WASHINGTON (CBS DC) – The median net worth of American households has dropped to a 43-year low as the lower and middle classes appear poorer and less stable than they have been since 1969.According to a recent study by New York University economics professor Edward N. Wolff, median net worth is at the decades-low figure of $57,000 (in 2010 dollars). And as the numbers in his study reflect, the situation only appears worse when all the statistics are taken as a whole.
The battle of the sexes is alive and well. According to Pew Research Center, the share of women ages eighteen to thirty-four that say having a successful marriage is one of the most important things in their lives rose nine percentage points since 1997 – from 28 percent to 37 percent. For men, the opposite occurred. The share voicing this opinion dropped, from 35 percent to 29 percent.
Believe it or not, modern women want to get married. Trouble is, men don’t.In my readings and discussions with men, I have learned that there is an enormous swath of men to believe that women enter a marriage as a sponge, taking everything a man can give but giving back little in return. They are also convinced that if they get divorced the courts will shred them financially in favor of the wife.
To say gender relations have changed dramatically is an understatement. Ever since the sexual revolution, there has been a profound overhaul in the way men and women interact. Men haven’t changed much – they had no revolution that demanded it – but women have changed dramatically.
In a nutshell, women are angry. They’re also defensive, though often unknowingly. That’s because they’ve been raised to think of men as the enemy. Armed with this new attitude, women pushed men off their pedestal (women had their own pedestal, but feminists convinced them otherwise) and climbed up to take what they were taught to believe was rightfully theirs.
Now the men have nowhere to go.This is a good point, too: "Feminism serves men very well: they can have sex at hello and even live with their girlfriends with no responsibilities whatsoever." As the old saying goes, why buy a cow when milk is so cheap? I put it this way in, "Why 'Man Up' Isn't Working:"
If you look at the economics of male-female relationships today (I don't mean the monetary aspects) there is not going to be a way for men to "man up" until women on the whole culture-change themselves into women worth manning up for. In short, women today are giving away what they should be charging a very high price for, and charging a high price for things that men don't much want at all. And then they look around and wonder what's wrong with this picture.I've written about this topic quite a bit. Some examples:
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