Vote Up or Down on our Economy

"A lot of times, people don't know what they want until you show it to them" STEVE JOBS.

What is the most interesting thing ABOUT THE ECONOMY these days? Some would say its the debates of what is not working with the Economy. Others will say its having the Wealth  being  controlled by Bankers and the top 5%. While even more people will say its the Election for the next leader of the Free World..... Why is this debate so complicate for most? Because everyone is not realizing the one thing that makes the World Economy thrive..... its all about "Confidence."  

Allow me to explain.  When I read this book, Influence: How Women's Soaring Economic Power Will Transform Our World For The Better, Author Maddy Dychtwald is a nationally recognized demographer, marketing executive, and entrepreneur. I was struck by the fact that of all the shifts that is currently taking place the one that was created by women’s economic independence stands out in the most compelling way. Which may prove to be its adverse impact on men—their values, their expectations, and their very definition of manhood. 

Boomer women--the first generation of women to enter the workforce and stay in the workforce; is the first generation to build careers like their husbands and fathers--have paved the way by example, demonstrating that gender doesn’t necessarily define our roles in our family and in our life.

“Men are where women were in the 1980’s,” explains Michael Kimmel, a sociology professor at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, and author of Guyland: The Perilous World Where Boys Become Men. "Guyland takes up where Real Boys left off...a must-read for parents, teachers, coaches, young women who are so confused by the guys in their midst-and for guys themselves who yearn to break free of unwritten rules that leave them half a man, rather than a whole person.” Back in the day, women were adding career to their repertoire; today, more and more men are adding care— for children, for aging parents, for communities ills. While some (okay, many) might call men’s engagement on the home front somewhat belated, this overdue participation may, in fact, be setting the stage for the move towards a partnership society.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not talking about some revolutionary “feminization” of men, where they simply swap roles with women, putting on aprons while women wear suits. What’s happening isn’t role reversal: It’s role reinvention. It’s a full- blown paradigm shift, one that gives both men and women more options when it comes to providing for their families and expressing their own talents and strengths. In this new social order, both genders are less shackled by a narrow vision of career success. Men in this new world have more social and workplace support for becoming involved fathers, equal partners in their homes and communities, and more complete people.

This change in the way we live is going on right now, in ways that are so obvious and self-evident that it’s easy to miss just how groundbreaking they really are. Men are reimagining their life just as boomer women shifted theirs twenty or thirty years ago, hoping to create lives that include important responsibilities at home as well as at work.

Case in point: When Myra Strober, a labor economist who teaches at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business, started teaching her course on “Work and Family” in the early 2000s, only a handful of men signed up. Today, men represent 40 percent of her class. Why? “More and more men are interested in being good dads,” she says of her students. “They also want to be good husbands and be supportive of their wives, or they have the kids for  the weekend." 

Let’s not forget that boomer women are the mothers of many of these men who are eager to take on new roles and responsibilities. This redefinition of fatherhood is happening in millions of families around the country, where fathers are spending many more hours with their children every week than their fathers spent with them. We see signs of it all around us as the most high- flying, type- A dads who drop their kids off at day care and duck out for soccer games and growing numbers of dads take paternity leaves, telecommute, or use flex- time.

The solution isn’t a broad political movement toward a new fatherhood, It’s the day-to-day accommodations that men are making, where they’re compromising and adopting new family arrangements that demand more from them at home. And they’re finding they’re actually enjoying it. Because they have shifted some of the Business headaches to their wives. There are more Women in the Business world today on the  Caribbean Island of St. Maarten, (for example) were women are in Key positions. However they are not being paid what men would be paid. More women head Companies in the USA dealing with the day-to-day issues in the Economy, they are not being paid what men were paid.......

Shifting to this new model of fatherhood can be acutely uncomfortable, even painful for some men. And this maybe causing the LACK of confidence in our Economies.   Often, men feel caught between a rock and a hard place, expected to fill the old-time breadwinner role and the new superdad model at the same time, while men are making adjustment, we also know who is making the decisions in our own household. This is scary to many,  the unknown is the new Experience for men as was the going from the household to businesses for women.   Are men still supposed to be the breadwinner? Will their wives think less of them if they step off the fast track? If men are confused, and women are learning these NEW roles, then that surely leads to "LACK of confidence"

If work/family pressure is taking a toll on the kids or the marriage, how can we have confidence in the Markets? And who is supporting their partner best? Many of men witnessed their own mother struggle with the dual responsibilities of raising a family and building a career, and now they find themselves in a similar conundrum. Once again creating LACK OF CONFIDENCE. 

While men in general and fathers in particular are going through a time of ambiguity, the shift in roles is already bringing tremendous benefits to both men and women, however its "work in progress." The more our communities and employers can acknowledge, recognize, and support these changes, already well under way, the more concerns like closing the gender wage gap will have to happen...... Let me be clear WOMEN still EARN $0.80 on the Dollar and in some communities even less. So this shifting is bringing less money into the households, because Men who are now in these rolls are no longer earning the bigger paycheck.  So now how can there be confidence when some Women are not making enough to afford great day care, which also does not allow for saving enough for education for their kids, enacting child-friendly laws and policies, and advancing work- life balance will become family issues, not just women’s issues. However EQUAL pay policies are needed like yesterday.....  There are more single Mothers raising their kids and doing a balancing act of family and careers. As the genders work together to redefine womanhood, manhood, and the family, our children will thrive and our society and economy grow stronger in "The Future." 

But before we get to that point we have to go through great adjustments and growing pains. You may want to read this link The problem: Men are trained to be independent, but women are trained to be inter-dependent. The  "LACK of confidence" in our Economy will be with us for awhile until we make the necessary adjustments.