I doubt Women’s Lib is preventing Italian men from leaving their homes-the article (and many others as well) observes that even when they leave, they still mail their clothes home for mama to wash them. That’s not a childishly spiteful reaction to women’s independence, that’s a refusal to be a man. In a couple of news articles from Italy they mentioned the divorce rates are rising because more and more women are tired of the constant interference from their mothers-in-law.
I believe the commenter said that mamas’ expectations differ around the world is dead on. My mother, thoroughly American, wouldn’t dream of doing her child’s mailed-over laundry. She would leave it sitting there, until her grown son comes and gets it done his damn self like she taught him to. American mothers, well mine anyway, teach their children how to look after themselves, so that when they’re older they are prepared to be adults.
Women having more options means they don’t have to put up with a man who refuses to act like a man. Sorry if being a man is such a chore, but women who tolerate childish men are the problem because they encourage more of them. The insight about the path of least resistance is exactly correct. On my job I have seen it happen where a woman marries a man like this: lives in his mother’s basement, plays games all day, and has no job nor is interested in having one. The women assume the men will magically stop being children, but they don’t. They don’t need to. Every need is met by her or their mothers, and they can continue to behave like overgrown boys.
If good women refused to look twice at them they might actually have to get a job and learn to look after themselves so they can interact with their wives on equal footing and not as a child. But instead they get what they need being lazy and childish and expecting to leech off of their wives. If we’re changing the definition of manhood to encompass such mentality and behavior then why even keep the word “man”? Just call ‘em all “boys” from now on. Of course, I don’t see the women hurting-they can always find men from elsewhere. But the men in this scenario will never have families. Unless family has been devalued more than I thought it has been, I fail to see how they’ve “won” here.
I don’t know exactly what Italians have to do to encourage men to embrace manhood over boyhood, but insisting the women lower their standards is probably another example of magical thinking. Not saying there aren’t any who don’t have low/no standards, but apparently there aren’t enough of them in Italy; and their existence is on the line here.
