Letters to the Editor
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OK psycprof
what's your explanation for why only 42% of college enrolees are men? Are young men just dumber than they used to be? Or are they just dumber than the young women? In either case, cite some statistics. Do you thnk it's a problem? If you don't think it's a problem in and of itself and/or signifies other problems in this culture, please explain why not. It seem obvious to me that the precipitous drop in male college enrolment is both.
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I'm not psychprof, but
Times have changed and so have societal expectations. Men were expected to go college, they were expected to sit quietly and work and achieve, they were expected to get jobs and support their wives and families. Society really *sat* on young people and forced them to conform. Young men also had distractions back then - drinking, sex, drag racing, motorcycles to name a few - but they were less pervasive. Now, they have iPods, cell phones, video games, the Internet, literally a finger-tip away.
Also, with women becoming successful and economically self-supporting, men don't need to do that role any more. So, in a sense, guys are freer than they used to be, but it doesn't seem to make them very happy. The old social systems worked, to a certain extent, but God help you if you didn't want to conform - or weren't part of the ruling class.
I taught martial arts for several years in an Experimental College and noticed something interesting (this is totally anecdotal and has no statistical significance). Young men didn't like it when young women beat them at something. If they couldn't consistently out-achieve the women, men would sometimes drop out. If I ran into one of those guys (this was a non-credit course), I'd ask him what happened and he'd say, "Oh, I just lost interest" or something. On the other hand, being challenged by either men or women only made my women students more determined. I also noticed that the women would practice together and encourage each other, and the guys picked on each other - a *lot* - but I couldn't really do anything to stop it, because they'd just wait until I wasn't there and pick on each other all the more. It was really sad.
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Anonymous
This must be my lucky day. A second civil post!
That there "appear" to be more fathers trying to avoid their parental responsibility than there are those trying for more access to their children is just that, an appearance. Read Sanford Braver's "Divorced Dads." For a long time, the media have gloried in every story, real or imagined, about the perfidy of men, particularly fathers. The reality is always at the very least, more complicated than "he's just a deadbeat dad," but the father's side of the story rarely comes to light. In the case of paying child support, non-custodial fathers have a slightly better record than do non-custodial mothers, but when did you last read that in the MSM? When fathers do fall behind in support payments, it's seldom because they don't care about their children, but because (a) they lost their job, (b) they had major medical expenses or (c) the mother refused visitation so they retaliated by withholding support.
But of course support and custody is just one part of the family law fiasco. In 7%-10% of live births, the mother has refused to tell the father about his child, and in so doing, has deprived him of his parental rights. Of course at any later time, she can come to him for child support for the child he's never seen or heard of. And it is fairly common for women to identify a total stranger as the father and then tell the court she doesn't know where he lives. This results in citation by publication, a default judgement and a massive support obligation, all for a complete stranger. Can't he contest that outrage in court? No, the case is res judicata because he "had his opportunity" to prove his non-paternity when he was served by publication.
I could go on and on, but the point is that it is precisely misandry in the news media that's created the perception of men as wanting no part in their children's lives. Vast amounts of sociology directly contradict that popular view, but who reads that? Who cares for the facts when the myths are so much more fun?
I agree that fathers' rights advocates sometimes seem to be their own worst enemies, but I think that stems from the enormous chasm between appearance and reality. Those men fight the reality of anti-father bias in family courts every day, and their words and actions may not appear sensible to those whose only knowledge comes from the newspapers and TV.
And I agree that men should play a greater role in mentoring the next generation. If the family court system agreed too, then we'd be getting somewhere, but it doesn't. When 35% of children are born out of wedlock, 16% of birth certificates list the father as "unknown" and 21 million fathers have only "visitation" rights to their children, that idea of mentoring comes to seem like a pipedream.
But the drastic anti-male bias of family courts and family laws not only hurts men, it hurts women as well. As former NOW president Karen DeCrow once said: "Until women give up power in the home, they will never achieve it at the office."
As to humor in popular culture, it is not male dominated, it is money dominated. The advertisers and show producers are just trying to sell a product. They have never had much of a sense of how their products affect people or the society they live in. That advertising exectutives are mostly men hardly excuses the misandry they produce.
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LSophia
With all due respect, your post doesn't make a lot of sense. You rightly point out that men used to be expected to go to college, get a job and support themselves and their families. Do you seriously believe that that is no longer true? If you do, I can cite a virtually endless list of sociology/psychology that contradicts you.
Your claim that men no longer need to be successful because women have become more so is even further off base. For one thing, real wages have declined steadily since 1973. That's why we have two people struggling to support the same family that a man supported by himself back in the 50s and 60s. Men are still highly motivated to be successful, I promise.
If you have any actual evidence to back up what you say, I'd be interested, but you seem to be long on opinions and short on facts on this subject.