I found Ms. Hymowitz's definition of adulthood tenuous. The idea that owning a home is integral to the maturation process is accurate (although perhaps unwise at the present time), but I have not seen any data suggesting that a larger percentage of young homeowners are women rather than men. It seems rather unlikely even within the parameters of a world the author dubs the "New Girl Order."

With marriage, termed another aspect of adulthood, I believe Ms. Hymowitz’s propositions are misguided. This may be due to her making the mistake of analyzing men in isolation. This is a precarious method by which to reach a conclusion regarding the sexes. Males and females are symbiotic,and their behaviors have a direct effect on one another. She states that marriage rates are declining due to people getting married later,which she calls "a dramatic demographic shift." I believe her. Yet, for what reason do fewer men wish to get married nowadays? Ms. Hymowitz’s answer, immaturity, is spurious. Relying on group pathology is not legitimate. Indeed, these young fellows appear to be perfectly happy and fulfilled. The author errs here by failing to take into account the changed nature of the modern woman.

Let us contemplate the essence of this New Girl Order. Yes, the phenomenon is new, certainly it is female, but unquestionably it is disordered. The transcendence of women is nothing I will deny, however. In fact, I believe that America is a land imbued with female privilege. Affirmative action promises them the best jobs, placement at the best schools, and ensures that, should they be incompetent for the positions they are granted, it may not be held against them, as firing them is not easy. The rise in the size of the government promises more and more competition-free jobs. In these settings, efficiency and productivity are not requirements; oftentimes, such traits will even be frowned upon. Should the vagaries of life become too apparent, then the notion of "discrimination" will sooth them and become a purifier for any personal inadequacies they may possess.

The system will continue to be termed "anti-woman," even when that same system is led by a female president which may transpire in less than a year’s time (no doubt, in January of 2009, we will hear claims that the President of the United States and the Speaker of the House are just "figureheads" and "tokens" within the larger patriarchy). The end result of the transformation wherein women reign supreme is the creation of individuals who are empowered, less feminine, and highly unconcerned about the way males perceive them. In light of this eventuality, why would any men want to marry them? Alas, this is a question Ms. Hymowitz does not pose.

Perhaps the "Odyssey Years" are not an odyssey at all but an end in themselves. Is a permanent "new hybrid state of semi-hormonal adolescence and responsible self-reliance" preferable to being an indentured servant to a headmistress of the New Girl Order? To ask the question is to answer it. The author states that "Women complain about the 'Peter Pan syndrome'--the phrase has been around since the early 1980s, but is resurgent--the 'Mr. Not Readys,' and the 'Mr. Maybes.'" Given the nature of the present crisis, how could it be any other way? Submission is not a state most of us wish to enter.

Ms. Hymowitz equates becoming a husband and a father with growing up, but this is no longer the case. Government has taken sides in regards to the sexes. With its abuse of males in divorce and custody court (for example, consider a legal doctrine like "equitable paternity"), the Leviathan has effectively turned marriage into a juridical charnel house. It is the immature, as opposed to the mature, who fail to take public affairs into account before saying "I do." Avoiding the manage et trios which is the union of man, woman, and law is advisable and indisputably a decision made by a sober mind.

That "marriage and children" used to "turn boys into men" is granted, but I’d argue that it does no such thing today. Becoming a juridical offering, morphing into an ATM which dispenses "empowerment" for decades, and being held up as a neutered display that embodies the victory of our social engineers over biology are not outcomes in keeping with manhood. The situation illustrates the way in which boys are turned into serfs.

I do not know whether Tucker Max was right about female insecurity being "a gift that keeps on giving," but I do know that male ignorance about the social injustice of marriage in our new millennium is a gift upon which millions of women rely.

Thank you for writing this article! Married just under two years to a "child man," I finally have seen something accurately describing my husband's undeniable preference for playing video games over...pretty much anything else. One of the first of his "crew" to marry, I think sometimes he rebels and exercises his "child man" side simply to reassure his friends that he's still cool.

His friends are EXACTLY as described in your insightful article - the comparisons made here literally travel from one aspect of their lives to another, from their favorite reading material to their all-time favorite movies.

Happily married (we're both 26), I know my husband loves me, but it's tough sometimes to fight the urge to demand that he grow up, and quick. A friend forwarded your article to me, knowing that this is my life you're writing about, every single detail echoing my personal experience. As if you've been sitting in my living room taking notes for the past few years!

We want to start a family in a couple of years, and I'm encouraged by your description of Pollack and his delightful relationship with his son, which allows them both to be children, in their own right. I'm not trying to change my husband - I know who I married, and I love that man. But it's so nice to know that I'm not alone here, and that there are others who fit the same mold...and other girlfriends and wives like me, hoping that mold will reshape itself in time - into something a little more manly and mature, while retaining that boyish charm.

An interesting sub-theme to your article might be to examine what works, at least sometimes--and that is military service. Now even the military is schizo about this, as on the one hand the larger institution provides a lot of services and responsibilities for service members and families (from free rent to retirement pay to free health care), but on the other hand it asks a lot of you in terms of sacrifice and responsibility--lead people, be accountable, do things correctly or die, and so on. The difference in responsibility levels between a 32-year old SYM and a 23-year-old Marine sergeant is light years, especially if the latter has led troops in combat. It is ALL about accountability. Might be worth looking into.

Very interesting read. You're on to something, but there is a female element to this as well: Young women facilitate the decline of young single males by not expecting more from them. American society has taught young women, through magazines and television, that they should become what the young single male wants.

I am a 37-year-old man. Ms. Hymowitz is right. Young men being happy and doing what they want (as the article admits)? Outrageous! Awful! Terrible! Immature! Intolerable!

Everybody knows that young men have to stop doing what they want and/or makes them happy and marry some woman. This way, even if they are not happy, a woman would be able to do what she wants and to be happy. And, as everybody knows, the happiness of a woman is far more important than that of a man. As everybody knows, men are the beasts of burden of this society. They are only mature when they give up their dreams to fulfill the dreams of a woman.

So maybe he doesn't want to marry and have kids (like the boys in this article) and he wants to live without stress. This is so awfully immature. To be a fully grown-up man, he must do the following:

1. He must slave himself working 10 hours a day, to support a wife and kids he didn't really want, to buy a house in the suburbs he doesn't really need, and a SUV his wife nags him to buy. He must have a huge debt to buy everything his wife wants.

2. He must bear with an ever-nagging, ever-whining woman who is always dissatisfied if she doesn't get everything her way.

3. He must resign himself when sex dries up after some years of marriage and affection and kindness are a distant memory.

4. He must not complain when his wife decides that she is bored and divorces him, and he is stripped of all their assets and loses their children (the children he didn't want before they were born, but now wants most in the world).

5. He must pay for years child support for children whom he barely sees. In certain states, he must pay alimony for a woman who does not perform anything in return.

Only if he does all of this is he A GROWN UP. Not collaborating in his own destruction makes a man very immature.

One other difference between the 1965 version of the 26-year-old male and today's edition: yesterday's guy almost certainly spent two years or so in the military. If nothing else, he learned to make his bunk, and if he opted for Beetle Bailey-esqe slackerhood over taking responsibility, he became the object of unending supervision from the non-commissioned officers and the unit's expert on how to scrub pots and pans in the mess hall.

I would venture to say that much of what you see in today's males is a direct consequence of the upbringing they received from their single, divorced mothers, overwhelmingly female teachers, crude anti-male attitudes in school and tv. The society spends 30 years denigrating men and maleness and then wonders, where are the men? Ha!

You girls brought this on yourselves with your hyperanalysis and denial of intrisinic maleness. While at the same time relegating males to wallets and child makers. You wonder why you girls are merely pieces of meat, maybe if you treated men as more than a ticket to your cosmo dream, you might get somewhere.

Excellent article. There are a couple of things going on here. First, men need male-only institutions in which to socialize them. The ugly converse to this is that any time women force their way into these arenas, men lose their interest. This is as true with specific examples such as the JayCees, the Friar's Club, Rotary, Lions, as it is with larger, general institutions such as the military and the workplace. These were places that men could enjoy camaraderie, hierarchy, and order. They respond to that. Now, look at the workplace: filled with often agressive women trying to act like men, diversity and sex harrasment training, politically correct (hence lame) Christmas parties. There's little in all of this for a masculine person to enjoy. The modern corporation fits perfectly with women, soft males (you know who you are), and gay men.

Secondly, the implicit exchange between men and women in marriage wasn't that they were trading their sexual freedom for security. The sex drive in men and women is apples and oranges. Not a fair trade. What was happening was women were giving up their autonomy in exchange for security and sexual monogamy. Men were giving up sexual freedom and the endless adolesence described in the article in exchange for responsibility over their family. They were respected in the community by other men because they had that authority in their family and exercised it well. Make the husband and wife co-equal in all matters, and you destroy that implicit exchange. Whey should we get married or remain married? So we can become Stupid Dad you see in all the sit coms and commercials? The pathetic fool who is (barely) a notch above his children and clearly subordinate to the wise, all knowing Mommy? It's not that hard to figure out.

To quote Chesterton: "Never take down a fence until you know for sure why it was put up."

In television commercials, especially in the past five years, young men are portrayed as mentally and physically and emotionally inept, and proudly so. I found myself wishing for a military draft again. What young men need is to be wrenched away from their families and denied their comfort zones for at least four years. Kind of like what World War II did to a generation of men this country holds in high regard. Thanks so much for writing this article, I'm going to share it with a number of young men.

I was so incredibly impressed and stunned at the accuracy of this article. Ms. Hymowitz deserves the Pulitzer for this. I don't believe that anyone could have put this version of the 21st Century's Peter Pan Syndrome on paper any better than this. Kudos! And thank you for taking on one of the biggest perpetrators of this insane bend in the male species named Tom Leykis!

Thank you for an excellent article on the prolonged adolescence of young males. I am 46 years old, and experienced something like it myself, even though I ultimately settled down to a happy marriage and family life.

One basic problem little-commented upon is that young men need places to go to be among men - exclusively men - to learn what manhood means, to measure themselves against other guys, to compete, to win or lose, and finally assume a place among others of their kind. They need access to mature men to set standards and keep them in line, much like a tough coach or hardened drill sergeant does, or used to do. The military used to serve this function widely in our culture - as a rite of passage that turned boys into men. Now, less than 5% of eligible American men serve in the military, and worse - from the standpoint of the development of maleness, women have pushed their way into the services, diluting what was once a purely male culture.

Today, mixed martial arts are so popular partly due to the simple fact that they feature no holds barred (with few exceptions) methods in violent, one-to-one contests. These employ martial arts methods to knock out, submit, or otherwise punish your opponent into giving up or losing on points. Blood flows, and the occasional bone gets broken, and the fans cheer wildly, not only men but some women, too.

Men remain adolescents into their 20s because the forces which formerly tore down and then remade a man's character are now largely absent from their lives. Young men also behave as they do because they are rewarded for doing so. In today's hook-up culture, commitment seems to be the furthest from young people's minds, and all seem to see it as sex without consequences.

However, the consequences are in fact profound. Not so long ago, young women saved their "pearl of great price" until marriage, and men knew it. The price of sexual relations was often marriage and a family. Today, however,young men do not have to pass the barriers of a woman's chastity, or her desire for marriage, nor do they have to commit in any manner. They just have to show up, and let the party begin. These men, enjoying the pleasures of the flesh denied to their elders outside of marriage or the pretense of one, are getting it for free. Why pay for something you can get for free?

The sad part about all of this is that deep down, most men want to fulfil the expectations of their fathers and reach full manhood, not the half-baked variety. Given some decent reasons for doing so, many would rise to the task. But I see almost no one in America calling upon them to do anything but spend and consume.

Well-written piece. But the biggest reason for young men's behavioral changes in the last 40 years was only briefly hinted at: The incredible ease with which young men can get women to have casual sex with them today versus 40 years ago.

I see this all the time. I own a nightclub which is popular among the 25-45 year old demographic (I'm 50). If you haven't seen the way young people hook up today, you literally would not believe it - and I'm in the heart of the Bible Belt!

I have lived in many places, countries, and cultures. This is a worldwide phenomenon. The behavior of men is simply a response (actually a quite logical one) to the changing behavior of women. Simply put, men are a breeding experiment run by women. You reap what you sow - and when a man can sow all he wants and leave the reaping to others, well, why not? The fact that it might be extremely detrimental to our society in the long haul does not concern men these days - any more than illegitimate children concerns many women.

Welcome to our Brave New World.

I'm frustrated by Hymowitz's article. What she observes about modern men is mostly consistent with what I have observed, but she fails to offer any reasonable explanation for why it is happening, or any potential means to address it. Instead, the article degenerates into a shrill attack on the men themselves, as if somehow between 1970 and 2000 a new genetic breed of man appeared in America, one that is somehow incapable of growing up and is unworthy of American womanhood. Hymowitz attaches the epithet "child-man" to this new, inferior breed of man.

More thought needs to be given to the question of what happened in the last 40 years to bring about this situation. It might be useful to think about the things that have not changed. For one, marriage in this country has always been voluntary and based on mutual affection rather than parental pressure. People in the past did not get married because they were forced to, but because they wanted to, just as they do (or don't do) now. For another, men are still men, made of the same genetic material that their fathers and grandfathers were made of. As Hymowitz observes, boys generally become men as a result of getting married and having children, not the other way around. Even before the days of the "child-man," unmarried men were immature, restless, irresponsible. Why did they choose to become married men in the past? Why don't they choose to do so now?

It would seem that something has changed in the nature of marriage itself, and in the economic and social circumstances that surround the decision to get married. One problem is that risks of marriage for men have greatly increased, while the rewards have decreased. Two historical factors seem to underly this change: feminism and no-fault divorce.

Feminism has changed things not because "men are intimidated by strong women" (men always have been intimidated by women, strong and otherwise), but because it has changed the inherent trade-offs of marriage to put the husband at a disadvantage. Feminist doctrine requires wives to deny or devalue the husband's role as provider and protector of the household. This is a role that men are well-suited for and find satisfaction in. Instead, wives are told to look to their husband primarily for companionship and emotional support. This is something that men are less suited for and find less satisfying. Their failure to meet the standards of emotional availability required by their wives often leads to resentment on the part of the wives and frustration for the husband, who senses that his wife wants him to be a grown-up without being a man.

In addition, because it is no longer acceptable to talk about "women's work" or "men's work," the division of labor becomes a source of strife rather than an efficient use of resources. Every household chore must be the subject of litigation.

The ultimate risk for the husband is that his wife's resentment might lead to a divorce. In a situation where courts still favor wives in child custody situations, divorce for the husband can mean financial ruin and the loss of his children.

The question might better be asked, why would a young man want to get married now? Sex, apparently, is generally available. Companionship is also available, and buddies make far less emotional demands than wives do. Wives can no longer be expected to provide domestic comforts (e.g., good cooking) that men value but are generally not very good at providing for themselves. (Although I would suggest that most wives still do provide these comforts, but that feminism has taught them to do so with a sense of resentment).

The question might also be asked, why would a woman want to get married? She can make her own living. The police can protect her from the bad people. Life doesn't require that much heavy lifting anymore.

It seems that the only reason left to get married is to have children. This is not to be underestimated, since children give purpose in life, introduce new levels of love and affection, and still provide a degree of security in old age that cannot be provided by government programs or careful retirement savings. For men, though, there is the greater risk of losing those children through divorce.

The frustrating thing about Hymowitz's article is that she places all the blame for this situation on the "child-men." Women surely can't be completely innocent in this breakdown. After all, the feminist movement in the 60s and 70s was a change in the expectations of women. They demanded that men change to meet those new expectations, but it appears that the men did not change that much. They are still the same "pigs" that they were back then. Only now they don't have any reason to "grow up" by getting married, maybe not so much to gain from it and a lot to lose. Maybe, as it turns out, a man needs a wife like a fish needs a bicycle.

As Hymowitz points out in her book, marriage is fundamentally important to the health of our civilization. And a healthy marriage is fundamentally useful for the people who choose to enter into it. Still, many no longer choose to enter into it. Understanding why that happens will require something better than a sneering new epithet for unmarried young men.

I read your article with great interest. I was hoping you'd be more forthright in diagnosing the problem of today's SYMs, but alas you just pussyfooted (forgive the pun) around the real issue. Which as I see it, is that women have given away the candy store.

Of course Freud didn't have to ask what men want; that's a slam dunk. And they DO NOT feel threatened by female "empowerment." On the contrary, they consider it a no-strings-attached, gratuitous-sex-for-life, American Express card for which the bill never arrives.
What enables the child-man to "put off family into the hazily distant future" is the law of supply and demand: every child-man knows that the number of women willing to get horizontal after a hamburger and a movie vastly exceeds the number of "squares" who won't. And that's the 800-pound Transformer in the room that everyone ignores.

Love City Journal & have been waiting with bated breath for the Winter issue.

Two things: the pill and abortion. Men used to get married to have sex. Fear of pregnancy prevented most girls from "giving in," and Papa with a shotgun helped. From there, we have arrived at the place where any guy can find a girl any night who will have sex immediately with him. Why should he get married? No one is demanding or even asking him to grow up.

Divorced parents don't help. Who wants to get married and be unhappy like his parents were?

Baby boomers thought they were so smart. Get rid of the stigma of divorce and out-of-wedlock pregnancies, prevent unwanted pregnacies or kill the "accident," and won't life be grand.

Only thing is, we ruined our kids with the experiment. Maybe we should stop playing God and get back to some of the basics: grow up, get an education, get a job, get married, have kids, and then won't life be grand. Or at least better than now.

Wars have made a lot of men "grow up" too, sadly. I'll bet the guys in the all-volunteer military will end up being the mature ones. Many of the guys that managed to avoid the draft during Viet Nam are now sporting graying ponytails, still smoking "grass," and divorced several times. They have spawned the "cretins" you have described that are ruining our society. I wouldn't want to be a young woman today.

Ms. Hymowitz is wrong. SYMs are not avoiding marriage. They are priced out of it, and of relationships. Young men in their thirties in the 1970s could buy their own houses.
Now, even high-earning MBAs cannot buy their own houses, a prerequisite for marriage and family.

Women with their own earnings require a "premium" over their own status/money/social power, or future expectation of same. "Sex and the City" was more a tale of high-powered young women finding A-Listers unwilling to commit. Because they want the few men with more social power than they possess.

Young men are substituting video games and childish diversions because they lack the ability to gain a woman's intimacy that will lead to marriage. Theodore Dalrymple writes about this extensively in "Life at the Bottom." Even lower-earning women choose bad boys over the regular decent guys. Because women want men with higher status than their own.

In your article you say that women ask the question, "How did this perverse creature come to be?" In my humble opinion, women share the biggest part of the blame. When the ladies started living with guys before marriage, having kids out of wedlock, and hooking up like guys, things went downhill. Sure, we men are to blame. But the woman has always managed to control the man by basically demanding marriage. Not anymore! So you can blame the men if you want to, but I suggest women look in the mirror for the creator of the child-man

Your op-ed piece ("The Child-Man" in the Dallas Morning News) struck a chord with my friend, Justin. Justin is many years younger than I. He's 26, right in the 10-ring of your putative, monolithic Single Young Male demographic. He asked me to compose this in his place since he's getting oiled up for a crazy week in Vegas with a few buddies before stopping in Phoenix on the way back in case there are some Super Bowl tickets left to score. Besides, writing isn't a skill of much use to him in his promising financial-services career.

Anyway, he would like you to pass on his personal thanks to all your New Girl Order, hyper-achieving comrades who have done so much to make his current lifestyle possible. He says there's a ton of them out there in the increasingly female-friendly workplace where he spends his 60-hour weeks, and they've been just super cooperative.

This situation has paid off especially handsomely in the case of Mary, a well-employed and very intelligent and attractive young woman, and presently Justin's main weekend diversion. It seems there's some guy -- also 26, strangely enough -- wanting desperately to marry her. But this guy doesn't have Justin's hunk factor or care-free personality; plus it's pretty obvious, given the career the guy has chosen, that he's never going to make it out of the mid-five-figure income mire. The contemporary adulthood into which Mary is emergent appears to have informed her that there's no way this is what a genuine New Girl wants out of life, so she's made herself regularly available for Justin.

Of course, Justin does sometimes have to sacrifice a little Playstation 3 time to keep Mary company on shopping sprees. Occasionally he even finds it necessary to travel with her to one of her special places. But if things get out of hand, he says he'll just move on. No big thing.

By the way, he says he's tried to work up a little guilt over his pointless, vapid existence, but so far with no success. It's just way too cool. So, once again, a great big thank you from my favorite SYM, Justin.