[slg]

>Women choose less lucrative careers, leave the workforce more often to care for children, and care more about work-life balance.

Although the "choose" here needs to put into societal context. Do women naturally prefer less lucrative careers or has society reinforced that some less lucrative careers are in some way feminine while some more lucrative careers are masculine? Do women naturally want to leave the workforce and prioritize work-life balance or is that a response to society putting a majority of the parenting responsibility on their shoulders?

[steveBK123]

Societal pressure and expectations cut both ways, and I think are starting to harm young men more than young women, and is somewhat explanatory of recent machismo populist political turn in youth voting.

The stats are saying - women enroll and graduate college at higher rates than men, graduate with lower unemployment, and society has spent the last ~60 years correcting a lot of the wrongs that harmed women's choices & freedoms (notwithstanding some recent SCOTUS decisions).

A young woman in 2025 has been brought up in a society that tells them they can do anything, be anything, want anything, etc.

For young men, I firmly believe society expectations haven't really changed at all actually. They are still expected to be providers, and to make educational/career choices & sacrifices to facilitate that.

Very few men are stay at home parents, or make less than their wives. Those that do are not accepted by society the same way as when the roles are reversed. As expectations haven't changed but women have gained economically in relation to men, this sets up a very potent mix of resentment and mismatched singles (high end loser women & low end loser men).

A pattern amongst my richer/older friends I've noticed is that their sons are encouraged to go get STEM degrees to support themselves, while their daughters are encouraged to follow their passions, go work at an NGO, oh and here's a condo in Manhattan we bought for you. I sat on the board of a condo in yuppie Brooklyn a few years, and despite the stereotypes, the majority of trust fund buyers were women now.

[_aavaa_]

> For young men, I firmly believe society expectations haven't really changed at all actually. They are still expected to be providers, and to make educational/career choices & sacrifices to facilitate that.

That’s because male-coded fields are still seen and treated as more prestigious. Men aren’t encouraged to go into different fields because that would mean encouraging them to go into historically female-coded fields.

Women being told they can do anything and be anything (which overall is good) is a push to get them into previously male-coded occupations, and not a change in how we look down on women-coded work.

Men who are being failed by culture are being failed because as you say they are being pushed further to the machismo extreme.

[steveBK123]

They are being failed because they are raised with the knowledge no one is coming to save them, and told implicitly & explicitly that the lower their compensation the smaller the available dating pool.

[apparent]

> Do women naturally want to leave the workforce and prioritize work-life balance or is that a response to society putting a majority of the parenting responsibility on their shoulders?

Yes, mothers naturally do have a stronger urge to spend time with their babies/small children than men do. One of my male buddies lamented that he couldn't defer his paternity leave until his son was 8, so they could interact more. He had very little interest in spending time with his infant child. This is not uncommon among men, and quite uncommon among women (who bond with the baby when it is gestating inside them, and again when they nurse it, in many cases).

[lazide]

Even women with no children and no plan for children generally do this.