MRM gets coverage in Businessweek: Alpha Dads: Men Get Serious About Work-Life Balance

SarcastiCock · 2013-06-11T01:12:42+00:00

~~Misleading title - no mention of MRM in the article.~~

Edit: My mistake, I didn't realize it was a multi-page article

If this uprising has a guru-in-waiting, it’s Warren Farrell, a consultant and author of seven books, including The Myth of Male Power and Why Men Earn More: The Startling Truth Behind the Pay Gap—and What Women Can Do About It. None of the Deloitte Dads have read him, but he’s been out there, complaining for four decades that men have been unfairly left out of the conversation about how to get ahead while being an equal parent. His has been a somewhat lonely crusade, although others have reached similar conclusions. Susan Faludi addressed this in her 2000 book, Stiffed: The Betrayal of the American Man, a lament for traditional manhood and a society in which gender roles were more clearly defined that ginned up a huge amount of media attention: “Even in the world they supposedly own and run, men are at the mercy of cultural forces that disfigure their lives and destroy their chance at happiness.” More recently, Susan Jacoby noted in the New York Times that, “The cost to men—in terms of stress, time lost with the families they were trying so hard to support and lack of freedom to pursue personal interests—has not been nearly as well documented” as what women gave up in the traditional-marriage bargain.

To visit Farrell, you must leave San Francisco and its tech millionaires and drive north. Beyond the Golden Gate Bridge and several traffic jams of cars inching toward Muir Woods, you’ll come to a luxe-bohemian tree house filled with rugs and urns, with a babbling fountain in the front and giant redwoods every way you look. Here, Farrell sips Kombucha, nibbles kale chips, and holds forth on how undervalued and oppressed men actually are. Never mind that men have a monopoly over nearly every powerful institution in the world, control most of the planet’s wealth, and have a leg up in everything from the tax code to reproduction, Farrell believes they are prisoners of all that money and power they spend their lives amassing. It’s something they do, he says, because it’s expected of them.

“No one ever asks men, ‘Was that a good way to live life?’” he says. “And yet it’s very rare that a man on his deathbed says, ‘I wish I spent more time at the office.’ It’s always, ‘I wish I spent more time with my family. I neglected my wife. I didn’t see my son’s baseball games and recitals.’ These are the things that people are missing, but coming from a man it just sounds like whining.” He adds: “For women, work-life balance is an issue they’re struggling with consciously. For men, this is life as it’s always been.”

Farrell, an ageless 69, has a trim white beard, twinkly eyes, and a speaking voice that seems carefully calibrated to sound nonthreatening even as he advances maddening oversimplifications of complex phenomena such as the gender wage gap, which he attributes largely to women’s decisions to pursue more fulfilling careers. Every so often something pops out of his mouth that prompts one to wonder if he actually said it, such as the suggestion that women arguing for equal treatment at work without taking the male point of view into account is like “men saying that women have to have sex at least three times a week with their husbands … that’s the type of thing that’s happening now in reverse.” He and his wife, Liz, who runs her own health-care PR firm, live out a Marin County embodiment of his philosophy. They both work at home, and Farrell can often be found serving Liz coffee or lunch as she works—a chef comes in once a week and stocks the fridge with quinoa and seaweed salad.

Although he’s an inspirational figure to those who consider themselves part of the Men’s Rights Movement, or MRM, Farrell doesn’t like the idea of “men’s rights” so much. For one thing, not all men see a need for their own movement. The mere mention of the phrase in front of male professionals tends to prompt outbursts of laughter. Farrell prefers to talk about a “gender transition movement” in which both men and women learn to listen to each other better, as opposed to what he characterizes as women lecturing men about how they should be less piggish and take on more of the diaper-changing and dish-washing. And if he can sound like he’s stretching at times when talking about undervalued, put-upon males, he has a timely pitch for Sandberg’s acolytes: Women are more likely to get what they want out of their careers and family lives if they persuade men to acknowledge that they want the same things women do.

We’re primed for a cultural shift, Farrell says, in part because of these “bright young men,” as he calls them, “who are feeling that they want something more out of life than just climbing a ladder and getting money and then having divorces like their fathers did, and then having broken homes where they neglect their children—the Cat’s in the Cradle type of existence.” They have their work cut out for them: Company human resources departments are almost entirely focused on preventing lawsuits and addressing the needs of women and minority employees, albeit inadequately, he believes. Opening up the options to the guys is the inevitable next step, he says, one that the upcoming generation of ambitious male workers is demanding.

giegerwasright · 2013-06-11T04:58:14+00:00

Men work more because they get less free shit. That's all there fucking is to it. They do because nobody else will do for them. When men get to pussy pass their way out of costs, repercussions, and responsabilities then maybe they too will be able to spend some time enjoying the fruits of their labor. Until then, they have to keep a fucking roof over their heads and chickens in their pots. Fucking idiocy.

dungone · 2013-06-11T05:10:51+00:00

“ ‘Work-life balance’ is one of these terms that tends to get overused,” says Rob Lanoue, a partner with Deloitte’s consulting group in Toronto

Seriously, that coming from someone who works for Deloitte? Reminds me of a scene in Office Space https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GjJCdCXFslY I love the way this article tries to play off real men as not really giving a shit about work-life-balance, how every one of them is just having lunch and shooting the breeze with their coworkers in their relaxed garb and trendy lifestyle. I'm going to show this article to some of my friends who have worked for Deloitte, they're going to have a huge laugh.

And they go on to describe Warren Farrel as some guy who lives over the hill and through the woods somewhere. Keep in mind that this is Businessweek:

you’ll come to a luxe-bohemian tree house filled with rugs and urns, with a babbling fountain in the front and giant redwoods every way you look. Here, Farrell sips Kombucha, nibbles kale chips, and holds forth on how undervalued and oppressed men actually are

Title	MRM gets coverage in Businessweek: Alpha Dads: Men Get Serious About Work-Life Balance
Author	lamamafia
Upvotes	0
Comments	7
Date	June 11, 2013 1:08 AM UTC (13 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/MensRights
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/MensRights/comments/1g34ty/mrm_gets_coverage_in_businessweek_alpha_dads_men/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/MensRights/mrm-gets-coverage-in-businessweek-alpha-dads-men.1171610 https://theredarchive.com/post/1171610

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