Curious: what effect do you think culture has? The economic plays a big role, but there’s a tendency nowadays to call the root problem for everything economic and act like cultural effects are just “holidays and religion” or other marginal effects.

The culture has changed dramatically since the 50s when these trends started. For the men, their role has gone from default “protector, provider, head of the home, in charge, theist, conservative, married young” to “equal bread winner, often oppressive, too often toxic, without innate greater purpose or role, etc”.

Obviously these are broad generalizations, but we would probably agree that men get a worse wrap now than then (even if that came at the expense of others). Does that large cultural shift have a large effect? Are men lacking purpose now and how much of the current problem men face is because of that cultural shift? The economic is important, but the cultural factors are huge too