‘Young, male and aimless’: Why are men in India delaying marriage?
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news.cornell.edu
https://indianexpress.com/article/cities/lucknow/moving-scen...
Right now, most people are just surviving with assets, mortgages, vehicles, and careers they already have. Starting out though, without these things, is very difficult.
Starting out even 5 years ago was easier. Lower used car prices, lower education costs, and now (for the US) a chance for loan forgiveness, which nobody entering college next year will get. It just gets harder and harder to stand up, to where you just end up questioning why even trying.
Why save $5K as a young man when, due to two years of inflation, you are hardly closer to affording that car than you were when you started?
20 years ago in China people didn't value girls so they aborted them. Today there are many, many men who can't possibly feel valued.
https://www.census.gov/newsroom/stories/unmarried-single-ame...
I think a lot of men focus on dating apps specifically (where the numbers actually are super imbalanced) which creates the perception of a large imbalance everywhere, a perception that isn't really true in general.
In my home state, for example, there's about 8% more single Women than Men. And there's a list of like two dozen medium-sized and major metros where this is true across the US (Pittsburgh, Boston, Detroit, Richmond and DC metro, etc) - https://www.movebuddha.com/blog/best-cities-single-men/
Atlanta too, has more single women than men by a wide margin ( https://www.thrillist.com/entertainment/atlanta/why-dating-i... )
Yes, the tech hub metros lean male-heavy (SF, Seattle, Austin, etc). But, generally speaking, most of the US is the opposite, so.
This is just a US-thing: more men on the west coast, more women on the east coast.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/799446/resident-populati...
What region are you talking about? At least globally, there seem to be more men born than women.[1] Also seems to hold for the US[2].
[1] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f6/Global_P...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:USA_Population_Pyramid.sv...
So... young women prefer older men, and vice versa? I don't think that is a new thing.
[0] https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2020/08/20/a-profi...
Hell, even IF looking at the streets were a good way to judge, you'd still have to look at an awful lot of a lot of them before you could make statements about a whole country the size of India, and you'd need to avoid any personal cognitive biases (like confirmation bias), and...
This link suggests that as of last yeah there were 1020 women per 1000 men in India https://www.statista.com/statistics/1303286/india-urban-and-...
Maybe you can find a source for <30yo gender split there? But whatever it is, I highly doubt it's a big enough gap to be the cause for you not seeing (/noticing) as many women as men in public.
Around 109 males for 100 females in 1991(30 years ago) and 110 for 100 in 2001(20 years ago). Sex ratio at birth has only recently begin to normalize with complete banning of prenatal testing. This has already create a massive problem of "missing women":
https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/46-million-girls-went...
https://www.thinkglobalhealth.org/article/missing-girls-indi...
This is known as "bare branches":
India’s bare branches - https://www.hindustantimes.com/columns/india-s-bare-branches...
Tackling India's Bare Branches - https://www.researchgate.net/publication/353220444_Tackling_...
Bare branches, redundant males - https://www.economist.com/asia/2015/04/18/bare-branches-redu...
India’s Bare Branches - https://foreignpolicyblogs.com/2011/03/19/india’s-bare-branc...
(and many more)
The book that brought attention to this all is Bare Branches - The Security Implications of Asia's Surplus Male Population https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262582643/bare-branches/
> What happens to a society that has too many men? In this provocative book, Valerie Hudson and Andrea den Boer argue that, historically, high male-to-female ratios often trigger domestic and international violence. Most violent crime is committed by young unmarried males who lack stable social bonds. Although there is not always a direct cause-and-effect relationship, these surplus men often play a crucial role in making violence prevalent within society. Governments sometimes respond to this problem by enlisting young surplus males in military campaigns and high-risk public works projects. Countries with high male-to-female ratios also tend to develop authoritarian political systems.
> Hudson and den Boer suggest that the sex ratios of many Asian countries, particularly China and India—which represent almost 40 percent of the world's population—are being skewed in favor of males on a scale that may be unprecedented in human history. Through offspring sex selection (often in the form of sex-selective abortion and female infanticide), these countries are acquiring a disproportionate number of low-status young adult males, called "bare branches" by the Chinese.
> Hudson and den Boer argue that this surplus male population in Asia's largest countries threatens domestic stability and international security. The prospects for peace and democracy are dimmed by the growth of bare branches in China and India, and, they maintain, the sex ratios of these countries will have global implications in the twenty-first century.
Of course, there is similar stigma to this day, but what OP was mentioning was real serious discrimination, ie. like ethnic minorities face, though to a much lesser extent.
Wasn't the point of marriage because women weren't supposed to work? And now they are, so what exactly is the point? "Taxes" or something?
Just look at the title of the article, it's implying that no marriage is associated with being "aimless", as if the meaning of life is marriage -> kids -> more cannon fodder and tax base. No higher purpose. Just more baby making
The entire attitude here (which is especially prevalent in US media) seems highly reactionary in tone. If (wo)men don't want marriage, then more power to them. Life is finite
edit: if you downvote, reply
And in "traditional" marriages, women absolutely do work. They just do unpaid labor (and often more than the man did, working weekends and evenings as well.) Laundry, cooking, cleaning, childcare, are all work.
And having kids can be emotionally fulfilling. Watching the development of ones children and experiencing the world through their eyes is powerful.
And I agree with you, if a woman doesn't want marriage, great! She should face no stigma for that choice. But your attitude that marriage is somehow transactional or whatever ignores a lot of human emotional aspects.
Your western centrism is showing. That's only a modern western view of marriage that commoners can get married for love. That's something that you can only do in a developed economy. Try marrying for love when you're a poor farmer and you don't know how next years harvest is going to be. For a lot of people, there are qualities besides love and attraction that are desirable in a marriage.
We marry to have kids. State-supported monogamy is the most stable for raising the next generation.
You don't have to have kids, or be able to have kids, but that is the exception, not the rule.
Marriage is for the kids.
Work in that context meant a job, ie paid labor
> And having kids can be emotionally fulfilling. Watching the development of ones children and experiencing the world through their eyes is powerful.
This has nothing to do with marriage
> But your attitude that marriage is somehow transactional or whatever ignores a lot of human emotional aspects.
Because it's a legal agreement, viz transactional. The emotional aspect is love. Love does not imply marriage (a legal agreement).
You love someone so much that you decide to enter into a legally binding agreement, and because of the love alone and not other factors like tradition or conformity?
This makes no sense, loving someone and entering into a legal agreement are two entirely different concepts
... But
The legal part of marriage is important, it provides protections for partners who are likely to make a life change based on love. My marriage certificate guarantees that if my partner or I chooses to give up a career to take care of the household, we aren't left penniless if we split.
It protects us in the outside world too, we are a household. We can easily operate for one another I'm financial, contractual, or other spaces.
It's social, it's a commitment visible to others. It's a way of saying I care so much I'm willing to put aside some of my independence for the purpose of this relationship. That carries emotional weight.
Of course love and legal marriage are different. Love whomever you want, but there are emotional reasons AND legal reasons to get married. (And plenty of reasons not to as well.)
Like all parents, everyone wants the best for their children, even adult children. The caste system is still a relevant factor. Social level determines who can marry whom. A good job opens up better marriage options. A university degree (even if just on paper) helps, too. So parents are delaying the marriage deals.
Sounds like marriage is modern slavery for both
I have a wife and kid. I have more to lose, sure, but I also have lots to gain. My friends and family who are single and childless have less of both (according to them, I'm not trying to pass any judgment here).
That's a tradeoff that is up to everyone to make for themselves, but characterizing this voluntary life path as "slavery" is disingenuous and misleading at best.
It's difficult to articulate, but I usually phrase it as something along these lines.
* As a child, relatively small things bring you true joy. Opening a toy, playing games with friends, lots of stuff. And the real version of joy, where your heart feels too big for your chest.
* After about age 20 or so, I noticed those moments becoming less and less frequent. It took more and more to grant them, things like kissing my wife for the first time, day of my marriage, etc.
* Raising my child seems to have reset this. I feel true and genuine joy almost every day, just interacting with them. It's like being a kid again, for me.
* I believe that raising my child without my wife would not be the same experience, and probably would not give me the happiness I have now. She has expressed all of this to me as well.
That is what my current life path offers me that a hypothetical single me would not have had, and it means an awful lot to me. This is obviously not going to be true for everyone, but I also don't imagine I'm the only one who feels this way. The above is almost a cliche, it's voiced so often.
Obviously there are also tons of stats about life expectancy, average earnings, and other such economic and practical metrics being better for married men in the USA. Those are probably true to a degree, but don't resonate with me the same way. Plus, this being HN, I imagine a lot of us would be fine either way.
Of all places, India has a very long history of arranged/forced marriages. That's a gross human right violation.
The article is so biased that it even starts with "Marriage is highly revered".
I always find something a little dark about this argument against letting men be single, and against practices like polygamy with some men having multiple wives and others not having wives.
There's a kind of 'or else...' vibe to it. As if some people think it's women's job to marry men to stop them being a menace to society.
I don't think anyone studying this seriously is making that argument or even trying to slyly imply it.
I think it breaks down like this:
We know "lots of single men" correlates with many indicators that are, broadly, "bad for society".
What is driving this change? What can we about it? The "what can we do about it?" is focused, again broadly, on "fixing men" or "fixing the incentives for men" or "fixing the opportunities for men."
No one is proposing, "Hey women, you better start marrying these unattractive layabouts or else society will collapse and you'll be living in dystopia...".
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/07/case-ag...
> monogamy's main cultural evolutionary advantage over polygyny is the more egalitarian distribution of women, which reduces male competition and social problems.
It's this 'distribution of women' that seems dark to me. That can't be that much of a crazy opinion as people here seem to think?
It's a very analytical, "cold" way to phrase it, yes, but you get this effect with many "human" problems that are studied scientifically, whether poverty, starvation, etc. Also note the same researchers can, and do, refer to the 'distribution of men' when discussing female mating preferences.
> incentivised instead marry someone else, someone you presumably did not really want to marry.
At a macro level, this is obviously true statistically. But do people experience it as such? You live in a non-polygamous society -- do you or the women you know feel like their spouses were forced on them? Because, to some degree, statistically, they were, as you correctly point out. But the mechanism is just via an accepted, background social norm... there are no arranged marriages, all marriages all voluntary, and everyone retains the option not to marry.
He can divorce and marry you, but that "frees up" his ex-wife to appease the roiling crowd of violent men. I'm being facetious, of course, because who thinks about it like that? No one. We just experience a cultural norm where people only marry one other person. And mostly no one complains.
And yet indirectly this norm has a macro statistical effect of keeping the peace.
Yeah I know - that's the situation I'm talking about. I know nobody seems to complain in public but I guess there are people out there is applies to. Maybe one day it'll change and people will be free to marry who they want.
People don't complain in private either. I've literally never heard it, even 2nd hand.
You're making it sound like a law against marrying someone of a difference race. It is nothing like that. Most Western women would be appalled at the idea of being someone's 3rd wife.
There is tiny subculture of poly-amorous people. Maybe some of them complain? But they can still be with who they want, just without the official seal.
Where are they illegal? Or are you talking about marriage?
Polygamy means multiple marriages at the same time.
https://www.wilsoncenter.org/event/young-men-and-war-could-w...
If you're aware of this work and you think it's flawed, why don't you elaborate? That could be a great discussion.
If you're accusing Wiener and Mesquida of being sexist, or if you think research on this subject should be suppressed, you should come out and say that.
What's your contribution exactly other than strawmanning "some people" as bigots?
Why don't you elaborate on exactly who you were libeling here?
The answer to all their questions is basically 'I never said that in the first place.'
How's that going to lead to an interesting discussion?
I literally haven't used the word 'sexist' once in this entire thread. That's a word you used. See what I mean? I can't defend the use of 'sexist'... because I didn't use it... you did!
I've leave this thread to let you argue with your own choice of words on your own!
> some people think it's women's job to marry men to stop them being a menace to society.
So now you're saying this view held by these 'some people' isn't sexist?
I don't really have any desire to continue this, the fact is you posted a defamatory statement and don't want to own it, but I think to have posted it at all is against the spirit of Hacker News, which encourages open inquiry and curiosity, not attacking people for their immorality or whatever you were doing here. You should post that kind of thing on Reddit's r/politics instead where I'm sure people will upvote it like crazy. Have a nice day.
I'm at the point where I don't like it, but it is probably true regardless.
I'm not that familliar with situation in india, but in "the west", we've come to situations where young people (with a very wide definition of "young") are unable to afford homes (and in turn, kids), are underpaid, and in some of those countries (mostly usa) cannot even afford education and healthcare (in contrast to eg. europe, where education is taxpayer paid but healthcare is slowly going down lower and lower).
Maybe it is the time to say "stop", we want homes, better pay (and all the other stuff), and such major changes only come with enough people who are fed up and have nothing else to lose... so yes, young, childless, unmarried men.
I know most revolutions end badly, but find me a developed "western" place with affordable housing?
If it were not for these things, I believe that we would be much closer to revolution even if nobody can see it yet. Potentially Tzarist Russia or Weimar Germany close. I think young men have all the social indicators needed to cause them to broadly revolt; we just have some placating methods that didn't exist historically.
Sadly, the governments solve this by taxing the "rich" (=middle class, because the actual rich always avoid the taxes, and engineers, coders, tradesmen etc. are the one who get fucked), bringing everyone (except the actual rich) to some low minimum needed to survive while still being fucked in every other sense. So yeah... the only way this can be solved is (in my, controversial opinion), is for people to actually get angry and replace the whole set of politicians and people in bed with them.
The same argument is made for wealth transfers via taxes: pay up, or they might just take it, and it's cheaper and more efficient to codify wealth transfer instead of just letting it happen.
And you don't necessarily need men to get married to not be trouble makers. But you'll need them to have something to do. If that's not marriage, education or work, you better have entertainment or drugs available.
Men and women have evolved over millennia to be (traditionally) different; play different roles in the raising and caring of offspring, partaking in society, partner selection, and responsibilities.
India is facing the same problems as all developing countries, but it is more drastic, given their population explosion, politics, culture, and prevalence of automation.
Men and women are simply different; having evolved different preferences for social order; modernity is threatening this evolved order, faster than the average man and woman can realize, and the ramifications are simply more drastic on a communal and macroeconomic level than anyone (especially those rallying "equality and equity" for women) could had imagined.
Men overwhelmingly value looks; a woman's health is nearly apparent in their attractiveness, and good health usually correlates highly with healthy offspring. Attractiveness is certainly partly genetic, but in general, woman can simply be pretty, and find a partner - because the things that men value (good looks, wide hips, symmetrical face) are nearly effortless at an individual level.
Women overwhelmingly value social status, as men who are higher on the socio-economic totem pole make it far easier to rear children. More money, easier taking care of children, simple as. This has a far more profound effect though, and is where modernity rears its ugly head.
Because of the above preferences, women are naturally _hypergamous_ - they will date across and up, but not down. Men are not - and will gladly take a poorer woman, provided they look healthy. This aligns with both partner selection and duties; woman care for children, men care for women.
Due to the nature of wealth accumulation and inheritance, men have to perform much more to "stand out" and to find a partner - compared to the effort required for women of just having to been born with decent genetics. This is where modern economics ( capitalism, accumulation of capital, automation, displacement) come into play, displacing men, exacerbating the issues - as these are very recent inventions, relatively.
These are an evolved (un)conscious bias, an instinct, labeled a "preference", that is found in every society we have created. Men must provide, women must nurture.
It is as simple as that: we still have our hunter(men) - gatherer(women) traits, but we are no longer in that world.
The modern world is drastically different, but we haven't changed (innately) much, and this disparity is causing social issues in every developed country. Every one!
The 20% of men get their pick of 80% of women. Women work now, and if they do not demonstrate hypergamy, men do not value a woman's material contributions the same way - most find it subtly emasculating. This is just even more competition for the "traditional man's role" of being the provider. There is no inverse - men are not being selected for their looks by successful women, because that is simply not the innate biological imperative we have evolved over thousands of generations emerging. Traditions had value, now they may be an impeding force in a brave, new world.
In short: women's suffrage, the modern workplace, and the widespread hypergamy have displaced men.
This may all just sound like Jordan Peterson and Andrew Tate talking points, which make you wonder why they have been _massively_ popular as of late, especially with young men in the 16-25 range. But it isn't just men, woman are also noticing these disparities in role selection: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCyR3jMVUgZadX9dHjuKFuMQ
Thanks for coming to my ted talk. downvoting without replying is for cowards. inb4 "sexist" and my paragraphs disappear into contrast oblivion. the truth is obviously going to be in contrast to many's current way of thinking, lest we wouldn't be having a problem. I don't think these problems can be solved, by the way. Women of course deserve to be equal - but men simply cannot have and rear kids the same way. No matter what you tell yourself, men and women compliment each other for a functional society, and we have disrupted that.
the unfortunate truth,
The Industrial Revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race. They have greatly increased the life-expectancy of those of us who live in “advanced” countries, but they have destabilized society, have made life unfulfilling, have subjected human beings to indignities, have led to widespread psychological suffering (in the Third World to physical suffering as well) and have inflicted severe damage on the natural world. The continued development of technology will worsen the situation. It will certainly subject human beings to greater indignities and inflict greater damage on the natural world, it will probably lead to greater social disruption and psychological suffering, and it may lead to increased physical suffering even in “advanced” countries.
Complaining about the current state of things is largely complaining that men are slowly losing their long standing advantage and privileged position.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0956797612441004
> No matter what you tell yourself, men and women compliment each other for a functional society, and we have disrupted that.
> The Industrial Revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race.
Society is different therefore society is a disaster. Got it.
This may be a popular talking point, but there's more to it than that. Mainly men can't assume the role of caretaker and gain the same level of respect and protection that housewives get; at least that's the perception, but while it may be exaggerated, there seems to be some truth in this.
Also, the fact that men and women just tend to look for different things in a partner. I agree that some of this "displacement" OP mentioned is exactly what you're talking about, but there's more to it than that. In addition to men not feeling comfortable being caretakers, women tend to prefer men that make more. Men don't care, or can even prefer women that make less than them.
I don't agree with OP and think he's been a bit reductionist, btw. It seems that people always jump to say we've just evened the playing field, but it's never going to be even if men and women want different things, and behave drastically differently.
heavy lifting there.
Tribal polyamorous families were good when we gathered and hunted.
With the rise of agriculture and population density, came familial norms that were better accommodating to all the members of the society, namely women, who would fight over partner selection, to enforce monogamy, which is better....for the children, it turns out.
The nuclear family only became normative in the 50's in the US: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_family
Before agriculture, specialization / modern civilization, and the _medical revolution_, of course you were going to have multiple women - most died in childbirth, and the ones that lived were too dependent to stand up on jealousy grounds.
turns out, instinctual preferences may outpower the "free market", only time will tell. It isn't looking that way though - else we would see equalizing by now in partner selection. Instead, we have a more disproportionate amount of men being left partnerless, as is the problem the article, and many a census sentiment are leaning.
>Complaining about the current state of things is largely complaining that men are slowly losing their long standing advantage and privileged position.
>privileged
just because a hierarchy exists doesn't mean it is advantageous to those on top. the more complex the hierarchy, the worse change is for those on top.
But if you consider mindless drone office work to be empowering, then women would be more satisfied with their careers, which doesn't seem to be the case, "stereotypically"/statistically. It also just plays into the thesis that men are being displaced.
In the current environment, men cannot replace women, but women can almost replace men. That turns our societal norms into predicaments.
We do see this: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5421994/
in addition to my previous link which looks at multiple country at a single time. Women are marrying lower status men more and more frequently.
> the more complex the hierarchy, the worse change is for those on top.
Because they can fall to the level of an unattractive woman 50 years prior?
___
India is a terrible example of generalized outcomes. It has a large gender imbalance and this whole dowry bullshit.
>> the more complex the hierarchy, the worse change is for those on top.
>Because they can fall to the level of an unattractive woman 50 years prior?
Yes. unattractive woman 50 years ago still had plenty of men to choose from - most men didn't procreate, although the levels weren't as drastic today.
Now, unattractive men cannot convince the same ladies to "swing down", which is why there is an all time high of unchilded women at menopause age.
>India is a terrible example of generalized outcomes. It has a large gender imbalance and this whole dowry bullshit.
I want to agree, but, it _is_ the oldest civilization on the planet, and it is the in the most immediate dire population/ecologic/economic stress. I think something can be gleaned, and not placed at the hand of outdated cultural alone.
The study is illustrating the groups in which women broadly have more educational attainment than men, women are more likely to marry down. Including highlighting several subgroups where the majority of women are marrying down, and thus implying that the majority of men are marrying up.
Your arguments here try to diminish the meaningfulness of this metric. Which I think is dumb because it's clearly at least a good proxy measurement for women gaining some form of social power, but suppose you were correct and it's a meaningless metric. Then what's driving the high prevalence of women marrying down? Because they are. This is observed data. Women in these groups are marrying down. The idea that hypergamy is instinctive female behavior does not hold up to scrutiny against sociological studies.
The linked study specifically tiptoes around it (money earned) and only speaks of "educational advantage", namely prevalence of women in higher education - my point was that college has been feminized, so this isn't a surprise.
Women may swing down in the later years, sure, because to rise up the educational/career ladder, takes time it and of itself. Time that females don't have, when maximizing mate selection. Men don't have that problem, old sperm is just as good, which also explains the 4-year on average disparity between men and women's ages.
Men like to swing down 4 years, women up. Aligns again with biology, and the preferences instilled in us.
ironic
>societies adapt to their needs.
we have so far. but there are biological impositions that may not be able to be overcome.
>Our current societies are not going to die because they have decided to cut down on marriages or lots of children.
They may not die, but unless we get robots caring for the elders soon, our continue expectation of population and economic growth is surely _unsustainable_
>We re smart enough to think for ourselves without consulting the books written by the Elders
Are we smart enough to prevent population/economic/ecologic collapse? Unless we are talking test tube babies and society conditioning....anything less than Brave New World simply won't work.
When half of women aged 30 are single and without a child, we didn't even need to damage our DNA a la Children of Men - just our society outpacing the human condition may be enough to ussure in an exponential degradation in quality of life.
men dont have babies. they aren't equal to women. unless that changes, and people accept it quickly, then men and women will continue to have crucial roles in society and the upbringing of the next generation - our continuity.
Not making assumptions is the entire point of science, after all.
Not once in the article do they consider that some men simply don't want to get married. It's absurd.
Here's the worst part of the article:
> Without jobs that can be lost or wives and children who could suffer, young, unmarried, unemployed men are poised to cause or be recruited to cause social and political trouble, Basu said. On the other hand, she said, “young women getting more educated and marrying later may yet turn out to be the harbingers of the modernization and social change in the country that seems to be otherwise slow in coming.
So men who aren't getting married are a threat to society, and women who aren't getting married are the "harbingers of...social change". How pathetic.
However, the article does seem to try to address the connection between being not married and issues of employment and education.
I suspect the article is just a shallow bit of what might be actual information.
Only because it assumed that connection in the first place.
Ignoring data is effectively the same as poisoning data. If I held a cup under a waterfall, and tried to measure how much water I was pouring into the cup from a pitcher...
I think it's a reasonable assumption that if men used to get married/desire marriage, but now don't, then something must have changed. "The hearts of men don't change in any age", as they say. Even if the changes in outcomes come as a result of changes in wants, people don't suddenly want something different for no reason.
> Marriage is also nearly universal in India, Basu said; in NFHS data from 2015-16, only 1% of women aged 35-39 and 2% of men aged 40-44 had never been married. Furthermore, women are expected to marry men of higher socioeconomic status – or in a pinch, equal.
Look at the rest of the world. This is an aberration.
It's painfully obvious that there are men in India who do not want to get married who are getting married anyway.
How could it possibly be a surprise to see fewer men getting married? That's the most obvious prediction I can think to make!
Maybe because marriage isn't as beneficial as it was 50 years ago? Young people can't afford to buy a home and start a family. So why rush to get married and bring kids into the world. Women are working a lot more and having great careers they don't want to leave.
But today you often need both partners to work, leaving both too tired to own all the household labor.
I wonder if we'll see an increase in polycules to address this and/or a return to multigenerational housing.
Given that, I of course reject your sweeping generalizations about both men and women.
I think I might partially agree with OP, in that men just don't feel comfortable taking on these roles. It's debatable how "fair" they are. Many would say that men are still at the advantage and men just can't accept a reduced (but still dominate) role.
I do think I've seen some thing in my personal life (well my married friends') that are concerning and do point to some amount of unfair treatment.
If the post were framed more like, "Men are unwilling to give up the status and do the labor necessary for gender equality" I'd be more receptive, though even that would be a generalization.
I think the way it was framed, particularly as a generalization about "women" (as if that was somehow a homogenous group) stood out most strongly to me. Combined with the admittedly unclear idea that women want men to take their burdens...
Men's frustrations domestically must always be framed in a way where men are doing something bad to women. As opposed to just not wanting to do certain work, or disagree about how it should be done (or whether it should be done).
Men are not saying that women should pick up the slack (others might be, but here we aren't). They're saying we'll just not have family, or the work should just not get done sometimes.
Further, I would speculate that if women are (rightly) displacing men, and IF they also tend to want to date men that make more money, that could be a problem...
... or at least there could be a lot more single people. Seems to be happening already and driven by other forces (social isolation).
“Some men, the ones without decent or any jobs, especially when they are not very well educated, have a hard time getting married,”