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August 1 - August 13, 2023
The one-word explanation for the pay gap is: children. Among young adults, especially if they are childless, the pay gap has essentially disappeared.
Children to blame for pay gap.
the crucial years for wage gains are from the mid-30s onward,
Do not miss this 🌊.
For most women, having a child is the economic equivalent of being hit by a meteorite.
Having a child economic equivalent to being hit by a meteorite.
Essentially all of the income gains that middle-class American families have experienced since 1970 are due to the rise in women’s earnings.”43
Rise in women's earnings responsible for most of income gains of middle class American families since 70s.
A man who knows he must provide for a wife and children has a clear sense of how to be “purposeful” and “whole.”
Men and purpose
Man-the-Impregnator-Protector-Provider.’
A man in many societies
What it does is formally to incorporate men into the interpersonal support structures, the chains of dependency, which lie at the core of any human society.”8
Incorporate men into chains of dependency
The traditional family was an effective social institution because it made both men and women necessary.
But it also rested on a sharp division of labor.
There is a certain desolation to a life that is designed for you.
Life wasn't rise for men in the past because of the role to thrust upon them.
Men’s freedom has often been stifled by patriarchy too, with tightly prescribed roles and oppressive expectations.
“A welfare system that was originally designed to compensate men for loss of earnings is slowly and messily redesigned to compensate women for the loss of men.”19
Many men are left feeling dislocated.
men who fare poorly in the labor market are also likely to suffer in the marriage market, especially in the working class.27
Black men.
Husbands without jobs are at much higher risk of seeing their marriages end today than in the past,
40% of the drop in marriage among Americans aged 25 to 29 from 1960 to 2013 can be explained by the fall in male earnings relative to men of the previous generation.30
Drop in marriage rate among 25-29 due to men earning less than they did in previous generations.
anomie
The success of the women’s movement has not caused the precariousness of male social identity, but it has exposed it.
Wifeless men, by contrast, are often a mess.
Men need women more than women need men.
Divorce, now twice as likely to be initiated by wives as husbands, is psychologically harder on men than women.40
One of the great revelations of feminism may turn out to be that men need women more than women need men.
One of their most striking discoveries was that women find more meaning in their lives, and from more sources, than men.
Women find more meaning in their lives and from more sources than men do.
Fathers matter. They are not dispensable.
Within 6 years of their parents separating, one in three children never see their father,
This is crazy.
The result is that the separation of men from women too often means the separation of fathers from children.
The social institution of fatherhood urgently needs an update, to become more focused on direct relationships with children.
When I mentioned Dwight’s story in a focus group of Black men, two of them took off their glasses, explaining, “Yeah, me too.
Wow. Glasses.
Tommy Curry,
Curry urges the creation of a new scholarly field of Black male studies, on the grounds that the accounts offered by existing feminist and intersectional scholars are missing the mark when it comes to the specific forms of gendered racism faced by Black men.
Tommy Curry wants a field of black male studies.
I want to be clear about my own position. I believe that the deepest American prejudices are rooted in anti-Black racism, specifically toward the people that legal scholar Sheryll Cashin calls “descendants,” African Americans who “descend from the long legacy of slavery.”
Anti-Black racism is the main challenge, and it is at least as great for Black men as for Black women.
more of these boys became prisoners than became husbands:
Black and white women raised by poor parents have similar rates of upward intergenerational mobility.
the overall Black–white intergenerational mobility gap “is entirely driven by differences in men’s, not women’s, outcomes.”13
Black-white intergenerational gap driven by black men.
a higher proportion of Black women aged 25 to 29
More black work hold per graduate degrees than their white male counterparts in 25-29 range.
White women have seen the most dramatic economic gains in recent decades,
White women have made the most dramatic gains since the 70s.
In other words, Black men are discriminated against because they are men.
One of the reasons Black men are less likely to be in the workplace is simply that they are so much more likely to be in jail.
One striking study showed that a Black man without a criminal record is less likely to be hired than a similarly qualified white man with a criminal record.
Before their 14th birthday, one in four Black children see a parent go to jail or prison, usually their father.
Black women marry later in life, are less likely to marry at all, and have higher rates of marital instability.
Black women in their early 40s are five times as likely as white women of the same age to have never married
Even today, there is a fear that helping men means hindering women, whether by design or by happenstance. But it is not true.
female disadvantage or the socio-economic gap or male underachievement,
In this chapter I set out the evidence on male deaths of despair; show how the economic difficulties of working class men ends up hurting families and putting more pressure on women;
describe how many of these men have lost connection to social institutions that once anchored male identity, including marriage.
Lost connection to social institutions
The counties with the most deaths of despair were the ones who swung most decisively to him in 2016,
Trump attracts suicidal people.
Men in particular felt the loss not only of income but also of dignity that accompanied a good job,
I think opioids are just as much a barometer of social problems as they are a cause.
Opioids are taken simply to numb pain—perhaps physical pain at first, then existential pain. They are not drugs of inspiration or rebellion, but of isolation and retreat.
Opiods are to numb pain. Drugs of isolation.
