern, post-industrial society is simply better suited to women."

She explains that the decline in manufacturing and construction work has left large numbers of men with few viable career options. At the same time job growth in the nurturing and caring professions has been growing rapidly. Thus, the majority of those working today are women.

Strangely, Rosin does not mention that many of the best jobs in the future will be in science and technology, and that these jobs seem to be better suited to the male of the species. Men do consistently better than women on standardized math tests, like the SATs, and the best students in science are predominantly male. As recent articles have shown, all evidence suggests that this is more nature than nurture. See John Tierney's New York Times article, link here, and Mark Perry's column, link here.

If boys do less well in school than girls, and if they are seriously under-represented in higher education, then perhaps the reason lies in the way schools have undertaken to boost the self-esteem of girls at the expense of boys. This unfortunate tendency was provoked by Carol Gilligan's book In a Different Voice.

For a picture of how this plays itself in the schoolroom we turn to another article by Hanna Rosin. In this week's New York Magazine Rosin shows how one form of what I and Mark Perry would call social engineering works: "For at least a decade, a subtle shift has been happening in the educational system that seems to be working against boys, who tend to be later verbal bloomers. New initiatives have emphasized more literacy skills in preschool, long before boys are ready. And early standardized testing-- now the norm-- sets up boys to see themselves as academic failures." Link here.

If boys are being conditioned to see themselves as academic failures and if the curricula tend to overemphasize subjects at which they are less adept, it should not be surprising to see them underrepresented in colleges and universities. Not because of any natural progression but because policies have been established to diminish them.

As I said, Rosin is not just indulging another round of feminist mythmaking. She is well aware of the negative consequences of this "war against boys."

In here words: "But allowing generations of boys to grow up feeling rootless and obsolete is not a recipe for a peaceful future. Men have few natural support groups and little access to social welfare; the men's-rights groups that do exist in the U.S. are taking on an angry, anti-woman edge. Marriages fall apart or never happen at all, and children are raised with no fathers. Far from being celebrated, women's rising power is perceived as a threat."

Ask yourself this. Is this outbreak of anger toward women just a speed bump on the road to feminist utopia, or is it the natural consequence of poorly conceived social engineering? Is it payback for the educational system's systematic bias against boys?

Are we really surprised that young men who are brought up without fathers in the new feminist dystopia are drawn to gangs and crime. We have seen exactly the same thing happen in the American inner cities over the past few decades. Single-parent families, headed by women, do not produce a cohort of healthy young males. See Kay Hymowitz' article here.

Astonishingly, those who are directing this great American social experiment have acted as though they thought-- consciously or unconsciously-- that it would be a good idea to have all of America emulate the example of inner city life.

Today Maureen Dowd wrote an amazing column about the behavior of high school students at Landon School, one of the toniest prep schools in the Washington suburbs. Link here. Incoming male freshman set up a draft, roughly like the NFL draft, where they would each select girls from their class and divide them into teams. Then they compete by getting points for the number of sexual encounters they have with the girls.

Keep in mind that we are talking about 14 year olds!

Culturally, Landon is an elite educational institution. It prides itself on teaching civility and good character. And yet, these boys seem more inclined to take their cultural cues from hip-hop music and ghetto slang. As Dowd explains: "One team was called 'The Southside Slam Pigs' and one boy dubbed his team with crude street slang for drug-addicted prostitutes."

Whatever happened to the notion that we should strive for excellence? Apparently the cultural revolutionaries among us have morphed it into a striving for deviance, a veritable race to the bottom.

[A warm welcome to those of you who got here via Instapundit or Dr. Helen. I want to thank Prof. Glenn Reynolds and Dr. Helen Smith for linking this post.]