Mark D White insists that men aren’t failing—they’re rethinking what it means to be good men.
David Brooks’ recent New York Times column, “Why Men Fail,” is one of countless articles commenting on Hanna Rosin’s new book The End of Men, which describes the growing success of women—and the corresponding decline of men—in education and the workplace. Several writers at The Good Men Project have commented on Rosin’s work previously, but I want to comment specifically on Mr. Brooks’ take on it.
According to Mr. Brooks, Rosin argues that adaptability explains women’s greater success:
Women, Rosin argues, are like immigrants who have moved to a new country. They see a new social context, and they flexibly adapt to new circumstances. Men are like immigrants who have physically moved to a new country but who have kept their minds in the old one. They speak the old language. They follow the old mores. Men are more likely to be rigid; women are more fluid.
Near the end of his piece, he writes:
Forty years ago, men and women adhered to certain ideologies, what it meant to be a man or a woman. Young women today, Rosin argues, are more like clean slates, having abandoned both feminist and prefeminist preconceptions. Men still adhere to the masculinity rules, which limits their vision and their movement.
I haven’t read Ms. Rosin’s book, so I can’t be sure how accurately or thoroughly Mr. Brooks is representing her arguments. But several problems quickly come to mind based on what Mr. Brooks wrote.
1. To claim that women have cast aside the gender conventions of the past while men haven’t is a gross oversimplification. As regular readers of this website know, lots of men struggle with our roles in the 21st century. We are trying to figure out how to be the best men as partners, fathers, and friends, as well as employees, employers, and entrepreneurs. Hearing that we’ve failed doesn’t make that any easier.
2. In the second excerpt above, Mr. Brooks contrasts young women with simply “men,” the former changing and adapting while the latter remain mired in the past. But what about young men—are they just as stuck in the gender roles of the past as their fathers and grandfathers apparently are? Hardly—the young men of today have grown up in the same world as young women, a world increasingly focused on creating equal opportunity and treatment for men and women alike. And many young men (and a few of us older ones) are eager to shed the gender expectations of previous generations and find out how we can be the best men we can be today.
3. But that is difficult too. I think Mr. Brooks ignores the societal pressures on men to “act like men,” and the ridicule men receive from many quarters when they do break those “rules.” Certainly some of this comes from other men—no one is going to deny that. But it also comes from the media, which loves to poke fun at the incompetent stay-at-home dad who fumbles whens diapering his kid or installing a car seat. The message is: He must not be a real man, hee hee.
And some women—not all, but a significant number—still expect their husbands or boyfriend to be “real men,” to take charge, to bring home the bacon. Rosin writes of men in Alabama laid off from their factory jobs who are reluctant to take other work, and their wives who have stepped up to take advantage of opportunities in the changing job market. Some don’t want to adapt, certainly, but might others simply be happy to stay at home while their wives work? And might some of the wives be uncomfortable with being the breadwinner in the household? Just because “younger woman” have “abandoned their feminist and prefeminist preconceptions,” not every women has, especially among the not-so-young, who may cling to old-fashioned gender roles as much as their not-so-young husbands, and put pressure on their husbands to “be men.”
Men are struggling with a lot these days, and some are dealing with it better than others. While Ms. Rosin and Mr. Brooks prefer to paint with a broad brush, proclaiming the end or failure of men, we see men trying to be better, which starts with figuring out what that means for each individual man. We aren’t failing, Mr. Brooks—we’re rethinking what it means to be good men.
Also read It Doesn’t Matter Who Wears The Pants: A Response to Hanna Rosin and the New York Times by Lisa Hickey
About Mark D White
Amen. Thanks for this Mark.
Excellent points, Mark. I doubt Rosin will print such ideas, even if she has encountered them AND chosen to take them seriously. There’s too much money to be made in simplemindedly bashing men as inadequate.
I have been generally annoyed with the assertion that Rosin makes about the End of Men. This is not the end of men, but the transition of male roles. Men are typically less inclined to reach out for help, so when the very ground that they have previously found stable shifts beneath their feet, it is harder for men to lean on others to avoid falling. And when we fall, we tend to refuse help getting back up. It has been drummed into our heads for many generations that you take care of things yourself. This struggle has been even more devastating for men when there are entire generations of women who have less patience, less tolerance for men who have lost their way. Divorces are up, mostly initiated by women. Earnings and education levels for men have been declining due to the emergence of women, and that is a sign of the times that women are demonstrating their greater abilities in these areas. But they get frustrated then when the pool of mates is limited to mostly those with less education, less income and lower expectations than they hold for themselves. They refuse to accept men they consider beneath them. So men have been burdened with both the struggle over our own failures to adjust and the heightened expectations imposed by women. Essentially, it’s harder to for us to advance AND the bar is set higher now than it ever has been for men.
Men are not ending, we are transitioning. Women are simply losing their patience with us as we find our way. Women can do everything a man can do, and vice versa. We still need each other and there will never be an end to men.
I have been generally annoyed with the assertion that Rosin makes about the End of Men. This is not the end of men, but the transition of male roles. Men are typically less inclined to reach out for help, so when the very ground that they have previously found stable shifts beneath their feet, it is harder for men to lean on others to avoid falling. And when we fall, we tend to refuse help getting back up. It has been drummed into our heads for many generations that you take care of things yourself. This struggle has been even more devastating for men when there are entire generations of women who have less patience, less tolerance for men who have lost their way. Divorces are up, mostly initiated by women. Earnings and education levels for men have been declining due to the emergence of women, and that is a sign of the times that women are demonstrating their greater abilities in these areas. But they get frustrated then when the pool of mates is limited to mostly those with less education, less income and lower expectations than they hold for themselves. They refuse to accept men they consider beneath them. So men have been burdened with both the struggle over our own failures to adjust and the heightened expectations imposed by women. Essentially, it’s harder to for us to advance AND the bar is set higher now than it ever has been for men.
And it doesn’t help that this is being done at the same time that said women are calling for men to help women.
Kinda like, “Fuck you got mine. Now help me get and keep mine. But fuck you and yours.”
I would argue thought that society hasn’t actually given men and women equal opportunity, they have solely focused on giving women equal outcomes, if that meants tipping the scales then so be it, Affirmative action isn’t a concept of equal oppurtunity, but one of equal outcome, so is pay equity. I personally have been involved in pay equity in my workplace and I would recommend that if anyone has the oppurtunity to partake in a pay equity session to do so, it will be very enlightening to say the least.
These programs were designed to give women (and minorities) a leg up, to correct for past injustices, the problem is the benefactors of these programs are not the people who were put down by the previous programs and the ways in which things were done. The people happen to share a gender or racial profile with those people.
You’re totally wrong, John.
If you think that slavery doesn’t cause a ripple effect to this day, you’re blind or obtuse or both. Sure the great-great-grandson didn’t experience slavery but the institutionalized racism that exists now and was legal until very recently affects boys and girls that were born in 1970 and and today. The fact that less than 10% of Fortune 500 companies are women is evidence of the ripple effect of a time when women couldn’t attend most universities and were actively discriminated against in schools in studies that didn’t “favor girls” like math, business, science, and many others.
So I may not have been actively or institutionally discriminated against, and yet there is still a lingering affect and prejudice against me.
Personally, as a white woman, I am happy to give up some of my privilege so that other people can gain. I can’t figure out why you are not.
These programs were designed to give women (and minorities) a leg up, to correct for past injustices, the problem is the benefactors of these programs are not the people who were put down by the previous programs and the ways in which things were done. The people happen to share a gender or racial profile with those people.
The thing is John the people that are benefitting from those programs today are (in most cases) suffering from lingering effects of past injustices.
In fact I’d say that a part of this “End of Men” craze is just that. Men were raised and molded to get out there and work to fit the role of “The Provider” with little care given to their own well being. The problem is now the “need” for men to be raised that way is quickly fading away but men themselves are being left lost with no alternative.
That is ligering affect of past suppression/oppression if I ever saw one.
Hannah Rosin and her husband were on GMA today…although the title of her book is provocative and she notes shifts in education and the labor force over the decades, she is certainly not advocating the end of men…she has two sons of her own, too…
I think what she really means is that so much is changing and that stereotypes are hopefully breaking up somewhat (or at least getting some holes put in them)…and that if we can get past the old cookie cutter stereotypes or the restrictive boxes of strict gender roles, then that frees both men and women to explore their full potential….
She is married and has 2 boys….I don’t think she is being negative or wants them to “end”…we all have to live together, men and women, don’t we? Yes, there are men and women who are competitive with each other, but to live together successfully as a team is a great challenge these days….
Leia,
I respectfully have to disagree. Part of Ms. Rosin’s book was excerpted in the New York Times a week ago, and what you are describing is most certainly NOT what she is talking about.
When she interviewed the members of the town in Alabama, some of the interviews involved a younger woman (I remember her being 19) who complained that all the boys she knew lacked directed and were playing video games too often. Ms. Rosin then used this, at several points, to generalize about how men, writ large, were failing to keep up among the younger generations.
The problem is that she’s using different standards to analyze men and women. So, when women took lower paying jobs for decades, it’s because “society told them to,” rather than a conscious choice made by individuals. Yet when men “play video games” it’s because they’re failing as individuals rather than indicative of a larger societal shift against men. There is clear bias here: when women fail it’s society’s fault, but when men fail it’s their own fault. This is Ms. Rosin’s biggest failing, she refuses to consider the possibility that men are only shifting away from education and jobs because the deck has actually become stacked against them.
In Ms. Rosin’s defense, she’s hardly the first one to put this argument forward. Hugo Schwyzer has been making this same argument for at least the past five years, and leftist writers like Amanda Marcotte aren’t that far behind.
Oh hell yes MikeL that is the difference.
When looking at how females are coming up short they were examined from the youngest girl in preschool to the oldest woman about to collect Social Security and the conclusion is they need help because they are being done wrong by society and measures were implemented. No I’m not saying the things that harm women have been fixed just pointing out how the examination went.
When looking at how males are coming up short the examination starts at today’s 20-30 ish crowd and ends with the relatively few men that make it to the upper echelons of the professional world and the conclusion is they don’t need help because they are the architects of their own demise and even when measures are proposed they are actively attacked on this premise (“the whole world is a men’s space” “because male privilege” etc….).
In Ms. Rosin’s defense, she’s hardly the first one to put this argument forward. Hugo Schwyzer has been making this same argument for at least the past five years, and leftist writers like Amanda Marcotte aren’t that far behind.
I’ve noticed one difference here. As far as I can tell Rosin doesn’t ID as feminist. Sure there are others (like the feminists that regularly hang out here) that will criticize her just like the other two when the need arise but damn if those other don’t get a lot of damn leeway (or at least one used to, but the other one is still considered untouchable).
Oh, that’s another manifestation of the standard media formula for assessing gendered outcomes. Everybody knows it by heart:
Women succeed = Yay for female initiative and drive!
Women fail = Boo, the patriarchy’s holding them down!
Men succeed = Yawn, more unearned male privilege.
Men fail = Gee, I guess men are inadequate losers.
She also has a daughter. And she has no problems pitting them against eachother as evidenced by the video in this article: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/07/the-end-of-men/308135/
The book mentioned in the article (END OF MEN) is just the interpretation of a feminist ideology of the current situation of men & women in which the blame of any negative out come in society when it comes to men should be laid squarely on men & their unwillingness to be more like women.
Its another way of emphasizing something called patriarchy is responsible for men’s negative out come basically.
@ Danny
She definitely does identify herself as a feminist Sir, at least she did in the past.
The book is just another sign of some of the realties facing the average men & boy’s in a society that is completely under the belief that since most stats show very few men on top then we should still focus most of the legal, social & financial empowerment on women & young girls instead of focusing the help were it’s needed the most regardless of gender for example the situation of boys in schools & colleges, it’s like since Obama is the president therefore we shouldn’t direct any help towards young black men.
That tells me that organizations that oppose any help or light being shed on the situation of men & boy’s do approach this whole issue as a zero sum deal by these organizations at least.