Why Men Need Women

Why Men Are Nothing Without Women

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Kay Hymowitz, author of Manning Up: How the Rise of Women Has Turned Men Into Boys and the William E. Simon Fellow at the Manhattan Institute, counters Ian Lang's response to her Wall Street Journal article, Where Have The Good Men Gone?





I’m guessing he won’t be happy to hear this, but Ian Lang and I agree about quite a lot. I, too, think that economic shifts have made it sensible and even desirable to delay marriage; I have a long section in my book on this topic — far longer, I should point out, than the single paragraph on video games. We also agree that the media has been on an anti-male binge for a long time now; I have a section about this as well in my book. Though he doesn’t say it in his article, I suspect we would also agree that the divorce industrial complex can be unfair to men and that women often want it both ways — equality and alpha males at the same time. The excerpt from my book that appeared in the Wall Street Journal does not mention any of this because, well, it was an excerpt.



But Lang and I do part company on certain fundamental premises. If I’m reading him correctly, he believes that the only good women are those who make the traditional bargain: "You earn the money, and I’ll take care of you, the house and the kids." He’s probably right that there are not many of those women around. Women are in the work force to stay for both economic and existential reasons. Most of you probably know the economic reasons, but they bear repeating since Lang seems to forget them: The large majority of men don’t make the kind of money that would fully support a family these days, and even university-educated men in their 20s and 30s will have a tough time pulling in the cash to pay for the house, two cars and daycare. The simple truth is that most couples need two incomes just to maintain a middle-class life.



So, no, it is not the "new luxury” for women to go out and get a career; it is a new necessity. True: Many — perhaps even most — university-educated women enjoy work. They may even be pretty ambitious. I agree that hyper-ambition can be a bad foundation for coupledom. (This is true for both men and women, by the way.) Equally, if not more importantly, in a divorce culture, women have to be prepared to manage on their own.

Read on for why men need family life...