The End of Men and the Rise of Women (37 page)

My daughter, Noa, has been a ray of sunshine streaming into my attic in the midafternoon, except when she’s not (she’s nearly a preteen). She’s grown up so much in the time I’ve been writing this book, but still managed to hold on to her curiosity and core of confidence. She’s also become one of the funniest people I know. My son Jacob asks me every day why I would write a book with such a mean title. I always tell him that I want to convince people that some men out there need our help, since it’s not always so easy for them to ask for it. He doesn’t quite believe me yet, but maybe one day he will. My son Gideon is thankfully too young to read the title, and too busy with his cars. But he is candy at the end of a long day. I kind of wish he’d never grow up.

How can I thank a husband who puts up with a wife who writes a book called
The End of Men
? Just imagine the potential for embarrassing tableaux: on the basketball court, at the gym, at the office. “Hey, what’s your wife up to?” Yet David has been nothing but proud, so proud that I always hear from his friends the nice things he says about me. When I interviewed top executives about the most important decision they made in their lives, most of them said: I married the right man. I completely agree.

A few notes on sources: All of the characters mentioned in the book are real people I met or interviewed in the course of reporting this book. However, sometimes I used only their first names, and sometimes I changed their names entirely. I used pseudonyms mostly in cases when I was revealing particularly intimate details about relationships: Tali, Shannon, Troy, Hannah, Billy, and Dian are pseudonyms, as are Stephanie Kim and Kirsten Lee. Quotes from experts generally come from interviews I conducted, unless a different source is noted below. Quotes in text that do not have sources noted below come from interviews conducted by the author in the research for this book.

This world has always belonged to males:
Simone de Beauvoir,
The Second Sex
(New York: Vintage Books, 2011), p. 71.

three-quarters of the 7.5 million jobs:
Between June 2007 and December 2009, according to Pew Research Center’s analysis of Bureau of Labor Statistics data, men lost 5.4 million jobs and women lost 2.1 million.http://pewresearch.org/pubs/2049/unemployment-jobs-gender-recession-economic-recovery.

worst-hit industries:
Mark J. Perry, “The Great Mancession of 2008–2009,” Statement before the House Ways and Means Committee Subcommittee on Income Security and Family Support on “Responsible Fatherhood Programs,” June 17, 2010. http://democrats.waysandmeans.house.gov/media/pdf/111/2010Jun17_Perry_Testimony.pdf.

In 2009, for the first time:
According to revised employment data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, women outnumbered men in the workforce in February, March, November, and December of 2009.

Women worldwide dominate:
OECD,
Education at a Glance 2011: OECD Indicators
(OECD Publishing, 2011). http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/61/2/48631582.pdf.

for every two men who will receive a BA:
According to “Gender Equity in Higher Education: 2010,” a report by the American Council on Education, women have consistently earned around 60 percent of bachelor’s degrees for the last decade.

Of the fifteen job categories:
“The 30 Occupations with the Largest Projected Employment Growth, 2010-20,” Bureau of Labor Statistics, February 2012. http://www.bls.gov/news.release/ecopro.t06.htm.

more than 40 percent of private businesses in China:
“41 Pct of China’s Private Businesses Run by Women,”
People’s Daily,
September 17, 2004.

the new “ornamental masculinity”:
Susan Faludi,
Stiffed: The Betrayal of the American Man
(New York: HarperCollins, 1999).

“fixed in cultural aspic”:
Jessica Grose, “Omega Males and the Women Who Hate Them,”
Slate
, March 18, 2010.

In her iconic 1949 book:
Beauvoir,
The Second Sex
, p. 562.

“Women of our generation”:
Genevieve Field, “Girl Crazy,”
Cookie
, August 2008.

“You have to be concerned”:
Louise Lague, “Shopping for a Boy Baby? Ron Ericsson Can Help, but Critics Say He Shouldn’t,”
People
, September 17, 1984.

a national survey of future parents:
Jaeseon Joo, “Statistical Handbook: Women in Korea 2011,” Korean Women’s Development Institute, 2011.

“Yale’s sexual culture” itself:
Bijan Aboutorabi, Eduardo Andino, and Isabel Marin, “Change the Climate, End Sex Week,”
Yale Daily News
, September 20, 2011.

In 1988 half of boys:
Tara Parker-Pope, “The Kids are More Than All Right,”
The New York Times,
February 5, 2012.

Teen pregnancy rates dropped 44 percent:
Brady E. Hamilton and Stephanie J. Ventura, “Birth Rates for U.S. Teenagers Reach Historic Lows for All Age and Ethnic Groups,” National Center for Health Statistics, Data Brief No. 89, April 2012. http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db89.pdf.

“A lot of them”:
Kathleen A. Bogle,
Hooking Up: Sex, Dating, and Relationships on Campus
(New York: New York University Press, 2008): pp. 43–44.

In 2004, Elizabeth Armstrong:
Laura Hamilton and Elizabeth A. Armstrong, “Gendered Sexuality in Young Adulthood: Double Binds and Flawed Options,”
Gender & Society
23, no. 5 (2009): 589–616; study results originally published in Elizabeth A. Armstrong, Laura Hamilton, and Brian Sweeney, “Sexual Assault on Campus: A Multilevel, Integrative Approach to Party Rape,”
Social Problems
53, no. 4 (2006): 483–499.

Hakim has identified:
Catherine Hakim,
Erotic Capital: The Power of Attraction in the Boardroom and the Bedroom
(New York: Basic Books, 2011).

“Properly understood, erotic capital”:
Catherine Hakim, “Have You Got Erotic Capital?”
Prospect
, March 24, 2010.

people labeled “attractive” earned:
Markus M. Mobius and Tanya S. Rosenblat, “Why Beauty Matters,”
American Economic Review
96, no. 1 (2006): 222–235.

“worst sin imaginable”:
Meghan Daum,
My Misspent Youth: Essays
(New York: Open City Books, 2001), p. 20.

We’ve been taught:
Lois P. Frankel,
Nice Girls Don’t Get the Corner Office: 101 Unconscious Mistakes Women Make That Sabotage Their Careers
(New York: Warner Business Books, 2004), p. 2.

In 2011, psychologist Roy Baumeister:
Roy F. Baumeister, “Cultural Variations in the Sexual Marketplace: Gender Equality Correlates with More Sexual Activity,”
Journal of Social Psychology
151, no. 3 (2011): 350–360.

“Societies in which women have lots of autonomy”:
Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jethá,
Sex at Dawn: The Prehistoric Origins of Modern Sexuality
(New York: HarperCollins, 2010), p. 133.

“Tell it to our mothers”:
Helena Andrews,
Bitch Is the New Black
(New York: HarperCollins, 2010), pp. 6–7.

More of them turn:
Mark Regnerus and Jeremy Uecker,
Premarital
Sex in America: How Young Americans Meet, Mate, and Think about Marrying
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2011).

“Erotic capital,” Regnerus writes:
Mark Regnerus, “Sex Is Cheap,”
Slate
, February 25, 2011.

In their 1983 book:
Marcia Guttentag and Paul F. Secord,
Too Many Women?: The Sex Ratio Question
(Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications, 1983).

On the cover of
Guyland
: Michael Kimmel,
Guyland: The Perilous World Where Boys Become Men
(New York: HarperCollins, 2008).

Stanford psychology professor Philip Zimbardo:
Philip Zimbardo, “The Demise of Guys?” TED Talk, March 2011. http://www.ted.com/talks/zimchallenge.html.

This is the argument:
Barbara Ehrenreich, Elizabeth Hess, and Gloria Jacobs,
Re-Making Love: The Feminization of Sex
(New York: Anchor Press/Doubleday, 1986).

More recently, Baumeister put that theory:
Roy F. Baumeister, “Gender Differences in Erotic Plasticity: The Female Sex Drive as Socially Flexible and Responsive,”
Psychological Bulletin
126, no. 3 (2000): 347–374.

writer William Saletan points out:
William Saletan, “The Ass Man Cometh,”
Slate
, October 5, 2010.

In 1970 women in the United States:
Richard Fry and D’Vera Cohn, “Women, Men and the New Economics of Marriage,” Pew Research Center, January 19, 2010. http://pewsocialtrends.org/files/2010/11/new-economics-of-marriage.pdf.

Now the average American wife:
Heather Boushey, “The New Breadwinners,”
The Shriver Report
, Maria Shriver and the Center for American Progress, p. 36. http://shriverreport.com/awn/economy.php.

also known as “alpha wives”:
“Alpha Wives: The Trend and the Truth,”
The New York Times
, January 24, 2010.

For the 70 percent of Americans:
30.4 percent of Americans twenty-five and over hold a bachelor’s degree or higher, according to data from the 2011 Current Population Survey.

In Washington, DC, for example:
Heather Boushey, Jessica Arons,
and Lauren Smith, “Families Can’t Afford the Gender Wage Gap,” Center for American Progress, April 20, 2010. http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2010/04/pdf/equal_pay_day.pdf.

But for the elites:
W. Bradford Wilcox, ed., “When Marriage Disappears: The Retreat from Marriage in Middle America,” The National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia and the Center for Marriage and Families at the Institute for American Values, December 2010. http://stateofourunions.org/2010/when-marriage-disappears.php.

the “private playground of those already blessed with abundance”:
Wilcox, ed., “When Marriage Disappears,” p. xii.

Sylvia Plath described:
Sylvia Plath,
The Bell Jar
(London: Heinemann, 1963; New York: Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2005), p. 4. Citations refer to the Harper Perennial Modern Classics edition.

In 1965 women reported:
Suzanne M. Bianchi, “Family Change and Time Allocation in American Families,” Focus on Workplace Flexibility Conference, November 29–30, 2010. http://workplaceflexibility.org/images/uploads/program_papers/bianchi_-_family_change_and_time_allocation_in_american_families.pdf.

Only 2.7 percent of Americans:
America’s Families and Living Arrangements data for 2010 report an estimated 154,000 stay-at-home dads—married fathers with children younger than fifteen who have been out of the labor force for at least one year primarily to care for the family while their wives work outside the home.

In Spain, marriages with foreigners:
Albert Esteve, Alberto Del Rey, and Clara Cortina, “Pathways to Family Formation of International Migrants in Spain,” XXVI IUSSP International Population Conference, October 1, 2009. Abstract: http://iussp2009.princeton.edu/download.aspx?submissionId=92078.

what Jessica Grose at
Slate
dubbed:
Jessica Grose, “Omega Males and the Women Who Hate Them,”
Slate
, March 18, 2010.

She published the results:
Mirra Komarovsky,
The Unemployed Man and His Family: Status of the Man in Fifty-Nine Families
(Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press, 2004). Originally published in 1940 by Estate of Mirra Komarovsky.

as Barbara Ehrenreich outlines:
Barbara Ehrenreich,
The Hearts of Men: American Dreams and the Flight from Commitment
(New York: Anchor Books/Doubleday, 1983).

No wonder then that a young college-educated bourgeois male:
Philip Roth,
My Life as a Man
(New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1974), p. 170.

Midway through Richard Yates’s 1961 novel:
Richard Yates,
Revolutionary Road
(New York: Vintage Books, 1961, 2008). Citations refer to the 2008 Vintage edition.

“Prostitutes don’t sell their bodies”:
Flo Kennedy,
Color Me Flo: My Hard Life and Good Times
(Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1976), pp. 5–6.

America’s divorce rate began going up:
National Vital Statistics.

when a wife works:
Nancy R. Burstein, “Economic Influences on Marriage and Divorce,”
Journal of Policy Analysis and Management,
26 (2) (Spring 2007): 387–429.

earns you playground pity:
Katie Roiphe, “Single Moms Are Crazy!”
Slate
, October 5, 2011.