Source: Young Women Go Back to School Instead of Work – NYTimes.com.

“Today young girls are told they can do anything, go into any occupation. But if boys express any interest in traditionally female occupations, they get teased and bullied,” Ms. Coontz said. “Lots of guys are not understanding what’s happening to traditional low-income or middle-income male jobs.”

Jobs in the male-dominated manufacturing industry and in other sectors involving manual labor have been, and still are, in structural decline. These careers can also be hard to maintain indefinitely because youthful strength eventually fades. And now many manufacturing workers do not have pensions to carry them through when their bodies do break down.

There are so many things that I could talk about in the article it was difficult choosing just one or two. I wish I had had the career opportunities that young people today have. As the article mentions I like most guys my age were driven into just a couple of areas. My guidance counselor, if you loosely want to call him that, of my small rural high school basically informed me that with a college education I could become a top-rate farmer or and engineer. The choice was mine.  I chose engineering as I had no interest in being a farmer. Any other possibility was just not discussed and since I was just a shy naive kid I didn’t realize other options were there.

Since, according to this article, women are becoming the significant majority of the population that are now going to college they will soon also be the majority of the primary bread winners in the family. I wonder how guys will handle that one? I hope that tomorrow’s young men can put aside the typical male ego and choose a profession that is aligned with their emotional core. I also hope that more of them understand, as their female counterpart already seem to, that if they don’t want to spend their lives earning at near minimum wage they have to get an education beyond the high school degree.

But what do I know….