Alan Krueger, top economic adviser to former President Barack Obama and one of the nation’s most influential labor market experts, took his own life over the weekend at the age of 58. Krueger was a labor economist and deeply involved in research that outlined the link between low labor force participation and addiction to opioid painkillers.
What Krueger discovered in his research was specifically related to men: “Prime-age men who are out of the labor force report that they experience notably low levels of emotional well-being throughout their days, and that they derive relatively little meaning from their daily activities.”
So what is the link between men, work, and their psychological well-being? That work is at the core of their identity.
In the past, we celebrated this. But over the past 40 years, the country has demoted men from respected providers and protectors of the family to being superfluous to women and to society. Anti-male propaganda abounds in Hollywood, in the media and in our universities. Commercials make dads look like buffoons. Did we honestly think this message would do no harm?
As if that weren’t enough, we now champion women as the dominant sex, even though the research about male vs. female bread-winning is clear: when women out-earn men, relationships suffer and often collapse. When relationships suffer, marriage and families break down. When marriage and families breaks down, society follows right behind.
We may not like that men need employment in a unique and primal way, but we can’t will it away, nor should we try.
After all, it is women, not men, who have the ability to do the most important task in the world: create life. What’s more, their bodies are designed to nourish that life. A woman’s value to society, in other words, is immeasurable — even if she never earns a dime.
That is not the case for men.
For men, their ability to provide for their families is how they gain a sense of purpose. Thus, a man who is stripped of his ability to earn — if he doesn’t make enough money to keep a family afloat, or if his wife makes more money than he does, or if his wife spends more than he’s able to earn — he doesn’t feel like a man at all.
He becomes rudderless. He feels useless.
Whether he actually is useless isn’t the point; that’s how he feels. That’s when his descent begins. As long as a man feels expendable to women and to society (who could blame any man for feeling that way given today’s cultural script?) he will become destructive, either to himself or to others.
Krueger knew this and made a call to arms. “Addressing the decades-long slide in labor force participation by prime age men should be a national priority.”
Indeed it should. Krueger focused his efforts on economic policy, but before we can have a change in policy we must first have a change of heart.
There isn’t a woman today under 60 years old who didn’t grow up hearing the phrase “Never depend on a man.” That was the beginning of the end.
Since then, men have been pushed off their pedestal (women had their own pedestal, but feminists convinced them otherwise), and now the men have nowhere to go. As a result, gender relations are broken and marriages and families cease to be formed.
Until that changes, nothing else will.
Suzanne Venker (@SuzanneVenker) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. She is an author, columnist, and relationship coach known as “The Feminist Fixer.” Her newest book, “WOMEN WHO WIN at Love: How to Build a Relationship That Lasts,” will be published in October 2019. Suzanne’s website is www.suzannevenker.com.
