The Econobros Are Leaving Family Money on the Table

Economists should be seeking to maximize male value in the new family formation marketplace. Instead they emphasize that men's strongest and most essential selling point is still in their paychecks.

It’s a good thing the econobros weren’t holding sway thousands of years go. We would still be hunters. After all, bloody meat was what women were “wired” to want. Civilization’s giant leap to Agriculture would never have happened.

No doubt the first human males who experimented with tilling the earth and planting seeds were derided as not real men. Real men hunted. These farmers, obviously and according to the Laws of Nature, were going to die lonely. Women didn’t want them.

Think about how IBM reinvented itself. On the brink of extinction by the flood of competitors eating its hardware-manufacturing lunch, IBM understood that IT services were where its most fortunate future lay. No longer does the company scrounge for slim margins in the crowded computer manufacturing industry. It is thriving with its brainpower and demonstrating its vigor and influence on the technology that runs the machines it used to make.

Consider men as another once-respected powerhouse that is calling out, almost begging for permission, to re-invent itself. Men’s greatest value proposition today is not in their paychecks. No longer do men need to compete with women in the crowded paycheck marketplace. Men have a unique selling proposition. Inexplicably, it’s being undersold at best, ignored with mild embarrassment at worst.

Call it vitamin M for Masculinity, for Maleness. The pure, genuine version of it is a social and psychological nutrient of which the industrial world is now suffering a debilitating dearth. But what is Vitamin M? One might just as well wrestle with the question “What is Art?” or “What is the Meaning of Life?” The futility of the question does not suggest that Vitamin M is not real, but rather that it is ineffable. Anyone who has noticed how children and adolescents respond to the presence of a man where men are rare and secondary understands that there is a there there.

One wonders why the econobros aren’t doing their best to trumpet it, to help women see it, appreciate it, value it as something they, their children and their communities need. While thousands and thousands of biological fathers are lost and adrift, but still available for duty, we beat the drum instead for part-time, non-residential volunteer mentors. One fears that our econobro-in-chief regards utterance of the science-based importance of Vitamin M at full potency from natural fathers and willing stepfathers as merely “the froth of the culture war.” It might upset those who view Male-centered Masculinity as competition for motherhood and advocate for tariffs and crippling red tape against it. We can call them Vitamin M deniers. They regard the science of fatherhood as far worse than a hoax. Some call it misogyny.

Imagine how we would still be wasting women’s talents for success in careers and business if we resisted the idea that women were socially valuable for more than how well they could cook and clean. Imagine how we would be reinforcing the benighted stereotypes that were causing women so much pain before the women’s movement started gaining traction and sparking a revolution in what we have come to see, understand and appreciate as women’s full value.

Sometimes plain, simple truths articulated well can give us more bankable insights than any numbers, any bar charts, trend lines, statistical modeling or economic forecasts ever can. Consider these non-economic truths about what makes society tick.

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This is Charles Donovan at a Heritage Foundation panel discussion on October 29, 2014.

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This is poverty researcher Kathryn Edin, circa 2015.

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Here is Kyle Pruett of the Yale Child Study Center in the 2010 documentary “The Evolution of Dad” by Dana Glazer.

It is quite astonishing how deeply entrenched Vitamin M denial is and how long we have been reluctant, even afraid, to address it forthrightly.

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Kathryn Edin again, on October 23, 2013.

Paychecks are valuable, too, of course, but they are a deal sweetener, no longer men’s most important value proposition. Imagine how different things would be for men, how much more motivated and committed they would be if women were universally convinced that fathers have immense psychological and social value to children, even fathers who are unable to find money-paying jobs or even if their jobs should suddenly disappear.

After all, which is more stable, resilient and reliable, a relationship built on a man having and keeping a job, or a man having and keeping a job because he has relationships that he cherishes and in which he is respected and appreciated for who he most fundamentally is? In poll after poll men are telling us that they want more time and more ways to demonstrate their love and their more-than-money value to their kids.

To avoid unnecessarily stirring up suspicion and enmity toward masculinity from female-female couples, we can acknowledge with lesbian mothers a variant of biodiversity, what we might call psychosocial diversity. We know that biodiversity does not require that every square meter of a forest, for instance, must contain in and of itself every nutrient that the totality of the forest ecosystem requires. But at the same time we can confidently assert that every community, every culture, every country should support and maintain a critical mass of unfettered, Child-centered Masculinity. What better, forward-looking solution can there be to the problem of purposelessness bedeviling today’s boys and men? The many lesbians who love and appreciate their fathers can be our allies and our vanguard in this diplomacy.

Economists are supposed to be concerned with efficiency and optimization. Vitamin M is the male value proposition our well-placed advocates most need to maximize now, countering misandry with all the vigor the truth requires. Try to define it, break it down, analyze it if you wish, but there’s really no need. Call it a glorious mystery of life that makes two the most powerful and versatile number of all.

We need to make the most of Child-centered Masculinity. Fear of upsetting would-be monopolists cannot be allowed to obstruct men’s full valuation and advancement in meeting the crying needs of the family formation enterprise.

jackkammer.com