The catastrophizing, from both sides, re “The end of America” if s/he wins is obnoxious and recognizes neither history nor the resilience of the U.S. We’ve survived much worse than her/him. However, it’s clear that, as in any election, some groups will fare better/worse with their guy/gal in the White House. And, if you disagree with me … we’ll both be fine. The group whose well-being (or lack thereof) I am increasingly focused on is young men. I believe Kamala Harris and Tim Walz offer the best way forward for young men in the U.S., who’ve been left behind in a time of unprecedented prosperity.
This election is — or should be — a referendum on two related things: women’s bodily autonomy and the future of men in the U.S. With the race likely to be decided not by a handful of battleground states but by a few battleground counties, the votes of young men could be decisive. No group has fallen further behind faster.
Young men are more persuadable than older voters, who are more partisan. According to Data for Progress, swing voters are more common among young people. Close to half (43%) of swing voters are under 45. According to Circle at Tufts University, young male voters are motivated to a large degree by economic issues such as inflation and job stability, issues that candidates tend to shift positions on during the campaign.
Gender Gulf
The GOP has proven smarter and more aggressive than the Democrats in reaching out to men, especially online. In recent years, young men have been trending more conservative and apathetic, while young women have become more progressive and engaged. The gender gap has become a gender gulf.
Women make up a little over half of the electorate, but they turn out in larger numbers to vote than men. This year the overthrow of Roe v. Wade and numerous state ballot questions about abortion are likely to bring record numbers of young women to the polls. Young men, most of whom support the right to choose and gender equality, are not as strongly motivated to vote on those issues. Part of the problem, I believe, is that the Democratic party has abandoned young men and failed to show them what the loss of Roe means for them, their opportunities, and their choices.
Who We Serve
The DNC website has a page titled “Who we serve.” Listed are 16 constituencies, including African Americans, the LGBTQ community, women, veterans, and 12 other demographic groups that comprise approximately 76% of the population. When you explicitly advocate for 76% of the population, you’re not advocating for 76% but discriminating against the 24%. In this case, young men. This visibly absent group comes into sharp relief when you extract an obvious truth from the data: No group has fallen faster or further in the U.S. over the past two decades than young men.
That neglect shows up in polls. As The New York Times recently reported about Democrats faring poorly with all men, “it increasingly seems possible that most or perhaps all of that weakness is concentrated among young men. … Surprisingly, Ms. Harris is faring no better than Mr. Biden did among young men in the Times/Siena data, even as she’s made significant gains among young women.”
Man Trouble
I receive a lot of emails from worried parents, particularly mothers, along these lines: “I have a daughter who lives in Chicago and works in PR and another daughter who’s at Penn. My son lives in our basement, vapes, and plays video games.”
Young American men are in a crisis of underemployment and under-socialization, which is bad for all of us. Even as the costs of college have soared beyond reach of many families, many of the manufacturing jobs that didn’t require a college degree, and were a ticket to the middle class, have been offshored. Housing is increasingly unaffordable; nearly 60% of men between the ages of 18 and 24 live with their parents and 1 in 5 still live with their parents at age 30. Since 2004, deaths of despair among young men have taken 400,000 lives. Think about this: more young men in America have died deaths of despair in the last 20 years than were killed in World War II.
Meanwhile, the whole subject of what it means to be a man has become radioactive, infected by a dialog that feels more like disdain (e.g., “toxic masculinity”) than a conversation meant to address the issue. Young men don’t know who they’re supposed to be and lack the resources to go out into the world and find out.
Many are stuck: isolated, despairing, and unproductive, prone to obesity, drug addiction, and suicide, susceptible to misogyny, conspiracy theories, and radicalization. They make lousy potential mates, employees, and citizens. While young women have made great strides in education and earning power — which is great, and we should do nothing to stop that — young men seem stuck in reverse.
I have spent a decent amount of time reviewing the different economic policies and positions of both campaigns and feel Harris’s policies would provide young men with increased opportunities to realize their masculinity. Specifically: to provide, to protect, and to procreate.
Provide
These are prosperous times. America doesn’t need to be made great … again. As Yale management professor Jeffrey Sonnenfeld recently highlighted in Time, the U.S. economy under Biden/Harris is, by a number of objective measures, doing well:
- The unemployment rate is currently about 4.1%, the lowest since 1968.
- Inflation is low, at 2.2%.
- GDP growth is the best in the world.
- The financial markets are soaring, hitting 71 record highs this year.
- Biden has cut the deficit by one-third.
Writing about technology, William Gibson famously said, “The future is already here — it’s just not evenly distributed.” The same is true of prosperity. And the algorithms that increasingly run our lives want to convince us that everything is awful. IRL the Biden administration has an economic record to be proud of, and Harris should embrace and extend it. She is campaigning on expanding housing construction, reducing student debt, increasing child tax credits, bringing back manufacturing jobs, and helping the sandwich generation care for their aging parents. The other side’s policies are inflationary: raising tariffs and cutting immigration. The GOP’s other standby, tax cuts, adds to the deficit, and that debt is an enormous long-term tax, particularly on young people. Older people (e.g., me) aren’t going to be around to pay off the deficit; young people are.
Historically, being a provider was a man’s job, though we now live in a world where physical strength doesn’t carry as much weight economically, meaning women can bring home just as much bacon as men. But women becoming breadwinners doesn’t mean the role is any less important for men. A guy with a decent job in a strong economy is creating wealth, paying taxes, and earning social capital, not to mention his own self-respect. He’s a more attractive potential husband and father. As Richard Reeves says “He adds surplus value.”
The No. 1 condition for the development of male providers — a strong and expanding economy — is far more likely under Harris. There is near-universal agreement on this among economists, Nobel laureates, and investment banks that have bothered to do the math.
Protect
This election is about policies, but it is also about values.
If you’re looking for a good shorthand term for healthy masculinity circa 2024, you could do a lot worse than the word “mensch,” which in German simply means “human” and in Yiddish describes “a person of integrity or rectitude; a just, honest or honorable person.” The first instinct of a mensch is to protect, to sacrifice for something bigger than oneself, not to pick on the vulnerable. Real men don’t start bar fights; they break up bar fights. They don’t shit-post their country, they defend it.
Harris’s running mate, Tim Walz, demonstrated that instinct during his long service in the National Guard (as did JD Vance, by enlisting in the Marines). Walz also exhibited the impulse to protect as a high school teacher and football coach in Mankato, Minnesota, where he was an adviser to LGBTQ kids starting a gay-straight alliance. “I understood what it meant to be that older, straight, white guy who was coaching football,” he said recently. “It’s easy to be an ally when it’s easy to be an ally. What really matters is knowing who’s going to be at your side and stand up when it’s hard.”
The Democrats have done poorly reaching out to young men. Picking an “America’s dad” type guy for VP, somebody with gray hair who can talk to both football players and queer kids, was an important move in bridging the gap and a statement of principle. A man’s default setting should be to move to protect, in any situation.
Procreate
The third foundational element of masculinity — the third leg of the stool, if you will — is ensuring the species endures. Which starts with … sex.
When I was a kid, my mom was worried I’d get into too much trouble. I believe today’s parents are concerned our kids won’t find enough. Peter Attia and Andrew Huberman have declared war on alcohol, where they see ill health and drunkenness. Where young people and drinking are concerned, I see togetherness. But that’s another post.
My generation never gave up on sex. However, lately, underemployed and screen-bound young men, who feel rejected in an increasingly winner-take-all online dating market, have thrown in the towel. About 63% of young men are single, and a lot of them aren’t even trying to date. Meanwhile, young women find themselves in an intensifying competition for a shrinking pool of what they view as acceptable mates. The viral hit was “I’m looking for a man in finance,” not “I’m looking for a high school dropout who lives with his parents.”
Guardrails
Young men need guardrails, and there are few stronger than the prospect of maintaining a romantic relationship. A decent summary of the key moments between me and several of my first post-college girlfriends went something like this: “Get your shit together, or I am going to stop having sex with you (i.e., break up).” This was motivating, and needed.
Young men today have fewer venues where they can meet potential romantic partners. With fewer of them going to college or church, and more of them working remotely, men have less social interaction and no ability to build social capital. Less sex ultimately means less intimacy, less marriage, and fewer kids.
Straight young men are interested in straight young women because they want to have sex. We tend to act as if there’s something wrong with that: There isn’t. Sex and the pursuit of it leads to romance and intimacy and lights a fire under young men to better themselves to be more attractive to potential mates.
This intimacy often involves sacrifice, the forsaking-all-others stuff that comes when a pair of young people decide, “I choose you.” This often leads to children. The most wonderful things in life, in my experience, lack rationality and structure. My grandmother, re finding a mate, used to say, “You have your list, and then you fall in love and tear up your list.” The person you fall for, and how it happens, will likely make less sense than almost any other important thing in your life. And that’s one of the reasons it’s wonderful. It speaks to you on a different level. Not what society or your parents want … but what you desire. And, eventually, the answer to the most important question of your life: Who do you want to have a family with?
According to Gallup, though, only about 21% of Americans under 30 have kids. In 1980 the figure was about 38%; in 1950 it was about 50%. There are a lot of reasons for that, but the war on bodily autonomy is a contributing factor. The state laws restricting or banning abortion that sprang up in the wake of Roe’s demise are designed to limit the sexual freedom of young women (and men), and undermine their ability to get into the game and create families.
The people most vulnerable in a post-abortion America are poor women. Affluent women will be able to get hold of mifepristone or to travel for a safe, legal abortion. A pregnant 17-year-old, Black, single mother in Alabama, however, is at ground zero for an emerging gender apartheid. She’s likely already poor, and forced to carry an unwanted pregnancy to term, she and the father (if he’s even in the picture) become less likely to escape poverty.
While Democrats have pushed hard to get young women to turn out and vote, the Harris campaign hasn’t been making the case to young men that the fight for bodily autonomy involves them, too. That needs to change.
Harris in the White House offers a chance to begin to reclaim the Supreme Court for the majority in this country who support bodily autonomy and a national effort to roll back state restrictions on it.
Not Heaven
I don’t think electing Harris and Walz is going to magically bring young men out of the crisis they are in. I do think, however, that it’s an important step.
A vote for Harris and Walz is a vote for the future, a vote to continue to improve economic policies that have served America well, that can give young men a place in it. It is also a vote for a shift in the way we think about masculinity in this country.
This is the most anxious generation in U.S. history. Action absorbs anxiety, and I hope young men will exercise their agency and support candidates who enable them to be providers, protectors, and procreators. I believe a Harris/Walz administration will serve young men well. If you disagree, again, we’ll both be fine.
Life is so rich,
P.S. This week on the Prof G Pod I discussed grit and perseverance with psychologist and UPenn Professor Angela Duckworth. Listen here on Spotify or here on the Apple podcast network.
P.P.S. Section’s AI:ROI Conference is three weeks from today, on November 14. I’ll be sharing my latest predictions — will there be an AI bubble or a growth wave? — and leaders like Moderna’s VP of AI will share how they achieved AI wins like 80% internal adoption. It’s free, register now.
