61 ms·

Fewer young men are in the labor force, more are living at home

• zitterbewegung 5y ago
  What is strange is this has been going on since the 1950s and it is even invariant in relation to economic cycles. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS11300001 https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS11300001 I am also an exception to this rule (I am employed but I live at home). Currently I'm saving for a down payment to a Condo / House.
  • chromaton 5y ago
    The population is getting older. https://www.statista.com/statistics/241494/median-age-of-the-us-population/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/241494/median-age-of-the...
  • blakesterz 5y ago
    That's quite an interesting graph. I wonder if it is also influenced by things to do with average age or age of retirement, time spent in school, or something like that. Just looking at it makes me wonder about demographics/education/etc. That's about a 20% drop over the years, I would assume caused by a number of factors.
    • BeFlatXIII 5y ago
      My speculation is that it’s like the argument that minimum wages increase the skill floor for employment. However, it’s that a combination of automation and cost optimization eliminated all the marginal jobs, rather than the wage floor. Automation allows a salary employee to pick up what previously would have been a full-time minimum wage position under “other duties as assigned” without overworking them. Cost optimization meant that companies realized that they do not need their floors to be that sparkling clean, further reducing the number of low-wage/low-skill positions.
      • erhk 5y ago
        Tax the machines
  • tootie 5y ago
    I'd suspect this has a lot of to with women being in the workforce meaning men are less required to work relentlessly. More recently, it's the aging population. The chart for just prime age males is less dramatic: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LREM25MAUSM156S https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LREM25MAUSM156S Also, a topic that has been surprisingly quiet is that employment-population rate absolutely cratered to a near 50-year low during the pandemic. We had a positive report in the UNRATE last week, but participation is still digging out of an historic hole.
    • watwut 5y ago
      > I'd suspect this has a lot of to with women being in the workforce meaning men are less required to work relentlessly. Afaik, career men working hours went up after women went to work. The culture of overwork went up.
  • _Microft 5y ago
    Maybe is has to do with women entering the labor force? Here I plotted the labor force participation rate of women and men plus the sum of both. While the rate for men declines, the one for women increases. Update: here is a new graph without the assumption that there are equally many men and women (participation rates for each are now multiplied by the population size of each and normalized to total population). The interesting part is that the total labor participation rate is moving very little, just between ~59-67%. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=EFG8 https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=EFG8 // OLD: The sum of both moves between 120 and 135% (assumption here is that there are roughly as many men as there are women which should be approximately correct): https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=EFEs https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=EFEs
    • notriddle 5y ago
      I think that's horribly misleading. Obviously, the percentage of women in the workforce shot up after anti-discrimination laws were applied to sex, but since the turn of the century, that trend has leveled off and reversed. If you just look at the last 20 years, the percentage of men and women in the work force have both been going down. Using your own, new chart (EFG8), which I used DoL statistics to verify [1], the overall labor force participation rate dropped from 67 in 2000 to 63 right before the pandemic hit, almost monotonically. What happened 20 years ago? [1]: https://www.dol.gov/agencies/wb/data/facts-over-time/women-in-the-labor-force https://www.dol.gov/agencies/wb/data/facts-over-time/women-i... (specifically, "Labor force participation rate by sex, race and Hispanic ethnicity")
  • Lammy 5y ago
    The people guiding our economy won't risk the "wrong sorts" of people getting too many rights, having an income, and thinking they deserve to be able to own a home, start a family, and build any generational wealth. Now all the rest of us are feeling the fallout from it too. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS11300006 https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS11300006
• dougmwne 5y ago
  This seems like a kind rational economic choice. If there are not enough good jobs that can support independent living, providing for a spouse, buying a home or raising a family, then staying home with the easy accomplishment of video games makes sense. Most people never live outside their home states and can't afford to leave the support network of their family and close friends. If you grew up in a medium or high cost of living area, then you're sort of stuck. I work in tech and still, owning a home seems pretty distant, so I can't imagine how it must be for someone without job skills.
  • AndrewUnmuted 5y ago
    Until this year, I lived in the same place I grew up, one of the highest cost-of-living places on the planet: NYC. Until the pandemic, the goal of owning a home did seem totally out of reach for me, even with my remote SV tech job salary. Then I moved to an unincorporated community in TN, because NYC's lockdowns, mask mandates, and general cultural decay was too much for me to bear - financially, emotionally, and even ethically. I now own 15 acres of land with two houses on it. The median income in this part is <40k/yr and yet it's safer, friendlier, healthier, and best of all, much freer. High cost of living is a true killer of communities and the more expensive your area is, it's quite likely it's also a lot less free. If you can leave the major cities in the US, it's possible for life to become a whole lot nicer.
    • olivierestsage 5y ago
      Unsure why you're getting downvoted for this -- it makes good sense, and many could benefit from this kind of thing. I have a friend who moved from NYC to Ohio recently. He was bellyaching about it a lot (the move was for work), since he thought he would be so sad to leave the cultural opportunities of NYC, etc. Instead he has found that a) Ohio wasn't so bad after all, b) his stress-related conditions have evaporated, and c) he has more time to pursue what he loves doing in that environment.
      • ryandrake 5y ago
        > Unsure why you're getting downvoted for this Any hint that dense urban living is not the optimal lifestyle for everyone gets downvoted here. For example, here's my super-controversial anecdote from yesterday, that people took time out of their day to try to bury: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27450896 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27450896
• speeder 5y ago
  I lived with my parents on and off until I was 31, that was when I managed to marry and move out hopefully permanently this time. It is Anedacta... but I think I know what is going on. 1. The labor market is a mess, for example today I got another rejection letter from a job I sent my resume, thing is, I am literally perfect for the job, my resume (that I didn't tailor for it) matched perfectly what they asked, even the "additional" things, including the fact they wanted someone that made Hidden Object games before (I had a whole company to make those with millions of downloads). I have a strong impression hiring is just screwed, people often don't even read resumes, for example I had a company invite me to do a job I don't know how to do, only for the interviewer of the company realize they are wasting time (a company asked me to do ML work, I never listed ML anywhere in my resume). Also I am 33 now, and never had a job registered legally in my country, I only had contracts and "contracts". Also here having internship is mandatory to graduate, a lot of my friends failed to graduate beause they didn't found any internship even for free, to graduate myself I actually created a company and hired myself (it is legal to do that O.o). Now relationshipwise: I looked for relationships very hard, and kept finding only people wnating flings, including one person that scammed me (she claimed she would marry me and whatnot to convince me to have sex with her, since I wanted to marry virgin, after she got bored with me she declared that all she wanted was my body and kicked me out). Only reason I managed to marry at all, is that I went to a church, found a childhood friend there that also wanted to marry and was having similar issues, and I asked her right off the bat if she wanted to marry me then, and she said yes. (we are very happy, for those wondering...) If it wasn't for a lucky coincincidence (in case you don't believe in God or something... I only went to that church because my car broke that day when I was going elsewhere and going that church was in the situation at the time the logical option) I probably would still be alone. Same thing applies to a lot of my friends, many, many of them are single, and jobless, after a while some of them just give up on living properly and settle for videogames... videogames are not the culprit, they are the escape, they are a solution to have a life, even if virtual, after your real life becomes seemly impossible to live. EDIT: by the way, student debt doesn't help, for example I did got "legal" job offers, but to earn mininum wage (for example supermarket cashier), thing is, my student debt monthly payments was roughly twice the mininum wage, so accepting a mininum wage legal job would put me in further debt. Thankfully my Startup Kidoteca was a reasonable success and I paid my debts with it.
• newaccount2021 5y ago
  There's no need to over-analyze this - we're talking about a generation of useless oafs. Days spent playing video games or other couch-bound non-activities, eating trash food, shitposting on the internet. I wish there was some way we could exile them to an island.
• CydeWeys 5y ago
  Part of this problem is our societal failure to build enough housing to keep up with the increasing number of people, with a resulting increase in housing costs that has significantly outpaced the median wage. If you can't afford to live on your own, and can't afford housing where the jobs are located, then you're more likely to live with your parents and be unemployed.
  • BitwiseFool 5y ago
    Adding to this, we've also abandoned the idea of building out in the middle of nowhere and linking it to a city center with a rail line. I'd gladly buy a cheap home in the boonies if I could take a train into work instead of driving.
    • lazypenguin 5y ago
      That’s an interesting observation. I’ve always heard the argument that we need “more density” but I like this option as well.
      • danans 5y ago
        We do need density at the end of that rail line - dense towns connected to a dense metropolitan hub via a fast rail line. For example Ann Arbor to Detroit, Davis to Sacramento (neither of which have fast rail lines to connect them). What we've built instead for more than half a century is continuous radiating sprawl.
      • lotsofpulp 5y ago
        There is no way the tax base of the boonies can support the initial and operating costs of a rail line. Therefore it is not an option, and why you do not see it anywhere. Even suburbs cannot afford all of their ongoing infrastructure obligations, and why you see many dilapidated areas. This is all becoming apparent now because birthrates have plummeted hence what used to be masked by economic growth due to sheer population growth no longer has the ability to be papered over with increased tax collections due to increased population.
    • 5y ago
• Romulus968 5y ago
  I'm in the labor force, but live at home. I can absolutely afford to purchase a home. Why don't I? Because I'm not spending $250,000+ on 1400sq ft. These types of articles make it seem like some huge mystery as to why society is the way it is today. It's no mystery. Houses cost to much and employers don't pay enough.
  • BitwiseFool 5y ago
    I also can't compete with Blackrock and other professionally managed funds buying up swaths of homes tens of thousands of dollars over asking price because they want to rent them out later.
    • brianxp 5y ago
      let's fund our own town!
      • tacocataco 5y ago
        It's beyond my technical ability, but I always wished I was able to create an app where contractors could sign up to build a town "at cost" with everyone contributing their specialty. Each finished town would have an electrician/HVAC/etc for repairs or to other business with. Maybe that would be something to pivot towards. Start with volunteer work. "Let's clean up the beach 6/10". People could earn karma/upvotes from the others who also contributed that's worthless like here, or to spend on stuff donated. And I'd call it 4us. Some day it will happen. :)
        • BitwiseFool 5y ago
          Let's just fork China's social credit score system.
  • mynameisash 5y ago
    When my wife and I bought our house (Seattle area) six years ago, I was uneasy about spending $300k, and my family in the Midwest was aghast that we paid asking price. Anyone in this area would now laugh at my previous situation; I certainly do. We briefly considered buying a slightly larger house in the area, but everything is going for about $800k now. If I were just entering the job and housing market today here in the PNW, I would absolutely stay with my parents if I could. And I rather expect that my kids won't move out at 18.
• dijit 5y ago
  If the goal is gender equality: what's wrong with this? The idea that every able bodied person has to work is not supposed to be the way our society functions; at least not in the last 100,000 years.
  • version_five 5y ago
    Idle hands are the devil's plaything... Agreed that the post-war version of work is dated and that maybe we don't all need to get a job. But people need something meaningful to do, at the risk of mental health and other problems. So if the people in the article are all becoming artists or volunteers then great, but if they're sitting around bored it could lead to societal problems.
  • rightbyte 5y ago
    I guess most of these men are not living in houses made for multigeneration living, i.e. with wings, separate entrence or separate houses or similar.
  • ameister14 5y ago
    >The idea that every able bodied person has to work is not supposed to be the way our society functions; at least not in the last 100,000 years. What? I was under the impression that particularly in agrarian societies, everyone who was able to work, worked. Are you saying that surpluses allowed for a large class of people to just not work at all?
    • falcolas 5y ago
      > Are you saying that surpluses allowed for a large class of people to just not work at all? Apparently this is the case today, since it's happening. Historically, agrarian societies did require everyone to work - twice a year. During harvesting and planting, as much manpower as possible was needed. The rest of the time didn't require 40h of work 50 weeks out of the year. It left time for leisure, building, crafting, etc. We're also not really in a traditional agrarian society today; most of the work required to create food is done by a vast minority of society using force-multiplying tools.
• nodejs_rulez_1 5y ago
  We failed to bring up a generation of girls willing to be providers to a stay-at-home husband.
  • comeonseriously 5y ago
    Citations?
  • cashewchoo 5y ago
    I know this is bait, but I want to provide my experience as counter-example. I went to a STEM college where anyone who graduates could quite reasonably expect to be able to build themselves a middle-class career, live comfortably, and perhaps even have some economic mobility (moving from middle-class to upper-middle, mainly...). There weren't a lot of women there, and you would expect that what women were there would be disproportionately the kind of woman who would be interested in having a life-long career. Just anecdotally, looking at peers who graduated with me, that is not the case. Many are married, and many have chosen to end their careers (where finances allow) to stay at home. If anything, I would argue the main failing we've committed upon the young generation (regardless of gender) is to provide them an economic framework wherein more than a single-digit percent of wage earners can hope to raise a family on a single income. In my experience, there are a growing number of men who wish they could be stay-at-home dads if finances permitted. But instead, most households are dual-income out of necessity. And beyond that, we've also demonized living with your parents pretty thoroughly, so people are hesitant to save money and get free childcare by living with their extended family. Something else I want to mention is how poorly we've tailored the current world to making raising a family easier. Letting your kids go further than your lawn unsupervised is tantamount to child abuse now. Childcare is absurdly expensive, low-quality, low-availability (enrollment is headcount-capacity-limited in most places) and low-flexibility (many places either want your full-time enrollment or not at all. You can't just pick some days). And we've also demonstrated that we're, as a system, willing to totally f** over parents when disasters strike. Covid has been a total disaster for dual-income families with children. I've heard it was not uncommon for it to be "lucky" a partner was laid off because otherwise they would've had to quit, without unemployment benefits, to care for kids full-time. Anyway, my point is, we've made it really fucking inconvenient to have kids and now there's all this overly-simplistic sexist whinging from a certain segment of the population about how it's somehow all the fault of young women. It's disgusting both from a moral standpoint and in how intellectually lazy it is.
• andrewmcwatters 5y ago
  I see this on the fringes of those within my circle of friends. I know one man in this age cohort who doesn't seem to have a job, just plays video games all the time, and I don't get it. But one thing I think about is what he has been exposed to: this is what he knows. I don't think this individual I'm speaking of was raised with anything differently. In this same light, as I believe the two concepts are directly related: another friend of mine basically refuses to date anymore because he thinks the sort of culture of Tinder dating is a waste of time that favors women disproportionately. I suspect all of this is primarily cultural first, and not related specifically to work, the economy, pricing of good or services like buying a home and starting a family, which would come second. That being said, if we were just talking about young single men, well, of course they're staying at home. It makes no economic sense to move out and get an apartment. The cost of living in major metros makes renting nearly equivalent to paying a mortgage. Except no one is building affordable homes.
  • MyHypatia 5y ago
    I see this too. One thing that has struck me lately, is the similarity between the addictive nature of gambling and video games. Going to a casino once in a while or playing some video games with friends is fine. But the amount of time some people spend on video games really mimics a gambling addiction, except it's less frowned upon because they're mostly losing time instead of money. But if you consider the opportunity cost, they're losing a lot of money too.
    • hindsightbias 5y ago
      Have been going to conferences in Vegas for 30+ years. For a long time it was just incredibly depressing walking through the floors and seeing all the elder generation playing slots at all hours. Quite the motivator to never stop working, IMO. Now that Vegas is more young-focused, it's all age groups on the slots. Then I think, multiply those giant floors by 1000X and that's the gaming population.
    • supertrope 5y ago
      In American culture money and materialism is dominant. Labor, quality of life, and time are devalued. People complain that a plumber “didn’t do anything” and then billed $170. Or an ER physician didn’t do anything yet they still got a $$$$ bill. Expertise, attention, and simply showing up to get the job done doesn’t seem to have fundamental value in common culture. But if they received a prescription, or an MRI was used, or some parts were installed there’s more appreciation.
• vidanay 5y ago
  I really wish this stigma against living "at home" would go away. Multigenerational homes has been the standard for thousands of years, and still is in large portions of the world.
  • ravenstine 5y ago
    I both agree and don't at the same time. On one hand, there shouldn't be anything shameful about living "at home", especially if it's purposeful. (looking back, it probably would have made sense to stay with my folks even longer than I did in order to save more money) Yet living at home and not building anything into late adulthood tends not to be a good way to generate intergenerational wealth. Until the international economic paradigm changes, I can't see how it's a good thing for people to have nothing to pass on to their children.
    • BeFlatXIII 5y ago
      How many of these people will make the children on to whom they pass nothing?
  • MattGaiser 5y ago
    Indeed. I have a very multicultural background, but the dominant cultural view, at least when it comes to money, is Chinese. For us, living at home is not failure. Moving out without planning to start a family if you live in the same city as your parents is considered wasting money.
  • Gunax 5y ago
    People use 'living at home' as a stand-in for a set of properties: unemployed or lowly employed, low ambition, single, excess time on entertainment, etc. Of course they aren't always true individually (I know some of my facebook colleagues lived at home) but from a rough demographic perspective, it's true. We do this a lot: consider that teen pregnancy is understood to be unwanted, thwarting educational opportunities, etc. but in some religious communities a 17 year-old might be married and ready to bear children. It's just that's a very small proportion, and doesn't diminish that teen pregnancy is generally considered a problem.
• neonate 5y ago
  https://archive.is/gTqpD https://archive.is/gTqpD
• UncleOxidant 5y ago
  I've got two nephews aged 34 and 32 who still live at home and play video games all the time and rarely leave their rooms. Neither has ever had a job that lasted more than a month or so. Neither ever learned to drive even though they live in a town with little or no public transit. They haven't had any education beyond high school. They seem wholly unprepared to navigate life without their parents. It's a slow motion tragedy.
  • heroHACK17 5y ago
    Did we just become best friends?
  • izend 5y ago
    What will happen once their parents are gone?
    • UncleOxidant 5y ago
      I suppose they'll inherit the house if it's paid off by then and continue to live as they are for a time. They seem fond of instant ramen, so I guess maybe they're partially prepared. But then again, when the property tax comes due they'll likely not be able to pay it and eventually become homeless after the house proceeds run out. The future seems pretty bleak for them.
      • dominojab 5y ago
        According to IMF you'll own nothing and be happy™
      • vmception 5y ago
        > They seem fond of instant ramen, so I guess maybe they're partially prepared. For an early death They're already in their early-mid 30s, what outcome do you think is going to happen to make them even less integrated into society?
      • fossuser 5y ago
        They can probably just get a roommate to cover the tax and ramen expense or door dash one day a week or something. Having no rent cost is pretty big.
• SMAAART 5y ago
  This was a thing (and still is) in Europe. US ridiculed them, and now it's here. Also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NEET https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NEET
  • stagger87 5y ago
    > US ridiculed them What do you mean by this? Some people on some online forums made some jokes?
• grogenaut 5y ago
  I'm trying to get my son and his girlfriend to live at home for a few years post graduation. He wants to move out into a place in seattle. She's a bit more about saving money. The math is that they'd have all loans paid off and a 200k down payment about 4 years out of college if they live with us, and they'd have loans paid off if in 4 years and < 15k savings if they moved to a smaller condo. Important side note: they're both major home bodies so they wouldn't take advantage of living in a cool neighborhood. To me it makes such massive sense to just bum it in their seperate upstairs 800sqft apartment and cheap food/rent/etc to bootstrap their lives instead of moving out. But it's a fight. Luckily so far she's moved him from being very much in the NEET camp to actually looking for a job. But covid completely nerfed my ability to push him to have a job last summer (his pre-junior summer).
  • plif 5y ago
    Something about the savings math doesn't check out, especially given the NEET aspect. 200k savings in 4 years out of school is a lot.
    • lotsofpulp 5y ago
      $185k/48 = $3.85k in monthly costs saved by not living independently. I can see it as being possible in Seattle, but on the high end. I would assume comparable abodes to sharing your parents house would be cheaper. I also would not have wanted to stay with my parents in my 20s though, at least not with my specific parents.
      • fossuser 5y ago
        Yeah - I think it's highly dependent on what your parents are like. I've known people who lived at home for a year or two to save money, but I wouldn't have been able to have any independence.
    • gnicholas 5y ago
      Yeah $200k of savings in 4 years is maybe $40k/yr of savings, plus optimistic investment returns for the first 3 years. But GP also mentioned all loans paid off, so that adds another $10-20k/yr, depending on what their loans look like. It's not impossible to save that much money straight out of school, but if you're making that much then you could still save a decent chunk even if you're paying $2k/mo for an apartment (which comes to $100k over 4 years).
• shimonabi 5y ago
  I had a pretty rough time between the years 2004 and 2016. I dropped out of college for a career track I dreamt about since childhood and I didn't know what to do with my life. I had no job experience and the recession hit also. If you live in a small country, where everyone is related on average 2.5 degrees away to a random person, it's pretty hard to get a job if you don't have any family connections. After several years I managed to get a warehouse and courier job through a crazy family connection with some boss of a firm. I enrolled in college again in 2010 and then went to work abroad to gain some credibility in my field. The job abroad was paid well, but soul-crushing, so a few months ago I found a job in my field at home for half the salary. I never played any videogames.
  • troupe 5y ago
    Are you in a field where you need to work onsite or can you work remotely?
    • shimonabi 5y ago
      The boss at my firm doesn't understand the concept of remote work. I did the job interview with my mask on and when there were hard restrictions on moving between cities in my country, so I had to have a signed document with me if the policed stopped me. I got my second shot 2 weeks ago and I'm working as usual.
      • troupe 5y ago
        Perhaps at your firm, but if the work you do doesn't require you to be onsite, there are other firms that may not have a problem with remote work.
  • leesec 5y ago
    There are an insane number of job openings right now.
    • MattGaiser 5y ago
      I assume that he is not American from the "small country" bit.
• fnord77 5y ago
  what do these young men have to look forward to in life? home ownership and having a family probably seem so financially out of reach that kids are not even trying.
  • missedthecue 5y ago
    Even in countries with extremely generous family support from the government, the birth rate is low and slowing.
  • spideymans 5y ago
    I'd suggest this represents the dividing line between Millennials and Generation Z. Millennials (at least those who graduated before the 2008 financial crisis) had legitimate aspirations of home ownership, starting a family, and achieving the typical American Dream milestones. Many of them have not given up those dreams, despite numerous setbacks. On the other hand, Generation Z never had those aspirations in the first place. They don't expect to ever own a home. They understand the nuclear family is financially unreachable. Life milestones after university graduation by and large do not exist for Gen Z kids.
    • esarbe 5y ago
      Might be a good thing in the long run. The nuclear family was a stupid idea anyway, putting the necessity of income over the necessity of an (extended) family. Children are not supposed to be raised by a single pair of mother and father, that's not how humans have evolved to grow up. Humans have always been raised by the extended family and only in the last two-hundred years we've invented this crazy concept of a 'nuclear family'.
  • Mirioron 5y ago
    Video games, movies, books, and other such entertainment. I genuinely believe that this is what they're looking forward to.
    • shrimp_emoji 5y ago
      Toss programming in, and you've listed off about all of the best things humanity's ever offered to date.
• MattGaiser 5y ago
  I have a very multicultural background, but the dominant cultural view, at least when it comes to money, is Chinese. For us, living at home is not failure. Moving out without planning to start a family if you live in the same city as your parents is considered wasting money. You instead use it as an opportunity to save a pile of money and invest. How much of this is just cultural change? It isn't failure to launch. It is wanting to launch with a larger rocket with more fuel.
  • supertrope 5y ago
    I grew up in a school district with median household income >$100k. Several schools had blue ribbon awards from the federal department of education. There were still families where kids were given 30 days notice to move out upon turning 18. Some families were under so much financial pressure the parents wanted the kids to drop out of high school at 16 and work.
  • xputer 5y ago
    It's also much harder to buy your own place these days.
  • InvertedRhodium 5y ago
    I would tend to agree were it not for the decreasing participation in the labor force - that's not doing anything to increase the size of your rocket.
  • 01100011 5y ago
    This. Caucasian, US born male here. IMO, Western culture is less suited to many of the challenges of the modern world. I don't want to imply that Asian culture is somehow flawless, but there is quite a bit the west can learn if it wants to be efficient and stable in the near future. My half-baked thought is that you can look at world population growth over time(https://ourworldindata.org/world-population-growth https://ourworldindata.org/world-population-growth) and note that East and SE Asian population density has been higher for much longer than in the west. It stands to reason that either some aspects of culture have adapted to this, or that the population density somewhat results from a conducive cultural factor. Obviously it's much more complicated than that, but I hope I've made my point. That said, I think there are forces at work which are putting special pressure on young people today. Whether it is related to declining testosterone, cultural shifts against traditional masculinity and success, negative information overload, cheap and ubiquitous entertainment and distractions, economic forces... I don't know. I think it's good to note that living at home isn't necessarily a bad thing, but there does seem to be something more insidious affecting our youth today.
• symlinkk 5y ago
  I don’t blame them. All of the necessities are less and less attainable day by day. House prices are rising out of control. College education is extremely expensive, and jobs require more and more degrees and credentials. Dating apps are heavily biased towards women. But entertainment at home is more attainable than ever! Cheap high speed internet, a plethora of fun games to play, tons of people online to socialize with.
• hardwaregeek 5y ago
  Video game addiction is a real problem. I spent my freshman year of college rooming with man-children who played video games non-stop. They didn't explore the city, they didn't meet new people, they just played video games in the dark, screaming into their headsets and eating their takeout at their desk. People can certainly have a healthy, fruitful relationship to video games but since then I haven't felt the need to touch a game.
  • echelon 5y ago
    I know people are different and I'm not wired the same way, but I have trouble understanding how people can play games for more than a few hours a week. Games like Pac Man and Tetris are algorithmic workloads. It's not much different than driving a semi or forklift, except you're not paid by a company for the work you do. It puts human brains closer to acting and performing as algorithmic worker bee agents. Modern AAA titles are the same thing, just with more degrees of freedom. I understand that there are dopamine triggers, but game engines subject players to the same repetitive thing over and over until the game ends. Kill this thing, collect 12 pelts, etc. There aren't very many variations on this theme, either. I can't grapple with how this squares with the limited time we have in life. I think the best argument from my perspective is that Animal Crossing has you literally working to pay off a fake mortgage to buy digital items you don't need. You shouldn't stress out over a game. I've enjoyed games for their mood, setting, music, and narrative, but gameplay itself is work. I'd rather just have a movie or narrative story. I already work too much.
    • christkv 5y ago
      Most games are power fantasies as well as narratives. You get to role play as a overpowered avatar.
    • zabzonk 5y ago
      > I'd rather just have a movie or narrative Open world games _are_ the equivalent of movies or narratives. think Skyrim, for example.
      • 5y ago
• jedimastert 5y ago
  The phrase "living at home" made me think of stay-at-home partners as opposed to living with parents, which led me expecting a very different vibe of the article
• cjohnson318 5y ago
  We moved to a suburb built around 1992, and our street had most of the original first residents. Out of say ten houses of original residents, three houses had sons in their 30's that still lived at home. (One guy was a welder and has since moved out, so I believe he was just saving money for a downpayment somewhere.) Snide comments about "kids these days" aside, housing is much more expensive than it used to be, compared to median household earnings. [Edit] I'm totally guilty of snide comments about "kids these days"; I wasn't directing that at anyone.
• belorn 5y ago
  What are the things that motivates them, and what do they themselves want to do in life? I ask this because much of the undertone in the article and in this thread is about the failure of meeting the gender role expectations that are put on young men. Do they have a job and a car? Have they studied hard so they can get a good job in order to support a wife and kid? Culture in the last several decades have hammered down on the negative aspects of stereotyping. A person who is 35 has gone through a life time of TV, movie and politics that on repeat has talked about the negative of gender roles for women, while the expectations on men has remained fairly unchanged. I do not find it strange at all if an increasing portion of men under this culture has rejected the role put on them. Which goes back to the original question I started with. What motivates them and what do they want to do with their life? If we want to avoid the slow motion tragedy, maybe the way forward is to help them answer those question in the absent of imposed gender roles.
  • teawrecks 5y ago
    When I was probably 18 I asked a friend/coworker who was going to community college what they wanted to do after college and they just didn't know. I couldn't wrap my head around that. As far back as I can remember, I always had an answer when an adult asked me "what I want to be when I grow up". It wasn't always a coherent answer, but I always knew what stuff I found interesting. I don't know why it's different for some people, but it is. I have to think it's something we just don't put emphasis on in our education system or by parents. So pop culture does it for us. When I was a kid everyone wanted to be someone famous; a singer, an athlete, an actor, etc. Today is no different, everyone wants to be an influencer, a streamer, etc. I think we need to make it a point for kids to understand from a young age that not everyone can be the famous person, neither should everyone want to be. There are so many other options, they only want fame because they don't know anything else.
    • yibg 5y ago
      I think you might be the odd one out here. I don't have stats for it, but looking at myself and people around me, most didn't really know what they want to do for a career after school. School typically doesn't really prepare you well for figuring out what you want to do, especially secondary and prior.
• aminozuur 5y ago
  I know some guys like that, and all of them grew up without their biological father in the household. Anyone else notice this pattern? Could modern families (with step fathers, or without any father) contributed to men failing to become independant?
  • brianxp 5y ago
    From anecdotal experience my father abandoned us I used to be a NEET in my late teen years. (but I also used to and still live in a very dangerous place, where I could regularly see people being killed or botched, something that could have contributed to me staying home) What saved me was that I had a big interest on computers and learned at the time to do basic stuff like toying around with php (when it used to be big) and html. One day on going through the neighborhood park I met a guy who told me he was a software developer and his company was looking for inexperienced people in exchange for the minimum wage and so my story as a developer (although I'm a very SUBPAR one) started
  • techsin101 5y ago
    for whatever it's worth, my bio dad has been super hard on me, but it did push me to into going all out in terms of starting a career albeit at much psychological pain. was it worth it? i dont know maybe few years of pain for life long career.
• thepasswordis 5y ago
  Is anybody advocating for them or encouraging them in any way? I can’t think of a single group which aims to highlight men, uplift men, and encourage masculine behavior. These guys grew up in a school system of almost entirely women teachers, and popular media tells them that if they are successful in any way, it is due to oppression. It’s no wonder why they’re not succeeding. We spent the last 15 years telling them that their success is evil. Who are their role models supposed to be exactly?
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  • cjohnson318 5y ago
    Oh please. There's nothing wrong with the way female teachers teach.
    • thepasswordis 5y ago
      Is that what I said? I said that these young men don't have strong positive male role models.
      • cjohnson318 5y ago
        > These guys grew up in a school system of almost entirely women teachers... Implies there's something wrong with the way women teach. If you meant to say, "young men don't have strong positive male role models", something most people would agree with, then you should have said that.
        • shkkmo 5y ago
          > Implies there's something wrong with the way women teach. No, you are uncharitably reading that into the statement.
    • voldacar 5y ago
      I don't think you get it. Young men today grow up almost entirely in female-dominated spaces. That is not normal historically. In fact it would be strange if it didn't lead to any pathologies.
• thepasswordis 5y ago
  So many comments here seem to miss the point here. These aren’t men who are working, but saving money living at home. They’re not participating in the labor force at all.
  • partiallypro 5y ago
    It doesn't say where the cross over it, we can assume that -some- are living and home and don't participate at all, but that's not how the stats are calculated. They are calculated separately, but the article is saying there is a connection (duh) but it's not the only factor for people living at home.
  • BeFlatXIII 5y ago
    I wonder how many of the men are total NEETs and how many simply don’t participate in the formal economy but do earn money under the table?
• tristor 5y ago
  This thread is full of people talking about cultural, societal, and economic factors that may influence this outcome. I've yet to see anyone mention the factor that I wish we more thoroughly investigated: health. This has been discussed in some articles at length, but we still haven't identified primary causes, but testosterone levels are falling in men (at a given age) at a pretty steady pace year over year. This is likely associated to the prevalence of endocrine disrupting chemicals in our food and water supply, such as BPA in plastics and PCBs in common food-oriented coatings (Teflon). Adding on to that, there are also phytoestrogens from soy lecithin in many food products, and we also had periods where growth hormones were commonplace in dairy products. There is a growing body of evidence, not yet fully interconnected causally, that seems to indicate that the introduction of these sorts of hormones and endocrine disruptors into our food and water supply has had marked effects on health, everything from the increasing epidemic of obesity and obesity-related illnesses like diabetes, to earlier ages of menarche in young girls, and increasing prevalence of gynecomastia in young boys. I, for various reasons, know numerous people who fall soundly into the NEET stereotype here in the US, still living at home (or in extreme poverty) playing video games and doing menial labor well into their 40s, despite having marketable and useful skillsets that would provide them gainful employment. Without exception, every person I know like this suffers from mental health issues, predominantly anxiety, all are obese, and all consume and have consumed throughout their life heavy amounts of processed food and take-out fast-food, which both increase exposure to chemicals like Teflon (often used to line take-out containers). Their generally unhealthy diet and lifestyle throughout childhood and into adulthood is likely a key factor in the outcome of their life, clearly affects their general health as adults, and is likely a contributor to their mental health issues and defeatist attitudes. The absence of any serious public health movement to improve the food and water supply of all Americans makes it unsurprising to me that we now find ourselves in the position we are in. Compounding this with the absence of universal mental healthcare and the comorbidity between depression, anxiety, and obesity, makes it unsurprising as well.
  • mywittyname 5y ago
    Could be. But lack of exercise would also lead to low T, and I'm quite confident that middle aged man without a job who lives with parents aren't exactly staying fit.
• deleted 5y ago
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• paulpauper 5y ago
  I don't think it's a tragedy. The overly dramatic media and pundits get this all wrong in labeling it such. Young people are simply responding to incentives to live at home longer. Living expenses keep going up relative to inflation and wages, such as home prices, rent, insurance, etc. Living at home is a good way save money, even for the employed. Family formation is expensive and fraught with risks such as divorce and having to pay child support. In having to choose between playing video games at home, versus a low-paying job and commuting, video games may be the rational choice depending on one's individual preferences. So someone who values leisure over money, would stay at home. Someone who has a higher preference for money than leisure would go to work even if the pay sucks. I don't see anything wrong with people voluntarily choosing leisure over work, because there will always be some people who will choose work over leisure. Someone who makes a lot of money may be more inclined to work, not because they are less lazy than someone who plays games at home, but that earning $100+/hour and no video games is more enticing of proposition than $11/hour and not playing video games; if you give the $11/hour guy $100/hour, then playing video games at home becomes a less attractive proposition.
  • nxc18 5y ago
    The problem comes in when their parents die and they have no path to supporting themselves. Not everyone has an inheritance to look forward to. Living at home and working isn’t really a problem, but entering the labor force at 40+ is not going to go well.
    • paulpauper 5y ago
      Millions of jobs were lost due to Covid, many permanently. This was on top of jobs lost in 2008-2010. Each wave permanently removes a bunch of people from the workforce. Pre-2008 it was easier for the unemployed to rebound and find work even without advanced degrees or advanced skills. Not anymore. So there are a lot of people not contributing, either on disability , living with friends or parents, or on some form of welfare. Yet, in validation of MMT, as evidenced by low inflation, low treasury bonds yields, and the strong dollar, supporting these people is not as economically prohibitive as originally believed. The US economy has surpassed the rest of the world since Covid and since 2008 in spite of a lot of people not contributing. A single Bezos or Musk in terms of econ productivity is equal to millions of low-contributing people. In an ideal world, maybe everyone would contribute, but that is not the world we live in.
• MeinBlutIstBlau 5y ago
  >The parental home can be a refuge, but also a trap that keeps young men from launching their careers. This took me a while to realize in my own experience, but certainly opened my eyes to how my own parents enabled me in this trap. "Stay at home to save money!" was constantly said to me, only for me to eventually realize, it is in fact stunting me. My dad would occasionally say "go out and do something," but meanwhile, I'd be interrogated for doing said thing so they can know every detail about it. It's why I tended toward videogames and the computers in general. They were things I could do by myself without an inquisition into my own life seeing as I barely was able to do anything privately. While I personally was only a NEET for a few months at a time for about a year, I never was fully committed to the lifestyle. Ultimately for myself I had massive reality check in how the world worked and I could at least have a modicum of success in it. Partly also to blame is heavy religion not coinciding with the culture as well as not teaching a kid how to adapt to society so I always felt like an outcast. Eventually I became atheist and eventually determining what it would take for me to give up, I finally broke free. It was very much like in Office Space where you just don't care anymore. You don't care if you make a faux pas, don't care if you couldn't meet that deadline, don't care if you disappointed someone. It snapped me out of it, but also made me into a very bitter on the inside. Knowing my parents didn't exactly want me staying at their house led to further feelings of being resented for existing. So I ended up being pretty sociopathic knowing I can't tell people my true intentions for doing things. I realize it's messed up and wrong, but much like the story of the scorpion and the frog, it's in my nature. I at least am cognizant that it's wrong, but I refuse to change because I've been able to find success in it.
• courtf 5y ago
  We ran out of frontier, and are rapidly running out of the sort of high-risk, high-reward opportunities that get young men excited. We need a new gold rush. No one wants to sit in a cubicle for 35 years, grinding out pennies while having all your value extracted by a cadre of semi-literate, power-tripping middle managers who punish anyone that displays talent. Not only have a series of crashes in 2008 and 2020 firmly demonstrated just how rigged the game is, but everyone can see what everyone else is doing on social media. There's little opportunity to trick these men into believing they should work hard when they can clearly see so many people skating through life without any effort, and watch laborers have their livelihoods stripped from them during crashes while billionaire fortunes double. Bloomberg has lost the plot completely, they don't yet realize that the jig is up. Want to get people excited about work? Bring back drinking and loud music at the office. Let people be themselves without having to put on a deliriously upbeat, false persona while sitting through endless, pointless meetings about nothing. Stop asking them to constantly fellate the worthless middle management caste. Pay them well.
• digglet90 5y ago
  Staying at home and playing video games/yield farm is the most incentivised activity right now. This liberal-moral capitalism breaks my heart sometimes lol. Reap what you sow!
  • deft 5y ago
    Pretty much. The economists created this mess using their magic number science, then look down at the broken scramble and are confused? Assuming rational actors...
• deft 5y ago
  Cool, why should they be doing otherwise? Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out.
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
• atlgator 5y ago
  Isn't this the logical outcome of giving women preference for college admission, scholarships, and employment opportunities? Does this not indicate policy success?
• vsareto 5y ago
  Idk, playing video games all day without any responsibilities seems like they’ve straight-up won life. Most of us have to work for that privilege or be born with a trust fund in our name. Only losing side to this path is a lack of romance or intimacy. No one’s likely gonna remember you anyway, for better or worse. Might as well enjoy your time on Earth with some of the most immersive storytelling humanity has invented.
  • carrolldunham 5y ago
    Yes, you have to ask how many people don't realize their critiquing has an unconscious jealousy behind it. I used to be a student bum and lived in a van which prompted a guy from a house in the street to come out and berate me, at first he said I was scaring his kids but we kept talking because he seemed to want mostly to reconcile in his mind how I lived like this. He had several "but don't you.. but don't you want". To my "No, no no, I'm just happy... " Eventually I admitted something along the lines of "But I'VE had to work so hard [to get the things that I require for happiness]" (it's not fair)
    • ip26 5y ago
      There certainly is something enviable in someone who can be completely happy, content, and satisfied as a bum living in a van. But I don't think the average young adult man living at home is doing so because they have reached Enlightenment.
  • tamaharbor 5y ago
    Yeah. Sounds like a real winner.
    • vsareto 5y ago
      Compared to who? The number of peasants who'd have taken that over toiling in the fields all day probably number in the millions.
      • the_lonely_road 5y ago
• flippinburgers 5y ago
  Men are not doing as well as women in school. If you look in the wrong places on the internet, media, or daily life, all you see is negativity towards masculinity. In addition, there doesn't appear to be any broad social system that is geared towards supporting men. The fact that men don't tend to be a socially adept doesn't help. This all feels like the perfect storm and there are plenty of people who act like "men have had it coming and deserve any ensuing suffering". I don't know how to fix this but I am sure glad I am no longer a young man.
  • soucy 5y ago
    Bullshit. There are problems but it's not because of some "war on masculinity". The real issues are economic.
    • ratsmack 5y ago
      It is mostly economic, but there is also a constant attack on masculinity in young boys.
      • deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
      • XorNot 5y ago
        Such as?
        • twh270 5y ago
          Are you kidding?? I've had numerous conversations about this with my son, starting when he told me he didn't want to grow up to be a "man". Because of what he had absorbed from culture/society. Today, men are told that we are disposable; Neanderthals; a legacy of the last century and the cause of everything that's wrong in the country/world; that we're patriarchal oppressors; that we're unnecessary and obsolete. The word "masculine" is at best a negative connotation, and usually meant as an attack. So, yeah, I have first-hand experience with this. On the flip side, from talking with a couple of my son's female friends, they feel the pressure of being told that they can do and be everything. All at the same time. That's not great either. The best response is to disengage from media and just be yourself. Easier said than done sometimes, for sure, but that's the longterm win.
• Tycho 5y ago
  Is this a new phenomenon in any real sense, I wonder. All through history, haven’t there always been many “surplus men” who didn’t find a place in their surrounding society.
• deadite 5y ago
  >The fact that men don't tend to be a socially adept doesn't help. Men are socially adept in their society and a society of their peers. Just not in this one which seeks to break them down and punishes them for not being women.
  • ziziyO 5y ago
    When all you’ve known is privilege, equality can feel like oppression.
    • t-writescode 5y ago
      Forgive me, but then it is not the kind of equality we should strive for. I want everyone on better, higher footing, not the highly footed to be brought down.
      • developer93 5y ago
        The point of this comment was not that men should be bought down, but that being asked to consider someone else feels like an imposition when you're not accustomed to doing that.
      • CiceroCiceronis 5y ago
        I’m reminded of a joke, which I’m often reminded of when I think about this (excellent) point. Two revolutionaries, one young and bright-eyed and the other old and grizzled, are sitting together. The older asks the younger what he fights for, to which the latter responds “For there to be no more rich people!” The older one sighs and says “How times have changed! Back in my day, we fought for there to be no more poor people.”
      • ziziyO 5y ago
        Are you saying that all lives matter?
        • t-writescode 5y ago
• dorkmind 5y ago
  > fewer young men are in the work force Hmm.. I should change my name to "Fewer Young Men" and get a job!!
• burade 5y ago
  29 here, living at home. I do have somewhat of a career though. I Honestly don't know when I'll leave. I have the skills to live alone, but my self-esteem is so low and my social life so limited that it gets really scary to leave.
• mbrodersen 5y ago
  Read “The Coddling of the American Mind”. It pretty much nails what is going on.
• motohagiography 5y ago
  > Improvements in video-game technology help account for young men’s detachment from the labor force, according to a 2017 paper by economists from Princeton, the University of Chicago, and the University of Rochester. It found that an increase in the playing of video games by men 21-30 accounted for somewhere between 38% and 79% of the differential in the decline in their time spent on paid work vs. the smaller decline of work by older men. Attributing economic trends to video games seems lazy and dumb, given all the other potential factors. The de-facto decriminalization of marijuana isn't mentioned, and as much fun as it might be, there is nothing harmless about it, and drug use appears in pretty much every other explanation of social decline for other groups, but we don't seem to talk about it. It isn't boomer ditch weed shake anymore, it's 25% THC. In Toronto, even illegal dispenseries were given essential service status during lockdowns. That's only in the last 5 years, but those are the critical career years difference between 25 and 30 for one of the biggest demographic boom generations in the last century, and this sets their trajectory. These men just weren't raised well or with adequate tools. It's that simple. Many have been actively sabotaged by parents who used their kids as a source of narcissistic supply. Their dads' heroes were rock stars, who in hindsight were mostly guys who dressed like women and made a spectacle of complaining. Boomer and Gen X men as a cohort weren't much to emmulate. Compared to defeating global totalitarianism or building the internet, those in-between generations of corporate rock and blockbuster movies were a pitiful enterprise. While I sympathize with the story of these young men, talking about mental illness and drug and alcohol abuse among young women is effectively taboo. Therapist friends tell me that young women are drinking themselves blind to hook up with randoms because they feel pressured to by their peers who encourage it to justify themselves. Sure, some really like it, but the ones who actually do don't challenge their friends to keep up with them. Peaches wrote a great song about how the rest of them feel. (Interestingly, Peaches ultimately became what she truly wanted to be: she is millenial womens' Joni Mitchell. When it lands what that means, you can begin to see.) The article isn't about young women, but they're suffering just as much and they are so much more harmed by the culture because their stakes are higher. That men need each other with privacy to develop and thrive is an ancient principle, and almost impossible in modern society. However, the solutions are still right here, but they require effort, persistence, and risk - the very things that society makes the most scarce of all. Put simply, men are not meant to look at pictures and representations, we are meant to live in the world and engage it directly. It's time to wake up.
• goatse_aas 5y ago
  Men are dirtbags. 97% of murders worldwide are committed by men.
• paulcole 5y ago
  Jesus these comments are some of the most toxic in HN history.
  • shrimp_emoji 5y ago
    This all exposes the absurd, meathook barbarism encoded by our evolution and why the future rightfully belongs to our eusocial, sexless pod clone successors. And then their cybernetic successors. And then their post-biological, pure energy metabolism successors. And then their singularity hive mind fusion. Or something
• lkrubner 5y ago
  What should strong, stupid men do? Male participation in the economy peaked in the 1950s. It began to decline as the USA automated agriculture. Millions of years of evolution gave us some men who are very strong, but very stupid. There used to be an abundance of jobs for such men. Agriculture, in particular, provided endless jobs for such people. Some of these jobs paid surprisingly well. When I was very young, I spent 6 summer/winter cycles working at Mack's Apples: https://macksapples.com/ https://macksapples.com/ They paid piece rate. You got $1.25 per bucket of apple's that you picked. You could make $14 an hour, then; adjusting for inflation that's about $24 an hour now. I'm not especially strong, nor especially stupid, but I was able to make decent money, back before I got started in tech. It was the best paying job available to me, back then. Those jobs no longer exist. (That apple orchard focused on "Pick Your Own Apples" where the gross margins are better, plus they planted a few short trees that could be easily harvested by untrained high school students. The orchard cut down most of the big trees, because those trees required skill to harvest.) But again, what should we do with very strong, very stupid men? There used to be an abundance of jobs for them, some of which paid well. Nowadays there are no jobs for them. I can't see how or when this trend reverses. The era of good paying jobs for stupid people has ended, and I don't know how it could ever come back. See the chart here: https://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2007/jan/wk2/art03.htm https://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2007/jan/wk2/art03.htm You can plainly see that men have been leaving the labor force since the 1950s. Recent events are less influential than the overall trend, which was more dramatic during 1950-1990. The loss of agriculture was huge, and then later the deindustrialization. Seriously, it is going to take some real imagination to create a positive vision for stupid people in the future. Please note, I'm using the word "stupid" here partly to overstate the point. Hopefully everyone is aware that there are many different types of knowing, not all of which resembles the book knowledge taught in schools. But the point is that the economy now favors book knowledge taught in schools. Those other forms of knowing are important, and were shaped by millions of years of evolution, and were once crucial to our survival, but right now we have an economy that does not pay for those other kinds of knowing. (I have a friend who did poorly in high school and never went to college. He is a fanatic birder and environmentalist. He claims he knows over 2,000 bird call songs. I believe him; I've been in the woods with him and he knows a lot. But he can't get a job identifying bird songs.)
  • 5y ago
• aidenn0 5y ago
  "...living at home?" I know what they meant, but taken literally, where else would they be living?
• deleted 5y ago
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• whereistimbo 5y ago
  Hah, I thought I'm totally a unique snowflake, guess what, there are A LOT of man that had similarities with me (worth noting that I'm a feminine gay man). I plan to keep becoming like this (living in my parent's home and not working at all) until, either I'm getting kicked out of home, my parents died, or I'm being forced to work. If all the comfort will be gone then I will do suicide (NO please don't lecture me about this. IT'S MY CHOICE). My life motto: tidak ingin bersusah-payah
  • iaHN 5y ago
    Born in a diamond mine It's all around you, but you can't touch it Sayin', "God, make me famous" "If you can't, just make it painless"
  • i_am_new_here 5y ago
    > then I will do suicide It's very difficult (to commit suicide) and you'll likely still not do it, then.
  • whereistimbo 5y ago
    I'm relieved I can still reply, I'm just adding that I'm not planning to suicide right now, but maybe I consider it later.
• fighterpilot 5y ago
  How much of this is due a modern abundance of addictive substances and activities, combined with men's inclination towards addiction? Online video games, opiates, online gambling, alcohol, fast food. Many of these are inventions of the latter 20th century, and have been optimized to be more addictive over time. I don't think this is sufficient to explain all the effect, but perhaps it plays a role by aiding mens' escapism.
• ccity88 5y ago
  Reading a lot of comments on this thread, I see many that are oblivious and out of touch at best, and disingenuous at worst. I'm 22 and I've been living with my parents my entire life; I have an Ok salary living in London, the reason I haven't taken the next step of moving out is because financially it doesn't make sense. I could get a place tomorrow and have that independence, but I won't be saving anything, and I'll never be able to a mortgage, I'll be renting for the rest of my life. I'm going to have to live with other people anyway (house/flat mates), so why not stay with family instead? I save on rent, its a good deal? Many of my friends and cohorts are in a similar position, in a large major city like London living with parents until 24-25 is completely the norm. Our generation has it the worst. Entry level jobs are harder to get, entry level pay is peanuts compared to living costs, accommodation costs are through the roof, and for many of us the dream of owning a home is just that, a dream. So colour me less than surprised to see young men living at home when an entire generation has been disenfranchised by a society that doesn't give a rats ass about young people.
  • esarbe 5y ago
    > Our generation has it the worst. Haha. No. I admit that your generation didn't have a golden spoon shoved in your mouths like the generations from 1950 to 1970, but your generation is far from having it worst. I do however think that you are on to something when you say that a generation of young men has been disenfranchised. There are no social media campaigns telling young men that they are OK the way you are, no preferential treatment for college or university admission, to preferential treatment in hiring for men, no men-exclusive training courses, ... This is problematic because it alienates a lot of people and drives them away from a fruitful interaction with society.
• techsin101 5y ago
  90% of the problem is housing prices literally rent/buy both are out of reach of all. Why work if you job wont even cover full rent?
• stephenr 5y ago
  Why do articles keep using the phrase “living at home” to describe “living with their parents”. Do you know what I call(ed) every house/apartment I’ve ever lived in, regardless of my parents locality? “Home”.
• IkmoIkmo 5y ago
  I wonder how much of these developments remain when correcting for factors we don't necessarily deem to be an issue. For example, between 1960 and today life expectancy in the US grew by 10 years. If we look at educational attainment, we also see massive positive changes. [0] From 60% completing less than high school in 1960, to 9% today, and those with degrees grew from 4% to 37%. If we live longer and educate ourselves for longer, it makes sense to delay certain behaviours and milestones in life, such as moving out of your parents' home, marrying, having kids, getting a job. This would typically not be something to be very concerned about, rather it would typically be something public policy would aspire to achieve. However, suppose you plot these milestones and behaviours on an age-timeline (from 0 to 100 for example) and the behaviours and milestones all shift 3 years to the right for the abovementioned reasons (5 years more education, 10 years of higher higher life expectancy). If you're a journalist who then selects a range on this age-timeline (e.g. 20 to 30), you'll obviously find that a smaller share of the people in this narrow range will have met those milestones. Taken out of context, it's worrying. Within context, it might be entirely natural. Of course there are genuine, objective problems as well that I'm not denying. But the issues might be overstated, as well. I'd like to see a more nuanced, more accurate view, correcting for certain factors instead of just selling a one-sided warning piece. If I look at my own generation I feel in many ways much more empowered and independent compared to what my parents (anecdotally), yet I did live at home slightly longer than my mother for example. However I had a better education, started a company at a young age, travelled to four continents by myself as a teenager with my own funds. My mom moved out earlier than I did with financial support from her parents, and married sooner. But she was not as free or independent. [0] https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/visualizations/time-series/demo/fig_2.png https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/visualizat...
• Khaine 5y ago
  Young Men Who Endorse The Masculine Ideal of Success Enjoy Greater Psychological Wellbeing. [1] Recently it’s been difficult to avoid the mantra that masculinity is toxic. There’s that viral Gillette advert encouraging men to be nicer (provoking a mix of praise, scorn and outrage); and the claim from the American Psychological Association (APA), in its promotion for its new guidelines on working with men and boys, that “traditional masculinity—marked by stoicism, competitiveness, dominance and aggression—is, on the whole, harmful” – a message welcomed by some, but criticised by many others, including Steven Pinker who dubbed it “ludicrous” and the British clinical neuropsychologist Vaughan Bell, who described the campaign as “an amazing misfire“. The APA report has been criticised on many grounds, including its oversight of the biological roots of masculinity, but the most frequently mentioned issue is with the overly simplistic, sweeping nature of the “masculinity is toxic” message. Traditional masculinity clearly reflects a host of values, beliefs and behaviours, some of which may indeed be harmful in certain circumstances, but some of which may also be beneficial, at least some of the time. Coincidentally, a paper in the January issue of the APA journal Psychology of Men and Masculinity captures just a little of this complexity. Responding to the lack of longitudinal research on this topic, and the concerns that potential positive aspects of masculinity have been overlooked, the new study measured nearly 300 young male college students’ endorsement of traditional masculinity at one time point, in the spring of their freshman year, and then measured their wellbeing six months later. The findings are mixed, but given the recent cultural emphasis on toxic masculinity, one result stands out: young men who, on the “Conformity to Masculine Norms” scale, more strongly endorsed the masculine ideal of “success and winning” (they agreed with statements like “In general, I will do anything to win”), tended to score higher on psychological wellbeing six months later. “Men who adhere to this norm may experience a sense of mastery and achievement through their accomplishments,” said the researchers, led by Aylin Kaya at the University of Maryland, “which can in turn boost their eudaemonic well-being.” In contrast, and more in keeping with the message emanating from Gillette/the APA and others, the men who endorsed the masculine “Playboy” ideal (they agreed strongly that “If I could, I would frequently change sexual partners”) and/or the “power” ideal (“In general, I control the women in my life”) tended to report lower wellbeing six months later. At the study start, the men also completed the “Gender Role Conflict” questionnaire (a scale developed in the 1980s ostensibly to explore problems arising from men’s aversion to femininity) and those who scored highly on the Restricted Emotionality sub-scale – for instance, they agreed “I have difficulty expressing my emotional needs to my partner” – also tended to report lower wellbeing six months later. However, critics might point out that this correlation is almost inevitable as the items related to Restricted Emotionality are phrased in a negative way that assumes emotional control is a problem, such that it would be odd if a high score on this sub-scale was not associated with subsequent reduced wellbeing. A stronger case against traditional masculinity would be made by results showing that men who felt they successfully and deliberately controlled their emotions went on to experience diminished wellbeing, but such a finding seems highly unlikely given the shelves of evidence documenting the positive consequences of having more mental and emotional self-control. It’s worth noting that the men’s endorsement, or not, of the majority of the norms that were measured by the “Conformity to Masculine Norms” scale did not, on their own, have a statistically significant association with their wellbeing six months on (positive or negative), including: “heterosexual-presentation” (being concerned to be perceived as straight); “self-reliance” (not wanting to seek help); “violence” (endorsing violence as a suitable response in some situations); “risk” (willingness to put oneself in risky situations); and “emotional control”. Kayla and her colleagues said that the negative associations of the “Playboy” and “power” masculine norms with later wellbeing supported earlier cross-sectional work linking the endorsement of these norms with negative mental health outcomes in men. However, they added that the positive association between endorsing the “winning” norm and later wellbeing “is consistent with our hypothesis and with previous research that has indicated in certain contexts, adherence to dominant masculine norms may contribute to positive mental health.” Of course, these new results come with their own important caveats – they may not generalise to other groups beyond young American men at college, and they are based entirely on participants’ self-reports of their own values and wellbeing. Clearly more longitudinal research is needed, arguably using scales that are not phrased with an inherent bias against traditional masculine values, and also including outcome measures not only for the men themselves, but also for those people who live and work with them. However, these results do provide a more nuanced take on the simplistic idea that traditional masculinity is entirely toxic, a point worth considering alongside the weight of research showing the benefit to children of having a father involved in their upbringing (a point that, hidden behind the “toxic masculinity” headlines, is acknowledged fully in the new APA report; pdf). [1] https://digest.bps.org.uk/2019/01/18/young-men-who-endorse-the-masculine-ideal-of-success-enjoy-greater-psychological-wellbeing/ https://digest.bps.org.uk/2019/01/18/young-men-who-endorse-t...
• wurstman 5y ago
  I'm one of those people, I've just accepted that I'm a loser.
  • i_am_new_here 5y ago
    The job you were supposed to do is now done half as good by women. They don't provide for a family. The combined negativ result (of women achieving less - cf. their physicals, eg. in sports) is compound. The corporate world is now/today like watching women's soccer. Thank you <you can't say anything against them> propaganda.
• dang 5y ago
  This thread got over 1100 comments, many of which are based in personal experience and are thoughtful. Others, alas, are flamewar dreck, but I hope everyone reading a forum like this knows how to step over stuff like that. HN threads are still paginated, so if you want to read them all you'll need to click More at the bottom of the page, or like this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27473199&p=1 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27473199&p=1 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27473199&p=2 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27473199&p=2 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27473199&p=3 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27473199&p=3 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27473199&p=4 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27473199&p=4 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27473199&p=5 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27473199&p=5 (Comments like this will go away when we turn off pagination. Sorry for the annoyance.)