Suck my dick, adult-woman

In her article The child-man, Kay Hymowitz writes about the immaturity of modern young and youngish men. They are very, very immature, you know. Whereas in 1965 a 26-year-old man was married with children, nowadays 26-year-old men are - horror, horror! - partying, screwing around, going to bars, hanging out with friends and playing computer games. "Wife? Kids? House? Are you kidding?" So immature!

In this article Hymowitz chooses to define adulthood as being married with children, and calls unmarried, childless, fun-loving men immature. Considering how much fun she makes this immaturity sound, she is not doing her cause a great service.

It's weird how some people consider fun, or at least the kind of fun that they themselves do not enjoy, immature. Hymowitz sounds exactly like my mother when she finds my father and myself watching some movie with a lot of shooting. My maturity can be questionable by Hymowitz's standards, what with being unmarried and childless and all, but my father is, after all, married, and has a child, and has his own company, and a house, and all the other paraphernalia of American Dream, except a golden retriever. But he is still obviously immature for openly enjoying the kind of entertainment that both Hymowitz and my mother consider beneath them. So see, guys - getting married and having kids will probably not grant you immunity from the accusations of immaturity, not until you learn to avoid all kinds of fun that Hymowitz - or your own very mature woman - doesn't like.

Hymowitz is of course not the only one. I've run into a number of articles by women about how thirtysomething men are all immature boys and just want to have fun instead of doing whatever the woman tells him to do, which would obviously be a mature and responsible thing. The corresponding articles by men about women tend to be a bit less numerous, but even more silly, usually threatening the single fun-loving women that if they don't get serious and get married right now, nobody will marry them in the future, and at the same time proclaiming that the author himself has no intention to get married ever, what with all the women being so immature and all, and who needs marriage anyway.

The reason I chose Hymowitz's article for the purposes of this post is that only a few months ago she wrote an article The New Girl Order about young women who just want to have fun, rather than marriage and children. Surprisingly (what, are you not surprised? I am shocked, shocked!) she does not condemn that trend as immature at all. She actually sounds like she finds it empowering, and fun. Damn. If you only read the article about child-men, you'd never imagine that Hymowitz, of all people, can approve of anything that anyone can consider fun.

Or on the second thought, she does mention fun in a positive way even there: "With women, you could argue that adulthood is in fact emergent. Single women in their 20s and early 30s are joining an international New Girl Order, hyper-achieving in both school and an increasingly female-friendly workplace, while packing leisure hours with shopping, traveling and dining with friends. Single young males, or SYMs, by contrast, often seem to hang out in a playground of drinking, hooking up, playing Halo 3 and, in many cases, underachieving. With them, adulthood looks as though it's receding." OK: shopping, traveling and dining with friends is maturity, drinking, hooking up and playing Halo 3 is immaturity. Whatever.

And hey, it is fun. I like traveling, parties, hanging out with friends, good wine, good food, games, books and technical toys. According to Hymowitz, I am an empowered New Girl. Single men who like the same things are, on the other hand, immature child-men. Whereas married couples who have fun are... but no, don't mention to her that there are married couples who have fun. She might have a heart attack or something. And certainly don't mention to her that there are married couples with children who have fun.

Seriously, she (and most other authors of such articles, regardless of sex) comes across as a kind of person who understands fun perfectly well when she is having it, but heaven forbid the man wants to play his computer game or hang out with his friends when she is either in the mood for a deep romantic conversation, or wants somebody to do the laundry right now. And of course it's always the fault of the opposite sex and their immature desire to have fun. Gee, is it any wonder that this kind of people can't find anyone to marry them? "I am mature and empowered and a real adult, but you are just an immature kid who wants to do some immature stupid things that you consider fun. Wanna marry me?" Way to go with the advertisement, sister!