Muddling Toward Maturity Blog

SINGLE YOUNG MEN (SYM) IN THEIR 20's -- STILL ADOLESCENTS

Update 2/2/08 - Kathryn Jean Lopez reviews the movie Juno and thereby underscores Hymowitz's insights below.  See also a reader comment on Lopez's review posted above.  It deals with the unintended consequences of feminism's effect on men.

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This is an eye-opening "investigation" (is that the right word?) of single American men, 18-34 years old. Kay S. Hymowitz titles her latest City Journal article, "Child-Man in the Promised Land."  The article makes discouraging reading, and to my mind registers another signal of a culture in slow-motion collapse.

For whatever reason, adolescence appears to be the young man’s default state, proving what anthropologists have discovered in cultures everywhere: it is marriage and children that turn boys into men. Now that the SYM can put off family into the hazily distant future, he can—and will—try to stay a child-man.

Read the article to discover the ins and outs of a child-man.

P.S. Note Hymowitz's earlier article, "The New Girl Order: Single Young Females (SYF)," on which I blogged here, which is also worth reading. I concluded that post saying, "This is one of those articles that alters the way you view the world."

Kay S Hymowitz - The New Girl Order: SYF (Single Young Females)

This article reveals a worldwide trend with significant repercussions for generations.  Consider these mind-blowing statistics:

. . .  in 1960, 70 percent of American 25-year-old women were married with children; in 2000, only 25 percent of them were. In 1970, just 7.4 percent of all American 30- to 34-year-olds were unmarried; today, the number is 22 percent. That change took about a generation to unfold, but in Asia and Eastern Europe the transformation has been much more abrupt. In today’s Hungary, for instance, 30 percent of women in their early thirties are single, compared with 6 percent of their mothers’ generation at the same age. In South Korea, 40 percent of 30-year-olds are single, compared with 14 percent only 20 years ago.

That's only the beginning.  Read on for a whole lot more. This is one of those articles that alters the way you view the world. 

"Boundless Line" - A Great Blog Specially Designed for the 20 Something Singles Crowd

Here are some sample posts from the Boundless Line Blog:

Cover Up, Please
Hitchens is Faithfully Anti-God
Loing That Vinyl Sound 
Praise for America's Past 
Manimals are Here
Posts from the Sex Category

Update  7/23/07:   Jennifer Marshall's new book, Now and Not Yet: Making Sense of Singleness in the Twenty-First Century garners  universal high praise from Christian leaders, including Joni Eareckson Tada  and Chuck Colson among many others.  (Click the Colson link for related articles on singles and sexuality.)