Luke directed my attention to this article from the New York Times. The general premise of the article is that an increasing number of men are out of the labor force. Here is a quote:
Millions of men like Mr. Beggerow — men in the prime of their lives, between 30 and 55 — have dropped out of regular work. They are turning down jobs they think beneath them or are unable to find work for which they are qualified, even as an expanding economy offers opportunities to work.
About 13 percent of American men in this age group are not working, up from 5 percent in the late 1960’s. The difference represents 4 million men who would be working today if the employment rate had remained where it was in the 1950’s and 60’s.
I am ambivalent about this trend. On the one hand, I see it as a product of economic restructuring, where working class and poor men are losing job opportunities because of the loss of factory jobs and the rise in incarceration. On the other hand, there is a big part of me that wonders if we are seeing some of the signs of the new patriarchy where the big battle will be over leisure time. Even though women still do not receive equal pay, it seems like it is going to be very difficult to get middle class women “back into the house.” So since we can’t keep women out of the labor force, what can men do to keep the upper hand? Work us like crazy?
Well, I think this phenomenon is the new trend. I am seeing this in my own life and with many of my friends. An increasing number of young women like myself are the primary breadwinners, which is no problem, except for the fact that we end up working full time, doing most of the housework, kin work, consumption work, and care work. In fact, the article notes that many men who are out of the labor force are not raising kids, which significantly contrasts them with unemployed single women. In fact, many of these men are single. It is not readily apparent if they were single when they first lost jobs or opted out of the labor force. It is entirely possible the loss of a job and the subsequent time out of the labor force contributed to the break-up of their relationships.
However, I do think there is a significant difference between men in the lower class and the working class, and their middle and upper income counterparts. Factory jobs, once populated with working class men, are going overseas. The number of men with felony convictions has also increased in large part due to the war on drugs, and upper income men are not the targets of the war on drugs (even though they are no less likely to use drugs). Lower income Black men have been hardest hit by the war on drugs, and it should come as no surprise that they are overrepresented in the number of men who have been out of the workforce for an extended period of time. This is where I have some sympathy with men who are out of the labor force. Getting a job with a high school education or a felony conviction isn’t easy, and it is getting harder by the minute. I also think it is nice to see men who are opting out of the labor force to do child care and other types of family work. In these cases, the families are often middle class, the women out earn their male counterparts, and the couple has invested more in the woman’s paid labor.
What troubles me is the cases where men opt out of the labor force and put the pressures of both paid labor work and family work on the shoulders of women. Some of the men in the article said that they didn’t want to take jobs that were “beneath” them. In some ways I can understand not wanting to take a pay cut or a downgraded job, but I get the distinct sense that women are way more likely to take jobs that are “beneath” them. It’s one more example where women are expected to make the sacrifice. This is where I think we are seeing the new patriarchy. The men who are out of the labor force and relying on their female partners for everything even if the couple can’t pay their basic bills, even if the women is working all day and all night. It is almost like women are expected to be the mother’s and father’s for their children and male partners. It’s almost like some men are doing this just because they can. I know of a case where a women worked full time for years so her husband could pursue his writing. She coordinated everything and paid for everything, so he could fulfill this dream, and he made very few sacrifice for her. Women need leisure time to, and we need people to make sacrifices for us, just as many of us do for others. I think most women don’t mind hard work. We just want to see our hard work matched by our partners.
So is this the new patriarchy or economic restructuring? My sense is that the increasing number of men out of work is the product of both. What do you think?
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Rachel:
We have a wide gulf between us in some areas but in this I can find full agreement. Some men and some women who enable are afraid of men ever even for a moment appearing less than the undisputed ruler of their kingdom. They may be benevolent but nevertheless due respect of the ruler.
The problem stems from mens inabilty on average ( there are many notable exceptions) being able to identify not only with their own achievments but with the group dynamic. This would allow a Stay at home husband to talke pride in his wifes achievments as if it were his own and not need to extract extra respect or lesiure to even (balance) the books in an effort keep him as the dominant partner of the relationship. People are adaptable and on average able to see things. If one form of classical respect of rule is unworkable a new form will be fashioned.
Steve
Well, part of it is the collapse of the old patriarchy. In the old patriarchy, a man works at the best job he can get, in order to support women and children, period. That’s his role. Serious and crippling medical disability, or economic dislocation such that there simply were no jobs, was about the only acceptable excuse for a man not to work at something. A man who turned down a low-level job (other than in the short term, while negotiating for a better position) would have been viewed with contempt.
(I, as a good old patriarch, find myself viewing the men in this article with contempt.)
But without that role, the cultural requirement is gone. If the woman in a dyad wants money, the thinking goes, she can go out and get a job. As he was never interested in raising kids or doing housework or kin maintenance, and as those jobs bring little or no status to him, those alternative tasks hold no appeal. Since there’s no status to be had from work, men instead make a rational economic calculation about the value of their time, and indulge their own interests. Why not?
“On the other hand, there is a big part of me that wonders if we are seeing some of the signs of the new patriarchy where the big battle will be over leisure time. ”
Hogging of leisure time is definitely not a feature of the new patriarchy, any more so than the old patriarchy. In fact, if you look at cross-country examples, men are hogging leisure time far more greedily in the old patriarchies as compared to the new patriarchies of the west. If you look at the Human Development Report 2004, women in developing countries (where old patriarchies are still thriving) put in 20% more time than men in all labor combined (paid and unpaid). Compared to that women in OECD countries put in 5% more time than men in paid and unpaid labor combined. On top of that, women in OECD countries earn far more than women in old patriarchies relative to men.
Ages ago, when I was young and naive, a male colleague told me that women are useless. I quoted a UN statistic about women performing 2/3 of the world’s labor and owning only 10% of the world’s resources. I thought he would take back his statement about women being useless. But his response was to use that statistic as proof that women are stupid. Well, guess what, women are getting less and less stupid, if being stupid means doing more work for less.
On the face of it, Rachel, you seem to say that the data does not easily fit the patriarchal theory but does fit the anarchist or Social Credit anti-work theory. But yes, some exploitation of this kind does happen.
I think most women don’t mind hard work.
…
I think humans in general object to hard work, except of course where it directly serves our personal goals and seems logically necessary. I think if you could stop doing all other work, you would jump at the chance, because this seems like standard human behavior and the central purpose of all technology.
Rachel, ITA.
I think opting out or downshifting is great, but these guys aren’t doing that. They’re refusing to work because certain jobs are “beneath” them. It reminds me of an article Katha Pollitt wrote, reflecting on a NY Times piece about men who were forced to work such degrading jobs as cashiers at Old Navy. Men who had six-figure salaries but were laid off. She pointed out that women on welfare are told that these same Old Navy/Starbucks jobs are good jobs and that they should work them. But for the upper- and middle-class (and overwhelmingly White) men, such jobs were “beneath” them. (And so, apparently, is traditional “women’s work.”)
The men “opting” out are part of a trend, but, save for those receiving disability, they are generally using their own assets to fund their leisure. This does make them somewhat different from women receiving welfare. And one point made by the article should at least comfort some of the commenters here — men without family commitments were far more likely to embark on this path than men with wives, girlfriends, or children. Another point was that a significant number of men with wives etc. who do go down this road end up losing them because they don’t agree with the decision to forego lesser employment. So the men that were interviewed were a bit anomalous. Also, many men, even those with clear patriarchal leanings, do take over some household management when they stay home. Even my dad (whose traditional idea of housework was telling me or my sisters to do it) started doing household errands and cooking when he “retired early,” to put it felicitously.
So the picture is perhaps a bit more complicated.
I can think of two reasons why not. One is simply financial. In the case of the Beggarows, they’ve taken out a second mortgage, are spending down their savings, and starting to withdraw their retirement savings. Mr. Beggarow is only 53 – he could have at least another 20-30 years left to live, and the meager money they have isn’t going to last that long. Not to mention that if he’s finding re-entry into the job market difficult at 53, it isn’t going to get any easier the older he gets. Indulging his own interests may be satisfying in the short term, but it seems like poor long-term planning for their financial future.
The second reason would be the nature of partnership in marriage. I would suggest that when people get married, they usual do with the intention of considering their partner’s interests in relation to their own. Mr. Biggarow may be living a life of leisure and pursuing his interests, but he is doing so while his disabled wife is responsible for bringing in the only new income in the household. He doesn’t have any children to care for, and in his discussion of his free time at home, he makes no mention of any housework. What is he doing, exactly, to contribute to their marriage and partnership?
We don’t know what he does around the house. But I did note that his wife combs want ads on his behalf every day. She is hardly comfortable with the status quo. Since it appears that the guy has talent and energy it does seem like he could do more to earn money — like playing piano for churches or events, tutoring students in math (what my sis does in her spare time as a math teacher), mowing people’s lawns, moving furniture, and so on, none of which will make him rich but would definitely stanch the flow. The fact is, when you are “employed” by someone else for a long time, it can be hard to get out of that mindset. OTOH, the guy worked continuously for something like 30 years. Maybe he just needs a breather.
All I know is that if there is some new patriarchy brewing where men sit around while women do all the work, there will be a lot fewer women getting married.
Lynne – this is the trend all over (women opting out of marriage and/or having kids). I know this is what’s happening here in Europe and last month I spoke to a chinese anthropologist who studies just this phenomena and who told me that this is the trend in China and large parts of Asia as well.
Here in the west we call it “evolution”.
“…kin work, consumption work…”
lol, I try to do half of the leisure work. Look everything I do is work!
Since there’s no status to be had from work, men instead make a rational economic calculation about the value of their time, and indulge their own interests. Why not?
Because women may also make a rational economic calculation, i.e. “If I divorce him, what will change in my life except having slightly less laundry to do?”
If we’re going by newspaper articles, BTW, a lot of white-collar men are becoming primary caretakers of their kids due to the economic downturn.
It’s happening in Australia too. I just read an article this week on the subject. Single households are growing rapidly as a proportion of household types and particularly economically independent women are contributing to this. (And enjoying it – the article was headed ‘Single and Loving It.’) They might have serially monogomous relationships with men, but they increasingly often choose not to live with them.
Cicely, I pretty much agree with you. Maybe men and women living together just doesn’t work so well as a hole. While there is alot of variability within both sexes, for whatever reasons, even single, childless women do far more cleaning than equivalent men do. I live alone and don’t have any pets. I put in about 2 hours of cleaning, excluding laundry, every month. I would rather lay on the floor and read a book in filth than clean.
I do wonder about the future for people who are good with things but not with words or computers. By and large regions and populations where men don’t do much work are really poor.
Jobs “beneath” them: I recall research that showed that job loss caused far more depression in men than women. I don’t really see a gender difference in thinking that going from 100k a year to Old Navy Cashier is moving down, but going from no employment to some is moving up.
“I also think it is nice to see men who are opting out of the labor force to do child care and other types of family work. ”
Well yes and no. They very often do it half-assed and with a lot of resentment. And then if you get bummed with their lazy asses and want to throw them out, they can repackage themselves as “stay-at-home” parents who will get custody. The courts are not biased toward women per se, but they are biased toward “continuity of care” and “stay-at-home ” parenting, even if his parenting is sleeping while the kids watch TV and eat junk food with no supervision. With welfare reform and little to no public support for quality child care, lot of mothers are being forced to turn to these unemployed bums for babysitters. Which is dangerous in many cases, because these lower-educated, out-of-prison, low-frustration type dads are very high risk for shaken baby syndrome and other forms of child abuse.
This form of patriarchy–women doing all the work while the men bark order and get fed first–is not really new. It’s common in Africa and other developing countries. It’s just as the US slides into a third world type society–enormous wealth for a small slice at the top, poverty for everyone else–we’re developing social relations that reflect that.
And no, without Sharia-type laws locking women into relationships like this, why should they partner with someone who contributes nothing to the household?
Forgot to mention–the NYT article did mention a custodial father, even though he’s a deadbeat. It DOES happen.
Well, this could be the start of a new Patriarchy (and the points made above are pretty strong) or something else. It might very well be the fact that 2 wheels on the car marked “homo sapiens” are moving, due to legislation to sparked social change while other half doesn’t.
This really looks like it’ll boil down to the same conclusion that’s come to in rape discussions: only men can fix it, since they’re largely the perpetrators.
How can you be a custodial deadbeat?
NVM, I get it. He’s a custodial parent who is generally a deadbeat, i.e. unemployed.
My question in all of this is why is it ok for a woman to take a job that is “beneath her” but not ok for the man? When you’re in a situation where you can’t pay your bills, and your MOTHER is buying groceries and diapers for you and your children, how is that more acceptable than taking a job that is beneath you?
Sorry, I’m venting here. I’m one of the “friends” Rachel is referring to. My husband lost his job almost a year ago, through no fault of his own. Since then, I’ve had temp secretarial positions (which are “beneath me” given my education, experience and knowledge), had multiple jobs at one time to pay the bills and he continues to be unemployed. He does do housework and takes care of our young daughter, but given the financial situation we are in, he also needs to be working. He is resisting looking for a job because he doesn’t want to do something beneath him. I’m just frustrated by the premise that it’s ok for the woman to lower her standards and not ok for the man, and I can tell you from experience it is extremely painful to my pride to do what I am doing, but I do it anyway.
Kate:
I understand your frustration. I don’t know the solution but I have a question. If he permently took a job that had both less prestige and income than yours and could live with it would it make you feel any differently. I myself would do anything required to keep my family fed and functioning. If this was best served by me staying at home I would. But I would not do this against the familial economic interest.
Steve, I don’t know if I follow your question. We can’t afford for EITHER of us to stay at home. We BOTH need to be working in order to pay the monthly bills to live on. One salary isn’t enough. Even if what he makes will mostly pay for daycare, an extra $100/week would make a big difference right now. He is “looking” or so he claims, but not very hard. He even turned down a job because it was 3rd shift and he didn’t think he could work that shift. He won’t admit it, but a large part of what has been holding him back has been the desire not to have to be embarrased by having a friend walk into the gas station he is working at (or whatever). Plus, he doesn’t have a problem letting his mother buy us groceries. I do. He knows we need him to work, but apparently our circumstances are not desparate enough yet… sigh, I just worry about how desparate we have to get for him to suck it up and do it.
Steve said, “The problem stems from mens inabilty on average ( there are many notable exceptions) being able to identify not only with their own achievments but with the group dynamic. This would allow a Stay at home husband to talke pride in his wifes achievments as if it were his own and not need to extract extra respect or lesiure to even (balance) the books in an effort keep him as the dominant partner of the relationship. People are adaptable and on average able to see things. If one form of classical respect of rule is unworkable a new form will be fashioned.”
That is a good point…a sort of group mentality as opposed to an individualistic mentality would likely change some of this sort of behavior.
Robert, I strangely find myself agreeing with a few points that you made in comment #2. I think the old patriarchy did have a strong expectation that men should be attached to their families through their labor force participation. My only problem with that is that I think men should make contributions to family labor and paid labor, and many older men were significantly emotionally detached from the day to day routine of family life.
What is funny about the new patriarchy is that it seems to only require loyalty to self? I don’t know that this is rational. To me it would seem rational to want to maximize income and minimize expenses, having a working women seems to help maximize income, which I think most men would want. Moreover, who are these guys going to have as they get older?
I’m not sure about why this is happening, but I imagine like every thing else the reasons men aren’t working fall on a spectrum from “I don’t want to do work beneath me” to “I really enjoy being a stay at home parent”. My husband lost his job a couple of years ago, and we were fortunate enough that I made enough to more than cover the bills. We discussed it and decided that he would take a year off to decide if he wanted to go back to work or go to school and complete his education. While he was off work, he did all the housework, took the kids to all their appointments, and did all the errand running. He was actually a better stay at home parent than I was when I did it.
Now he is back at work, and he still does most of the laundry, and takes the kids to the majority of their dr’s appointments and after school activities.
My ex-husband didn’t work after the first year of our marriage, and didn’t do much of anything in regards to the basic maintenance of the household. That all fell to me.
As far as taking work that is beneath me… I can’t say that I would be thrilled about having gone to school to get a degree or trade only to find myself working for minimum wage in a job that I held in high school. I would do it to keep food on the table, but that doesn’t mean that I wouldn’t be depressed and frustrated. Job loss tends to create depression in men more often than women, and since most men are taught to keep their feelings in they don’t often grieve the loss so the depression can worsen.
That’s how I lure you in, Rachel. I say something reasonable, and slowly over the course of years I groom you as my intellectual slave.
Oh please Robert. You’re cracking me up here.
Oh please Robert. You’re cracking me up here.
Just you wait. One night you’ll sit bolt upright in bed and gasp out something incoherent about supply-side economics. That will be the beginning of the end. You’ll read and re-read “The Nation” ever more frantically, but something about Katha Pollitt will just seem…off. You’ll find yourself biting your lip when soon-to-be-former friends talk about the cops. The end will come when you snap “maybe if you spent less time worrying about the man and more time developing your entrepreneurial skills, your life would turn around” at some deadbeat. Then there’ll be nothing for it but a move to Scarsdale, marriage to a podiatrist (or making your existing husband become a podiatrist), 2.7 kids and a Humvee. (Get the A/C and leather seat package, it is TOTALLY worth it.)
On the actual subject of the post: something nobody has yet mentioned is the interplay of status effects. I wonder how the dynamic of guys like this would change if men got more status among other men for housekeeping and childcare tasks. (We get some status from women, but status from women isn’t very important to most married men – and I mean status in the larger world, not appreciation from the wife/partner in question, which IS important.) The impression – and that’s all it is, I have no real data – is that the breakdown in status received from other men goes something like this:
* not working any job at all – slight negative status, but not very much. (This is what I think vanished/is vanishing with the old patriarchy – this used to be a fairly big status hit.)
* working a low-end job that’s the best you could expect – modest status
* working a low-end job after a high-end career – negative status because you’re a big ole’ loser – in fact, more negative status than not working at all. (Anecdote: several years ago after the tech crash, I went through a period of unemployment, followed by a period of working as a pizza delivery guy, before making my own job. My wife’s ex-husband knew of all these changes via the kids. When I was unemployed, he didn’t say anything about it. When I was working pizza, he referred to me contemptuously as “pizza boy”. Luckily for my self-esteem, I still got that old-school patriarchy going on, and I was putting food on the table, so I was OK.)
* doing housework full-time or substantially – zero status. (An improvement from the olden days, when it would be negative status in big heaps, because it was thought of as the same as…)
* homemaking – major negative status. What are you, a woman? For Christ’s sake. Take off the apron, turn off Martha, and go play John Madden Football or something. You might have to run a vacuum, but if you enjoy it, you’re Wrong and Bad. My guess is that this is a protective effect – if guys start saying they like homemaking, women might expect men to do more housework on the grounds that we don’t really hate it as much as we claim, because look at that nice Todd up the block… So we must Ostracize the Wrongdoer.
* childcare – slight positive status, and some envy among the more family-oriented guys.
I suspect that the status accorded to men who do childcare will increase, especially as the economy becomes more entrepreneurial and the 9to5ers die off. Men recognize that this is intrinsically important work, and the more guys who do it, the more status it will receive. (Kind of like how secretarial work used to be relatively prestigious when it was an all-male job.)
I doubt the status accorded to housework will ever increase, for reasons that we’ve been over before.
Feminists/women in general can’t do much about the status beliefs of married/partnered men, but single guys (for whom status-with-women is HUGELY important) might be acclimatized.
I note that Mr. Beggarow has not been entirely free of work – the article mentions occasional short-term teaching jobs. He’s also not exactly sitting around on his butt doing nothing; he’s finished two novels in five years, and hopes to be published eventually – the article mentions that he has very decent writing skills. His lack of regular work could also be described as “taking time off to write”, not a new phenomenon by any means.
On the other hand, it wouldn’t kill him to get a job.
Robert, behave yourself or I’ll make you start agreeing with me again.
Kate, have you tried sitting him down and telling him that the situation is not tolerable and is unfair to you? (Full disclosure, I had a similar situation with Mr. Mythago following an extended period of unemployment. When I offered him the choice of shaping up or life as a single parent, he wisely chose the former.)
Kate:
Sorry for not replying sooner.
I just can’t see not working. Taking a short time not working is OK but not an extended time if money is critical. The longest I have been out of work is about a month.
The worst experience was taking a job that was way “beneath” me and still falling further behind. Frankly that sucked. But it was a slow motion fall rather than getting the financial slam into poverty.
So I sucked it up and got two and a half jobs. Driving cab in a bad part of the greater Chicago area was more interesting than I liked but I got paid in cash immediately so I didn’t have to wait for a check. The bad thing is all my fares knew this too. It got interesting but it did put food on the table.
Not everyone has the safety net of savings or a working spouse. If I lost my job, I wouldnt have much of a choice other than finding another job and finding one quickly even if it were “beneath” me. I mean, I have some savings but not much more than about what I would need for just a few months. But I will admit that if I had a spouse who earned enough to pay the bills, I might hold out and not take a lower paying job for a while.
Greetings!
Alan Beggerow here. Great discussion you are having here!
Due to the space limitations of the NY Times article, much was not said that perhaps needs saying. You can read these clarifications here:
Go visit Some Clarifications…
Also I’d like to tell you all that I’ve recently begun math tutoring, and there are some opportunities coming my way that I can utilize my music and writing abilites towards. So things are looking up.
By all means keep up the discussion. This is an issue that is long overdue for debate. The way my wife and I are living now is of course risky, but so was working in a steel mill for 30 years. My wife and I have come to take life one day at a time. After her near-fatal auto accident and the ensuing disabilities she has, and the frustrations I’ve had trying to re-enter the workforce, we just decided to say to hell with it. At least for the moment.
The really sad fact is that there are many that I personally know that have experienced age and ex-union member discrimination, with many having it much worse off than us. It is for these people just as much as myself that I agreed to do the NY Times interview.
Much has changed since I first started working in 1971, with much of it for the worst instead of better. It was just not in me to start all over again, and at least for the moment I remain retired. So I hope that the interested read the entry on my blog, and my entire blog for that matter. I will have further entries there as things gel in my mind. This has been a most interesting experience indeed!
Good luck to you all!
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