The Decline of Males: The First Look at an Unexpected New World for Men and Women [Paperback]

Lionel Tiger (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 2, 2000

Why have sexual and family norms of American society changed so dramatically in the last few decades? Lionel Tiger presents a unique perspective, offering arresting evidence that the real issue is reproduction, a biological process. He argues that the spread of effective contraception, controlled by women, gives them the sole power to decide to, or not to, bear children. Removed from the process of reproduction, men have begun to feel obsolete, resulting in their unprecedented withdrawal from family systems.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Biological anthropologist Lionel Tiger, best known for developing the concept of male bonding in Men in Groups, offers what he calls "a chronicle of the decline of men and the ascendancy of women." If there were a male counterpart to feminism--masculinism?--this is where it would be found. Profound social changes over the last several decades are rooted in reproductive technology, which "has given enormous general power to women that has been translated beyond the family sphere," says Tiger. This is not an unequivocally positive development, he believes, and it has led to a slew of problems that include general family breakdown. The book is occasionally alarmist, yet there is also a freshness to its argument.

The Decline of Males is a nonsexist brief on behalf of men, and it includes a number of interesting observations. As women play a larger role in public life, men are looking for new ways to be male. "Perhaps the apparent explosion of interest in sports and pornography means that men are trying to find new outlets to express their inherent maleness, which they may feel otherwise obligated to repress," writes Tiger. Several of his proposals are politically naive, but intriguing in how they blend conservative and liberal ideas. Tiger, for example, thinks men should earn higher pay for the children they have during a first marriage, and that unmarried women with children should receive welfare without having to work. The Decline of Males will fascinate some readers and exasperate others, yet all will agree it makes a unique intellectual contribution to the ongoing sex wars. --John J. Miller --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

Males have declined into bewildered, lonely creatures since "new and effective contraceptive technology, controlled by women" and the "anti-male" discourse of feminism have led to a pervasive social shift away from "male-centered production to female-centered reproduction." With the advent of the Pill, men have become from the "means of reproduction" and the demand for abortion has risen. The ancient mammalian unit of mother and child has morphed into a "bureaugamy," as single mothers find government assistance a more satisfying partner than a confused male. Or so says anthropologist Tiger (Men in Groups, etc.), who claims that only Darwinian biology can satisfactorily explain these changes and pities anyone foolish enough to believe the "Christian Science about human behavior" known as gender studies and sociology. This "psychosexual weather report" will delight those who find sociobiology convincing, but may vex readers who want more than newspaper articles offered as science (118 references to the New York Times alone). It may also be news to many women that they are "on the way to winning" the war between the sexes and will soon dominate the world economic system. Somewhat paradoxically, Tiger celebrates single mothers as the heroic vanguard of a new social order in the "human zoo," yet proclaims that it is men who have been "liberated" by the women's movement. Although provocative, his arguments won't withstand much serious scrutiny from points of view outside biology that may not see humans as analogous to bats and tadpoles. Agent, Amanda Urban of ICM.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 336 pages
• Publisher: Golden Guides from St. Martin's Press; 1st edition (September 2, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312263112
• ISBN-13: 978-0312263119
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.5 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (41 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #364,656 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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119 of 139 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Why men are in decline -- but what to do about it?, August 26, 2000

By 

Michael Mills (Goleta, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Decline of Males (Hardcover)

Over the past century, and especially in the past three decades, the feminist movement has intensively lobbied to secure women's reproductive rights. That battle has been won, but not simply due to political changes. Lionel Tiger argues in "The Decline of Males" that the key reasons were technological: medically safe abortion and contraception (primarily the pill). These technologies allowed women exclusively, and independently of their husbands, to control their reproduction. Contraception controlled pregnancy, and, should it not, women could solely chose whether or not to bring the pregnancy to term.

Although most would agree that these technologies have empowered women by offering them more life options, the larger social and personal effects on men, and on the relations between the sexes, have been largely ill-considered. These reproductive technologies, Tiger argues, have set the sexes on an uncharted, and perhaps dangerous, course. Reproductive power is no longer shared, albeit unconsciously, via the evolved desires and aversions of each sex. Today reproduction is controlled consciously and almost exclusively by women.

So while women were gaining their own reproductive control, men were losing theirs. What reproductive rights do men have left today? Virtually none. Consider the following scenarios. If a man's partner becomes pregnant, and he wishes to have the child, but she doesn't, he has no legal recourse to prevent an abortion. If, on the other hand, he wants her to terminate the pregnancy, he cannot compel her to have an abortion. Further, he will be legally responsible for child support for a child he would not have chosen to have. If she is on the pill, and he wishes to have a child, there is no legal recourse available to him to compel her to stop taking the pill. Divorce courts still favor granting custody of children to mothers and child support payments to fathers. The idea that reproduction and parenting is a decision jointly made by both partners is an outdated romantic illusion. Examined more closely, it is clear that the consent of woman is always a prerequisite. The consent of the man is often superfluous.

In addition, the resources that husbands traditionally have been able to contribute to reproduction and marriage -- financial support, protection, and socialization of their children -- have been supplanted, and sometimes replaced, by what Tiger terms government "bureaugamy" (women's dependency on the government, or the "government-as-husband"). What women historically relied on husbands to provide, now the state often antes up: child care, welfare, education, police protection, affirmative action and divorce laws that that favor women, ambiguous sexual harassment codes that leave the determination of whether an infraction occurred to the interpretation of a particular woman (not necessarily a "reasonable woman"), etc. While medical reproductive technology has had the effect of marginalizing men reproductively, the state's "bureaugamy" has marginalized the importance of men's marital and parental contributions. Women are often encouraged to live independently (as evidenced by the feminist slogan: "A woman needs a man about as much as fish needs a bicycle"). The bureaugamy supports the superfluousness of husbands by assuring a woman that it will provide what historically a husband did -- with government help she can live independently and generally without fear of hunger, lack of shelter, attack, or lack of socialization and education of her children.

The consequences of women's reproductive control, combined with feminist inspired "bureaugamy," may already be felt. Tiger notes that one-third of births in industrialized societies are now to single mothers. The average female income is growing while average male income is declining. The majority of college undergraduates, 55%, are women. While female college enrollment continues to increase, male enrollment is decreasing. Divorce rates are the highest recorded in history.

As the value of male contributions to reproduction, marriage and parenting have diminished, so too has the general level of male status in society. Warren Farrell noted in his book "Why Men Are the Way They Are" that our perception of men has been transformed in a few decades from one in which "Father Knows Best" to "Daddy Molests." The male cultural icons of the 1940s, 1950s and early 1960s were independent, powerful, and respected men, who were also generally respectful and gentlemanly toward women. Today, the movie of the week is typically about a woman victimized by a male: her boss or father, her current (or ex) boyfriend or husband, or by a maniacial serial rapist or murderer.

The feminist movement has spearheaded the cultural acceptance of the routine disrespect of men. Instead of equitably quashing and discouraging misandry and working toward true mutual understanding and respect between the sexes, the feminist movement has succeeded in cheerleading a misandry that palpably permeates the culture. Jokes, television commercials, magazine advertisements and even greeting cards often put down men in a way that would be condemned as sexist if directed toward women. As men become less needed as fathers and husbands, they are increasingly disrespected by women. Ironically, by reducing men's general status vis a vis women, women find to their disappointment fewer available men who can meet their high expectations for a potential husband and father of her children.

Tiger's concern is that by "fooling Mother Nature" via the reproductive technologies of contraception and abortion we have unwittingly headed into uncharted, and perhaps dangerous, territory. Our species has not evolved psychological adaptations to deal with modern reproductive technology -- what evolutionary psychologists call an "evolutionary mismatch." There is now a disconnect between our ancestral and current environments. As a sexy and technologically smart primate, we have learned to take the goodies (sex) an unlink it from its evolutionary purpose (reproduction and parenting). The long term social and emotional consequences of this mismatch are unknown, but is it clear that one of the effects, the "decline of males," has already begun.

Yet most men today are about as cognizant of their increasing inequality as women in the 1950s were conscious of their limited life choices. Men need some consciousness raising of their own. Unfortunately, they are so predisposed to protect women, and protect what feminists say women's interests are, that men ignore their own interests as a group to their own peril. On a social level, several nascent men's movements have sputtered, and then sadly faded. Apparently men's instincts to protect women (or at least protect their own personal reputation as a protector of women), are generally greater than their inclination to protect themselves.

On a more personal level, when a man finds himself unable to provide more income than a woman can obtain via welfare (or that she can provide through her own career), when he cannot cause or prevent an abortion, when he is ordered to financially support a child that he never wanted (or even one that is not genetically his own), when he is not granted equal custody or parental authority for his children after a divorce, when he loses a job, promotion or a work contract to a less qualified woman due to affirmative action policies, when women of his own socioeconomic class reject him because they prefer a partner who has a higher status, he is feels, at best, confused. He knows something is askance with feminist rhetoric about "equality," but he may have difficulty articulating it. Men today are befuddled -- they don't understand how equality for women came to result in sexual, reproductive, parental and legal inequality and a disrespect for men.

Although Tiger's book contains a great deal of valuable information, it is rather poorly presented. It is written with a prose that awkwardly combines the style of a social commentary with a smattering of too lightly sketched evolutionary psychology theory, personal observations, social history, exemplars from contemporary cultures, and some repetitive statistics. Chapter titles and section headings are nondescriptive. Some of Tiger's assertions are based solely on his opinion -- others have solid scientific backing. But it is often difficult to distinguish between the two. It would have helpful if Tiger had organized the book more as a clear, progressive and logically structured argument.

Most egregiously, Tiger seems to have missed some of the most important works in the men's studies field, such as Warren Farrell's books, including Why Men are the Way they Are, The Myth of Male Power, and Women Can't Hear what Men Don't Say. This is a serious oversight -- not only are Farrell's important works ignored in the text, they are not listed in his chapter notes and references. Many of Tiger's own arguments have previously been p

45 of 52 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars 4 1/2 stars actually..., September 26, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Decline of Males (Hardcover)

Ok, so us guys are doomed to fail to reproduce, die early, and perhaps take down many others with us. Others here have said most of what needs to be said about this book, so I'll address what other reviewers have written, in an attempt to clarify.

What the reader from North Carolina misses is that the decline of males *is* the decline of civilized society, since matriarchies are from the era *before* civilization. Civilization was only made possible after patriarchy had been invented, since fatherhood is a social (rather than biological) construct; it's the weak link in the family. Before, during the eons when women were in control, it was called the Stone Age, and life was barbaric, brutish, and short; women were callous creatures rather than ladies (which only became possible w/patriarchy), no matter how much feminism wants to propagandize us about the inherently loving and nurturing nature of females. A return to the biological mother-child "family" is now viewed by the basically braindead as "progessive".

The comment about how men should keep their pants on is so reminiscent of what society told girls and young women 40 or 50 years ago that one almost couldn't come up with a better illustration of the current second class status of males. The problem is not lack of commitment, but a lack of anything for men to commit to which has their interests in mind: marriage no longer confers any rights on men whatsoever, thus depriving even men who really want families of them; at her whim, the woman can split with the kids, the minivan, and the home -- and make him continue to foot the bill for this deprivation, while she's no longer obligated to cook his meals or do his laundry.

The net result of this is that men with talent and resources have stopped pursuing women to a large degree, who then think there's a shortage of quality available men. But if it's "Our Paychecks, Ourselves", why should any man put his life's work at risk for an unreliable female who the state will not hold to the marriage "contract"? This is amply demonstrated by the "I find myself doing a lot of losers" story in the book. Good men are lieing low, waiting for the pendulum to swing back at least a little way in their favor. Perhaps this book will help bring that about.

Ronald should read the dialogue w/Tiger in the June issue of Harper's Magazine, where his concerns are addressed. The Senate is predominantly male because the female voting *majority* knows that chivalrous and paternalistic males are in their interest. Who ever heard of a politician bragging about what he was going to do for *men* -- other than build more prisons to put them in? Government-as-husband w/many men paying taxes for "families" they have no stake in is the result. Nobody's keeping women from running for any office.

CEO's are not despotic rulers (like women are to their young children), but highly paid servants of their customers. And it's women who control 70% of the consumer spending in America. (Just go look around the mall if you're in denial -- the power of money is not in its earning but in its spending.) The idea that men act only to benefit all men is preposterous. One man's personal victory benefits me not at all. Besides, Tiger says he doesn't care about the small percentage of men who are highly successful; his book is about the declining success of the other 99.9%. If men ran GM and Ford the way feminists believe they do, we wouldn't have all these g.d. minivans; sports cars would be more like it. The problem is not with those from families with fathers, but rather those from female-headed households.

Anyway, this is an important book even if not entirely convincing at times. It could have been better written -- sometimes one feels deluged by all sorts of demographic stats in search of an ordering theory. And Tiger is almost too defensive in advance, answering objections before needing to -- probably a result of being stuck around a university crawling with feminists ready to pounce on any errant male -- though this book is nothing compared to what some men really think. It's actually pretty tame. It could have been a little better, though that shouldn't detract from it's many contributions to this field. Men freed women, so it's now roughly 50-50 in the public sphere; will women free men so that the same could be said of the private sphere? Or will women continue to deny men equal reproductive rights?

30 of 36 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Intelligent & thought-provoking -- must reading., March 7, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Decline of Males (Hardcover)

Lionel Tiger's insightful new book focuses on changes that are influencing virtually every facet of American society. It is no secret that, since the introduction of birth control, elemental patterns of dating, mating and sexuality have undergone a revolution. Gender barriers that seemed insurmountable two generations ago have greatly diminished if not vanished completely (in 1920, who would have thought that roughly half of Ivy League undergraduates would be women?) Not all the consequences of these changes have been expected or understood. Tiger forces us to confront many of them that have escaped previous analysis.

Some people, of course, would rather not think about the facts and issues that now confront us. To see how explosive Tiger's work can be, you need only read the outraged reaction of the Kirkus reviewer. It's not hard to see why highly ideological feminists, with a vested interest in ideas not facts, might be outraged by the book. But for the rest of us, The Decline of Males is must reading.