Part Two on the Shortage of Manliness: The Disappearance of Men AND Marriage As We Once Knew It

In yesterday’s blog we referred to the recent book (Manning Up) and spat of articles by Kay S. Hymowitz on the difficulty men are having growing up in our society (see here and here).  She lists several societal factors that have contributed to men NOT growing up and living the life of a frat boy for decades: video games, the preponderance of Slacker Movies portraying 20 and 30 something men as absolute losers, the rise of magazines and internet web sites and television stations that cater to men as boys, the rising age of marriage for both men and women, and the commonality of cohabitation.

Meanwhile fewer and fewer men are going to and graduating from college while more and more women are completing their degrees in an knowledge based economy.  More and more women will be looking for fewer and fewer men who will actually be their peers and be able to keep up with them.

In yesterday’s blog I also suggested adding the availability of pornography on the Internet as another mitigating factor.  Porn freezes a guy’s brain into thinking as a perpetual 14-year old.  It also trains him to be selfish and totally self absorbed, not the stuff of manliness and respectability.

So now we have this really weird phenomena where men are getting Dumber and Dumber and women are becoming smarter and more mature.  Now lets put these two together and what do we get?  A recipe for disaster.

If we’re not careful, the marriages we do get will be where she’s hyper-responsible and he’s out drinkin’ with his buddies.  It’s no wonder most divorces are initiated by wives.

With so few real men out there women are giving up altogether!  Sperm?  Fine.  An actual contribution to my life?  Are you kidding me?  What’s a man even bring to the table?  All he does is fart and leave his pee all around the toilet and he never picks up after himself and he spends his meager money on motorcycles, shotguns and beer and never takes a shower and won’t talk to me or gets mad when he does and the only time he’s nice to me is when he wants sex.  What’s to like?

Is this all men are?

Check out this article in the City Journal (“No One Gets Married Any More, Mister”), written by a high school teacher in Connecticut, who also happens to be a married father.  Men have actually disappeared:

Within my lifetime, single parenthood has been transformed from shame to saintliness. In our society, perversely, we celebrate the unwed mother as a heroic figure, like a fireman or a police officer. During the last presidential election, much was made of Obama’s mother, who was a single parent. Movie stars and pop singers flaunt their daddy-less babies like fishing trophies.

None of this is lost on my students. In today’s urban high school, there is no shame or social ostracism when girls become pregnant. Other girls in school want to pat their stomachs. Their friends throw baby showers at which meager little gifts are given. After delivery, the girls return to school with baby pictures on their cell phones or slipped into their binders, which they eagerly share with me. Often they sit together in my classes, sharing insights into parenting, discussing the taste of Pedialite or the exhaustion that goes with the job. On my way home at night, I often see my students in the projects that surround our school, pushing their strollers or hanging out on their stoops instead of doing their homework.

So the stigma of an unwanted pregnancy is gone, replacing it with a status symbol.  Where is the dad in all of this?  You know, a husband?  A man?  He’s been replaced by the state:

Connecticut is among the most generous of the states to out-of-wedlock mothers. Teenage girls like Nicole qualify for a vast array of welfare benefits from the state and federal governments: medical coverage when they become pregnant (called “Healthy Start”); later, medical insurance for the family (“Husky”); child care (“Care 4 Kids”); Section 8 housing subsidies; the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program; cash assistance. If you need to get to an appointment, state-sponsored dial-a-ride is available. If that appointment is college-related, no sweat: education grants for single mothers are available, too. Nicole didn’t have to worry about finishing the school year; the state sent a $35-an-hour tutor directly to her home halfway into her final trimester and for six weeks after the baby arrived.

How is the State-as-Daddy doing?  Check these stats out (from the same article):

From the FBI: 63 percent of all suicides are individuals from single-parent households. From the Centers for Disease Control: 75 percent of adolescents in chemical-dependency hospitals come from single-parent households. From the Children’s Defense Fund: more than half of all youths incarcerated for criminal acts come from single-parent households.

Not so hot.

Meanwhile, our President, yesterday, declared the Federal law declaring that marriage is between a man and woman is unconstitutional!

The Obama administration said Wednesday it believed a federal law defining marriage as the union of a man and a woman violated the Constitution, in a major reversal that could stand as a landmark in changing U.S. attitudes toward … rights. The Justice Department said President Barack Obama had ordered the department to stop defending the 1996 law in court—an about-face after two years of arguing that the Defense of Marriage Act was constitutional.

Great.  The faction arguing for all of this is making it about rights, but it’s fundamentally about morality and the disintegration of society, as we know it.  This move in our country to equate a man with a man and a woman with a woman to a husband with a wife is not raising the status of people with same-sex proclivities.  Instead it is lowing the meaning of marriage.  If you take a cold liquid and add it to a hot liquid, the hot liquid loses its high temperature.  Marriage is becoming colder and colder, meaning less and less, like we needed any help in that arena.

Rights?  Rights?  This is the barometer of what is right and wrong?  “Changing U.S. Attitudes toward …. rights?”  What about changing the status of marriage to make it absolutely worthless?  Marriage between a man and woman now means the same as marriage between two people of the same sex?  That’s all marriage is?  Just two people with government approval?  Any two people?  That’s it?  Nothing special about it at all?

Government hasn’t only taken over fatherhood, it’s replaced God, too.  Our God and Father, the U.S. Government.  Our Father who art in Washington, Broke and Broken is Thy name.

What about the right of a child to have a mom and dad?  Are we going to get rid of the word dad and father altogether?  In a world of a man and a man, who’s the father?  In a world with a woman and a woman, who’s the father?  In a world of unwed single mothers, who’s the father?  In a world of divorced families, where’s the father?  It’s just a part time job, right?  Or unnecessary altogether? We’ll divorce and our kids will be fine.  Kids are resilient.  In the world of second and third marriages and beyond who’s the dad?  Oh, I can always remarry.  As long as there’s a male figure in the house, my kids will be fine.  A male figure?  That’s all we are?  Male figures?

Ask your local jailer how many of his inmates come from intact families with an original husband and wife?

Ask your local high school principal how many dropouts come from families where the birth father and birth mother love each other?

Ask your local police office how many gang members come from families where their real dads sleep with their real mothers.

Ask you local DHS worker how often they call on families where mom and dad never divorced?

Go ahead.  Ask.

Sorry, I disagree.  Kids need dads.  Kids need moms and dads.  Kids need their own biological mom and dad in their own house nurturing and loving them and setting and example of the complimentarity of the genders.

The world needs more responsible men.  We need more men who get up early and study late.  We need dad’s who father their own children and love their own wives in their own homes.  We need men who will protect their families from evil.  We need dependable, responsible, respectable men.  We need men who keep their pants zipped and corral dark temptations instead of listening to every lust and whim that enters their brains.

We need more men that will stand tall in dignity and bow low in humility before God realizing there’s a larger purpose in life than their frickin’ penis.

Please, guys.  GROW UP ALREADY.