Why Men Fail
为什么男人会失败

By DAVID BROOKS

What is your anticipation at the sight of this topic?
你对这个话题的期望是什么？

You’re probably aware of the basic trends. The financial rewards to education have increased over the past few decades, but men failed to get the memo.
你大概率已经意识到了基本趋势，教育的经济回报在近些年正持续增长，但是男人却并没有领会到这一点。

In elementary and high school, male academic performance is lagging. Boys earn three-quarters of the D’s and F’s. By college, men are clearly behind. Only 40 percent of bachelor’s degrees go to men, along with 40 percent of master’s degrees.
在初高中，男性的成绩表现正在逐渐落后。

Thanks to their lower skills, men are dropping out of the labor force. In 1954, 96 percent of the American men between the ages of 25 and 54 worked. Today, that number is down to 80 percent. In Friday’s jobs report, male labor force participation reached an all-time low.
多亏了他们差劲的能力，男人们正在逐渐退出劳动力市场。

Millions of men are collecting disability. Even many of those who do have a job are doing poorly. According to Michael Greenstone of the Hamilton Project, annual earnings for median prime-age males have dropped by 28 percent over the past 40 years.
数以百万计的男人正在领取政府的救济金。

Men still dominate the tippy-top of the corporate ladder because many women take time off to raise children, but women lead or are gaining nearly everywhere else. Women in their 20s outearn men in their 20s. Twelve out of the 15 fastest-growing professions are dominated by women.
虽然男人依旧牢牢支配着“企业阶梯”只因为非常多的女性需要花费世界去养育孩子，但女人正在几乎所有领域领先或不断进步

  • 企业阶梯：在职业生涯中逐渐晋升的一系列高级职位，被认为是通向更大责任和财务成功的阶梯。

Over the years, many of us have embraced a certain theory to explain men’s economic decline. It is that the information-age economy rewards traits that, for neurological and cultural reasons, women are more likely to possess.
在近些年来，我们之中许多人都已经接受了一个特定的解释男性经济衰退的理论。理论内容是说信息时代的经济奖赏某些特质，而这些特质由于神经学和文化的原因，更容易被女性拥有。

To succeed today, you have to be able to sit still and focus attention in school at an early age. You have to be emotionally sensitive and aware of context. You have to communicate smoothly. For genetic and cultural reasons, many men stink at these tasks.
想要在这个时代成功，你需要在小时候便能安静地坐在座位上并专注于课堂；你需要有敏锐的情感察觉能力和对对话语境的精准把握；你需要有流畅的交流能力。
由于基因上和文化上的原因，许多男人对此并不甚擅长。

But, in her fascinating new book, “The End of Men,” Hanna Rosin posits a different theory. It has to do with adaptability. Women, Rosin argues, are like immigrants who have moved to a new country. They see a new social context, and they flexibly adapt to new circumstances. Men are like immigrants who have physically moved to a new country but who have kept their minds in the old one. They speak the old language. They follow the old mores. Men are more likely to be rigid; women are more fluid.
男人们却总是人在曹营心在汉。
男性可能更加死板，而女性则如水般随遇而安。

This theory has less to do with innate traits and more to do with social position. When there’s big social change, the people who were on the top of the old order are bound to cling to the old ways. The people who were on the bottom are bound to experience a burst of energy. They’re going to explore their new surroundings more enthusiastically.
这个理论与内在特质的关联比较小，与社会地位的关系则很密切。
当社会变革到来时，身处高位的人总是成为保皇派，而底层民众则渴求变革。

Rosin reports from working-class Alabama. The women she meets are flooding into new jobs and new opportunities — going back to college, pursuing new careers. The men are waiting around for the jobs that left and are never coming back. They are strangely immune to new options. In the Auburn-Opelika region, the median female income is 140 percent of the median male income.

Rosin also reports from college campuses where women are pioneering new social arrangements. The usual story is that men are exploiting the new campus hookup culture in order to get plenty of sex without romantic commitments. Rosin argues that, in fact, women support the hookup culture. It allows them to have sex and fun without any time-consuming distractions from their careers. Like new immigrants, women are desperate to rise, and they embrace social and sexual rules that give them the freedom to focus on their professional lives.
如同新移民一般，女人们正不顾一切地崛起，她们接受一切社会和性规则，只要它们有利于给予她们专注于职业生涯的自由。

Rosin is not saying that women are winners in a global gender war or that they are doing super simply because men are doing worse. She’s just saying women are adapting to today’s economy more flexibly and resiliently than men. There’s a lot of evidence to support her case.
并不是说女性已经成为了性别战争的赢家或者她们做得很好只是因为男人做得更差。
女人正更加灵活和具有弹性地适应当下的经济。

A study by the National Federation of Independent Business found that small businesses owned by women outperformed male-owned small businesses during the last recession. In finance, women who switch firms are more likely to see their performance improve, whereas men are more likely to see theirs decline. There’s even evidence that women are better able to adjust to divorce. Today, more women than men see their incomes rise by 25 percent after a marital breakup.

Forty years ago, men and women adhered to certain ideologies, what it meant to be a man or a woman. Young women today, Rosin argues, are more like clean slates, having abandoned both feminist and prefeminist preconceptions. Men still adhere to the masculinity rules, which limits their vision and their movement.
四十年前，男人和女人都坚持某种意识形态，确立了作为一个男人或者女人应该是什么样的。
但是当今的新年轻女性更像一张白纸，已经抛弃了女权主义者和前女权主义者的成见，而男性却依旧普信，这限制了他们的眼光和步伐。

If she’s right, then men will have to be less like Achilles, imposing their will on the world, and more like Odysseus, the crafty, many-sided sojourner. They’ll have to acknowledge that they are strangers in a strange land.
男人不再同阿喀琉斯一般能够将自己的意志强加于世界，而更像奥德修斯，一个狡猾、多面手的旅人。他们将会意识到他们是这片陌生土地的陌生人。