There have been lots of articles recently about the changing role of the American male motivated by an increase in long-term unemployment among young men. This hits close to home as I am a young male, with (apparently) increasingly dubious prospects for future income security. I am also (apparently) increasingly less likely to get married or sire stable offspring. In the increasingly unlikely event I do marry, it will (apparently) be to a higher educated woman with higher earning capacity than myself, which (apparently) will make me less appealing to her in the long term.

There’s no direct link to Chinese gender issues aside from anecdotes; in general I consider China to still be a very patriarchal society, though men don’t seem to fit the modern definition of masculinity at all. Despite popular narratives of manly aboriginal hunters, extreme gender identities are a modern product of wealth and higher income levels. China’s gender imbalance, unique in the world in terms of its scale, will be felt most acutely amongst the very poor, the results decidedly uncomfortable for men and women at the bottom of the social ladder. Still, a visit to an internet cafe or university dormitory filled with better-off urbanites reveals the zeal with which a large swath of young mainland men have for the most exquisite forms of escapism. Something is certainly not right. Surely talking to girls is more interesting than getting to level 70.

Back to the US: it would be nice to figure out exactly what is going on. If decreased income prospects for men make marriage a more insecure institution by increasing the probability of divorce, and if single-parent households have deleterious effects on children, finding a way out of the cycle seems extremely important. Having been a stupid-mistake-prone adolescent male, it would seem very useful to adopt a different set of strategies when raising adolescent males, such that they do not make similar stupid mistakes, especially if alternate child raising tactics are relatively cheap to implement. Bearing the above in mind, I’m personally not convinced the problem is as simple as a “generation of men raised by women,” though existing social problems that gave rise to that idea are certainly going to be exacerbated by these economics trends if gender norms don’t radically change (evolution being terribly slow in reprogramming our desires.)

Marriage as an institution for child rearing seems more personally relevant as of late, having hit the age where biological clocks start ticking. Numerous 20-something female Western and progressive Shanghainese friends lament the dearth of actual interested date requests they receive, presumably to placate some sort of nagging evolutionary desire to feel pursued. The expectation, it seems, is for males to take the socially aggressive role while simultaneously being emotionally sensitive enough to… Not quite sure to what end. Learning to walk this kind of tightrope perhaps requires further maturation. Until then, numerous males my age will probably continue to be intentionally aloof. Gender equality in that sense may end up meaning universally equivalent odds when playing the see who we wake up next to today roulette. No idea what this might mean for the long-term efficacy of social taboos for child rearing. Perhaps it has always been this way, and we’ve only now the luxury of noticing it.