Our gender divide

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Christine Emba (1:16)

Okay. We've been hearing about it for a while now, including on this podcast. Gen Z is in a dating recession. They're in a loneliness crisis.

And however you frame it, it's something we're all beginning to feel. A sense of social disconnect. Relationships have never been easy, but the divide between men and women in particular is beginning to look more like a chasm, especially when it comes to younger generations. The easiest story to tell is that too much relying on smartphones has atrophied our ability to really connect. But what if it's more complicated than that? It's a shift in parenting. It's a shift in politics. It's dating apps and cultural messaging. Yes, of course, smartphones and the Internet broadly too.

But all of that seems to be adding up to a crisis that may be much harder to address than we think. How do we get here? Can we come back?

Welcome to The Gray Area.

I'm Christine Emba, filling in for Sean Illing. My guest today is Daniel Cox, a Senior Fellow in Polling and Public Opinion at the American Enterprise Institute, and so my colleague. Daniel has just written a new book titled Generation Uncoupled, America's New Gender Divide and the Crisis of Human Connection. This is a book ostensibly about gender divides, but it's really about social norms, institutions, and a society in which they've come apart. It's comprehensive, fascinating, and frankly, deeply worrying. I'm excited to dive in today.

Dan, welcome to the show.

Dan Cox (3:09)

Thanks for having me.

Christine Emba (3:10)

So Dan, we've both been interested in these topics, men, women, gender divides, society falling apart for a while. I'll confess for me, it was me search. I was trying to figure out what was going on in my peer group among my friends.

What made you so interested in figuring this out?

Dan Cox (3:31)

So I think the book is actually a continuation of the work I've done for a number of years on the declining social engagement we've seen in American society that people are spending less time in third places, people are less likely to be members of civic orgs, and houses of worship, and religious bodies. So we've seen a withdrawal from social and public life, and this seems to be the latest manifestation of that, and something that was deeply worrying to me.

Christine Emba (4:08)

Right. I mean, your subtitle is America's New Gender Divide and the Crisis of Human Connection. I feel like much of the reporting today is focused on the first part, gender problems, the dating recession.

Do you think we're actually talking enough about the second part, this broader human connection crisis? How do you separate the two out?

Dan Cox (4:31)

Yeah. I mean, one of the things I really wanted to do with this book is not to pick sides, not to referee disagreements and differences between men and women, because I'm woefully unprepared to do that. I'm a social scientist, I'm a pollster.

One of the things that I think I am fairly good at is trying to understand why people come to the views that they have, what are their experiences, where are we seeing divergences, and trying to understand the broader systems that they're in, or the structures that they're a part of, and how that shapes various behavior. One of the things that I've loved to do in my work is understand how our broader social context influences our politics, our views on gender, gender roles, and everything else. I really wanted to bring that perspective to this growing division we've seen among men and women, not just in politics, but in relationships too, where we're seeing very different expectations and understandings of even something as central as dating.