Read the book and i have got parts to argue with on that question, men are in trouble. Give us the premise of the disaster. Host men are having a harder time adapting to the economy and women are adapting wisely. I can tell you why. Just to say to this period entry, then as education and credentials of the kami is fastchanging and who knows what its going to throw at us. Women seems to get getting those credentials at a faster rate than men are and they tend to be more nimble and that filters down into our society so in the book i talk about how that changes marriage and fatherhood in what manner he can and cant do in families and how young people have and make decisions and so you really start to see it having an influence in our culture. Host give me some of the numbers. I think many people, we have heard for so many years if theres a crisis with girls and they have to learn differently and not as strong in math and science. I think it will come as a shock to learn that women far out do men and boys in academic performance. Guest i have a daughter and two sons so this plays out in my household but education is the clearest argument. Basically girls do better than boys. Now they had equal s. A. T. Scores in math and they do better in verbal score so it starts out kind of early in life. I think that is largely developmental question likely demand a lot more if younger and younger children and girls develop faster than boys so that is where it starts and what people say his boy start to get a sense of themselves with maybe a little bit of failures in school. Not because they are less smart because boys and grocery lisa marr. It has to do with extra issues like discipline and can you sit still and what our schools are demanding of kids that come more naturally to girls than to boys and i have an addendum to that which i will get to in a minute. Then you move on to Community College and other college so for every two degrees that men get, women get three degrees. That is a huge disparity and they reached parity in the 80s and since then women have been out skirting men. The fact is you do need a College Degree as a prerequisite so michael greenstone who is the white house economist said to me, its simple the economy has been standing at the top of the mountaintop screaming and a loudspeaker, just get a College Degree and you will make our money like its simple to get the degree and you will make our money and as he puts that women hear the call and men dont hear the call. There are probably lots of reasons for that. If you go back to after world war ii and the g. I. Bill, there you have it period of extreme flexibility in men because i talk about men being a little more rigid and maybe women being more flexible and men didnt go to college and they did become farmers and take on all these jobs they hadnt done before. Host after fighting a war. Guest im thinking a lot about why this is true. Is it because women had been the underdogs or they feel a lot of women i talked talk to in the book, they felt like that immigrant drive that they have to get ahead is part of the formula that seems to be moving with them. Maybe that worked for men after world war ii. They were coming back from war and they where like i want to get my job that. People are charging forward for different reasons. Host what is the effect on the employment market . Guest in 2009 women became the majority of the American Workforce which is pretty remarkable. Working women was unusual enough in the 80s and 90s they were like sitcoms. Look how cool it is that women are wearing pantsuits and now women are the majority of the workforce. They became the majority and now its kind of even but still thats pretty remarkable. You have over the course of 40 years, mens wages kind of steadily stagnating and declining for his womens wages are steadily increasing. Men on average still make more but if you look at the charts, the trends are very much like this. And then you no couple that with the types of jobs opening up. So basically the way it works is women with College Degrees enter the workforce in greater numbers and then they open up the kinds of jobs that women used to do for free so that is like childcare and food preparation, service economy, elder care and you have the health care industry. You see its like having this cascading effect where they are opening up more jobs for women and also the axis on a manufacturing era that is the literal interpretation. In the book i do the towns that were archly and depended on manufacturing. This is not a new story. You could be a very prosperous middleclass redlener, head of your household by working as a manager in a factory making 70, 80, 100,000 a a year and had a very good life. That is really not available in in the u. S. Anymore and i think that is really messed up a lot of men and that is really something that men have had a hard time recovering from. Host . [inaudible] guest somebody said something so obvious that i hadnt thought of. And a talent in alabama that i write about you do not call yourself a feminist. They are christians so they dont like the situation where they are suddenly they dont believe they should be the head of their household but they find themselves in this position. They basically started the bottom and weight worked their way up but if you ask someone if he was making a lot of money and doing pretty well to start again in the bottom, thats harder. Its harder for the women for whom even if they dont call themselves feminists and dont want to be in a position, you are suddenly making a paycheck and learning new schools and learning new things about yourself. Thats easier than to ask a guy to start from the bottom again or to say hustle so i got a sense every time that they have been protected in some funny way. I dont we dont think of menace needing help and men dont like to think of themselves as leading help that they were protected in a sense so they didnt have to work that hard. Women have a funny combination of opening Job Opportunities plus the sense that they are behind, since that they really need to hustle and that creates the drive where men feel like there were suddenly whacked in the head. The light that was handed to them was now gone. They dont want to start at the bottom so you have growing numbers of men on disability rolls. People give up after a certain amount of time. They give up and they see their wives are earning money. And the hard part of this, the book is not that triumphalist. There are good things for women impossible good things for men but some of its heartbreaking to watch unfold. Host it sounds like a disaster. Guest it is a disaster in some places but you can imagine a world when i think of my own son, some of this is true. They come from welleducated families and theyre likely to go to college but if what is happening school is true, doesnt happen naturally to them and it does to my daughter to do the things that the school is asking but would it be so bad if when they grew up it was possible for them to be dating or marrying a woman who is making more money than they were in that wouldnt be such a big deal . That seems to be a good thing. There are periods in history where men complain about the pressures of being the breadwinner and why is it always says that has to be the breadwinner . Host so we have had the Current System which you describe and i think most object to the servers would kind of agree. You have the date on your side for sure. But i wonder if that is involved for a reason. Maybe it evolves out of the basic nature of men and the basic nature of women which are not the same. Guest this has been the hardest question for me is the book rolls out, trying to think really hard which i did not resolve in the book about where to sit and . You talk to in alabama when i talked to christian families its easy for them. The man is the head of the household and they had to rethink that a little bit at the man remains the head of the household even he is just the spiritual head of the household or their different ways of interpreting that. Then there is the woman and the childcare question which we havent gotten to yet. At what point do we reach the natural limit . I dont think there is greater room for men to be domestic without being utterly feminizing and domesticated. You dont pass a guy who is taking care of his kids in the park. You shouldnt be thinking what is wrong with that guy . Which in some local society we still do. I dont think theres anything inherent in that. Host are you talking about the weekends or after where . A man who is a stayathome father. Guest or you just pass that guy in the park. You think we will never get to that point. Host im not even at catching a value to it. Im merely noting this liberal world where people think we are entitled to a single happy marriage in which a man is a stay at home dad and his wife is the breadwinner. Guest those that have not chosen to be stayathome dads probably. Host mens understanding of themselves is bound in intrinsically what they do for living in that rose out of their nature. Im not endorsing that. Im just quoting the reality of it. Im just not aware and i know a number of people who have been in that position of a single happy stable marriage where the man stays at home but maybe there are a lot of them. Guest thats interesting. Lets explore that for a minute. Is an important question. Increasingly womens identity are tied up to their work in a way which we may not like and we may find disturbing and unnatural but isnt that true. The mayor who was recently chosen to be when she was visibly pregnant and was asked how much Maternity Leave or you want to take and she said basically none. The fact that such women exist is not the way i would do it. I would take plenty of Maternity Leave but i feel like that is a growing, that is the kind of woman that there can be a base for in the fact that there are some stayathome dads who are happy stayathome dads, this is not limited to Portland Oregon and its okay. Host whose wives affect wife suspect that men are sexually attracted to them. I dont think that couple exists. Guest i did a survey and a thousand people into the survey. The survey was explicitly for breadwinner wives, solicit lead women who make more money than their husbands. These were slate readers which is the magazine that im an editor of. They are more educated than the general population they probably live in more literate urban areas so we are talking about a few samples with the vast majority described themselves as happy. Host thats great. Im not against it. Im just saying its not something ive seen that there are many things i havent seen. Two things, one it is difficult for men, this change of rules is difficult for men man and for another, there is a syndrome where a woman was like a man who is more sensitive, more like her and sort of classic and qualities and when he achieves those qualities she realizes its kind of repulsive actually. Guest is so funny because Kayla Flanigan wrote a story in the atlantic which made this point, how it is to watch them and make lunchboxes. On the other hand there was a funny Washington Post story, which he now talks about all women want for them and to reorganize things in the refrigerator and do the laundry the right way so i dont know where women fall on that question. Somebody asked me this question, what are you exactly saying . Lets say a husband who is the editorinchief of slate tecumseh stay home dad and she said had he feel about that . Are you attracted to him . Im not asking if you think politically thats okay. Host we are talking on a visceral level. Guest what is your response to that and ive really heard that i think if he was happy and fulfilled and wasnt miserable i feel the same way as i do about stayathome moms. They are some stayathome moms who are having to defend their situation and are really unhappy and feel selfconscious and i dont think, that doesnt seem a natural for me where there are some who are utterly fulfilled than their stayathome dads but i had a couple of stayathome dads in my preschool. One of the moves ahead to make around this particular stayathome dad who was making handprint tshirts and i was startled by that. There was a visceral reaction we have to that but he he was was fun and he plays it plays music with his kids. Host some are happy that i wonder how true it is. I notice that no matter how involved and aggressive the woman says she is, if she asks you where would you like to go to dinner tonight and you give an insight she resents it. Every woman ive ever met wants you to save guest is that true . I dont like indecisive people. I think there are some women who like to wear the pants in the family. I think there can be more of a cultural phase of the man doesnt i was on a series of radio shows and the men were like i am psyched. If my wife wants to earn a lot of money so i can stay home, rock on. But you still dont feel like we have gotten to the visceral attraction level. We can cover the cultural acceptance. We can cover the this sort of economic flexibility that we will still be left with host we are going to fall up against human nature at some point. I is a libertarian minded i dont judge them. As long as they arent hurting anyone great i dont judge you but i also wonder about the systems that have been in place in roughly the same shape for millennia and you ask yourself why is that . Maybe because they are outgrowths of things that we cant change and things that are in eight. Guest i read all those books. The female mind in the male mind, it said like an invention to me. Host we have to keep inventing it in every culture . Guest yeah because physical strength is a fact of the male and it has been for a long time so anything that grows out of physical strength. I do find women the men are not providers and just another mouth to feed. I know this is insulting to men that ive heard that line. Host there are those men out there for sure. Guest there are a lot of men that they women dont want to marry because they are not providers the protectors they draw the line. When i say what is the man good for . He will protect me. If theres an emergency he will come and protect me so when it comes down, not to the stayathome dad that the physical protection which is different than economics, providers. Is physical protection like i want a man to kind of the there in case of an emergency but thats not the same as if he works and identifies with this job. Host but i wonder if its purely physical. You know, i wonder, you open the book with a really Interesting Exchange with a woman you met on the shore here i think in washington who is their shopping with her daughter and you asked simply, where is the man in your life . She simply said i dont want him around. He just takes up resources. Understand the guy sounds like a total loser, but she sounds like shes in a tough spot. That doesnt see my progress. Seems like something very depressing. Guest i dont think thats progress. You want to end up in a situation where men and women need each other. Im not sure if it needs to be an evolutionarily adaptive and a 40000yearold way to you dont want to end up in a situation where more classes of Society People are not getting married. I personally dont care if people get married but then it has to be the european way where they live together or support each other or in the same household but not necessarily married. Americans are very into marriage so we get married and when we dont get married it looks dysfunctional and it means that you are not really supporting the family and not helping out. Host why is that . Guest i think that men are not working and i think the women, its like okay im sorry i misunderstood the question. Why do americans have a preference for marriage . We are conservatives effectively and more religious than other cultures. Host so there is no specific reason . Guest i think europeans and raise Children Together without getting married. You are asked me specifically why do we like marriage . We have high marriage rates and high divorce rates and we have the kind of, we work out a lot of Family Structures around marriage annulled way that a lot of cultures if you say you live in washington you say anything goes. We get married and we like marriage. In fact the College Educated classes are an extremely conservative traditional moment. Host poor people do not. Guest is like a luxury of the rich. Host there is overwhelming traditional americanstyle marriage no matter who is the breadwinner is the optimum way the optimum environment on average to raise children. Guest in america. The other countries have come up with perfectly viable other models like swedish couples, european progressive couples dont really get married but they Stay Together. Host unmarried couples Stay Together on average for a less long period of time. Guest in america because we like marriage. We will have what is called a marriage goround. This is the most interesting book on marriage today, culture that is always ending marriage. We have a turnaround culture around marriage if you are not rich whereas stability of union is america isnt a marriage but in other countries its not really. Host where does all of this leave children . Guest it depends which children. The children of the elite now, which is so she logically defined as College Educated i think are in a pretty good. Met. We are now. Back in which children pay an excessive amount of attention. We are in a hyperparenting moments where even the women are working these days they are spending more time with their children than they did 30 years ago and i think fathers are more involved in that class of society. Im sure youre not a father in the same way your father was. My husband is certainly more involved in the children than my own father was so the expectations or father or greater. I think its a good moment and your parents are much less likely to divorce them more likely to stave marriage. If you are a month a College Educated you are in a good spot and as a child i would say but if you are not then you are in a much worse but then you were 20 years ago particularly if you are a boy because your fathers less likely to be around and be involved in your life and in fact your parents what is becoming entrenched which is one thing i describe, your parents are investing in a child is like an economic position so parents, or mothers rather make the decisions in that daughters are more successful in school and therefore more likely to invest in daughters and send them to college. What used