On Substack, Bettina Arndt shows some of the reasons why men are less and less willing to commit — not just to relationships, but to huge swathes of what we used to call “adult life”:
The warning signs have been there for decades. Back in 1983, American author Barbara Ehrenreich wrote a powerful book — The Hearts of Men: American Dreams and the Flight from Commitment — arguing that a male revolt was underway. Since the 1950s, she suggested, men had begun rebelling against the breadwinner ethic — inspired by Playboy culture, the counterculture, and a desire for personal freedom. They were rejecting the cultural ideology that had shamed them into tying the knot and becoming a good provider, lest they be seen as immature, irresponsible, and less than a real man.
Ehrenreich understood that marriage was the mechanism by which society harnessed male productivity. Remove the shame, and the yoke comes off.
Forty years on, the yoke has disappeared. In April 2026, the American male labour force participation rate hit its lowest level since records began in the 1940s, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. One in three American men — roughly 33% — were not working or actively looking for work. The overall male participation rate for men aged 16 and over stood at just 67%, down from 73.5% two decades ago and from 87% in the postwar years when Ehrenreich’s story begins.
The trend is not confined to America. Australian men’s workforce participation has fallen from around 79% in 1978 to approximately 71% today (see below), while similar declines — though less dramatic than in the United States — have occurred in the UK and Canada.
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If you want to understand why men are voting with their feet, you need to look not just at what marriage now costs them — and the costs are severe — but at what it delivers. Increasingly, what it delivers is a pretty dud deal.
The modern woman: a prospectus.
- They are the most miserable, anxious, and insecure cohort in living memory — hardly great marriage material.
- Most married women go off sex — and the husband who objects is seen as the problem.
- Many women don’t actually like men very much. The more educated she is, the higher the contempt.
- They’ve gone full throttle left — and three quarters of college-educated women won’t even date a man who votes differently.
- They’ve rigged the education system and colonised corporate and institutional life, turning universities and workplaces into man-repellent factories.
- Yet their hypergamy (desire to marry up) is still running hot. Despite outnumbering men in education and careers, they demand a tall, equally high-status unicorn.
- The modern female threat-detection system is hyperactive. Almost any male behaviour — silence, opinions, jokes, breathing — gets flagged as a red flag.
- They’re extremely well-versed in the lucrative economics of divorce, including a well-timed false allegation to eliminate tedious shared parenting.
What rational man reads this list and thinks: yes, that’s exactly what’s been missing from my life?
