Woe For the Modern Man

In 2012, Anne-Mare Slaughter explained "Why Women Still Can't Have It All" and though she took some flak for her hypothesis-- that in order to achieve the same things as men, women need to be either superhuman, self-employed, or well-off-- I think her sincerity really resonated with women trying to be super-moms and super-employees and also have some kind of social life and maintain a house . . . but enough about women . . . if you listen to Hanna Rosin, then women are doing fine and it's the men we need to worry about, so-- in order to balance the scales-- I'll offer a lament for them, because in today's litigious circumscribed world, where anything you do might be recorded and put on the internet, and where any misstep might result in a lawsuit, men can't have it all either: you can't bring your kids to the pub on Sundays, you can't let them ride bikes without a helmet . . . in fact, you've got to keep track of your kid's whereabouts on a daily basis . . . it's very taxing and stressful, and it's difficult to relieve this stress because due to the ubiquity of digital cameras, it's tough to maintain a mistress with any degree of secrecy and it's even tougher to take a trip to the local brothel (especially for men of the cloth, video surveillance has made their vow of chastity far more literal than it used to be) and you don't want to tell an off-color joke in public, because it might be recorded for posterity, or even rant in your own home-- you might be banned from the NBA for life-- and you can't drink liquor at work, like Don Draper in Mad Men . . . or take a nap on the couch in your office (like Don Draper in Mad Men) or light fires on the beach without a permit or smoke cigars indoors or get in a fistfight at school (without being considered for a psychological evaluation) or any number of "manly" things . . . so if you want to maintain your status as a family man and keep your job, then certainly men can't have it all either . . . unless-- which Slaughter points out-- you're rich . . . then all this need not apply, and you can use a term that was probably created by a man: f#$@ you money.