# Young men and relationships
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/young-men-and-relationships/1014156
**Category:** In My Humble Opinion
**Created:** [February 11, 2025, 5:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/young-men-and-relationships/1014156 "2025-02-11T05:39:53Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 22
### Author:  [@DemonTree](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DemonTree)
#### Post date: [February 26, 2025, 4:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/young-men-and-relationships/1014156/421 "2025-02-26T16:33:20Z")
> [@Andy\_L](#):
>
> I believe the study controlled for that effect. At any rate, veterinary salaries have been steadily increasing, not decreasing.
For others who don’t have access, the full study is available here:
[https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/document?repid=rep1&type=pdf&doi=df8170bd2fcb8c6776aa6943a8709731abd2c95a](https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/document?repid=rep1&type=pdf&doi=df8170bd2fcb8c6776aa6943a8709731abd2c95a)
Interesting. They found that the number of women already in the profession, and on the faculty at veterinary colleges had no effect on male applicants, but the proportion of women enrolled as students had a strongly negative effect. They also found falling salaries relative to comparable occupations reduced applications from both men and women, but the increase in class sizes more than compensated this for women, and that the rise in tuition costs also reduced applications from both sexes, but had a larger negative effect on men. I wouldn’t have predicted that, either.
> [@DSeid](#):
>
> @DemonTree why do think my field has gone from male dominated to female dominated within a fraction of one professional lifetime?
It’s obvious why women would preferentially choose to go into that field, since on average women are much more interested in working with children than men are. And some quick googling suggests you are incorrect about pay not being lower. Here is an article expressing concerns about not enough MD graduates choosing it:
> **[Why are fewer U.S. MD graduates choosing pediatrics?](https://www.aamc.org/news/why-are-fewer-us-md-graduates-choosing-pediatrics)**
>
> Experts worry that, if compensation and training don’t better incentivize new doctors to pursue pediatrics, impending shortages could hurt kids’ health.
And here are a couple of threads from a trainee doctor asking for advice, and foreign-trained doctors asking why it’s not popular, which specifically mention low pay - even compared to IM and FM:
> **[Pediatrics Vs Family medicine](https://forums.studentdoctor.net/threads/pediatrics-vs-family-medicine.1309474/)**
>
> Another specialty indecision thread from a third year.
>
> I am interested in both pediatrics (most likely general) and family medicine. I like kids and adults but like kids more. Although not a huge fan of neonates.
>
> First, I've been discouraged from...
> **[Reddit - The heart of the internet](https://www.reddit.com/r/IMGreddit/comments/1bamh5y/why_doesnt_anyone_want_to_match_into_paediatrics/)**
I don’t know if they are actually correct about pay, but this does suggest it could be a factor in putting students off applying. The advice is “only do it if you think you’ll really enjoy it”, and that may well apply to more women than men.
However, I do think seeing it as a ‘women’s job’ could also be a factor. I would have thought this would only apply when a high proportion of entrants were female - somewhere over 50% - but @Andy_L’s study suggests it applies at a much lower percentage. I was thinking about names as a comparison: it’s easy to think of names originally given to boys that have switched to be girl’s names, but there aren’t too many examples of the opposite.
> [@DSeid](#):
>
> The fact that females, when given equal opportunity, have consistently done better in schools across cultures and across time, even in the face of cultures that declare them inferior, is not proof that, on average, they are better at the skills that are needed to achieve in school on some intrinsic basis, school age group for age group at least. But it is highly suggestive of it.
Would you say the same for ethnic minority groups that consistently do better in education? 🤨
> [@DSeid](#):
>
> I certainly don’t think my family of origin experience with my encouragement being much greater than my sisters, is unique. Maybe a bit more obvious but the societal expectation of the woman to put her advancement in the back seat relative to the man’s is pretty clear to my observation.
I don’t think this sort of sexist family encouragement is common anymore. But what is still very common is for the man’s career to take precedence over the woman’s in a couple, eg by moving for greater opportunities, or putting in more overtime to get ahead while their partner picks up other responsibilities. This surely has an effect on comparative pay and prestige.
> [@DSeid](#):
>
> Standardized tests are more objective since they are, well, standardized. Individual teachers bring subjectivity. Standardized testing can however be more _biased_, systematically. And in the United States at least, standardized testing is less _predictive_ of future success in college than grades and class rank, which is the task they are being used for at college applications time, which is why some colleges have stopped looking at them.
The SAT has undergone considerable scrutiny to eliminate bias. The days of ‘regatta’ appearing in the analogy section are long gone (as is the analogy section itself). And claims of its lack of predictive ability are overblown, which is why many top universities are bringing it back. It’s really not surprising that school grades would be _more_ predictive of college grades, assuming achievement is assessed similarly in each (is it?). But that doesn’t mean standardised test results aren’t an improvement on grades alone. If nothing else, they provide a check on grade inflation, and could also be useful to distinguish between students who all have top grades.
Also, AIUI, the SAT and other standardised tests in the US are more like intelligence or aptitude tests than tests of subject matter knowledge like GCSEs and A levels. You have to know the material taught in the US education system to do well in the SAT, but it’s less about testing specific subject knowledge than testing ability in general. Is that correct?
> [@DSeid](#):
>
> It may be that part of the skill set used for grades over exams is consistency in effort (some of the articles claim that, and argue that fewer exams hurt boys because they, allegedly, need the test to cram for). But consistency of effort is a key skill for success in college and employment. Life is often more a marathon training program than a series of sprints.
Sure, but being able to work well under pressure and think on your feet are also valuable skills in employment. Conscientiousness is something that can improve with maturity, or when a student is properly motivated, and it would be shame to waste people’s potential because they didn’t work consistently as children.
---
### Author:  [@Andy\_L](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Andy_L)
#### Post date: [February 26, 2025, 4:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/young-men-and-relationships/1014156/422 "2025-02-26T16:37:07Z")
> [@DemonTree](#):
>
> It’s obvious why women would preferentially choose to go into that field, since on average women are much more interested in working with children than men are
Why did that preference only start having an effect a couple of decades ago?
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### Author:  [@thorny\_locust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thorny_locust)
#### Post date: [February 26, 2025, 4:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/young-men-and-relationships/1014156/423 "2025-02-26T16:41:52Z")
> [@Andy\_L](#):
>
> Why did that preference only start having an effect a couple of decades ago
Because until a couple of decades ago women were discouraged from becoming doctors, and steered instead into nursing fields.
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### Author:  [@puzzlegal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puzzlegal)
#### Post date: [February 26, 2025, 4:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/young-men-and-relationships/1014156/424 "2025-02-26T16:58:38Z")
Or not allowed to become doctors at all. A friend’s grandmother was in the first class of med school open to work in the US. Until they shut down that program, because it distracted the men.
Heck, my mother wasn’t allowed to write a thesis in college (meaning she couldn’t graduate with honors) because, “it would be a waste of the supervising professor’s time, as you will just leave the field to rear children”. So, she did rear children, in large part because that was the only job she was allowed to have.
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### Author:  [@Pleonast](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pleonast)
#### Post date: [February 26, 2025, 5:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/young-men-and-relationships/1014156/425 "2025-02-26T17:01:48Z")
> [@puzzlegal](#):
>
> Or not allowed to become doctors at all.
Yep. My grandmother had the choice of nurse or teacher. She chose nurse.
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### Author:  [@raspberry\_hunter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/raspberry_hunter)
#### Post date: [February 26, 2025, 5:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/young-men-and-relationships/1014156/426 "2025-02-26T17:05:54Z")
> [@Kimstu](#):
>
> > [@DemonTree](#):
> >
> > > [@puzzlegal](#):
> > >
> > > Also, girls are sometimes socially unwilling to do better than boys. My sister felt that strongly in school, she never wanted to show up the boys. So if you have a lot of competitions, some fraction of girls will intentionally hold back and not try hard.
> >
> > > [@Kimstu](#):
> > >
> > > which helps mitigate lack of confidence and impostor syndrome and so on in girls studying STEM
> >
> > More things I’ll never understand! Did either of you ever feel like this?
>
> Speaking as a literal college math professor with PhD and decades of research experience in a STEM-related field, the answer is FUCK YES, and so has every other female STEM researcher I’ve ever heard from.
>
> Most of us (at least, most of us who make it into an established professional career) are lucky enough not to have been seriously handicapped or held back by the intrusion of such feelings. But we know what those feelings are like, and we know our female colleagues and students are also dealing with them to varying extents. Naively asking a roomful of female STEM researchers if “any of you have ever felt like this” because you’ll “never understand it” would just get you laughed at for cluelessness.
>
> For most of us professionals I don’t think that “deliberately trying to underperform the boys” plays much of a role, except perhaps in socialized expectations to be a bit more deferential in interactions than men are expected to be. After all, if we were really strongly averse to “showing up the boys” by being visibly smarter than them, we’d never have got where we are. But being affected to some degree by feelings of impostor syndrome is an extremely real and widespread phenomenon among high-achieving women in all fields, particularly in STEM.
Yeah, I also have been affected by impostor syndrome (though not until I was in college, and not enough not to go into STEM), and so have the vast majority of the women in STEM that I know.
Interestingly, the women I know who are not affected by impostor syndrome (and there are a couple!) are all spectrum-adjacent in some way, and they also don’t particularly see themselves as feminine (they don’t consider themselves trans, but they also don’t identify strongly with their gender). (I also know plenty of women on the spectrum, including me, who are affected by impostor syndrome, though often to a smaller degree than those who aren’t.)
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### Author:  [@DemonTree](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DemonTree)
#### Post date: [February 26, 2025, 5:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/young-men-and-relationships/1014156/427 "2025-02-26T17:07:06Z")
> [@thorny\_locust](#):
>
> Because until a couple of decades ago women were discouraged from becoming doctors, and steered instead into nursing fields.
It’s not quite that bad. My generation was not as a rule steered into nursing. Women comprised almost 50% of medical students two decades ago, but it takes time for the change to percolate through the workforce as new doctors are trained and older ones retire. I’d assume this is the reason, though.
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### Author:  [@thorny\_locust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thorny_locust)
#### Post date: [February 26, 2025, 5:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/young-men-and-relationships/1014156/428 "2025-02-26T17:09:22Z")
> [@puzzlegal](#):
>
> Or not allowed to become doctors at all.
Yes, when you go back far enough. The question was about “a couple of decades ago”, though. so say late 1990’s at earliest. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t illegal to be a female doctor (at least in the USA and many other countries) by 1990, or even earlier; and that by then a sufficiently determined woman could manage it. I had a female internist in the 1980’s and didn’t get the impression that this was considered extraordinary, though the supposed puzzler about the parent who can’t treat their child in the emergency room (the father having been killed in the accident) was IIRC still going around.
Being discouraged by multiple people in one’s life, including high school and college advisors but also friends and family members, hung on a whole lot longer. I doubt that it’s entirely gone away yet; but I certainly have the impression that it’s decreased drastically.
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### Author:  [@puzzlegal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puzzlegal)
#### Post date: [February 26, 2025, 5:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/young-men-and-relationships/1014156/429 "2025-02-26T17:09:24Z")
> [@raspberry\_hunter](#):
>
> Interestingly, the women I know who are not affected by impostor syndrome (and there are a couple!) are all spectrum-adjacent in some way, and they also don’t particularly see themselves as feminine (they don’t consider themselves trans, but they also don’t identify strongly with their gender).
Yup.
I also am not as deferential towards men as society expects women to be. And i believe this hurt me professionally. I was considered too aggressive. I was not more aggressive than many successful men. But it was a problem in a woman.
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### Author:  [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)
#### Post date: [February 26, 2025, 5:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/young-men-and-relationships/1014156/430 "2025-02-26T17:11:21Z")
> [@Andy\_L](#):
>
> > [@DemonTree](#):
> >
> > It’s obvious why women would preferentially choose to go into that field, since on average women are much more interested in working with children than men are
>
> Why did that preference only start having an effect a couple of decades ago?
I also wonder to what extent the characteristic “interested in working with children” comprises others like “expected to be working with children” and “familiar with working with children”, and so on.
People’s career choices tend to be heavily influenced by their socialization, and society encourages girls and women into caring-for-children roles pretty much from the get-go: older sisters get more expectations of caring for younger siblings than older brothers do, girls are steered towards babysitting jobs more than boys are, and so on. At even younger ages, girls are much more encouraged to engage in “pretend childcare”, in the form of playing with dolls, than boys are. And so on.
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### Author:  [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)
#### Post date: [February 26, 2025, 5:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/young-men-and-relationships/1014156/431 "2025-02-26T17:15:43Z")
> [@raspberry\_hunter](#):
>
> Yeah, I also have been affected by impostor syndrome (though not until I was in college, and not enough not to go into STEM), and so have the vast majority of the women in STEM that I know.
I mean, it’s just part of the cultural water we swim in. It’s not necessary for somebody to rationally believe she’s inferior in order to be inadvertently affected to some extent by social pressures encouraging her to feel she’s inferior.
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### Author:  [@doreen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/doreen)
#### Post date: [February 26, 2025, 5:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/young-men-and-relationships/1014156/432 "2025-02-26T17:22:39Z")
> [@DemonTree](#):
>
> But what is still very common is for the man’s career to take precedence over the woman’s in a couple, eg by moving for greater opportunities, or putting in more overtime to get ahead while their partner picks up other responsibilities. This surely has an effect on comparative pay and prestige.
It’s really hard to say which is the cause and which is the effect. Because if one of the two people earns significantly more , then the higher earner’s career is likely to take precedence regardless of who is the higher earner. There’s no way we ever would have moved for my husband’s career - it would never have been worth it. My career was a different story. We didn’t move because I was always able to get a promotion near home - but if the promotion had been 400 miles away, we would have either moved or I would be coming home on weekends.
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### Author:  [@asterion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/asterion)
#### Post date: [February 26, 2025, 5:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/young-men-and-relationships/1014156/433 "2025-02-26T17:48:18Z")
And here we see one of the problems about discussing men’s problems on the internet. The discussion always gets shifted to focus on women.
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### Author:  [@DemonTree](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DemonTree)
#### Post date: [February 26, 2025, 6:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/young-men-and-relationships/1014156/434 "2025-02-26T18:02:14Z")
> [@Kimstu](#):
>
> Most of us (at least, most of us who make it into an established professional career) are lucky enough not to have been seriously handicapped or held back by the intrusion of such feelings.
Glad to hear it!
> [@Kimstu](#):
>
> Naively asking a roomful of female STEM researchers if “any of you have ever felt like this” because you’ll “never understand it” would just get you laughed at for cluelessness.
I’ll be sure not to do that, then. 😅
But is the lack of confidence specifically because you’re a woman, and women are stereotyped as bad at maths? Or the attitudes of people (men) around you? Or what?
> [@raspberry\_hunter](#):
>
> Interestingly, the women I know who are not affected by impostor syndrome (and there are a couple!) are all spectrum-adjacent in some way, and they also don’t particularly see themselves as feminine (they don’t consider themselves trans, but they also don’t identify strongly with their gender). (I also know plenty of women on the spectrum, including me, who are affected by impostor syndrome, though often to a smaller degree than those who aren’t.)
Yeah. I don’t know that I’ve never had imposter syndrome, but I haven’t had it about gender. I’m good at what I’m good at, statistical averages can’t change that. 🤷♀️
> [@Kimstu](#):
>
> People’s career choices tend to be heavily influenced by their socialization, and society encourages girls and women into caring-for-children roles pretty much from the get-go
Mmmm. I do feel I was impacted in choice of part-time jobs by societal expectations, and wish I had considered or been advised to look for something less normative. Still, most ‘student’ jobs suck in general. Easy jobs are hard and hard jobs are easy.
> [@puzzlegal](#):
>
> I also am not as deferential towards men as society expects women to be. And i believe this hurt me professionally. I was considered too aggressive. I was not more aggressive than many successful men. But it was a problem in a woman.
My impression is that people are judged on this against the average for their sex, so yeah. I don’t know if it’s best to try and suppress it to get ahead or not.
> [@doreen](#):
>
> It’s really hard to say which is the cause and which is the effect. Because if one of the two people earns significantly more , then the higher earner’s career is likely to take precedence regardless of who is the higher earner. There’s no way we ever would have moved for my husband’s career - it would never have been worth it. My career was a different story. We didn’t move because I was always able to get a promotion near home - but if the promotion had been 400 miles away, we would have either moved or I would be coming home on weekends.
True. And in most couples the man is somewhat older and therefore more advanced in his career, giving a reason to prioritise it from the start.
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### Author:  [@Andy\_L](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Andy_L)
#### Post date: [February 26, 2025, 6:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/young-men-and-relationships/1014156/435 "2025-02-26T18:03:21Z")
That is my point - now we say pediatrics is naturally and obviously for women, but a few decades ago, being a doctor was naturally and obviously for men.
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### Author:  [@Ulfreida](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ulfreida)
#### Post date: [February 26, 2025, 6:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/young-men-and-relationships/1014156/436 "2025-02-26T18:05:44Z")
> [@raspberry\_hunter](#):
>
> Interestingly, the women I know who are not affected by impostor syndrome (and there are a couple!) are all spectrum-adjacent in some way, and they also don’t particularly see themselves as feminine (they don’t consider themselves trans, but they also don’t identify strongly with their gender). (I also know plenty of women on the spectrum, including me, who are affected by impostor syndrome, though often to a smaller degree than those who aren’t.)
This would be me as well. It’s a foreign feeling to me, and I assume this is partly because I am self-absorbed, internally motivated, and often blind to social cues. I was also raised with female role models of independence, professionalism, and a decided indifference to public opinion. Although it was the fifties and sixties, my adult female relatives all had professional lives, and it seemed normal although none of my friends’ moms did.
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### Author:  [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)
#### Post date: [February 26, 2025, 6:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/young-men-and-relationships/1014156/437 "2025-02-26T18:09:17Z")
> [@asterion](#):
>
> And here we see one of the problems about discussing men’s problems on the internet. The discussion always gets shifted to focus on women.
This thread is massively drifting, but I don’t think that’s exactly the problem. The implication in “young men and relationships” is clearly “Young straight men and sexual/romantic relationships,” a topic that necessarily involves discussing women.
But to the extent that the thread now has little to nothing to do with that topic, I agree that it’s not where it should be.
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### Author:  [@raspberry\_hunter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/raspberry_hunter)
#### Post date: [February 26, 2025, 6:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/young-men-and-relationships/1014156/438 "2025-02-26T18:14:54Z")
> [@DemonTree](#):
>
> Yeah. I don’t know that I’ve never had imposter syndrome, but I haven’t had it about gender. I’m good at what I’m good at, statistical averages can’t change that. 🤷♀️
I don’t think most women who have impostor syndrome think “I’m not good enough because I’m a woman.” I mean, maybe some of them do? But I don’t think it’s something that women explicitly link to their gender, they just (as a group) aren’t as confident as an unbiased outsider might think they should be based on their abilities.
Whereas I’ve met a couple of guys who have a lack of confidence relative to their abilities, but most guys I know (again, as a group) are generally _at least_ as confident as they should be based on their abilities (and in some cases, way more confident, lol).
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### Author:  [@Ulfreida](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ulfreida)
#### Post date: [February 26, 2025, 6:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/young-men-and-relationships/1014156/439 "2025-02-26T18:21:27Z")
> [@asterion](#):
>
> And here we see one of the problems about discussing men’s problems on the internet. The discussion always gets shifted to focus on women.
It seems a natural drift, since if we are talking about sexual relationships of cis men, the issue is strongly linked to the increased options for women. Over and over I have read studies that show that women, if they have the choice, would rather remain single than have to live with a man who is difficult or impossible to have a relationship of equals with. Young men are still growing up with ideas and ideals of women under a patriarchal system, while young women are wanting to get beyond that. It often appears that young men not only have few tools with which engage in a marriage of equals, they are angry that it is being asked of them. Besides economic factors, this is the central issue.
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### Author:  [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)
#### Post date: [February 26, 2025, 6:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/young-men-and-relationships/1014156/440 "2025-02-26T18:36:01Z")
> [@DemonTree](#):
>
> But is the lack of confidence specifically because you’re a woman, and women are stereotyped as bad at maths? Or the attitudes of people (men) around you? Or what?
Well, it’s a complex phenomenon and there’s a whole lot of study on it; [this 2023 article](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK585058/) might be a place to start looking for some research-informed answers.
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