On College Campuses, a Shortage of Men (New York Times)

Parent Cafe
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<p>D is going to law school in September, can cook, owns a car, supports herself, and will give a withering look to anyone who mentions her looks. She is quite striking but woe to anyone who notices.</p>

<p>She is an extremely strong individual. Her BF seems to prize that about her.</p>

<p>I don’t think I did anything to bring this about except to value everything about her and provide a role model in pursuing a career (college teaching) for her entire life.</p>

<p>She came to classes frequently.</p>

<p>She naturally learned to cook but refused before this year because she said she didn’t want to cook for a guy. Now she is kind of having fun doing it.</p>

<p>He BF loves cleaning and dishes.</p>

<p>Sounds good to me.</p>

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<p>S3 is a first year at American University, where the ratio is about 62/38. His biggest worrying in choosing AU was whether there would be a sufficient number of “guys’ guys” like him to watch and play sports with. He’s learned–as most do–that once you connect with just a handful of likeminded people, you’re fine.</p>

<p>From chats with him, it seems that this issue is a Mars/Venus disconnect. He’s interested in girls, for sure, but a relationship? not at this time in his life. He’s focused on academics and future opportunities and friends in general–he doesn’t want the drama or obligations of a real relationship right now. I’m not sure why it’s admirable in a girl to be this way while a guy is considered a cad when he has the same perspective.</p>

<p>When he goes to a party or a bar and dances or chats with a girl, he has a great time…but doesn’t think of it as having been anything other than having had a good time dancing and chatting. It wouldn’t occur to him to parse an email from a girl or to think twice about any meanings of what he might text to her…males animals are just not into that degree of subtlety. Just as it would not occur to him that a girl might feel at all pressured to act a certain way with him, etc…he would just assume that any girl he was with was perfectly capable of making mature, independent and responsible choices about any behavior she might or might not engage in.</p>

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<p>oh COME ON. it’s not like these are straight women at vassar. 55/45? not that big of a difference. i read the article this morning, and it was ridiculous. women sleep around now! they wrote as if they are actively being held hostage by this shortage of men. if you don’t want to sleep around, don’t! it’s not a shortage of men “forcing” you into it. have some self-agency. no one is being victimized. </p>

<p>if this is true, women are perpetuating it</p>

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<p>boys: Yes, if all parties are on the same page, no foul. I agree. It’s always good to check if people are on the same page for all sorts of reasons.</p>

<p>However, sometimes being ready for a relationship just means meeting the right person. Many eighteen year old guys engage in relationships, not just hooking up.</p>

<p>I don’t think kids know what they’ll want. </p>

<p>Again, many studies do show men fall in love more easily than women.</p>

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<p>You know, I have never met a real life “Samantha”, a woman who has sex with whomever and whenever she wants without paying some kind of emotional consequences. I think she might be a myth (perpetuated by mythmom, maybe? Sorry, I couldn’t resist). I would like to be that person, tried to be that person back in the day (I too was much wilder than my D is now), but it just didn’t work. Either I became attached to someone more than I should have, and by that I mean investing them with attributes they did not deserve, or I felt “cold” because the situation was reversed and I didn’t return the feelings. I really can’t see how this FWB works. Hell, it’s hard enough just being good, close, steady friends with anybody, male or female!</p>

<p>I have both a S and a D, and I’m not surprised to read that boys/men fall in love faster and suffer more from break-ups than girls. They’re both vulnerable in their own ways. That’s the one thing missing from these comparative sexual attitudes discussions-- acknowledgment of everyone’s vulnerability. And I mean everyone.</p>

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<p>^^I don’t think ANYONE is capable of falling in love at 18…lust maybe, but not love</p>

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<p>mythmom, there is actually a fair bit of data about “what guys like.” It is not what our young posters think. Instead, what is consistently desired across countries and time are characteristics that suggest good genes and health for delivering and raising offspring, including symmetry, the right ratio of bust to waist (the ratio has apparently stayed constant over time even if the most desirable body size has changed from Rubensque to Kate Moss), signs of youth including tight skin, big / childlike eyes, … . </p>

<p>If we had a change of societal interpretation of casual sex by women, that would not change the other greater costs for women, though these costs will only happen some fraction of the time or for some fraction of women (i.e., for many, contraception will work although the probability of contraception working for every one of many sexual encounters is actually scarily low; for many, they won’t contract STDs that lead to infertility; and for some, sexual involvement will not lead to emotional attachment). But, short of some major societal changes, all women bear a greater expected cost (probability multiplied by consequence) than men for casual sex.</p>

<p>Incidentally, on that point, the math geek within has done a little calculation. I tried to do the calculation but didn’t have enough data, but here’s what I found:</p>

<p>For condoms, the typical failure rate is about 12%, somewhat worse than birth-control pills (8%), but better than the diaphragm (18%), withdrawal (19%) and rhythm (20%)", where contraceptive failure is defined “as the percentage of women who use a given method but who nonetheless become pregnant over a year’s time.” The failure rate would probably be higher for a sample of women who are very sexually active. </p>

<p>But, here’s the kicker, from the math geek within. Imagine that a woman maintained the same level of sexual activity for 10 years. The probability of at least one pregnancy in 10 years is 72% for a condom, 57% for birth control pills, and 86% for the diaphragm. Thus, women who are sexually active over 10 years are more likely than not to become pregnant at least once in those years and thus the expected consequence is quite high.</p>

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<p>Shawbridge: I have seen different statistics, but I do take your point.</p>

<p>We do have legal abortion at the present, and I don’t think sexual inactivity is really the solution for most women. </p>

<p>So, it seemed to me we were discussing how sexually active women were viewed, not whether or not a woman should be sexually active. Somehow I think that ship has sailed.</p>

<p>As for there being Samanthas, I definitely know them, though I can’t claim to be one. </p>

<p>I don’t think everyone is emotionally vulnerable, but certainly most people are to one degree or another.</p>

<p>I do feel sad that society seems to have pack pedaled from the attitudes my friends and I enjoyed in the late sixties and early seventies.</p>

<p>Shawbridge, I have seen those studies about sexual attractiveness to men but my own observations don’t bear them out. However, certainly anecdotal evidence is not very convincing and not proof in any way.</p>

<p>My mom told me no men would like me because I was too smart and should play dumb. I have found that intelligence was appealing to most of the men I’ve met in my life.</p>

<p>I seem to think more highly of men and women that most in society do, and I certainly have met wonderful men who were not predatory or shallow.</p>

<p>Of course, I have met some who are, but I have met women who are, too.</p>

<p>I have shocked many folks at various venues, but I have also received a lot of support from many folks.</p>

<p>But of course, we don’t all have to completely agree.</p>

<p>I am fortunate to have been able to raise a D and a S and find them both to be adventurous self-defining individuals who are both kind.</p>

<p>Both have been hurt by partners. Probably both have hurt partners, too, though I have heard less about that.</p>

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<p>mythmom, I’m not advocating sexual inactivity. If one were to follow the cost/benefit calculus, women should be predisposed less to casual sex and more to sex in the context of deeper relationships. In that context, the costs or probabilities seem lower and thus the expected cost is lower. To the extent that this strategy is a lot harder to execute in schools with 60/40+ F/M ratios, which seems highly likely, going to those schools raises the expected cost they pay. If so, I would advise my daughter to try to swim upstream and find schools that are close to 50/50.</p>

<p>By the way, nothing I’ve said has anything to do with shame or morality or societal attitudes towards women, just cost/benefit. </p>

<p>The source for the data was a website that cited the data as being from “Contraceptive Technology,” Irvington Press, and Family Planning Perspectives journal. Finally, like you I found some of the studies of what males find attractive to be weird, but the accumulation of data is pretty compelling. The symmetry thing is amazing. There is an extraordinary study (whose description I’m going to bungle a bit) in which women are asked to judge attractiveness of males just by smelling their sweaty T-shirts (which psychologist or biologist thought of this fun activity? Was this a sorority hazing ritual?). But, the more they felt they’d be attracted to the man of a t-shirt (whom they didn’t get to see), the higher his symmetry rating.</p>

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<p>There are more women than men on college campuses. Why? Isn’t sex ratio 1:1? Are girls more qualified than boys to go to college?</p>

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<p>ok dats great</p>

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<p>I think the men as sexual predators/women as victims or the object of shame for sexual activity mentality makes it more difficult to instill balance on issues of sexuality in a child. Add to that the media suggestion that if you’re not “hot” you’re not hip.</p>

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<p>Shawbridge: Well, as I said, I would be surprised if we looked at this exactly the same.</p>

<p>Cost/benefit analysis would never be my style – I’m in THE HUMANITIES. Just kidding, but I do operate very intuitively.</p>

<p>I can’t imagine that my dad could possibly has evaluated cost benefit the same way I would. </p>

<p>How can one quantify the value of freedom, fun, and the very deep desire to know people deeply. </p>

<p>As Piaf said, “No, je regrette rien.”</p>

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<p>I have to disagree. My parents met and “fell in love” at 17/18 respectively and have the happiest marriage of any couple I know. I could cite a thousand examples of how this is so, but the fact of the matter is that many people are quite emotionally/intellectually mature by 18 (although they are in a very small minority).</p>

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<p>mythmom, agreed. This is why genetics/evolution are not destiny for humans, but they help shape the game we’re all playing.</p>

<p>People will evaluate the costs and benefits differently, but they should understand either explicitly or intuitively what they are. I think they may see the “value of freedom, fun, and the very deep desire to know people deeply,” although they may or may not value or get the latter one in a heavy hook-up world. However, the costs are harder to envision, but for a 17 or 19 or 22 year old to have to decide whether to have and abortion or not and then either having an abortion delivering a baby for adoption, or even derailing her college plans to raise a child, without meaningful support from the impregnater (if she actually knows who he is), is in my observation likely to be a much tougher emotional experience than people might think of before they go through with it. No one can quantify this stuff but the benefits will exceed the costs for some and for others, had they known, they would have chosen differently. Some young women may feel pressured by a highly sexualized, highly sexist media and a school environment with gender imbalance. My concern is that lots of young women probably haven’t delved much into the potential downside when they make their choices – it is a whole lot easier to pretend it is not there.</p>

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<p>Well, aren’t we diligent about explaining the downsides? How about the upsides?</p>

<p>I may be living in a fool’s paradise, but I can honestly state I suffered no ill-effects from the sixties sojourn. A a writer it’s been a velvet goldmine.</p>

<p>Regrets to French: non, je NE regrette rien. I do regret butchering French, however accidental it may have been.</p>

<p>I have had fun talking about this thread to D who is visiting me for a week as a convalesce from an old lady hip operation.</p>

<p>At 22 of course she feels all grown up and able to opine as a grown woman.</p>

<p>She went into the NYC to visit her alma mater and she is dressed in Barnard sweats and feels a woman’s college was very instrumental in HER process.</p>

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<p>Love those upsides, mythmom!!</p>

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Interesting. I think my ability to fall in love peaked around that age. But maybe we mean different things by falling in love. I don’t think falling in love and forming a deep, lasting romantic relationship are at all the same thing. They can coincide, and it’s fabulous when they do, but they don’t for all people. Hopefully everybody gets to experience both, whether in the same relationship or in different ones.</p>

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<p>Interesting nightchef, I don’t think I fell in “love” until I met my husband at age 28. Looking back I fell into alot of things, but not real love until I was older and I absolutely knew it when it happened. I do think my concept of love encompassed different attributes than my husband and probably still does. I think some of those fragmented attributes are what start appearing in young people and why they have so many ups and downs on the path to “love.”</p>

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<p>And if you don’t fall into the DADT philosopy of life, there are some amazing memories and tales from that trip. Mythmom gets the added benefit of being a writer. Have you writen from the perspective of someone who had considered temple prostitute as a possible career path? What a great premise. </p>

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<p>How? By the number of smiles per hour.</p>