Act your age, not your shoe size

There’s no denying it – women are more mature than men nowadays. I blame this on a combination of things. From a sociological point of view, men are no longer thrown out of the nest at the first available opportunity and sent out and hunt/forage for food like they were in the days of yore. Nothing makes you grow up faster than having to bring home the bacon or else the family/tribe dies.

Humankind in the western world has evolved to the point that food is readily available and parents mollycoddle their kids into their 40s and beyond! This tends to be particularly true with mothers (especially Irish mothers!) and their sons. Children growing up in a world of sky high property prices tend to live at home with the folks longer than previous generations. Thus, they are less capable of fending for themselves and the parent-child dynamic doesn’t evolve as it should. Fending for oneself is an important skill for a young man to learn as he’s expected to be able to look after his own household within a short period of time. However, often nowadays he’s lucky if he can tie his own shoelaces! A lot of twenty and thirty something males have grown up in their rooms playing video games and continue to do so in adulthood. The proliferation of lads’ magazines tells us it’s alright to be immature, drink beer with abandon and leer at scantily clad women. All these factors contribute to the emasculation of the modern young male and the “Peter Pan” effect, whereby young men don’t really grow up as much as they should.

Women on the other hand have gone in the opposite direction to an extent. Once almost universally considered subservient or inferior to men, many women saw their considerate talents go to waste. The woman’s place was in the home, after all. Female pioneers such as Marie Curie and hell, even Maggie Thatcher, had to battle severe discrimination to bring their formidable talents to the world. With the welcome advent of female suffrage and equality, more and more women started contributing to society in many different ways. This increased level of female responsibility and participation in society has caused the relative maturity levels of women to rise. They overtook their male counterparts some time ago and if this worrying trend continues, we men folk will soon be reduced to blubbering idiots (too late, I hear some of you say!)! To that end, I’ve decided to do my bit and give up video games….soon!