In light of this single woman who had 8 babies in vitro with no man in the picture makes me wonder about the diminishing role of guys in families raising kids and society in general.
There was an interesting statistic about how men were disproportionately being laid off in this recession because most blue collar jobs being eliminated in this country and being replaced by more service or hospitality oriented jobs traditionally held and run by women. Women are becoming the main bread winners of families, women are choosing to have babies without the need of a husband with in vitro fertilization and sperm donors, many of the families are already run by single mom's with no guy in the picture, and more women than men are going to college these days.
Is the American male becoming irrelevant? Can society just get by fine without having us around?
I think most of us would rather conceive "the old fashioned way" :biggrin1: (or if you're like me you don't want to conceive at all - you just want to do a lot of what you do TO conceive! :biggrin1::biggrin1
As far as the jobs go, who's to say what is a "man's" job or what's a "woman's" job? A job is a job, and it doesn't matter who does it.
I'm a woman who always had traditionally male career interests, and I'm feeling the similar crunch of the recession, and have had to consider the service jobs that are more traditional female jobs, although the thing is they PAY CRAP!!! I mean, $7 and $8 an hour just doesn't cut it when you used to make $40-$50K a year!
Part of the problem with the jobs that have laid off the most workers, yes, those "traditionally male jobs" (the jobs I was more interested in as well) is that they've been moved overseas so that the CEOs can make more money. If you're not a CEO you're SOL.
Some traditionally female professions are more recession-proof, and do pay enough to live on (such as nursing and teaching), and many men are going into those jobs too - and why not? If they can do those jobs, they're less likely to get laid off and outsourced as they would be in a manufacturing job or an IT or engineering job (I was an IT job and I've seen many, many jobs in my field moved to India...) Unfortunately, not everyone is cut out for nursing and teaching jobs. I am most certainly not. I can't deal with children (I've never even babysat! And I'm an only child who grew up being never around younger children, so on those rare occasions that I was around them, they annoyed me out of my mind!) I also have trouble doing health care jobs for other reasons - just not cut out for it.
I'd say that men are not becoming irrelevant. All people are relevant.
The thing is, we need to bring the manufacturing, IT and engineering jobs back (Now I have no problem with the people in India or wherever who take those jobs - MY gripe is with the corporate executives who move those jobs just to fatten their own bank accounts at everyone else's expense!
) Also, those jobs are definitely NOT limited to men, just as teaching, health care and service jobs are not limited to women. People should do the jobs they enjoy and are cut out for regardless of whether they are men or women.
