Men's Liberation

Haven’t read this yet. And I’m sure there’s plenty of men who are unwilling to be parents or who are crap partners.

But let’s be real; this is the Atlantic. So instead of covering the real systemic issue: the world is on fire and every bit of labor and value is being squeezed to its last drop to fill the dead coffers of the rentier elite, it’s gonna be: why we don’t got more kids? Men.

It’s not about women being free to pursue jobs, or men being toxic. If society is not producing offspring, en masse, it’s because society sucks. My hot take.

Reading the opening sounds interesting but I am not an Atlantic subscriber so the details are lost to me.

Pretty hard to foster discussion on a topic when (i assume) the majority cannot read the item.

It's interesting. I took a read and generally didn't dislike the article, but it read to me like its intended for women, by women. They touch briefly on topics I would definitely have preferred them to go into more depth on.

Nearly three decades ago, the sociologist William Julius Wilson cited male joblessness as the reason behind the decline in marriage in some predominantly Black communities, and the pool of available men has shrunk since the late 1970s and 1980s because of Black men’s disproportionately high rates of incarceration and mortality. More recently, economists have documented falling marriage rates in pockets of the U.S. where men have lost manufacturing jobs, notably in sectors facing competition from cheap Chinese imports. Unlike the egg freezers, women in these communities typically do not defer childbearing until their late 30s, but instead have children at earlier ages and raise them on their own.

This section in particular is interesting. Anecdotally, I wouldn't be surprised if jobless men in places without any hope of improvement of their situation sunk into being terrible partners. Given the pressure for men to be primary income providers, especially the forces at work in blue-collar environments and the stronger gender norms enforced there, handling a loss of your future and not seeing a chance to improve things isn't likely to make you someone who wants to look into the future and plan for a family.

Beyond that, the article gives very few in depth answers, and just skims over things, like what classifies men as 'eligible'? Income seems to be related, given the wording they use, but is that just any income, or are these women unable to find men who are interested in being high income/sole breadwinner type earners? My frustration with the article's lack of solid information is summed up in the paragraph below;

Or is it that finding love and connection has always been hard, and is even harder today for straight women because something is amiss with a not-insignificant share of American men? Between the quantitative gap in college attendance and the qualitative gap in dating experiences between men and women lies dicey causal terrain. Mapping that terrain with any degree of precision may be beyond Inhorn’s (or anyone’s) capacity.

Because less and less people have money or security?