Do We Need To Worry About Childless Cat Men?

Some commentators want to pretend that this group is more of a problem than childless cat ladies

A Wall Street Journal article recently declared that young men “are falling even further behind.” It reported on how fewer men are going to college and more men are living at home with their parents.There is a generation of men that’s adrift, aimless, and falling behind their female peers.

This phenomenon begs the question as to what will happen when they get older. Will they finally get their act together, or will they be doomed to be NEETs forever? 

The article is worth reading in the context of the debate over “childless cat ladies.” Politicians and pundits have pontificated about these ladies since J.D. Vance’s comments about them resurfaced as a campaign issue. Conservatives contend that the rising number of unmarried and childless adults is a problem. Liberals think there’s no problem at all and it’s “weird” to even notice it. Democrats have painted Republicans as anti-cat lady to gain support among single women. 

Largely unmentioned in the debate are the rising numbers of childless men. However, some conservatives want to make this a gender-neutral issue by pointing out this demographic. This is not done to counter the Left’s cat lady appeals by engaging with their male counterparts. They are brought up to castigate as equally bad, if not worse, than the childless cat ladies. 

Frequently wrong pundit Erick Erickson made this point a few weeks ago, asking: “Is it just the single cat ladies who are the problem, or also the middle-aged, single childless men?” I’ve had other right-wingers warn me that the childless men will be as much of a problem, if not more so, than the cat ladies. While it is a serious problem that millions of Americans–regardless of gender–will be unattached into middle-age, the men will mostly be a sad lot. They will have little political, cultural, or financial power. They will be at the bottom rung of the social order and will contribute to the rising number of “deaths of despair.” 

Just look at the male Zoomers struggling to make it into young adulthood. Suicides are rising within this age group, and this is before they hit middle-age. They are not going to be the people shaping the country and making it “woker.” That responsibility will be with their female peers.

The cat ladies are a major political and cultural force–and will likely gain even more power with time. Many of the most powerful women in our society already belong to this demographic. Politicians will cater their message to this group, as will popular media. Taylor Swift, our most popular entertainer, proudly identifies as a “childless cat lady.” No popular entertainer will want to identify as a childless cat man who demands respect from politicians. It’s only women who will do that.

Obviously, this influential demographic will vote overwhelmingly Democratic and will embrace all the latest progressive issues. The cat ladies will make their mark on America and determine its future. The same can’t be said for their single male counterparts.

Conservatives want to blame the single men for creating the single ladies. Some of this impulse stems from the traditional perspective that men lead and women follow. It’s up to the men to make the cat ladies happy moms. It’s also far more politically correct to blame men rather than women. Conservatives prefer a comforting view that men are too busy playing video games and being BAD MEN to settle down. The solution to this problem is just to castigate men even more. It’s not like the mainstream press, entertainers, and schools don’t do that already, but apparently scolding from the Right will finally do the trick. 

Women encourage this view as well. Viral posts claim that the childless cat ladies are a creation of cads leading innocent women on. Women are blameless for ending up single in middle-aged. They all wanted a husband, but heartless men sabotaged their years of fertility. This may be true in some cases, but this argument is built on the assumption that women have no agency and can’t be blamed for their decisions. It also overlooks social factors to focus exclusively on the personal to explain America’s relationship woes.

There is something  to this argument, however. There are fewer “suitable” men for ambitious, professional women. Fewer men are graduating from college, their employment rates are in decline, and their wages remain stagnant. Meanwhile, over 60 percent of college grads are now women and females are rising in the workforce. The vast majority of women (Lana Del Rey excepted) do not want to marry men below their station. They prefer men who make more money than them. It’s now harder for them to find men like that. High-value men who out-earn women are a hot commodity and these guys realize they have a lot of options. The “cads” are less inclined to settle down, but that’s who women seek out. Ladies don’t want to be wifed up by the men falling behind.

This is part of the situation I outlined in a previous article explaining the chaos wrought by the dating apps:

While most women will get plenty of likes and matches, only top-tier men will get this level of engagement. A large percentage of women will match with the cream of the crop because men will swipe on everything. That small fraction of men will respond to this abundance with a refusal to settle down. Due to occasional matches, a majority of women believe they can obtain a guy from this small demographic. Society tells them to not settle for anything less, and they stay single in the hopes of one day getting chad to propose. 

Attractive women in their prime (early-to-mid 20s) also have a similar level of abundance and don’t want to settle down either. Family would get in the way of their lifestyle. Their mind changes as soon as they hit 30, yet they’re now less capable of getting the man they think they deserve. The 30-something chads will eventually want to settle down, but they want a girl in her early-to-mid 20s (this reality motivates women’s rage over age gap relationships). But they’re less likely to obtain that dream girl, so they string along 30-something women who they will never propose to.

This is a miserable dynamic, but it is what it is. 

The cads are a very small slice of the childless men demographic. The vast majority are the “left behinds” who have few marriage prospects. Unlike many of the cat ladies who have successful careers but no proposals, these men have bleak career prospects that match their dating lives. No one is demanding they settle down because they have zero options. Women see them as incel losers and would prefer not to think about them at all. The picture for this demographic only gets grimmer as they get older. It’s brutal to be working DoorDash into your 40s with no wife, no kids, few friends, and little hope. But there will be many men like that.

Both groups of childless men are hated. The cads are despised because they won’t settle down. The left behinds are hated for being losers. Neither group is going to turn into an influential political constituency like the cat ladies. No party will try to appeal to them. If anything, both parties will attack them as a politically correct punching bag. The growing power of the cat ladies could see calls for laws against the childless men. Women will demand that cads be barred from dating younger women and be legally required to propose to their girlfriend after two years of a relationship. At the same time, the cat ladies will want the incels put in prison camps to ensure they no longer have to deal with their awkwardness and “misogyny.” 

It’s highly unlikely our government would pass such laws, but it would be socially acceptable to advocate such measures. The same could not be said of anything incels or cads would propose. 

America is going to have a lot more childless adults. It’s not really men or women’s faults. It’s just the nature of our society where women now have far more choice and men are falling behind. The only way to correct this problem is to get young men back on track. However, conservative advice to young men is often terrible. The stereotypical advice is to tell them to not go to college and move far away from the cities, all of which takes them out of the dating pool and pushes them into the left behind category. 

We need a society that encourages young men to succeed and find a purpose in life. If an equal number of men and women were graduating college, you would see marriage rates increase. If you saw male wages and employment rise, you would see greater family formation. If more resources were devoted to guiding young men on the right path, there would be fewer left behinds.

If young men continue to fall behind, American society will be riven by gender warfare and increasing childlessness. Miserable and barren girlbosses will reign supreme as their male peers succumb to deaths of despair. That’s a nightmarish picture, and one that should cause reflection on how we ended up like this.