Book review:Where have all the good men gone

By UCU libray, :: 25-07-2011

  Singleness is a special season of grace from God, a time to be devoted solely to spiritual matters,  a time to have fun before   we become weighed down by responsibilities of marriage and children yet privately many  ( if not most ) singles long to find the “one”. This book is a culmination of a survey carried out on Christian singles and the challenges they encounter in the 21st Century.
   Christian singles although a subset of the singles culture as a whole, are supposed to be a very different subset viewing marriage as a positive thing, God’s original design for meeting our needs of intimacy and romance.
 A generation of children growing up in day care centres, women’s liberation movement, entertainment media in a sexualised culture, mind-boggling divorce statistics, and cohabitation replacing the marriage covenant are some of the influences that have changed the way men and women interact with one another.   
   The author explores in depth the reasons why men won’t “step up to the plate” as discussed below.
Men put too much pressure on themselves about how they need to be and what they need to be for a woman. They fear taking risks and do not want to let their guards down. This portrays women as unforgiving and without grace to love men the way they are.
    Many men are intimidated by successful women; they look at them as less marriageable and do not know what to do with them. With all the women emancipation, some men think ladies do not want the romance of being pursued, wooed and asking them out on dates.  The Bible says when “a man finds a wife, he finds a good thing.” Men need to step up and pursue ladies, it might seem old fashioned but it is biblical.
    Men are looking for someone with a 20-year-old body, having a face of Naomi Campbell and a personality of Mother Theresa all in one. They are also too focused on the externals like what a woman can do for them. This directly contravenes what women like: to be valued for who they are as people and what they have to offer as loving feminine companions.
   Many men are so complacent, self-centred and passive that they believe they have no reason to ever get married. It’s easier for them to just live their lives by themselves than to take the risks of really growing up and becoming fathers. This directly tags behind their assertion of wanting “Godly women yet they also want women with worldly standards.”
    Many men are also waiting until their 30s to get married, but then they seem to be almost threatened by women their age because they have set up lives of their own, make good living and do not need a man to take care of them financially.
The phenomenon of delayed maturity is so prevalent that a new phrase has been coined to capture it- “extended adolescence.” It is also the supremacy of personal fulfillment and gratification over the notions of obligation and commitment.
   However, men also had complaints that they felt  responsible for the singles’ crisis. Top on the list is the fact that Christian women do not keep themselves attractive enough and that many are over-weight.   
  Sometimes women dress down because they don’t wish to be part of the worldliness of looking attractive. Too many women by-pass nice guys in favour of the bad boys on top of being preoccupied with the let’s-be-friends tag when a man shows signs of intentional/ exclusive dating.
 The author concludes by urging men to wean their eyes from impossible standards of perfection and retrain them to see “real” women, pursue them and pursue them without giving up. However, the only limitation I saw from this book is the failure to address the statistical fact that there are fewer men than women.
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