The End of Men and the Rise of Women by Hanna Rosin Page B
Authors: Hanna Rosin
Tags: Non-Fiction
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being so competent over there?’”
This may be a fiction they both perpetuate because women have not yet become accustomed to owning the power even when it is so obviously theirs. It may in fact be a new variation on “provider,”where men preserve the protector aspect of being the breadwinner even when they are not earning the money. Or it may be because the provider role did not just pass on to women, but passed into obsolescence. When men earned the money, women claimed alternate sources of power—sovereignty over the house or the school community or the couple’s social life—so it seems only fair to preserve that system now. Power is diffuse. Maybe that’s a satisfying enough explanation to save men from obsolescence and give them space to invent an entirely new way of being a happy, harmonious family in the age of female power. Or maybe not.
One early evening, just after Sarah came home from work and we were all talking, Xavier took off his diaper and peed in the hallway for maybe the third time that day, which prompted this observation from Steven about the future: “All boys do is pee on things. Nothing good comes from being a man. Women bring good things to the world. I live longer if I have a wife. I have a better, healthier life.” He picked up the discarded diaper and dropped it in the sink, forgetting to spray. “I wanted a little Anne of Green Gables. Someone creative and good. I would love it if the next one is a little girl. Like my wife. A superstar.”
THE NEW AMERICAN MATRIARCHY
THE MIDDLE CLASS GETS A SEX CHANGE
A lexander City, Alabama—In the first days after the mill closed, Pastor Gerald Hallmark of the First Baptist Church was able to keep the prayer requests specific:
Joe Moore got a pink slip today. Let’s pray that he finds new employment.
Or,
The Wallers have been called off to Atlanta. Let’s pray they find a new church home.
But before long, the numbers got to be overwhelming. In a town of fifteen thousand, Russell Corporation, makers of premium athletic wear, employed nearly eight thousand people, and over the last eight years nearly all of them have lost their jobs. Keeping up with the details of the disaster was like “trying to wrap your hands around a tornado,” Hallmark said, so after a while, he just lumped the victims under one all-encompassing prayer. “We pray over those who havebeen released from employment,” he would say at the Wednesday night service. “May God open another door for you.”
The ones who left town the fastest to find new jobs were the plant managers who were also the “town doers,” as the pastor calls them—the deacons and Sunday school teachers and Little League coaches and Rotary Club chairs. Once upon a time, the patriarchy was not an abstract idea to fight over, but the central organizing principle of a respectable middle-class existence. In Alexander City, the patriarchy that made middle-class existence possible began with the Russell family, after whom many town institutions and main roads were named (Benjamin Russell High School, Russell Medical Center, Russell Road). In a tier just beneath them were the friends and relatives who served as the plant managers and also as the civic leaders. The only woman of note was an honorary matriarch named Big Mama, who lived on a mini-plantation with a rose trellis and pools and a house for each of her sons.
This patriarchy supported the kind of middle-class striving that is romanticized in pop country songs and political speeches. Like many thriving small towns, Alexander City provided a blueprint for the American dream that looked nothing like success in New York City or San Francisco. Here, a man with some textile training or engineering knowledge could make $70,000 or even $100,000, enough to afford a second house on the lake and his own boat. Here, a man could drive a Lexus SUV and still imagine himself to be the kind of American cowboy reflected in the Toby Keith song blasting on the
This may be a fiction they both perpetuate because women have not yet become accustomed to owning the power even when it is so obviously theirs. It may in fact be a new variation on “provider,”where men preserve the protector aspect of being the breadwinner even when they are not earning the money. Or it may be because the provider role did not just pass on to women, but passed into obsolescence. When men earned the money, women claimed alternate sources of power—sovereignty over the house or the school community or the couple’s social life—so it seems only fair to preserve that system now. Power is diffuse. Maybe that’s a satisfying enough explanation to save men from obsolescence and give them space to invent an entirely new way of being a happy, harmonious family in the age of female power. Or maybe not.
One early evening, just after Sarah came home from work and we were all talking, Xavier took off his diaper and peed in the hallway for maybe the third time that day, which prompted this observation from Steven about the future: “All boys do is pee on things. Nothing good comes from being a man. Women bring good things to the world. I live longer if I have a wife. I have a better, healthier life.” He picked up the discarded diaper and dropped it in the sink, forgetting to spray. “I wanted a little Anne of Green Gables. Someone creative and good. I would love it if the next one is a little girl. Like my wife. A superstar.”
THE NEW AMERICAN MATRIARCHY
THE MIDDLE CLASS GETS A SEX CHANGE
A lexander City, Alabama—In the first days after the mill closed, Pastor Gerald Hallmark of the First Baptist Church was able to keep the prayer requests specific:
Joe Moore got a pink slip today. Let’s pray that he finds new employment.
Or,
The Wallers have been called off to Atlanta. Let’s pray they find a new church home.
But before long, the numbers got to be overwhelming. In a town of fifteen thousand, Russell Corporation, makers of premium athletic wear, employed nearly eight thousand people, and over the last eight years nearly all of them have lost their jobs. Keeping up with the details of the disaster was like “trying to wrap your hands around a tornado,” Hallmark said, so after a while, he just lumped the victims under one all-encompassing prayer. “We pray over those who havebeen released from employment,” he would say at the Wednesday night service. “May God open another door for you.”
The ones who left town the fastest to find new jobs were the plant managers who were also the “town doers,” as the pastor calls them—the deacons and Sunday school teachers and Little League coaches and Rotary Club chairs. Once upon a time, the patriarchy was not an abstract idea to fight over, but the central organizing principle of a respectable middle-class existence. In Alexander City, the patriarchy that made middle-class existence possible began with the Russell family, after whom many town institutions and main roads were named (Benjamin Russell High School, Russell Medical Center, Russell Road). In a tier just beneath them were the friends and relatives who served as the plant managers and also as the civic leaders. The only woman of note was an honorary matriarch named Big Mama, who lived on a mini-plantation with a rose trellis and pools and a house for each of her sons.
This patriarchy supported the kind of middle-class striving that is romanticized in pop country songs and political speeches. Like many thriving small towns, Alexander City provided a blueprint for the American dream that looked nothing like success in New York City or San Francisco. Here, a man with some textile training or engineering knowledge could make $70,000 or even $100,000, enough to afford a second house on the lake and his own boat. Here, a man could drive a Lexus SUV and still imagine himself to be the kind of American cowboy reflected in the Toby Keith song blasting on the
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