That's my question mark.
A friend sent the following. My brief and off-the-cuff response to him follows.
Social change
The weaker sex
May 30th 2015 The Economist
Blue-collar men in
rich countries are in trouble. They must learn to adapt
AT FIRST glance the patriarchy appears to be thriving. More than 90% of
presidents and prime ministers are male, as are nearly all big corporate
bosses. Men dominate finance, technology, films, sports, music and even
stand-up comedy. In much of the world they still enjoy social and legal
privileges simply because they have a Y chromosome. So it might seem odd to
worry about the plight of men.
Yet there is plenty of cause for concern. Men cluster at the bottom as
well as the top. They are far more likely than women to be jailed, estranged
from their children, or to kill themselves. They earn fewer university degrees
than women. Boys in the developed world are 50% more likely to flunk basic
maths, reading and science entirely.
One group in particular is suffering. Poorly educated men in rich
countries have had difficulty coping with the enormous changes in the labour
market and the home over the past half-century. As technology and trade have
devalued brawn, less-educated men have struggled to find a role in the
workplace. Women, on the other hand, are surging into expanding sectors such as
health care and education, helped by their superior skills. As education has
become more important, boys have also fallen behind girls in school (except at
the very top). Men who lose jobs in manufacturing often never work again. And
men without work find it hard to attract a permanent mate. The result, for
low-skilled men, is a poisonous combination of no job, no family and no
prospects.
From nuclear
families to fissile ones
Those on the political left tend to focus on economics. Shrinking job
opportunities for men, they say, are entrenching poverty and destroying
families. In America pay for men with only a high-school certificate fell by
21% in real terms between 1979 and 2013; for women with similar qualifications
it rose by 3%. Around a fifth of working-age American men with only a high-school
diploma have no job.
Those on the right worry about the collapse of the family. The vast
majority of women would prefer to have a partner who does his bit both
financially and domestically. But they would rather do without one than team up
with a layabout, which may be all that is on offer: American men without jobs
spend only half as much time on housework and caring for others as do women in
the same situation, and much more time watching television.
Hence the unravelling of working-class families. The two-parent family,
still the norm among the elite, is vanishing among the poor. In rich countries
the proportion of births outside marriage has trebled since 1980, to 33%. In
some areas where traditional manufacturing has collapsed, it has reached 70% or
more. Children raised in broken homes learn less at school, are more likely to
drop out and earn less later on than children from intact ones. They are also
not very good at forming stable families of their own.
These two sides often talk past each other. But their explanations are
not contradictory: both economics and social change are to blame, and the two
causes reinforce each other. Moreover, these problems are likely to get worse.
Technology will disrupt more industries, creating benefits for society but
rendering workers who fail to update their skills redundant. The OECD, a
think-tank, predicts that the absolute number of single-parent households will
continue to rise in nearly all rich countries. Boys who grow up without fathers
are more likely to have trouble forming lasting relationships, creating a cycle
of male dysfunction.
Tinker, tailor,
soldier, hairdresser
What can be done? Part of the solution lies in a change in cultural
attitudes. Over the past generation, middle-class men have learned that they
need to help with child care, and have changed their behaviour. Working-class
men need to catch up. Women have learned that they can be surgeons and
physicists without losing their femininity. Men need to understand that
traditional manual jobs are not coming back, and that they can be nurses or
hairdressers without losing their masculinity.
Policymakers also need to lend a hand, because foolish laws are making
the problem worse. America reduces the supply of marriageable men by locking up
millions of young males for non-violent offences and then making it hard for
them to find work when they get out (in Georgia, for example, felons are barred
from feeding pigs, fighting fires or working in funeral homes). A number of
rich countries discourage poor people from marrying or cohabiting by cutting
their benefits if they do.
Even more important than scrapping foolish policies is retooling the
educational system, which was designed in an age when most men worked with
their muscles. Politicians need to recognise that boys’ underachievement is a
serious problem, and set about fixing it. Some sensible policies that are good
for everybody are particularly good for boys. Early-childhood education
provides boys with more structure and a better chance of developing verbal and
social skills. Countries with successful vocational systems such as Germany
have done a better job than Anglo-Saxon countries of motivating non-academic
boys and guiding them into jobs, but policymakers need to reinvent vocational
education for an age when trainees are more likely to get jobs in hospitals
than factories.
More generally, schools need to become more boy-friendly. They should
recognise that boys like to rush around more than girls do: it’s better to give
them lots of organised sports and energy-eating games than to dose them with
Ritalin or tell them off for fidgeting. They need to provide more male role
models: employing more male teachers in primary schools will both supply boys
with a male to whom they can relate and demonstrate that men can be teachers as
well as firefighters.
The growing equality of the sexes is one of the biggest achievements of
the post-war era: people have greater opportunities than ever before to achieve
their ambitions regardless of their gender. But some men have failed to cope
with this new world. It is time to give them a hand.
Ends
Very gloomy but contains quite a bit of truth. I hate the idea
(though most accept it) that the "politicians must do something" (though to be fair the writer does talk about scrapping foolish laws).
When they do stuff, they create unpredictable bad outcomes. If they
hadn't started to pay for single parent families, the 'poor' men would
have had to adapt to the changing environment re technology. If they
hadn't criminalised drugs, poor men wouldn't have found a ready
occupation and income. And if they didn't over-professionalise
manual jobs, more men could participate. If they didn't buy into the
feminist hysteria (the public service is feminist and PC) about the
danger men pose to children, they could have attracted far more into
teaching jobs.
There will be lots of manual work required in the future. As society
becomes more affluent people want upkeep and beautification of their
homes and gardens - done by someone else when they don't have the
time or inclination (especially with ageing populations). Plumbing,
electrical work, building and all the associated trades are still
good avenues for males. My son has two friends going down that
route, neither academically capable but highly practical. And degrees are OK if you know
what you want and the will to get there. Otherwise they can be a
wasted purchase from the state.(Surprisingly for me, I am beginning
to wonder about user pays universities because the quality of the
student, the teaching and the qualification seems to have suffered).
By and large I still think the free market sorts problems better
than the state, including social problems like the one this article
identifies.
