Are today’s so-called Single Young Males (SYMs) a menace to society, denizens of a hormonal limbo between adolescence and adulthood, or merely " emerging adults," products of nothing more menacing than demographic differences between theirs and earlier generations?
Are today’s so-called Single Young Males (SYMs) a menace to society, denizens of a hormonal limbo between adolescence and adulthood, or merely " emerging adults," products of nothing more menacing than demographic differences between theirs and earlier generations. It depends on whom you ask.
Manhattan Institute scholar Kay S. Hymowitz has her feet firmly planted in the former camp. In "Child-Man in the Promised Land," an article in the Winter issue of the conservative City Journal, Ms. Hymowitz implores SYMs to emerge from their prolonged bachelorhood of hard partying, videogames and serial, semi-serious relationships and grow up before they wreck society.
Then there are those like Robert Wuthnow, a Princeton sociologist and the author of a new book called After the Boomers, who don’t buy into the doomsday scenario.
In a recent Wall Street Journal interview, Prof. Wuthnow cites several of the crucial demographic differences between today’s 20- and 30-somethings and their parents and grandparents: today’s young adults stay in school longer, remain financially dependent on their parents longer, marry and have (fewer) children later, and change jobs and locations more often. Prof. Wuthnow concedes that this "extended adolescence" or "emerging adulthood" has both upsides and downsides.
Interestingly, many of Prof. Wuthnow’s upsides are Ms. Hymowitz’s downsides. Where Ms. Hymowitz sees serial, semi-serious relationships, Prof. Wuthnow sees young adults less likely to divorce precisely because they have lived with their potential spouse a while before marriage and children. Where Prof. Wuthnow sees "emerging adults" who are better educated, more financially independent and career oriented, Ms. Hymowits sees self-indulgent, professional students (mostly male) delaying adult responsibilities until they are thrust upon them, usually when parents stop paying the tab or their latest girlfriend gets pregnant.
Ms. Hymowitz’s writes that this "new hybrid state of semi-hormonal adolescence and responsible self-reliance" among SYMs breeds a superficiality, apathy and indolence which she sees as "a momentous sociological development of profound economic and cultural import."
She has a point. Many of today’s college-educated young adults feel little or no loyalty to family, friends, neighbors, employers or their country. In their self-centered world, strangers are viewed with disdain or distrust. One need only attend a Philadelphia Eagles football game to witness the phenomenon of packs of beer-swilling young men in expensive seats and designer clothing cursing, ridiculing and provoking out-of-town fans whose only offense is to cheer for the visiting team.
Moreover, I’m not convinced that divorce is less common among 20- and 30-somethings who marry when they’re older. As a lawyer, I’ve seen many first marriages between young adults who have lived together before marriage crumble at the first sign of stress. Its been said that there are many successful marriages but few blissful ones. A successful marriage requires patience, work and commitment, qualities anathema to many of today’s young men.
Nor should we forget the female counterparts to single, young males. Although modern attitudes among young women toward pre-marital sex have made it easier for men to shirk the responsibilities of family life, the bottom line is that single, young females are also victims of male immaturity.
In particular, it is young women whose hearts are broken by guys who just want to have fun. It is young women who feel humiliated, manipulated and exploited after (once more) discovering too late that their guy had no investment in a relationship in which they had invested mind, body and soul. It is young women who sublimate their hearts’ primeval desire for marriage and children to pop culture’s siren song of independence and freedom, and who then must settle for much less than they deserve as their biological clock winds down.
Growing up is hard. I struggled (if struggle is the word) with delayed-onset-adulthood until well into my 30s. Years later, there are still days when I want to run away and join the circus. I know I’m not alone. As Ms. Hymowitz says, "Adults don’t emerge. They’re made."
Is prolonged adolescence in young single males wrecking society? I don’t know. But I do know it can’t be doing it any good.
gmcoscar@msn.com
Read more articles by Gerald K. McOscar
As a 21 year old business management student who lives at home with his parents and has no wife, kids, 9to5 and mortgage payments, I can attest to the fact that "SYMs" are ruining the purity of American culture. I can honestly say that the world would be a much better place had I dropped out of high school, knocked up a girl, married her, got a manual labor job for 10 dollars an hour, and bought a 2 bedroom, 1 bath house with a white picket fence like a respectable person. That's the problem with today's society: people (err, men), are too educated, too self centered, and not impulsive enough.
"it is young women whose hearts are broken by guys who just want to have fun. It is young women who feel humiliated, manipulated and exploited after (once more) discovering too late that their guy had no investment in a relationship in which they had invested mind, body and soul. It is young women who sublimate their hearts’ primeval desire for marriage and children to pop culture’s siren song of independence and freedom, and who then must settle for much less than they deserve as their biological clock winds down."
Of course, because women are not responsible for their actions, and have no capability of making their own decisions. Wherever there's an unhappy woman, there's a bastard "SYM" who made her that way.
Give me a break. This is analogous to the economic exploitation arguments that presume the free market to be a zero sum game, where there are only the exploited "losers" and the exploitative "winners". As if the "losers" were only "losers" because they were taken advantage of - not as a consequence of their own rational choices and decisions.
There's always something isn't there? We finally did away with the nasty patriarchy, and now there's a whole new generation of men to cause a whole new generation of problems…
As convenient as it would be, all of the ails of American culture cannot properly be laid at the feet of "SYM"'s.
Comment by Patrick Mulligan | May 4, 2008
"…the bottom line is that single, young females are also victims of male immaturity."
It seems the author is not aware that today's young ladies are also very immature compared to say the 1960s.
They also live with their parents longer, delay having kids, they dress like a prostitutes, they use foul language, and there are also articles that report on the fact binge drinking is a little more prevalent among young ladies than young men.
A football stadium experience is mentioned,
but have you ever visited my Space?
Plenty of young ladies are very happy to be posting photos of themselves and their female friends drunk, vomiting, passed out, half naked et cetera.
Did some bad boy force them to do binge drink and post the photos?
and all those teen pregnancies?
Are we supposed to believe every teen girl who gets pregnant does not know where babies come from and is a victim of those boys you describe?
Really?
Even if young men are somehow behaving worse than young women - which you have now demonstrated - you still have not even touched why this is so?
Why are young people today behaving so differently than we were? ( I am a 48 year old man )
You can blame boys and give a pass to girls if you want, but why have boys become what they are today?
Could it be liberalism/leftism/progressivism and how it is finding new ways almost every day to "help" western civilization descend into decadence if not oblivion ?
Just off the top of my head,
It is not conservatives who for decades have been pushing for easy access to abortion for 14 year old girls and free needles for drug addicts( at least in Canada where I am ),
You are describing the symptoms (or more precisely, half of the symptoms since you give girls a pass) but you do not even touch the causes.
Comment by Friend of USA | May 5, 2008
If you enjoy amusing inconsistencies, one might wonder out loud why Gerald K. McOscar didn’t mention Kay Hymowitz’s companion piece in “City Journal” titled “New Girl Order”. In analyzing single young females (SYF’s for short) within her “New Girl Order” essay, Hymowitz has nothing but frank approval for late marrying, high education, high income, shopaholic young females. Every trendy criticism of single young males (yes, SYM for short) finds no corresponding note when it comes to their female counterparts.
Where young males, according to Hymowitz in “Child Man in the Promised Land” are partying too much, hanging out with male friends too often, picking up different girls at clubs every night, playing sports and games while guzzling too much beer, delaying marriage too long and working hard in tedious jobs, young females, according to Hymowitz, are seriously pursuing the legitimate milestones of adult-hood; namely, hanging out with girlfriends and sipping cocktails, shopping, getting picked up at clubs, traveling the world with their girlfriends, delaying marriage and pursuing glamorous careers. In the event you’re thinking this obvious contradiction appears to constitute a double standard where SYM’s can’t win and SYF’s can’t lose, then you’re thinking exactly right.
In our matriarchal society, apparently it’s the self-appointed role of middle-aged females to seriously ponder the problems and trends of marriage, family and romantic relationships among the younger generation. And, while Hymowitz is a highly intelligent and astute social analyst, discussing male-female relationships seems to send all women off the emotional deep edge.
When it comes to the current crop of SYF’s, Hymowitz does see problems, but only those problems that relate to society’s future economic issues regarding declining birth rates. Poor lifestyle choices, irresponsibility, delayed adolescence, addiction to Prince Charming fantasies, sexual experimentation tragedies, shopping addictions are signs of liberation and maturation for females, not the immaturity problems similar characteristics constitute within young men. Ironically, Hymowitz, who normally eschews feminist ideology, toes the party line of old guard feminists when it comes to men – men refuse to commit, men refuse to grow-up, men refuse to accept equal responsibility within marriage – basically, men are pigs. Apparently, women of all ages, eras and political ideology love this type of “us vs. them” analysis – and lately, it’s become a growth market.
Women seldom ponder the problems of men – do men actually have problems? But, great male sages, after consuming innumerable glasses of beer down through the ages, have developed some fundamental truths about problems with women. First and foremost among these truths is that women need men around to keep them rational. You can love a woman, you can hate a woman, but you cannot, for any length of time, ignore a woman. Women, individually and as a group, won’t stand for it; they crave male attention and go to great lengths to attract it. Positive attention, negative attention, whatever. When they don’t get what they consider enough attention, they go a little nutty. Does the recent and continuous male bashing in books, entertainment and the media mean women are basically coming to hate men? Not in the least, it means that men aren’t paying women enough attention, as usual.
Across the gamut of female writers, the “it’s all the man’s fault” is a constant and enduring theme – and one of the basic tactics for attracting male attention. Radical feminists, college professors, advice columnists, politicians, sociologists, astronauts, doctors or actresses, the female refrain is identical – men are somehow at fault for our problems. Whether it’s equal pay for equal work or equal responsibility in child rearing, men are the cause of injustice and somehow they always manage to come out on top in any situation.
Passing discretely unmentioned by feminists is that the New Girl Order clings to identical standards of men and marriage as the Old Girl Order did. Women want their Prince Charming, or at least the enduringly, popular template of the Prince. For instance, statistically, modern young women with good educations and high salaries want to marry only modern young men with good educations and even higher salaries. The rough hewn but willing construction worker comes up short on the marriage scale among women with Wharton MBA’s, despite all their lamentations about the male’s refusal to commit. Career women in their thirties, currently childless and increasingly destined to remain so, aren’t about to relax their high standards just to lasso a functional, but mediocre, husband.
Women still prefer marrying older men as well – sure, it’s liberating to see Demi Moore married to a much younger man, but for the most part, the older man as husband is the goal and the displayable trophy. And, these frustrating discrepancies between the ideal Prince C. design template and what’s currently available in the marketplace are the source of constant tensions between the sexes. Somehow this ancient/modern male selection formula seldom, if ever, works to female satisfaction, happiness in relationships is often elusive - and it’s all the man’s fault of course.
Comment by Pat Skurka | May 5, 2008