Society

The End of Courtship?

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What is a date? What do you expect from a date? Why do you need to date anyway? What topics are you to allowed to discuss on a first date? What things are ok to say on a date? How long are you supposed to wait after the date to call? Is it ok for a woman to ask for a first date? Is the man always to pay each time a couple goes out on a date? When are you supposed to have sex – by the third date, fourth, a month? When are you supposed to announce that you are exclusive? When is it ok to move in? When are you supposed to get married? Is dating eventually a road to marriage? It certainly is for most young women.

Rules, expectations, outdated norms and customs. A lot of changes have been made in our culture. Some people expect to keep old customs alive. I feel the concept of dating might be a thing of the past and may never come back.

The article “The End Of Courtship” talks about these ideas and concepts.

Instead of dinner-and-a-movie, which seems as obsolete as a rotary phone, they rendezvous over phone texts, Facebook posts, instant messages and other “non-dates” that are leaving a generation confused about how to land a boyfriend or girlfriend.

A much-publicized study by Reach Advisors, a Boston-based market research group, found that the median income for young, single, childless women is higher than it is for men in many of the country’s biggest cities (though men still dominate the highest-income jobs, according to James Chung, the company’s president).  This may be one reason it is not uncommon to walk into the hottest new West Village bistro on a Saturday night and find five smartly dressed young women dining together — the nearest man the waiter. Income equality, or superiority, for women muddles the old, male-dominated dating structure.

“Maybe there’s still a sense of a man taking care of a woman, but our ideology is aligning with the reality of our finances,” Ms. Rosin said. As a man, you might “convince yourself that dating is passé, a relic of a paternalistic era, because you can’t afford to take a woman to a restaurant.”

Many young men these days have no experience in formal dating and feel the need to be faintly ironic about the process — “to ‘date’ in quotation marks” — because they are “worried that they might offend women by dating in an old-fashioned way,” Ms. Rosin said.

 “It’s hard to read a woman exactly right these days,” she added. “You don’t know whether, say, choosing the wine without asking her opinion will meet her yearnings for old-fashioned romance or strike her as boorish and macho.”

I feel courtship is mighty confusing for young men in our new millennium. Many men are having a hard time figuring out what modern women want. There are a lot of mixed messages and double standards. I’m sure young folks will figure it out sooner or later. Hopefully they will do it sooner because I feel there is at least two generations of folks that have had a hard time relating to one another.

“A lot of men in their 20s are reluctant to take the girl to the French restaurant, or buy them jewelry, because those steps tend to lead to ‘eventually, we’re going to get married,’ ” Mr. Edness, 27, said. In a tight economy, where everyone is grinding away to build a career, most men cannot fathom supporting a family until at least 30 or 35, he said.

“So it’s a lot easier to meet people on an even playing field, in casual dating,” he said. “The stakes are lower.”

Things have changed now that women are making more money than they ever have before and can be ‘independent.’ How is that going to play it out with relationships, dating and courtship? We shall see.

Read more here: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/13/fashion/the-end-of-courtship.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

Fatherhood, Society

Why Does TV Love To Portray Dads As Idiots?

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“Originally appeared on Role/Reboot. Republished here with permission,”

By Emily Heist Moss

What are we telling young boys if the examples of fatherhood they see everyday are parodies of incompetence?

Every time I see a promo for the new Scott Baio sitcom, See Dad Run, I gag a little. I can hardly believe that a) Scott Baio is still working, and b) they’re still pushing this “Idiot Dad” shtick and we’re still buying it. The title alone is cringe-worthy, and in a 40-second promotional clip, we see Baio burning toast, exploding a blender, setting the kitchen on fire, and his daughter pleading with Baio’s wife, “Please don’t leave us with daddy!” Hardy har har, stay-at-home dads are so hilarious, especially when they don’t know how to make toast!

I was recently discussing the resurgence of the Idiot Dad trend with my cousin, a conservative married mother of two. On every political axis we find ourselves on opposite poles, but on this issue we finally found some common ground. “I don’t want my kids to think that dads are incompetent,” she explained, “It’s so insulting!” We already worry about children absorbing gendered messaging—adventure, exploration, and construction tools for boys, glitter and princess gear for girls—but what do they learn about their parents, or the way parents are “supposed” to be, from advertising and TV?

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We spend a lot of time, rightfully, talking about the depiction of women on screen, from the hard numbers (68% of speaking parts on prime-time TV are male) to the subtle ways they are simplified, objectified, and glossed over. Channel-surfing between Real Housewives, Teen Moms, The Kardashians, and Toddlers in Tiaras is enough to make me want to turn off the tube forever. Are these my choices? What will historians think of women of my era when they pore through archives and find this drivel? Of course, there’s also marked progress to congratulate, with complex, rich female characters on shows like The Good Wife, Girls, Parks and Recreation, and Homeland, but those still feel like the exceptions, not the rule.

But men, well, we’ve never spent nearly enough time talking about their roles on big and small screens because the range of roles available to them makes this kind of conversation seem unnecessary. They could play anyone, at any age, and get the girl every single time. There is no Real Househusbands of Orange County, noTeen Dads, and consequently fewer stereotypes that we need to push back against. This is why the Idiot Dad trope is worth exploring, because in the sea of available parts for men and depictions of dads, we keep coming back to this ugly, insulting version of fatherhood.

Underneath See Dad Run, or any of the ads blanketing the airwaves that depict women doing all of the housework and childcare while men watch football or fumble the chores, there is a kernel of truth. Not absolute truth (there is nothing that makes dads incapable of making toast), but what advertisers would call a “consumer insight.”

Studies show that, on average, women do three to four times as much housework as men, even when they both work full time. Imagine you’re an advertiser selling a new cleaning product, who are you going to target? The wife. And might it occur to you to target the wife by showing her you know how hard she works by plopping her “lazy” husband on the couch while she scrubs? And might your target woman identify with your ad and buy your product? She just might. This is what advertisers are banking on when they find a handy hook. No matter how hetero-normative or insulting it might be, if it works, they use it.

But sometimes it doesn’t work because advertisers neglect to consider the times and how they are, bit by bit, a-changin’. Huggies recently caused controversy with their “Dad Test” ad campaign that claimed their diapers were so good, evendads could use them correctly. The response was overwhelmingly negative, as parents across the country resisted the insinuation that dads are categorically inept, and Huggies re-shot the ad with a more dad-friendly spin. Advertisers and broadcasters will stop pushing this vision of family life on us if and when we stop responding so positively. The more we protest, the better this will get.

There are examples these days of non-idiot dads on TV. Will Arnett’s character on Up All Night, for example, is a sexy stay-at-home dad who is an engaged, responsible parent. Or consider the recent Google ads, “Dear Sophie,” and “Jess Time.” In one, a father documents through pictures, letters, and video the first years of his daughter’s life. In the other, a father and daughter stay connected when she goes to college through Google products. Do you mean to tell me that some dads are engaged in their children’s development and make time between lounging and bro-ing out to actually parent?

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In my day job, we devote a lot of mental energy to changing the ratio of women in leadership and technology because, as the saying goes, “You can’t be what you can’t see.” Women who don’t have examples to follow or role models to observe have a harder time finding their own paths to success. It’s not impossible, of course, but it’s harder when you’re flying blind. You can’t be what you can’t see; what are we telling boys if the examples of fatherhood they see everyday are parodies of incompetence, laziness, or neglect?

Advertisers and broadcasters will say they are only doing what the focus group research tells them to do, but that excuse only lasts so long. There are lots of ploys advertisers don’t use, like blatant racism, even though it might succeed with certain audiences. Just because something works doesn’t mean you should use it. Just think, in recent history a line like “Even a woman can use it!” was perfectly acceptable. Now, I hope, we would all view that as miles over the line of acceptability. And yet, we use the same logic, and sometimes even the same language, to talk to men about being contributors in their households and engaged parents. Isn’t it time we let this trope fall by the wayside and become part of our sexist history instead of our slightly-less-sexist present?

Emily Heist Moss is a New Englander in love with Chicago, where she works in a tech start-up. She blogs every day about gender, media, politics and sex at Rosie Says, and has written for Jezebel, The Frisky, The Huffington Post and The Good Men Project. Find her on Facebook and Twitter.

 

Fatherhood

Abandoning your child

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Leaving your child’s mother to raise your child alone is weakness and cowardice. Your child needs you just as much as they need her. There is no excuse for abandoning your own flesh and blood.

Of all the roles men play in society none is more important than the role of father.

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Fatherhood

Daughters, Too, Benefit From Influence of Good Dads

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Dads model so-called masculine traits for daughters and sons.

My daughter worked six days a week as an intern in her father’s company before she departed for her freshman year in college. She assembled press packets and gift bags; coordinated publicity events and sent celebrity photos to stores three days a week; and on the other three worked on the sales floor and in the stockroom unpacking cartons and unfolding and, painstakingly and in a highly specific way, refolded clothes for display.

The work was seldom glamorous, with the exception of one day when she got to meet Tom Cruise at a photo shoot; that was huge. But for the rest of what was an exceptionally hot summer, she worked long hours for low pay in her father’s world, watching what he does and how he does it, discovering and testing her own mettle according to his example.

As I have watched her grow over the years from winsome little girl into vulnerable adolescent and now into competent adult, it has become clear that if mother love grants you safe harbor and shelter from the storm, father love provides ballast for the vessel of the self and a sextant to help it navigate the world.

The more I saw how my daughter evolved and flourished under my husband’s guidance, the more determined I became to explore the complex dynamics between daughters and fathers. And the more I have found out, the more curious I have become.

Why, for example, do some child placement agencies set greater store in having a father in the family when placing a boy than when placing a girl? One agency official told me that when foster home placement or adoption of a boy by a single mother was considered, the agency always made sure she had arranged for the child to be exposed to a male role model. Why, then, wasn’t the agency concerned about a girl growing up without a male role model? Because, the official told me, there is “probably a bias that it’s not as important [for a girl to grow up with a father as it is for a boy], frankly, when it is.”

Since then, data have begun to replace the anecdotal conjectures. In one 2009 study, biologist Anna Katharina Braun, Ph.D., and her colleagues at the Institute of Biology at Otto von Guericke University in Magdeburg, Germany, released preliminary findings from a study they are conducting on infant degus (small, highly social rodents typically raised by two parents). In the experiment, the degu dads are removed from the cage shortly after the litter is born and the pups are left to grow to maturity — which takes about 90 days — with their mothers.

The preliminary results are astonishing: Not only did the father-deprived pups exhibit more impulsive and aggressive behaviors than the pups with fathers, their brains also were developing differently. Neurons in the brains of the father-deprived pups were slower-growing, and in some cases shorter, dendrites (twig-like extensions that conduct electrical impulses between neurons). Moreover, these dendritic differences were found to occur in the amygdala, the part of the brain responsible for, among other things, modulating emotional responses. Braun’s team concluded that being deprived of a father delays and may also inhibit the development of brain circuitry.

While it is too soon to draw conclusions about how the physical and psychological development of small fatherless rodents may apply to that of small fatherless human beings, there is ample evidence to anticipate a connection.

We take as gospel the notion that mother love can make or break a child’s self-concept, self-esteem and psychological well-being while glossing over the father’s contributions to these basic elements of personal development. When we do acknowledge the importance of a father to his child, we almost always seem to picture the child as a boy.

Common wisdom has it, a father provides his son with a model of virility, competency, power and strength, but I have found, not only from watching my daughter evolve but through clinical research of 75 women over a five year period, that the father also provides a model of so-called masculine traits for his daughter as well. The model of masculinity a dad provides for his daughter is adapted and assimilated to his daughter’s own needs and into her own life as a girl and a woman.

Increasingly dads are showing their daughters how to be strong and effective navigators of their lives much as they have always done with their sons.

This appeared on Psychology Today.

Peggy Drexler, Ph.D. is a research psychologist, Assistant Professor of Psychology at Weill Medical College, Cornell University and author of two books about modern families and the children they produce. Follow Peggy on Twitter and Facebook and learn more about Peggy at www.peggydrexler.com

 

 

Fatherhood

Women Earn More Than Men?

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By Belinda Luscombe – Tmie Magazine Wednesday, Sept. 01, 2010

The fact that the average American working woman earns only about 8o% of what the average American working man earns has been something of a festering sore for at least half the population for several decades. And despite many programs and analyses and hand-wringing and badges and even some legislation, the figure hasn’t budged much in the past five years.

But now there’s evidence that the ship may finally be turning around: according to a new analysis of 2,000 communities by a market research company, in 147 out of 150 of the biggest cities in the U.S., the median full-time salaries of young women are 8% higher than those of the guys in their peer group. In two cities, Atlanta and Memphis, those women are making about 20% more. This squares with earlier research from Queens College, New York, that had suggested that this was happening in major metropolises. But the new study suggests that the gap is bigger than previously thought, with young women in New York City, Los Angeles and San Diego making 17%, 12% and 15% more than their male peers, respectively. And it also holds true even in reasonably small areas like the Raleigh-Durham region and Charlotte in North Carolina (both 14% more), and Jacksonville, Fla. (6%).

Here’s the slightly deflating caveat: this reverse gender gap, as it’s known, applies only to unmarried, childless women under 30 who live in cities. The rest of working women — even those of the same age, but who are married or don’t live in a major metropolitan area — are still on the less scenic side of the wage divide.

The figures come from James Chung of Reach Advisors, who has spent more than a year analyzing data from the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey. He attributes the earnings reversal overwhelmingly to one factor: education. For every two guys who graduate from college or get a higher degree, three women do. This is almost the exact opposite of the graduation ratio that existed when the baby boomers entered college. Studies have consistently shown that a college degree pays off in much higher wages over a lifetime, and even in many cases for entry-level positions. “These women haven’t just caught up with the guys,” says Chung. “In many cities, they’re clocking them.”

Chung also claims that, as far as women’s pay is concerned, not all cities are created equal. Having pulled data on 2,000 communities and cross-referenced the demographic information with the wage-gap figures, he found that the cities where women earned more than men had at least one of three characteristics. Some, like New York City or Los Angeles, had primary local industries that were knowledge-based. Others were manufacturing towns whose industries had shrunk, especially smaller ones like Erie, Pa., or Terre Haute, Ind. Still others, like Miami or Monroe, La., had a majority minority population. (Hispanic and black women are twice as likely to graduate from college as their male peers.)

(See the top 10 female leaders.)
Significantly, the conditions that are feeding the rise in female wages — a growing knowledge-based economy, the decline of a manufacturing base and an increasing minority population — are dominant trends throughout the U.S. “This generation [of women] has adapted to the fundamental restructuring of the American economy better than their older predecessors or male peers,” says Chung. While the economic advantage of women sometimes evaporates as they age and have families, Chung believes that women now may have enough leverage that their financial gains may not be completely erased as they get older.

The holdout cities — those where the earnings of single, college-educated young women still lag men’s — tended to be built around industries that are heavily male-dominated, such as software development or military-technology contracting. In other words, Silicon Valley could also be called Gender Gap Gully.

As for the somewhat depressing caveat that the findings held true only for women who were childless and single: it’s not their marital status that puts the squeeze on their income. Rather, highly educated women tend to marry and have children later. Thus the women who earn the most in their 20s are usually single and childless.

The rise of female economic power is by no means limited to the U.S., nor necessarily to the young. Late last year, the Bureau of Labor Statistics announced that for the first time, women made up the majority of the workforce in highly paid managerial positions. The change in the status quo has been marked enough that several erstwhile women’s advocates have started to voice concerns about how to get more men to go to college. Is there an equivalent to Title IX for men?

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