Editorial: Beware the Child-Man?
By Shawn on Wednesday, January 30th, 2008 at 10:21 AM PST In Editorials, Features
Recently NPR (National Public Radio) featured a segment during its Talk of the Nation program with Kay Hymowitz, a writer and lecturer regarding her recent Op Ed piece from City Journal that was cut down and run in a recent Dallas Morning News Sunday Editorial space. Hymowitz espoused her view that something had changed in our society with young men. Something had allowed them to become less driven to fulfill the traditionally defined role of a male adult – namely marriage and procreation – instead she claimed young men in the 20s and 30s were delaying true adulthood and commitment favoring instead the proliferation of media like Maxim magazine, 24 hour cartoon channels and video games.
Hymowitz dubbed this new generation of young men with the derogatory title “Child-men”, saying that because of their attraction to these entertainment forms and their seeming lack of strong commitment skills that we had a maturity gap emerging within society. Young men were no longer rushing to the altar or marrying childhood sweethearts and she seems to place the cause of this on games for one. These “Child-men” came to light because she had spoken with a number of young women and these ladies had decried the lack of good candidates for marriage on the traditional timescale.
Now I won’t refute that there has been a change in our society. I won’t argue that people (male and female) seem to be entering into traditional adulthood later with the average of married men aged 30 dropping 27% in the last 30 years, but I think she is examining the results not the causes and placing blame in the wrong place.
Do young men spend 2-3 hours an evening playing video games? Statistically yes, the rise in game play has said as much. Are they doing this in addition to the other “traditional” activities like watching sports or network television? The numbers say they are not. So instead of being the great catalyst of the man-slacker as she infers, I think we’re seeing a transition in the leisure activities and their content.
Hymmowitz writes:
Not so long ago, the average mid-twentysomething had achieved most of adulthood’s milestones—high school degree, financial independence, marriage, and children. These days, he lingers—happily—in a new hybrid state of semi-hormonal adolescence and responsible self-reliance. Decades in unfolding, this limbo may not seem like news to many, but in fact it is to the early twenty-first century what adolescence was to the early twentieth: a momentous sociological development of profound economic and cultural import.
Why is it bad to entertain aspects of childhood in adults? Must becoming an adult be all about responsibility and social pressure and nothing of fun? It seems to me she is judging the behaviors of a generation beyond her with the standards that no longer apply or are in flux. She says to put down the toys and accept your role but why is there no discussion of accepting your role and enjoying the toys along with that? She seems to indicate that these are unrelated possibilities.. that to be a full member of the community you must marry and have children because men do not engage in or become useful to society otherwise.. which seems a narrow view to me and one I see broken in my friends and acquaintances all the time.
I can speak from personal experience here about the changes in society toward marriage and adulthood. I was married at 18, I had my first child by 21. I was a social pariah for many years and both my wife and I suffered social backlash because we had taken a more traditional route to adulthood. Many of our friends waited until their 30s to even begin dating and having children. Sometimes merely because they felt societal pressure to be successful instead of happy. They placed the drive to be professionals and career focused on the top of the pile before becoming family oriented. In fact it often feels like in this day and age there is a stigma against those who marry young. The change in society is often attributed to the ’80s generation and their career obsession. This has become accepted to a large extent – especially when you consider that those same career obsessed yuppies waited until their mid-30s and beyond to procreate and “embrace adulthood” by Hymowitz’s definition.
Single Young Males, or SYMs, by contrast, often seem to hang out in a playground of drinking, hooking up, playing Halo 3, and, in many cases, underachieving. With them, adulthood looks as though it’s receding.
We see her proclaim that young men needed to put down the controller and grow up. Why is the controller the catalyst here? Isn’t it a good thing that men in society are stepping back from the burden of responsibility that drove many of our forefathers to an early grave and enjoying the fruits of our labor while we labor? Doesn’t this lead to happier men with longer lives because they are not resentful and angry at the responsibilities thrust upon them artificially by a society driving them to reproduce and become cogs in the social wheel?
Why is her ire so squarely focused on men and not women as well? Are these trends any different from the activities of young women who are often unwilling to surrender personal freedoms to be “shackled” by motherhood? The Sex and the City generation who see marriage as an anchor and drag on their personal lives, who embrace disposable relationships and are obsessed with designer clothing?
I think she is only looking at half the equation and drawing erroneous conclusions. She mentions that underachieving is a mark of these “Child-men” but I wonder if she’s using the same scale of achievement as the people she’s analyzing. Maybe we’re seeing a backlash in this generation after living with parents who were so focused on money and personal accomplishment that children were often a check in the box rather than the center of the family’s focus.
Hymowitz also equates the stunted Child-man growth with the emergence and popularity of Maxim and social comedies featuring immature male characters in the vein of The Forty-Year Old Virgin and Knocked Up, but it is her focus on video games that of course is relevant to this editorial.
Nothing attests more to the SYM’s growing economic and cultural might than video games do. Once upon a time, video games were for little boys and girls—well, mostly little boys—who loved their Nintendos so much, the lament went, that they no longer played ball outside. Those boys have grown up to become child-man gamers, turning a niche industry into a $12 billion powerhouse. Men between the ages of 18 and 34 are now the biggest gamers; according to Nielsen Media, almost half—48.2 percent—of American males in that age bracket had used a console during the last quarter of 2006, and did so, on average, two hours and 43 minutes per day. (That’s 13 minutes longer than 12- to 17-year-olds, who evidently have more responsibilities than today’s twentysomethings.) Gaming—online games, as well as news and information about games—often registers as the top category in monthly surveys of Internet usage.
Unfortunately it is with statements like this that Hymowitz shows her cultural bias. She is of a generation before the proliferation and acceptance of gaming as an adult recreation. She admits that in her world view games are a child’s play activity. But the same considerations be said of the Television and its impact on children who grew up during the “Wonder Days” generations of the 50s and 60s.
We see entertainment forms change between generations and society adapts. Today most people would laugh if you tried to claim that it was silly for an adult to stop listening to the news on the radio and move over to the television set. We are simply seeing the transition of recreation and the acceptance of video games as a medium for recreation for all ages – just as we accept that fact when we examine television viewing.
Ironically, Hymowitz concludes her editorial with something that bothers me more than it likely should. She claims that Child-men are unable to form long term commitments… but isn’t that a long standing cultural stereotype? The man afraid to commit? How is it related to this latest social crisis? Responsibility is not generally something that comes without pressure and expectations. Then she wraps it all up in broad generalities that honestly apply to both men and women in modern society:
The SYM doesn’t read much, remember, and he certainly doesn’t read anything prescribing personal transformation. The child-man may be into self-mockery; self-reflection is something else entirely.
That’s too bad. Men are “more unfinished as people,” Kunkel has neatly observed. Young men especially need a culture that can help them define worthy aspirations. Adults don’t emerge. They’re made.
Unfortunately, there is some truth in this – literature is not the common entertainment form of this generation – video games, television and the Internet are. However, I don’t think the lack of “Less than Zero” being a cultural icon of the generation’s culture reflects a lack of self-reflection.
Men and women in the 20s and 30s all face the same harsh realization and reflection regarding their role in society, their personal goals, hopes and dreams – they just are not happening on the old timescale. We are healthy and prosperous as a society. Men and women are living much longer than even two generations ago because of healthcare advances and societal changes, isn’t it natural that these stages of growth would expand?
I don’t think any generation can sit in judgment on the former or the later with a fair eye. Our society is evolving exponentially as we deal with technological changes at an accelerating rate and it is pressures like that which force us to adapt on a scale unseen at any other point in human history.
Is there really a “Child-man” problem or is this more broad than Hymowitz suggests?
sources: NPR: “Young Men Stuck in Adolescent-Adult Limbo?” ,City Journal: “Child-Man in the Promised Land”
Don’t feed or tease the straight people.
I wish that there was a full transcript from what this woman had said. I do not like only getting a part of the story. Many of you before me have mentioned several reasons why this women is being mislead by her information. It seems to me that such an intelligent woman would be able to understand that it was with her generation and the one directly before hers that divorce became more common place than its alternative. That being the case it seems that generation X and the subsequent generations will come to be more turned off to marriage as more people experience the troubles and the pains that are a result of these higher divorce rates. Also maybe our generations are less prepared to settle for that one person that is good enough. Plenty of people my age (mid-20s) have too much on their action-item lists as it stands now, and an hour or two spent playing video games is all we can do to relax after going to work all day then to our evening class at the university, and maybe even another job. I know there are a few out there that make Kay Hymowitz’s point for her, but they are the exception and not the point. Maybe she should start studying more about her own generation , and how they screwed up the world for us that are forced to follow.
This women infuriates me. In one foul stroke, she belittles both men and women. Disgusting ….
In response to an earlier post, I would never trust anything I hear on “Judge Judy,” a farce of the judicial system.
It seems as if there are more and more of these ignorant comments made by media personell every day. I myself am an avid ‘gamer’ with a 4-year university degree. At the age of 26 I work at 2 part time jobs with fairly decent wages, part-time because they don’t want to pay benefits though; great economy. I am currently working towards a second degree that will double the salary of having the first one alone. I am engaged and plan to marry in July. I plan to have children but not ANYTIME soon. Our economy is terrible and the state of our society in general is horrible, so I don’t really want to try and bring up a child right now. I know, I know, blame it on Bush. It’s about time that people start to accept responsibility and quit looking to the government for help. They don’t care about us and never will. All they care for is our ‘vote’ so that they have a ridiculous salary and lifetime benefits. They don’t care about Social Security, they don’t need it. They don’t care about health insurance, they will always have it. But go ahead, let them invent another government agency like health care so they can screw it up too. We have to make it on our own, and ‘own’ doesnt include welfare either. Why would the ghettos want to ‘grow up’ when they get 3rd or 4th generation welfare(allowance) from daddy (govt).
What on earth did she think would happen with out of control feminism degrading, humiliating, demotivating, and discriminating against men?
In response do Andy,
I see how that could definitely be a problem with your husband. I have a brother-in-law that does this same thing with neglecting his child. As a gamer myself, I have one part-time job, and 2 freelance jobs while attending a university. MOST people I know that play video games have their priorties straightened out. I know classes come first, work a close second. If I EVER play video games without making sure the house is picked up,dinner is taken care of, be it paying for it, making it, or helping make it my fiance would definitely let me know. Children also come first no matter what. Even when my niece is over she comes before games, all family does, or should. I don’t see how he/ your husband could even relax enough to play games if he is unemployed and neglecting everything around him. Maybe he wont change, it may be time for you to move on. But don’t let that experience with someone who plays video game be the ‘rule’, only the exception. My fiance enjoys her time watching her t.v. shows or reading a good book. But we know when we need to spend time with eachother.
Sounds like Claire/Hymmowitz might have gotten knocked up, eh? Who needs work when there’s video games. I’ll be financially set in life, I plan on winning the lottery!
im from south africa, over population is a bitch, please dont have any more children America
we are dying over here!!!!!
I am glad you broke apart her argument the way you did. One thing you said did make me upset though. You claim that literature is not something this generation engages in. Why is that? Right now, a tremendous amount of people in my generation took time to read and analyze your article. The Internet is a selective medium of any kind: Literature, Music, Video, Games, etc. People engage in more reading and knowledge now than ever before. Look at youtube, google and wikipedia.
@Stephen: When I was speaking of literature I was referring to it in the classic sense – not the modern sense of reading and information ingestion. I don;t know of a lot of men or women in my age group who are literature buffs. There is a segment of my peer group of course (being a lot of writers and the like) who are but the primary form of entertainment many of my friends ingest is television, youtube and internet related, not Barnes & Nobles related to continue the generalization.
I also have children who don;t seem to understand the attraction of books but love to read websites – that is more the point I meant to illustrate, not that we are not literate minded. Sorry if that was not clear.
Most women don’t want children anymore. If they’re happy with a
puppy and a netflix account, there’s no reason for men to grow-up.
Imagine her poor husband… Probably dying to get his hands on a PS3
With obesity now afflicting around 30% of the population of the United States, I’d say that it’s much more difficult these days for a man to find a woman who is sexual desirable and with whom he would like to procreate. I believe there is a correlation there, but it needs to be studied.
Interesting that Hymowitz doesn’t address people like me, and there are a lot of us: 30-something women who were told to work hard and become independent, who now have solid careers and nice houses (and maybe designer clothes and shoes, though I’m not into that myself) but no committed relationships with men because we were told by our mother’s generation that we didn’t need them. That’s the real cost of the feminist movement.
I put the blame squarely on the NOW crowd. Lets face it, in the past the reason most men got married was because they wanted/needed to have sex on a regular basis. They may also like the girl and that was bonus. But sex was biggest driving factor. Well, since the feminists decided that the old rules of women playing the hard to get were old fashioned and needed to be discarded, men now have the best of both worlds. This maybe shallow by why would a man commit to any one woman when he knows he can go out to a bar any night of the week, meet some nice girl and have sex with her that same night. Why buy the cow when you’re getting the milk for free? Anyway, just my two cents.
I agree with previous posters that it’s all about economics. The fact is, even a lavish “Sex and the City” lifestyle, with dinners out and expensive shoes and vacations, is far cheaper than trying to afford even one child, what with the cost of daycare. So people are making a rational economic decision to be hedonistic over “responsible” given the choices available.
And women are the typical homemakers of generations past??
Bah!
I like pie
@ IAN about half way up
FUTURAMA !
(36 years old, and proud to be a kid !)
Well it is the same for women too, at mid thirties they like to meet friends and sit in coffee shops rather then take care of children and husband,
My favourite bit: “The SYM doesn’t read much, remember, and he certainly doesn’t read anything prescribing personal transformation.”
Because healthy adults read nothing but self-help books?
Fell for it.. the lot of you. What better way to get your name out there in the “editorial world” than to put something forth that will undoubtedly piss off a few thousand folks?
She probably doesn’t even believe what she wrote. She KNEW it would garner “contraversial dialogues”…. that is why she did it.
Attention whore.. nothing more. Indicated by the constant links back…
TMOTS
I blame black people for the man-child problem!
All I can say is this, and I relize it may sound lame “With great power comes greater responsibility”. Yes, it’s a Spider-man quote but it holds true.
Marriage and children are a responsibility NOT an obligation. You have the power to CHOOSE when or if to get married and have children.
You don’t get married if both aren’t ready for it. You DO NOT have children if one or both of you feels “it’s not the right time”.
What people need to understand is that it’s not about pressure, it’s not about obligation, it’s not about social roles in society, it’s 100% all abour taking responsibility. If you and your partner are NOT ready, DO NOT DO IT!
It has nothing to do with being immature, in fact it’s the opposite. There is nothing more mature than deciding if the time to marry or have children is right or not.
Do you REALLY think forcing 2 people who aren’t ready to marry and have children is a GOOD thing? That’s about as immature and irresposible as it gets.
Forget the “man-child” video game argument! Think about the childrens future first. If you are a man and content playing video games and not ready for wife and kids, do what feels right. If you are a woman content on buying shoes, purses and hats and not ready for a husband and kids, do what feels right.
Whatever the leissure activity may be, be it video games or materialistic needs (both male and female) you need to do what YOU feel is best and not what people tell you is best. (irony 101 = feel free to disregard this post if you’d like since i’m sort of in a way telling people what to do. Well, maybe more of a suggestion) lol.
The point is, be responsible first!
@Andi. Welcome to the deal the modern married MAN is expected to uphold. Were the circumstances reversed, the response would be to “grow a pair, suck it up and deal”. I’d bet you’d REALLY appreciate it were that “slacker” man of yours were to divorce you, get the kids, the house, along with 1/2 of YOUR “imputed” income AND child support while he dicks you around over custody. NOW do you appreciate why men suffer from a wimpy “fear of commitment”? Notice, too that the term wimp ONLY applies to men.
I don’t need to read this womans stupid story, most men lived with their Mother for 18 years already so understand the psyche. I cancelled my cable because I grew tired of watching the denigration of men. I like video games because it is a GREAT stress killer. Plenty of women make great friends and lovers, but men tire of pissing around with the life of the American woman dream. Obviously, from what the media broadcasts I’m supposed to be her slave. Well, haha, with the feminist movement the way it is I’m much happier being and living alone. Chasing women was the biggest waste of time out of everything I’ve done in life so far.
I would love to go back to being single without kids. I love my kids, but do sometimes resent them.I work and work and work to support them and my lazy “babysitting” wife who breathes down my neck about every damn thing I buy even though Im the one who makes most of the money and she could not hold down a job. If I have any advice for the guys reading this….STAY a Child-Man and focus on YOUR happiness. or just try to marry the right person. I made the mistake of marrying the wrong one and am basically stuck with it or I lose everything probably even my kids.
” UNHAPPILY ”
I totally Relate! Except I am already divorced. I am much happier, by the way. I have two kids. A boy and a girl. My ex-wife has them one week, I the next, and so on and so on.They are four and six. My ex is happier also.We just grew apart and I think we were not particularly right for each other in the first place.She was a snooty perfectionist and I am a video game playing rocker type. I have met someone new and we have tons in common and the kids love her. My ex has also found someone new who is more her type. Neither of us has remarried, but it seems it will be in the cards. So, what I am getting at I guess is that the video games are not a child-man thing. It is a personality thing.There ARE female gamers.Also, UNHAPPILY…. you may want to consider divorce. You DO NOT want to feel STUCK for the rest of your life. I doubt your wife would take your kids away from you.No mother would deny a Father for their Child. No if they are in their right mind.
Games are fine as long as everything else in life balances out.
Unhappily Married with Kids. its like you are describing my life.Its freaky. I just want to let you know that you are not alone. I have been planning on leaving my wife since just a while after my first son was born. The only reason I have not after two more kids later is that she would probably get everything so I have just had a relationship on the side. I know it is wrong but the side woman is who feels right to me.
“bill says:
January 30th, 2008 at 3:54 pm
“Young men were no longer rushing to the alter or marrying childhood sweethearts and she seems to place the cause of this on games for one.”
Well, it could be that…or maybe it’s the fact that garbage like Sex and the City has turned at least 75% of girls in our age bracket into semi-psychotic materialistic airheads with a single thought process (”affection = handbags/jewelry”) that make relatively normal guys like myself shudder at the thought of settling down with one. No thanks, I’ll keep playing Mass Effect and dating around until I find one that doesn’t make me want to gnaw on broken glass.”
LOL! I am a Woman and I agree With You Bill.I don’t even like to be around MY OWN KIND! They talk about Shoes,Coach Purses, and Diamond Tennis Bracelets. I can’t stand Greedy, Consumer Driven Women!
I am a 23 year old married woman and consider both myself and my 24 year old husband child man and child woman.We love to play games, relax, go out to eat, and really enjoy immature movies. I mean, we are financially independant, own our own home, and are married of course but we are in no ways looking to “grow up” because I’ve watched people “grow up”, have kids,take life too seriously, and stop living for the moment.I want no part of it and probabky never will.