Gendered mediocrity

Interesting column over at the Post today about the growing portion of young men living with their parents - one third of men 22-34. The piece is rather short, and doesn't really get around to saying definitively what might be causing such the trend. As I myself dangle close to this precipice, I have to wonder about how to avoid slipping into complacent unremarkableness. Friends who have been successful in starting new, independent lives after college seem to have just decided to get up and do, quite incautiously. Where do they get the motivation to give up security? What separates them from those I know who seem stuck?

The gendered aspects of this are intriguing. I wonder if societal changes in gender roles have affected this - over the last 40 years or so, women have been told they can do everything, which might be read by men to say implicitly that they shouldn't be doing everything, that they no longer have some inborn responsibility to seek gainful employment, etc. While it's great to focus on correcting thousands of years of misguided gender differentiation, I think perhaps we do so at our peril if we don't recognize that everyone needs messages of empowerment if we're all to succeed in a new system.