Clare Boothe Luce

Policy Institute

A Rocky Dating-and-Mating Road for Twenty-Something Grads

Inside Kay Hymowitzs new book, Manning-Up: How the Rise of Women Has Turned Men into Boys
by Lil Tuttle

They met as freshmen in collegehe in pre-law, she in history and governmentand never seriously dated anyone else. After graduation, she chose a job in Washington DC for its close proximity to his law school. When she told her parents that they were thinking of sharing an apartment, her mother offered a little time-honored advice: men crave sex, domestic comforts and long-term respect, while women crave relationship, domestic stability and long-term security. Dont meet his needs until he meets yours (which, incidentally, is called marriage). She got her own apartment, rose rapidly in her career, continued dating him and said I do on the same day he learned hed passed the bar exam. Now 30, her biological alarm has gone off, and they are planning their first child. This couple falls generally into Kay Hymowitzs Neo-Traditional category of todays college graduates who, after a decade or so of intense personal and career development, eventually marry and settle into a satisfying family life. Neo-Traditionals life story has a better chance at a happy ending, suggests Hymowitz in her book, Manning Up: How the Rise of Women Has Turned Men Into Boys, than many of their college peers, who are crashing over the guard rails of the rocky, unmapped dating-andmating road paved by the pill, feminism, and the Knowledge Economy. As market capitalisms development of effective birth control and time-saving technologies in the last half-century empowered women to participate fully in the workforce, f e m i n i s m encouraged them to trade in family aspirations for a chance to outdo men in the casual sex, education and career game of life. You Go, Girl became the mantra in the New Girl Order, and go they did. Women aged 25 to 34 with a bachelor (or better) degree began outnumbering men in the 1980s, and today they earn 58% of all degrees awarded. (This is not an American phenomenon, according to Hymowitz; women earn more college degrees than men in 67 of 120 nations.)

In 1960 a mere 3% of law school graduatesand 6% of medical school graduateswere women; today they are at near parity with men at 47% and 49%, respectively. Women in this age group also beat men in earnings: A recent study found that the unmarried, childless female college grad earns, on average, more than her male peers in 147 of the 150 largest U.S. cities. Failing to recognize the signs that young women were already on academic and psychological steroids, legislators and policymakers took their cue from backward-looking experts, writes Hymowitz. Girls needed more attention, more encouragement, and more ambition, they agreed. And they got it with even more feminist-advocated government programs and scholarships. Yet the success of feminisms siren call to the workplace, says the author, required an economy that could provide a wealth of fulfilling jobs. As if on cue, the new Knowledge Economy emerged. While the old Industrial Economy valued mens innate skills of strength, endurance and individual competitiveness, the new Knowledge Economy values womens innate skills: organization, focus, diligence, creativity, and networking. It may not be pleasant to say so, writes Hymowitz, but manufacturings loss has been womens gain. Preadulthoodthe New Adolescence The computer and Internet revolution of the 1990s brought a mega-kiloton explosion of career possibilities for educated, upwardly mobile, unmarried, childless twenty-somethings of both sexes. Career choice became less about landing a good job and more about finding ones passion. With no life script for such a quest, young college grads could wander from job to job for years and, on occasion, find themselves back in their childhood bedrooms for unexpected, extended stays. One phenomenon of the Knowledge Economy is a new demographic of young people who postpone adulthood for a decade or more. It is a state of life the author calls preadulthooda 21st century extension of the 20th centurys adolescencethat she defines as without stable employment,

a fun-house mirror image of the alpha-girl, the child-man is a passive, vague, crude, happily immature and unsophisticated slacker

quasi-permanent independent residence, wives, husbands, or child. With the shift in the median age of marriage from 23.2 in 1970 to 28 today, scores of preadults are now populating metropolitan areas in particular. If this demographic groups New Girl Order alpha-girl is ambitious, hyper-organized, mature and sophisticated, her fun-house mirror image is the child-man: a passive, vague, crude, happily immature and unsophisticated slacker. Feminists theorize the child-man is a deliberate backlash against womens progress, but the evidence suggests that he is a product of decades of societys increased male-bashing combined with diminished respect for the traditional role of men as providers, protectors, husbands and fathers.
The child-man, then, is the lost son of a host of economic and cultural changes: the demographic shift I call preadulthood, the Playboy philosophy, feminism, the wild west of our new media, and a shrugging iffiness on the subject of husbands and fathers. He has no life script, no special reason to grow up. Of course, you shouldnt feel too bad for him; hes having a good enough time. But preening with a sense of entitlement he is not. In fact, after passing through boyhood and adolescence, he arrives at preadulthood with the distinct sense that he is dispensable, that being a guy is a little embarrassing and that given his social ambiguity, he might as well just play with the many toys (and babeshe hopes) his culture has generously provided him. After all, he is free as men have never been free before.

higher-status males. Attractive single girls not only dropped their dates at the slightest whiff of a bigger, better deal, they routinely betrayed their girlfriends, too, Toby Young, a British author who lived in New York for five years, wrote about his sojourn there in his dismissive review of the movie Sex and the City.

Those who play too long in the mating pool risk a lifetime of regrets

Time favors the male of the species, not the female. For women [there] is a gap between the cultural ideals behind preadulthoodequality, freedom, personal achievement, sexual self-expressionand biologys pitiless clock, says Hymowitz. His mating season extends well into the 30s; hers starts diminishing by that age in terms of both starting a family and the size of the mating pool. In sadly funny ways, Hymowitz describes the future of those who play too long in the mating pool: Darwinian Playboywounded and cynical, focused on having a lot of sex with a lot of women, by mid-40s doing a comb-over for his balding head and wearing leather jackets to cover up his gut when he goes to bars to pick up women (few of whom are interested) Single-and-Loving-It Womanchose the Darwinian Playgirl lifestyle, maybe married once but divorced, travels a lot, dotes on her nieces and nephews, occasionally dates (rare sexual encounters, dropping to zero as years progress) Choice Motherhoped shed find Mr. Big for a husband, lived for a while with a guy in her 20s but fell in love with her career instead, finally settled for a fertility clinic and a baby to raise on her own at 35 Starter MarriageAlpha Girl dated a Child-Man for 3 years, had a cool wedding avoiding words like love and forever, out of there by age 30, now engaged and planning her next big wedding (ignoring statistical chances of success the second-time-around) Then theres the Neo-Traditional, a scenario similar to the young couple discussed earlier. They may meet in college, date briefly, go their separate ways, meet again, get serious, get married, and have a family. This group still represents the overwhelming majority of college grads, but trends are not in their favor: 84% of college men marry today, but it was 93% in 1980; 86% of todays college women marry, down from 92% in 1980. Nonattachment and self interest: these dont seem like the right groundwork for the marriages that most young people say they want, but thats what they often find themselves practicing, concludes Hymowitz. Both sexes still say they want to have satisfying family lives. If thats going to happen, young women will have to get a better understanding of the limitations imposed by their bodies. And young men? Theyll need to man up. Reflecting on Kay Hymowitzs well-documented book, I couldnt help think it might be time for us girls to woman up, too.

Acknowledging that it may be impossible to prove for certain, the author points to longitudinal studies which suggest that the loss of the almost universal male life scriptmanhood defined by marriage and fatherhoodis key to the mystery of the child-man. Men tend to work harder, strive for success in their career, and earn more if it improves their chances of marrying a quality woman. In the absence of marriage returns to career choices, men would tend to work less, study less, and choose bluecollar jobs over white-collar jobs. In short, men succeed to prove themselves to potential partners. Adulthood Eventually If preadulthood is an enlightened philosopher when it comes to work and self-fulfillment, writes Hymowitz, it is a lazy mute when it comes to love, sex, and marriage. The old conventions have been discarded, but new ones havent been written. Neither guys nor gals can clearly read todays mating signals: is the interest in hooking up, or settling down? Personal dating rules (read: expectations) still exist, but they vary from person to person and are rarely telegraphed in advance. Consequently, dating becomes a baffling guessing game that too often breeds cynicism, hostility and bitterness in both sexes. And both share the blame.
What it adds up to is that neither sex can be trusted. Men cheat because they are always hunting for variety, while women double-deal because they are always prowling for

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