Myers argues men will “be increasingly defined, dominated, and controlled by women” in his new book, “The Future of Men: Masculinity in the Twenty-First Century.”
“These young men are not their fathers, they’re not their grandfathers. Young men who are growing up more and more in fatherless homes, growing up in homes where the woman is out-earning her husband, where they’re both working — they’re not just defying traditional gender norms,” Myers said Tuesday on “CBS This Morning.”
Myers said younger men are “out-educated by women” and being “out-performed” by women economically, defining the last generation of “traditional” men as those in their late 20s.
“The jobs that are being created now in the workplace are requiring a college education. Only 40 percent of college degrees are going to men versus 60 percent going to women, which is a flip of where we were in the 1970s,” Myers said. “Economically, under 30, single, unmarried women are out-earning single, unmarried, childless men under 30 by almost 20 percent.”
New York Times reporter and CBS News contributor Jodi Kantor, who has written extensively about gender and workplace issues, said in her reporting, she has heard “everyday dilemmas” of people who are trying to navigate the “new system.”
“What we see in our reporting is really that gender roles are converging more than ever before in society, whether you look at women taking combat positions in the military or fathers staying home — almost nobody is living out the kind of gender script or marriage script that their parents did. And we find a lot of social confusion,” Kantor said sitting alongside Myers on “CBS This Morning.”
Confusion can also surface when younger men, who may not have necessarily learned “traditional gender norms” at home, enter the workforce and are imposed with the various “norms,” Myers said.
“We need to change the narrative around young men, and we also need to create a better sense of the man’s role in a relationship and help him understand,” Myers said, pointing to the need of more dynamic portrayal of men in media and advertising.
Stay-at-home dads, for example, have increased from 1.1. million in 1989 to 2 million in 2012, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
However, Myers said the new generation of men aren’t getting the kind of support that women have had, and his book aims to provide men with tools to embrace the shifting gender roles.
“Churches, local organizations, community group are not supporting men the way they’re supporting women. And men are not supporting men the way that women are supporting women,” Myers said.
But working women in America are still earning $0.79 for every $1.00 men make, and top CEOs across industries and political leadership positions are still dominated by men, leaving Kantor to point out that “barriers for women are especially stubborn in many cases.”
“So we’ve got this complex, duel situation that often ends up feeling less like men are dominant, then women are dominant — but that people are sharing the anxiety of earning money and raising a family more equally than ever before,” she said.
