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(More customer reviews)Once in a while a book comes my way that gets me to see the world in a whole new way. Howard P. Chudacoff's THE AGE OF THE BACHELOR is one of those books. Chudacoff traces the influence on (and place in) American society of the unmarried adult male over roughly the last 120 years. Economics and demographics have played a big part in the changing role of unmarried men, from the days of the pitiable "old bachelor" who lived a lonely life in rooming houses of the 1800s to the glamorous "swinging single" of the late 20th Century. As more single men gained larger disposable incomes, entrepreneurs found ways to glamorize and exploit the unmarried condition, creating new markets and new values. This not only changed the lives of single men, but the society as a whole, as women, too, began to challenge the idea of the married state being the ideal one. I found this fascinating reading.
One of the major discussions of the book is the changing definition of what it means to be a man. How do men's lives differ from women's lives? Whereas females have a lot of generational interaction in their lives, males, with the advent of the move from agrarian to urban living, lost the mentoring influence of their fathers and developed same sex friendships almost exclusively among their contemporaries. Females tend to form relationships based on support and sympathy, whereas competition serves as the major tie among males. In the absence of time spent with the family, other venues of male camaraderie, like the saloon, the pool hall and the sports arena evolved.
The book contains many statistical tables and hefty appendices of notes and bibliography. But this is not a plodding book for specialists. I found it lively and entertaining with one insightful page after another. This is one of the most enlightening books I've read in a long time.
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