While I was in school in the 80s and early 90s, we children were given a great many warnings about the dangers of drugs, unsafe sex, talking to strangers, drunk driving, smoking, etc. We’d get literature about how we should always wear safety gear when bicycling or skateboarding, and we were frequently lectured about how our choices would affect our future. Sometimes older recovered addicts were brought in to tell us their stories, and we were subjected to graphic descriptions of drunk driving accidents. I’m not sure how much these programs helped steer kids clear of risky behavior, but I suspect they had some effect on the normal, obedient kids. Of course, their parents probably would have done the job just as well, but that’s for another post. Today, kids are probably even warned about internet safety and the dangers of video game addiction. They really try to cover all the bases. Or do they?
For all the warnings of dire consequences for making incorrect choices, schools never bothered to mention a thing about marriage. Sure, it was OK to talk about sex and drugs, but not the most important choice most people make in their lives, and this despite the fact that the American family was disintegrating at a record pace during those unfortunate years.
Today, young men are probably better informed than we were back in the 90s, before the internet really took off, and due to the fact that the devastation of the traditional family is no longer swept under the rug (as it still was when I was a kid), they are probably a lot more skeptical of marriage. I have seen some evidence of this, as young men appear to be a lot more wary even of long-term relationships with young women than they were only ten or fifteen years ago. Of course, the sluttiness of young American women is off the charts these days, so there isn’t much motivation for the young men to hook up long-term. This has a lot to do with why Italians were so shocked by Amanda Knox, who at one point boasted of doing a stranger in a train.
However, despite the stories I’m sure many young men have heard from friends and relatives, or the disasters seen first hand in their parents’ marriages, I doubt they really know just how bad it can be when a marriage goes south. For example, I don’t think very many of them know about VAWA, and that they can be thrown out of their own house on the basis of a single accusation without any hearing at all. Unlike earlier generations, they may be aware that plenty of wives cheat, but I doubt they know that getting upset about that and yelling insults can get them ordered into a domestic violence program that they must pay for, possibly as a condition for seeing their children, even if they never laid a hand on anyone. Do they know that if their wife gets physical with them and they attempt to restrain her, and then a neighbor calls the police, that someone is going to get arrested — probably the man? Additionally, they are probably unaware of just how merciless child support enforcement is, and how they can end up treated like a criminal – in fact, made a criminal – for losing a job. Did anyone tell them that their credit can be ruined or their passport revoked for falling behind for as little as a couple months?
In addition to the ruthless nature of family law, young men probably aren’t aware of just how nasty the women they loved can be in divorce. Has anyone told them about how a wife can go from apparent emotional detachment to all out war in an afternoon? Or that many, many women think nothing of ripping children away from a father, even when they mean more to him than anything else in his life? No, people are usually too cowardly to tell the truth.
People may argue that these are adult issues that shouldn’t be foisted on children. They may say that it would unduly traumatize and frighten young men to tell them this may happen, and anyway marriage is a private matter. They may say that, but the problem is that marriage is so heavily legislated that its dissolution can be far more consequential than being caught by the police with crack cocaine, and don’t we tell young men stories about guys who lost everything and ended up in prison for drug offenses? Girls are taken aside and warned about teen pregnancy; why aren’t boys taken aside and warned about it, too? They’ll be on the hook for child support even if they are 13 years old and the woman who seduced raped them is 25!
The failure of the state to inform boys and young men about the dangers of marriage goes beyond neglect, and gets into the realm of willful malevolence. Not even an Army recruiter would withhold the fact that soldiers are killed in war, so why would the state make no effort to inform potential husbands of the risks of marriage, if not from callous cynicism? Parents who fail to do so are acting negligently, although I’m sure many fathers who have never been through divorce are intentionally ignorant about the dangers; who wants to contemplate such horrors, after all? But every mother in the United States surely knows how easy it is to divorce a man, take the children and receive monthly payments for doing so. This being the case, the burden falls more heavily on mothers with sons. Mothers who do not explicitly tell their sons what other women can do to them are failing their own children, and in all seriousness they should be ashamed of themselves for holding the interests of strange women above those of their own flesh and blood.
Unfortunately, the job is probably up to us — at least for now. Until our society confesses to its abominable treatment of men, we few rabble-rousers will be all there is to warn boys of the perils ahead. Ours may be a lonely voice in the crowd, but it’s getting louder, and people are starting to fall silent and listen. We can only hope that the young hear us before it’s too late.
