Full article here. (Originally posted ten years ago now, and I suspect more people are receptive to the problems raised…).
The basic idea: Many young and young(ish) American men are free of the social obligations to commit to women, get married, have kids, and thus languish in a suspended state of man-childishness.
How did they get here? By the radical and excessive cultural changes the last 40 years have brought about: I’m assuming the excesses of feminism, the excesses of equality.. which form a solid part of majority pop culture opinion and have often been institutionalized…
“Young men especially need a culture that can help them define worthy aspirations. Adults don’t emerge. They’re made.”
Hymowitz is arguing that the culture is failing young men in an important way, and it’s doing so by abandoning certain cultural values and the depth and wisdom those values sustain.
Do you find the argument persuasive?
Addition: Emily Yoffee at Slate picks up on the same idea: adandoning the institution of marriage does have consequences for all of us.
See Also: Kay Hymowitz In The The City Journal: Love In The Time Of Darwinism
From Will Wilkinson-A Response To Kay Hymowitz: ‘The “Menaissance” and Its Dickscontents’…Kay Hymowitz In The The City Journal: Love In The Time Of Darwinism…Kay Hymowitz In The City Journal: Child-Man In The Promised Land?…Kay Hymowitz At The City Journal: ‘How Brooklyn Got Its Groove Back’
From The Chronicle Of Higher Ed Via A & L Daily: Christina Hoff Sommers “Persistent Myths In Feminist Scholarship”…Wendy Kaminer At The Atlantic: ‘Sexual Harassment And The Loneliness Of The Civil Libertarian Feminist’