The Disposable Male by Michael Gilbert - Contact the Publisher

It seems that manhood no longer requires preparation. Boys stumble without a map onto the pathways to masculinity, forced to learn by their own devices the essential traits and qualities of authentic manliness. Without a clear sense of purpose, young men are hardly motivated or encouraged to support their partner and family, much less serve their community. Men's ancient and defining roles as resource provider and defender have been down-sized and outsourced. Declared obsolete and cast adrift, the modern hunter is searching for a new job description.

Meanwhile, women have been propelled into unfamiliar territory, encouraged or forced to support themselves and build careers in today's long stretch between puberty, marriage, and beyond. The contemporary woman has become a hunter as well as a gatherer. Barely one in three American women held a paying job in 1950; almost three-quarters do now. And there's not much relief when a husband and children are added to the equation: two-thirds of women with children under six now hold down a job compared to less than 20 percent half a century ago. For many of these sleep-deprived women, forced to assume the triple role of wife, mother, and employee, "you can have it all" has turned into a cruel joke. "You have to do it all" is the not-so-funny punch line.

Despite all the changes over the last two generations—or perhaps because of them—young women often report that they are struggling to cope in a man's world while many young men believe women get all the breaks. As a result, America is turning into a culture of severely diminished men without distinctive roles and responsibilities, and overburdened women trying to balance too many agendas. In the process, masculinity has become a disease, femininity has become a burden.

According to recent surveys, young adults of both sexes now experience unprecedented confusion around gender roles and mating behavior. As today's "twixters" move into their prime reproductive years, often graduating from broken homes, they enter a lengthy, unsettled breakup culture of "no rings, no strings," according to a Rutgers University study on the state of marriage. Modern romance, if that's the word, seems reduced to a kind of use-and-discard universe of coarse sexual barter. The ageless and intimate masculine-feminine union turns ever more edgy and fragile. "Trust no one" has become today's social mantra. To many observers, contemporary mating has begun to look like a battleground of broken dreams. Minor skirmishes and countless little hurts and bruises add up to a crude, transient social culture.

The intimate bond between men and women, the primacy of reproduction, and the lifelong commitment to wedlock are going the way of the dinosaur. Increasingly isolated, we are opting for freedom over permanence and marrying later, if we marry at all. We are living alone or living together without formal ties and becoming single parents in record-breaking numbers.

In the anonymous cosmopolitan landscapes in which most of us now live, families and clan are often scattered and kinship ties broken. Statistics chronicling the disintegration of the family are as familiar as they are distressing. From preparing meals to housing the elderly, family functions have been outsourced or subcontracted. Three out of four young adults tell pollsters they are less family-oriented than their parents. Our friendships also feel more temporary and mercenary even as trusted family, kin, and community supports erode. In the big metropolis, we are hardly accountable to anyone anymore.

Not coincidentally, polls regularly support the notion that American society is increasingly abrasive and selfish. Reports of anxiousness and depression in the general population reached epidemic levels even before 9/11. Although the ordinary citizen earns nearly three times the income of his or her counterpart at the end of World War II—and lives in more than twice the household space—levels of clinical depression are, depending on how you define it, three to ten times greater in just two generations.

A blue chip national commission charged with studying youth preparedness concluded, "Never before has one generation of American children been less healthy, less cared for, or less prepared for life than their parents were at the same age." The American Psychological Association now rates the everyday levels of anxiety among children aged nine to seventeen as exceeding the scores of psychiatric patients just two generations ago.

Assessing these enormous social upheavals calls for a perspective both wide and deep. Yet seldom are we able to pause on the treadmill of twenty-first century life to consider where we've come from, to ponder our current predicament, or to explore the root causes of modern sexual confusion and social disarray. Perhaps what is missing is a panoramic sense of history, the bigger picture. For instance, the embattled institution of wedlock may be just a few thousand years old, but the intimate pair bond between the sexes that drives it is a partnership anchored in ancient origins, bearing a long and colorful legacy. That it has survived this long is no accident.