If you’re a man over 30 and you have time to maintain more than 5 friendships—I mean real friendships—you’re either a loser, groomer, or gay.
Despite this being at the top of the article (presumably an inspiration for it), I find it fascinating how both the author and the commenters succeeded to ignore the most straightforward interpretation: that the problem is literally about men with jobs and families literally not having enough free time to maintain 5+ deep friendships.
If you imagine a patriarchal society where men go to work and women take care of children, the men can spend their time after work with their friends. On the other hand, if you imagine a society with equal gender roles, where both men and women go to work and then take care of children, there is not much time left for cultivating deep friendships; both genders effectively work two shifts.
I find it ironic that when this was problem of women only (women already started to have careers, but men did not yet help at home), a lot of feminist writing was produced about how bad it is for the women to work two shifts. Now that the society has changed and both genders contribute to childcare, so now effectively both work two shifts (note that the social norms have also shifted towards “helicopter parenting”, so the total amount of childcare has increased), and both genders have the same problem, it became a taboo to talk about it.
(The last person who publicly mentioned the need for “allowing and truly endorsing (as part of our culture) part time work” was James Damore, and it cost him his job. Note that this part is not even mentioned in Wikipedia.)
Suggested new EA cause area: shorter workweek. More time for relations outside work.
I don’t have an account on the other website, so I will comment here:
Re: Friendship Forever (new EA cause area?)
Despite this being at the top of the article (presumably an inspiration for it), I find it fascinating how both the author and the commenters succeeded to ignore the most straightforward interpretation: that the problem is literally about men with jobs and families literally not having enough free time to maintain 5+ deep friendships.
If you imagine a patriarchal society where men go to work and women take care of children, the men can spend their time after work with their friends. On the other hand, if you imagine a society with equal gender roles, where both men and women go to work and then take care of children, there is not much time left for cultivating deep friendships; both genders effectively work two shifts.
I find it ironic that when this was problem of women only (women already started to have careers, but men did not yet help at home), a lot of feminist writing was produced about how bad it is for the women to work two shifts. Now that the society has changed and both genders contribute to childcare, so now effectively both work two shifts (note that the social norms have also shifted towards “helicopter parenting”, so the total amount of childcare has increased), and both genders have the same problem, it became a taboo to talk about it.
(The last person who publicly mentioned the need for “allowing and truly endorsing (as part of our culture) part time work” was James Damore, and it cost him his job. Note that this part is not even mentioned in Wikipedia.)
Suggested new EA cause area: shorter workweek. More time for relations outside work.