What is going on with people?

[Emptyandsad]

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/mar/05/gen-z-men-baby-boomers-wives-should-obey-husbands

Society seems to be going backwards! I always thought that, generation after generation, we were generally, slowly, becoming more equitable...

It's no surprise. Men have historically abused their power to both get and keep women, remove that power and you end up with men wanting it back to get and keep women.

What about their fathers? Surely they should be the role models in this case?

Women didn't decide that. Women "decided" that they wanted to have equal rights and opportunities to go get education, go to work and otherwise to participate in a society. They didn't force men to get on board with equal contribution to the household. They simply decided to not engage with men who didn't. Now these men cry about the loneliness epidemic which is their prerogative. We all make choices. I am just glad that women now get to make that choice too.

Oh god, that is scary. Hopefully you can find out and have a chat about this sort of stuff. Never too early I guess.

The men are not lonely enough :)

They don't want to have to make the effort of being kind or making compromise, they want women to fear them and defer to them.

The 1950s model was their perfect scenario.
Women aren’t asking for the moon on a stick….a partner that joins in with family life would be a start.
My ex said that ‘most women would boast that their husband had a pilots licence’. Wrong! I’d have been more likely to boast if he’d done the hoovering.

I've noticed this for a while. It felt like things were more equal 20 or 30 years ago. Now I see many young women deferring to their partners, styling themseves like strippers or porn stars and assuming they'll take their husband's name on marriage. It feels like a lot of ground has been lost.

This is not a helpful article. The research was global and included countries that have a different history of sex based roles than the UK.
The responses to most of the questions are not broken down by country. In the instance where it is broken down, for example, on the question as to whether wives should obey their husband's, only 13% in the UK agreed, compared with 66% in Indonesia. The 13% in the UK is the same as the 13% of boomers who agreed.
I'm not suggesting there's no problem. Clearly from a global perspective there is. Nor do I think 13% isn't concerning. However the article is a bit of a mess.

I don't want to come over all vacuous 'new man'. But I'm a man in his 60s; I've never wanted a Stepford wife to come home to. I've wanted somebody to go through life with; somebody who has my back and I have hers; somebody to share the joys and the sorrows; someone with whom I can share dreams

I don't believe any kind of happiness lies in having some trophy wife - or being somebody's trophy wife. So I pity the men and the women who aspire to this shit. They need to raise their game and their aspirations

My mother was born in 1946; if you asked her if she "obeyed my father", she would laugh you out of the house. 🤣

Manosphere grifters preying on young men. It's depressing.

Exactly, there's no desire to check whether any of the lazy crap they're being fed is materially true or not - it benefits some people to believe it regardless.

How do they even need to check it is the thing? Don't they have eyes in their heads, are they honestly trying to say they don't know any average or below looking men who are on average or below salaries that are married or have girlfriends?

You can thank Andrew Tate and his ilk for this. It's coupled with the general right wing direction young mens political views are headed.

Of course not, but if they’re stupid enough to believe it all then they’re too stupid to realise that.

I think Sigma's the same as skibidi for tweens. It comes from online theorising regarding alpha male/beta males etc so I am sure there will be lost teenagers out there using it in a serious and toxic way.
But eg some kids calling their WhatsApp group "Alpha-Sigma-Chad-boyz" is more of a piss take on an existing concept. It's a symptom that those terms become mainstream so fast. But I don't think the fact your 8 year old is using them automatically means they are absorbing mysogynist messages (though obviously check what they see on the internet carefully still).

It’s true, a stroll through any town centre will show you that fairly ordinary and (frankly) ugly people DO have partners and it’s NOT looks alone that drives relationships, looks can fade, personality and values last way longer.

my guess is that they only see women in porn, aspire to people who aren’t your ordinary person next door and set their sights way too high and then blame women for the inevitable consequences.

I don't think it's about stupidity; it's about young men trying to fit into the world, to impress their peers. It's depressing to see from the article that there are women who buy into this too - presumably basically for the same reasons.

If kids aren't brought up with better values, with more self-awareness, greater self-esteem and more respect for other people then they become vulnerable, as they look for a way to be successful, to being influenced by arses like Andrew Tate, or religions (Christianity, Islam and Judaism are all historically misogynistic)

The problem is not that many women are going to be signing up for this. The birthrate is dropping, marriage is dropping, even dating rates are dropping, as are rates of sexual frequency.

Women are opting out, I don't blame them. I don't know any Gen Z men like this though, my children's boyfriends are not like this, I suspect these men are the ones who are going to be very left behind.

The algorithm on Facebook both in terms of what videos/content tyou see and what comments on said content are boosted to the top is very opaque and quite manipulative.

I agree that part of it is a reaction to changing societies/a push back against women getting more rights or anxiety at men's place in the world. But it isn't completely organic. A lot of it's being pushed by people with specific agendas (I know that I sound like a conspiracy loon. I don't care). And also pushed by people who can make more money from controversial content on their social media platforms and therefore profit from less societal cohesion.

It's not just lonely/young men that are the problem. They are being pushed in a certain way deliberately (and that means women are being manipulated too probably). While obviously that's a worry, the flip side is that YouTube shorts and Facebook will also be pushing the worst content to the front. I don't want to fall into the trap of making the same mistake - assuming what is online is more real than in person experiences.

That's what I mean! It being in front of their noses totally highlights their choice to believe it as a belief that is proven wrong by... looking around!

This!!!! Talk about misleading headlines and almost pointless research conflating so many different countries into what become meaningless statistics!!!

To be honest im glad. Hopefully then the hateful attitudes dies out when they can't find any women to have babies with and carry on this toxic nonsense. Evolution in action. Is that too harsh 🙈😅😬

Came here to say exactly the same thing. Societal attitudes in Indonesia or Malaysia are not at all comparable with those in the UK.