The child-man

I want to send it to my Dad and maybe he and I can dialogue about it.

Maybe you can bring Dr. Phil, too.

If you have to "dialogue" with your dad, you're in a pretty bad way.

Move it back another 30 years. I always finding it interesting when discussing family the mild astonishment that ensues when a 14 or 15-year-old girl had married a 19 ro 22-year-old man. It's amazing the number of relationships one finds in one's family tree that would be considered criminal today.

Oddly enough, my mother-in-law and my mother bother wed in their late 20's.

After age twenty-six for men and age twenty-three for women, however, age at marriage seems to make little difference [in likelihood of divorce.](Glenn and Supancic, 1984).

http://mtsu32.mtsu.edu:11422/315/adultdiv/divfactos.html

There is a temptation, when reading articles like this, to start placing blame in various directions. It's the "free milk" syndrome; it's feminism, it's the breakdown of the family, it's the consumer culture, it's any one of a number of disparate elements.

There's some truth to each of these as causes, but I think this problem's causes run deep. This poem of Wordsworth's has a glimmering of what is wrong:

"My heart leaps up when I behold
A rainbow in the sky:
So was it when my life began,
So is it now I am a man,
So be it when I shall grow old
Or let me die!
The Child is father of the Man:
And I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety."

"The Child is father of the Man." And the child and the man in Wordsworth's poem are both stirred by the sight of the rainbow, by transparent and ethereal beauty, by a glimpse of something rare and wonderful, lovely and mysterious: in a word, by transcendence.

What struck me when I read Ms. Hymowitz's piece was the seemingly conscious rejection by the men described of any sort of transcendent values. Art and the imagination are reduced to vulgarity and low humor, love and romance are nonexistent except when turned into the most unflatteringly utilitarian methods of tricking women into sharing their beds, work is viewed as an ugly necessity whose sole purpose is to enable the worker to buy more amusing toys; there is nothing of patriotism or loyalty, and certainly nothing of religion or faith.

It is a two-dimensional life, barely different from a purely animal existence. But if the Child is father of the Man, what are we doing to our children, particularly our male children, to produce such a dreadful reality? What are we teaching them; more importantly, what are we not teaching them? What does our life and behavior model to them that they see marriage as a prison and family as a joke, responsibility as slavery and the higher realities of life as elitist and undesirable?

The men are misbehavin', blame the women.
Uh...
In all reality, there's another aspect completely overlooked here: the average college grad has how much debt? Add in the necessity of 30K for the down payment on even a very modest small house and settling down isn't economically feasible for most people in their twenties. Those guys live with their buddies in a small apartment in Chicago because they can't afford to live any other way!

THEN take into account that thirty years ago, 26 WAS practically middle aged. Now, with life expextancies pushing 80 (with an expectation that tthey'll continue to climb, right or wrong) and people just don't feel like they're in as much of a hurry.

While the trend 30 and 60 years ago may have been young marriage for men, for most of human history they wouldn't be married until their thirties. Of course, they married 14 year old girls, but nonetheless, the innovation of late has been men marrying partners of their approximate age range.

I don't deny that there are other, troubling, factors here. Not least of which is the number of people i've met my age and younger who have no intention of ever having children. But there's a real tone of misogyny to the arguments as well.

What a great post (and great article).
As someone who considers my wife to be by far the better half, this all ran true to me. For me to marry her was a miracle. For her to marry me was a tragedy, but for some reason she loves me anyway.
If it weren't for her, I would still be stuck in the adolescence I lived in during my 20's. She really rescued me. My love for her, and for my two children, made me grow up very fast.
I look at this younger generation (I can't believe I'm saying that, I'm in my late 30's), and it honestly scares me. They are so self absorbed, they are so stuck in their own little worlds, going back and forth between their cell phones and their ipods, playing video games and then going to parties to see who they can hook up with. I don't think they realize the damage they are doing to themselves.
It makes me angry at the 60's generation. Thanks a lot for tearing apart the traditions and undermining all the conformity. Now what? What have you replaced them with? Look at what your children have become.
I don't see how society can be repaired. The damage is too great, and the lust for easy fun is too alluring. It will take something very drastic to wake young people up to the fact that life is more than fulfilling all your cravings.

I'm with Elizabeth Anne. People get out of graduate or professional school and have to finance $100K worth of debt over 30 years. That's what we did with our HOUSES, for pete's sake! I'm a member of the last generation of lawyers to graduate with no debt. I can't imagine how kids manage these days.

OTOH: [Warning: Modest Proposal ahead] Given that girls generally master reading and most of the academic skills based on it at least a year or two earlier than boys, why not take advantage of that age difference? Rather than hold girls back and rush the boys, let girls start first grade at 5, and boys at 7 (except for special exceptions at both ends.) Then encourage young women to marry right out of college and do their childbearing right away (presumably with somewhat older men), get the kids into preschool, and THEN do the grad-school/career thing. They will be in the same job market as their age-mates, without having to watch the biological clock, and, with any luck, married to mature adults.

And please, spare us the cow/free milk analogy. It turns me into a raging feminazi.

Although people are mocking it, the plain truth is that feminism has made many women insufferable.

Because the men were perfect saints the whole time.

I'm sure I filled the definition of "man-child" when I was in my 20s, although if I may say so, perhaps a little less crass and materialistic than Hymnowitz's caricature. I got married and bought a house when I was 32 - first child at 34, and off to the drudgery and all the rest (I'm kidding). I enjoyed my footloose and fancy-free 20s, and wouldn't do it any differently, but I also really enjoy being married and being a father now. I think most of the man-children will eventually settle down and become responsible fathers and husbands as I did, if only because having roomates into your 30s is really lame.

Also; wasn't Rod just reminiscing about his good-time bachelor pad lifestyle in D.C. in his 20s? Is it still being a man-child if you're avoiding responsibility by hobnobbing with Conservative Catholic intelligensia instead of playing video games? Just wondering.

This is too hard on the child-men. Sure, they're behaving like knukleheads. But since, rightly or wrongly, many women don't seem interested in marriage until after they're thirty, what else are men supposed to do? Might as well play Halo 3. At least it distracts one from the crushing loneliness.

Rod, you forget something in your analysis. In 1965 it was quite possible to graduate HS, obtain a good paying job in a factory, get married and have kids by the age of 26 and actually afford to house, feed, clothe and raise them.

Today, in order to make enough to take care of a family you need some sort of a college degree, at least an AA or tech degree. It is nigh unto impossible to find a job with just a HS diploma that will allow you to support a family unless both partners in the marriage are working. Even then, it is a struggle. So, today's CC graduate at age 20, or college grad at age 22 or 23 is at roughly the same position in earning power as the average HS grad in 1965.

This does not excuse the "child man" complex. Goodness knows there are more than enough men who fit that role even if they make good money. But if you are going to compare them with the average male their age some 40+ years ago, let's at least be honest and talk about the differing wages and educational requirements. Even for those males who do not fit the role of "child man" it is likely that they will postpone marriage until after they complete college and get a job.

Just like your 1965 male did in postponing marriage until after HS graduation and getting a job.

Submitting myself to the discipline of living the Catholic life -- specifically, living chastely -- forced me to mature, because it forced me to confront ways in which I avoided commitment as limiting.

Very commendable. Some of us had chastity imposed upon us unwillingly.

Just a note from what MZ Forest told Derek. Which was..

"Derek,

Some years I took to be 3. Regardless, youth marriages where divorce is more likely are those under age 20."

One thing I will note. For people, a little interesting math. If the man above was 26 and had some kids and married for 'some years', and that was to be 3 years. And he married a girl fresh out of high school, who was in the same class as his sister (also above), and he didn't marry her the minute he met her.. this has a man in his early 20's who had been dating a high school girl.

Oh, and if someone is viewing me as a livestock (source of 'milk'), then the LAST thing I'd want to do is marry him.

Guys in their 20s who still bond with Beavis and Butthead:

See Wikipedia, "Child-Man of Cornholio"

Fun does not equate to recklessness or irresponsibility. People can have fun without "hooking up", getting drunk or doing drugs. And guess what - WITHOUT the need for "marriage and children" to "man" them up afterwards. Taking care of children and committing to a partner do not turn one into a man. They merely give one *different* responsibilities, which at the end of the day is a matter of choice. At best, one will take deal with their choices to take a vow or have children (as they should) At worst, neither the marriage or children will effect their behavior, and they will do more than merely covet "adventures at sea, pinups, or sublimated war on the football field". Beyond this concern, any attempt to insinuate that having children and marriage per se is a requirement of adult status, is simply retarded.

sigliris: maybe the data is skewed based on the kind of people that read/comment on CrunchyCon, but I think it's safe to say: YES.

I know of many of my "dude" friends who have given up on long-term relationships because the girls weren't interested in marrying or weren't the kind of people they wanted to marry.

Strange, isn't it? Up, sometimes, is down.

I should say though, this was never my problem. I had enough trouble getting a second or third date.

You raised a lot of worthwhile points in last week's Points section, Rod; I'm not quite sure why, but I've been thinking a lot about the precarious state of manhood lately -- as the mother of a 20 year old boy, and aunt to several aimless twenty- and thirty-something nephews. I say precarious because we're in danger of losing a generation of boys to purposelessness -- women having successfully denigrated their status to non-essential personnel.
The older I get, the more I come to appreciate the qualities that distinguish men from women -- their resolve, physical strength and courage-- to the point of brashness; their single-mindedness; their sense of duty. The more that women inhabit traditionally male spheres, the more apparent it becomes that they tend to allow their judgement to get clouded by sentiment and wishful thinking. As just one tee-ninesy example, consider the number of women polled recently who freely admit to supporting Hillary solely because she's a woman. Yikes.
I couldn't possibly cover here the many "new" scientific revelations which serve to confirm what human beings have known for eons -- that there are innate, hard-wired differences between the sexes, and that those distinguishing characteristics are ideally suited to the biological imperative to perpetuate our species.
One thing that jumped out at me about last Sunday's edition of the Dallas morning news -- there also appeared on the Metro page a lengthy piece about the "epidemic" of teenage pregnancy. How interesting, I thought: over here in Metro we have teen girls prattling on about how hard it's going to be, but they're determined to finish school and "gain their independence." What they don't seem to grasp is that they've simply substituted dependence on the state for the perceived oppression of a traditional bourgeois marriage, a cruel trade. So, in one corner your clueless accidental mothers, crushed by the burden of shouldering family responsibility alone; and in the other, a generation of young men aimlessly roaming the streets. Maybe we're close to the day when children of modern progressives, exhausted from the striving, wise to the fraudulent claims of "liberation," will turn to one another for complementarity, and find delight in a home headed by both a breadwinner and a nurturer.
The book I can't put down at the moment is an anthology of essays by G.K. Chesterton on men, women, children, sex, divorce and the family called Brave New Family. I'm astounded by how well he pegs us moderns. Here's a snippet from a piece called "The Equality of Sexlessness:"
"What definite freedom is meant when the freedom of women is proposed? If it merely means the right to free opinions; the right to vote independently of husbands or fathers; what possible connection has it with the freedom to fly to Australia or score bulls-eyes at Bisley? If it really means, as we fear it does, freedom from the responsibility of managing a home and a family, an equal right with men in business and social careers, at the expense of home and family, then such progress we can only call a progressive deterioration.
"And for men, too, there is, according to a famous authoress, a hope of freedom. Men are beginning to revolt, we are told, against the old tribal custom of desiring fatherhood. The male is casting off the shackles of being a creator and a man. When all are sexless there will be equality. There will be no women and no men. There will be but a fraternity, free and equal. The only consoling thought is that it will endure but for one generation."

In 1965 the typical woman had married right after graduating or maybe worked as a secretary for a couple years first. She had a child within a year and a half of marriage (excepting those who had babies within 7 months). She spent her day cleaning, cooking, PTAing, ironing, washing and caring for the kids. Friday or Saturday night might involve a social activity with neighbors. Sunday was church. (Fact checked this with my wife who is 6 years older than me at 60).

The 26 y/o now? Ok I can make stuff up but based on my 26 y/o daughter it seems they live in a house with roommates, are on the fast track at work, volunteers 2 days a month for something, goes out to play guitar hero (whatever that is), looks for Mr. Perfect (high standards as she wants a soulmate) and goes to church on Sunday.

Does this make for a woman-child?

My wife's response to reading this article was "If I knew I was going to live into my 80's I wouldnt rush into marriage either".

This is so clearly multifactorial. People move more, lots of single parent families, big college debts, frequently changing jobs (daughter has changed jobs 5 times already moving up), self-esteem training in school, no draft, more affluence, more stuff to do, contraceptives, job equality by gender and race (mostly), parents working more (we lead the Japanese). Take your pick.

One last point about the parents from the 60's. Vietnam is something that the 20 and 30 somethings here just really wont understand. Cognitive dissonance is one of those overused terms on these blogs (Im still pretty new to blogging but it seems to pop up a lot). Take an 18 or 19 y/o kid brought up in middle America truly believing in God, Christianity,and America. Send him to someplace where you were asked to lie to further the government's cause (defeating Communism made anything ok). Now send him home to where he is reviled by some for serving (remember he already hates what he had to do). There is real cognitive dissonance. That person will never have the blind total acceptance of authority that a child of the 80's will have.

Steve

Erin:

gjoe, you "kind of" like your wife? I sure hope for your sake that she doesn't read this blog.

This is one of the many problems with missing transcendence blah, blah, blah...

Take a deep breath, dear. I think he was just being droll.

If you honestly think that's a new situation, Erin..

My father, a man born in the 30's. He worked at his job. When he came home, it was not 'quality time with the family'. It was plop his butt in the recliner with sports on tv, and the newspaper.

And so it was with most of the fathers in the neighborhood.

The studies pointed out, in the 70's (remember, that's the generation who grew up in the 40's and 50's), the father spent a matter of literally minutes per week with the children.

He had his grownup time, with the lodge, the bowling league, the nights out with the boys, the dinners and drinks with clients (depending on the type of job), etc. Mom, her free time activities usually involved having the children with her. Tupperware and bridge, and church activities. Maybe some sort of Auxillary or 'Ladies League' of some sort. So, they really didn't spend that much time together.

Heck, my father had to, at more than one point, ask my mother what GRADE I was in.

The only part that is new is not being married while doing these things.

What, I think, has changed is merely that women don't put up with it.

There's something very retro about this whole thread. I think the Beastie Boys said it best:

---

Well You Say I'm Twenty Something And Should
Be Slacking
But I'm Working Harder Than Ever And You Could
Call It Macking

---

>> "settling down isn't economically feasible for most people in their twenties."

That's a lie the economy tells young people so it can suck them of their youthful vitality.

It's amazing what a motivated twenty year old can accomplish these days. They start companies or establish non-profit organizations. They invent things. They travel the world. The news is filled with stories of young people doing all kinds of things that were previosly associated with older people. There is plenty of money and opportunity available to do these things, and the culture celebrates these things. THE ECONOMY NEEDS THESE THINGS. The only thing young people don't do anymore is have families. The culture doesn't celebrate that. Look at the terminology we use to describe it - 'settling down'. From the point of view of the economy, the time a person spends with their family is time they are not being productive - unless they are spending money - and I think everybody here at Crunchy Con can agree - lots of material wealth makes the best families, no?

Many people are told that their twenties are a perfect time to do something bold and risky when they are talking about their careers, but when it comes to starting a family, the message is go slow and get all your ducks in a row first. Get a degree, get a (good) job, buy a house, get a boatload of 'life experience' and most important, find your soul mate. Once all the boxes are ticked, then just maybe, if both of you have spent enough time finding yourselves, you might be ready to get married and have kids.

Who benefits from this situation? Who loses? The answer is clear. The economy wins, people, families and children lose.

Let's add insult to injury: Many of those who start out with dreams of being the next founders of Google or something, just end up spending long hours working and go home lonely. A lot of guys don't figure this out until they get to be about thirty. 'Settling down', suddenly looks a lot more appealing. Too bad they just wasted 10 years.

Good comment, Karen. One thing that bugs me to no end is when many behaviors and attitudes are presented and criticized as if they're a product of some "new" age.

Look, let's not avoid the ugly elephant sitting in the living room. Decent men are not getting married because it is very difficult today to find women who are not tramps, and not-so decent dudes are putting off marriage because so many women are tramps.

Oh, and if someone is viewing me as a livestock (source of 'milk'), then the LAST thing I'd want to do is marry him.

Well, the point of the saying is that you can't really sort out who wants you for you and who just wants the "milk" if you go into shacking up.

First for all that been said about the guys being haters there ain't no misogyny like the misogyny chicks inflict on chicks.

Really feminazis cause men without chests, big BS Rod. Duty, honor, and responsibility simply are not valued by the young men and women of whom we expect such sentiment. They have countless examples of such an expectation placed on themselves, without any follow through by the ones who proclaim the ideal. They seen that the ideal of marriage is BS, the young women watched their daddies walk out on their house wife mommies without skills and leave the family destitute. Hyper-achievement? No. Critical evaluation and assessment of what is. And the young men? They watched the nuclear holocaust of their families imploding, because of entitled bread winner men and door mat mommies.

Marriage has historically been about financial security and acquisition, childbearing, and transmission of wealth and power along a patriarchal family line. The former system only benefitted males. You had your little house elf at home, your mistress, and total financial control, pop a few kids out and now the systems set. Women, truly were property. and rates of adultery are not any higher now than they were in any past generation, it "may be" is just less tolerated

What the mid to late 70 brought was the beginning of a realignment of what marriage is, no longer the union of two families to produce offspring and to control, manage, and distribute resources, with the female partner passing from the possession of daddy to hubby, but of equal(ish) individuals attempting to form a lasting (chuckle) partnership. We haven't quite jumped the gap yet.

And its a big gap. Political alliance : Soul Mates, bit daunting really.

As an older person (one of the generationally damned "boomers") I'd like to say I think all this is rather unfair to younger people. Admittedly I don't have a large posse of 20-somethings, but the ones I do know seem like pretty good people. They're certainly no more messed up than the youth of my own generation. It's true that the age of marriage seems to have moved up. So what? Does that make them bad people? I'm sure that in time they'll mature and make pretty good decisions--as good as the decisions we all made, most likely. When Mr. Sig's colleagues fret about their children not being settled yet, he often tells them, "Statistically speaking, your children will probably live to be 100. So don't be in such a rush." I don't understand whence comes this impetus to dog on the younger generation and portray them as the worst bunch of slackers and losers in history. Anyway, how can my generation be the Worst Generation Evah if young people today are in fact the worst ever? We can't ALL get the booby prize, can we? Or maybe we can . . . maybe this is like the Midget League and everybody gets a trophy.

Oh, and if someone is viewing me as a livestock (source of 'milk'), then the LAST thing I'd want to do is marry him.

Well, the point of the saying is that you can't really sort out who wants you for you and who just wants the "milk" if you go into shacking up.

Posted by: Derek Copold | January 30, 2008 9:10 PM

The point is, 'milk' has always been available, no matter what anyone has told you. Whether it costs a little (though less than supporting a wife and kids), or nothing by finding one of 'those girls'.

Its simply the fact that nobody ever had to marry someone for 'milk'.

What they had to marry someone for was legitimate heirs and free cook, maid and nanny. Including for themselves.

Those you can sort out by 'shacking up' with them.

I just want to inject a point in regards to the generational issues at work here into the discussion. Despite all the "greatest generation" stuff, many people from that generation were not very good parents, especially the fathers. Many of the men were traumatized by war, everyone had lost a young man in their lives to the war, people were traumatized and their relationship with stuff was twisted by the great depression. These were not people who were well equipped to be good parents in many cases. Often the only thing holding life together was an excessive attachment to conformity and exaggerated acting out of traditional roles. When you've spent so much time in a world which is completely out of control, sometimes you will cling way too hard to only solid things available to you - in this case conformity and restricted gender roles. So those of us from post boomer generations need to be a little more sympathetic to the reality that the traditions and old wisdom we long for really were poisonous things in the lives of many boomers growing up.

However, boomers would also do well to recognize that their experience of gender and tradition was an exaggerated, unhealthy one. It wasn't particularly indicative of the way these things had played out in the past (not that dipping off further into the past would bring us to a time of perfection, just one where these things were experienced as more help than hinderence in most people's lives).

The other thing which I really wish boomers would be more congnizant of is that those who came after them don't know the tyranny of conformity but are being swallowed up by the tyranny of chaos. We've just traded one unhealthy, exaggerated, soul killing tyranny for another. Asking us to simply be glad that we don't live under the tyranny you did (of which we often have little real conception of) just doesn't cut it. No one wants to go back to the 50's, but if someone put a gun to my head, I would hardly have to think twice about choosing that over the experience of growing up with a single mom in a war zone in an inner city project building.

Almost everyone I know who's under 40 feels like we're being forced to re-invent the wheel all the time. There's no norm, no plan, no old wisdom to fall back on. We have to approach every choice, every problem and responsibility as if we're the first ones to experience it rather than just one more in a long line who we could have learned from. For many of us this isn't freedom. It's more like trying to find your way through the wilderness after someone took away all the maps because it's more fun to find your own way. But being lost isn't much more fun than being forced to stay in the car for the whole ride without ever getting out to explore.

Making it even worse is that if we don't figure it out - if we mess up the wheel - the stakes are high. Many people have completely screwed up their lives before they're old enough to have thought about having a value system by which to govern themselves. In the past, that time of immaturity was covered by cultural norms. Today, you just do what you want and pay for it for the rest of your life.

That's where our frustration comes from.

Anyhow, I just wanted to throw that in, for what it's worth.

Oh, definitely. I have never been able to watch a whole episode of Sex in the City. I much prefer, oh, House. And yes, I also like Futurama, and Family Guy.

When acceptable sex (including pornography) is widely available and relatively inexpensive in time, money and effort, it makes no sense for a young man (say, below age 45) to get married or to otherwise devote himself to one woman. Add to this the very real prospect of divorce, the loss of children, and alimony and child support for a least a decade, and a man truly has to be an idiot to get married. And in between marriage and divorce comes all the conflict assured by a feminist-inspired version of "equality." Who the hell needs it? Apparently not a growing number of young men.

The genie of easy sex is out of the bottle, and it will take a dramatic "re-whoring" of easy sex, with all its ostracism of straying women, and a political suppression of the sex industry, to bottle the genie again. I don't see it happening. In addition, there will have to be a re-establishment of the married man as "first among equals," with a dignity and family authority all his own for having sacrificed his liberty to the benefit of family, along with an increase in difficulty of divorce when there are children involved.

I can easily anticipate the outrage among the majority of young women reading this. "What about OUR sacrifice?" they will cry. Sorry, girls. There is no sacrifice in entering a lifestyle about which you have dreamed about since puberty. Go to the grocery stores and examine the magazine racks. Do you see a "Groom" magazine or a "Men's Home Journal?" Not a one, and you know why.

Someone please refresh my memory: how did that saying with "make", "bed" and "lie" go?

Destroy the honor and pride in fatherhood, and then gape aghast at the dearth of commited young fathers.

"How is shopping a more adult hobby than playing video games? It's not empowering to cast certain actions in a better light because they are associated with females; it's patronizing."

No, it's not. A guy can slam another guy for being a video geek slacker, but only the dumbest of men will get between a woman and a shoe sale.

What they had to marry someone for was legitimate heirs and free cook, maid and nanny. Including for themselves.

Those you can sort out by 'shacking up' with them.

Excepting the "legitimate" modifier, men can and do often get all those things by shacking up, and they don't need to make any serious commitment beyond a lease. The metaphor "milk" covers more territory than simple sex.

**On that, the gray ponytails must remain silent. All they have is the hope that, having turned their sons loose in the world without a map, habituated to the idea that their maps are useless, that the young men find their way out of the wilderness.**

Rod, I think Hymowitz got a lot of the symptoms, and they were/are funny in a rueful way.

But you got the cause dead on. And only you can explain someone like me, who got married at 26, never was and never wanted to be a Mack Daddy/gamer/drink beer and watch the NFL kind of guy (although I do have an addiction to Formula 1) -- and then got divorced at 31 because, and this is the best way to put it, I GOT MARRIED TOO YOUNG. (She had some of the issues women vaguely allude to on here, too, but I want to focus on myself and not rag on my ex.)

To be "married too young" seems crazy when you figure lots of 26 year old guys once upon a time already had two kids and lived happily (or mostly happily) ever after with their young wives. But ...

I knew all the negative things NOT to do (i.e., drink beer and watch the NFL all day Sunday) in a relationship, but I didn't know the positive things to do. The facts that my dad was a royal scr*w-up, and my stepdad is only slightly less than a royal scr*w-up, I realize belatedly are not coincidence.

Rod, it wasn't that they (and millions of neglectful/abusive Silent Generation/Boomer dads like them) stuck me in the big woods in back of my house -- which wouldn't exist any more, thanks to developers -- and asked me to find my way home sans map or compass. It was that, Sopranos-style, they kidnapped and blindfolded me and dumped me smack in the middle of the Jersey Pine Barrens and expected me to get out alive. (Sans map or compass.)

Richard Barrett has a lot of wisdom, too:

**(I've sometimes joked that I was the kind of kid my parents would have beat up if they'd been in high school with me)**

My experience, too -- and Richard sure doesn't sound like one of the frat boys from Knocked Up to me, Rod ...

**All of this gives me no small amount of anxiety thinking about parenthood--will I have anything to offer my kids? Will I be able to do better for them? Or will I just be the shuffling luh-hoo-suh-her they can't wait to get away from when they turn 18?

Perhaps some men aren't trying to stay children so much as try to correct the childhood they had?**

And people wonder why I don't want kids ...

(Oh, wait, TMD on the march -- raise the battle flags ...)

They don't nearly as often, while shacking up, OR marrying.

Interestingly, jidcat, it actually has been pointed out that in many cases, it is the MEN who wanted to get married, and the women who are putting it off, or simply refusing. Despite the old cliched image, all women aren't necessarily dreaming of marriage, and consider it a lifestyle they want to enter.

Weddings, of course, are a separate matter. *laugh* A huge party at which the bride is the star, wearing a fairy tale gown and getting to get every detail they want. And usually, that scenario is about as much a child's fantasy as dreaming of being an astronaut AND garbage man (hey, they get to drive the cool truck).

There's no 'Groom' magazine or 'Men's Home Journal', because both of those areas of life, wedding planning and care of the home, are ones where there's no work for them involved, they only have to show up.

You honestly think 'Ladies Home Journal' reflects women's desires? Its as much a professional publication, rarely bought by those who aren't involved in the maintenance of a house (unlike 'Bride', ever see a teen girl buy one of THOSE?) as something like the 'AMA Journal'.

Wow, well, I assume most have always suspected it. The men, apparently, are only in it for the sex. Because, apparently, if they can GET sex, they have NO REASON to get married. They see no other value in the institution, or in the woman they would be marrying, other than a safe, reliable, and hopefully desirable source of 'gettin' some'.

In return, women got financial security, social standing, children, and the lovely job of finishing where his mother left off. Both in raising him, and taking care of him.

Is that the basic premise here?

And people are wondering why women got disenchanted with the whole thing. They can now make their own money, they don't need you. After all, wasn't that the only reason WOMEN get married? For your wallets?

There, doesn't that make you want to go out and work harder, so you too can have a woman who considers you her personal ATM machine?

That's about the effect of this story many women when it comes to wanting to fix this situation.

Oh, and pornography AND access to sex has always been easy. And even more prevalent during times when sex with 'good women' (including wives) was the most restricted.

You want a time of the freakiest and most pervasive levels of pornography and prostitution? You'd have to go to the Victorian era. They raised both to an art form, and men STILL managed to grow up, and get married.

Heck, you certainly didn't marry your wife for the sex. Sometimes you barely knew her, and it was mostly arranged by the parents. And she wasn't really the best source anyway, since she wasn't supposed to enjoy it.

You simply got married because you were supposed to, and because there were OTHER social advantages. Many times, jobs wouldn't take you seriously, and others wouldn't view you as an adult until you did so.

For women, it was a bit more.. direct. Above the lower classes (who, despite the "Leave it to Beaver" view of life some have, always had women working), that 'Angel in the Home' wasn't allowed to have any other source of income, had few social resources outside of their prospective home. There was simply nothing in society for a 'spare woman', who didn't have a husband. Which is difficult, considering there are always more women then men, so even if everyone married who could, there were always going to be single women (not even counting wars and such, which increased the disparity).

Is that what is so desirable, then? Immature men who can always blame not only the women IN, but the women NOT in their lives for their condition?

Why would any woman want to marry so they can finish raising their child husband? (After all, they still would've been in the past, right?)

That's odd. Since I raised a boy, and he somehow knows how to dress himself, cook his own meal, clean his own apartment, and hold down his own job.

Does most of that better than I do. (Not particularly domestic.) Graduating this year with an engineering degree and already has a job, just gets an increase in salary as he goes from paid intern, to starting employee.

And he's straight. At least, that's what his girlfriend claims. (And to delve into cliches, his entire wardrobe consists of khaki pants and either boring button down shirts or oversized tees with snotty expressions, he's hardly what you'd call even 'metrosexual'.)

AND he's got a girlfriend he's going to get married to. Not to get 'civilized', he's plenty civilized, and responsible, already. He's not marrying someone as a surrogate 'mommy', etc?

Karen, I meant to respond to you yesterday re: the difference between the past and the present, but forgot to come back and do so. Since you're bringing it up again, I'd like to explore it a bit.

The difference between men of the past expecting to have leisure time with their friends or to watch or participate in sports is that the men of the past also took on a clear set of unique responsibilities when they entered a marriage. They were ordinarily the sole financial support of the family, and it was their responsibility to work hard to provide for all of the material needs of the family. Whatever leisure time they had came after they had met their responsibilities.

Today, men expect their wives to bring in at least as much if not more income than they do. I recall hearing a group of young single men at a place where I worked discussing marriage; they didn't even want to date a girl who wanted to stay home if she got married and had children, because that was just "lazy." In their view, it was the woman's job to bring in just as much money as they did while handling all of the childcare and household chores, and then smiling and waving to them as they headed off on weekend fun excursions without her or the kids.

Unlike the men of the past, they didn't think of marriage as something that ought to burden them with any additional responsibilities or duties. Combining their incomes with what their wives earned would just mean the ability to buy cooler cars and better toys; putting up with that situation was the "price" they expected from a woman who wanted more than shacking up.

I see this as very different from the past.

Brody, Surveying the current mainstream cultural landscape, I feel no allegiance to much of any of it.

I'm with you here, Brody. I have no loyalty to American culture in present form. What M said, too.

A suggestion to all the men posting here who feel lonely and bitter about the male/female situation: be countercultural. Demand more of yourself and of your girlfriends. Be different. You might be suprised.

IOW, give up the whoring around, start working hard at your job, and take responsibility like men used to do. Dump the TV/movies/bar life and all that girly-man stuff. Ignore liberal culture, just shut it out. Get a hobby that produces value, like hunting or fixing cars.

Tell women you won't even consider dating them unless they can act like real women. Ask questions: do you think cooking has some lesser value than a career? Cleaning? Childcare? Dump any woman who has the feminist chip yesterday; can you imagine being married to it? Go to church. Never date a woman without a stong moral code she is willing to talk openly about.

Fair warning: you won't believe how desperate most women are for men to stop playing games and start taking responsiblity. If you do all this, you will be flooded with women. So many are simply tired of trying to act like men. And you will also pick up a more intelligent and more moral type as well, as these women who demand more in a mate simply have nowhere to go today. Let's face it, most men are losers. Just be careful, because most women, even the high IQ set, are losers too. They simply don't have the serious skills required to run a household. The apple doesn't fall far from the boomer tree. Demand more.

Fair warning again: responsibility is something most men in this culture are clueless about. An officer in the military at meals does not take a single bite until after the last soldier is chowing down. He eats very last, if he eats at all. This is the part men have long forgotten, that every bit of authority has an equal level of responsiblity. No wonder feminism is so big these days.

max S says:

"Face it, by nature there are basically two kinds of men...

1) Pigs.

2) Pigs with a good women to dress them and make them behave.

I know. It ain't fair the the fair ones among us, but it is what it is.

(Gay guys are in a totally different cosmology.)"

Brilliant Max I can see you've been paying attention to all the anti-male propaganda of the last 40 years. And with such soul searching insight into the discussion we ought to get quite far. Figured it would not be long before someone ditched all men categorically with the usual "all men are pigs statement. I love it. If you are a guy how bout you speak for yourself.

A suggestion to all the men posting here who feel lonely and bitter about the male/female situation: be countercultural.

No, that's not "counter-cultural" that's insanity.

"...doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results".

What you suggest has already been attempted. Counter-cultural would be doing something unlike that.

And Franklin is right. There was definitely a sense of 'Droit de Seigneur' for the golden boys for decades before the Sexual revolution. Most of the time it was someone athletic, from status and money (usually all of the above) and if anything happened, someone 'took care' of the trouble with the girl involved getting a check and a trip to the country to 'stay with an aunt'.

Because, unless she was the social equivalent, you didn't marry her.

I remember what Franklin speaks of, all right. One of the disillusioning moments of my young life occurred as I hid out in the school library, where I went to escape bullying--since the Young Masters seldom cracked a book. I saw half a dozen of the school's finest young citizens, jocks all, beat the crap out of the first boy to grow his hair long. They beat him, threw him on the ground, and held him down while they chopped off his hair with a pair of shears. He was screaming. They were laughing. Nobody cared. They were never punished.

In junior high school, I watched the handsome jocks torment a poor kid with some kind of borderline mental dysfunction. I couldn't take it any more and told the ringleader he'd better stop it, or he'd answer to me. I was terrified he'd take me up on it, but he didn't. I guess he was more scared than I was. : ) The end result was that it became standard practice with the teachers to make me be lab partner or whatever with the messed-up kids, because they knew I'd look out for them and help them get the work done. In other words, they put their job off on me so they could ignore the problem. This stuff has been going on forever--but there are none so blind as those who will not see.

Sig, you were likely saved by that vestige of courtesy: boys don't hit girls. I'm guessing you didn't cross the line of shaming the bully in front of his sycophants, or you might have had an "accident" soon after, or been the target of a "practical joke".

M_David, I won't hold your honest disclosure against you. There's a definite "you had to be there" element at work. YMMV.

Well, Franklin, I hate to disagree with you, but you're just wrong in this case. I did shame the bully in front of everyone. He said, "What are you gonna do about it? Beat me up?" I said "Yes, and you'd better believe I can do it." I fully expected to fight, but he never showed up. He told my brother, much later, "Man! I was terrified of your sister for years!" So it really was fear that restrained him, not courtesy.

I'd fought with boys before that. They never seemed to feel any reluctance to assault me, and I fought back. I never started a fight with anyone. I only defended myself. And yes, I'm familiar with those "accidents" and "practical jokes," too. I've never understood where this theory that boys don't hit girls--men don't hit women--came from. Trust me, they do.

True. "Productive" hobbies stop being productive when people stop being responsible.

[But it's big money otherwise. For example, I caught 500 lbs of salmon last year (and my wife cleaned, froze, and cooked them, gasp!). This comes to about $5,000 tax free, with a mere $200 invested in gear/gas. That's real money. Ever check out how much plumbing repair costs? Changing a transmission? This ain't chump change hobbies. Tax free, baby.]

Yep, and buying a fancy boat and 500 dollars worth of tackle to mount a fish on a wall isn't. But most don't consider plumbing, fixing your OWN car, or hunting for actual food you plan on eating the next day to be 'hobbies'.

Just a note.

[It's kind of sad, how desperately you see a battle between the sexes around every corner.]

Its not about a 'battle between the sexes'. And its kind of sad that you apparently DO see that, in almost every post. What I am noting is simple equity. It shouldn't be a battle to budget, nor should it be a battle for a man to put his dirty socks in a hamper. If it becomes such, its between that couple, not the sexes. It'd be just as obnoxious if its the man spending like crazy, and the woman who dumps her dirty clothes all over the floor.

[I would assume a normal husband would like a clean house; doesn't he have a stake in it? Does he trash his garage too? I would also assume a normal wife would like to spend their money wisely; isn't it her family too? I don't see my spouse as some sort of "enemy." My wife and I would both be poorer and be worse off without each other.]

You would think so, wouldn't you? It isn't about being the enemy, again. It is that I have SEEN this for myself. Doesn't make the other person an enemy. Only inconsiderate, and taking the other party for granted. And it is simply easier to do so when its the wife because her contribution (noting, again, a traditional setup) doesn't come with a salary, or regular promotions.

My own father, again, and many of the men I personally knew, simply figured it was 'her job' to pick up after them. And many of the women I knew from that generation? They did.

And we ended up with a generation of men who were as infantilized as much as any 'child man', only in a different way. Men who couldn't boil an egg. Who didn't know how to operate a washing machine. Who had to ask their wives where their own socks were, and whose wives picked out their clothes.

[Hey, all I'm saying is just as no woman should marry some jerk who thinks he's above trying to bring home the bacon, no man should never marry a B who thinks she's above changing diapers or cleaning house.]

I've not met one. Though I don't run in that social circle, I would imagine. I run in the 'if I don't do it, I'm going to live in squalor. He won't, and we can't afford a maid' circle. You must make a great deal more money.

[Not unless paid employment is shared as well. Please don't make the claim the SAHM has it harder than the typical working stiff. I've done both, and I'll trade my job in and become Mr. Mom any day of the week. My wife, also who has done both, isn't dumb enough to trade, though. But I still have hope she will forget how bad working is!]

You're considering the raising of the children on a par with cooking and cleaning? I'm not talking 'quid pro quo' there. I'm talking about RAISING the children. Not 'tending' the children. Not changing diapers, washing clothes, or feeding them. I'm talking about interaction, discipline, making decisions, and simply having a clue what is going on in their lives.

[Could be. For all I know, feminism is a justfied reaction to the past male injustice, but I never saw those days, only the mess of today. Great job, boomers!]

Don't look at me. I'm post-boomer, child of that 'Silent Generation'. Boomers skipped me altogether. They were the older siblings. And somehow I STILL managed to experience it. What generation are you?

[My suggestion to X'ers (and Y'ers) today is to dump the ugly war between the sexes. It's your parent's game; why not create something new? Why accept a nasty culture where everyone is seething about each other all the time? Who wants to like like that? Seek something better.]

They have. Most of them. Again, my son is marrying. He's an engineer, his wife is a schoolteacher. They can both cook (he actually likes it), clean, knows how to run all the appliances, and she knows how to run a lawn mower, and do minor (the kind you do at home) repairs on the car.

As for what will happen if/when the children come, that is for them to figure out. She may stay at home, he may, they both may work and use daycare.

Which is how it should be. Humans are capable of a great many things, and doing it well. As one of my favorite quotes goes..

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.

-Robert A. Heinlein

Karen, Specialization is for insects

Robert A. Heinlein, meet David Ricardo and bend ye wee mind a bit around the economic laws of comparative advantage.

Heinlein always did have some weird sexual hangups - ever read his The Moon is a Harsh Mistress? Good writer, but into rotating sexual partners and other evolutionary dead ends that while plenty fun simply don't work in the real world. If you take his men-and-women-are-the-same view into real life, it falls apart.

Any culture that does not specialize with their strengths - that is, if they let their men change diapers and their women fight war - will soon get their a** kicked (check out our southern border, just brush up on your Spanish first). Natural law rules. Men and women are simply not the same and don't have the same skills. And the sooner people grow up and and realize the real world doesn't revolve around ideology, the more pleasant their families will be.

my son is marrying...As for what will happen if/when the children come, that is for them to figure out. She may stay at home, he may, they both may work and use daycare.

If they don't figure out gender roles quick, they probably won't need to worry about daycare. Here's a bet: the number of kids they have will be directly proportional to how quickly they "figure out" how to fill traditional gender roles.

But don't trust me. Find 100 families with a TFR=6+ who do not specialize around sex. It ain't gonna happen. Bottom line: gender-benders are an evolutionary dead end. Most linages go extinct, but it's rare to see such a clear case of cultural suicide as we are witnessing today in liberal-la-la-land.

[Heinlein always did have some weird sexual hangups - ever read his The Moon is a Harsh Mistress? Good writer, but into rotating sexual partners and other evolutionary dead ends that while plenty fun simply don't work in the real world. If you take his men-and-women-are-the-same view into real life, it falls apart.]

It was quote, not an endorsement of everything he ever was or wrote. Sheesh.

Any culture that does not specialize with their strengths - that is, if they let their men change diapers and their women fight war - will soon get their a** kicked (check out our southern border, just brush up on your Spanish first). Natural law rules. Men and women are simply not the same and don't have the same skills. And the sooner people grow up and and realize the real world doesn't revolve around ideology, the more pleasant their families will be.]

You honestly think that there's some genetic component to changing diapers? And, once again, who is talking about that anyway? Again, I'm talking about being INVOLVED with the children. Diapers are only the first few years. After that, its about listening, teaching, discipline and paying attention. Now, if you think men aren't up to parenting, that's good to know. I happen to have more faith in men than that.

Secondly, why 'changing diapers and fighting wars'? That's the dichotomy? Raising children or killing people? And since are we having the culture of south of the border serve as our example?

Again, my family is plenty pleasant. I hope yours is also. So is my son's, and my sisters'. Though my father's wasn't, and most of those people I told you about? They ended up in divorce courts, and had triple bypasses before they were 60.

I lived in that setup. I grew up on that setup. It wasn't all that pleasant.

Men and women are different. Men are different from women, women from men, men from men, and women from women. Because we are individuals, because we are human beings, and yes, because we aren't insects, all neatly slotted into worker drone, queen and warrior slots.

I recall what happened to people when life deals a blow. You talk about your life being worse without your wife? I'm not talking worse. Of course it is, we're a social species, and we do better when we work together. I'm talking about non-functional.

I'm talking about women who, once divorced OR widowed, or with disabled husbands no longer 'doing their duty' who couldn't drive. Who couldn't write a check, or balance their account. Who never handled money outside of their 'allowance'. Who had no idea how to file taxes, or what kinds of insurance there was, or how to make or even arrange for minor repairs, and I haven't even TOUCHED 'making a living'.

I'm talking about men, in the same circumstances, who didn't know how to feed themselves, how to clean their clothes, or their own environment. Were utterly clueless what to do with the kids. Didn't know what shots they'd had, who their teachers were, or as noted, what grade they were in.

That degree of specialization isn't even practical.

[If they don't figure out gender roles quick, they probably won't need to worry about daycare. Here's a bet: the number of kids they have will be directly proportional to how quickly they "figure out" how to fill traditional gender roles.]

*laugh* Sure, because being able to breed is directly connected to a man working 9-5 and a woman cooking and cleaning. Nobody who ever had another setup ever had children?

Odd, between all my sisters and me, there's 8 kids, and all of us hold jobs.

[But don't trust me. Find 100 families with a TFR=6+ who do not specialize around sex. It ain't gonna happen. Bottom line: gender-benders are an evolutionary dead end. Most linages go extinct, but it's rare to see such a clear case of cultural suicide as we are witnessing today in liberal-la-la-land.]

Umm.. Looking up 'TRF' and just not finding it. If you're talking about number of children, you're looking at the wrong person to talk to there. I work in a homeless shelter. I can tell you right now, ability to pop out children has no connection to anything other than ability to have sex, the physical capacity and willingness to carry to term, period. It seems to occur just fine with single parents, with people living on the streets, people actively using drugs, and people with a wide variety of mental illnesses, education levels, and disabilities.

None of which are 'gender benders'. Neither is a woman who works, or a man who can change a diaper.

Geez, even Biblically, the infamous Proverbs 31 woman held a fulltime job, and the whole chapter dealt more with her home business than it did with her ability to cook or clean (other than being good at ordering around the servants).

Oh, and even during the so-called golden age of the 30's through the 50's, the fertility rate was averaged more at 4. And that's prior to birth control.

6+ seems to be more common in 3rd world countries, interestingly enough. The highest indicator of a high birth rate doesn't seem to be gender roles.

Its poverty.

Karen, nothing M_David says about this will make any sense if you don't understand he thinks 'liberals' and possibly the entire west is going to depopulate themselves out of existence because they're not having kids. (Or, alternately, we will all be replaced by Muslims or Mexicans. Possibly both, wouldn't that be a weird culture?)

Erin:

But of course (and I know with whom I am speaking), having a stay-at-home mom and sole breadwinner dad is impossible unless a. dad makes well into six figures or b. family makes ENORMOUS financial and other sacrifices.

The latter of which is fine :-) but not for everyone, or even most families.

Anyway, those choices weren't nearly as difficult in the glorious '50s, for better or worse.

If sheer numbers was sufficient, we would've never won the Revolution. It isn't just the boots on the ground that wins wars, if wars is all we care about.

An intelligent army, good equipment, strategy, the other kind of intelligence means far more than simple numbers ever would.

In other words, a well educated, well trained populace with morale, with ingenuity, with innovation is far more important that just breeding like rabbits.

We get families regularly from, oh for instance, Somalia, numbering 11, 13 children at a time.

Anyone here pining to go live in Somalia? How about the 'over the border' that he referred to? Or any of those other countries?

Ever notice.. they're coming here, rather than vice versa?

You notice that too? They get genuinely socially Darwinian in ways that Darwin never intended, all the while loudly declaiming that exact same same theory as false, and that it will lead to that exact same sort of thinking.

Long comment strings are interesting. The best stuff us written in the middle, the worst stuff happens at the end.

Some of the commenters on this blog are awesome. Max Schadenfreude, M_David, Erin Manning and DavidTC are my favorites. Seriously, do you have your own blogs? I'd really be interested in reading more.

Max, I appreciate your apparent reverence for women as the source of civilization in men. But if you look at it for more than a couple of minutes, the glitter of this vision tarnishes a bit. It seems analogous to the Roman custom of providing Greek slave pedagogues to mind and tutor their youth. Once the youth was grown, he could pension the pedagogue off, or sell him to the mines, just as he pleased. The slave never acquired the status into which he inducted his freeborn charge.

Just so, in this view of things, women are imported in cultural shackles (though of the pinkest and prettiest variety) from the occupied territories of Women's Country, to serve the manpiglets as Supernannies. We housetrain them and fix them up so they can go out in public without disgracing themselves. Yes, women are the custodians and teachers of civilization . . . that must be why so many men freak out in resentful hostility when women insist on full participation in the institutions of that civilization. That must be why so many men respond to women's attempts at instruction by beating the crap out of them. That must be why Paul found it necessary to admonish women that they should just keep quiet in church. I'm seeing some inherent contradictions here.

I'm with Karen. I don't see men as little piglets. I see them as human beings and expect them to behave accordingly.

Not sure I like the pig metaphor, but a cop friend of mine remarked after his wife died that men without women are "bears with furniture."

I don't see men as little piglets. I see them as human beings and expect them to behave accordingly.

This blog post having scrolled of the list on the front page, we're doubtless reaching the end of the discussion here, but this inspired a question from the rusty inner workings of my brain nonetheless.

When you say you expect them to behave as human beings, in your heart of hearts, what do you mean? I know incredibly little about the issue of gender, but I would bet that somebody somewhere would argue that there is an unavoidable bias in what is meant by "acting like human beings" depending on whether or not it is a man or a woman saying it.

To put it another way--do women expect men to act like women? Do men expect women to act like men? I don't know, but I'm sure that's got to be an old, old discussion to which I just haven't yet been exposed.

Richard

"Long comment strings are interesting. The best stuff us written in the middle, the worst stuff happens at the end.

Some of the commenters on this blog are awesome. Max Schadenfreude, M_David, Erin Manning and DavidTC are my favorites. Seriously, do you have your own blogs? I'd really be interested in reading more."

Thanks. I started a blog, but abondoned it. Perhaps I'll finally take it up in earnest (or what passes for earnesty with me).

http://maxschadenfreude.blogspot.com/

Karen,

Quite right. My last post conflated two different replies, so it seems like I was attributing things to you that were not my intention. The first paragraphy was for you. The rest; Sig.

"I'm with Karen. I don't see men as little piglets. I see them as human beings and expect them to behave accordingly."

I thought you saw them as rapists. They are indeed human beings, but that is hardly an endorsement or benchmark of exemplary behavior.

One thing that a woman doesn't see is the behavior of a group of men with no women around suddenly change when women do come around. Regardless whether the men are "pigs" or "civilized human beings" the behavior/group dynamic changes radically in the presence of a woman. It is not reasonable to expect you to appreciate that which you can never see, but it does exist. You have far more power over men than I think you realize.

Oh yes, and not acting as if he deserves the flippen Congressional Medal of Honor for being willing and able to DO all that stuff. It belongs in the same category as being potty-trained.

"(c) do laundry, take out the garbage, mop the bathroom, and KNOW WHEN ALL OF THIS NEEDS TO BE DONE without having to be advised of it by the Woman of the House."

ROFL! Good luck!

BTW, while I don't believe in wars or armies or universal military service, I really really really believe in universal basic training. Even the sloppiest of veterans cleans up after himself, makes his bed, etc.

I made this comment to another article about this and I am going to make sure it gets out there to all young guys so that they know whats up before they give in and conform into marrying someone they are not truly sure about:

I would love to go back to being single without kids. I love my kids, but do sometimes resent them.I work and work and work to support them and my lazy "babysitting" wife who breathes down my neck about every damn thing I buy even though Im the one who makes most of the money and she could not hold down a job. If I have any advice for the guys reading this….STAY a Child-Man and focus on YOUR happiness. or just try to marry the right person. I made the mistake of marrying the wrong one and am basically stuck with it or I lose everything probably even my kids.