In response to some criticisms by James Taranto of the WSJ, Kay Hymowitz takes up the debate and crushes the Taranto riposte.
Taranto says men have resigned to a lesser life and role because the feminist society has made them insignificant.
Hymowitz points out boys in single mother homes are in trouble by the time they’re 8 and it sure isn’t because they reject a society that has minimized the role of father/husband/domestic family men in favor of a feminist structure.
5 and 6 year old boys are not policy and culture analysts and don’t make lifestyle and behavior choices based on their evaluation of the cultural norms and influences. They couldn’t care less about the feminist movement and a society that says men are not important, they just react to what they see and feel. Boy do they react.
Touche’ Ms. Hymowitz.
http://www.city-journal.org/printable.php?id=9895
very insightful.
John Dale Dunn MD JD Consultant Emergency Services/Peer Review Civilian Faculty, Emergency Medicine Residency Carl R. Darnall Army Med Center Fort Hood, Texas Medical Officer, Sheriff Bobby Grubbs Brown County, Texas 325 784 6697 (h) 642 5073 (c)
Let me preface my response by saying all three articles are worthwhile.
I don’t need to know graduate-level calculus to catch a thrown football. Similarly, I don’t need to understand solar physics to feel the pain of a sunburn, nor to avoid one next time by putting on a hat and limiting my time in the yard. Ms. Hymowitz, by contrast, seems to want to know exactly which wavelength(s) of light is(are) causing the problem, and exactly how at the sub-cellular level, even before stepping into the shade.
Whether young boys understand (or even care about) feminism is thus immaterial. What IS of consequence is that fewer and fewer families include a biological father in the unit, and that this is a problem developmentally for male children. Mr. Taranto correctly accuses feminism as being part of the root cause of this, but that too is of limited consequence to these kids.
The solution is as obvious as putting on a hat and staying indoors between 0900 & 1500 to avoid sunburn: parents, society, the media and government all must revert to a position that “Marriage” is NOT “Dating 2.0,” that “Sex” is NOT “A fun game that adults play sometimes,” and that part of being a man is being present as a father and a husband to help raise your kids. (Religious revival or a secular sense of societal self-preservation as the driving force behind such a sea-change, IMO is also nothing more than sauce for the goose — either way the problem is addressed.)
We can debate the exact mechanism behind WHY this works later: that it DOES work is indisputable from the evidence we have.
will check.
I don’t think Toranto spells what you think it spells.