Oh, good lord. If you want to understand gender inequality in the U.S., come visit my two-earner, two-mom family, where our combined income -- because of pay disparity -- means that we will work longer and harder to make the same as a family with a male earner. We see it on a daily basis in our careers, where men who are single-earners for their families get ahead at work because other men think they need to help the "providers" with a leg up. I could care less about equal distribution of domestic chores -- show me the money.
42
From my personal observation, as a woman of 66, women are no more kind, caring, and compassionate than men, nor are they less aggressive or competitive. Especially if they are of a generation older than mine, or if they are of any age and live in a conservative area, they do tend to do more virtue signaling. But their actual behavior does not match up to it. I also don't see how nature changing women biologically when they have babies applies to women who have no children. And none of this has any connection with a desire to do housework, or a feeling that it is women's special duty, which I definitely see more of in women of my generation but especially older.
11
Here are a few question:
1. How many parents want their daughter's spouse to be a stay at home father while the wife takes on all the pressures of financial support?
2. How many women are prepared to marry a man who says he wants to be a stay-at-home dad?
We're not ready for those sorts of discussions until we truly acknowledge that some women truly want family over career, some want both, and some want career. Few men have that option. A lot of the tension is coming from Third Wave Feminism and its questionable social narratives, little opposition, and free reign in the media. The reference to Suzanne Walters Piece "Why Can't We Hate Men" is a perfect example of an ideological tirade. Third Wave Feminism uses a few social constructs to advance its cause.
1. Women are victims.
2. We live in a patriarchy
3. Gender is a social construct
Good people can easily be divided in such moments because ideology trumps humanity.
Women account for conferred degrees by a significant margin: 62% of associate, 57-58% bachelor, and 60% of master degrees (https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d08/tables/dt08_268.asp?referrer=rep.... They have far more choices than men.
The number of fortunate 500 CEOs and members of the House and Senate combined account for a total of 1035 people. To put it in perspective women outnumber men in college be nearly 3,000,000.
14
Strangely incoherent article for Mr. Brooks. He uses statistics and articles to show the divergence of gendered outlooks and desires among young people. Then he says that it "feels phony" to him. Where is the rest of the syllogism?
21
Don't overgeneralize. There are many women who have made their way in the world in the last 50 years. Your survey data just indicates some recent backsliding on the recognition of women's rights, not a total return to the middle ages. I woud partly blame some notable bullies in political leadership. A lot of us men have welcomed capable and intelligent women in the workplace, and we continue to support them by calling for more daycare, more affirmative action, and more workplace accommodations for workers who are different from the old stereotype.
24
So much here--1. Our economic system (by its nature, not by conspiracy) co-opted the push for equal rights so that now a family needs two incomes instead of one to live a comfortable life and raise a family. 2. By valuing public bread-winning over "home economy", society has unfortunately pushed both men and women to see employment as the more worthy enterprise. Where are the men wanting equity in terms of staying at home? 3. We will make better progress if we celebrate the fact that male/female differences are partly nature, not all nurture--but variability within each gender is great and equal opportunities must be rigorously upheld. In this regard we still have a long way to go. 4. On the political side, I would embrace in a heartbeat a constitutional amendment to require one male and one female senator from each state. A civil society will only be possible if we balance masculine and feminine wisdom.
10
Like his older, but no less laughable compatriot, George Will, David Brooks, rich, white, male, middle-aged, divorced and remarried to a peppy young replacement wife, wants to explain the gender wars to us.
The gender wars are fake, he says, phony, just a lot of noise. He's not alone in this delusion, but we should thank for him repeating it, because when the train hits him, he won't feel it.
So thank you, Mr. Brooks--and thank you, George Will, and thank you, Bret Stephens, and thank you, Leon Wieseltier, and thank you, Richard Cohen, all the other millionaire middle-aged male, white, conservative columnists who are still hard at work telling us what women believe and what women want, and why they're wrong to believe it or want it.
Luckily for women, these guys will never learn.
26
What a silly fellow David Brooks is. What exercises in heroic reification. His consistent ability to postulate the world in which he'd like to live -- rather than the one that exists -- is more impressive than the president's only because, unlike the president, he both knows and cites the data that demonstrates that his perspective is totally invalid.
Here, he cites a mountain of data that indicates, frankly, that millennial men are some lost, aggrieved human beings, then simply sweeps it aside in a paroxysm of the sunniest wishful thinking. What an enviable ability.
15
With all due respect, the Gender War is the least of our problems.
7
Interesting piece Mr Brooks, it is not the usual pro feminist propaganda piece put out by the NYTimes.
I see the feminization and devaluing of the millennial ie hipster male here in Greenpoint.
Beautiful women walk down the street and although the men are alone or with other men they stare away from the women like they are neutered asexual beings.
Hillary lost the election for many reasons but near the top she ran an identity obsessed, women must have everything whether they deserve it or not and all men are evil except for her husband.
It ticked off many people including many women. She lost a majority of the white women's vote.
Enter the ego maniac demagogue Trump to take advantage of it.
Instead of running a gender/race neutral race like Obama, Hillary ran as an identity obsessed woman instead of an American like Obama did.
He served two terms. She was relegated to the dust heap of history.
Democrats don't do it again in 2016 and 2020.
Run qualified candidates male and female that can relate to all moderate progressive Americans and do not run on identity obsessed politics.
10
You know, Brooks, the problem with your thinking is it is ethnocentric - it's skewed by your distinct world view, which is clearly conditioned by living in a man's world and having a hierarchical perspective of what it looks like to thrive in life. It doesn't help that you simplify the spectral expression of human affect, gender and sexuality to an all or nothing premise.
What your article tells me is you are not curious.
17
"Spectral expression"? As in ghosts?
4
You sounds as moronic as DJT saying he, "‘I have tremendous respect for women."
23
"I’m betting that the millennial gender war is a figment of the political circus, and will be washed away by the giant force looming on the horizon: parenthood."
Mr. Brooks, this will happen when men begin having babies. I'm very familiar with family leave patterns was well as the numbers of women and men who relocate due to a spouse's job change. Women relocate because of hubby's job at at rate somewhere around 1,000 times more than men relocate for their wives.
I'm taking a break from processing some of the related paperwork of these changes to write this. I keep track of the data, and I've never been called by a research group. Strange, that.
11
The equality of men and women has been established by anthropology and social science. But women are more compassionate, patient, and persevering than men, having acquired these qualities by raising children. My guess is that when women finally achieve equal political power, they will unite internationally and demand laws making it illegal for mothers to send their kids to war.
5
I disagree that there is a gender war. There IS a growing awareness that women's rights matter, and I don't believe it is just women who say so. In addition, with more women's voices being heard, a perspective that has been silenced too long is rising in political power. Unfortunately, the GOP sees it as a gender war, and with a strong Religious Right who leans toward the "barefoot and pregnant" subservience of women becoming more vocal in our government, women are under attack. Let's see what happens when Trump's SCOTUT (under Trump) starts whittling away at the gains our country has made. Then, David, you will see a real war.
17
When there is a system that creates vast differences, between are groups, ethnic groups, gender groups, a search for the "cause" of the differences usually is to find blame in one of the other groups.
The system, in this case a growing laissez faire capitalism, is probably a good place to start looking for the roots of the differences.
2
I found this column pretty amusing. Brooks is one of the relative few on the right (if that can even be said of him at this point) who still have the courage to openly acknowledge the idea that facts exist and should influence one's opinion. That alone probably makes him an enemy of the people to many Republicans. So to see him spend an entire column citing numerous studies about gender beliefs and the growing conflict therein, and then end his evidence-filled column by saying "Nah, I don't believe it, fake news" is just classic. Maybe Brooks is more in line with his party than we thought.
7
So, the public will decide the reason Hillary did not get elected was that she was not conservative enough. Republicans could elect the first female president of the United States, and with a packed conservative court that could make most major decisions.
Right, because "gender wars" are always defused by parenthood. Any confusion millennials may have felt about what they were fighting for as to gender, will become crystal clear if they chose to parent.
Also:
"when egalitarian welfare states give people more choices, many women take advantage of those choices by dropping out of the rat race."
That certainly is NOT true in the U.S.. However far we still have to go for gender equality- as women have gained "choices", we have gained significantly, by every measure, in the career/employment sphere..
6
Sure the war might be fake, and sadly David Brooks neglected to identify the real war.
There is most certainly a war between a majority of Americans (myself included), and the wealthy old conservative straight white men who run things in this country.
From the CEO's who perpetuate sexism in companies large and small, to the gormless politicians like Donald Trump, Pence, McConnell, Cornyn, Ryan, and all the others. They've unwittingly created an uprising and a real movement to counteract the oppressive establishment currently wielding power. And the leaders of this nascent movement are women, and we all should be thankful for that.
Roy Steele
San Francisco
15
Your comments would be valid IF and it is a super big IF women had no babies during the survey period....'sadly' women did have babies, so that society can continue.
If a society makes little or no accommodation for the fact that WOMEN are the ones who get pregnant for nine months, WOMEN are the ones whose bodies give birth and who breast feed and likely raise the child in the early stages at minimum, then your comments would hold.
However this is NOT the way the world works. How many centuries before these basic facts are realistically taken into account. I am not a feminist so much as a realist.
8
If millennial men feel discriminated against because they're less educated, I can suggest a remedy.
Yes--the sun is setting on the day when you can assume that just because you're male you can dominate the workforce. Technology marches onward and, in this advanced technological society, skills seemingly inherent to women--attention to detail, empathy, the ability to communicate and work as a team, etc.--have become more valuable than, say, the ability to lift a piano. Adapt or die, as they say.
Despite all that (or maybe because of it), women and minorities continue to watch in frustrated bemusement as white men far less qualified are repeatedly promoted while we may be criticized for, for example, writing a memo in language too advanced for them to understand. The old boys' club hasn't lost its grip just yet.
White males are just as capable as any of us to function productively in modern society--many of the most qualified people I work with are white and male. But they've been coddled so long that many of them have lost their edge and with it their ability to compete.
24
VIEWED FROM A SOCIOLINGUISTIC PERSPECTIVE, The gender gap is yet further proof of Deborah Tannen's findings in her masterpiece, You Just Don't Understand. She writes that women typically communicate with the purpose of answering the question, Do you like me yet? While men typically communicate with the purpose of answering the question, Have I won yet? Tannen posits that women tend to communicate to build rapport, while men tend to communicate to give factual reports. I think that these attitudes are not attributable completely to social learning and acculturation, but also to hormonal and genetic factors. Thus, they are largely unconscious. Using Tannen's analysis, the outcome David Brooks observes is attributable to the fact that women have equal opportunity with men to communicate each in their own gender-related style. Beyond that, the styles as described, clearly show a difference in priorities. So the outcomes of equal opportunity will reflect what women believe to be valid priorities, as will the priorities of men be reflected. The outcomes in professional status and earnings may differ. But not for lack of equal opportunity in the Scandinavian countries. That said, it would be an interesting study to see what had occurred in the Soviet Union where so many men died in the war or were liquidate during the Stalin era that many more women studied medican, science and engineering than in the West because that's what the USSR needed. But what are they now?
6
It would be nice if Brooks made even a pretend effort at actually engaging with young people about their views on gender. Some old dude theorizing about our culture seems like a waste of ink when you could just, track down some young people. We're not hiding.
17
If you think the gender war is fake, you haven't been paying attention. Or are so blinded by white male privilege that you can't recognize the hostility, inequity and basic unfairness women endure every single day in every single aspect of their personal and professional lives.
22
It is not a figment of anyone's imagination. Maybe a "gender assertion" rather than war. The "backlash" has been coming since the '70s. Time for it to be over. I'm glad to see women asserting themselves in politics and in other ways--even here in a Red state. We need them, goodness knows. The oaf in the white house is giving men a bad name.
15
I am so confused. Brooks writes an entire article on how men and women are becoming more and more dissimilar and then, in the last paragraph, states that the hypothesis he just tried his best to prove is probably all just a bunch of nonsense.
4
At the age of 11 or 12 I myself walked into a bank and opened a savings account. I deposited one dollar from my baby sitting money. I was very proud of this. This was in 1948 or 1949. and I continued to add more. There was no adult with me.
Perhaps this happened because it was a small bank, division of a large bank, or my parents had an account there. I don't remember the details. I just assumed it would happen and it did.
Later, in another location, far way from my hometown, now age 22, I did the same exact thing only my deposits were now larger. I'm quite sure I could have received a loan after a year or two depositing money and I wouldn't need my husband there. I don't understand these horror tales of women dealing with banks back in the 50's.
1
So... let me see if I understand your point....
You didn’t personally experience the practice of banks discriminating against women. Hence it never happened.
If you’ve never been raped, does that mean that rape doesn’t exist?
14
Today banks are algorithms. They are not bankers.
Underwriters understand cash flow not cash savings, even if it incudes the interest from that first $1 received in 1959.
I cannot get a loan, but I can get approved for a nice apartment.
The system today matters not much on gender. The system just wants to own apartments and loans.
First they systemized communal lands. Now they systemized living quarters.
Next they will systemize you.
My country tis of me.
1
I find the "Nordic paradox" the most interesting thing in this article. It seems that many women in northern Europe have come to realize that work and success are not the only things that make life meaningful. It seems the most visible American feminists have forgotten that.
5
Speaking as an actual, real live Millennial, not a single word of this column made sense to me. In my personal social group, there's a mix of men and women who are the primary breadwinners in their families, and each family makes their own agreements on how to divide responsibilities. We've all grown up in a world where two incomes are required to make ends meet. What happens in our homes comes down to one thing: pragmatism. Perhaps those outside our cohort could learn a thing or two about adaptability, not to mention having the self-worth to reject rigid gender roles.
23
testosterone and estrogen are completely different molecules and have completely different actions......there is the difference......hatred of the other will only hurt you.....
1
I'm with Brooks in this case, that some of this feels fake. After all, in whose interest in it is it to have men and women at each other's throats, and to convince men if they can that they are the victims? One guess and his initials are d t.
1
July 3, 2018
To quote Hamlet :
LAERTES :
[…] Then, if he says he loves
you,
It fits your wisdom so far to believe it
As he in his particular act and place
May give his saying deed, which is no further
Than the main voice of Denmark goes withal.
Then weigh what loss your honor may sustain
If with too credent ear you list his songs
Or lose your heart, or your chaste treasure open
To his unmaster'd importunity.
Fear it, Ophelia; fear it, my dear sister,
And keep you in the rear of your affection,
Out of the shot and danger of desire.
(1.3.27-39)
https://www.shmoop.com/hamlet/gender-quotes.html
jja Manhattan, N.Y.
2
I can't tell if this is a joke, but you do realize that Laertes is supposed to be a jerk, right?
3
This is absolute drivel. Mr. Brooks is dangerously bordering on Friedman-level risibility...
3
June Cleaver arise and I'm buying stock in a kitchen apron company. I'll also expect twin beds and a gal that can fold underwear and iron sheets.
3
If Republican SCOTUS choices end up reversing Roe v Wade, will white male Mr. Brooks admit that is an attack on women's reproductive rights in the US? When Republicans over turn gender equal pay laws, as in Wisconsin, will Mr. Brooks admit that is an attack on women's economic life? When Republicans still nominate white men in much greater proportion for public office than those men represent in our population, will Mr. Brooks admit that Republicans don't value women as much as men? Can't write about nonexistent gender wars and not actually note the changes conservatives and Republicans have imposed with control of the federal government in all three branches.
8
As I read these comments, I am extremely grateful that I am a gay male and I'm in a same sex marriage. Is this what heterosexual couples do all day? Fight over gender norms when it comes to household chores and child rearing? No wonder my straight male colleagues are always eager to go when I organize a happy hour. Who wants to go home to strife?
6
My husband and I have been together over 45 years and have never fought over gender norms. When we first moved in together we agreed to split tasks and money 50-50 and there has been no attempt to "renegotiate" since. True, he's always made more money than I have but he's male and men get paid more. If I managed to make more than he does he'd be thrilled.
6
The political war between the sexes somehow seems phony to David Brooks yet he cites myriad statistics showing enormous gaps between male and female attitudes. What gives? I think it's pretty obvious that Trump's support comes from older, less educated and more male voters than does Democrat support.
5
With respect to white and Asian middle class, there is parity between men and women until childbirth.
I just don;t see how this parity can be maintained with children in the picture - this is biology, not sociology. Developmental psychology demonstrates that a child NEEDS sustained physical (eye and body) contact with the mother, less with the father. If a woman privileges her children over work, that means she is listening to her (and her child's) body. If she privileges ambition... Even when labor is 50/50 i don;t see how a mother would have motivation and drive to compete with childless coworkers.
4
If spending years staying at home to do housework and childcare is so great, why are men not fighting tooth and nail to do so?
24
Don’t forget the part about losing your earning power and competitive edge (which you will never recover) and winding up impoverished when your husband trades you in for a younger model!
16
Then there are the women who end up like my mother-in-law, a 50s housewife who was widowed in middle age. She was intelligent and energetic. During World War 2 she was in the WAVES and did bookkeeping for a naval base at a professional level. But the women in my father-in-law's family were taught never to work outside the home or handle money. After marriage, she never even looked at any of her financial statements, let alone balance her bank account. She apparently had no idea how much money her husband made or what their living expenses were. She also left all the home and car repairs up to her husband, including hiring them out when needed. After he died she was lucky to have two sons, both living nearby, one of whom my dying father-in-law instructed to take care of the finances and the other all the property repairs. Without them she'd have been almost completely helpless. The ability to do housework is not enough to get anyone through the real world.
2
Absolutely, and these women often become easy prey for predatory men who know how to manipulate them. It happened to my great-aunt, and also to the mother of a co-worker. When the husband who had controlled all of the family finances died, both women were suckered by sweet-talking younger men who swindled them out of their late husband's savings, even despite the best efforts of their children to protect their interests. Neither woman was clearly mentally incapable of managing her own affairs, so the law protected their right to make bad decisions -- right into the poorhouse. Or more accurately, the nursing home, on Medicaid, because once the money was gone their younger beaus moved on to new victims, and it was nursing home or homelessness. Golddiggers come in both genders.
1
Maybe many millennial men like Trump for the same reasons many millennial women don’t like him.
6
Cheating on all 3 wives and hook ups with porn actresses is not popular with women who take marriage vows seriously.
8
They like him because he made not paying contractors and workers a standard part of his business model??
That’s weird.
5
The more I have read Mr. Brooks opinions and heard him speak on TV, the more I think he just doesn't get it on many issues, especially on women.
12
I don't feel like there is any more tension between the sexes now than there has always been. It is somewhat cyclical. Anyone remember the backlash of the 80's, chronicled by Susan Faludi in her classic book? Misogyny has always been with us. Some Millennial men are resentful because they are at the bottom of the current economic pecking order and think that a woman got their job, but others have grown up in homes where their mothers had successful, rewarding careers and for them, that is normal and how it should be. I'm always leery of generalizing across the board for an entire generation, other than in a strictly factual sense (i.e. Millennials came of age when personal computers were in widespread use), because when you're talking about that many people, individual points of view vary widely, and there are many subgroups. Opinions also vary depending on how the question is worded, so I don't put too much stock in polls -- most of them simply aren't very well done.
10
Yikes! Has Brooks not read the mountains of research that shows parenthood sharply reinforces traditional gender roles? Has he not noticed that women are roughly equal to men in salary and status until parenthood? Has he not read the mountains of research that show marital satisfaction plummets after parenthood? And his solution is parenthood? Yikes! Has he not read that US is one of few developed countries without parental leave, universal day care and universal access to medical care the includes maternity care? Has he ever talked to a young mother about her challenges? Wow, seriously under researched and half baked Brooks!
24
The worst part of this article is the use of the word "fake." Trump's term, which means, "Anything I disagree with" should not be normalized. It is a weapon he uses to delegitimize facts that he doesn't like and viewpoints he disagrees with. To see the Times adopt it, is exceedingly distressing.
7
If he hasn't himself been a victim, every man who works in a liberal setting knows of a man who has been the target of a slander campaign in the workplace or school setting. They have seen the young women huddling together, repeating empty gossip, claiming that they don't feel "safe" around some heterosexual man in the workplace. Increasingly, heterosexual men know they can't really object to policies or express their true views without being accused of making the workplace "unsafe." All of that, right up to the hysteria of the Title IX on campuses may be changing things for many liberal men. They've been allies for decades. But can we expect that to continue when they become the targets?
4
I'm a little flummoxed by the statistic claiming that more people believe a traditional home life with a male breadwinner and female homemaker/mother is best. Maybe this explains why marriage rates are dropping.
6
Mr. Brooks, as a conservative this may come as a shock to you. Men and women are different both physically and psychologically. They see the world differently. The differences need not lead to conflict, but they sometimes do. Yes, each gender is sometimes capable of understanding the other's point of view, even adopting the other's point of view. However, right now, American politics and culture is under the control of a group of childlike males who lack both a moral governor and a soul.
As a Marxist I was glad to see your argument that the gender war should end based on "economic equality". The problem is economic equality between men and women is far from a reality. And, should it ever happen in the Trumpist America built into our future, economic equality might soften the rough edges of genetic gender differences, but it won't eliminate the differences.
Let's celebrate the differences, because more women holding the reins of power may be the only way to return our current angry, aggressive, destructive culture to a human level.
5
The 2002 BBC documentary 'The Century of the Self' (available on YouTube) examines how Sigmund Freud's nephew Edward Bernays used his ideas about subconscious desires to create the 20th century PR/advertising industry and sell us all-- via mass media-- deeper and deeper into increasing degrees of rejecting all social constraints on individual behavior in favor of promises of personal fulfillment limited only by our capacity to dig up raw materials, process them, form them into ton after gigaton of consumer goods, and then accumulate and discard things at ever increasing rates until we now find ourselves on the brink of global climate disruption which is bringing to bear the sixth great extinction event in our planet's history.
After accompanying Wilson to Paris after WWI (and having helped get the country into the war before that), Bernays realized,
"When I came back to the United States, I decided that if you could use propaganda for war, you could certainly use it for peace. And, propaganda got to be a bad word because of the Germans using it, so what I did is try to find some other words, so we found the words Council on Public Relations." (7:50, the documentary)
Interestingly, Bernay's first major use of his new invention was co-opting the language of liberty-- "torches of freedom-- in the service of the tobacco industry during a public relations coup exploiting the sufferance movement to overturn social conventions against women smoking in public.
Watch the film.
6
Male backlash, white backlash, Christian backlash - it's all the same. The people in power are angry their stranglehold seems to be eroding and they become enraged and see it as a slight on themselves. Our current president was elected by those who want to make sure everyone who is not a christian white male remains a few levels below them. It's far from fake.
25
I fell asleep in sex education class and the part about men having abortions and giving birth.
What exactly did I miss?????l
I went to a catholic school and we were taught about immaculate conception and priests remaining celebrate and those poor girls and children should bare the consequences of sex outside of marriage and since men did not become visibly pregnant...that was what god wanted!
5
Why did 53% of white women vote fro Trump in the last election?
53% of white women in America did NOT vote for Trump. Considering that total voter turn-out hovered around 55%, that would be statistically impossible.
I think what you meant to say is that- of the white women who voted in the 2016 élection- 53% voted for him.
That’s a big difference. Not the same thing at all.
4
Probably because these women either depended entirely on their husbands’ income and couldn’t or didn’t want to get a paying job themselves, and/or wanted their economic situation to improve from an increase in their husbands’ wages, and saw T as the means to achieve this.
2
The only way for women to truly escape gender stereotypes is to not have children, and for god sakes don’t wear high heels! Motherhood is a trap, in all but rare situations of the partner truly embracing gender equality. Don’t have children, no workplace problems. Stay at home, give up your income, have children? Comfy cozy until infidelity, divorce or death. We need fewer people on earth, to give other species a chance. Stay childless and you will be more free to be!
11
"In the Nordic countries, where gender equality is highest, unexpected differences have opened up between men and women...It seems that when egalitarian welfare states give people more choices, many women take advantage of those choices by dropping out of the rat race." Mr Brooks, I have to take issue with this common misconception that comes up frequently in these debates about gender issues in Europe vs the US. It seems that you are equating "gender equality" with government policies for things like year-long paid child birth leave and quotas for women on boards. But just because a number of European countries have these policies does NOT mean that women face fair treatment in hiring or in their workplace and career advancement. I lived for a year in Germany a decade ago as a visiting professor at a German university. Even with 'family-friendly' government policies in place, it was abundantly clear that women in the workplace were still stigmatized and were not given fair treatment in hiring and promotions. In these circumstances, women are not "dropping out of the rat race;" they are (perhaps wisely) dropping out of a race that is still clearly rigged against them, where they will not be judged according to their abilities fairly relative to their male counterparts. You can have gender equality government policies in place but you can't make men "think" them. So what women still do in European or Nordic countries is NOT evidence that they'd rather be staying home.
14
I want to point out that in the "nordic countries" there are high rates of sexual harrasment in the workplace. So that women are not being offered true equality.
5
Millennial woman here. I grew up with something of a paradox: my father was the breadwinner, while my mom stopped working to care for me when I was born--a traditional arrangement. In a less traditional sense, they have never treated the home realm or the work realm as the domain of one or the other. Responsibilities and respect were shared.
They raised me with high expectations you might think were more fitting for a boy. I was to make excellent grades, go to a top school, and start a promising career, all of which I've done. I've never seen myself in competition with men, as if it were a zero-sum game. But I have seen males my age struggle to find their sense of purpose and gender role in a way females do not. We expect the world of ourselves because our Baby Boomer parents taught us to. My goals in no way involve a "war" with men, but I see the collateral damage.
14
I've been fortunate enough to be a young millennial woman who marches alongside her young millennial male friends. There's a flip-side to this female movement and its the fight against toxic masculinity and its long-standing and long-rewarded place in our society. Feminism serves both men and women and its frustrating to hear the word thrown around as synonymous to "female-only" or as a cause of gender divide. But my personal experiences do not speak for the whole, I think even liberal men my age are having difficulty finding their place with (as this article argues) male-backlash and increasing pressure to act within male gender norms.
Getting off the sidelines and joining this fight is no longer seen as the masculine thing to do, which might be why some decide to just stay put.
8
That's a very, very surface-level reading of the "Nordic paradox."
There is plenty of sexism, sexual harassment, and sexual assault in Nordic countries and their workplaces. And if these countries are anything like others, it is likely greater in management roles and stereotypically male lines of work like science, engineering, and finance.
The Times has even run an opinion piece on Swedish women and #MeToo, and how hard it is to have serial harassers removed, complete with, "Sweden is also not a place where pretty much anyone gets fired. Ever. A full-time staff job is perceived as a right, and the employer’s responsibility to handle and protect a problematic employee will often supersede the concern for a safe workplace environment for women. So most men accused of sexual harassment or even rape in Sweden still hold their jobs."
But because of the social safety net and accommodations for parents, women who don't want to put up with sexist workplaces have more options to "drop out of the rat race," so to speak. That doesn't mean it was their first choice.
14
Mr. Brooks knows he is being inflammatory by pretending he thinks the 'Gender War' is 'fake'. He himself quotes the statistical differences between millennial men and millennial women's political party affiliations. He knows "Me too" wouldn't exist without gender differences. His article makes no case for his headline. Disappointing and not very informative.
7
This article is of a piece with the article from Brooks from last week. In last week's article he took issue with Justice Anthony Kennedy's belief in an individual's right to define own existence. Brooks in a cowardly move, and he really was at his cowardly pseudo-intellectual best last week, placed himself as the "defender of the community" and defined Justice Kennedy's position as leading to "monad" type humans, Nietzsche and Aristotle as ideal types of "monad", meaning Brooks essentially in a cowardly move defines all people he doesn't agree with as demonstrating selfishness, or concern primarily with self, and not being for the community.
Now today in this article Brooks essentially is for the traditional family, prescribed roles for men and women. Never mind that who knows how much talent is squandered, especially that of women, in this tradition arrangement. For Brooks the essential thing is that community as he defines it must be preserved with of course pseudo-intellectuals such as himself at the top of society. Brooks is essentially a priest in secular guise, with all the cowardice of a priest defending his position as leader of the community. Never mind that over and over throughout history precisely the type of humans Brooks would define as "monads", out largely for only themselves, have proven to be the greatest flowers of the human community while the Brooks type humans are mostly utterly forgotten. And today women cannot realize themselves and have family?
6
"Parenthood." That's when numerous women in the office are gone for months at a time, and the remaining men have to shoulder extra work. This does, in fact, happen.
1
In my org we had two men on paternity leave within close proximity to each other. The remaining team members, regardless of gender, picked up any slack. It works the same way when someone goes on vacation or gets sick. What a weird assumption that 1) only women would go on parental leave, 2) that many women would all leave at once, and 3) that only men would add extra work to their plates. Seems like a biased and inaccurate account of the logistics of maternity/paternity leave to me.
11
It's not an "assumption." I have personally witnessed a protracted period during which different women were out on extended pregnancy leave, sometimes overlapping, sometimes consecutively. The fact in this case was that, because of expertise and responsibility, the work fell to a gay male colleague, over a period of time that stretched across years. Men might be taking more parental leave, but I haven't seen it. In the bad old days women were told to accept lower salaries than male counterparts because men "have families to support." Today childless workers are told to pick up the slack because pregnant couples are "raising a family. This is bound to breed resentment.
I can't argue that a company culture that places unfair burdens on employees, regardless of the reason, would cause resentment. But that sounds like a company-specific problem. However, you seeing that happen at your company and generalizing it to all companies, then blaming "parenthood" and women, is absolutely an assumption. Unless you have statistical evidence suggesting that this happens across the board, I stand by my statement that this sounds like a biased and inaccurate account of parental leave dynamics. I mean heck, if we look only at the example of my company, then there is no problem at all.
2
Ah, Davis, David, David, women's fury, outrage and disgust is not based on economic discrimination alone. And by the way we are still paid significantly less than males, lose jobs and titles when we are pregnant and give birth, while men are usually given more money.
What would your mental state be if a person weighing maybe 80-100 more pounds than you, with significantly more muscle mass, were able to, with more or less impunity, invade the most intimate parts of your body sexually and you were not believed when you sought justice? What would your mental state be if you became pregnant after an intimate encounter while using birth control (which does have failure rates) and when seeking to terminate you were called a slut, but the male co-participant was called a stud and never judged as being ethically involved in the event.
#TimesUp
13
'An increasing number of high school-educated men say they are the ones being screwed by modern society, not women, who are better educated on average. More and more college-educated men adopt a Jordan Peterson-style posture, arguing that the assault on “male privilege” has gone too far, that the feminist speech and behavior codes have gone too far"
It's all about education!
Between those capable of objective fact based reasoning and the emotionally driven regressives (angry and disillusioned -degraded and inexorably Headed towards economic irrelevence)
Add to that the sexual angst being experienced by this crop of males who have to compete with much more discriminating females with more attractive choices.
Tough luck! - Just being male can't push your way into the drivers seat anymore.
LONG overdue!
12
"An increasing number of high school-educated men say they are the ones being screwed by modern society, not women, who are better educated on average. "
Up to high school level, education opportunities are equal between men and women. Given the women are better educated on average after K to 12 and have better opportunities in life, the question is that whose fault is it? As a man, I must say that it is our own fault that many of us foolishly think that scholastic achievements do not represent masculine virtue. A misconception historically perpetuated by con MEN who know that less educated people are easier to control. As an old man saying to the young men, don't be a chump.
12
Male backlashers: it isn’t women holding you back and keeping you from getting and keeping good jobs. Look out at machines, computers, and the increasingly educated world.
And then look in at what you are doing to keep up, and to make sure you and your kids are getting a good education. The anti-education bias among the white lower and middle class is what holds it back.
Mr Brooks knows this, but he is too busy compressing this issue together with What Women Want (brought to you by a man) to make any sense in this article.
18
I've been responding the likes of Kirsten Gillibrand by wanting to start a "Me-Too-Much" movement built along the lines of "The Fight Club." I think she exploited Franken for political gain.
Men don't need women to define our masculinity for us. Nor, do we need women refereeing sex. If you think pornography is an affront, turn away. If you don't want pick up lines, don't dress and act provocative.
I am tired of Gillibrand taking the blame for what is a male's problem. These things are true. Either Franken did it and he's guilty or he was set up by Roger Stone. Either way the fault is not Gillibrand. So why does she get the blame?
As to "we don't need women refereeing sex", well not if its homosexual male on male sex certainly, but if we are involved, yes our views matter. And this should be obvious, but if your pick-up lines offend, then they are pretty ineffectual pick up lines aren't they?
10
Sorry, but did you just say "white male Millennials" have shifted to the GOP?
Let me check. Yes. Yes, you did.
So, I guess your headline is correct. The "gender war" IS fake.
We don't have a boy problem. We have a white boy problem. They resent that in a multicultural country, they aren't the center of the universe anymore. The GOP under Trump wants to change that. But it's impossible.
23
The author makes absurd misuse of Pew survey evidence in support of his contention that millennial men feel more pressure than members of previous generations to act stereotypically masculine. He compares them to the way their elders feel now, not to the way we old folks felt at the same age. All he proves is that young men are young. None of us is as quick to throw a punch at 65 as at 25.
10
Wow! Logic combined with the understanding that correlation is not causation. Love it. Hope Brooks is paying attention.
4
Viv la Difference
Now up everyone's wages.
4
More self-contradictory drivel from Brooks who tells us that "high-school seniors...believe that the best home is the one where the man is the outside “achiever” and the working woman is the primary caregiver".
Apparently while the likes of Brooks simultaneously moan that "it’s men who face the high burdens — to provide financially, to be tough, to be successful in their careers".
Women are never going back to an Abrahamic diminishment, David, no matter how nicely dressed your arguments for them doing so become.
11
Anyone who feels the need to be "tough" and "masculine" is a distorted creature. Evidently this relates to being physically tough, which is a contemptible primitive characteristic that causes far more trouble than anything positive, both to the individual and a community. Tough and masculine reminds me of the white demonstrators at Charlottesville VA - negative, violent, destructive, useless. Reassertion of millennial masculinity is the province of a mindless minority.
7
Brooks keeps trying very hard, in column after column, to rationalize, misrepresent, misdirect, and propagandize. Very creative, very obvious, and consistently unconvincing.
6
. . . .Sayeth the man whose opinions are printed by the Newspaper of Record, which predicted the walkover election of Mrs Clinton, even convincing Donald Trump , who told his wife, who hated Washington, DC,. :"Don't worry! We won't BE in Washington after this . I haven't got a chance of being elected. Read the NY Times . .
"...predicted the walkover election of Mrs Clinton"
Did the NY Times do that? Or did it merely state what the odds of a Clinton victory appeared to be?
2
I have been a HS teacher for 35 years, and taught now in 7 different countries. What have I seen that sheds light on this question?
I am typically viewed by others as a White Male (although my father was an orphan in the Depression, illiterate factory worker/farmer, working class, multi-generational Irish Appalachian stock - so, not so much really).
I tell my students in the International School I teach that I am not white. Holding up a white sheet of paper I show them that my tanned arm is NOT the same color, and declare that "white is not a color, but a state of mind."
Recently a white American 17 year old student in class responded by asking in an annoyed way, "We all know you're a white male; why don't you just be what you are?"
I said to her, "If I thought of myself as a white male (with all the attendant historic and assumed privileges) I would be weak when I must be strong, and I would be blind when I must see clearly."
There is an African proverb that I quite like that's relevant here: If you want to know about the crocodile (the alpha occupier), ask the frog (those who are eaten as snacks).
Loss of assumed privilege means loss of a guiding, clarifying *story*, a simple pattern that leaves individuals free of the obligation to image a world and a life, and go and live it experimentally. This is a large burden on modern humans.
So?
Welcome to the world of the frogs. As I tell my mostly asian very privileged male students, "Suck it up and get a real life."
2
Because of toxic, ingrained hyper-"masculine" culture, men have access to the male traditional, higher-paying, more dangerous jobs that women are actively but unofficially discouraged to have - first responder, construction, armed forces, police. Higher suicide rates? The same supports are available to men. If they don't avail of them, that's the fault of women? It's often asked - why aren't there shelters for battered men? The answer is because they haven't done the work of organizing and support and fundraising that women have been doing for 50 years. As to ending up in prison, if men stayed home and helped with house work and child care, they wouldn't have the "opportunity" to be arrested, now would they?
The real answer to all your points is that overall, some men feel pressured into a stereotypical masculine, tough-guy, loner archetype that leads down a predictable path. Men can change that and many do. They are the ones taking responsibility for their actions rather than roiling in the manufactured self-pity of pathetic men's rights organizations.
6
There are always men enraged by women’s autonomy, whether women are starring in a comedy reboot or “Thelma & Louise”; playing rock or video games; demanding their reproductive rights; running for president; or, you know, doing anything that some men don’t want them to do. The depths of this rage betray a deep fear about a loss of male power that’s been central to the cultural, social and political landscape for decades. Time's up.
17
Millennial men need to put the game console down and focus on their future
I told my 18 year old son that he can be anything he wants to be in life but if he becomes a republican then I was a total failure
11
The male of very ancient times saw the value of reproducing lots of male children to work for him so that he could acquire lots of wealth and later on unnecessary and obscene amounts of money as well as wealth. These males went as far as to ban all forms of sex except heterosexual, banning the other forms so that reproducing workers and child bearers would increase the powerful and greedy males wealth, including monies.
To this day, males, (and females who buy into this greed-determined system), continue to amass unnecessary and obscene amounts, and, also, to do this - - they continue to underpay their employees. Furthermore, to get their employees to work for them for substandard incomes, the employers pit their employees against persons whom are identified as immigrants, doing this by threatening to hire the immigrants for lower wages if the employees do not continue to work for substandard salaries. And, the employees, in any case, hire non-nationals so as to increase their unnecessary and obscene amount of wealth and money.
Solution: Stimulate the economy by using the obscene and unnecessary amounts owners get in order to eliminate poverty and sub-standard wages.
5
David is now mansplaining gender issues to us women who have been in the workplace for decades and/or are politically active and informed.
Being women, I assume you expect us to be grateful and thank you. While smiling.
Actually, it's no thanks to either you or the GOP.
10
The short answer: Senator Al Franken
I just finished reading his book, ".. Lion of the Senate," that was published when he was proud to describe his challenges and achievements in a profession where his talent as a comedy writer was marshalled in the performance art of politics.
His raucous comedic sensibilities that entertained millions for over a decade on SNL, had not the least similarity to those such as Bill Cosby, Harvey Weinstein or Roy Moore. Yet, spearheaded by Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, and the silence of Leader Chuck Schumer, Franken was too devastated to oppose his party, without destroying it
This is what war is. When generalizations of the enemy lead to atrocities against innocents.
3
Are you saying that Franken stepping down from his second successful career (reluctantly, voluntarily) is an actual atrocity? You know what the word means, right? Just in case, here is a definition: an extremely wicked or cruel act, typically one involving physical violence or injury.
I like Franken a lot, and wish there had been more nuance in the #metoo conversation in its early days but of course there wasn't. I am sorry he is 'gone' but he is fine. There is no need for hyperbole or pity.
5
Here are some synonyms for atrocity: abomination, cruelty, enormity, outrage, horror, monstrosity, obscenity, violation, crime, abuse; barbarity, barbarism, brutality, savagery, inhumanity, wickedness, evil, iniquity
How about this restatement using these words: "Franken's being drummed out of the Senate, was an iniquity, an abuse of process, that was an abomination of the rule of law that is expected to be exemplified in the Senate of the United States.
Not all banter between the sexes are evil obscenities, and to generalize anodyne comedic behavior as abuse is to paradoxically lessen the travesty of the real thing.
I said this earlier and I'll say it again. Either Franken did it to which he deserves to lose his seat or Roger Stone put him up to it to which then Roger Stone not Gillibrand deserves your ire.
However, if it was fake, until Franken left all there would be was claim after claim after claim which would destroy his party and all he fought for. It was absolutely right he had to leave. Stop blaming women for men's sins.
4
In the face of growing economic equality, why is politics dividing men and women? FAKE NEWS, thanks to The Times, et al.
1
I agree. The so-called "gender war" is not real, at least among the bipartisan critics of Mr. Trump. On the other hand, Trump manipulated the fears, resentment and ignorance of his white male base. Trump's campaign was predicated on explicit promises to white men which were in essence a declaration of war on women:
* The worst white man would once again be better than the best brown man.
* White men could once again compel women to stay home and have babies.
* White men could once again harass and assault women with impunity.
* White men would once again control women's bodies.
* Unqualified, under-educated and unenergetic white men would once again sit behind the desk while women and brown people did the hard work.
Little wonder that Trump's white male base considers those the best of times. But times have moved on, and we are now in a far better place--these Trump Republicans being the notable exception.
8
Minor correction:
I agree. The so-called "gender war" is not real, at least among the bipartisan critics of Mr. Trump. On the other hand, Trump manipulated the fears, resentment and ignorance of his white male base. Trump's campaign was predicated on explicit promises to white men which were in essence a declaration of war on women:
* The worst white man would once again be better than the best woman or the best brown man.
* White men could once again compel women to stay home and have babies.
* White men could once again harass and assault women with impunity.
* White men would once again control women's bodies.
* Unqualified, under-educated and unenergetic white men would once again sit behind the desk while women and brown people did the hard work.
Little wonder that Trump's white male base considers those the best of times. But times have moved on, and we are now in a far better place--these Trump Republicans being the notable exception.
5
I generally love Mr. Brook's columns as being spot on with his assessment. On this one, I think he didn't dig deep enough in the analysis.
The divide between men and women is widening, that is for sure. To see young men embrace Trumpist posturing is disturbing, and yet we are living in disturbing times. History does not move linerally....it's more like fits and starts. But everything plays a part...
The "whining" culture, birthed from Oprah's crying couch and Jerry Springer is now fully developed into the #Metoo revolution of the 'he done me wrong and he's going down'.
Privately, men speak about the 'mob mentality' that has overcome our culture. Caught up in the frenzy of casting a net for abusive men, many men wonder about how easy it is now to take down a man's reputation online, by accusations that can't be proven.
Regarding Pres. Trump and his braggadocios... many men have said things privately that they might not say aloud or if they knew they was being taped? Slowly, the drip, drip, drip of decades of an equality culture change became sudden shock in a "gotcha"movement as a worldwide phenomenon.
Parents with sons are now rightfully concerned at what could be lobbed at them from a disgruntled date or at work. A flirtatious joke....what's that anymore? Women are deadly serious and accusatory about compliments that were miniscule in my generation.
Does it make men more tense these days and lean more tribalistic? I would think so.
1
It's hard to tell from your comment if you're making this argument or simply repeating it as an example, but I am beyond sick of hearing that the way that the MeToo movement has gone too far is in causing men to fear for their reputations based simply on accusations.
What do you think women have been dealing with for centuries? Not only is the oft-quoted Margaret Atwood adage true (“Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them.") but women face reputation ruin at every turn: being labeled sluts for having the the wrong kind of sex, being discriminated against at work for being female or becoming pregnant, being maligned publicly and privately for coming forward about sexual assault and rape.
So men are scared now because there is suddenly the potential of consequences for their actions? Because they may face the same "guilty until proven innocent" public trials faced by women every day for centuries? I'm sorry but - cry me a river. The MeToo movement isn't a gender war, or a zero sum game. As with any erosion of privilege, the privileged are wont to feel equality as discrimination. If you have a legitimate argument for why MeToo has gone too far, which doesn't involve complaining that men now have to face a small amount of the reality with which women are all too familiar, I am all ears.
10
It's true that male and female Millennials see things more alike than differently. I agree too that the "gender war" is fake.
But sadly, most "blue" and "red" Americans, when you get down to it, agree on some pretty basic things about the job of government, capitalism, foreign policy, civil rights, progressive taxation.
We draw meaning from those differences exist, and so what often seems relatively superficial things take on enormous power.
By reading the press and our utter fixation on race, sex and gender, for instance, one would expect to find white Americans and Americans of color attacking each other on the streets. You'd think women were being held in bondage, gays and LGBT people were being jailed, and white males were being rounded up for being Nazis.
Brooks has it exactly right. The horrid state of our "politics," where it's all about public Outrage, macro-responses to micro-aggressions, tribalism and the Suffering Olympics is now defining "differences" between Millennial men and women.
3
Pregnancy makes the changes to a woman's body and mind for the benefit of the fetus and then the child. Not necessarily beneficial for the woman herself. That is the difference between the sexes during and after birth.
Because of this and because she then is doing the work in creating a person, mothers should be paid by the fathers. In a money economy she should not accept that she is not.
However unless one says that men don't really care that much about there being other people than himself, I can think of no reason why there should not be stay at home fathers, receiving wages.
6
Correction for clarification :
"That is the difference between the sexes during pregnancy and after birth."
"This brings us to the second story, the male backlash."
I understand that Brooks himself is not expressing this viewpoint, so much as describing what he is observing in others. Nevertheless, it illustrates the ceaseless counterfeit victimization of the Trump supporter.
There are many groups who have enjoyed unfair privileges throughout our country's history. But now that the harms of their historical privileges are being mitigated by legal protections and social resistance, they feign victimhood.
Males were once "privileged" to be able to treat women however they wished in the workplace or at home. A woman had no real choice but to accept Trump-style "locker room talk," lower pay, harassment or worse. It is not an "attack" that men are now held to account for such things, nor is any "backlash" warranted.
Similarly, the Christian right was once privileged to have their every whim prioritized ahead of any other faith. The invocation of their faith alone was once a law unto itself. Now they become enraged at the notion that secular laws must have secular justifications. This does not constitute a "war" on Christianity.
Similarly, do we even need to discuss the abuses minorities or the LGBTQ have suffered (and continue to suffer)? Within the context of our nation's history, they've barely had their rights for a moment and look how the majority despises equal protection; wailing about "reverse discrimination" and pining for the "good old days."
11
In a generation of rising feminists, women are becoming equal to men. Women are able to do things that they could not do in the past, like run a company or become president. But, with these new generations, the definition of feminism is becoming lost. Feminism means gender equality between men and women. While modern feminists claim to be practicing this, in reality, they are putting down men and bringing up women. In the article, it states things like "male backlash" and "male privilege". These statements are examples of men being stereotyped and suppressed simply because they are male. The backlash has nothing to do with their gender, it is their views on the topic. The article goes on to say how there is a division between the sexes in political views. There are men and women mixed together in both political parties. While the majority of women may lean to one party and men may lean to another, men and women are free to choose any party they want. Overall, from what I've observed modern feminism is causing men and women to separate instead of uniting.
1
"While modern feminists claim to be practicing this, in reality, they are putting down men and bringing up women."
Can you give some examples of this? What I see is not this at all, but is instead men responding to an erosion of their privilege as if that is discrimination. The loss of privilege in favor of equality is not, however, discrimination or "putting down".
5
I applaud all of the gains in workplace equality and better treatment, it's long overdue and had taken huge amounts of hard work and sacrifice.
but I have to wonder where the men are--we are over-represented in politics and work, yet because if that fact many of us are silent and apathetic. our worse, we feel incapable of changing anything. were is the movement to better educate or young men so that the number of us who have only high school diplomas drops?
men are often the "achiever" in our households, but when we fail to achieve, it is our own fault, and that knowledge isolates and crushes us into silence, apathy and often regressive politics.
"I’m betting that the millennial gender war is a figment of the political circus, and will be washed away by the giant force looming on the horizon: parenthood."
As in, deciding they don't want to have children. But if they do, then the gender issues are simply magnified by financial issues and decisions about how (and who) to care for children.
3
“This brings us to the second story, the male backlash. When covering any social movement, it’s always important to pay attention to the people standing on the sidelines. These days, that would more often be young men.”
Yeah what about the men? WHO will represent the interests of straight white men? It’s a travesty that they’re so underrepresented in colleges and board rooms. Gosh. So sideline. Many underrepresentation. So wow. Very disparity. (It’s a meme, people.)
“An increasing number of high school-educated men say they are the ones being screwed by modern society, not women, who are better educated on average.”
Yeah, well, when you’re used to privilege, equality looks like oppression. Men’s failure to understand this doesn’t mean it’s not true.
10
I think this article makes a common mistake - compare young men with young women and fail to acknowledge and address the role that the culture of the workplace has on both of them
When millennials enter the workforce the men experience male privilege that has been there for decades - the pressure to behave in a masculine fashion also has perks such as execs identifying with young men while they view the young women as similar to their daughters.
Gender in the workplace needs to be addressed at the systems level - not at the individual or relational level.
4
As a 73 year old white male, I am always amused by David Brooks’s forays into GOPsplaining the younger generation. I wonder if he wears tight Euro style jeans to the office ...
12
You lost me early, with that crop about the narrowing of economic disparity... what? The NYT's is really selling this narrative meaning Dems must be scared. In totality, women don't have blip of independent economic power and history shows, most voters vote their purse-- they certainly did in 2016-- women getting DT over the line more than any other voting block. The literal appendage of men, a second vote in their favor, women haven't built a political base with the cash money power that will drive women's issues, thus the degradation in women's healthcare and reproductive freedom. In my own county where we built one of the largest domestic violence shelters in the state, because men kill women here, 1 in 3 will be the victim of intimate partner violence. Women comprise more then 50% of the highly educated workforce and yet only 25% of the economic prosperity- and they beat us to death. The problem with your faux news is that the Dems think a Sandberg, Windfrey, Harris, Warren, even a certain Bronx super star can lead a social movement sans platform or the economic power to force cooperation. It's never happened. It never will. I was a major Dem donor. They're not listening to the kinds of women's voices that will actually move the needle, and they don't care to. The Democratic establishment is in self-preservation mode. Your third base start, elitist model, where white males rule, allowing a handful of aunt Tammy's through, a token for their compliance, all is secure.
3
poor men - especially white men - they have it so so hard and are so misunderstood.
10
Here's a poll you should ask, How many millenials have been sexually assaulted or raped? That lens changes the view on the topic. At least for me. The Jordan Peterson-esque millennial holds all the warning signs of a man I can not trust. There are so few already. The majority of men I do trust have at least 10 years on me. The rise of this aggression, this backlash against feminism, makes me not trust the men of my generation. Whenever I've encountered men who believe they are the victims, being put in the friend zone when they are just a nice guy, those are the ones who sexually assault and rape. I say that not from data but from personal experience. The distance between the genders of my generation is largely built on a lack of trust. Even if a man has never hurt a woman, never been rude, never been sexist; he will be impacted by the actions of those who have. #MeToo has been trying to hammer that down. It's the call that says "We no longer can fully trust you."
And men don't like hearing that. Men don't like it that I'm constantly armed in some form or fashion, but I feel it's necessary. The worst part of it is that when the attack comes, it is usually from someone you thought you could trust. So you've gotta be ready to attack and be attacked by your loved ones. That is based on the data.
7
Simplistic, lacking nuance . . . . much like his book "Bobos in Paradise" this piece relies heavily on over simplifications and a fixation with the white upper middle class.
3
Any man who abruptly dumps his long time wife for a woman 23 years his junior clearly doesn't see women as his equal. How can anyone take his views on women seriously?
13
When it comes down to how women versus men break on the Trump divide, it really just comes down to women generally being more empathetic than men. Whether this is due to nature versus nurture or if there are exceptions that prove the rule I will leave to another discussion, but you can see it in their friendships: women make friends more easily and are more open in their friendships than men are. The simple matter is that they can feel your pain more than men and look upon Trump as being callous almost to the point of sociopathy. As for the Jordan Peterson thing, I gave up on that guy for good when he came out with the position that men find it difficult to respect women because they can't respect someone whom they can't physically fight. Really? I have been married to the same woman for forty years and she couldn't throw a punch to save her life, but mentally she is one of the toughest people I know. She is absolutely reliable and has my undying respect. On this score Mr. Peterson has absolutely no idea what he is talking about.
6
Everyone stop what you're doing to take note! A man has a hot take on gender equality.
12
Hahaha, you just made me laugh out loud.
1
I wish you had more humility when writing about things you don't know much about. This article was just terrible and never got to the heart of anything. It made me tired just reading it.
11
Mr. Brooks argues a millennial gender conflict over victimization is theater, posturing that will be “…washed away by the giant force looming on the horizon: parenthood.”
Doubtful.
First: “…(millennial) young women have become highly mobilized…” seeing public expression as worth the effort while males dismiss it as ‘counterproductive,’ ‘pointless,’ ‘divisive’ or even ‘violent.’” Ergo dynamic is female; static is male.
Second: “…more young people (now) believe that the best home is the one where the man is the outside ‘achiever’ and the working woman is the primary caregiver.” Note that’s “WORKING woman,” implying unequal female workload.
Third: ”…increasing number(s) of high school-educated men say they are the ones being screwed…” –and- “More and more college-educated men argue that the assault on “male privilege” has gone too far. Really?! Since when is challenging inequality going too far?
Fourth, “ (Research says) 63 percent of women ages 15 to 24 say there is a lot of discrimination against women at work, while only 43 percent of young men say that.” That’s complacency and privilege talking. Walk a mile in those heels and then tell me how your feet feel.
I submit what millennial males see as their victimization is the result of their choosing non-involvement.
And here’s one more observation: stay with this ignorant animosity and there likely won’t be much if any “parenthood” on the horizon either!
10
So, what will parenthood do to this cohort? Will the men realize that they support a GOP that is hell-bent on eliminating Medicaid and Medicare, actually all health care including that for children and wake up? Among older white men, that hasn't been a factor - they don't care if their children are sick or even dying as long as they have their strong anti-woman leader. I'm a boomer white male, Democrat all my life, and yes I have a Ph.D., and I doubt that the Millennial white men will care about their own children as history indicates. The women, however, will be in opposition. Should be fun to watch.
6
"An increasing number of high school-educated men say they are the ones being screwed by modern society, not women, who are better educated on average."
Here's a hint to the cause of this anxiety among white males with a high school education, Mr. Brooks:
The economic policies you have spent a lifetime championing which have destroyed their economic prospects over the last forty or so years.
All your genteel, white, male intellectualizing about feminism and gender roles from the comfy confines of your splendid office on Eighth Avenue or over a Manhattan dinner that costs a couple days' worth of wages for these people might be gratifying to you. But, actually it is just a distraction on your part, probably intentional, to guide the conversation away from this real cause.
If anything, given your fondness for extolling family, your discovery of a rise in Scandinavian women who choose to follow a more "traditional" life in the family when given high gender equality and the benefits of family-supporting social welfare systems should cause you to change your views. But, it does not. Your agenda remains the same.
And these challenged white males with high school educations will continue to suffer with the rest of us who just can't seem to afford to join you for dinner in Manhattan.
5
This morning, Trump tweeted against 4 women Democrats: Pelosi, Warren, Waters, and Harris - no men. Don't tell me there isn't a full scale gender war going on. Time for all of us (including columnists) to open our eyes and truly see what's going on right in front of us.
9
After drawing attention to provocative statistics, with large gaps showing dissatisfaction and difference distributed along a gender line, his conclusion is...WHAT?
Gotta wonder how many men espousing the biologically inviolable nature of the sexes would like it if their failures as against other men were attributed to biology.
Unless you guys believe that we are biologically pre-determined to succeed or fail, that the guy who beat you out for that promotion or date was just a better physical specimen, perhaps "biology" in the case of sex is a proxy for something else.
4
Mr. Brooks writes his own version of "Defending the Caveman."
Problem is, the cavemen became extinct but the defenders of them live on in the Russia-Republican party that the author cannot seem to abandon.
4
This op-ed is a bit of a mess. Women are and have been an oppressed majority since when, forever? GOP and conservative "values" don't appeal to a younger generation because they see through the lies. The contrast with Nordic countries is an obfuscation, more distortion. Politically different to say the least. Women and especially younger women are flocking to the Dems not because they believe that party to be perfect. But because they see an oppressive minority white male dominated GOP with outdated, regressive and cruel politics that is doing everything in their power to hold on to that power. That doesn't care about them. Is racist. Young men are being pulled in the GOPs direction because they are less educated and are being fed the false narrative that they are the victims. That what is rightfully theirs is being taken by immigrants and uppity women. And leading that charge is a repugnant bully who represents everything the oppressed have come to fear and loathe. And parenthood will solve the continued stripping away of women's and other oppressed people rights? This article is out of touch with reality.
12
Go away David brooks and take your “norms” with you.
Call me when we all have healthcare; childcare; equal educational and career opportunities.
Ps I am a single unmarried childless woman What would you suggest I do?
6
Gender wars? Ah, now I know why men live 5 years less, do the most dangerous jobs, are 90% of the prison population, commit suicides more often, under-perform at school...
I'm thankful that we these issues are discussed with such intensity!
I want to finish by doing some virtue signalling and assure the all feminists out there that I gladly wash the dishes for you if you climb on the roof to spread that moss killer.
7
@Jo: The thing about holding almost all the levers of power is that you have no one to blame for your problems except yourself. After thousands of years of male dominance, it makes me chuckle when men complain about how unfair life is for them.
What do women have to do with our male lifespans? We are the ones who generally hate to see a doctor (and, through our laws, seem to hate when others see doctors). Having near total governmental authority, men could also write less draconian sentencing laws. We lock EACH OTHER up! Again, what does that have to do with women? If men are committing suicide, perhaps it has something to do with the hypercompetitive, somewhat superficial society we ourselves have created. Maybe male grades would be better if males didn't place so much emphasis on that most simplistic notion of masculinity: physical prowess.
As for the moss killer versus dish-washing argument, I have to ask... just how much total time do you spend on that roof each month? Compare that to the total amount of time spent washing dishes. I'd wager you're getting the better end of things.
4
Nothing more unmanly than an entitled whiney man. I say that as a man, despite my handle, which is actually a nod to an Australian beer brand.
4
Women have been under attack since the most qualified person (a woman) lost the election for our country's leadership. Disgusting descriptions of sexual assult were recorded by the man who won. This is not a generational fight- Gen X, Y, Z, Boomers, Silent, are all here together. We see how the USA is so poorly structurally is set up for half of it's population (us) and we are ready to roll up our sleeves to fix it.
3
Yes, I don't see people as so divided when you zoom in. It is only the media that exaggerates things and divides us (also know as segmentation). And, I don't just mean the so-called "main-stream media". I mean all off media - television, movies, music, and yes the news too.
But I must say that I am very disappointed that Brooks share a link to Sandaji's pseudo-scientific rubbish of a book. Normally, he only include truly respected scientists and academics in his articles. This book does not pass the smell test at all, and is a clear example of cherry-picking date to support your pre-determined agenda. It is also clear case of confusing correlation and causation. It is simply rubbish.
2
"...Trump’s cartoonish masculinity squares off against cartoonish “Why Can’t We Hate Men?” incitements."
Anyone see a false equivalence here? And since when does hating men become the calling card of young women?
Brooks has once again mishandled statistics to make the biased, pro GoP argument that there is no gender gap and by extension to suggest there is no migration of (white) women to the Democrat Party column. And yet we know this is true.
Brooks has provided no secondary analysis to support his likely wrong-minded conclusions. What we really need to see, in addition to age, are ethnicity, income level, marital status, education, urban/suburban and state data. And under no circumstances can foreign surveys be conflated with American trends given the huge differences in the secondary parameters enumerated above plus political, social safety net and cultural markers.
The statistics that matter most in trying to understand David Brooks's musings are first and foremost the preponderance of GoP leaning editorials he has penned in our unprecedented toxic political environment.
1
David Brooks notes that among people under 30 more women voted against Donald Trump than men, asking "What's going on?", baffled why a blatantly sexist old-style chauvinist pig who bragged about sexually assaulting strangers and getting away with it would get fewer votes from young female voters than their male counterparts.
No, I can't think of any reason either, let's write several pages of meandering head-scratching trying to figure that one out.
As a side note it appears that after citing all of the evidence like the above that shows that younger men and women are fairly divided on who they vote for and what polls show about their opinions, Brooks suddenly claims that it's all actually "a figment of the political circus", that is, I guess the voting trends and polls he earlier cited were just made up by someone.
The usual meandering incoherent mess from Brooks.
8
Has anybody told Mr. Brooks that conservatives want to do away with reproductive rights? He ought to know about it before embarassing himself with a column like this.
7
Good to know that only millennials have gender issues and it will all be better after my nap.
3
We seem to have a larger problem with men in general regardless of age feeling like victims. Trump is all too happy to egg on the pity pit.
4
Brooks, as usual, is off on cloud 9 politically. He should read Michelle Goldberg’s opinion piece today, where she explains why women feel a “gut-churning revulsion” to Trump. Why? Because his policies are affecting them and their families directly.
11
Oh phleeeeze! Until David walks a mile in a woman's role, he should not be so sanctimonious and finger wagging to the feminine culture that is trying to survive, contribute and shape the future of society for all people. Woman have been subjugated, abused, molested (some by members of their own families) and now criticized by a major NYT intellectual columnist for sticking up for themselves. It makes my stomach turn. And I just want to add that his resume includes supporting a Republican party for most of this life that is the main threat to democracy today as we know it.
7
This rising war between the sexes feels phony to you, Mr. Brooks, because you have never been pregnant. You have never worried about getting pregnant, and never once had to wonder whether information from your medical services provider is legislatively required to be phony. That you presume the millennial gender war will be washed away by parenthood is a barely concealed command to young women to get, and stay, pregnant. From your sleepy viewpoint, having children will end the gender war against women. What a joke.
10
Brooks always wants to believe people are civilized and looking out for the common good. Just doing it in different ways. Try being a black, Latin or Muslim women trying to get a loan. The white boys club does not want to even hear about a women getting any advantage. But, would it not be fair if women got advantages for say the next 200 years to even out the playing field? Let men prove it instead of feel entitled to it.
3
Men will never willingly accept gender equality. They may talk out of the sides of their mouths. They may show a different public face than they do in private. Men are afraid of women, and always have been. They are afraid of equal intelligence, afraid of equal ability, afraid of deserved disrespect, afraid of not being in charge, afraid of peace, and particularly afraid that white women will not produce enough white babies to keep white people in the majority. If men think that we will ever give in, or give up, they are desperately mistaken. There really IS a gender war, thousands of years old, and it was started by men, from the very beginning.
5
David, you’re a Boomer. I’m a Boomer. Neither of us is qualified to explain millennials.
Never use “woke” again. It’s like listening to my grandfather say “groovy” in 1975.
13
So I guess that at the ripe old age of 66, certainly not a millenial, and married for 35 years but without kids, my belief that the gender war has been, and is, real is fallacious and the only reason I am so angry and frustrated is because I didn't have children? Or maybe this piece only applies to millenials and older folks are just curmudgeons.
Not only is Mr. Brook's article demeaning and supercilious, but it is not well thought out. He states that women in Nordic countries have dropped out of the rat race in spite of the rights they have, but cites no evidence for this claim. Perhaps women drop out because they can spend more time with their children in their early years without fear of losing their health care, their jobs, their right to advancement. And we do know for a fact that greater numbers of men in Nordic countries leave the workforce for parenting responsibilities as well because they are not penalized for it.
The US is so far from the Nordic countries in terms of benefits and rights, and in their political systems and education, that to compare the two is truly absurd. And to then extrapolate from this comparison that the US "gender wars" will be resolved when parenthood arrives, just as you allege it did in Nordic countries, is demeaning to women and to men. "Go on children....just go off and procreate. I promise that you'll be happier and all the need for your whining will go away." Really? To quote our feckless leader- SAD.
15
If we understand that at least some of Trump's actions and attitudes are raw unfiltered testosterone driven, and that all men, whether consciously or not, are at least somewhat testosterone influenced, why should we be surprised that more men, especially younger men, favour Trump than do women?
The issue is, as it has always been, to "know thyself". That involves introspection, rational thought, and deliberate action. Furthermore, it requires that all of us, women or men, think somewhat outside of ourselves, and pretend to be part of a greater whole.
4
I suspect millennial men are moving toward the GOP because of the clown like adherence to masculinity in the WH. Confrontation seems to be more appealing to those with the 'y' chromosome.
The often omitted data from this picture is what happens to women if they take on the 50s role. My father died young, leaving my mother with 4 kids and what was supposed to be a good trust to keep her going. Then the 70s inflation hit. When men leave, women who don't have workplace skills are often left in poverty or near poverty.
6
Millennial males have a real problem with reality. While Mr Brooks correctly pegs them as a growing number of sideline "sleeper" votes, he misses the elephant that THEY MIGHT JUST WAKE-UP.
Wake-up to Trump's destruction of Obamacare which will deny those with pre-existing conditions. Trump sold a lie of better, cheaper. And young white men were gullible to ignore the portability of Obamacare; and how that enables going after new positions or building a business.
Wake-up to Republican Party is not interested in Joe Blow's wages rising. Wake-up to the fact that the tax cut greatly benefits corporations and the wealthy. Joe Blow's tax cut expires in 9 years, yet he will still pay for the $1.5T price tag (deficit).
Wake-up and stop being Trump's and Republican Party's compliant fool because - WHO DO YOU THINK exploited all of the undocumented migrants FOR DECADES? Liberals?
Republicans' pending passage of their Immigration Bill will undermine Labor- WITH MORE work visas AND the coveted green cards will go to the higher educated future citizens who will be sponsored by multi-national corporations. White millennial males need to wake-up AND SEE who's bringing their actual competition.
5
Consider an cultural atmosphere where major media outlets like WaPo (not some grim corner of the dark web) are comfortable publishing articles like Brooks mentions -"Why Can't we Hate Men", a clearly rhetorical question. This attitude has been a near constant drumbeat for years in the media.
Many young men have never known any other atmosphere- they don't live in "history", they live now. Theirs has been a era of declining opportunity and public denunciation. Many have never known a father. Now they are being told quite clearly that their wives, mothers, grandmothers, sisters and female coworkers actually hate and fear them and always (although secretly) have.
If they complain of any of this they are accused of having too much privilege and power. Can't imagine why these guys turn to gurus like Jordan Peterson?!
5
It requires just 10,000 years to evolve a race. Sex has existed for over 550 million years. Which difference should be expected to have accumulated more conserved genes? William Hamilton's altruism equation helps explain why we are all racists. But there is no scientific basis for supporting the notion that the sexes are equal. Of course there is also no scientific evidence that humans prefer to be logical.
1
I'm surprised Brooks didn't bring out the trump card. It is this: heterosexual men and women are fundamentally different on a psychobiological level. The cocktail of hormones and brain chemicals is mixed very differently. It took millions of years to concoct the current mix. Ideological bartenders can't change it. If they don't accept this fact and work within it, they only make the drink taste bitter to everyone.
2
So mean trump, and not Trump?
Americans believe in American exceptionalism. Why?
We were taught in school that what made America different from say corrupt governments of Henry VIII and others was a bill of rights.
That bill of rights guaranteed due process, including a trial by jury of the accused, with a right to cross examine witnesses and put on a defense.
Now we are told by feminists that women can NEVER be wrong. That if they waited 30 years to make an accusation it is because of the white patriarchy which prevented them from bringing a case, when the evidence was fresh.
Can you remember what clothes you wore on a specific day 30 years ago? Or what you had for dinner? Most likely not.
That's the reason we have statutes of limitations, particularly in cases which involve consent. After 30 years have passed it becomes impossible to prove or disprove a case involving consent.
What about 60 cases involving consent? The problem is that 60 unprovable cases do not provide one case in which certainty was achieved.
60 cases influenced the trial of Bill Cosby. If we were honest with ourselves we would realized that his trial was tainted with publicity used to sell newspapers by the NY Times and others.
Now accusations abound.
Francisco Ayala of UC Irvine was accused by 4 of his colleagues. There was no public discussion. A committee forced him to resign.
We no longer live in a free society. We are engaged in the public lynching of powerful people for the purpose of entertainment.
3
I'm 63. When I was young I looked just average, not a babe. I had passes made at me by one high school teacher and two college professors. They asked me out on dates and I immediately had to worry about my grades if I said no. I dropped out of one course and since another was almost over, put off the professor till I got my grade and then said no. A high proportion of male college students I met expected me to go to bed with them if they took me out to a movie or dinner. (Though one did instead want me to come to his apartment, clean it, and do his backlog of laundry.) This kind of thing happens to young unmarried women all the time. Instead of putting up with those professors (and I was told one of them had a long history of hitting on students), I wish I'd been able to register a complaint. I don't remember what dates I was propositioned but I certainly remember the incidents.
7
This op-ed, like many others, blurs the line between the historical grievances of entire peoples and the private lives and relationships of individual people. This can be an interesting exercise, but it's worth remembering that they are two very different things.
Most importantly, history is slippery and Protean. For example, people often pretend, or even really believe, that they know a lot about the "historical role of women," but any detailed investigation of world history reveals immense complexity and variation, not a role.
Secondly, people are quick to use a "spark notes" version of history to justify their own contentious personality traits. Bossy, controlling, insensitive, disruptive, cruel, mocking, or ignorant behavior in an individual can RARELY be traced back to a real historical precedent. It's almost always just that person's personality.
Everyone's looking for an excuse to let loose, and a distorted and abridged version of history is all-too-ready to oblige. But at the end of the day the calculus of harm isn't pinned to historical benchmarks. We must each try to benefit each other and avoid causing harm, and history is no excuse.
6
I think you may be missing the point on what’s going on with women these days. Sadly, I don’t think men are at all thinking about this. Men have been in charge forever. And the world is a mess! On almost any reckoning. Men, over the millennia, seem to have learned — well, not much. They have all this experience and it appears to have been wasted on them.
Women are starting to talk about this. Need to be careful though because they don’t want to be viewed at men-haters. Want to know one reason why so many US women are running for office? They don’t see that men can make the world, our country, our community a better, safer, peaceful, poverty-free place to live. The evidence tells women this is so.
It will take decades, if not centuries, for women to be in charge. And we may be proven wrong in thinking that women will do a better job. However, we all know the definition of insanity, it’s worth a try. We will all, men and women, need to be watchful of power. We know what it can do.
9
I always enjoy David Brooks columns as food for thought. Thank you!
One commenter said, all the bad things in the world have been perpetrated by men. If that is true, why so many bad men?
Women have more power than many seem to realize, for the selection of a breeding partner determines the genetic qualities they choose for their offspring and for society in general. The other influence is nurture, and certainly women have a role in that, too. So again, why so many bad men?
Across species, it seems females have been choosing alpha male qualities in mates since the beginning of time. However, the flip side of strong, protective qualities is dominance. Do women still desire the strong, tough alpha male in movies rather than more gentle males? In terms of both nature and nurture, male qualities are a reflection of what females have chosen.
Culture, after all, is just groups of people making similar choices. The dominate cultural gender roles and qualities have never been accidental or unilateral, but evolved in tandem. Men are the way they are because women are the way they are because men are......etc.
The future can always look different, though, depending on the types of men women choose to father their children, and the ways they are raised.
5
I have heard of the war of the sexes but I didn't know it is trending currently. So it may be phony or it may not; but it appears this is a straw man of sort.
Maybe our emotions demand us to find a reason. Sometimes, it is based on our experience; sometimes, we make up something so we do have to face the real truth. And sometimes, we just abdicate ourselves and say it is God's will.
But if we stand back and assess the situation, the middle way is a good compromise without compromising our integrity. A lot of times immediate gratifications are like doing drugs. Good for a while until your bills arrive. Immediate gratifications don't just mean material stuff. People imposing their worldview and/or religious belief on others are also engaging in immediate gratification.
Gender wars, class wars, generation wars and other wars are all tribal. And we see what tribal warfares have done to the Middle East for generations.
Movements are addictive and it is good to lose yourself to them but they might take control of you. Kindness and compassion are the way to loosen their grip. Parenthood itself too is just another phony movement. That doesn't mean parenthood is not sacred and fulfilling. But you think of "teach your children well," you should think of all the children, yours, mine, Asian, American, Palestinian, Jewish. For they are the real inheritor and progenitor of this special place we call Earth
2
I am an old(er) white man, and have done my best in both my personal and professional lives to give women and ethnic minorities equitable treatment. I have also tried to extend a helping hand to the downtrodden in our society when I could. No, I don’t want a medal. So when I hear blame cast toward white men and my generation for many of the problems we are facing in America, while it may not be entirely misplaced, I don’t take it personally. There are many old white men like me who still do what they can to level the playing field. In any case, we’ll all be gone soon and those Millenials who are quick to point their fingers will discover that they will need to point to themselves. Oh, and be prepared for your children blaming you for their problems — some things don’t change.
7
At sixty-one, I've come to believe that a crucial failing of feminism is that the work place has not become more feminized.
I've spent the last thirty years working at companies that I started and ran, all in the tech or biotech sectors. Early on, I adopted a policy of no specified amount of vacation or sick days. Just do your job and take time to be with your family.
I tried to exemplify this in my own habits. I'm married to a very accomplished woman; a leader in her profession as a physician. My schedule was always more flexible, so I took on the lion's share of childcare: picking up the kids after school, driving them to soccer and music, and afterwards making dinner. I'd often go back in to work after putting them to bed. It's worked out great for us.
I rarely saw other male colleagues do this. In fact, I rarely ever heard them talk about their kids. The professional lives of my female colleagues were all over the spectrum. Some took lots of time to be with their families, while still doing a great job at work. Others worked constantly, even when they had families that needed care and feeding.
I think the media has certainly contributed to the apparent divide between the genders. But I think part of the male resentment that contributes to this is the ever present pressure to live up to masculine ideals. Feminism has made progress in many areas. But in my view, many men fail to appreciate what feminism offers them: the freedom to assume non-traditional roles.
14
This is a disappointing analysis. Gender roles in 2018 may be less burdensome for women than they were in 1960, but they continue to be unfair. There is no egalitarian arrangement at home that has both genders satisfied. At least, not in the world I live in. Mr. Brooks lived reality is at odds with mine and of the young, educated, professional working women I know. Men may be happier to have someone else paying the bills. But they are not lessening the burden of housework and childcare at home by much. That is just a fact of life for tens of millions of working women. THAT is where the gender strife is most pronounced and real - in the domestic setting, between the genders at home. I would like to see the data on the "fundamental agreement" and "less day-to-day
differences" between men and women. Because, as far as the lived reality of women goes, the more educated and self-aware women have become, the more they disagree with man is the achiever and woman is the primary caregiver roles.
2
It always angers me when men and whites throw out the term "identity politics". This is not a new phenomenon. We have had identity politics for thousands of years - white male identity politics. Using the term "identity politics" to compartmentalize, diminish and dismiss other points of view is just another way of trying to maintain and legitimize white male rule - patriarchy. Writing from the place of a white male, there is much that David Brooks does not get
4
And apparently, even more that you don't get. Just because you have victim cards to play doesn't make your opinion correct or more important than someone with fewer victim cards.
2
The urgent question is where do men stand on women's right to control our own bodies and terminate an ill pregnancy legally without harassment, having men respect our privacy. It seems that those who think they have a right to control women's bodies and private decisions tend to be male--and older white males at that. We allow men to control their bodies--for instance, to take Viagra and impregnate women, without laws against doing that.
2
Not true. If it were, women would all vote for Democrats, and we wouldn't be in the position we're in now. Plenty of women are anti-choice.
If more women than men are getting more highly educated, it is because they do their homework for class and are better prepared for college. An inordinate amount of young male activity is oriented to sports and sports culture, but the most highly ranked competitive college sports teams rarely produce scholars who achieve in the adult world.
There are profound differences in communication between men and women and it is most striking when the subject is sex. Every teen aged male whose brain is poisoned by surging doses of testosterone is challenged by the eternal question, "What do women want?" The answer to that question is not universally the same. And the answer may change depending on the woman and her mood at the moment.
And then there are other questions:
What does the DNA that uses our bodies as hosts want? That DNA wants to see itself survive and replicate in new hosts.
Pheromones promote sex and reproduction in other animals. Are we exempt? What does she see in that guy? What does he see in that girl?
The answers to these questions will not be found in the NY Times Opinion pages.
2
So when women are over respresented in college, it's because they work harder. If men are over represented, it's because they have an unfair advatage or privlage? Funny how that works.
1
You fail to note that until very recently, women were denied education. Women by the laws made by men were not allowed into law schools, medical schools, music conservatories or other institutions of higher education. Yes, men had the unfair advantage in education for at least the last two thousand years.
Now that women have access to education in some countries, they are going for it. For much of the world, women still have no access to education, and when they try to get educated, they might get a bullet in the head like Malala.
.
This is Matriarchy vs. Patriarchy. Call it out. Define the terms and understand what is going on. This is not your run-of-the-mill gender friction that has always been present in male-female relations and provided the tension between the sexes that has made for so much light-hearted drama. This has taken a more serious turn.
Emboldened by the right to vote, by the right to kill (Roe v. Wade), by the clear failure of men who orchestrated the failed violence of the Vietnam War (for example), by cries of “toxic masculinity”, by courts that define violence as unwanted touch, by modern life made easy with inventions, innovations and insights, by John Lennon’s assertion that “Woman is the Nigg__ of the World” … this is a feminist power-grab.
Where does it lead? Is there a vision for a kinder and gentler feminine future? Is that possible? What does the Matriarchy plan to do with power -- more than air ancient grievances? Are there examples of successful matriarchal societies in the history of human civilizations?
Stay tuned.
1
. . . it was Yoko Ono, not John Lennon, who originated that phrase . . .
I joke, but it's not, that I want to hide my 76-year-old white face when I go out in public.
Not the entire but the largest part of this nation's problem today is white men, especially older white men.
Women are now receiving north of 60% of all college degrees and 65% of advanced and professional degrees in this country.
And men, especially white men? Falling father and farther and farther behind. And whose fault is that? It is the fault of lazy, bigoted, misogynistic white men who better get used to the idea that within 25 years there is a 2 in 3 chance their bosses will be women because only the women are going to have the educational background and qualifications to run things.
Those polling gaps you identify Mr. Brooks, think what that means in a nation where more than 60% of the gender that is 52% of the population. It will mean we will be a slightly left of center nation instead of a slightly right of center nation but that small shift will have profound impact on all of society and on the economy that underpins society.
6
White men are the problem? Nonsense. There are many real problems in the world but demonizing one racial-gender-age profile is kindergarten thinking. As long as this focus persists there's not much chance for real dialogue. Without intelligent dialogue there's no chance for growing up.
2
Mr Brooks is taking parenthood (an apple) and comparing it to a gender war (an orange). A millennial gender war is a not on the horizon. Rather it is a shift of thinking.
Why entrust older white guys like Trump, McConnell, and others with so much misogynistic political power? Tradition only goes so far these days. Consult women. Empower more women. Elect more women to the state and federal legislatures. We'll have a fairer and more just society.
11
One of the high school graduation gifts we gave our daughter was a "Rosy the Riveter" framed poster with her name on it. Rosy shows her bicep under the talking balloon indicating she can do it! That was the 1940's during WWII. The next decade saw men at work in either a grey flannel suit or working in the factories, mills, or mines. Women were either caregivers, nurses, secretaries, or teachers. All lived in a society in which "Father Knew Best". Popular comedians told sexist jokes about women drivers, bad mother-in-laws, and about how expendable wives are ("Take my wife, please!). This decade gave rise to both Playboy and the Feminine Mystic. These are two very different gender world views. Today we are still living in the tension between these gender perspectives as this column points out. I suspect the feminine mystic will have more influence in the future. However, to the extent that women experience inequality in the work place in both pay and promotion, and experience abuse in both work and home, there is and will be a gender war; and these are not figments of anyone's imagination. I also have a copy of my daughter's "Rosy the Riveter" poster in my home office.
1
It amazes me that so many otherwise intelligent people really do believe that the members of a so-called "generation" (Millennials, Boomers, etc.) think and act alike. Really? Millennials in San Francisco and Detroit and an Appalachian village and a suburban town in Alabama are all basically the same people because of the year in which they were born? How does this differ from astrology?
13
Brooks starts off with the wrong premise. It is not that women wanted to one day think like men or "see the world the same", it was they want the freedom to decide who and what they want to be. That has never meant that the end result was the exact same number of woman and men become doctors. It's always been about doors being open. I think most would agree that men and woman are different, but geez lets not predestine people because of which group they are born into.
5
No, feminists never wanted to give women the freedom to decide who they wanted to be. They wanted women to have successful careers and positions of power just like men. They didn't want women to raise children. The people who degraded the role of mothers was the feminists, not the men. Feminists wanted women to make different choices. It was never about freedom to chose.
2
Actually, your whole argument is based on a factual error: the apparent agreement in young people these days that women should be primary caregivers is driven by a significant increase in men believing that, not women.
"A different survey found a similar trend, in this case concentrated mainly among men. In 1994, 83 percent of young men rejected the superiority of the male-breadwinner family. By 2014 that had fallen to 55 percent. Women’s disagreement fell far less, from 85 percent in 1994 to 72 percent in 2014. Since 1994, young women’s confidence that employed women are just as good mothers as stay-at-home moms has continued to inch up, but young men’s has fallen. In fact, by 2014, men aged 18 to 25 were more traditional than their elders." https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/31/opinion/sunday/do-millennial-men-want...
So much for a trumped up gender divide...
It's just not fair. Maybe we should pass a law requiring men to have children and the hormonal changes that go along with it. Then everything would be fair.
When millenials divert their attention away from their smart phones long enough to actually vote in a real election I'll begin to care about their concerns in life.
7
If most men spent even one day in the shoes of a full time working mother, they too would drop out of the rat race. It's simply exhaustive, never ending, underappreciated and unpaid hard work. And mothers today are under extreme pressure to perform at much higher levels then was expected from our 50's and 60's moms. You may just want to join a monastery instead.
14
Oh, and speaking of men. Just because women don't want to be subjugated, doesn't mean that women don't need men, love men and appreciate men.
All you have to do is look around for a man who grew up without a father, and you can usually figure out pretty quickly how it affected his life. Ask a woman who grew up without a father (like me). It colors everything for your whole life, even now when I am old. If you had a good daddy, consider yourself rich.
5
Brooks' conclusion is silly. In 2016, 48% of millennial women were mothers. Also, the gender gap that he describes started in about 1980 and has grown since. This phenomenon is 30 years old and very real.
2
Notwithstanding that some of the math is pretty fuzzy here, there is the kernel of a future column. Why are millennial men so worthless? That would be worth investigating. High school dropout rates, lack of trade school education, political apathy, sense of entitlement, masculinity based on video war games and the overpowering sense of victim hood, as they huddle in their parents' basement, would be an interesting and illuminating essay. The huge gap between acceptance and performance by millennial men and women is explainable by understanding that women can aspire to equality and then execute. Men aspire to equality and then go back to imaginary war games before going to the gym. What a waste!
2
Whenever a playhouse is broken up, in this case domination of the workforce by white men, those pushed aside are the less capable. Saying it another way, if it weren’t for the exclusion of others, the ones who lost out wouldn’t have been employed in the first place. So if you are an employer do you hire a capable, educated woman, or a guy who spends his time listening to sports talk radio and wears his ball cap backward?
2
As an older (I prefer to say "middle-aged", but let's face reality) white male, I used to really resent these negative references to "white males" and "old white males". Now I don't resent it any more - I see that it reflects a realistic appreciation of the real situation. I'm not that politically invested in being either white or male that I refuse to see it. Just look at those pictures of all those nasty people on Trump's cabinet, or those Republican senate groups. All old white males, with the occasional odd and somewhat misplaced old black male thrown in (Clarence Thomas, Ben ... whatsisname ...Carson! - that's it; they say the memory is the second thing to go...) Old, (mostly) white, males - stingy, stingy, stingy about freedom and power for others.
6
It comes down to age and marital status. Younger women are less likely to be married and more likely to be naive and still believe the propaganda that they bathed in in college. When they get older they are more likely to get married and figure out that what they learned in college is garbage. They are no longer smitten with the Nannie state and begin to realize that the government is often times the enemy. A majority of married women vote republican. It’s that simple. Of course, I’m referring to women that are married to men.
3
JP,
It is true that married women tend to vote more Republican, but is that because their values change? Or is it because Fox News is on the TV all the time or they are brow-beaten down by husbands who tell them "what they learned in college is garbage" as you say?
3
No, it's because they grow up. That's what marriage does for you and that's why the democrats do everything in their power to destroy the institution.
Parenthood only exacerbates it, because there are two radically different approaches to it.
On one hand we have the Ozzie and Harriet, Leave it to Beaver approach. This is only achievable by the squares though, who study mind numbing STEM or business subjects, and who then suppress their neuroses and will to power to sublimate them to the wishes of their partner and children. These households can be either religious conservative, or secular liberal - but all of them disdain artistic freedom and true compassion, and at a certain point of all them start to resent the fact that the rest of us feel like they should give up some of their white privilege. These types of parents wind up upper income.
The other approach to parenthood is more modern, and recognizes that all we really need are mothers. This matriarchal approach allows women to have children at a young age, to have free healthcare, food, and housing. This is the trending approach to parenthood, and it is good. I notice too that many of these migrants represent liberated parenting as well. The fathers were usually too toxic in their masculinity (abuse!), and were left behind in Central America. These moms have a new dad! His name is Uncle Sam!
I think as the new approach to parenthood, and just being free to be single, catches on, the squares will become more resentful about being asked to share their white privilege. The "war" will intensify. The single moms might be our (the left's) salvation!
I assume the reason that Mr. Brooks is allowed to write opinion articles is that he is clever enough to be the constant troll that causes his comment section to light up. Always disingenuous enough to allow his tongue to peek through his cheek, he never the less fans the flames that serve to burn down reasonable discourse on any topic.
In the real world millennial men and women will have the same needs and the same hard choices as the generations that preceded them. The experience of Nordic countries (presumably living under a social democracy) show that when women have a choice many will go back into the traditional roles of wife and mother. What a news flash! Once again, the war between the sexes has only ever existed in the minds of opinion columnists and religious leaders who both make a living stoking divisions where ever they can find them. In real life men and women are partners in life and they sacrifice together to make the best world they can out of their particular circumstances. In real life women will defend their men and men will defend their women and they will attempt to give their children a better head start than they had at almost any cost. The differences in voting outcomes in recent elections is totally tied to the differences in economic responsibilities and gender roles that both expect to live with. In a world of mass propaganda aimed at every psychological crack in the electorate one can expect the uneven electoral results that we now see.
5
Many young men are numbing themselves with video games and drink, hiding behind beards and tattoos, subconsciously angry that they are not heroes in their own Marvel movie. Twenty-somethings are the new teens, Thirty-somethings the new twenties. These days real men start to emerge from their self-induced pain caves in their forties -- if they are lucky. Young women see the slack and are claiming power. Good for them.
5
David Brooks talks about the generational cohort known as Millennials (people born in the mid-1980s to mid-1990s) and then wildly overgeneralizes Millennials to include kids today who are as young as 15 or 14 years old. ... Seriously?
Those people are not Millennials, David. A 14 year old kid born in 2004 is not remotely in the same generational cohort as a 34 year old adult born in 1984 any known sociology measurement. Even the Pew Research Center does not define Millennials in the ridiculous manner which Brooks does here.
You can't random invent your own definitions for sociological terms. Lumping everyone born from 1980 until today, spanning over forty years, into the same generation cohort is sheer intellectual laziness on Brooks' part.
If Brooks wishes to pontificate about generations, he needs to have a basic grasp of the subject. A really, really basic grasp.
1
It's time for David Brooks and everybody else to consider what is actually meant by the concept "Love one another."
It's a lot deeper than something from a Hallmark cards cliche. It's achieved by the methods propounded by all the world's great spiritual teachers: step beyond the bonds of ego and feel in our deepest emotional center our inherent connection to all the rest of life on this planet. It's not that hard. In fact, it's absolutely natural once you overcome the conceptual gibberish that fortifies the ego with its cornucopia of terrors.
We then recognize the folly of dividing people into categories, and of supporting a political and economic model that exploits and dishonors both the people and the resources with whom we share the planet.
John Lennon said, "I hope some day you'll join us, and the world will live as one."
2
Men always feel victimized when it comes to change that favors women. Yet these same men complain when women depend on them. You can't have it both ways here. The biology of the matter is that women can have children while men can't. Men are stronger than women. Women and men can work together and succeed. Sexual undertones do not have to be part of every workplace or educational setting.
Girls and boys get their first clues on how to be men and women from the adults around them. If the males in their lives treat women like silly geese both boys and girls will see that and consider it normal unless another model is presented. If children see respect all around they will consider that normal.
It would be nice to see that women are not treated as less worthy on the job simply because they might get married, have children, and take parental leave or leave. It would be even nicer to have men understand the feelings that accompany having children. If we want to continue as a country and a species we need women to want to have children. We need to pay people enough so that they can raise the children, pay attention to them, support themselves and the children without having to resort to holding down 3 jobs at once.
The truth is that American politicians do not consider families, children, or single people as worthwhile unless they donate large sums of money. And they play on our jealousies to keep the status quo: companies win, we lose.
14
Seems to me that a substantial number of men do expect equality for women to swing us toward a more "male" world view. We, on the other hand, simply wish to inject more compassion and cooperation into politics and society, in general...
PEACE/LOVE!
2
David, you are cherry picking the voting data to give yourself the false sense of security that men are compensating for all the women going over to the Dark Side. The men that support Trump broadly fit into two categories: men with only a high school education and men born before 1955. As both men and women become more highly educated, as epitomized by the millennials, and the baby boomers pass from the scene the Republican party will go from a national to a regional party unless they cut the influence of the evangelicals and focus more on women's issues like health care.
To emphasize my point please note the Republicans have lost the popular vote in six out of the last seven Presidential elections. They lost the popular vote by 3 million in the last election. Soon 80,000 votes in three critical state won't matter any more.
3
If it is true that millennials favor a "neotraditionalist" family arrangement with the woman as the primary caregiver - and, honestly, I'm skeptical, and would want to examine the source study - all that means is that they think children should be well cared for and have trouble imagining proper care being achieved by both genders equally. It is the fault of our society's gender constructs and extreme capitalism that this is so difficult to imagine. The difference between 2014 and 1994 is economic: today's young people are more precarious, more aware of how they can't afford child care, and so they fall back on expecting the woman to do it all while fantasizing about the security of more "traditional" days. Once again, I am frustrated by how David Brooks argues for reactionary social norms while ignoring elephants in the room.
4
The gender gap is not just a feature of the millennial generation, it has existed throughout times and around the world. Pew has seen the gender gap for decades; it's just now higher than ever. Women on the whole prefer Democratic values such as diplomacy over war, protection of the vulnerable, and tolerance of racial and religious differences. What has exacerbated the gender gap recently is not just Trump, but also Fox News, which speaks disdainfully of Democrats and their values, and so that is how Republican men tend to behave toward the Democratic women they know, including their wives.
Parenthood does not erase gender gap. On the contrary, parenthood exacerbates it as (usually) Democratic mothers and Republican fathers face the miserable proposition of teaching their children basic values. For example, mom's are saying immigrants seeking refuge in America should be treated humanely, and dad's are saying they should be detained and deported. You can imagine what it's like to have that conversation with children around the dinner table. Usually the mom stays silent to avoid conflict.
This is not the first time that Mr. Brooks has turned a blind eye to the abiding differences between Democratic and Republican values, and asserts that it should have no effect on our relationships, but he is wrong. It does. Our political parties reflect our basic values, and men, typically do not respect ours.
8
I do not know if Candidate Clinton did not campaign in Wisconsin because of a Barrier or an Aura.
Silence
But read or hear stories (the commoners writing) about the Hmong in Wassau, the german polish swedish migration of the 1800s, the black exodus out of Chicago, and the reservations of the Ojibwa.
Walker and Ryan, sons and fathers.
I do not know the state song but I do not think it is on the banks of the Wabash. Another state in mind.
It sounds like the tale of the tortoise and the hare. Men, white men, in this country have had their way for so long, they got far ahead fast and slowed down. In law school in 2003, I was the only male on the editorial board of my law journal. It occurred to me then that the answer was to try to become more sensitive to feminist ideas and to see things from the female perspective. Mr. Brooks’ column should provide assurance that going with the feminist flow poses little risk for men concerned about their positions of influence. Equality does not necessarily mean displacement, but men who remain in fear should step it up and compete intellectually instead of returning to the gym. The name of the new game is survival of the smartest.
8
How about the survival of us all? I have no desire to displace any of my fellow humans.
Missing from this piece is any understanding of austerity and social under-investment since 2000. Millenials are struggling to rent apartments, establish families and move forward. Women and Men are having to compete for jobs, and, surprise - some men dont appreciate the competition.
Rather than understand that their govt and society has decided not to invest in their generation, they see the women as the problem.
6
Growing up, I was taught that all we are all equal. We are all human, and we should be treated with respect regardless of our race, gender, or age.
When I hit the real world, I discovered that equality is a touch more complicated than that.
Day in and day out, I am confronted with situations where some group other than "white males" is attempting to uplift themselves, invariably at the expense of "white males."
This is the social pendulum at work. This is a culture's attempt to bring parity to a system that has long been dominated by a white patriarchy. It is a strategic attempt to instill equality.
The problem is that, in the moment, the tactics used are often inherently unequal or at the very least degrading. The top comment of this article is a great example.
My "white male" friends often are at a loss in these discussions. "How can they say that? If you replace white with black, and male with female, and I said it, I would be crucified."
They're not wrong, but that's not the point.
Discussions on racial and the gender equality have embraced the ends justifying the means. Just like Affirmative Action, there needs to be a touch of tactical inequality to bring true social equality. Making those who are being treated unequally (in the moment) understand why this is necessary is a difficult task.
I should know. It took me years to understand it. Because I was taught to treat everyone equally. Why should I be treated any different?
The sins of our fathers....
6
It is stunning that as I posted this, the Trump Administration is looking to repeal certain aspects of Affirmative Action.
Case in point...
6
Parenthood will change some things among millennials but not as much a Brooks believes. Millennials are likely to demand more equality and previous generations egged on by their Boomer parents.
4
When one group is saying that women should have the right to shape their lives the way they want, including a choice not to work and raise children inside the context of a family partnership, and another group says that "larger power dynamics" and institutional sexism is what's making women want to focus on their children, it's time to #walkaway.
3
The real problem is that men appear to be inferior to women for modern life. Now that women can own property, hold a job, and even procreate with little or no involvement from men there is little need for greater physical strength and a mercurial temperament. The attributes developed by child rearing of stamina, patience, empathy, and cooperation are necessary in modern society. Men will have to adapt.
3
It isn't a perfect fix, but a little matriarchal aspiration and respect to balance out the last 2000 years of Western patriarchal aspiration and respect could do us some good. You nailed it; just as human productive systems worked best in matriarchal systems in the past, so has history made that necessary again.
2
To check-in on the status of men and woman through the metric of politics has limited utility. Look rather to neighborhoods and how families survive years of conservative thinking that had a very poor understanding of human nature, and especially of what women were like. The meme of 'the fallen creature' has in a practical sense fallen away; except from the theorists both left and right. They are still looking to witnesses to sin, not realizing that the world as a whole has left this kind of thinking behind, a long time ago.
1
I think it is naive to talk about “millennial” males as a homogenous group. I am sure that white millennial males may have a different frame of reference than those of color; and difference in education is another large factor impacting ones view of the world and place in it.
The idea of “gender wars” is a figment of the media and this columns making. In my 40 years of working with young people and families, I have found people to become more accepting of difference in roles and responsibilities. People want their children to have a variety of opportunities. Parents want their daughters to grow up and be engineers, and they support their sons being dancers and nurses and caretakers of children.
I wonder where these surveys are located; who designed the questions. Design of question can skew results. Surveys and their results can be designed to find the message or answer you are looking for. I am more impressed by observing the people in my community and hearing their stories and learning from their view of the world. What I have experienced is more opportunity for all gender identities.
9
Thank you. My husband and I raised our kids to do whatever they wanted. My daughter is an engineer and my son cares for history young children jointkynwith his wife.
3
From what I've seen, a lot of young men operate on a similar wavelength to Trump and some of this has to do simply with the modern male zeitgeist which prizes immaturity, and fun more than anything else. Sounds weird but such depictions are everywhere: sitcoms, in commercials, movies, portrayals of gamers, etc.
They tend to, more or less, ironically appreciate his bluster, his ability to outrage, his social media prowess, his ability to use and just recognize internet memes (and to use them correctly).
Without sounding dismissive, he's sort of the flippant smart aleck in the room who's mean to girls, neglectful of his work, and disrespectful to the teacher and becomes popular for it, at least among the guys (and a surprising amount of girls) who admire the bravado of it all.
7
The Pew study is missing the most relevant information. There are no time series data included in the paper. Pew compares the millennial gender gap to older voters. That information is rather pointless when you think about it. Why would you expect millennials to have the same gender gap as any other generation? Over time each generation is going to respond to changes in societal norms differently. You're comparing apples and oranges.
We need to look at the change in gender gap for millennials within in their own demographic. Most people under 35 would have begun voting in 2004 at the earliest. Maybe a handful in 2000. What percentage were voting and what was the gender gap for each election over the past 18 years. Compare those figures and you might get a sense for how millenials are responding to the Trump era. Everything else here is white page filler.
1
Knowing who you are, having an identity, is an important part of mental health. Men tend to associate their identity with their job, whereas women often associate their identity more with being a mother. As women become more co-equal in the work place they tend to displace men and thereby threaten their identity. And while it is true that men might become more active in the role as care giver to their children, they can never carry and bear children; and therefore they can never really identify themselves as a "mother" in the way women can. I think what is being observed is an identity crisis among men and especially among those that do not have a college education.
7
While a crisis of identity may be true, men may want to read how Native Peoples in Matriarchal Societies find power and identity. As the Hitchhikers Guide says, "Don't Panic."
Brooks would probably blame the behaviour described by Petula Dvorak in yesterday's WaPo :
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/tormented-and-traumatized-rage-towa...
Well, I do believe men and women think more alike, in a few ways, than they used to. No, I am not at all surprised that, when given all options, a significant percentage of women choose to stay home and raise their children. Women and men do, on average, have some differences in their natures. When things are working well, these differences complement each other. I never thought the struggle for women's equality meant that men and women would be alike, or think just alike.
What I thought then, and I think now, is that men should not subjugate women, or confine women, or beat or rape women, or restrict their choices, or squeeze them out of opportunities, or take/control their property. Women should have equal access to education, jobs, property rights, etc. In an ideal world, women's unique contribution to human reproduction would be supported by society, not used as a penalty.
I know that most men's lives aren't a bed of roses, either. But for most of human history men have dominated and controlled women, simply because they could. Our species has finally evolved enough that we are eliminating major cruelties and injustices, like slavery, child rape, and female oppression. Some day we will eliminate War, if we make it that far.
21
War has been a plague of our species between familial units, tribes, and civilizations since we climbed down from the trees and started to take control of our destinies. Child rape, slavery, and female oppression came later as civilizations began to form. Perhaps the modern era will redefine productive relations that help us get back to matriarchal values, but that doesn't end war. War will only end when all humans, come under the same umbrella of empathy.
1
Gender issues are the icing survival is the cake. We have been thrown into a winner take all culture where basica economic survival is often in doudt for most of the month.
1
I think that the millennial gender war is wishful thinking on the part of politicians. There will alway be differences no matter what the generation. Each generation is faced with some of the same challenges as their parents. They are also faced with different societal expectations now then when I grew up.
The key for all of us is to look at each other as equals in a human way. This does not mean we will have the same opportunities in the wider world. We can lean on each other, play to our own strengths and help our partner to play to theirs.
We do not have to continue gender wars if we do not want too.
We just need to respect our differences.
2
I read half the births in the US are to single mothers. I often see stories about children’s successes or tragedies with interviews of mothers and I wonder - Where are the fathers? I think the biggest problems are lack of decent paying jobs Americans are willing to take and no social healthcare safety net. Marriage is hard but lack of financial resources makes it harder, so,people are choosing not to marry.
In a recent interview an illegal immigrant said he came to the US because he was making $300 per month in Mexico and makes $5000 per month in the US and was trying to get his family here.
It’s income inequality that’s causing the majority of our problems with the lack of healthcare and our poor educational system in the US.
5
Of course younger women see things differently. They are experiencing a resurgent assault on their rights to bodily integrity and self determination. It doesn't get much realer than that.
23
“Women in their traditional roles need power” -Margaret Mead,1975
3
David Brooks seems to live in a bubble built for one! As the mother of a politically aware millennial of the male gender, I can testify that he and his wife and their fruends have none of the traits ascribed to this cohort. Both my son and his wife are MDs; and both work and intend to continue working when they have children. Given their specialties, it's likely my daughter-in-law will make more money. Their friends share these attitudes and those who have children share responsibility for raising them. Very different from the picture painted by Brooks
12
I think he was talking more about poor folks.
In 1960 America white males ruled supreme. They had almost no competition—not from women, not from blacks and other minorities, not from foreign competition, not from immigrants. You could be big fat and lazy and still make good money. Unions protected and even encouraged bad behavior
Then competition showed up. And white males have become less competitive and have a tough time keeping good jobs. So they blame everyone but themselves for their difficulties. Study hard in school. Not us. Commit to retraining. Not us
Waiting for Superman. And Trump has finally shown up
11
Men and women are fundamentally different. Donald Trump won't change that. Hillary Clinton won't change that. Caitlyn Jenner ... well Caitlyn Jenner might change that.
3
Aboriginal peoples all over the world, across history, accept the gender and sexual diverse that are born to their groups as a blessing. They accept the differences between the genders and see those that cross boundaries as a bridge between the gaps. I hope she does change the artificial norms that our "superior society" has forced upon our species.
White people are in made up wars that affect everyone. White women have taken over affirmative action, and given opportunities that others are not. Qualified minorities can't get hired because of the white purity of the corporate and board world.
Black professional women hit the glass ceiling due to racism before anyone else and end up changing positions in order to have an opportunity. The white world of America is far from being fair and having minority babies are risk known to put the mother at higher risk than her white counterpart.
Mr. Brooks why don't you write about the world as it is vs how you think it is
5
Your post grieves me to the core. It crushes me that people of color feel left out, even by women such as myself who are fighting for justice & equal opportunity. Honestly, I can only get down on my knees & beg forgiveness if minority citizens felt excluded & marginalized by the recent Women's Marches I have participated in. Everyone, and I mean everyone, in this country who is dismissed & demeaned by our ruling Oligarchy must start reaching out to one another & supporting each other. It seems that our Oligarchy is viciously & intentionally dividing everyone, including those who should be allies. I remember Mr. Obama's first inauguration & the feeling of common purpose & hope that (very briefly) seemed to unite us. What can the good people of this country do to achieve the unity we require if we want to be seriously influential?
Some good, needed points rarely made, although not right on everything, such as "parenthood" as the solution to the "war." Good to bring attention to the backlash, as so often these things are missed (a book review in the NYT yesterday, conversely, featured a lot of them, in a range of areas), but needs more nuance. The backlash among men is not necessarily limited to those who voted for Trump. The praise for "all-women" companies or supervisors has recently switched from implied to explicit. I don't see why proponents of more empowerment for women (which includes me) do this. Can they not see what this will lead to...even among supporters? Why create new problems?
We also have a fundamental problem of language. Is there really such a thing as "men?" Maybe in some sense, but it's also an abstraction, a category and how can I be responsible for a membership to which I'm assigned? Yet, over-generalization is vast, something which once was discouraged, but now so commonplace that standards editors allow it.
Part of the solution is larger scale empathy, which has to go both ways. But that's a challenge, particularly when you "know" your side is 100% right, on everything, and the other side totally wrong or worse.
3
Parenthood? That was a dream of mine (as someone in the demographic you are talking about in this article) until the reality of health insurance and costs there for having a child appeared. As it stands, I will never be a parent because the costs are too high if everything goes okay. If there are any complications, I have just bankrupted my family and destroyed any ability to provide for them. Forget about parenthood (many people I know are running the same calculations) as becoming a major factor in people's lives going forward.
7
Single payer and a simpler less materialistic-driven life style will do wonders for your concerns. Do you really need to spend $6 at Starbucks every morning? It is amazing how much money you can save by using a bicycle and public transportation and cutting down on the frantic, overly busy hyper-electronic American way of life.
4
Chuck: you are placing the onus of the problem on individual choice rather than drastic shifts in the economy over the past several decades. Millennials as a group will be having far fewer children as they graduate with student loan debt, and contend with much lower wages overall. The Boomers had the advantage of lower college costs relative to wages in their prime child-rearing years, as well as lower underemployment, job security, etc. It’s not the coffee, and it’s nearsighted to blame the character of a generation rather than its circumstances.
5
Chuck-One of your concerns is something that he, and all of us, can do; reduce consumption (although billions are made on exploiting the psychology of all humans to get us to consume). The other is much needed but not in the hands of the individual or the family.
1
So you set up a strawman and knocked it down. Big stuff, Mr. Brooks.
5
Sorry, David, you latent male chauvinist. You and old White guys like myself have had it too good for too long. Our time in the sun is setting. Being White, Male, and highly educated was a passport to the American Dream. We lived the proverbial Good Life. We loved it, and coveted it, and became so enamored with our perceived genius we let it go to our puddin' heads. Then we became jealous when challenged by equally bright Women.
So now, it's not so funny anymore, because we White Guys have begun to wane. Men have lost power, become increasingly impotent. We now are lashing out at anyone who we feel is the cause for our shrinking flaccid machismo.
And I say hip hip, and hurray. It's about time. When White American Males cast their votes for a demagogue, a know-nothing dimwit, an imbecile, be assured the decline and fall of the White American Empire is nigh. And I could not be more happier. We White guys have done some good, to be sure, but that was so ago and far away in a galaxy of post-WWII powers.
Since the Baby Boom age ended, White Male dominance is rapidly fading. Decades ago, it was easy to say we'll accept Women in our World when there were so few willing to take the challenge. Now that our alleged infallibility has been torn asunder, our shortcomings highlighted, we must realize it's time for us to get out of the new road which lies ahead and lend a hand. If not we will be cast alongside that road.
DD
Manhattan
10
George Carlin said it best:
"Women are crazy and men are stupid."
He also said that if you pay attention, you will see that all the terrible things in the world, ALL the terrible things in the world are perpetrated by men.
This is, indeed, an elegant, accurate picture of "gender."
5
The gender war is over?
Roe v. Wade
13
The biggest difference between men and women in business is the one that has always been there -- women are not team players. Sorry but field hockey just doesn't prepare women for having someone strenuously disagree with their notions. They hold long term grudges over things most men would laugh off as "horseplay" and meet at the bar for a drink and another laugh.
_____________________________________________________
Changing human nature is very difficult - both men and women will take generations as women slowly "get on board" and men learn to appreciate a team member that pulls her share of the load.
3
Ugh. That’s all I can bring myself to say. (This ugh is coming from a woman who works in business). If you work in business, I feel awful for your colleagues; both male and female. Ugh.
4
I fail to get the point, if any.
There is no "war" between the sexes.
But there is a war by the patriarchy against its own demise, which it tries to win not by achievement, but by scapegoating — of women, minorities, immigrants.
That cannot be separated from the economic war, the class war, in which the rich, aided by those in the working class they have managed to dupe or whose prejudices they have been able to enlist, are taking every last vestige of power and prosperity from the working class as a whole.
One cannot separate racism, sexism, homophobia, misogyny, and xenophobia from economics, from capitalism. Just as one cannot separate the fight against all those things, including the fight of feminism, from resistance to capitalism.
Many liberals think that you can address these problems as "imperfections" in the system. Conservatives like Brooks think many of these problems don't exist. But the problems are the system.
And millennials are waking up to that fact.
11
Since you don't even know the difference between sex and gender, you are not qualified to write this column. This is a fraud.
6
My first instinct is to be annoyed at the NYT for continuing to publish these poorly researched op-eds with such superficial theses, but then I open the comments section and find responses that are infinitely more eloquent. Maybe NYT should pay the commenters for their work instead of the tired opinions of op-ed columnists.
25
Nordic paradox? More like Nordic sensibility. I've always found it absurd that the measure of a society's gender equality is how many female managers there are, as though being in management is the acme of aspiration. How about the number of artists, or teachers, or any number of professions that people go into because they want to, rather than to make money?
9
The Trump era deprives the world of nuance, and that makes it hard to talk about the ways in which men are struggling without it seeming like an assault on women.
It can simultaneously be a good thing, for example, that more women than ever are highly educated, and a bad thing worthy of careful thought and response that many men are finding themselves ill-suited to learn relevant skills for a modern economy. (Whether the women who've put in the work to get ahead deserve to pass them on the economic ladder or not (read: they do), a sizable cohort of male failures portends societal problems.)
But as usual, it's hard to take Brooks credibly as a messenger when he offers predictions like "parenthood" will fix all. As if the entirety of human experience hasn't taught us that parenthood, though sometimes rewarding, is also an overwhelmingly challenging milestone for parents to navigate. And as if there aren't a ton of gender-charged political fights to be had in that sphere, from maternity and paternity leave to custodial rights in divorces to equitable division of household labor to balance-less work cultures.
4
If you are correct about a gender war among millennials, I doubt that parenthood will be a national panacea, especially considering that millennials are marrying less and having fewer children than Gen X'ers and Boomers.
6
And childbirth usually removes one side from the field.
3
This article is shortsighted on so many points. First of all, someone tell David about mansplaining, and then let’s stop having boomers discuss millennials. He doesn’t even mention transgender or nonbinary folx, and problematically discusses men’s rights advocates without once calling out their TOXIC masculinity. He doesn’t acknowledge that women face hurdles in getting reproductive healthcare and that SCOTUS might soon gut roe v wade, or that women are sometimes not even believed by medical professionals. He acts like women don’t live in fear of getting assaulted or stalked or domestically abused, and then finishes off by assuming we’re all about to have kids. Well, I’m not, so that last part sounds extra insane to me. ‘Just wait, Females, for when you Bear Us Children you will Forget the Ills of Society.’ What the hell? Next time step away from flat data and maybe ask women how they feel. You know, remember us? We can speak, too. The opinion in this article is part of the reason WHY women are marching.
48
David Brooks is a cultural philosopher who stays inside and calls friends on his Rolodex.
6
I am a boomer and I agree with everything you wrote.
1
Once again, a well off, well educated, straight white older man weighs in on gender and misses the point. Women are still largely perceived as lesser mortals. In a society in which there are more progressive views that include a community in which everyone is better off when child care is a "shared" responsibility in terms of parental leave and health care paid for by a progressive tax system, women can opt to take more time if they choose. They also have the option to climb to the highest ranks of business or government, although the glass ceiling still exists even in more progressive countries. For any gender, this is probably the worst Western country in which to raise a family. American women have the worst of all worlds - most are treated like crap in the work place and are also left holding the bag for child care. If the spouse leaves or dies, it is often financially catastrophic for any woman who doesn't have a career of her own.
31
The whole argument about station in life and the conflict between the genders is a class conflict. The elite never raised their own young and the poor never had a choice but to be all hands on deck for survival. For the middle class, the further up one goes and can live comfortably it is more common for women to make the very understandable choice to nurture families (beyond the nuclear) and build communities rather than work for a boss that ultimately does nothing for you. Orwell's 1984 was a 3 class society too: The Inner Party, the Outer Party, and the Proles. While it wasn't good to be a Prole, the real nightmare was for the Inner Party members.
3
"An increasing number of high school-educated men say they are the ones being screwed by modern society..."
I compete in a job market that has moved closer to a level playing field. I know hiring managers are far less likely than in the past to give me an advantage just because I'm a white man, and I don't want them to. If I experience career or business problems or setbacks, I know they result from my inability to train and position myself effectively, not because someone is treating me unfairly.
I was raised to treat everyone - male or female - with the same respect, a concept that applies easily to people who don't identify as male or female.
I grew up knowing that this country afforded my immigrant ancestors the opportunity to use their talents and work ethic to make a decent life for themselves and their children. That story never ends: there are always people who want to come here and fulfill the promise of America, and denying them that opportunity is sheer hypocrisy.
None of this gives me cause to feel sorry for myself or to go around crying and whining that I'm a victim.
9
Dude, you're missing / conveniently overlooking what's actually happening in the real world. Your data about changing attitudes of millennial men is probably right, but not necessarily surprising. Regardless, it's no where near the story begins or ends.
- Sweden has universal healthcare, retirement and a big social state... if one parent isn't working, you can still be middle class (or better) and are not totally screwed.
- Many women here are single parents and / or dealing with dead beat husbands. There is no other option but to work.
- Even for married couples, few can afford the luxury of having a one income family. Except for maybe your bubble of friends.
- Increasingly it's the woman who is the bread winner while still being the keeper of the home and family (look up emotional labor).
- Not sure where you sit or what you chose to see, but there is still crazy sexism and bias daily, at work and in life. Woman should be mad and stand up.
- This is not a women issue... it's a man issue. Stop being defensive, insecure and combative. For a group that historically is about personal responsibility, men need to stop whining, listen, understand and step it up. Look for real solutions rather than a time machine. That's strength, not a snow flake.
- Please be smarter than this, David.
31
Davis is pretty smart - all that you are doing is listing the typical set of talking points - absent any - you know - empirical data.
What David is attempting to do is add some empirical data to the mix and to see what happens to these unsupported 'talking pionts'
2
The thing that strikes me is the perpetrator becomes the victim mentality. Since you are on top of the mountain, becoming equal to minorities or women means either they get more or you get less. In all reality, it's a combination of the two. But there comes a point where , in order to be equals, you now longer can "feel" superior. OK, we let you have.....now asking for more is asking for too much. We may all be better off with equality among races and genders. But it sure doesn't feel that way to those who are giving up the gains they have achieved "fair and square" in their mind. When the pool of those under consideration for things like jobs, promotions, raises, college acceptance, loans, etc, etc gets bigger and bigger, your likelihood of winning decreases. And then you start saying to yourself: "Wait a minute. The problem wasn't that bad. We 'fixed' it and now they are screwing me". So you hire a guy like Trump to stop the forward progress of the movements and turn back to the good old days where you could be on top again and simply deny that you were screwing someone else to get there. And then you can feel good about your life again.
7
The stridency of US feminism has always been associated with pushback from men. The form such pushback takes differs between educated and uneducated Americans. It is seen in all walks of life amongst the uneducated but, as would be expected, is much more subtle in more educated circles, where it is seen mainly in the workplace, where men protect themselves from accusations of creating a "hostile environment" or discrimination by tokenism and various defensive behaviors that ultimately work against women. It isn't surprising that millennials are more transparent about where they see inequality and where they don't. So an equal partnership in the home isn't controversial but views of inequality in other walks of life are. Anyone who is familiar with Scandinavian cultures will know that women are treated as equals in terms of opportunity and respect but that gender differences still exist when it comes to other areas. Unlike in the US, women in these cultures are comfortable with such differences, don't conflate equality with "sameness", talk about "male privilege" and "microaggressions" or objectify themselves while objecting to being objectified by men.
1
Stridency? Wow! I’m sure you long for the days when women were quiet and did what we were told. It always interests me when men use words like “strident” and “shrill” to describe women’s behavior when the same behavior in men would be described as assertive, confident and powerful.
4
The political gender divides, just like the political racial and ethnic divides are most useful to those at the top of the socio-economic power structure.
Divide and conquer has always been the winning strategy for the one perennial minority - the rich and powerful.
10
To understand the gender war is not over, even if there has been progress, we only need to look at the staff around Trump when we watch TV: white males who make the decisions for women. I hope the coming elections in November will show real progress in the number of elected women. Also look at the protest March against Trump when he goes to London on July 13th It is led by women like Shola Mos Shogbaminer. I do not know where she is from but she is black.
3
In this piece, Brooks focuses on gender inequality in the workplace regarding pay and responsibility but that is only one of many concerns that women have. Men are by far less likely to be sexually harassed at work. Perhaps that would change if women ran things to the degree men currently do but that is not the case now.
Also, women suffer from sexual exploitation often resulting in low self-esteem. Imagine if images of the perfect male physique were plastered everywhere and it was perfectly acceptable for the public to hold every man to that standard. We would begin to feel inadequate and lacking in some way--as if we are not good enough. We might even start starving ourselves or working out to the level that it is detrimental to our health. Women have had to deal with this for a long time and it is cruel.
That said, I believe the differences are more along political lines than gender lines. Just increasing female leadership will not work if they are conservative women. If you get people like Kellyanne Conway or Sarah Palin in office, you would witness cruelty to men AND women increase exponentially. However, others, such as Elizabeth Warren would bring stability.
Lastly, women do not tell men when to have a vasectomy but men think they can tell women when they can and cannot have a baby--even if their lives are at risk.
There is right and wrong, and right now, everything on the Right is wrong. Women on the left are now leading a charge for change.
10
"I’m betting that the millennial gender war is a figment of the political circus, and will be washed away by the giant force looming on the horizon: parenthood."
Parenthood? How on earth are they going to afford that?
Our culture does not support young families. Women make less money than men still- for the same work. Lots of young men also do not thrive in “the rat race”. People telling you to be a victim in exchange for your vote is nothing new.
At the same time, the real courage right now in the culture is coming from the young. I was surprised that the young do not support marches but that might explain why it was such a surprise that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez won by closing a huge gap while her opponent sat around waiting to win- her support became a visible thing at the polls not in the streets.
3
Peterson and his ilk ask us to ignore centuries (millennia) of human experience when women (who are a slight statistical majority) and minorities were subjugated, often in violent and vile ways, in order to believe that men are the real victims.
So, we get something that vaguely resembles equality (and all statistics confirm that we are NOT there yet) and men throw a collective fit and carry on as if they were...well, not to be too coy about it...denied the vote, property, jobs, held in chains or lynched.
Do thinking adults really need the problem spelled out? Simply claiming to "feel" like a victim does not make you one. It's those who often suffer measurable hardship who are most apt to be quiet and work through it.
I fear for a country where the rush by some to claim victim status is the very group that charges others with being "snowflakes." They are the blizzard they seek, but they're going to bury us if their calculated and false narrative is not refuted. They don't get to rewrite history.
Civil rights campaigns throughout history were won when men and women worked together to overcome systemic injustices. As many male names as female are on the memorial at Seneca Falls. Women often led the union battles of the last century. *
The simple truth is this: We're stronger together. A woman said that. Strange. She didn't win.
*Days before the Triangle Shirt Waist Fire, the women who died there negotiated the biggest pay raise in the history of the garment district.
8
"I’m betting that the millennial gender war is a figment of the political circus, and will be washed away by the giant force looming on the horizon: parenthood."
Of course you do; you're a white male of privilege. That has been the mantra of the Republican Party since, forever; Family Values!
Brooks doesn't seem to grasp the animosity and fear this President and his Republican cohorts have engendered among most women.
Certainly, there are those, many in rural areas, who continue to clasp to their anachronistic religious and cultural beliefs and will go along with their 'man'. However, the overwhelming pool of female voters are incensed.
David your attempts to tamp down this uprising only illuminate your attempts to normalize the unacceptable. This Republican Party and their leader are an abomination, and everyone should sound the alarm. Acquiescence such as yours serves to further encourage their psychopathic behavior.
7
The youngest millennials are in college. The oldest are well into their thirties. Parenthood is not on the horizon, lots of us are parents already. The trope of describing millennials as bratty children is getting ridiculous.
3
@Sean - Sorry to say that some millennials brought the bratty children description to life during the financial crisis. A very small but whiny group of them is responsible for the perception.
Who can forget the countless interviews on TV and in print of sad millennials, after attaining a college education (most of them paid in full or part by their parents) -- snubbing any job if it's not in their very specific field of choice so they sit at home, complaining about lack of money to go out, but a car, etc., as they live off their parents while contributing nothing. This, at a time when we had people with college degrees & experience laid off, taking any and all jobs (including fast food/retail jobs) to support their families.
2
"It’s only there that we see the usual social media game of moral one-upmanship in which each tribe competes to be more victimized, more offended and more woke."
My wife and I have talked often in the past couple of years how this game seems to be tearing apart our country. Can the genie be put back in the bottle or are we doomed?
1
Equality in pay? What are you talking about? Women still earn 75 cents on the dollar, domestic violence and sexual assault has been as prevalent as it ever was regardless of any hashtag moment and the fact that a few well-known men are finally being arrested for their violence. You speak of women’s issues as if you know something of them. Your facile interpretations of feminism, gender dynamics of millennials (as If hashtags make that much difference/that parenthood will have such an effect) and why women women do what they do signals that you don’t. Scandinavian women flee the workplace when things are equal? Nonsense. My guess is that they choose to raise the children they bear and nurse in a civilized manner and in a country that mandates employers provide more than a few lousy weeks of mat leave and and doesn’t force them to pump their breast milk in a supply closet. Want to know why women make the choices they do (including being silent about the violence we regularly endure)? Just ask any one of the millions of women why pay for this paper (even though it actually costs more of their disposable income compared to the men who purchase it). But the answers you get won’t fit nicely in a single column. It’s all a lot more complicated that yours would indicate, Brooks. Please stop making things worse by perpetuating the fallacy that women’s lives are uncomplicated. Or better yet, keep your opinions off their decisions.
13
"I have to say that this rising war between the sexes feels phony to me."
Phew. For a minute there I thought you were buying into all this nonsense you were saying.
BTW, youth voters went for Reagan over Mondale by 24 points despite Reagan's massive cuts to college loan programs and for Bush over Dukakis by 29 points.
Young people do not yet have the experience to see nuyance and shades of gray, so they are naturally drawn to Republicans and conservatism.
1
Male supremacy ended in 1945 with the actual use of the atomic bomb. The gift of that weapon (and of course its predecessors) to the world dictated an eventual feminine takeover or men would eventually annihilate the human species. The only thing that ever gave men power over women was warfare. Lets face it guys we can't really do that anymore. WWII was our last hurrah. We are now going to live in an increasingly feminized world or end it all.
2
Don't make the cartoon argument that this is women's issue: "many women take advantage of those choices by dropping out of the rat race"
I am a husband and a father. My wife and I both work full-time, which reflects more the necessities of life than actual choice of a lifestyle. Actually, she contributes more to the family income and I sometimes have more flexibility. I participate in every chore, in children's activities, in their learning, and in their lives in general. I see the same in many fathers of my generation.
I do know, seeing and judging all the evidence around me, that conservative ideas are bad for families - either directly or as a product of policies they espouse (eg resulting in poorer education, poorer healthcare options, less early education, bad family leave policies, no support for working parents).
I repeat my main point: don't make a cartoon argument that this is a women's issue. There are two problems here. One is the older cultural ideas about manhood and fatherhood which are, like it or not, changing. The second is very specific: Conservative ideas and policies are simply bad for families. The relation between the two: conservatives retreat into racist machismo as the model of what a man ought to be. Conservatives poison parenthood and fatherhood and turn it into a political issue. Party of my duty as a father is that when my children grow up they will know to reject racism, fascism, and false prophets.
17
Years ago, CONSERVATIVES WERE AFRAID that gender equality would produce gender similarity.
FIFY
The rest of us, not so much.
PS Phyllis Schlafly is dead.
2
Complaining and blaming seem to be close to the same thing. Men and women both want pretty much the same things, but want to go about getting them in different ways and, IMO, that is part of the problem.
Blaming each other seems to be as old as Adam. When Eve ate the apple and Adam did after her, when caught, Adam blamed first Eve for giving him the apple and then blamed God for giving him Eve who made him eat of the apple.
Eve blamed the snake.
Men are not marginalized in this society, they still have many advantages. I am tired of men whining about things if they don’t get their way. No you do not have some imagined right to sex from any female or the right to attack women who do not find you attractive. If you are concerned about women being more educated, then pay attention in school and go to college. Work hard at your job and at home, take care of yourself and quit expecting women to do everything just because they are women. Why do men have such a difficult time seeing women as equals? Why should we have to act subservient to males to make them feel better?
24
White males are openly demonized in the US; its perfectly acceptable. How many times do we read "Old white men" as a reference to the lowest of the low among us.
3
Young people I know, are marrying later and postponing having kids. Although our playgrounds are packed with babies and kids, many of the caretakers are grandmothers and nannies, not moms, who are away at jobs. Our own kids are no longer in a hurry to get married, they are happy with their partners in a non committed relationship.
How come you are not cursing and ridiculing millennials like you did all through the election season? Back then, the word millennial was considered a curse word by NYT and its columnists.
Speaking of gender roles, my mother who is in her 90s, and all her sisters worked outside home, in professional capacities. My father's mother, my grandmother too worked from her 30s to her 60s, raising 8 children, most of it single handedly when my grandfather passed away very young. This was back in the 1940s. Head scratch, David.
6
Just have babies and you won't have time to think about things. Another reason the right, wants to get rid of reproductive rights. Mr. Brooks you have no idea what women go through in daily life and your column is evidence of that
7
Nature tricks women in their childbearing years into lack of confidence, where they feel the need for someone more capable to look after them. This perception of their own inadequacy is fake, phoney, fraudulent - and powerful.
Men who fit the mold as protectors are older, taller and seem more confident; which, as in Donald Trump, is often fake, phoney and fraudulent. There are infinite ramifications of this on both sides of the gender divide.
1
"It seems that when egalitarian welfare states give people more choices, many women take advantage of those choices by dropping out of the rat race.”
They drop out because they are, in general, smarter than men.
3
How are people who view the world in such disparate terms supposed to meet and mate and become parents?
Speaking from the female perspective, who would want a Trumpie in the house?
3
Not going backwards, Mr Brooks, just because you see some benefit to "barefoot and pregnant". You keep trying to put the world back to 1955, it can't go there. And 1955 wasn't so good for women and minorities, certainly not good for non heterosexuals and non Christians. 1955 looked good because there was no Depression, no World War and the American economy was roaring.
Oh, well there was Joe McCarthy and the Red Scare. The words "under God" were added to the Pledge of Allegiance and "in god we trust" were added to U.S. money. Political beliefs became a subject of government enquiry. Maybe not such a good time-for a lot of people.
Your Christian utopia doesn't play, because it was never a Utopia, just a great time to be an American white male.
4
i, for one, think that the resurgent popularity of men's beard is also a subtle reflection of said male backlash. if women are going to browbeat us all the time, then we're not going to shave! lol.
As young males find themselves increasingly reliant upon their mothers for shelter and financial support even well into adulthood, the level of aggression towards females among younger males is increasing proportionately. A gender war is brewing in mothers' basements and on videogame forums across the nation. If only those young males were raised in a manner that equipped and required them to face life in the real world, they might have learned some basic respect for the rest of humanity.
3
Wow. David's solution to the gender gap: get the women pregnant. That'll keep 'em closer to the maternal role that weak men seem to constantly need to feel good about themselves.
With the Supreme Court slouching towards Salem, we are about to see how really fake the gender war is.
7
The current tone of political feminism born of Hillary Clinton's defeat woefully alienates men. Progressive women will find it difficult to remake the social contract without a few allies.
1
As a 65 year old Caucasian experienced manager, I will tell you that amongst 20 to 35 year olds, give me a woman over a man every time. They work harder, multitask and ask for more. My 30 something well educated and confidant nieces and similar friends find the man pool a desert. Entitled young men blaming everyone else, taking little self responsiblity, wanting to be awarded 3rd base without every achieving anything. Most are pathetic outcomes from their baby boomer middle class parents who let abandoned their healthy childhoods to the computer and video games. No outdoors like in Scouting. No summers mowing lawns. Just lazy parenting of males. These younger ladies rock and this young lady generation will do the great things that once men only used to do. They will make a Beautiful America ahead!!
11
There have been many monikers applied to the different generations in America....millennials should be referred to as the feckless and phoney generation. Their submersion into fake social media lives drives a self-inflated sense of importance that waxes and wanes depending upon who said what, when.
So, right now....the gender war is on....and it's fake. Soon to be replaced by whatever happens to pop up on their screens while taking a break from Netflix binging in their parents' basements.
1
As usual, Brooks, himself the cause of so much of the agony gripping the nation, just doesn’t know anything about anything. Millennial men are the very antithesis of what he describes here - he just doesn’t get it. Additionally, there is a real war approaching with a Neanderthal Supreme Court appointment that will definitely be totally against women. (Another result of Brooks’ life work.) The third branch of government will soon fall totally in line with a war against women. Brooks will drink martinis in the Hamptons and collect his paycheck, oblivious to it all.
11
This column raises a serious issue which I have seen in other editorials. When did misandry... a person who dislikes, or despises men become acceptable? When did the various man-hating stabs, jibes, insults & expectations become part of our culture? Why do our cultural norms protect & celebrate this kind behavior as “hip” or “sassy”? The difference is that misogynists are decried as evil while misandrists are celebrated. Isn't this a double standard? Misogyny & misandry is unacceptable whether it comes from the left or right? We have enough divisiveness in our country. If you seriously want to tear down the web of institutions that systemically oppress women you will need as many allies as you can get. Telling half the population that you hate them, even in jest, is not the way to do that. This new sexism, reverse sexism, is widespread in feminist and pro-feminist literature - or propaganda, one might say, - but largely ignored. One does not criticize feminism! But a fair number of feminists have criticized men based solely on their gender and/or ethnicity. Misandry is everywhere, culturally acceptable, even normative, largely invisible, taught directly and indirectly by men and women, , very damaging and dangerous to men and women in different ways and de-humanizing.
2
The reason women dislike Trump so much is that we know him so well. All of us have met him. He is the obnoxious member of our family, the boss we can't stand, the classmate who drives us nuts with his bragging, and the man who not only expects sex from us but imagines he is a great lover when in fact he is delusional, a liar and a bully. Older women seem to object less because we are so used to characters like him and have even developed pride in all their schemes to "handle him." Younger women who believe they should not have to be clever and "handle" such men; they should just be stopped. Not all men are like Donald Trump, but there are enough of them that we simply cannot escape them. They are everywhere. Just ask us if we have ever encountered someone who very much reminds us of Donald Trump. And then listen, please listen to our responses.
10
In her extraordinary poem “And Still I Rise” (1978) Maya Angelou may have been specifically addressing black women, but her words can bring comfort and renewed determination to anyone, male or female, black or white, who is fighting to save this country from the dark forces of racism, xenophobia and misogyny. Reading, or better yet, listening, to Angelou reading her poem is the best remedy I know against the despair and discouragement sown by Trump. Here’s just the first verse:
You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I’ll rise.
8
David Brooks thinks parenthood is an equalizer? Actually, it's the number one reason for inequality. This article is clueless. But then Brooks often is.
23
Women make less than men because they have children, but then they marry men, so it doesn't make any difference.
Parenthood will wash away the gender wars? Are you kidding? Parenthood is where they really get started!
325
The reality I see in my thirty-something daughters’ marriages Is that they work 40 hours per week, while still taking on most of the responsibility for their children and most household tasks. The husbands want it both ways - the income and intellectual stimulation of the working wife combined with the home front care provided by a traditional housewife. Magical thinking indeed!
I interpreted BROOKS as meaning - men and women will stop talking about the GENDER issues ans start talking about the BABY issues. You both agree!
Nordic healthcare vs US ACA-- now bing unstrung and dismantled by your party Mr Brooks. I personally know women who go back to work on day three after birth, by necessity. In Norway, a parent gets paid for the first five years of the child's lie, to stay home. Your comparison should be apples to apples, not a fantasy of poor comparisons. Do your homework.
6
How convenient! Women assuming equal responsibility outside of the home and “ neotradi tionally “ assume the majority of caretaking and homemaking responsibility in the home. Wow women are really wonder women.
And let’s not forget , looking 30 at 50 and amazing in bed. Put them on another impossible pedestal. Your dream of the perfectly happy family dependent on female sacrifice reflects the white male Judeo-Christian privilege that neither dies nor fades away.
12
...And cannot, somehow, find a way to create peace among nations and classes.
Too much testosterone, I fear.
2
Once again- you simplify complex information- and reduce your conclusions to mind-numbing sound bites that do nothing to improve the discourse on topics like this. Perhaps- you should NOT be writing about the gender war... or whether it is fake or not- and stop mansplaining.
10
Fake? What I see is an assault on personal freedom of minority’s by old gray men,and I am an old gray man. David you need to stop carrying Trumps water, codependency is a tough battle.
7
Every once in a while David can be spot on. But then, #WhiteMalePrivilege kicks in and blinds him.
2
This was the idiotic view of women having it all that was presented to young women and men in the 1980s in an effort to sell perfume.
“Cause I’m a wo-man,
I can bring home the bacon
Fry it up in a pan
And never let you forget you’re a man.
(Give her Enjoli, the 8-hour perfume for the 24-hour woman)
I can work till five o’clock
Come home and read you Tickety Tock
(Tonight I’m going to cook for the kids!)
And if it’s lovin you want
I can kiss you and give you the shiverin fits.
(Enjoli, the 8-hour perfume for your 24-hour woman!)”
She worked, came home to cook, feed the kids, and be a sex goddess to her man. Just how many hours did we women have in a day back then?
Meanwhile what exactly was the mister doing? He went to work, came home poured himself a martini, and sat until the dinner bell rang. Then he watched tv while the little woman cleaned up.
After watching that scenario play out around me all too often. I had a career, married late, and skipped the kids.
Women, get an education, stay current in it, and don’t put yourself in a situation where there’s no way out. Life is unpredictable. Prepare for the worst. Expect the best. Too many women are stuck in bad situations.
If you can find a loving caring life partner to do it with you, all the better. It’s wonderful to have someone you share a vision for life with so choose wisely. I did, we’re going on 31 years now.
vintageamericanways.com/can-bring-home-bacon-fry-pan/
3
Courageous article. One of David Brooks best.
2
>
The causation of the your stated problem:
“For the woman, the man is a means: the end is always the child.”
Nietzsche
Eros is the master conductor of this madhouse.
1
When someone quotes Thus Spake Zarathustra: a book for all and none - you are not quoting Nietzsche - you are quoting a character in a Nietzschean philosophical tale - in this case you are quoting Zarathustra who may or may not share Nietzsche's belief.
This is why it is important to closely read TSZ and not ascribe its themes directly to Nietzsche.
2
Well, grandpa, I guess you know better. You finish that the washing agent of parenthood will restore some semblance of normality to millennials. Those babies will stop the fake gender war in its tracks.
We will achieve domestic peace when women are barefoot and pregnant.
Women millennials' protests will end when they have to stay home because of the lack of affordable, public daycare.
Access to contraception and safe abortion? No need to guarantee those any more because they now have babies.
Millennial women will be happy with earning fewer cents on the dollar because, you know, babies.
They won’t mind the crushing burden of student loans that failed to find them the careers promised. Their babies will provide that fulfillment minus income (see above—daycare and income disparity).
Women millennials will clearly be too tired to respond to sexual innuendo and harassment in the workplace. Carrying a baby on the hip and fatigue make women less likely to be sexual objects.
Finally, they will lose those pink hats and stop marching. The toddlers will have hidden them.
9
David, Trump won against Hillary primarily with the help of the millions of totally racist White misogynist men who didn't want to see a woman go to the White House while promising the Black and Brown Americans that she'd do more for them than what a Black president called Obama did.
While we recall Trump's win with 63+% of White men, we've to recall that there were 43+% of White women who completely ignored his 'groping' habits as he proudly announced on that infamous "Access Hollywood" tape that came out less than a month before the election.
So even if those huge number of women who turned away from a woman candidate and voted for a racist,sexist,misogynist,homophobic,islamaphobic candidate who openly promised to those women and men that he'd make sure that nobody from Mexico or other countries with non-White, non-Judeo-Christian citizens set foot on the most immigrant loving country of this world where the famous Lady Liberty is still welcoming all foreigners landing on our shores.
But the 43+% of White women who voted for him and will do it again in 2020 if unfortunately Trump's name is on the ballot again, then we've to counter those ignorant women's votes with the names of good Democratic women,Black and Brown,Hispanic and Asians,on the ballot papers all over the country starting with the midterms in November because only a woman can topple a totally racist and misogynist Trump and his homophobic,islamaphobic,racist,misogynist,sexist party called, the Republicans.
1
These well educated, informed, articulate, and highly motivated young women have justifiably served notice that they will not tolerate the ham-fisted, arbitrary, and stupid control of men, often not their equals, based merely upon a gender construct. In this respect they are, thankfully, not their mothers', daughters.
We should rejoice in their principled activism. It has and will make America a much better place to raise not only daughters but sons. The ever Republican Brooks sadly, even shockingly, just doesn't get it. It is not a "war" but an historical moment where more than one half of our population desires to have an equal place at the table and will not accept the crumbs falling from it. Get used to this new paradigm!
11
Mr. Brooks divorced his first wife of 28 years, one who converted to Judaism to raise their three children in his faith, in order to marry a women 25 years his junior who was his research assistant for the ironically called book - The Road to Character.
And now he is betting that the 'millennial gender war'......will be washed away by the giant force looming on the horizon:
Parenthood.
It is amazing that he, just like so many other and older 'real' men are exchanging their wives for a newer and much younger model, and then fathering a children again.
Facit of this whole unbearable article is that reading it all was not necessary, with his very own distorted punch line at the bottom.
29
David:
Wishing won't make it so.
If you perceive the war of the sexes to be phony...you might consider reading the Comments sections of your own and other columnists. Even people who widely agree on many things political are finding ways to disagree on this.
I know you gave up reading reader Comments years ago, but if you are looking to sample opinions to support assertions, it's an interesting place to start.
A societal critic who walls himself off from facts...how very Republican of you!
Just saying
7
A Marxist view, Mr. Brooks?
"millennial men feel much more pressure to behave in stereotypically masculine ways than men of older generations — to throw a punch when provoked, to join in when they hear other men talking about women in a sexual way."
Men feel that the word, 'Man' affords them special status for it means male=human. To be a human man, worthy of being male is to practice Virility. Nonviril humans (effeminate men and females) don't count as much, are second class humans. Using the man=human man=viril man formula, women, ironically, are free to develop their humanity in more ways than men are. Men serve virility, are dominated by ideas of virility. Women, gays, lesbians, and nonbinaries have more choices, more freedom. That Trump's men are regressing to serving the single minded model of the virility is an indication of its impending demise. Yes, Donald Trump is the symbol of how that tragic flaw in men is working against them. At this state, men have nothing to lose but their own chains! They aren't throwing punches and acting out their fears of impotence because the women tell them to, are they? If American males felt confident, would they need the bromide talk of a Viagra sort of President like Trump to feel great, again? Virility=fake male.
1
The difference in politics is pretty simple. One party says your female body belongs to god and men, and they'll make abortion and birth control illegal. The other party says your female body is yours so you can do whatever you want with it. That's a pretty simple choice.
18
"I’m betting that the millennial gender war is a figment of the political circus, and will be washed away by the giant force looming on the horizon: parenthood." Actually parenthood just makes everything harder for women: money, work, relationships, personal time, etc. Many women become more feminist as they age, not less, a fact which could clearly be seen in the 2016 primary split between older and younger female voters. Look, we all get that men are struggling to give up some of their privileges. It would be weird if you weren't! But when a system isn't working, it has to change. Women's lives are just too hard and many are cracking under the pressure. Ironically, it's the kids who suffer the most when moms don't have the support they need.
4
"An increasing number of high school-educated men say they are the ones being screwed by modern society, not women, who are better educated on average".....Kind of tells you all you need to know.
5
Unfortunately, hirings, and even to some extent promotions, are zero-sum.
1
Let's break this down. Isn't the GOP all about women having choices? The choice to remain in the workforce AND the choice to remain home if they so wish? Given the experience in Nordic countries, which suggests that women have more choice when the social safety net is stronger, why aren't your GOP brethren rushing to pass legislation that supports women's choices? Even Dems don't support the rise of women through the ranks of corporate America if they're rising because they're staying in the workforce despite a desire to do otherwise. This seems antithetical to everything the GOP espouses. Not surprising, as most of what the GOP actually does bears no relationship to what it espouses! As to the gender "war", that's a term coined by Faux Infotainment, and isn't embraced by Dems. Also, the statistic you share about the percentage of men who believe women are disadvantaged in the workplace is notable, but not for the reason you propound. It's quite astounding that 43 percent of millennial men, who aren't personally experiencing these disadvantages, observe them and are honest about their observations. I suspect at least another 20 percent of men observe theses disadvantages but aren't prepared to acknowledge them in polls for fear of the impact on their own professional futures. As to the backlash, it's not because gender equality has gone too far. It's because the playing field has become a bit more level and white men don't like what that's done to their white male privilege.
4
"Isn't the GOP all about women having choices?"
Evidently you never read the 2016 GOP Platform:
"We reiterate our support for both the advancement of women in the military and their exemption from direct ground combat units and infantry battalions."
"We do not support the U.N. Convention on Women’s Rights, ..."
Source: Google "2016 GOP Platform".
2
Mr. Brooks, Women have more common sense. Less navel gazing, more real life to work thru. It's that simple, and that profound.
Seriously.
6
My 12 year old son came home from an award ceremony at school and said to me, "almost all the awards went to girls." I looked at the list and realized he was right, and I was struck that he noticed this discrepancy. If you look around his school, nearly all of the teachers are women which means he is surrounded by mostly women in a place of power over him everyday throughout his school years, and like many boys he doesn't like school. I told my son that while it is true that more girls received awards, boys do better once they are out of school. I'm not sure he believed me and I'm not sure the millennial young men believe that either anymore.
2
SB. Look at the special Ed stats and disciplinary stats You will see while the award winners are mostly female, the categories I point out are overwhelmingly male. The dirty little secret of public education that lacks attention
1
It often seems any group with an ax to grind can find a poll or some obscure research to make their point. Whenever something starts with "according to" it should raise alarms. "According to" comes up often in Mr. Brooks' columns.
The Biggest Liar in History is perpetrating The Biggest Fraud in American History. No poll, no research is needed to know that. The only important thing to know is that an alarming number of people-millennials, baby boomers, male, female, young, old, uneducated, educated support him.
This is more than a gender war, Mr. Brooks.
6
You are so stuck in you bubble, that you don't even comprehend what this article is about, and appear to be arguing with yourself.
An alternative view is that the political differences reflect a general revulsion with the ineffective statist approach of the self-described Progressive party , which is temporarily masked by an understandable dislike of Trump held by many women. I don't think that the future necessarily belongs to the Republican party but i'm pretty sure that it doesn't belong to the Democrat party.
2
If you think just a little bit about it, the following sentence makes no earthly sense - "political differences reflect a general revulsion with the ineffective statist approach of the self-described Progressive party"
We are fast approaching what I would call 'The Tautology' (the culture war equivalent of 'The Singularity'), wherein the rabid equality warriors run into the brick wall that is biological reality -- men and women are different, and therefore not 'the same.' The warriors' devotion to sameness and blank slatism will be revealed not to be anchored in any kind of reality or scientific fact, but in a quasi-religious catechism. The Left, once driven by a devotion to reason and progress, is now more of religious order, enforcing irrational and arbitrary orthodoxies on a platform not of ideas, but of superstition.
3
Men and women are human and equally capable of fantastic feats of perseverance and inspiration, they are also equally capable of being petty and self-destructive. Power structures in society as a whole were set up to benefit kings with males and female servants left to squabble over separate majesteria. Bottom line, straight people problems. You want to know if there are gender disparities? As a Trans Person on either end of the spectrum, you might just learn something.
4
According to David's analysis of the situation women are smarter than men. Reducing this column to those last five words would have made it more accurate and better reading.
9
Also, on the whole, more sensible. As a man, I hate to admit it, but it is what it is...
It is worth remembering that huge gender gaps in our politics are neither new now confined to the millennials. On the evidence of the last four decades, they grow whenever the Republican Party features an aggressively antagonistic or dissmissive attitude toward women’s evaluations participation in society as part of their branding.
The pattern is predictable and the strategy transparent: Energize men who think (either explicitly or implicitly) women should be second-class and not equal to vote Republican. (The implicit ones are those who say women should be equal, but “it’s gone too far,” or “gotten out of hand,” or “but they want special rights,” or “reverse discrimination,” etc.)
Inevitably, women are alarmed and provoked and a good number of them mobilize in defense of themselves, while others feel caught and conflicted between men in their lives who spew this nonsense, discomfort with strident fight back voices, and fear of becoming a target. Men who do believe in women’s equality fall into those willing to support the pushback, on the one hand, and those who want to downplay “all this identity politics” because their own priorities dampen their empathy and solidarity. (The later often difficult to distinguish from the implicit chauvinists without close examination.)
What we have now is that pattern pumped by the ugliest misogynist demagogue we’ve seen in a very long time. It will fade when (and if) he and his movement does.
3
More Brooksian bloviation. Initial premise "... people used to believe that as women and men enjoyed more equal opportunities and earned similar pay, men and women would see the world in similar ways." When one starts with a faulty premise, the supporting arguments, no matter how empty, are still hollow.
4
The reality of the situation is sometimes very different from what we tend to convince ourselves actually is the case.
As for why less than 50% of the men think that women are disadvantaged at work, consider this : The majority of Caucasians believed that African Americans were not really a suppressed and subjugated group in the years leading up to the civil rights movement. As a matter of fact, it still turns out that many Caucasian men still feel they are the victims.
The #MeToo movement is really a fight for civil rights and long overdue.
6
Isn't the entire point of modern feminism, indeed all of modernity, to replace men with women?
The replacement of the male in the workforce has largely been completed with the "mancession" of 2009 and the rate of female degree achievement. STEM seems to be the last bastion of the patriarchy.
The great blue wave of 2018 is likely to not only sweep deadbeat white male republicans (and democrats in the case of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez) out of office but also replace them with women.
Brooks seems to think that parenthood changes attitudes about life in general. That would only be true if parenthood amounts to something more than a social status symbol. A large part of modern biological research is dedicated to the production of human life by artificial means--without the need of male sexual contributions and without incurring the drastic life penalty of pregnancy. Industrially organized parenting through daycare and institutional learning satisfy the legal obligations of raising the blob of cells after birth. To heck with the environmental consequences of overpopulation such as global warming or garbage proliferation. In this age of designer babies, make sure that they coordinate with your values as well as your outfit.
1
The point of feminism is equally. It's clear from your comment you have trouble with this. If you are sure of your skill set in your chosen field why do you fear competing with women within it?
The remark about accessorizing a child with an outfit is I hope an expression of sarcasm and not misogyny.
3
The idea of a gender war is preposterous, unless you're talking about the whole history of our species. As for American voting, and the last election in particular, women remained consistent with the way they've been for a relatively long time; they were more aligned with progressive ideas and principles, and they voted more Democratic, than men. And that trend, folks, is going to continue. A hundred years ago, because of centuries of men hammering into women that their purpose in life was home, hearth and wifely submission to men, women were a lot more conservative than men. That women today are overall more progressive, and men overall more conservative, is not surprising. Whenever an individual or group that was top dog loses power, resentment easily bubbles to the surface. The important takeaway in the gender gap in the last election is not that there's a gender war, but that resentment is a powerful motivation in voting. That's why I bristle every time I read yet another pundit who opines on the number of women who voted for Trump, subtly implying that these women could have saved us from Trump. Sure, yeah, so what. The important fact is that Trump won the election because of resentful men.
10
Trump won the election because the DNC put forward a terrible corrupt candidate
The traditional male role has been as breadwinner, which has given males financial dominance over females. Now that we are taking away this male role by empowering women to have equal or greater $ power, we must require males to take on domestic duties (childcare etc) as an expected male role. Thus both males and females will earn a living and be present on the home front. This works. My 3 daughters each have 2 children and a husband who shares equally with childcare and cooking and cleaning and shopping, along with his outside work; my daughters each have a professional life along with mommy-work. The families thrive and no gender war.
18
Perhaps this is the path back to our more egalitarian ancestry. Lets just try not to bring back the tribalism.
Why are we missing the mark here? Historically you can retrace the last two thousand years that men (not all men but most) for whatever reasoning have assumed superiority over women and here we are feeding the same behemoth again. Have we not learned anything about women in those two thousand years, or at a minimum the last 240 in this country. Who gave men the idea of superiority? Just because they were stronger physically and were the hunters and gatherers in ancient time. Would anyone be convincing in trying to say that John Adams was a better man than Abigail Adams was a better woman? The gender bashing and gender equation is an empty argument. Women have borne more of the burdens all those years. What burdens have the men borne? "pressure to succeed, bread winner, wearing a suit, starring in sports, hanging out in a bar. If men had to overcome the silent and ever present discrimination that women faced in the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries they would have folded their tent.
Would men have waited 140 years since the founding of the country to finally get the vote?
Maybe, just maybe in this 21st century we'll have a renaissance and a reckoning.
And as for the majority of the millennial generation, from my observation of and interaction with both the men and the women, they seem to be focused of creating and innovating and carrying their success forward in humanitarian ways without regard to who is best suited to do it - the men or women.
18
You are right of course, but backlash is always present.
It's very easy to be egalitarian before you have children. But once the stork visits, some really hard decisions need to be made. I know very few Moms who don't believe they are, in fact, the primary caregiver (no matter what they may espouse at dinner parties). I know very few Dads who honestly want to split household chores 50/50. Or actually get excited to take the kids to T.J. Maxx.
There is no right answer. Many women are far more capable than their spouses and would likely be more successful in the workplace if they want to grind it out day and night. But this would mean missing a lot of time with the kids when they're young. A tradeoff easier made in theory than in practice for many women.
My wife and I have a happy balance that works for us. But there is definitely no one size fits all.
14
There is no one size fits all for individuals, but we also seem to view the world through the blinders of personal culture rather than all of the diverse schemes that humans have lived through. Dinner Parties, T.J. Maxx, and Household Chores are cultural determinants.
The idea that if equal pay and opportunities for women were realized, then men and women would see the world similarly appears grabbed from thin air by Mr. Brooks. As a young adult during the second wave of the women’s movement (the first was women’s suffrage, by the way), no one I knew considered similar world perceptions a goal, whatever the heck similar perceptions of the world means. The goal was having a CHOICE of careers, to become educated to the extent a woman wanted, to work outside or inside the home. The perceptions that required changing back in the 1960’s and 1970’s - the glass ceiling that needed cracking - were false perceptions of superiority of male gender (intelligence, acumen, sole bread-winner) and separation of gender roles in society. The “natural roles” or “natural order” of society was defined by men. No one argued men were generally stronger physically, generally taller, or that only women could give birth. The argument was and remains women can perform equally, intellectually and often physically, in “traditional” male roles. Women are victims when they are forced into a role and they have no choices. Men today are not victims as they still have the same choices they always had.
15
"In the face of growing economic equality, why is politics dividing men and women?"
Identity politics pits one group against another in the hope that creates more votes. More votes equals more power for the party that can successfully divide people into warring groups.
4
Whenever the topic comes up with my teenaged daughter, she thinks it is crazy. She knows she has the same opportunities here as her brother because that's what she's been taught at home and at school. She cites other countries in the world where women can't vote, can't wear what they want, can't swim in public. Then she rolls her eyes and says, "get a real problem."
5
I waited tables as a teenager, through college. This taught me quit a bit about latent gender disparities. One of the greatest "opportunities" men have that many women don't is to be treated with basic human dignity and respect at work. I suggest that your daughter get a job in low-paying industry to see the manner many women are treated in their daily lives, and ask her if she thinks it's a "real problem."
14
If I may venture a guess, I would say that has more to do with working in a low-paying industry than gender bias.
Only well-to-do or unemployed people can really afford the luxury of enjoying the benefits for themselves and their children flowing from the traditional parenting roles.
One can blame whatever one wants to blame for this kind of society.
2
There is still a widespread belief (prejudice, really) among both men and women that men are better at "running things" (outside the home) and at making decisions (other than about one's children). This is, in essence, what perfectly well-educated women (and men) tell me about why they voted for Trump. It also explains the vast, knee-jerk animus felt toward Hillary Clinton that could be justified not by any provable charge against her for an alleged misdeed, but by the vague rationale that she didn't inspire "trust." It also explains the animus toward Nancy Pelosi. Until we get a woman president who demonstrates the toughness of a Margaret Thatcher or Angela Merkel, the stereotype of women as "less able" and "weaker" will persist.
4
Like SCOTUS on issues of race, Mr. Brooks assumes (or pretends) the battle is over, its time to survey the field, and finds the whole Gender War thing pointless and a fraud, like he always said.
Except its far from over; hardly begun. When a distinct set of the population has regular recourse to the courts, biased and ineffective as they are, that's a pretty good sign you walked in mid-battle and you ain't seen nothin' yet.
The outlines of the conflict appear in bold relief here, in Brooks' latest diatribe.
First, he assumes that women would, or should, come to see the world more like men. Honestly, what a depressing outcome. Look at us, look at the mess we've made of things, from Calvinism to Trumpism and everything before, in between, and after.
We're all about secretly comparing ourselves to somebody else, all about the endless competition, re-evaluation, lusting after property or position or personal notoriety.
Sure, men leave space for the occasional artist or philosopher. But if he's (see what I did there?) not a really rich artist or philosopher, he's a hippie and a loser. Or a liberal.
Men took the brightest, shiniest, most hopeful object ever to appear in the political heavens (that would be US) and reduced it to a cheap, transactional facsimile of the very class-riven, ego-and-pride-driven, acquisitive states we struggled here to escape.
And you want women to be more like us? Maybe they will...
I was kind looking forward to a change of perspective.
18
"I’m betting that the millennial gender war is a figment of the political circus, and will be washed away by the giant force looming on the horizon: parenthood." A nearly 60 year old man predicts the future for 20 year olds. What could go wrong?
6
I would have thought "parenthood followed by divorce." If we're talking statistics still at this point.
5
"Years ago, people used to believe that gender equality would produce gender similarity."
Ahem. Assumes facts not introduced in evidence.
If you are going to hand your column on such a sweeping generalization, readers deserve some proof.
6
Not to mention that "people" means "men commenting on women without any qualifications to do so," which is still happening. Like right here in this article.
David Brooks continues to have his own discussions by himself. This time conjuring up a (new!) piece on gender war(s).
I'm convinced he sits with an argument in mind then Googles up, in this case, a few polls to assert simply his daily perspecitive.
Pew is OK, the rest of it, maybe. But so often all of this is simply desperation in Brooks head about what to talk about today. In this case is kind of smells-who can really identify with what point(s) he is trying to make.
I'm a 60 year old gay male in California who has seen everything Brooks talks about here and more, still I would not be able to garner any particular trends from it with this little empirical knowledge. Brooks does not probably even have much first person knowledge-he collects his checks after three decades of voting to ultimately install Trump and then pontificates abou the rest of us. He ought to quit.
12
Walter, David Brooks has spent the last year trying to rescue himself from all the trouble he has brought on his fellow Republican establishment calling the Democrats elitists. This "elitist" word was the carrying cry that helped Trump get elected--he knows that, so instead of apologizing and leaving his post at the NYT, he has tried desperately to find sources to reassert himself.
4
He definitely writes from a perspective that there was some glorious past in the 1950's of ice cream cones and barbershop quartets. He is myopic in many ways. But perhaps we all are.
1
Not his brand of myopia. Most people don't have the time for it these days. They are too busy trying to stay alive in our current gilded age that he helped create.
When an iceberg's center of gravity shifts it can instantly overturn. It's exciting to think that I might yet live to see such an event. All through history regimes have come and gone, violently for the most part. What has never changed is the male dominance of society, at least here in the U.S. Women are you ready?
6
And meanwhile, the American mercenary-authoritarian state controlled by oligarchs and kleptocrats continues to loot the country...
MLK opined accurately that without economic justice there cannot be racial, gender and class justice, and economic justice is on a steep backward trajectory. Perhaps tribal- and identity-focused citizens are being deliberately distracted? And letting themselves be?
Whither the American Experiment? Or is it "wither?"
4
I think it is fair to say that the goals of second-wave feminism have not been fully realized. And it's not clear that orientation and approach of the third-wave will achieve the outcomes that were, and perhaps are, most central to the practical issues that women confront: income disparity, professional advancement, childcare, reproductive rights.
As contemporary feminists focus on individualism, consciousness raising, and diversity issues, the broader economic and cultural change previously at the top of the list for activist women seems more remote.
One place where cultural change is most apparent is in advertising. Men are frequently seen pushing triplets in threesome strollers while they change diapers and balance a bag of weed-and-feed on their hip at the same time. Men are also portrayed as intellectually deficient when wives swoop in and use their IPhone apps to find the car that has eluded their husbands. When a man wants to fix a broken pipe in the ceiling, his wife is there by his side patronizing him and prohibiting him from making the repair because of his inherent male incompetence -- let the insurance company handle it.
It will be interesting to see if this kind of mass-market opinion manipulation can lead to concrete changes on the ground. At the least, it seems to be selling strollers, car-buying apps, and insurance. Can the emasculation of men be the new "sex sells" in reverse?
1
I call this “The Pendulum of the sexes.” The biggest problem we seem to have is believing that men and women are equal. FALSE! We’re different; Period! Have been since the first male and female came together. Even Abraham Lincoln believed that when he said “All MEN are created equal.” Just kidding. A little humor on this subject is justified. It’s a fact that men and women actually tend to think differently. Men tend to be more logical while women tend to be more intuitive. As a nature, men tend to be stronger physically. Equal pay for equal work is absurd unless you define that work. The union of a man and woman in a partnership has to potential to be exponentially better than two men or two women in a relationship. We were created to work together as a family unit. Unfortunately, in the past, Mankind has tended to abuse it. Now it’s time to replace Mankind with Humankind. If we would learn to work together, but think individually, nothing could stop us. We truly need each other.
1
David Brooks wrote,
"More and more college-educated men adopt a Jordan Peterson-style posture, arguing that the assault on “male privilege” has gone too far, that the feminist speech and behavior codes have gone too far."
Come on; Assault on male privilege ? This is the phony mantra, that drives certain sectors of Trump support. The aggrieved white voter, who feels he is losing his status to "those others", whether it's people of color, or "streaming across our borders'.
The women I meet, and know are intelligent, hard working, attending University in greater numbers than their male peers, and are marching against oppression. Wait until Trump's SCOTUS try to overturn Roe versus Wade. They will fill the Washington Mall again.
4
There are real differences between women and men in their views on a number of important social policy issues--differences that also exist between the Democratic and Republican parties, which helps explain why women are more likely to be Democrats, especially among the young. As a 72 year-old White male who used to be a Republican (as a liberal, I had to give up on that now destructively vacuous shell of a party), my hope is that women and minorities will save us from what White male political leaders have done to the country over the past several decades. (Trump is putting a wildly ignorant and corrupt exclamation point on this dismal record--with a lot of White male support.) The upsurge in women running for office (which is weighted to the Democrats) is wonderful.
11
"I’m betting that the millennial gender war is a figment of the political circus..." maybe...
more likely its the media circus which, with every "breaking news" bumper, retails conflict, no matter that most issues are painted in shades of grey...see the ICE story, for example, even the tapes show some agreement that ICE needs work, but most op-ed screeders, cable couch potatoes and round table sages much prefer to feed the rage of the mob (never a lot to contemplate anything when a slogan will do) than risk provoking the hand that turns the page or clicks the remote by actual reporting.
the politicals are only one of the acts in the center ring.
1
Other factors -- we currently have a dysfunctional Congress, dominated by old white Republican men. This Republican Congress did not include women on the healthcare discussions & had men saying they shouldn't have to bear healthcare costs of pregnancy. The president is a Republican who has sexually assaulted women, committed adultery and attacks female leaders and issues and has suffered no consequences from this behavior from members of his party. Why would any women want to support this sort of Republican party?
11
Can someone help me understand this article? Maybe I am not getting it because I went to public school and my liberal single mom raised us without one ounce of help from my conservative dead beat father. Where does Mr. Brooks think people like me fit in his theory?
Should my mom have told me the world would be a nicer place if I stayed home and raised kids? That way the battle for equal rights would not be such a distraction to our men?
I am really trying to read and understand more about how some conservative folks feel but Mr. Brooks has lost me.
5
I did not expect to have a word salad (with a side of numbers) for breakfast!
6
Assuming the writer believes that once millennial men have children, they will smart up about the prospect of unchecked climate change and fight the GOP lies about it. Or is he insinuating some other shift?
6
Some how the human race seems to progress over time. I would like to see more women and minorities in leadership positions sooner than later. It would do this country good. The only possible impediment to this is big money. We need to reverse Citizens United and get our government back.
Until then other issues really don't matter.
5
Speaking of 17 point gaps, 39% of U.S. males own a gun compared to 22% of females. A coincidence?, I think not.
1
David, I think the "male backlash" you describe is a kind of passive aggressiveness among more outwardly moderate men.
They have heard for years about their white privilege and various shortcomings from minority groups and women. Publicly they support politically correct progressive causes. But I believe that in the privacy of the voting booth they have been pulling their lever for GOP candidates.
Look, no man wants to be told, day in and day out, that you've accomplished nothing, you only got to where you are because you're a white male, and that you've got to give up things you've gotten used to because other groups "deserve them." And if one believes the media these days, all white guys are either Harvey Weinstein, Donald Trump or David Duke. They don't like it. It's just human nature. But they can't say that to their female friends or significant others. So they vote GOP. It didn't start with Trump; it's been going on for awhile. It's like their private protest vote.
At some point, progressives are going to have to realize that white men will not vote for them in large numbers if their message continues to be "Vote for us even though we hate you."
2
Thanks. White males are openly demonized in the US; its perfectly acceptable. How many times do we read "Old white men" as a reference to the lowest of the low among us.
Whenever I see polls numbers these days, my first thought goes back to the the polls leading up to the 2016 election. And it was Mr Brooks' NYT that compiled the results of all these polls and then told us there was a 97% probability that Hillary Clinton would win that election.
I also remember hearing an on-air review of a book a few years ago (I don't remember the title) whose author had surveyed political pundits' accuracy in their predictions. They author found the pundits are right about 50% of the time. You know, like tossing a coin.
These days I still read the poll results and I still read and/or listen to a few of the pundits, but I don't put much faith in the results of either. I supposed I do it for the same reasons I do the NYT crossword puzzle: for their entertainment value and to maybe learn a few new words.
2
" author had surveyed political pundits' accuracy in their predictions. The author found the pundits are right about 50% of the time. "
Nonsense. I can create a model right now that has about 90% accuracy: simply pick the incumbent. In federal and state elections around the country, I can simply ignore all other information and i will be right 90% of the time just with that one variable.
Brooks writing about women's issues - like suffering through catcalls, #metoo, glass ceilings, a neo-con attack on reproductive rights, a governing faction that wants to poke their noses into our bedrooms - no that's not just a woman's issue, etc. the list is long.
But it's good that an old white male can dismiss as fake troubles he won't ever have.
25
I doubt young women will change their political views upon becoming parents. Rather their "liberal" tendencies will only intensify as they wish the best possible world for their child
9
60% of all the homeless population are men. male privilege
Only 17.5% of custodial parents are fathers. male privilage
Men account for 92.5% of all workplace deaths. male privilege
Men get to retire 2 years later on average yet by current
lifetime expectations women live almost a decade longer. male privilege
Conscription (even in peace in some countries) is a male privilege.
Yes, in certain cases women still has less power than men. I won’t deny that. But understand that not all men are Donald Trumps sitting on a golden toilet, dictating how the Earth should revolve. Where is the male privilege of the single father who can only see his children once a week? Where is the male privilege of the hard laborer (98% male) who works for minimum wage and die much earlier than the average?
3
There is a lot of confusion in today's young. They seem to want their cake but want to eat it too.
Their lives were launched with Sesame Street, fabled educator shows that led them directly into mass consumerism.
They have mistaken sexual objectification for liberation.
Their utter dependence on handheld phones that allow them to feel "in control" as they twiddle their thumbs and swipe experience away with a swish of their thumb.
They expect to live forever, fancy they can beat mortality, and have become histrionically convinced they are above mere death.
As such, they mirror Orwellian youth to the T.
2
"I’m betting that the millennial gender war is a figment of the political circus, and will be washed away by the giant force looming on the horizon: parenthood."
David, perhaps you haven't heard the news: the U.S. birth rate is at its lowest point in 30 years. Perhaps in part because millennial women realize that their potential mates have a lot of growing up to do.
https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/05/17/611898421/u-s-births-...
5
So millennial women are more grown up than their male counterparts? This sort of sexist attitude is a big part of the problem.
As usual, Brooks resorts to the Reagan/Trump ploy of 'there's blame on both sides' to claim, incredibly, that, in a country run since its founding for the benefit of white men, it is white men, compared to women, who are being oppressed. This justifies "throw[ing] a punch when provoked, [and] . . . join[ing] in when they hear other men talking about women in a sexual way."
Can we just have, at long last, a single standard of conduct? One that upholds equality of opportunity, regardless of gender or of race? Please?
3
"people used to believe that as women and men enjoyed more equal opportunities and earned similar pay, men and women would see the world in similar ways." There you go again David. Starting off with a false statement that was never true and then writing a theoretical treatise around that false beginning. Yikes! I want your job my friend. Who wants to write software that has to work when one can make perfectly great money making up stuff that is nonsensical? As the hero says in Hancock to the cops after their debacle: "Good Job!".
4
This puts Too much focus on the high school educated white male. There are many of them and some vote but they aren’t the future. This piece really shows the re-emergence of Thomas Hobbes’ dictum that life is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” That’s what Trump is driving us toward and I will be relieved if that’s fake.
BTW Get another word. Fake is fake. It’s shorthand for I’m making this up but you won’t be able to tell.
3
Is it really too hard to admit that men and women have important biological differences that are a main component of why men and women achieve different levels of success in the business world? For example, men have, on average, more testosterone than women, and aggression and asserting oneself are important in becoming executives. Or is it sexist to even point out these differences? In the modern U.S., it is the latter. That is a shame
2
I wonder how you would feel about "biological differences" being used to attribute one man's professional inferiority to another man? It would be a shame to think that you are suggesting that biology is only relevant with respect to gender.
Other countries have a much higher percent of women in elected office than in the US. No one would argue that politics is not competitive, right? So perhaps there's something else at play.
It used to be that women were not allowed to attend universities because they were thought to be biologically incapable of higher learning. Now that women have outpaced men in the academy, the "biological" ability to study has been classified as feminine. Funny that.
I also wonder why one would assume that testosterone and aggression would play such an outsize role in becoming an "executive." Perhaps the entire paradigm of a successful leader is structured around the male archetype? In other words, because more executives are male, you're assuming that traditionally male traits are what makes an executive successful.
Just some things you might want to consider.
5
By this logic, one could make the absurd claim that men are more skilled at sexualized violence, mass shootings, etc.
Oh.
2
Simple question for David: If 50% of our population is female, shouldn't 50% of our politicians be female? I mean, it takes a 50/50 ratio to make a new life, why shouldn't there be a 50/50 ratio to govern life?
3
Please - this time around, I think you should take this column back, and rewrite that opening paragraph, and resubmit for your final grade.
What an evasive opening. "People used to believe used to believe that gender equality would produce gender similarity." What people were these? A lot of us thought that eliminating overt and covert sexism - would make it possible for women - and men - to develop their own talents. To make the life choices that are best for them.
Make that read a little differently - a lot of us believed that unless the overt and covert sexism - like racism - was addressed through legal means as well as with lifting awareness, women would forever face barriers that had nothing to do with their capabilities.
Also, some of us actually held the hope that as women were integrated into employment in higher positions, the work world might become more attuned to the needs of the family, and more family (human) values might prevail. That turned out to be hogwash.
3
It’s kind of an interesting column. Brooks tosses out a few statistics and then he and all the commentators provide narratives to explain the statistics. I know Brooks is a great admirer of Daniel Kahneman who spends a great deal of effort in Thinking Fast and Slow to explain why this mechanism of system one of creating narratives leads to faulty judgements.
There is one judgement that Brooks mentions in the piece that does make sense to me: the decision to leave the rat race.
4
The battle for America's soul isn't about gender. It is about Authoritarianism versus freedom. Authoritarians believe in using Government to control the people, democrats believe in using the government to lift up the people. There just happens to be more authoritarian males than females.
35
Here's a negative way men and women are completely equal: As a retiree looking back on 45 years in the work force, I found the female workplace bullies were more numerous and vituperitive, but there was no difference in the proportion of bad male bosses and bad female bosses, and there was no difference in the proportions of males and females who talked too much--I mean yapping endlessly.
4
It takes a generation for language to kick in. The term 'sexual harassment' was coined in 1975 by Line Farley. Words such as sexism, acquaintance rape and domestic violence need time to go from the tips of activists' tongues to the brains of the mainstream. Millennials were raised with this language and thus think in it. Having a words for things makes networking easier and networks make change.
4
Gotta love Mr. Brooks legitimizing the use of the term "Fake" to discredit research. Right in lock step with President Fake himself.
Can we vote Brooks out in the fall too?
11
Young men are finding out that "equality" is attained through discrimination against them. Why is that so hard to understand?
I work for the federal government and am gob-smacked at the cavalier way senior civil servants will claim, "we have too many old white men around here," while standing in an office that is comprised of 70% women of color.
It's been said that a conservative is a liberal who has been mugged. In this case, the Millennial mal Republican has been mugged by the reality that "diversity" means anybody but them.
10
David says: “I have to say that this rising war between the sexes feels phony to me.”
With that thought uppermost, David should have written on a different topic. Maybe on why “socialism” is still a pejorative when almost all of the Country’s real problems (including the indifference to them by the GOP Congress & the White House, & the Supreme Court) require huge government involvement.
8
Yet another Brooks column desperately avoiding the most important topic we face every single day: the once-great United States in the grips of a pathologically dishonest, profoundly narcissistic President who doesn't understand the principles of a democratic society, doesn't like what little he does understand, and who is actively working to dismantle the foundations of our democracy. Brooks latches onto any topic that he thinks his (dwindling) readers might consider related to current events, yet is also far enough removed from the corruption in the party whose (false, white, male) memory he reveres, and which he still supports even though he knows it is wrong, that he can maintain some psychological comfort.
To paraphrase the conclusion to the sad and wasteful exercise in self-delusion to the left: I’m betting that the David Brooks NYT column is a relic of the soon-to-be past, and will be washed away by the giant force looming on the horizon: an eventual return to societal sanity and progress, and a disgust with those who aided and abetted this descent into national disgrace.
7
Looking at statistics from a macroscopic perspective obscures the fact that there is great variation among individuals. One my daughters is the breadwinner in her family, while her husband has been a stay-at-home dad since their first child was born. Another daughter is a stay-at-home mom who works hard at caring for her young children and volunteering in her community. The third has been a single mother for 13 years. She runs a successful business that consumes an enormous amount of her energy and attention.
Each has chosen a path that works for her and her family. All three have earned masters degrees and all three engage in activities that bring them a sense of satisfaction.
Trying to evaluate attitudes based on gender is likely to distort the many differences in people and the decisions they make. That does not mean that it's not worthwhile to pursue equity in opportunity for both men and women.
3
But there was a time when these opportunities would not have been open to your daughters. Not too long ago single mothers were shunned and labeled as "immoral". There are still factions of society that claim a child need both a mother an a father--not a single woman or two people of the same gender--to grow up to be a health, well-adjusted individual. There are groups out there who desire greater government regulation of woman's reproductive lives. This is not the time to be complacent. If you examine history, you will note that progress can be reversed.
6
Perhaps you missed it, but single, women headed households, are the ones doing Parenthood, alone, not with men. And the expectancy is: society support me, not just the father of the child.
This isn't merely political showbiz. It shows up in the border wars most recently when the chant is "open up for all of those women coming with Children from other lands." Is that part of the new deal?
It is not at all clear what the family of the future will be given these trends. If the state can provide the money and services to support the single Mom, and she can pick the semen, what is the use of men?Of if the fetus isn't wanted, the State can supply the services to dispatch it.
Males are currently dominate in the political realm. That can change, society can be changed, but the models likely to fit the scenario painted here all run into the same problem, needs and wants soon run out of resources unless the entire population works to achieve more for more. So far we have more asking for more, but do we have more doing more for themselves? Or is there now a class which says, my way, no traditional support do I want, just society step up and provide for me and my children, forget the traditions of have fathers or partners to carry this burden?
You were doing fine until you mentioned Donald Trump's name.
He is in a category called "other", by any measurement in my opinion and experience.
The treatment of men and women is learned in the family, when we're children. Still, some men may be feminists about women in the workplace and not so much at home, doing chores. Personally, I believer we're still morphing in the field of relationships, and I notice that younger men are much more chivalrous than the majority of older men. I'll take incremental progress over no progress.
However, generally speaking. neither men nor women can sew a button on a shirt in 2018.
2
Mr. Brooks, like many other men, has erroneously concluded that the growing call for attention to and amelioration of problems of gender inequality can be easily dismissed with a few decontextualized statistics. For him and others of his ilk, these issues don't affect him personally, so he isn't inclined to try terribly hard to understand their complexities
Parenthood, and all the issues surrounding reproduction and its burdens, is indeed part of the crucible of these ideas. What Mr. Brooks fails to understand however, is that women increasingly expect and deserve equal treatment in the workplace (salary, advancement opportunity, freedom from harassment). More than that, however, we see caregiving being delegated to women, as a form of necessary labor that is uniquely undervalued and inappreciated in the US. We also see that other countries have social policies that address these issues, and that women and children in those countries have more opportunity and higher standards of living. Women today may be less likely than men to be business managers in Sweden, but they are much more proportionally represented in government than the US, and are able to balance family life with maintaining a career (which I believe most women DO in fact want) because of progressive social policies like subsidized high quality child care, parental leave policies, access to higher education, health care, elder care, etc.
Incredible also to not even mention harassment, assault, violence.
19
Our experience with our 8 grandchildren is that the gender issue is primarily an educational one. Nancy and I and our 4 children are all graduate-degree educated,Masters or Phds. Our 4 oldest grans are college educated and back in school going for higher degrees while working. The other 4 are still in grade school. We find that they are balancing the complicated schedules amazingly well and that with their partners or spouses balance the parenting to a degree we find unbelievable; Time will tell, of course, but from our view-point, the future looks very hopeful. But we've got to get more people educated.
4
David, I think the gender war feels phony to you is because you made it up to meet a deadline. Yes, we are still in the throws of sorting out how bias influences our thinking and decision making. There are still unequal power dynamics in the workforce and at home. This problem won’t get solved overnight. But the conversations are more numerous, less angry, and more understanding with every passing day. If we can get passed the divisiveness (that your opinions help create), we can move forward.
6
What could the unifier be here?
Focus on:
WAGES, JOB TRAINING and HEALTHCARE.
The issues that effect voters at their very own family tables, male and female of all stripes.
Have we learned nothing from 2016?
7
With regard to “the two income trap” - it will only become that if you allow it to. When our children were growing up, in the 70’s and 80’s, my husband and I both worked ( once the kids hit school age for me ) but we made a deal right from the beginning that my salary would always be completely “banked” and we would discipline ourselves to live off of his. Now, maybe that was anti-feminist but, this future feminist saw the logic and rational reasoning behind it. First, back then, no matter who did what for a living, he always would make more than me. Second, we were going to have to put money away for our children’s college educations, so why not allow me that feeling of accomplishment. Third and finally, since my job ( jobs ) were never intended to be “careers”, the most valuable part of my “being” - my intellect - always belonged to my family first and foremost. Moral of the story: Both children grew and thrived and were awarded full academic scholarships to both undergrad and grad school - my husband respected and appreciated my “teamwork” mentality and treated me as an equal - the money we put away for college, due to the kids academic excellence became the down payment on our little cottage in our favorite vacation spot and “Voila’”, the whole family gets to enjoy it. There were always “feminists” walking among us, it’s just that some of them were too busy to talk about it....
12
Reply to Mary, many of the jobs that women held in the ‘80s and ‘90s to provide a little extra cash are no longer available — bank jobs, secretaries and so on. For me as a young woman in the ‘00s, most of the jobs that were available were stepping stones into big careers. I worked 55 hour weeks in business, and that was just to start. Those types of jobs are always hard to combine with mothering.
Even jobs like nursing and teacher are very intense where I live and I frequently hear mothers of young children in those jobs complain about being “bone tired”. They’re also ‘golden handcuff’ jobs — they’re very competitive to get in Canada and if you leave, you’re gone. It might have taken you ten years as a teacher to get a permanent position!
I do see some women take smaller jobs to help out the family but they are mostly working class jobs that pay poorly and are not aspirational at all — grocery store cashiers, personal support workers, home daycare provider and so on.
Now I’m not saying that you can’t have two incomes today with one job being smaller and using that money for extras, but it’s harder than when I was a kid.
It’s also harder in that everything costs more for families today. The stakes for being in a good school district are perceived as mattering more — couples “stretch” to provide their kids the extras that might lead them to greater career success. The premium for success is higher today.
2
You are right to mention how a certain type of non-career job has utterly disappeared and left only marginal service jobs - a ton of work but not enough pay to pay for gas or childcare. Even in civil service, the number of jobs available shrunk, competition for them expanded, and it was no longer necessarily a predictable 9 to 5 position that was left, but one with emergency or extended hours that clash with caring for your own children.
What troubles me is our nations war on parenthood. Both my daughter and daughter-in-law are in highly competitive professional fields---and both are doing quite well in male dominated environments. And, to credit to their husbands, who, also in competitive fields have contributed to home tasks and childcare. Having said that, even, with a part-time nanny, both, struggle to weave together child care schedules that take into account a sickness, a nanny interruption, a unexpected work task--as grandparents we are able to backstop these interruptions, but, unlike European nations, our policy structure for "parenthood" is medieval.
25
A lot of this "gender" battle depends on age. I'm 81 and I meet women in as polite a way as I can. I respect "ladies first" and help if needed.
What angers me, really angers me, are the efforts to take from women their rights to control their own life choices. So Mr. Brooks, there is a gender war going on whether it involves parents or singles and it is being made far worse by misguided politics.
56
Mr. Brooks seems to believe that parenthood will save the day in the Gender War. It's hard to believe his belief, given that more and more gender-opposite couples live together in a relationship which eschews parenthood. When copulation happens, as it often does, and birth control is not operative for whatever reason, unwwanted pregnancy also happens. This, then, results in an uptick of the Abortion Solution. 60 millions and growing every day, the mother proclaims the human fetus is not human and not wanted. Somehow consensual commitments just don't happen much any more. I worry more about the abortion casualties in this conflct. They are not fake.
4
And yet, curiously, this is a particularly American problem (the abortion solution). It appears that when one has free access to abortion AND has access to good sex education, the abortion rates are among the lowest. Thus, the abortion problem is largely a product of misguided attempts at enforcing a particular vision of morality.
3
Lake Woebegoner,
Better check your stats. Abortion rates are down and having been declining since 2005.
If you want to decrease abortion, demand mandatory age appropriate sex education for grades K- 12 nationwide in all schools. Demand freely accessible birth control and free birth control. Women and men are sexual beings. No one forces anyone to have an abortion. It’s a choice and should remain a choice.
“Compared with 2013, the total number and rate of reported abortions for 2014 decreased 2%, and the ratio decreased 7%. Additionally, from 2005 to 2014, the number, rate, and ratio of reported abortions decreased 21%, 22%, and 22%, respectively. In 2014, all three measures reached their lowest level for the entire period of analysis (2005—2014).”
www.cdc.gov/reproductivehealth/data_stats/abortion.htm
2
Right on topic, Lake W.
Not. At. All.
Women never had the power in the US to fully define their vision of society in which they had a final say. There is male dominance everywhere, in legislatures, in judiciary, in executive positions. The only woman who actively aspired for the highest office is still being maligned with the chants of "lock her up." Men can continue to claim whatever they like. It is not what women want. A country governed by women (of any age) will spend more on health and education; will work actively to save the quality of air and water; and will reduce income inequalities. Until then, people like David can continue to claim that gender differences do not exist.
57
There are at least as many people clamoring for Trump to be locked up (lack of evidence notwithstanding).
Men have never had the power
"Years ago, people used to believe. . . "
Really, Mr. Brooks? Why not open with "Once upon a time," signaling to the reader that this opening paragraph will be a fairy tale. Yes, people used to believe that if women could vote that it would mean the end of the family and civilization as we know it. It hasn't quite turned out that way because women are still denied opportunities in education and the workplace, they are still fighting for the right to control their own bodies and sexuality, and it hasn't worked out "that neatly" because equality remains elusive and discrimination rampant. The parity you imply has not yet arrived.
Oh, and turning to the gender ideology of high school students does as little to bolster your position as your comparison between the US and Nordic countries.
A final thought: institutionalized gender inequality does not mean that there is a gender war going on. We will all be better off when we recognize that men and women must work together to solve the problems associated with gender. Let's think cooperation and collaboration and dump both the fairy tale and war metaphors.
106
Men and women working together to solve problems? Isn't that communism?
Feeling slightly light-headed after this extraordinary heat wave, this admirer of the writings of David Brooks hedged, remembering the sanguine sentence of her French stepfather, 'In any case, he has nothing to add'. He would have wondered why commentating on the thoughts of an author were necessary.
He would have enjoyed the headlines of our newspapers, and his spouse believed that one should bring an appropriate topic to adorn the bill of fare at lunch; on a visit with her son, I would go into a fake Jane Austen manner. On one occasion when the heat was stifling on a day in July, I let down my hair and without a tinge of remorse, swiped his tall glass of water, and left him with an elegant flute filled to the brim.
'The Gender War Is On', and should this turn into an epic Trojan war, and damage a cordial understanding between Venus and Mars, we will only have ourselves to blame.
Having 'traveled' earlier to Zimbabwe where the fate of a single woman is fraught with threats and perils by the ruling male population, I remembered the mores of another African nation where a single woman of a certain age is expected to have a younger female companion to care for her.
We are in America, and if near 50% of male voters are on the Republican ticket with Mr. Trump and his unstable administration, it is going to take a renewed effort on the part of American voters, regardless of gender, to declare that it is time to get serious and make the right choice.
13
The gender wars are not fake and have been heating up for decades. Men are discriminated against and villified in many ways. If fact, it is so pervasive that it can be hard to notice, as a fish doesn't realize that it's swimming in water. Women continually play the victim card while progressively bending society in their favor (overall). The trend continues to slant things even further and it really isn't good for anyone.
9
MHW writes: "The gender wars are not fake and have been heating up for decades. Men are discriminated against and villified in many ways."
And yet, cis men do not find their reproductive rights hanging in the balance of a Supreme Court that is likely to turn majority anti-choice. That is what discrimination looks like.
I'm not sure I'm persuaded that men are discriminated against. Rather, men who previously held unchecked privilege are now sometimes having their privilege pointed out to them.
29
Men still dominate Congress, the Cabinet and CEO positions. Men don't have to take any breaks from their career to bear children. Men still earn more money than women. While women are encouraged to be more "manly," e.g., engage in sports, be stronger, etc., men still do not appear to be comfortable with engaging in female dominated activities. Women having bigger roles in society does not mean that men are victims or being discriminated against.
12
Grow up.
3
Parenthood probably will tamp down on these problems, but it is declining. Fertility is at an all-time low, especially among the highly educated people who are most involved in politics and one would think would have the most resources to marry and have good kids. Yet ywomen struggle to balance parenthood with their careers, while young men struggle to even find a mate. What to do about that?
6
This column underestimates the war against low income women's access to birth control and abortion. Closing clinics won't matter to the wealthy and professional classes, but it does to the people who cannot afford expensive medical care. Even on abortion, the Trump family women can always afford to fly to some more enlightened place for an abortion and so can all the wealthy, but not the low income women who will forced to bear children they don't want, can't afford. As usual, its class.
51
The reason why women favor traditional gender roles as they age is because the male-dominated world is incredibly harsh to women pursuing a career outside of the home. It’s a circular argument.
65
It's not "the male-dominated world is incredibly harsh to women" it's the world is incredibly harsh, period.
A lot of millennials, men and women, feel disenfranchised with reality because it does not conform to what we were raised to expect, such as life's easy, everyone wins, if you get A's in college you will be successful in life.
Our parents loved us so much that they tried to protect us from the harshness of life and failed to prepare us for the realities of the world. The reality is that life is hard, unforgiving, monotonous, and has no guarantees of gold at the end of the rainbow.
Hard times create strong men (the Great Depression/WWII), strong men create good times (50s to 90s), good times create weak men (the millennial generation), weak men create hard times (our future).
8
It’s pretty brutal to everyone, a function of how there are few spots at the top, lots of competitive people who want them, and disproportionate rewards to getting them. I know lots of men who fantasize about marrying a rich woman so they can retire early.
1
In the current sociopolitical and socioeconomic situations, David, how many millennials do you think are even going to want to become parents?
With student debt, expensive housing, underemployment, etc., most millennials don't have the resources to raise a child, let alone multiple ones. We've all heard the reports about decreasing fertility, and believe me, it's not all the result of endocrine disruptors.
33
The problem is a disillusioned generation. I think most of us feel the urge to become parents just as strong as our desire to own a home, live debt free and have our taxes pay for responsible investments, yet here we are adding it to the pile of unrealistic expectations. At least we remember it wasn’t always this way.
6
One only as to check the admissions/attendance/graduation statistics at any university today to understand millennial male anxiety. Women outnumber men by increasingly large percentages at most major institutions which may seem great to an 18 year old boy but not to a 22 year old man competing for his first job. I'm sure there has been plenty of research on this topic but like most prejudices it starts with a perception that the world is changing in a way that is not beneficial. I suggest that young white men just like old white men are afraid of a future that leaves them behind and so they respond to Trumpism in hopes it will slow the process down.
16
You do know that because of the fact that more women are in college than men it is much easier for men to gain admission? There are many factors that explain why many young men are underachieving, but I assure you it is not because the world favors women. Women are actually under attack by this administration. I fear for the future of all young women with the current attack on Roe v Wade, etc etc.
18
Well, there’s a solution at hand for those gents who worry about competing with educated women: study.
Yep, there are women who will be competing for the job you want. Gasp! Gone are the good old days when women didn’t stand a chance.
Oh, there’s another thing the gents can do: campaign hard for equal pay. Then there won’t be such an economic incentive for the company to choose a woman as a cheaper hire.
1
Many millennials are already parents, especially rural ones, so you need to see what is happening with Gen Z, as many of those students are already politically active. Parenthood really is not changing the the rural millennials in my experience here in the middle of nowhere. Region still has the most say on what a person believes.
10
I'm not sure. The "gender war" in universities or newsrooms is likely exaggerated. But the class issue is important, and to the extent it correlates with gender, it's not going away.
25
As usual, David, you have missed the point.
The purpose of gender equality isn't to remove inherent or choice-based differences in viewpoint, behavior, or employment. It's to prevent unequal treatment BY OTHERS on the basis of gender, particularly the government and corporations.
If women vote for Democratic candidates more often than Republican, or decide on the basis of free choice to go into other industries than men, that's fine! Nobody is arguing that there's no actual differences between men and women in aggregate, or between individuals generally. The issue is how people get treated by others on the basis of their gender.
113
Hi, Ben. Isn't David's point in this column to highlight tribalism -- this time between men and women -- that is exacerbated by social media? Seems to me that this has been an ongoing theme in his work: the social dysfunction caused by tribalism. Today's column points out another specific of that general theme.
7
Does Mr. Brooks really think that when the millennials start families, America will revert to one paycheck families with a loving spouse working at home? Some will---the most affluent, but others will continue with both partners working. Choice will play a role, and necessity, in driving the decisions that make two working partner marriages viable.
Employers and institutions will have to play catch-up to accommodate working spouses. There are more women graduating from college than men and too much talent is at stake.
The world is changing around Mr. Brooks and Trump for that matter, and its not going to go back to an imagined, idyllic 50s.
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All you have to do is watch a few episodes of Mad Men to see how "idyllic" the 50s and 60s were for those stay at home moms. And for the "career" women. We have come a long way from those days and need to improve more, but with the current administration trying desperately to turn back clock, I am very worried for our future.
8
Most young men and women I know see the benefits to everyone when women rise up. Greater pay and opportunity for women mean less pressure on men to pursue careers they hate and that keep them from their family for long periods. More financial automony for women mean they don't feel trapped in unhappy marriages which again is good for both men and women. There are many young men who enjoy a balanced family and work life because their wives work in rewarding (financially and emotionally) careers. Ideally both parents (including same sex couples, too) should have more time at home with their children.
18
Reply to MJ, there is some evidence that women’s entry into the workplace may have lowered wages across the board, as it effectively doubled the labor pool.
Also, when both partners in a marriage work in shorter hour jobs (ie both working forty hours a week, aka “the dream”) then both partners can be outcompeted by anyone willing to work 50 hours, or anyone with the time to pursue specialized education. This is how driven single people as well as married people (usually men) with stay at home spouses utterly outcompete working mothers.
Even in couples where both partners work there is no “freedom” for divorce or job change, as MJ said. Couples end up needing both incomes and thus the pair is stuck together and stuck in their jobs even if they hate it all. For dual earning families they can also be bankrupt by ill health in their children or anything that drives one partner out of the labor market. Elizabeth Warren wrote “The Two Income Trap” on this — a fascinating book.
21
As a full time working mother of now three adult children, I confess that I dreamed of a more traditional role especially when I saw that some women in my family and neighborhood were able to stay home with their children and have ( in my mind) a much less stressful life. My sons, both in their twenties fully expect their significant others to work and to be financially equal to them if not more so as many of their friends have female partners who make more than they do, in some instances much more. My daughter states openly, although feeling guilty, that she would gladly give up her successful career once she has children if her partner is able to support the family on his own. I really think that most couples with children would take the more traditional roles if they could. After all, everyone has to do more, including the men, when the woman works outside the home. Sadly, I don't think that the traditional role marriage or partnership is an option for many young people, just a chosen few who have the luck, the money, or the genes to be able to finish higher education and get a well paying job. Our economy has changed greatly and many men who could be the traditional bread winners can no longer do so.
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True. The economy is bearing down on both men and women as they struggle to make a normal life. Nether sex now has much choice in what they are economically ordained to do. But economies are not nature, they are products of law and politics. This economy, any economy, can be changed and improved to make life easier for the average person. All it takes is the will to make the system do that. The resources for a life that is closer to what many remember as the middle class is still there, but it has been distributed away from the people who earned it and who need it now. But those resources will have to be taken back from people who do not want to give them up. When people truly want justice, they will get justice. Until then it is all theater.
Do men have any frame of reference to discuss issues of female gender inequality? Statistics are malleable and can be used to make any point. Women want equality at work and still want to be responsible for everything at home? What women were answering that questionnaire and how was the question phrased? I have yet to meet any women who says that they want to work really hard all day in their job and then come home and be responsible for all of the traditional wifely duties so their husband could advance his career. And by the way, what’s left out is a reflection of the reality of same sex couples and how they relate both at home and in the workplace.
67
Do men have any reference to discuss issues of female gender inequality?
Yes.
Next question please.
Having lived long enough to see the early stages of 60s type fights for feminism to current times when women take feminism for granted. And through it all, the complaints of have not changed. Mainly, they hate working an 8-hour day job only to go home and work until late evening.
Despite all this talk of equality, men and women are very different creatures. This is the nature of things. Meanwhile, due to the precarious nature of relationships, women who dare to stay home and take care of children find themselves without skills capable of landing a living wage. Studies consistently show that children benefit greatly from stay-at-home moms, but when the marriage heads for a cliff, women's choices are the same as they've always been: endure a horrible marriage, fight poverty in a low-paying job or rely on mom and dad for help.
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In the early 70s, I met a woman who was a stay at home mom whose husband had died unexpectedly. She was forced into the workplace and had a great deal of difficulty initially. Her comment to me was "Before my husband died, the only decision I had to make was what to serve for dinner." He had the job, took care of all the finances, and she had no idea about the financial shape they were in or the financial shape she had been left with. Totally unprepared. Is that what we want for women?
4
I do not know about Michigan, but the state of NY uses a formula to calculate child support, which can be accessed by online calculators. Any person can plug in their own earnings (or potential, if stay-at-home), their spouse's earnings, and the number of children they have, and the calculator will indicate how much they will get, or how much they will have to pay.
The question I pose is, "Is the amount actually fair?"
In a traditional scenario, where one spouse stays home and then becomes the "custodial parent", the amount is too high. It creates an incentive for the spouse earning a lower income to get divorced.
In a modern scenario, where both ex-spouses share custody and both have jobs, it is catastrophically unfair and unjust. Simply put, the law was not written to work properly in this scenario. The law is so unfair, in fact, that it has induced some men - high income men, in particular - to commit suicide. Those that do not, find themselves giving up far more than half of their post-tax income to their ex spouses, while those ex spouses are entitled to keep all of their own income.
Young men see this. Young men know this. And young men are taking deliberate steps to avoid this happening to themselves.
If you want to cool down the tribal warfare between the sexes, burying your head in the sand is not going to solve anything. A good place to start would be to look at what each side is complaining about, and find ways to fix it.
1
Maybe we should do something about an economic system that treats women like this? Like tear it up and start over? Women are the majority of the population and the majority of voters. If they ever get together on anything, that thing will happen. So ladies, what is stopping you?
1
In my view, the crucial thing for every man, every woman, and everyone else, is financial security. Nothing matters more than this, especially the older we become. Finding your soul mate? Meh. Having children? Double meh. Friends, family, travel, hobbies — sure, these are all very well, but having money makes such things so much more pleasant.
When I was fiscally secure, for a very brief time, I was as laid back and easy going as it's possible to be. Once finial anxiety set in, I was back to being my old self – constantly worried, tense, flying off the handle at the slightest thing.
Money matters much more than mates. The modern millennial male and the female don't have much money. Instead, they have massive debt and no prospects.
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True. It's past time for a millennial revolution. I think a lot of people would join them if they joined together and demanded justice.
1
My life is proof of this. Very unstable as a college-educated working divorced adult. Trying to find a partner added to the stress and instability.
Fast-forward to lifetime inheritance and it's a completely different world. Stable, calm, not being forced to please three different bosses and coworkers and neighbors and friends and dates. I am now at the end of life out of that vicious (literally) cycle and have never been happier.
The way to change that cruel and stressful lifestyle so that young people cradle to grave can attain happiness and freedom is to EXTEND THE SOCIAL SAFETY NET beginning with UNIVERSAL HEALTHCARE in the United States.
Without this socialist solution, the USA will continue to sink globally at a rapid pace, and more young people will choose to emigrate than remain in the U.S.
The Republicans are both cruel and stupid.
3
Republicans have been concerned about white vs non white future. That's why the voter disenfranchisement effort against people of color. Meanwhile they are losing the battle of the sexes. The coming Nov. elections will be a blue wave led by females. You Go Girl!
40
Its not fake if that is how men and women vote now. I agree that some of these numbers will change with age but it doesn't effect the present.
7
If you can fragment and divide your market so that you are guaranteed some votes, and only have to get a few people to vote for you, you have a chance of winning, even if a lot of people loathe you. And you have targeted your dollars to get those votes.
The key is to divide and conquer. We have natural divisions - people who see women as oppressed, with reason, and people who see women getting ahead of them. People who want to stop abortion, stop paying for people's birth control, and people who see it as reduction of rights, an attempt to "keep women in their place."
The idea that men can blame women for their position in society, in the job market, comes from a very carefully tailored message being delivered to a carefully selected audience. It is tailored to men with less education in regions in which global forces have reduced the job market to nil. We do the same when we scapegoat immigrants and refugees - blame them for wholesale job loss, loss of rank in society.
What will wash away the divide,would be efforts on part of politicians to represent these people, bring in jobs, rather than target them, promise solutions and walk away laughing as they strip people of everything they have. Cold day in Hades before we see the GOP actually represent the interests of the men they have marginalized, and use with rhetoric about how women are winning. Cold day too, when that demographic will wake up.
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Of course, only Republican politicians do this! I'm sure Democrats have no blame, it isn't like they controlled the White House from 2009 to 2017 and both houses of Congress from 2009 to 2013... Nope, all these problems happened the second Trump became President on January 20, 2017.
The problem is our political system in genera! Our politicians, left and right are horrible and hypocritical people who think only of their rich supporters and their own power.
1
In other words, propaganda works, but only the Republicans use it. So whose fault is that?
Your analysis suggests that principles like equality need to be more carefully considered when moving from the abstract idea to lived reality with its many motivations, consequences of individual and tribal choices, and competing agendas. The word is often used as a without any such consideration, especially in political discourse.
6
Everything I have seen across my entire lifespan points to the gender divide being real and enduring. It is only now, though, that it has broken through politically.
My parents were educated, upper middle class baby boomers and my mother was always angry about the situation of women when I was a kid. Of my gen-x peers, I see so many women who never married. Of those who did, the resentment of women when couples have children seems huge. These are often angry and cold marriages. Women can’t forgive men for the burdens women shoulder.
I suspect that women actually love childcare, love dominant and competent men, and feel less joy than men in career competition on average. Yet women are schooled to think that careers are the focus of life and that marriages should be egalitarian with couples taking similar roles. On a day to day level perhaps many women are not enjoying their lives and that leads to anger.
Men, on the other hand, are the recipients of all this anger. They are having trouble being able to form relationships at all (as many women abandon relationships, or only consider them with the very most successful men, who may juggle multiple women).
Feminism obscures truths about human nature and that just makes life harder. For instance, traditional sex roles are practical (after all daycare is expensive) and often psychologically pleasurable.
Where do we go from here? I hope we can learn to trust each other again.
30
Where do we go from here? We reinvent our cultural norms. We make it easier for women to raise a family and have a career; we have longer vacations and have shorter working hours so we can spend more time tending to our relationships to those we love; we build more shared homes like co-houses; we start more worker-owned business so profits and leadership are shared. We devalue patriarchal hierarchies and value democratic, and diverse cultures that allow everyone to achieve their full potential. Our survival on this planet depends on moving in this direction.
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I agree with your comment about resentment after the birth of children. Much of it can come from economic stress and insecurity and it isn't just limited to women. I saw this in my tail-end Boomer marriage and now in my Millennial niece's marriage. There also seems to be this "I can have it all" fairy tale that women believe in so strongly that they are literally devastated when they cannot have it all. Men either are not as invested in this lie or just accept their lot in life and make the best of what they have.
17
Sorry, I don't particularly like child care, and do not like dominant men. Dominant is too often associated with subtle bullying. Competent is very different from dominant. I enjoy being self reliant and independent through having a decent job. Some women love childcare, which is wonderful for them, but that shouldn't affect how I am treated in the workplace. Everyone should be treated as an individual - not pigeonholed.
Couples should share the household tasks - regardless of the presence of children rather than assume the woman will take care of it all. Daycare should be much more available so it's easier on the parents - and let's not forget the stay at home dads -
27
I agree with you that its about the posturing of Trump and his equality for all but you have to wear a dress and have long hair, makeup, and smile whenever you see a man.
What I disagree with you about is women tend to drop out because of their gender. Women drop out to take care of the kids because decent day care is difficult to find and expensive. Don't forget that women still make less doing the same job as a man. That alone makes more sense for the lesser income individual to not return to work and instead take on the responsibility of childcare. Other studies have shown that they are passed over time and again for promotions. Women are more often interrupted by a man during business meetings and given assignments men don't want to do.
Young men also expect more from women than women expect from a man or at least the ones I have talked to do. They expect women to do most of the housework and familial (even if it is his side of the family) care even when women work. I've only witnessed this dynamic change when the couple is upper middle-class and up. In other words, people who are existing paycheck to paycheck have no real choices other than to live more along the lines of generations before them.
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If what you suggest were true we would not see this type of dropping-out behavior among highly paid professionals like doctors, lawyers and engineers.
Women drop out or transition to part-time work in those highly paid jobs at rates orders of magnitude greater than men.
A Dr. can easily afford day-care.
3
In other words, most people today live lives of quiet desperation because the economic system is biased against them? I wonder what would have to change to fix this?
1
I share Kathy Lollock's skepticism about the accuracy of these opinion surveys. Five Thirty Eight has warned us repeatedly about the problems with public opinion polls, which failed to predict Trump's upset victory in 2016. But Brooks cites polls on a far more complex issue, the attitude of different generations about gender equality, and he does so without any evaluation of the quality of the surveys (although, admittedly, Pew has a good reputation).
However accurate the polls, moreover, they may reveal less than David thinks. He cites a survey that reveals a change in the attitudes of high school seniors between 1994 and 2014. But this age group lacks experience with marriage, so its members' attitudes toward gender roles in marriage reveal little of what they might think a decade later.
This heavy reliance on something as ephemeral as a poll doesn't inspire confidence in David's conclusions.
30
Do not discount the survey results. These are kids who experienced first hand daycare from cradle to graduation. They experienced mom and dad tired and stressed out from work. My own kid said he would have rather had me stay home than have"things". What he didn't understand is that we would have been homeless since I made the money and his dad drank it away as fast as I could earn it. I am sure at some point in your teens or twenties you said you were not going to do the things your kids that your parents did to you. Everyone says these things because they did not like "those things".
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If the survey data supports real-life results or actual outcomes then the surveys are capturing something of real life.
If you set an impossible bar to clear for 'data' then you can never investigate anything.
1
I worked with high school students for 30 years and am well aware of how they think. Of course, they are individuals so there is some difference but in almost all cases they have an unrealistic view of life because they have experienced life only through the cocoon of their family existence. Many of them think they are going to become very successful and make a lot of money. They just don’t have a distinct idea what they have to do to make that happen. They don’t have any idea how much work it takes to get to their ideal situation.
1
Millenials are less likely to have kids, though. That might not be the growing-up equalizer that it may have been in previous generations.
9
And that's a bad thing??
1
Republicans are experts at using wedges. Male fears of women challenging their supremacy works well as a wedge, especially well with less educated males. Trump, who understands male insecurities, has made a career of activating male fears and turning them into reality TV and political success. Of course men and women have similar and differing concerns. It takes the unethical politician to discover the wedge to pit men against women to win an election. If their is to be a war between men and women, it will be encouraged and used, most likely by Republicans.
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Republicans are experts in propaganda. They became experts because they knew they had to do that to win. If the Democrats want to win they can become experts in propaganda as well. It just a choice between wanting to win or wanting to experience the emotional catharsis of being the constant underdog. It's a choice everyone gets to make.
Yes, men and women are different. But to be honest, the differences between genders feels pretty insignificant at a time when 40 some percent of my fellow citizens, of both genders, support Mr. Trump & his political party. Mostly I've given up trying to find the words to describe the depth of my revulsion for the demagogue they've put in the White House, or my despair at their lack of morals or judgment. I struggle to think of some way of communicating with them, of speaking over the Fox-GOP megaphone of fear-mongering & lies. I throw up my hands. It does no good to pretend that we're having any sort of conversation.
I have no trouble getting along with women. But women, or men, who believe in Mr Trump? They're a different species, speaking a different language, living in a different world. I'm old enough to remember when men & women lived in completely different economic worlds, obeying completely different rules, misunderstanding each other constantly. That was nothing compared to this.
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'...I've given up trying to find the words to describe the depth of my revulsion for the demagogue they've put in the White House, or my despair at their lack of morals or judgment.'
Had the presidential election outcome been different, the same sentiments would have been similarly widespread. Our candidate selection processes are significantly broken.
bill:
No doubt you are correct, and I agree that our politics are completely broken. But I can't help but note that the revulsion is fundamentally different on each side. The revulsion toward Trump comes from the things that he says & does. He was an offensive & ridiculous character before he ever entered politics. But the revulsion toward Clinton (and believe me, I'm no fan) comes not from what she says or does, but from the things that Trump & the right wing media say about her.
1
It's the beauty of living in a propaganda machine. You think 40% is bad? Wait until Fox News owns all the networks and everything is fake news all the time. We may have had the last close election. In other countries controlled by propaganda media, election wins of 90% of the vote are common. We aren't there yet but that is where the business plans are taking us. If the fix is in you might as well sit back and enjoy the spectacle. As Thomas Jefferson once said when looking at the chaos and idiocy of his time, "I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just."
3
The 1990s and 00s was a bouncing ball and confetti party that made it seem that all the work was done. So here we are now at a time while Trump is in office that everyone is seeing everything in sharp focus for what it is- and it totally stinks. Everything is gray and we know it. Childcare is awful, healthcare if awful, and women's rights have been sidelined in the office for the genius hashtags for the guys. But now look at the beauty of clarity. We can see it, hate it, and fix it. I am grateful to Trump (I suppose) for bringing the dark times- at least we can be honest that things are not great for women and men and there so much work to do. Gender war is on.
12
First - Mr. Brooks conclusion that if there aren't many women managers in the Nordics it's because they are voluntarily dropping out is totally misguided and wrong. The Nordics have the highest percentage of working women in the western world - if they aren't top managers and partners at law firms it's because of other reasons (i.e. discrimination perhaps) but not because they aren't working. Being a "stay at home mom" is completely frowned upon in these countries. Second - any woman 35 to Boomer who works is pretty furious about the gender inequality in our society - in very real ways. No group is more discriminated against in employment than working women, particularly mothers (heap on more discrimination for African American women) Just look at working women over 35 wages, career trajectory after children and general perceptions at the workplace. I'm my family's breadwinner -we count on my career - and yet I watch men (including dads) work half as hard and get treated better. Every woman can tell this story. Strictly defining millennials in a more narrow/appropriate cohort - means they are just starting to have children. Prior to having kids - I earned comparable to me, thought equality was mine, etc - their attitudes and perceptions will change the minute they start showing - and experience the wrath of America toward working mothers.
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"... Mr. Brooks conclusion that if there aren't many women managers in the Nordics it's because they are voluntarily dropping out is totally misguided and wrong."
Evidently you didn't follow the link to the nordicparadox.se web site. That conclusion is Nima Sanandaji's, not Brooks's:
"Nordic welfare states are – unintentionally – holding women back. Public sector monopolies and substantial tax wedges limit women’s progress in the labour market. Overly generous parental leave systems encourage women to stay home rather than work. Welfare state safety nets discourage women from self-employment."
Dana, you make some excellent points, but I think age discrimination is even more fierce than gender discrimination. The fact that it gets a tiny fraction of the attention is in itself revealing.
1
I worked my whole life and I never saw women being paid less than men for doing then same job. What I saw was men and women both discriminated against with low pay and long hours and no collective bargaining to let their voice be heard. When you want to help change that let me know.
Two can play at cherry-picking data. Sweden has the fourth highest representation of women in a national legislature in the world (45%). At the local government level, 44% of councilors in Sweden are female – the highest rate in a survey of 30 European countries. The Left party and the Green party have more women members than men.
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I think he said "business managers." He didn't say anything about politicians.
5
@ Richard Swanson - Thanks for providing real data on SE. Will have to go back to read David more carefully to see if you are replying to him or to an unnamed comment writer.
I can add that the newspaper beside me, DN, has an extraordinary collection of female columnists, one of whom brought the Swedish Academy (Nobel prize group) scandal to the attention of all, a scandal involving, naturally, the Academy's support of a man whose specialty was mistreating women at his club.
In addition, Sweden's TV SVT has a truly exceptional collection of female correspondents scattered throughout the world.
A question. Do you understand David's final sentence, I do not but cannot ask him. His column may appear in Swedish in a couple of days since I think about half his columns appear in DN in Swedish.
Tack
Only-NeverInSweden.blogspot.com
6
It's worse than cherry picking, it's intellectual dishonesty.
The wage gap information sited is simplistic and, as in many writings on this subject, fails to make accurate and nuanced wage comparisons. The broad census bureau sites in the referenced article make no effort to account for the nuances that would make the comparison fairly reported. Accounting for such would reduce the wage gap to about 5%, statistically small.
The source cited in the article was a women's rights publication. Unfortunately they often fail to report the real wage gap differences. There have been tremendous improvement in our country to reduce the wage gap to a statistically insignificant %. It is sad to continue to see this as a rallying cry. There are legitimate grievances for women to rally around, but unequal wages should not be one of them--because it just isn't so
13
There is a massive wage gap between mothers and fathers. And the worst part of it is that many people think it's perfectly justified.
There's an overall wage gap that points to devaluing "women's work" like nursing and teaching. And also inequality in our education system and culture that cannot seem to grasp that girls can do math and excel in technical fields.
Your denial of obvious inequality is not helpful or insightful or even accurate.
17
Uh, a 5% difference can certainly be "statistically significant" in some cases. Also, since you find it so insignificant, I am sure you will be going to your boss to ask for a 5% pay cut to offset a 5% raise for your female colleagues. Bet the female in your home will really appreciate your altruism.
2
I find this war of the sexes stuff to be nonsense.
On a lighter note, I will recall Henry Kissinger's famous dictum: "No one is every going to win the war of the sexes -- there's too much fraternization with the enemy."
On a more serious note, as a middle-aged man, husband and father, I insist that the women in my life to have all the opportunities I had. It is inconceivable to me that they would be mistreated or marginalized in any way based on their gender.
26
If Kissinger had been a woman, think of the oceans of blood that wouldn't have been shed.
We need women to participate in government to stay the hand of those who would use our tremendous power to win at the cost of so much suffering. Make America great again continues the folly of the Vietnam and Iraq wars.
Enough!
1
Ha Ha Ha, your last paragraph was meant to be funny, right? To whom do you "insist" that your women have all the opportunities that you do? How do you, viral man that you are, protect them from being "mistreated or marginalized"? My daughters have faced down sexual violence, patronizing professors, gender based intimidation from co-workers, sexual advances from patients, pregnancy discrimination and a significant gender pay gap.
Thats all in the last 5 years.
They are highly educated white women. I can't imagine how tough the world is for women of color, single mothers and low income women. You have no control over how the world treats 'your women." If it is inconceivable to you that they would be treated poorly I suggest you sit down and have a serious conversation with them. It is ineffably sad, but not inconceivable to me that they will respond #MeToo.
6
As a grandmother, I'm more concerned with a different kind of war. Hopefully if we get more women in government, we can stay the hand of those who want to use our tremendous power as we did in Vietnam and Iraq.
Next time women march let's make some antiwar signs.
1
David, David. You are missing the forest for the trees.
Young women are afraid they'll be harassed, raped, or made pregnant against their will. Why would you expect them not to vote against Trump in larger numbers than men do?
When there's real equality, people will sort themselves out differently. If everyone can be rich, some will choose not to be because they have other priorities. We're as far from that as we are from gender equality.
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"Young women are afraid they'll be harassed, raped, or made pregnant against their will." Wow. Really? All "young women"? What about middle-aged women? How about old women? Wouldn't these groups also be afraid of being raped or made pregnant, or do they simply fear being harassed?
The number of women getting abortions -- which have been legal for 45 years now -- who are pregnant due to rape or incest -- are fewer than 0.5% of all abortions.
99% of all women getting abortions are young and healthy and their pregnancies are healthy and normal. They are not rape victims and their babies are not deformed.
If you ask them "how did you get pregnant"?, overwhelmingly they tell researchers that they did not bother to use birth control, because it was "icky" or their partners didn't like condoms, or it was inconvenient, or they just "took a chance". Many say contraception is "unromantic".
"They want both sexes to have equal opportunities at work, but year by year more young people believe that the best home is the one where the man is the outside “achiever” and the working woman is the primary caregiver." Young women who believe this should be very careful living this belief - there is still a high divorce rate in this country. Young women who decide not to be the outside "achiever" will almost inevitably end up with lower lifetime earnings and if they get divorced will face a poorer old age. Does David's son believe this? Did his ex-wife believe this? Since David is now with a woman 23 years his junior, his research assistant, it seems that she is willing to give him the role of outside "achiever".
370
Thank you for providing context behind some of David's untethered biases.
23
I find that statistic very difficult to believe. I am GenX, and I don't know a single woman who thinks that. I'd say 85% of the Moms at my kids elementary school work full time outside of the home. All the Dads I know are highly involved as caregivers. It just doesn't reflect the reality of where I live.
4
Sadly, when many young people get married and the woman leaves the work force to be a Mom, the notion that they won't be together for life is unfathomable to them.
But the divorce rate speaks otherwise. There is no right answer about how to balance work and family. But women should be aware of the potential risks.
2
“Jordan Peterson-style posture, arguing that the assault on “male privilege” has gone too far, that the feminist speech and behavior codes have gone too far.”
There’s probably an inconvenient truth to this hypothesis.
A simple hewing to equal rights for all, no trips, would go along way toward denaturing the current animus or resentment that may be building on the male side. In fact, it might go a long way to solving many of our current culture
problems.
11
If most humans had the inclination to exercise 'a simple hewing to equal rights for all' (which we don't, in my opinion), we wouldn't be in the mess we are in.
5
You mean like "all lives matter"? That's working out so well.
Sounds like the desire for equality and the ingrained cultural expectations thanks to generations of patriarchy are bumping up against each other. If you look at romcoms, books, and the way relationships are portrayed on sitcoms women see themselves as equal but still long for the perceived romance of a man who pays for dinner and buys flowers. A successful man is seen as a potential breadwinner.
I have faith that the younger generations will sort things out. Let's see where they are at 20 years from now once they become parents.
As for why women go for Democrats more than Republicans, perhaps we recognize which party sees us as equal and will protect our rights. The GOP plays identity politics and subtly promises to keep everyone in their place. I can see how that message might appeal to men who see themselves as victims of the drive for equality.
A jobs program that focuses on gainful employment for everyone and pays a living wage would help. When everyone has an equal opportunity for a good life instead of being forced to take crumbs we are more free to live and let live. Scarcity mentality does weird things to the social contract.
37
For that Americans need a Progressive Tax system. There needs to be more attention paid to people who pay a small amount of taxes but have a huge amount of wealth. In France there's VAT. In France we receive bills for our taxes. Yes, there is more than one tax. We don't get to pick and choose what we will report because the system does that for us. While we can contest a bill that is too high my experience has been very different than what is found in the USA.
For example, one municipal tax not only billed us too much but then transposed 2 numbers in our tax account so our payments were never recorded to our account. Of course this led to fines. We identified the problem, contacted the tax representative who told us he would send in the correction. This went on for 5 years. It was getting ugly. Then a new representative was assigned to us (apparently we were a hard case). We went through the same story with same documentation and, surprise! It was corrected and we were sent back fines we paid.
We pay taxes on accumulated wealth. Taxes are higher but quality of life for nearly everyone is also higher. There are those who get paid below the table. It seems they might get away with that until something happens and then there's no safety net beneath them. The difference is that there IS no safety net in the states. Once a person begins the fall they just keep falling.
16
Mr. Brooks, I have read this column a few times and still am not sure if I am reading it correctly or even fully understanding it. So, let me say this. The last time we based "reality" on statistics researched by the best of the best, as a matter of fact, we were supposed to have a woman Democrat as President with the hope of a more progressive Supreme Court. Well, that was flushed down the loo and instead we have an inept egomaniac at the helm with the threat of having our rights as women - and our rights only - taken away by a group of biased Christian men on the Bench.
I as a Boomer do not care if there is a gender war. And I am sure neither do my sisters who happen to be Millennials, Gen Xes, et al. I am a married woman, to the same man for 50 years, but by darn if there is to be a war of the sexes, let there be. That will not stop the majority of the women in this nation to protect what is theirs, equality across the board and a right to do with their minds and bodies what they choose.
352
@kathy lollock, I wish you well and will support you. My younger relatives are not politically active and neither are their peers. I don't know if they know what happened during the Vietnam War when young people exercise their political will. I was like them when I was young, but now politically active as a naturalized immigrant.
How do we change their attitude? they are the ones who will pay for the boomer and the "tweener" generation between the so-called greatest and boomer generation excesses.
I worry for them. Meanwhile I might go down to Fresno to support the opponent to Devin Nunes, an American traitor, during the next election. Nunes fits the Trump model, no brains but willing to use it to support his boss. I'll have to take of the Bernie Sander bumper sticker or rent a car...
6
Good for you! I am a product of the 60's, from SF, and learned early on that we do not sit still for injustices. Our daughters, both Xers, are the same way. In fact, the one living in Alameda County has friends throughout the state who are targeting Nunes!
3
I'm not quite sure I get what this column is trying to say but...either way this female is tired of what the whole #MeToo movement has turned into. People are very gullible and sheep-like for the most part, and it is seen as 'cool' for women to protest about 'grrrrl power' and say things like 'Resist!' (er....resist WHAT exactly??) or 'The Future is Female' (as if it's ok to blackball all/most men as being 'the problem')?
Racism is racism, just as sexism is sexism, and deciding that either is ok (as some sort of 'payback' to the other 'privileged' side) and that the other side should not only be fine with it, but participate in it, is plain dumb. How many white folk who march for Black Lives Matter...or how many men who march for #MeToo etc. ...how many are truly angered by the injustices, and how many were only participating...er...so they'd not incur the wrath or questioning by their female partners?... and/or to simply show the rest of their tribe ...the world of social media...how 'enlightened' they are?
I'm not saying that some folks don't participate in such things for genuine reasons. It's just that I really question the motives of many people, esp. in this day of social media, catchy hashtags, and selfies taken at rallies/marches.
22
This cartoonish editorial is a classic example of pseudo-intellectualism exploiting myths and superstitions regarding gender roles.
The reason millennials believe that men are the focus of discrimination and oppression in our culture is because the millennials are correct.
The generations that have preceded us simply revised history to serve a gynocentric agenda. That gynocentric agenda allowed the plutocracy to divide men and women, very effectively, to render them easy to control and exploit in the workplace, the marketplace and in every aspect of our culture.
The truth is that men have always been exploited in favor of women.
Men are getting smart. Men are walking away from the gynocentric game that is rigged against them. Many fair and honest women are supporting them.
That is why President Trump has been elected.
7
Don’t believe Jordan Peterson’s pseudo - scientific slurry. He has had the privilege of an excellent education in western literature - as well as his psych qualification - clearly he is not stupid BUT he’s also not principled - I say this as an academic - his willingness to present as fact,what is at best mere opinion, at worst, wild conjecture, is not legitimate scholarship. It’s a great strategy for selling lots of books to people eager for certainty and a formula though.
7
As Gerald Ford observed:
"A great philosopher once said—I think it was Henry Kissinger—nobody will ever win the battle of the sexes. There’s just too much fraternizing with the enemy."
http://takimag.com/article/the_wisest_thing_anybody_ever_said_steve_sail...
4
Women ARE more victimized than men. Don't compare a woman who has a college degree with a man who barely finished high school and suggest that he's the one who is victimized. Compare her to her college-educated male peers.
That's basic social science.
521
You sound proud to be a victim. I don't think we are going to get anywhere by measuring which of us is a bigger victim than the other. I think it is better to look at the systematic forces that are holding everyone back and do something about them. When we help each other we may find that we are helping ourselves.
2
Yes. When I graduated from college in the seventies, a female college graduate earned the equivalent of a male high school dropout and it stayed that way for decades. If male high school graduates feel they lack opportunities, perhaps they should wake up and take responsibility for their choice not to pursue a better education. Isn't that what Republicans believe? Bootstraps?
5
Umm... no it's not.
The fact that the college-educated male peers of a highly educated, victimized woman are not themselves victimized does not in any sense imply that lower education men are not victimized. Your argument is logically flawed.
More broadly, anytime there is a rigid gender expectation (e.g., about who's supposed to be the main breadwinner vs who's supposed to be the main homemaker/caregiver.... or in the dating realm, who's supposed to initiate and who's supposed to play the more passive role ... or any of a dozen other examples) then both genders lose. That implies victimization on both sides. It's really that simple.
1
What is most fundamental in peoples' lives? For the vast majority it is their children.
Brooks is right.
it is what conservatives, liberals, racists, socialists, Democrats, and Republicans have in common---their children and the lives of their children. It is what is foremost in all of their minds.
Compared to the power of that emotional and psychological demand of children, politics takes a distant role.
But when you read articles or listen to pundits they rarely talk about this. They talk politics. Like, who cares? I care about my kids and their kids. Talk about them, please.
It's almost unbelievable. The most important thing to the vast majority of Americans is rarely mentioned by politicians, by newspaper columnists, by talk show hosts, etc.
It's parenthood that we have in common. Let's talk about our children---not Trump, not Sanders, not #MeToo, not BLM, not Fox News, not immigration, etc. etc.
Our children.
9
I think that may be the last time I really heard anyone put into a seat of presidential power talk openly and honestly about the needs of children and their parents were the Clintons. Remember when they said it takes a village to raise a child. (Apparently that comes from some African adage, but I don't know which one. Still, it is correct). Well, that finished off ever again saying anything beyond children need to learn to read and eat a balance diet.
I remember the the indignation that met President Clinton and the First Lady saying that anybody had any business attending to the needs of a child by the then Republicans and it is still considered intrusive by current Republicans. It seems so strange to me that they cry fowl whenever it is pointed out that they created this mess to begin with. They don't want anyone to tell them what their child might benefit from but they just can't seem to get it through their heads that women's bodies belong to woman who wears it and therefore it is up to her to decide what will benefit it; not some intrusive Republican pharmacist who refuses to fill her prescription because he doesn't think she has the right to decide.
18
"it takes a village to raise a child."
The problem is that the people in the village need to pretty much agree on how to raise that child, but today, they don't, they have wildly different opinions on that...and so everyone says, "Don't you dare tell my child what to do, that's my sole prerogative as the parent!"
Sorry, Dan, but what we leave to our children is: this country. How our society works, what we stand for, how we provide social support for those here now and those who follow us, namely, our children, is exactly what politics is about.
I hear plenty about the 'world we are leaving our children' from everybody. How do we define that world? How do we decide how much education should be publicly funded, how much environmental legislation we should pass so our children actually have a living planet to inherit, how much affordable health care will be available to them, is exactly what politics is about. It doesn't have to be stated every five seconds. Children are, implicitly, our greatest concern. They inherit the mess we make.
This column? Maybe it should be teaching you something about the sort of world your daughters, if you have any, will be dealing with. Some comments, even in the NYT which ought to moderate them out, are so anti-women it makes my skin crawl.
Get with the program, Dan. Pay attention.
2
This essay isn't as "millennials are dumb" as I'd expect, given that it's, you know, an article about millennials. There is something truly weird about it, though. Brooks acknowledges that there might be a "gender war," then denies its existence, then concludes with a pat line about parenthood. It seems almost like an effort to obfuscate the political concerns of millennials... To suggest that what millennials are saying isn't actually as important as what people are saying about millennials. That so many millennial women are politically progressive (and, honestly that so many millennial men are, relatively speaking: there are only currently only twenty male baby boomers, and one of them is my dad) shouldn't be swept under the rug, because it's not something that's going away.
And thank goodness for that.
"I’m betting that the millennial gender war is a figment of the political circus, and will be washed away by the giant force looming on the horizon: parenthood."
David sounds like he's part of the school that believes all problems between men and women will be solved by keeping the women barefoot and pregnant.
While I rarely agree with Brooks about question of political interest I didn't expect him to sink to Trumps level of calling attacks on women fake news.
BLAAAGH.
149
Mr. Brooks, what makes you think that parenthood is a
a "giant force looming on the horizon" for millenials? According to all recent statistical analyses, they are increasingly opting out of parenthood as a lifestyle option. Parenthood is seeing a modest uptick in popularity among the over-40 cohort but that will, needless to say, never morph into anything that could be described as a "giant force".
23
Indeed, and how could it! With stagnant wages, ballooning costs in housing and food, and enormous student loan debt, any young person's idea that they will eventually have kids and embrace outdated gender rolls is hogwash. Unless they are part of the upper-upper middle class and above, both partners will have no choice but to work. Parenthood is fast becoming a luxury.
2
Parenthood? Not this generation. My two millennials (one of each gender) have expressed no interest in having kids. There have careers to build, student loans to pay off. None of these young people assume that things will get better over time such that having kids is a good idea. here are different from previous generations in that lack of optimism.
49
When children at the border are ripped from their mother's arms and little Anglo kids, supposedly safe in their beds, are waking up screaming, fearful that their parents have abandoned them, you see how harmful this to all children. Why would anyone want to bring children into the world at this time.
19
"Why would anyone want to bring children into the world at this time." ...Said many people, many times, all throughout history.
The view of younger people that women should be caregivers probably affects two household employment patterns. It could mean that women believe that men should have the primary career and women a less time consuming career. I suspect academic studies focus on this issue.
3
"As economic disparities between men and women have narrowed"
"Over the past few decades, the U.S. has made steady strides toward gender equality, and millennials live in the most gender-equal cohort in our society."
"I’m betting that the millennial gender war is a figment of the political circus"
Whether the "gender war" exists or not, Mr. Brooks is too nonchalant about narrowing disparities between men and women in the workplace.
Discrimination in Salary:
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/03/business/wage-gap-gender-discriminati...
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/23/business/dealbook/ceo-gender-pay-gap....
Discrimination against pregnant women:
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/06/15/business/pregnancy-discri...
And this is just from the last few months in the NYT.
The war may or may not be phony. The discrimination is not.
227
Those who discriminate in the workplace frequently do it on any parameter that they can. Such behavior is active not only concerning the classics of gender, race, age and so forth, but also in realms such as the tall/ the not tall, the 'beautiful'/ the not beautiful, golfers/non-golfers (really!), the 'fashionable,' university cliques, sports enthusiasts, the conveniently quasi-ethical, the 'team' proclaimers, and on and on. Variability and difference are experienced as threatening.
5
Unfortunately the New York Times writes its stories to support its established positions, which in NOT saying they are false. But the NYT's world lacks the inconsistencies, confusion, and outliers in the real world. So while NYT stories will predictably support the feminist position their bias means they don't add to my understanding of topic.
@ Joshua Schwartz
Ironically, the article you cited on the CEO Gender Pay gap - which I just read - is all about the fact that (apparently) there isn't one.
That's not to say there isn't a gap at non-CEO levels, nor that the studies quoted might not be flawed - but just that article doesn't support your point.
As a general matter, my take on the attitudes of the young regardless of gender is … wait twenty years and ask the older versions. The attitudes of the young have political weight only if two things happen: 1) they vote reliably and in numbers, which they don’t; and 2) those attitudes remain generally constant as they age, take on greater responsibilities and get kicked around seriously by life – and they don’t, either. Millennials, like all young cohorts, adjust their attitudes as they age, tend to moderate them significantly and generally tend to grow at least marginally more conservative as they accumulate more to protect.
In a sense, I suppose I agree with David that the “war” is “fake”; but more importantly, I see it as irrelevant. In twenty years, the “war”, if it exists, will have very different contours and objectives. In the meantime, we still need to hammer out a denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula and get our allies to contribute more to our common defense – and Millennials won’t be participating notably in those efforts.
Parenthood is an important but not truly central factor of the conversion of the Millennial confused or even the Millennial outraged about ANYTHING into mature thinkers who exert serious weight on the arc of our development as a society -- in part because it's too specific a factor. That most central general factor is age, time, a collected database of experience and the choices they've made along the way.
11
Yeah, that’s true about people growing more conservative as they get older (and wiser, of course). Why, I just heard someone yesterday say that - about how much they changed since they were younger.
Signed,
Beaver Cleaver, August 14, 1957.
4
Don:
I'm quite sure that you and the Beave are exceptions that prove the rule.
Well I’m one young boomer who has become more liberal and progressive the older I get. 65 this Thurs. I did grow up with FDR Democrat parents. On the farm my immigrant grandfather homesteader.
17
Did Brooks just argue that children would fix rising sexism among young people? I don't even know what to say to that.
The attitudes Brooks is talking about are incredibly damaging to both men and women. The neotraditionalist attitude holds that women should work, but they should also continually sacrifice their career for their husband and children. We know the results of that: women's careers stagnate and, worse, women become stereotypes as less reliable and hardworking. This propagates sexist attitudes and means those same kids are going to have this fight again in twenty years.
Brooks is taking the position fed to him by conservative media: that the fight against sexism is really a war between genders. He's right, the war between genders is manufactured by people who do not want to lose their power and privilage. The real war needs to be with both genders aligned against the sexist attitudes of our forefathers.
474
I don't think it was the conservative media that forced Brooks to divorce his first wife and marry an employee.
7
Yes. I hope Brooks reads and considers your comment. The idea that calling for an end to gender-based inequality and maltreatment constitutes a "war" is the result of reactionary and shallow thought, generally by people who want to serve their own best interests by maintaining the status quo.
We are supposed to be deeply concerned about the fate of the high-school educated male, but when is the well-being of his counterpart, the high-school educated american female ever discussed? I'll give you a hint: it isn't, except when it's to serve as an example of what our society selectively shames. We don't like poor people, and we certainly don't like poor mothers. They are perhaps the only group that it is socially acceptable to openly shame.
Blue collar males, on the other hand, are often able to find jobs that pay a livable wage, and are rarely expected to compromise their career demands with childrearing. Their female counterparts have to balance childcare with extremely low-paying jobs.
My husband's managerial job in industry pays very well, requires no college degree, and consists largely of building business/social relationships with other men. There are no women in this role (other than family members), and none work the good union jobs in production either. They would never be hired. With a college degree, I struggled to find a livable wage. With a grad degree, I make a third of my husband's pay. Guess who took time out for childcare, forfeiting advancement?
9
No one says that there aren’t differences between men and women. But what we’re really looking for is equal opportunity for everyone, regardless of gender. It’s the freedom to get an education, find a good job, earn a decent living, buy a home and raise a family that’s important.
More important than the gender gap is the economic gap. When rich Republicans are running the country, we see what happens. The gap widens. Schools and neighborhoods are not priorities. Tax cuts and bonuses for corporate executives take precedence over schools, which are put under someone like Betsy DeVos, who doesn’t even bother to disguise her disdain for public education.
If high school-educated men think they’re being screwed by modern society, it may be because their lack of skills, education and discernment make them susceptible to conservative pandering.
When education suffers, inflaming the resentments of the poorly educated becomes a winning strategy. The heartland voted for the bad joke who now runs the country, while the brainland was having none of it.
The distinction between men and women becomes irrelevant when everyone is being sold down the river by a dishonorable administration that is being run by a belligerent man-child and abetted by a cabal of opportunistic conservatives who are using this opportunity to run roughshod over everyone, regardless of gender.
634
This year I've read more "gemli" and "Socrates" than I have David Brooks and find myself better informed and more entertained.
Most heartfelt thanks to you both.
30
"the brainland" vs. "the heartland"? Is it any wonder that you guys can't win elections? Being insufferably pleased with oneself is not a winning trait. And you offer no evidence that periods of Democratic political power have had any effect on slowing or reversing these trends that trouble you. Democrats, when in power, are masters of the political gesture, and the well-meaning legislation with unintended consequences. I have no trouble voting against Republicans. Why do you have to make it so hard to vote for Democrats?
6
Tom, for one thing...Republican presidents have a way of destroying economies with tax cuts that blow up our deficit (Reagan & Bush) and getting us involved in geopolitical adventures that upset the world order which they also don't pay for. It's been Democratic presidents - Clinton and Obama - that have come in to clean up the Republican mess.
It's going to take another Democratic president in 2020 to clean up the mess Trump is making at home with his tax cuts and the looming trade war; and abroad with his assault on the world order while Russia and China advance.
There will never be gender similarity as men and women were created for different purposes . In the case of marriage, a man and woman become " one flesh" as the Bible teaches. There should be equality in that marriage but different roles for each sex. I have been married to the same woman for 52 years and I cannot recall a major argument between us because we treat each other as equals. If there was a decision to be made we sat down and discussed alternatives and eventually reached an agreement. But we had different responsibilities. She was the major caregiver for the children and our home. I have never cooked or done a load of laundry. She has never mowed the grass or paid a bill. Gender equality is the key to a happy and lasting marriage as long as a difference in roles is expected and accepted.
55
Yup, this was my parent's marriage until Dad died 10 years ago and now my siblings and I have to do everything Mom never learned to do for herself. I hope your children are ready to take your place, also to take the place of your wife if she were to die first...otherwise you will starve to death in dirty clothes.
249
So this is great for you and your wife. As a woman who loves her work and loves her family, having to fit your model would have destroyed my marriage.
I really wish that more people could be happy with their negotiated arrangements and resist the urge to prescribe them for others.
248
Congratulations to you. But please also ensure your lovely wife understands your finances and investments as a couple. It's hard for a woman who's never paid bills to figure this all out if she loses her husband early.
20
Fake? Only if you’re looking at it from a male viewpoint.
The gender war is very real to me and all women seeking equality. I’ve been fighting since I first became aware of self, of my femaleness. Since I and my girlfriends at age 12 first roared along with Helen Reddy’s ‘I am Woman’ in 1972 until we wore grooves in the 45 on our record player.
The chorus, as meaningful to me now as it was then.
“Oh yes I am wise
But it's wisdom born of pain
Yes, I've paid the price
But look how much I gained
If I have to, I can do anything
I am strong (strong)
I am invincible (invincible)
I am woman”
We were on the cusp of womanhood then. We knew what was at stake. The fights for civil rights and against Vietnam were going down around us as we came of age. We were Catholic school girls but even then we knew the Church was not supportive of women and our causes.
It was a man’s world. Much has changed since then, too much hasn’t. I thought abortion rights were settled law by now, I thought access to birth control was settled, I thought the Equal Rights Amendment would have been passed long before now.
Yet here I am, 57 years old, and still fighting for the same causes I championed as a teenager. Except today too many young women don’t understand the fight women before them waged. They throw it away because they don’t get it! They don’t get what is at stake, they don’t remember the time before. They believe feminism is no longer needed. Maybe you don’t deserve it.
229
"I thought abortion rights were settled law by now, I thought access to birth control was settled, ..."
"Yet here I am, 57 years old, and still fighting for the same causes I championed as a teenager."
That means you were 12 when Roe v Wade was decided, so why were you "championing" abortion rights "as a teenager"?
And were you really "championing" "access to birth control" "as a teenager"?
Please clarify.
Nothing like a little top 40 philosophy!
1
WNL,
Both abortion and birth control were freely available for MARRIED women. If you were a teen or single woman access was denied by parents and by doctors imposing their beliefs on us. I couldn't get birth control pills from my GYN even though I was 18. I had to find another and then lie about how bad my periods were. It took multiple visits to convince the doctor in order to get what I was entitled to by law.
Then as now the law states abortion and birth control are legal rights. Yet across this country teens and women are denied service due to provider bias and draconian laws being tested in red states.
How can anyone be unaware of this?
The real war on women is the taking away of their rights, especially for reproductive healthcare. No man has to deal with pregnancy, the various cancers and diseases of the reproductive system, infant nutrition, rising maternal death rates, the denial not just of abortions but of contraception, and other related factors. Taking children away from the arms of their mothers (and fathers) strikes deep. Women tend to be the ones taking care of those with disabilities or the aged, and to be dependent on minimum wages and/or Medicaid.
Rape and sexual assaults and domestic abuse are concerns of women of different ages. Sessions and others opposed the Violence Against Women Act. Few men have to deal with sexual harassment at work, and the Me,Too movement exposed how common this is in all sectors including in technology.
Women were energized by Trump's election in part because they recognized the misogyny when a highly qualified woman was constantly smeared not just by the right wing but by Bernie bros or trolls masquerading as them.
The morning after the election my teenage students were in shock and were both somewhat quiet and stunned. One girl said, how could a man who committed sexual assault become president? Since then more of the scandals about Trump have appeared, and it turned out only hush money had hidden them before.
I'm afraid this article is mansplaining circumstances the author doesn't understand.
779
First off many men DO experience sexual harassment at work. They deal with it in silence because they believe speaking out is going to be worse. If they do come forward, they are not believed and women heap hate on them and accuse them of trying to steal their cause.
As for Hillary Clinton, she did not want to win because she did not work to win the election where it counts. She thought she was entitled and would be crowned president simply because she had two x-chromosomes. She embarrassed every woman and made us look incompetent. Yes I hate the electoral college and believe it should be removed from the US Constitution but winning there makes you president, not the popularity contest called the national election.
4
While I respect your general point, there are cancers of the reproductive system that affect men, e.g. prostate and testicular cancer.
1
Every man has to deal with pregnancy.
Think of all the women in America who "face the high burdens to provide financially, to be tough, to be successful in their careers."
The Nordic way is better--provide a social safety net. And make life better for everyone.
301
Sadly, someone has to pay for that social net. So are you saying women don't want equality but special treatment and to be cared for instead? In the 1950s we called that getting your MRS... I guess today, the left wants women to get their MRS from Uncle Sam.
I guess when you take away all the "fun" things in the old boys' clubs, like misogyny, blatant abuse of power, and a guaranteed job if you were "one of the boys," all you are left with is hard work, layoffs, and lots of stress.
1
I was there. My mother a divorced woman struggled to support me and eventually her parents in their last days. My friends' moms kept their MRS. and stayed at home.
We would have benefited from a little "Nordic style" help from Uncle Sam.
Tito Perdue: No disrespect intended, but in the fifties did you happen to be male, middle-class and white?
In the 1980's, both my husband and I received our Ph.D.s. Mine was in the sciences, his in classics. My husband understood that I would have a career that took me out of the home and embraced it wholeheartedly. But that didn't mean there weren't problems. One was that he deeply resented the fact that I have always made twice as much money as he did. This was strictly a function of our chosen fields. Nonetheless, he has always felt aggrieved by the salary difference even though our pay checks go into the same account and we both have access to the money. The second ongoing problem was that while he understood intellectually that I shouldn't have to do all of the housework just because I am female, emotionally that is exactly what he expected. Our 37 year marriage has been a constant process of renegotiation as a result. The good news is that our two sons are very egalitarian in their domestic arrangements and our daughters feel absolutely no compulsion to marry until they are good and ready. Progress, however slow, is being made.
266
It's tough to be a man. Cut him some slack. By why on earth would a man get a PhD in the classics? Is he mentally ill?
1
He's great at parties!
I believe part of the reason for men's backlash against women's issues is because men's issues are ignored by the media. Compared to women, men are about 20 times more likely to be killed on the job, 10 times more likely to end up in prison, and 4 times more likely to commit suicide. Based on 2015 data, an unarmed man is 30 times more likely than an unarmed woman to be shot and killed by the police. All this adds up to the fact that men, on average, die 5 years earlier than women. Yet, the media almost never reports on these male issues. Instead, we get the daily drumbeat of news articles talking about women not earning as much as men, the #MeToo movement, etc. I'm only surprised the male backlash isn't greater. But I've come to learn that, apparently, generating gender and racial divisiveness is considered a good way to sell newspapers, so I don't expect anything to change soon.
102
Please. While all of these things might be harmful to men, the most dangerous thing to women: men. Look into the statistics. Like, just to cherry pick one, how 94% of murder victims in murder-suicides are women. (According to the NCADV) That sounds like a lot.
1
alas, the choice made, from the halls of ivy, the seats of government, the corridors of industry and on the cable couches and pages of media is to get even, not better.
1
Women are still trying to break into “dangerous” fields like construction, that has something like 3-7% participation. When women enter jobs dominated by men, they meet discrimination — including sabotage that can put safety at risk. If there were more women working in dangerous fields, maybe those fields wouldn’t be so dangerous.
2
In the spirit of fairness I propose that Hollywood create all-male reboots of Steel Magnolias and Mystic Pizza.
More seriously I think that the frontlines of this "conflict" - especially amongst millennials - is happening on social media and the internet in general, and David isn't exactly tapped into that. Bret and Gail make some good observations in their recent "Conversation" column about how our current political climate is a reflection of the highly fractured media environment - when everyone has a voice (the internet) then people have to shout to get attention. Therefore we feel like the loudest and most obnoxious voices are the most mainstream. The same thing is true here. In the sphere of gender relations, this means that a bevy of content confirming our worst suspicions about the opposite sex and their true intentions is readily available for anyone who wants to find it. Adults with perspective and maturity can see past the noise, but kids and younger adults without that perspective become lost in that morass.
80
But then you run into the trap of not being able to see past the Status Quo and decades of normalizing the bad. On the other hand is that the young have ideals about fairness and cooperation that gets beat out of them as they age. This is age old and no one said that the conflict between measured change and the push of ideals would be nice.
1
I suspect the social media fascination will wane as well. People are finally waking up to the pitfalls of social media. Oh, it'll probably last in some form or another, but the heyday is here, it'll go downwards from herein. To give David some credit, a lot of interaction on the net is also fake, people posturing about their social status, obsession with "like" counts, so too the man-woman battle is mostly hype. I agree with David, today's generation is way more gender balanced than ever before, fake news, overhyped. That's not to be confused with the #metoo movement, that is real, and way overdue, but it would be best served if not overplayed.
2
"I’m betting that the millennial gender war is a figment of the political circus, and will be washed away by the giant force looming on the horizon: parenthood."
Too bad most millennials are trapped in an economy that has them scuffling to even make rent, much less start families. You see the tent camps of "homeless?" No small number of those tents are owned by young people working as servers, baristas, floor sales people ... the only way they can get ahead on what they make is to live on the street.
Only the fortunate minority have the income and security, or extended family support, they need to even think about having children.
43
The "gender war" in Western Civilization (aka Christianity) has been on going since Augustine used, and slandered, Eve to invent original sin.
There really is nothing new under the sun...
100
The history about how original sin, that most depressing of doctrines, was pushed through and became church dogma is full of horse trading and some vile shenanigans. Women were the target, of course, so near and this so easy to blame, humiliate, tame, and control.
Now it's abortion rights and it's the shame misogyny. "Patriarchy is the religion of the planet": Mary Daly.
6
Thank you for recognizing that. I also blame St. Paul the original misogynist. Just two reasons I drifted from the Catholic Church.
5
Read your own newspaper, David. (Pregnancy Discrimination is Rampant Inside America's Biggest Companies, NY Times, 6/15/18.) This "gender war" may feel "phony" to you, but it feels real to me, especially as we come to grips with a Supreme Court that will most likely be overturning Roe in the near future.
Men can dismiss demonstrations because their bodily autonomy is not threatened like ours is. We are mobilizing because we see that the threats to our safety and to the progress we have made in the last 50 years are very real.
When these young men say they are being "screwed," it's all relative. They still make more money, are more likely to get promoted, have an easier time getting hired, and hold office at a substantially higher rate than women.
Men can see their supremacy is waning, a supremacy they have held SINCE THE DAWN OF TIME, and I sincerely hope they're right.
138
Here are a few question:
1. How many parents want their daughter's spouse to be a stay at home father while the wife takes on all the pressures of financial support?
2. How many women are prepared to marry a man who says he wants to be a stay-at-home dad?
We're not ready for those sorts of discussions until we truly acknowledge that some women truly want family over career, some want both, and some want career. Few men have that option. A lot of the tension is coming from Third Wave Feminism and its questionable social narratives, little opposition, and free reign in the media. The reference to Suzanne Walters Piece "Why Can't We Hate Men" is a perfect example of an ideological tirade. Third Wave Feminism uses a few social constructs to advance its cause.
1. Women are victims.
2. We live in a patriarchy
3. Gender is a social construct
Good people can easily be divided in such moments because ideology trumps humanity.
Women account for conferred degrees by a significant margin: 62% of associate, 57-58% bachelor, and 60% of master degrees (https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d08/tables/dt08_268.asp?referrer=rep.... They have far more choices than men.
The number of fortunate 500 CEOs and members of the House and Senate combined account for a total of 1035 people. To put it in perspective women outnumber men in college be nearly 3,000,000.
5
"Read your own newspaper, David" You have got to be kidding, CCT in California. The New York Times is certainly not a source of objective information, i.e., what is really going on around us.