After reading an excerpt from Kay Hymowitz' "Manning Up: How the Rise of Women Has Turned Men into Boys" in the Wall Street Journal, I was intrigued, placed it on hold at the library and added it to my ever-growing summer reading list. It sounded like an interesting premise, and judging from the excerpt, a pretty even-handed treatment of the topic. Did it live up to its promise? Weeeellllllll.... It's certainly one of the most interesting books I've read in a while.
Hymowitz starts out with her definition of the "preadult", the 20-something who's half child, half adult, stranded between school and a solid career. How did we get to the preadult? Hymowitz lays out two primary factors, the Industrial and Sexual Revolutions. One changed the culture's idea of work and its purpose, creating the free-time necessary for a college degree and its resultant "knowledge economy jobs"; the other completely changed the script when it came to marriage, family and children. From this basis, Hymowitz examines how women have flourished in this new career playing field. Not surprising, since the technological advancements of the Industrial Revolution freed women from much of the domestic drudgery and the Sexual Revolution "liberated" women from children and a husband. Men on the other hand? They've retreated to their man-caves with a beer in one hand and a remote in the other. Think Knocked Up, beer pong, frat parties and Adam Sandler movies, among other things. Why?
Is it because women were the primary beneficiaries of the two Revolutions? Did second-wave feminists raise daughters to aggressively pursue degrees and careers that were once the sole province of men? Or are women just better at the knowledge-based career world that bloomed in the last half of the 20th century? Hymowitz explores all of these possibilities, as well as what the preadult phenomenon has meant for men and women in the boardroom and the bedroom. She ends her book by acknowledging that, while most women seem to still desire marriage and children, the growing bloc of "choice mothers" (those who employ sperm banks instead of the crude child-man) will probably become the norm. She ends by stating that
"men may have lost the clarity of previous eras' script for growing up, but that does not mean that the only alternative is to hang out in a playground of drinking, hooking up, playing Halo 3, and underachieving. They can still choose to keep their eyes on the things that will lead to a meaningful life."
In other words, it's the guys' fault for not adapting and evolving to fit this new model of society where women don't really need them as husband, father or breadwinner. And yet puzzlingly enough, in the next paragraph, Hymowitz acknowledges that "with nobody expecting anything of them, men get worse." That's right, man, I don't really need you because I am woman, hear me roar. I have a satisfying career, a chic apartment, friends, everything I need. Well, actually I kinda need your sperm cause I want kids. But I don't want you cause you're gross and crude and immature. Somehow, Hymowitz fails to see the connection between the evaporation of the expectations placed on men by the previous societal life-script and the resultant slob who appeared after women decided that they didn't really need men performing in their traditional roles.
One other thing that bothered me: besides Hymowitz' obviously irritating stance that contraception did women a favor by "liberating" them from children, I also threw my hands heavenward over her dichotomy of the guys women date (or don't date, as the case were). She gives the reader two types: the sensitive, so-called-nice guy*, who's thoughtful and in touch with his feminine side, supposedly the ideal man in a post-feminist-revolt world; the other is the man's man (as Hymowitz defines him), the kind of guy who notches his bedpost and uses something called "Game" to score women without a shred of feeling. She sees no middle ground between these two kinds of men, and finds it somewhat puzzling that women don't seem to be attracted to the sensitive man, but are rather drawn to the so-called macho man. I found it most irritating that she defined the manly man, the man's man, as the slimeball in the second example. That is not a manly man; that is a cad (<== lovely, descriptive word, that). Ascribing such things as "respect" and "care" to her "nice guy", Hymowitz paints a picture of the manly man as an arrogant, neanderthal jerk. And that's just not true. Neither of her two options sound at all appealing, and I've had just enough experience with guys to know that there's a third type, the gentleman, and with all due respect to Ms. Hymowitz and her well-placed indignation over the Gamers, that's the kind of man I want.
So while I found "Manning Up" to be a fairly informative if somewhat frenetic attempt to cover all the bases, Hymowitz' failure to offer any satisfying conclusion to the question she poses disappointed me. I did enjoy reading the book. It's not your typical summer read, but it has offered me quite a bit to think about.
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*Nice?! *snorts of indignation* One such "nice" guy that she quotes is miffed because "you [the average preadult woman] ignored the nice guy. You used him for emotional intimacy without reciprocating, in kind, with physical intimacy." Yeah. Cause I call a guy nice when he gives me emotional satisfaction only with the ultimate expectation that I'll sleep with him. Good call on that definition of nice, Ms. Hymowitz
