Men in Your 20s: It's Time to Grow Up

Author: Because women in their 20s have just about given up on you
By John Johnson,  Newser Staff
Posted Feb 19, 2011 2:39 PM CST
Men in Your 20s: It's Time to Grow Up
Photo illustration: Men in their 20s just don't want to grow up.   (Shutterstock)

A female author escalates the girls-rule-boys-drool argument into the stratosphere with a damning essay about twenty-something males in today's Wall Street Journal. While women in their 20s are turning into responsible adults, guys are hung up in a state of "puerile shallowness," writes Kay S. Hymowitz in an essay adapted from her book whose title says it all: Manning Up: How the Rise of Women Has Turned Men Into Boys. Among the descriptors: "aging frat boys," "maladroit geeks," and "grubby slackers."

These guys prefer video games to committed relationships, living in "a hybrid state of semi-hormonal adolescence and responsible self-reliance," writes Hymowitz. The phenomenon isn't exactly new (see any Judd Apatow movie), but "it's time to state what has become obvious to legions of frustrated young women: It doesn't bring out the best in men." Hymowitz has larger points to make about the causes—"an expression of our cultural uncertainty about the social role of men"—and much sympathy for women wrestling with one big question: "Where have all the good men gone?" (More men stories.)

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