Are Men the New Ball and Chain?

A lot of women talk on TED right now.



This one Hanna Rosin goes on about how the global economy is shifting the power balance between men and women. Men are getting hit harder by the current recession; they are graduating at lower rates than men; women are taking more managerial positions; young women are now earning more than young men.



This TED talk, in some ways, blames old-school men-style thinking in the financial sector for the global financial meltdown. Well, not exactly, but they did start a financial company using feminine qualities that survived through the Icelandic financial crisis.

So, what do I, a man, make of all this? Well, I can't make broad generalities, but I can compare myself with, say, my wife. I definitely have qualities she doesn't have; there are definitely some things I can do that she can't or at least not as well. Definitely, the same thing can be said in reverse (and I'm hesitant to say, but I'm sure its true - that overall she brings more to the table than I do).

But are women going to be entering the work force while men stay home? Is that our future?

I like what I do on my job, and in some small ways, I think what I'm doing is important and I want to do more important work more often.

But, as I watch how hard my wife works with our kids and when I see the work she does in the community, I have to say, that the work she does is far more important for more people than the work I'm doing. The difference is that I get paid for it and she mostly doesn't.

And I would have to say, that the most important work (more or less) people don't pay (or get paid) for it or they pay far less for what they're getting than what its worth.

So if women are being lured into the workforce in greater percentages and if what they bring matter more in our current economy than what men bring. What will men be left doing? This isn't me asking by the way, Hanna Rosin herself asks it:

"I went to a men's group in Kansas and these were the same kinds of victims of the manufacturing economy that I spoke to you about earlier. They were men who had been contractors or they were building houses and had lost their jobs at the end of the housing boom. And they were in this group because they were failing to pay their child support. And the instructor was up there in this class explaining to them all the ways they had lost their identity in this new age. He was telling them they no longer had any moral authority, no one needed them for emotional support anymore, and they were not really the providers. So who were they? And this was really disheartening for them. And what he did was he wrote on the board $85,000. That's her salary. Then he wrote down $12,000 and that's your salary. Who's the man now? She's the damn man. That sent a shutter through the room."

Is this our future? Women taking over the work force and then hiring other women to take care of their children? While men, well? Sit in prison? Go off and fight wars?

Not sure what to think of any of this, but I think its something worth discussing.

Christmas: A Post Mortem

I really should have posted (read and absorbed) this article before Christmas, really before Christmas shopping, but its fun to consider it after the holidays as well. Its all about the economics of Christmas, a holiday that has widely been assumed to be a boon to our economy. Well, hate to break it to you, it turns out that its not.


"It suggests that in America, where givers spend $40 billion on Christmas gifts, $4 billion is being lost annually in the process of gift-giving. Add in birthdays, weddings and non-Christian occasions, and the figure would balloon."


The reason is simple. The amount of money the buyer spends on a gift is often greater than the amount that gift is worth to the receiver. This is especially true when there's a big age disparity between the receiver and the giver, and/or when they are not closely connected. This disparity in worth makes both the giver and the receiver poorer.

I'm sure you can relate, I know I can. I have received gifts that I did not really want, or didn't really want that badly. Of course and probably more often, I've given gifts that weren't really enjoyed by the recipient. And in these cases, we are all poorer. The giver spent money on something reducing her wealth. The receiver received something she didn't want. Lose/lose.

There are cases when this works out and the article lists some of them.

If the giver knows a lot more about something than the receiver and the receiver has an interest in it. My sister bought me a subscription to the New Yorker some years back and basically changed (after reading issue after incredibly written issue) my politics. My wife just renewed that subscription this year, saying "I'm so glad we have the New Yorker again in our house" - proving that this gift was just as much for her as it was for me. My sister already enjoyed this magazine, knew I would probably enjoy it as well, but knew I probably wouldn't take the step to purchase it - I was richer as a result.

The giver of the gift basically gives the recipient permission to consume something they probably would not have allowed themselves to consume otherwise, but still they desire it. Say, chocolate? Or some other indulgence - I gave my wife a massage one year which she thoroughly enjoyed but would never buy for herself.

Gifts that have incredibly high sentimental value qualify. My sister-in-law Suzie compiled the weekly e-mails my wife sends out to family and friends complete with pictures and a summary of the week (The Turley Family Newsletter) and published them in a book. It was incredibly generous - this kind of thing is not cheap - but it's a priceless to us. Yes, we came out of the holidays very rich.

Gift cards and/or money should be given if you truly cannot meet the qualifications above. I think overall, we did a pretty good job making our kids happy, and we actually received a lot of happiness from the gifts we received. We did get gift cards and our kids got money from the right relatives. Otherwise, the gifts qualified as thoughtful and appreciated.

So, maybe collectively, we can all do our part to reduce the over $4 billion loss to our economy each year by making Christmas economically more efficient.

By the way, Amazon is innovating around this economic principle, but is taking some heat for it. We'll see how that plays out.

I Love Christmas

No matter how stressful the holidays can be, I love Christmas. I love gifts - the giving and the receiving. I love the myths and the magic around the holidays - Santa Claus and the elves and how excited all this makes our kids. I love the movies and the songs and the candy and the food. And of course, I love the religious parts of the Christmas celebration, the holiness of that sacred night when a Savior was born.

It's easy to get all huffy about the commercialization of the holidays - I remember my parents giving me this lecture actually.

But being a parent, I love living vicariously through my kids I must say. I remember how fun it was on Christmas eve singing carols with my family and then I would go to bed early because I wanted Christmas morning to arrive as quickly as possible and how hard it was to go to sleep. I love the thought that my kids will be in the same situation I once was. My parents struggled with the holidays, but my older sisters often stepped in, and I really appreciate this gift from them.

I think its easy to get huffy about the holidays (watch the above video for a lot of extra huffiness) and I can relate to it - I got a little bit huffy about Disneyland a while back. But you know what turned me on to Disneyland, other than the general downright fun of it of course? It was while I was on the wildly fun "Souring Over California" ride and at the end, there's that famous Disneyland fairy that fly's over Disneyland while the fire works go off. In that one second, the whole thing clicked for me. The magic and the fun of Disneyland - all of the movies of Disney and the rides and the fun. I bought it into it.

I guess, more generally, I love commerce, yes I love the commercialization of Christmas and all of the holidays for that matter. At the heart of it, this is nothing more than what each of us collectively pours our heart and soul in to produce. Receiving a gift with joy is just celebrating the art produced by another person. Sure, a lot of this depends on what we bring to the holiday. And there's more than enough rope to hang yourself in our society. But when properly consumed, Christmas can be an incredibly uplifting holiday. Of course, it doesn't matter how much or how little money a person has, but its a holiday where we can enjoy a little excess no matter how small that excess may be. Or hopefully, if someone's a little short and literally has no excess, someone else will reach out and share what they have with another.

After all, we are all in this together. Let's celebrate and share with one another. But giving a gift requires a receiver - and both those who give a gift and those who receive it can find joy in these holidays and in these very exchanges this holiday promotes.

Seth Godin talks about gifts here.


"When done properly, gifts work like nothing else. A gift gladly accepted changes everything. The imbalance creates motion, motion that pushes us to a new equilibrium, motion that creates connection.

The key is that the gift must be freely and gladly accepted. Sending someone a gift over the transom isn't a gift, it's marketing. Gifts have to be truly given, not given in anticipation of a repayment. True gifts are part of being in a community (willingly paying taxes for a school you will never again send your grown kids to) and part of being an artist (because the giving motivates you to do ever better work).

Plus, giving a gift feels good."


Merry Christmas everyone.