Synopses & Reviews
Women complain there are no good men leftthat men are immature, unreliable, and adrift. No wonder. Masculine role models have become increasingly juvenile and inarticulate: think of stars like Adam Sandler and Will Ferrell, or the dudes of the popular Judd Apatow movies. There are no rules for dating and mating. Guys are unsure how to treat a woman. Most importantly, dating in the pre-adult years is no longer a means to an endmarriageas it was in the past. Many young men today suspect they are no longer essential to family life, and without the old scripts to follow, they find themselves stuck between adolescence and real” adulthood. In Manning Up, Kay Hymowitz sets these problems in a socioeconomic context: todays knowledge economy is female friendly, and many of the highest profile areas of that economycommunications, design, the arts, and health careare dominated by women. Men are increasingly left on the outskirts of this new, service economy, and take much longer to find a financial foothold. With no biological clock telling them its time to grow up, without the financial resources to settle down, and with the accepted age of marriage rising into the late 30s or even 40s, men are holding onto adolescence at the very time that women are achieving professional success and looking to find a mate to share it with. A provocative account of the modern sexual economy, Hymowitz deftly charts a gender mismatch that threatens the future of the American family and makes no one happy in the long run.
Review
A.J. Jacobs, author of The Year of Living BiblicallyKay Hymowitz has written a fascinating and important bookone that should be read by every man, woman and man-child in America. So put down your Wii controller, click off the Tucker Max blog, and pick up Manning Up. You wont regret it.”
Pamela Paul, author of The Starter Marriage
With spot-on detail and zero dogma, Kay Hymowitz has written a smart, incisive analysis of the woes troubling todays young men, oft saddled with the dreary label, adultescents. Anyone interested in the state of the sexes will want to read Hymowitzs wise, accessible and compassionate take.”
William J. Bennett
Manning Up is an important portrayal of the disintegrating covenant that once existed between the sexes. And few can do this better than Kay Hymowitz. She untangles the complex forces threatening marriage for even the most privileged young Americans.”
Caitlin Flanagan, author of To Hell with All That: Loving and Loathing Our Inner Housewife
In her fascinating, brutally honest new book, Kay Hymowitz describes an unintended consequence of the successes of feminism: the creation of a huge generation of aging frat boys, men who have discoveredin the spray tanned, bikini-waxed wonderland of post-feminism a shangrila they are only too happy to inhabit. Freed from the old tests of manhood, such as the ability to marry and provide for a woman and children, they are biding their time, and leaving many of the best and brightest young women wondering, where did all the good men go? Manning Up is an important book for parents, educators and most of all, for todays young women.”
Neil Howe, co-author of Millenials Rising: The Next Great Generation
Kay Hymowitz is a brilliant observer of cultural and social trends in America. Manning Up moves in a crescendo of accelerating energy from first chapter to last. Any reader who has ever wondered about changing gender roles and the purpose of marriage in the lives of our friends and relatives or in our own lives will be impressed and amazed. If you are between age 20 and 50, reading this book may cause you to re-plan your own life. Whatever your age, it will certainly cause you to rethink our collective future.”
Richard Whitmire, author of Why Boys Fail
Kay Hymowitz does an exacting job describing the growing flock of man/children we're seeing, and she lays out the disturbing reality of the marriageable mate dilemma that once affected only black women but has now become a broader phenomenon. Not only are there fewer college-educated men to marry, but many of those men who are available are little more than man/childrennot anyone you would want your daughters to marry!”
Mark Bauerlein, author of The Dumbest Generation
If youre curious as to why university admissions officers have to scramble these days to keep their entering classes at less than 60% female, or if you find that a sports bar on a Saturday afternoon sounds like a high school locker room, Kay Hymowitzs Manning Up provides an illuminating response. Its not because feminism has emasculated men, or because the media parade one man-boy after another (Adam Sandler, Will Ferrell, The Man Show...). Its because of the Knowledge Economy. Manhood used to happen through marriage and fatherhood, boys becoming men by assuming caretaking responsibilities, usually by taking jobs in manufacturing. It made them grow up. The Knowledge Economy delays the process. It keeps them longer in school, and many of the jobs it offers favor women (design, communications). Drawing evocatively from films and novels, video games, blogs and research reports, female despair and male slackerdom, Hymowitz derives a fresh and pointed take on the Mars-and-Venus gender gap. This is the startling and persuasive news she imparts, an unintended consequence of the knowledge boom. More prosperity and innovation and mediabut at a profound cost to family and society: the immaturity of men.”
Kirkus Reviews
Hymowitz neither critiques feminism nor apologizes for modern male behavior. Rather, she offers enlightened observations to help women and men who still say they want careers and families make sense of cultural paradigms no longer based on the traditional life scripts that once delineated gender roles.... A witty and insightful cultural analysis.”
People Magazine
ruefully amusing”
Feministing.com
Hymowitz...has a sense of humor, a fierce grasp on historical research (she puts this whole thing into centuries of perspective), and a powerful argument.”
Detroit News
Clever.... Hymowitz makes the realistic argument that men and women alike might want to think hard about finding a mate who will also, one day, be a good parent.”
Washington Times
Hymowitz does a terrific job of anatomizing the problem and setting out its less salubrious social consequences."
Synopsis
Essayist and provocateur Kay Hymowitz explores the unintended consequences of the feminist revolutionthe infantilization of young men and the rise of lad culture
Synopsis
In Manning Up, Manhattan Institute fellow and City Journal contributing editor Kay Hymowitz argues that the gains of the feminist revolution have had a dramatic, unanticipated effect on the current generation of young men. Traditional roles of family man and provider have been turned upside down as pre-adult” men, stuck between adolescence and real” adulthood, find themselves lost in a world where women make more money, are more educated, and are less likely to want to settle down and build a family. Their old scripts are gone, and young men find themselves adrift. Unlike women, they have no biological clock telling them its time to grow up. Hymowitz argues that its time for these young men to man up.”
Synopsis
A fascinating and important bookone that should be read by every man, woman and man-child in America.” A.J. Jacobs
About the Author
Kay S. Hymowitz is the William E. Simon fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a contributing editor of City Journal, where she writes extensively on education and childhood in America. She also writes for many major publications including the New York Times, the Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The New Republic, New York Newsday, The Public Interest, Commentary, Dissent, and Tikkun. A regular commentator in the broadcast media, she earned a Masters of Philosophy from Columbia University and has taught at Brooklyn College and Parsons School of Design. She lives in Brooklyn, NY.