Discuss the following. Feel free to add more issues as you see fit.
(1) Given that the current career mantra–go to college, get 4-year degree, get nice job–has failed, are we really seeing a generation of men who are not “rising up”, or are we seeing a transition in which men are in the process of throwing off the old mantra and in fact are re-asserting themselves en masse?
(2) Given the current economic landscape, do you really see the workplace becoming more geared toward women, or do you see a shift in this? Explain how that might play out.
(3) Are men eschewing the roles of husband and father, or are they simply trying to make the best of a very bad situation, where both the risks and the rewards are less certain than ever?
(4) Is manhood possible without being a husband and/or father? (I say yes.) How is manhood expressed in the life of the single? How is it expressed in the role of husband? Father? Single father? How might Mohler be counseled to reword–if not revisit–his articulation of manhood?
(4) In what ways can the Church help men–single and married–on this front?
In the Christian world, I would suggest that men are finding that pastors have no clue what is happening. Of those who are more realistic about the economic landscape, the effective counsel toward men has been scarce at best.
Americans in general–men in particular–are having the rug yanked out from under them.
They grew up thinking they had to do A, B, and C, and the career paths would open up.
After all, for most of the last 40 years, a college education–almost ANY college education–was a guarantor of a nice career: an office job, good pay, good benefits, good health care. If you were savvy with Microsoft Office, the sky was literally the limit. Never mind that the marginal benefit of a college degree has been declining while the marginal cost has been rising faster than inflation for more than 25 years.
Now that the economy has gone bust, and now that the workplace can no longer deliver jobs that men can depend on, the whole game is changing. Those who think they can go to college–without a viable career plan–and rack up loans en masse, and expect to be employable let alone on a financially-sound path, are playing with disaster. But how many parents are counseling their kids in that direction?
As for marriage, men are often counseled not to get married until they are in a position to be good providers. That being the case, the marriage age is expanding out of sheer practicality. Men will not have the nice job opportunities that existed 20 years ago. Many are going to have to create their own opportunities.
Academic asshats–and ministers who have not had to do this–are going to find men looking at them with increasing contempt, because they are devoid of sound counsel. Such men will find it hard to talk civilly to the people they once respected, because the counsel they have received is not working. They will also be increasingly hostile toward a clergy that looks down on them for not fitting their paradigm of what men should be.
How this will end will depend on a number of things. But the landscape is ugly, and it will get worse before it has any chance of getting better.
Things That Make Me Go “AAAARRRRGGGHHH!”
That the free market even can conceive of such a thing annoys the shi’ite out of me.