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Adult Lessons from The Peanuts Movie

The Peanuts movie is well done, even touching, certainly a fine movie to bring a kid to. 

I had two reactions to it, one positive, one negative:

1. That it is a more potent character builder than all the parental and school lectures on ethics.

2. It reinforced a serious anti-male double-standard: that a guy must move heaven and earth to attract a gal's interest while a gal only need look pretty. 

I lay out the arguments in my PsychologyToday.com article today.

Yet Another Example of How the Media Considers Men The Disposable Sex

When women are "underrrepresented" in science, Time does a cover story calling for redress.

When women are "underrepresented" in high-level corporate positions, Time calls for redress.

But when men are "underrepresented"--in the most important category of all: whether they live (Men live 5.4 years shorter than women, dying earlier of 9 of the 10 leading causes of death), what does Time do? Routinely write about women's health., e.g, this week's TimeHealth: The Advocates, described in that issue's table of contents as: "Our latest wellness checkup surveys the state of women's health."

I searched Time 's archive for the last 50 years on the term "men's health" and found 34 listings. I then searched on "women's health" and found 148--that's 470% as many articles on women's health, even though men die 5.4 years younger.

Why the double standard? Because men visit the doctor less often? Would that justify not focusing on women who are, for example, obese?

A Double Standard is Destroying Boys

This article makes a strong case for how the public schools have become very unfair to boys. Boys are suffering greatly as a result: decreased achievement, increased dropouts, not to mention increased Ritalin, increased teen suicide. Yet, the media has dismissed pleas for attention to boys as unnecessary. If girls had suffered such a decline, I'd bet a lot of money that the media wouldn't ignore it.

The Most Deadly Double Standard

Men die far earlier from heart disease, indeed from all causes. Men live 5 1/2 years shorter than women and spend their last decade in worse health.

Yet the vast majority of gender-specific health research and education are for women. Think of the sea of pink ribbons for breast cancer research. Where are the ribbons for the many more men who die earlier of sudden heart attack?

It's sexist and unfair. Imagine that all literacy programs were aimed at whites, even though Blacks have a much higher illiteracy rate. It would never come to be, or if it did, would trigger national outrage and the program pulled. But when women are the beneficiary, there's no problem. Think about it.

The Double Standard Strikes Again

Today, I received a press release from an outfit called Part-Time Pro. Its core assertion: "Women should not have to sacrifice personal desires for professional aspirations."

What?!! Let's say two people aspire to be promoted. The first one doesn't "sacrifice personal desires for professional aspirations" while the other person rarely leaves early to watch their kid's soccer game, in fact often stays late so s/he can answer emails in a timely manner, who reads while on the exercise bike, chose to take difficult statistical modeling classes to improve their work skills, and accepted a transfer to some God-forsaken place so s/he could acquire important experience. In any world other than Alice's wonderland, shouldn't the latter person get the promotion?

Yet women's advocates constantly argue that people who choose to work less (what they term "work/life balance," which is a focus-group tested phrase designed to elicit maximum sympathy) should have an equal right to promotions. And when fewer women are then promoted, feminists blame it on a men-created glass ceiling rather than that women more often make choices to work less and in less demanding areas.

The feminists' intended trump card is to play the "Children need mommy at home" card. As I've stated in earlier posts, the data on that is equivocal and, logically, it is better for children to see a role model of mom who holds a job other than housewife. Too, the stay-at-home mom (cynics would say "play-at-home mom") is more likely to be a helicopter mom (hovering) thereby denying their child opportunities to develop self-efficacy.

Ironically, the people who attribute the low percentage of women in top positions to a glass ceiling are also likely to insist we do more to try to stop global warming. Well, environmentalists agree that the greatest threat to the earth is overpopulation, so should we be subsidizing the having of more children by telling women, "You shouldn't have to sacrifice your personal desires for professional aspirations?"

Can we please stop with the double standard and remember that, ultimately, the greatest cure for all that ails us is meritocracy, whether a person has an xy or xx chromosome.