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Loading...Young Men More Sexist Than Their Fathers?
Esquire Magazine has released a new survey of American men born in 1960 and 1990. The survey compares attitudes on everything from politics to which decade produced the best music to what feature is most attractive in a woman. The results suggest the sexism portrayed in the popular show Mad Men may be more rampant amongst millenials than those born the year AMC’s fictional ad execs began their 5th Avenue reign.
According to the survey released Thursday, more 20 year-old men — about 20% as compared to 14% of their older counterparts — would rather their wives stay at home and take care of the children than maintain a separate career outside of the home. Almost as striking is the assertion that only about 47% of the younger men, as compared to 55% of 50 year-olds, believe their female partner “should do whatever she wants” in making the choice to work or stay at home. And despite efforts of the women’s movement to degender caretaking roles, only 1% of 20-year-old men and 3% of older respondents would choose to stay at home while their wife brings in the primary income.
What’s behind the younger generation’s reversion to traditional gender roles? Perhaps watching their mothers struggle with the unreasonable demand of maintaining the role of full-time caretaker and full-time employee makes them less willing to impose such stress on their partner. Or perhaps it’s a result of naïveté. Young men who have yet to enter the workforce and start families are less wise to the reality that this lifestyle often requires two incomes to sustain. More worrying, these attitudes could suggest kids born in the 1990′s have fallen prey to increasingly conservative portrayals of women in the media, missing shows such as Maude and Murphy Brown in favor of Desperate Housewives and a never-ending diet of reality shows that hype the worst of gender roles for men and women.
Also worrying is the younger survey respondents’ opinions on a woman’s right to legal abortion — more 20 year-olds self-identified as “pro-life” rather than “pro-choice.” Only 19% consider themselves “prochoice, without qualification” while 38% consider themselves against the right to legal abortion, but with exceptions for rape and incest. Their father’s generation is more likely on all counts to support a woman’s right to abortion, an indication the backslide in political reproductive rights on the state and national level during the past two decades has seeped into the minds of the younger cohort.
This same generation, which has lived much of their conscious lives under the Bush administration, are also primary victims of failed abstinence-only-until-marriage programs that touted misinformation about abortion, as well as hormonal contraception and condoms. These programs also promoted traditional views of marriage and of men and women within it, suggesting their influence may also be at work in the disturbing statistics surrounding their opinions on women’s place in the home. These young men also came of age at the dawn of crisis pregnancy centers, religious establishments that pose as fake clinics near college campuses and real women’s health centers for the sole purpose of spewing lies like ‘abortion causes breast cancer.’
No matter the root causes of these disturbing findings — your opinions in the comments are more than welcome! — it’s clear young women, who make up about 56% of college students and are increasingly matching their male counterparts salaries upon entering the workforce (though still falling behind later), have much the same fight on their hands as women’s movement activists in the 1960′s to get their brothers feet off their necks. Far more important than establishing who gets the title of coolest man in America — both generations agreed it’s Clint Eastwood — is making sure the next time Essence does this survey, questions about a woman’s place and her right to bodily autonomy seem so outdated as to only belong in a retro television show.
Read more: abortion, abortion rights, reproductive rights, sexism, womens rights
photo credit: thanks to kevindooley via flickr
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Awesome!!! Thank you! :-))
@Dennis -- while Jenny McCarthy's views aren't anywhere near as pernicious as those of Palin and Bachmann,…
Thanks for the info.
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165 comments
+ add your ownSeems the men are finally deciding for themselves what they want out of life and in a spouse. If american women are so against being a traditional wife, these men will got marry foreign women. Most of my husbands friends are now married to foreign women. They all have kids, and a happy family. Soon American women will have plenty of uninterrupted time to focus on their careers by themselves. ;-)
I think the article is misleading. In my Brooklyn neighborhood, one increasingly sees men engaged in "female" activities like walking the children and taking them to the park to play on weekdays. No one seems to have more than 2 children so some kind of "family planning" is clearly indicated. I would like to see a broader survey; also one that mentions religion.
I aggree that much of this comes from conservative propoganda. I remember the shift I learned about AIDS and condoms, when 7 years later my younger sister learned about "abstinence". I do have one objection to your assertions "and despite efforts of the women's movement to degender caretaking roles". I am just not sure if this is true. Most women I know hold very rigidly to the roles men and women should have. I have met many "liberal" women who don't want men as the stay at home dad. And the stigma is still that the stay at home dad is a lazy looser, etc. I really don't think the women's movement has done much to counter the gender sexism expectations of men. Men even by feminists must be macho, masculine, dominant, not show emotion but be emotionally supportive etc. etc. all these sterotypes cage women as much as cage women. And feminism does little to reveal the opposite forms of sexism. We no longer need a women's movement, nor a men's movement, but a people's movement that defend the rights of everyone.
The conservatives have maintained a steady stream of loud invictive against abortion, against feminists, and against contraception while the conservative media and press maintain a steady stream of shows with sex bias and articles on the stresses of women in careers, instead of the advantages. Young men are self-centered and not very well educated or thoughtful--their consciousness is sex-centered, not relationship centered, when it comes to women and girls. Without a strong public feminest movement, men just roll back to the old, old, damaging ways. Women have got to speak up for themselves. These findings support that what these cultural leaders teach has negative consequences for marriages and all human relations.
I find every comment on this article disappointing. I don't think a single person got it.
Just because there has been a slight rise in traditional roles between men and women, the Bush administration is to blame for this? Come on think. One out of every three marriages in this country ends in divorce. Is it possible people don't want to raise their children the way they were raised - being bounce between homes?
What a biased article.
Just because thats what men say they want, doesn't mean their going to find those qualities in a wife.
The survey seemed biased ...
This study is flawed. It is the result of Radical so-called feminist who see men as the enemy. Men have rights too , Strange is it not that ,many women want a higher earning man?
Where did they find the men questioned? I don't think this represents the feelings of the majority in that age group.
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