Yes. And The Economist does a decent job of explaining what it is.
At first glance the patriarchy appears to be thriving. More than 90% of presidents and prime ministers are male, as are nearly all big corporate bosses. Men dominate finance, technology, films, sports, music and even stand-up comedy. In much of the world they still enjoy social and legal privileges simply because they have a Y chromosome. So it might see odd to worry about the plight of men.
Yet there is plenty of cause for concern. Men cluster at the bottom as well as the top. They are far more likely than women to be jailed, estranged from their children or to kill themselves. They earn fewer university degrees than women. Boys in the developed world are 50% more likely to flunk basic maths, reading and science entirely.
One group in particular is suffering . . . . Poorly educated men in rich countries have had difficulty coping with the enormous changes in the labour market and the home over the past half-century. As technology and trade have devalued brawn, less-educated men have struggled to find a role in the workplace. Women, on the other hand, are surging into expanding sectors such as health care and education, helped by their superior skills. As education has become more important, boys have also fallen behind girls in school (except at the very top). Men who lose jobs in manufacturing often never work again. And men without work find it hard to attract a permanent mate. The result, for low-skilled men, is a poisonous combination of no job, no family and no prospects.
Those on the political left tend to focus on economics. Shrinking job opportunities for men, they way, are entrenching poverty and destroying families. In America pay for men with only a high-school certificate fell by 21% in real terms between 1979 and 2013; for women with similar qualifications it rose by 3%. Around a fifth of working-age men with only a high-school diploma have no job.
The political left analyzes this problem like most problems in a materialistic way. Why do conservatives bitterly cling to God and guns? Because they lack job opportunities. Seriously. That's what our president once said. Shrinking job opportunities for men is a result of the decline of men, not the cause. Men don't know how to work because they were not reared to work. They don't marry because they were not taught to marry.
Those on the right worry about the collapse of the family. The vast majority of women would prefer to have a partner who does his bit both financially and domestically. But they would rather do without one than team up with a layabout, which may be all that is on offer. . . .
Hence the unravelling of working-class families. The two-parent family, still the norm among the elite, is vanishing among the poor. In rich countries the proportion of births outside marriage has trebled since 1980, to 33%.
In the United States, it's more than 40 percent.
In some areas where traditional manufacturing has collapsed, it has reached 70% or more.
Here's materialistic thinking again, the implication that illegitimacy, a moral problem, is caused by the collapse of traditional manufacturing, a material problem. I suspect a stronger correlation can be built between illegitimacy and the culture of permanent welfare dependency. Yet this potential cause of illegitimacy is seen by the left as the cure for social dysfunction, not a major part of its cause. The illegitimacy rate among American blacks is north of 70 percent. In some neighborhoods, it approaches 100 percent. The intelligentsia sees no problem here. It's just a lifestyle choice.
Children raised in broken homes learn less at school, are more likely to drop out and earn less later on than children from intact ones. They are also not very good at forming stable families of their own.
As I copy this text from The Economist, two men are installing a new floor in my house to replace one that failed. They are quite skilled and work very hard. They also speak little English.
My guess is that they are working while others are laying about, as The Economist puts it, because they were reared in a more stable family and culture than many others who are not presently at work in my living room. They were reared in a culture that values the masculine virtues and taught these men how to be men. My prayer is that they will pass these same values to their own boys and girls.
The Economist essay is Leader, "The weaker sex," The Economist, May 30, 2015.
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