I've been planning to write a post about this for some time. You know, it was hard to tell who was responsible and who wasn't, way back in the days when I lived in a largely gay community. Gay men weren't pushing to have babies in those days, or marry. Our lives were totally about fun. (Well, we worked too, but fun was a major driver in our lives.) So in that era, I wasn't aware of the differences between men and women.
But after I moved out of NYC and into the rural area in which I now live, I met a ton of straight people with children. And one thing that has come through loud and clear to me is the childishness of the men, and the responsible nature of the women. I don't know what to attribute this to, other than obvious child-rearing differences, but it's a stark fact. The straight men I've met up here are much, much less responsible than the women. They're children, really, and the wife or girlfriend is the only one who holds things together. In many relationships, it seems the men have a mommy rather than a life partner.
What prompts me to write today is an article in the New York Daily News today about a book that takes an absurd tack in analyzing this situation. Oh, no, it's not the men's fault -- it's the damn, uppity women. Mind you, the book is being excerpted in the Wall Street Journal, so it's not surprising that the book's message is warped. Here's an excerpt:
But after I moved out of NYC and into the rural area in which I now live, I met a ton of straight people with children. And one thing that has come through loud and clear to me is the childishness of the men, and the responsible nature of the women. I don't know what to attribute this to, other than obvious child-rearing differences, but it's a stark fact. The straight men I've met up here are much, much less responsible than the women. They're children, really, and the wife or girlfriend is the only one who holds things together. In many relationships, it seems the men have a mommy rather than a life partner.
What prompts me to write today is an article in the New York Daily News today about a book that takes an absurd tack in analyzing this situation. Oh, no, it's not the men's fault -- it's the damn, uppity women. Mind you, the book is being excerpted in the Wall Street Journal, so it's not surprising that the book's message is warped. Here's an excerpt:
"Hymowitz's book, "Manning Up: How the Rise of Women Has Turned Men Into Boys," is excerpted in the Wall Street Journal, and discusses the "novel sort of limbo, a hybrid state of semi-hormonal adolescence and responsible self-reliance" that characterizes many young men in today's society.
Though she attributes a number of elements to the notable emergence of this boy-to-man subculture, chief among them are financial stability and changing sexual hierarchies."
