Men, the Media, and the Village Idiot
According to Suzanne Venker (2013) in the span of a few short decades, the feminist “movement managed to demote its men from respected providers and protectors of the family to superfluous buffoons.”
“Name a sitcom from 1970 forward that depicts a strong, responsible, intelligent father figure.” (Ibid.) Fathers in sitcoms “are depicted as immature, dumb, lazy and incompetent. Do we seriously believe this drumbeat of messages has no impact?” writes
New York Times author Allan Bird (as c.f. by Venker).
Venker continues, “It has major impact. Today’s sitcoms,
and commercials, routinely paint a portrait of the idiot husband whose wife is smarter and more capable than he. Ward Cleaver is long gone...We are left with The New Dad: unemployed, unaware, and thoroughly emasculated.” (Venker)
This kind of “male bashing, which almost always falls under the radar, is par for the course in modern America.” (Ibid)
In a CNN interview with Maureen Dowd, the author was asked about her 2005 book,
Are Men Necessary? Dowd concluded that the answer was no: “Now that women don’t need men to reproduce and refinance, the question is, will we keep you around?” “Dowd stated “we need you in the way we need ice cream—you’ll be more ornamental.”
Are these claims true? Are men idiots? What does this mean for society? If men are unimportant, then it should not matter if they are marginalized and alienated?
It does matter
The empirical evidence we have from decades of data proves that the role of a father is critical and that children raised without fathers have far worse outcomes than children raised in traditional two parent families. According to a meta analysis (a study of studies) 92 studies found that children of divorce had far worse outcomes across a variety of measures relative to children of intact families. (Amato, Bruce 1991). Children do better when they live with their own two married parents.
Children from single-mother families are at increased risk of psychosocial morbidity, troublesome traits that are based on items like an individual's socialization skills and psychological growth.
Single-mother family status on its own is a significant predictor of all child difficulties. (Lipman et. Al , 2000)
Children of divorce have much higher rates of alcoholism and drug addiction, higher rates of incarceration, higher rates of mental illness, lower rates of academic achievement, lower rates of career achievement, higher rates of divorce when they marry. Popenoe 1996, 2011, Sayers 1998, Jeynes 2002, Sanderson 2009, Huss 2008,
As far as parents are concerned, married people are better off financially. Marriage is associated with better health, sex and safety for men and women.
Longitudinal studies have examined couples that were on the verge of divorce. Some couples stay married, some did not. The couples that stayed married had far superior outcomes compared with those that divorced. Women and men benefited greatly.
The Western world has a disdain for men
The science proves that men matter, but popular opinion and Gender studies reject this empirical evidence. In fact there is a name for this phenomena. It is called “speaking truth to power.” A famous conclusion of this literature is that “women need a man like a fish needs a bicycle”. (Dunn 1970).
A 2011 poll of 2,000 women failed to find ONE woman who was completely happy with her man. (Remington, as c.f. Daily Mail, 2011)
That is why we must look to other fields for our information. Gender studies are normative, not scientific, and highly biased. Traditional psychology is not much better. Mainstream psychologists and psychiatrists are utter failures when it comes to teaching men.
We must look elsewhere for our solutions. In Political Science the quantitative studies of cohabitation and social welfare policy are well done and give us good insight. Rational Actor modeling (taken from economics) does an extremely good job of predicting social welfare behavior.
1
The same is true with evolutionary biology, and evolutionary psychology.
Well designed empirical studies (that means they are based upon the scientific method) have overwhelmingly supported the superiority of the traditional nuclear family.
Everyone wins when we have intact nuclear families. Ultimately, it is usually the woman who makes the decision as to whether a couple says married or not. The only power that men have is the power of love. It is critical for society, for our future that men develop the skills, the tools they need to keep women in love.
Women communicate and keep score differently
Men do not understand how women communicate and keep score. They communicate and keep score differently. Furthermore, women keep score constantly. Most men do not understand this fact. They don’t see that they are losing love points daily. They only know that she is arguing with him every day, she is overly critical and nags incessantly. These are signs that she is falling out of love.
You MUST identify these signs and tests when they are happening, and respond correctly. If you get angry, argue with her, you fail the test. If you stay calm, rational, and utilize the tools I give you, you WILL pass these tests with straight A's. By doing so your woman will love you a little bit more each day.
Do not think that buying your wife an expensive gift will give you a ton of love points. It does not work like that. Buy her a $60k Lexus? One point. Listen to her talk about her day without going into (typical male) problem solving mode, one point.
Resist her attempt to argue, one point. It is absolutely critical to get these daily points. Doing so keeps a woman in love with you. Expensive gifts elevate her value above yours and don’t work.
1. Charles Murray is a good example. Murray, using rational actor modeling explained why a women would chose to be an unmarried mother. It is because she would get more from the dstate than she would if she split the fathers paycheck.