Kotaku
In a Dallas Morning News opinion piece titled "The child-man" from the Manhattan Institute's City Journal, writer Kay Hymowitz argues that the today's 18-34 lingers in "a new state of semi-hormonal adolescence." From the article:
With women, you could argue that adulthood is in fact emergent. Single women in their 20s and early 30s are joining an international New Girl Order, hyper-achieving in both school and an increasingly female-friendly workplace, while packing leisure hours with shopping, traveling and dining with friends. Single young males, or SYMs, by contrast, often seem to hang out in a playground of drinking, hooking up, playing Halo 3 and, in many cases, underachieving. With them, adulthood looks as though it's receding.
Because if you play Halo 3, that means you're not doing anything with your life. And if you are shopping and traveling, you are. There's more:
The problem with child-men is that they're not very promising husbands and fathers. They suffer from a proverbial 'fear of commitment'... Now, you could argue that the motley crew of Maxim, Comedy Central and Halo 3 aren't much to worry about, that extended adolescence is what the word implies: a temporary stage. Most guys have lots of other things going on and will eventually settle down.The rest of the opinion piece isn't so bad. It just paints the world with very broad brush-strokes. Sure, Hymowitz has written an opinion piece, but her opinion seems skewed by media and misanthropy and certainly not informed by the world around her. Yes, some people are marrying later, but to be calling men underachievers because they play video games? Years back in my mid 20's before I wrote for a living, I was working something like three jobs, seven days a week, doing anything I could to support my wife and baby son. In my free time, I also played video games. What does that make me, Kay Hymowitz?
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The child-man [Dallas Morning News via CVG] [Pic]
