Delmar Boulevard divides a part of St. Louis with “million-dollar mansions directly to the south, and poverty-stricken areas to its north,” says the BBC.

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How different are the two sides of Delmar?

• The median home value to the north of Delmar: $73,000. To the south: $335,000.
• Median household income to the north: $18,000. To the south: $50,000
• Residents with bachelors degrees to the north: 10%. To the south: 70%
• The population north of Delmar is 98% black. The population south of it is 73% white.

The BBC talked to people living on both sides of Delmar about the two very different communities living across the street from one another. To no surprise, education and expectations are discussed by several residents.

See the entire story at BBC News.

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The fact that men are mainly responsible for violent and health-harming behaviours, not only against women and children but also against each other, is so taken for granted that it slips beneath the radar of commentators and policymakers.

The authors quote numerous statistics to make their point:

In 2009-10, men were perpetrators in 91% of all violent incidents in England and Wales. The figures vary by type of incident: 81% for domestic violence, 86% for assault, 94% for wounding, 96% for mugging, 98% for robbery. [U.K. Ministry of Justice] figures for 2009 show men to be responsible for 98%, 92% and 89% of sexual offences, drug offences and criminal damage respectively. Of child sex offenders, 99% are male. The highest percentages of female offences concern fraud and forgery (30%), and theft and handling stolen goods (21% female).

Men even commit more traffic and speeding violations – 87% and 81% respectively. Men are responsible for the vast majority of dangerous driving offenses (97%) and accidents causing injury or death (94%).

On the financial side, the Cockburn and Oakley project the money saved from injuries of the crimes themselves, lost work and productivity, and the costs of trying and incarcerating criminals would be in the tens of billions of British pounds.

I don’t doubt any of these numbers. I’m sure the statistics trend similarly in the United States. Our prisoners are overwhelming male: over 90%. And I wouldn’t be surprised if prison costs in the U.S. were even more than in the U.K. given our comparatively larger prison population.

Cockburn and Oakley conclude with:

The case we are making is that certain widespread masculine traits and behaviours are dangerous and costly both to individuals and society. They are amenable to purposeful change. The culture of masculinity can be, and should be, addressed as a policy issue.

Ok, but how?

There is a discussion now about masculinity being unhealthy, men who are trapped in the Man Box and the harm caused by both. But how, as a policy issue, do we teach the next generation of men and women that the Man Box doesn’t exist, while changing the thinking of the current generation of men to live healthier and more positive lives? This new thinking must start at home, in schools, at the playground and on the athletic field, continue at work, in social life.. even in the car!

A drastic change is needed in how we think about the role of men in every aspect of society. It’s a daunting proposition, but well worth the money, and more importantly, the lives this change would save.

What are your thoughts? Where do we begin?

See also:
When Masculinity Is Unhealthy
The Man Box

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Volkswagen is going after men for the new version of the VW Beetle. The company found out the previous incarnation of the car had more female buyers than male ones. So, to make the new Beetle appeal to men, they say the car is “a boy.”

In the commercial for their low-calorie soda, the makers of Dr. Pepper Ten say it only has “ten manly calories” and the tag line is that “It’s not for women.”

Articles about the car and the soda point out that the conventional wisdom is that men won’t buy those products if they think the cars are for women or the drink doesn’t “seem macho enough.”

Maybe, but there must be a way to appeal to men without becoming that little boy who writes “no girls allowed” on his bedroom door. The Beetle ad is trying too hard: “This car isn’t girly,” implies the ad. Dr Pepper Ten tries to be so macho, I wonder if they considered infusing the drink with testosterone, too.

It doesn’t have to be this way. The Old Spice Guy doesn’t do this. Commercials for the body wash are technically aimed at women, but they still need a macho stamp of approval for men to use it. And by appealing to both men and women, the Old Spice Guy ads don’t exclude anything feminine to prove how masculine it is.

Leave your thoughts in the comments section below.

Photo credit: Jonathan Welsh/Wall Street Journal.

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But what got my attention was the part about employment and income. Kerner cites a study that indicates a high-salary job correlates to increased likelihood of cheating:

While there aren’t any hard statistics on female infidelity, most experts agree that it’s on the rise, especially among women who have their own careers and a degree of financial independence. A University of Washington study found that people who earned $75,000 or more per year were 1.5 times more likely to have had extramarital sex than those earning less than $30,000. And with so many women in the workplace, it’s no surprise that among the spouses who cheated, 46 percent of women and 62 percent of men did so with someone they met through work.

I’m not suggesting that women – or men, for that matter – with high paying jobs aren’t marriage material because they’re going to cheat. The University of Washington study makes sense, though. If someone has a job and is able to support themselves financially, but is in a bad marriage and has the opportunity to meet someone who makes them happy, it makes sense that person will be more likely to cheat, or at least get out of that unhappy marriage.

It doesn’t make cheating right, but it makes sense.

Do you think female infidelity is on the rise because, as the post suggests, more women are in higher positions in the workforce?

As the number of women in the workforce catches up with the number of men – along with their salaries – will infidelity rates between the men and women begin to equal out as well?

Photo credit: Rushell070/Flickr

See also:
If Wives Make More, Could They Cheat More?
Wives Make More.. More Often

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A quick recap: Arizona’s immigration law passed; the NAACP took on Tea Party racism, and the Tea Party came back in a bad way; Andrew Breitbart took on the NAACP and Shirley Sherrod making all parties involved look bad, including Barack Obama; 1/5 of Americans think Obama is a Muslim in spite of factual evidence to the contrary and none to support it; there’s the controversy over the so-called “Ground Zero Mosque” that isn’t located in Ground Zero and is more of a community center than a mosque; and Dr. Laura used the word “nigger” 11 times to a black caller.

These moments and the lack of any progress on race show the country isn’t ready to engage and have an honest conversation about how race and ethnicity affect Americans. What’s worse is President Obama doesn’t appear ready to lead the country in this matter. This is a shame because he is the perfect person to do it.

First, he’s already done it before. In a 2008 speech responding to the Rev. Jeremiah Wright scandal, Obama spoke brilliantly about race:

I chose to run for the presidency at this moment in history because I believe deeply that we cannot solve the challenges of our time unless we solve them together – unless we perfect our union by understanding that we may have different stories, but we hold common hopes; that we may not look the same and we may not have come from the same place, but we all want to move in the same direction – towards a better future for our children and our grandchildren.

It requires all Americans to realize that your dreams do not have to come at the expense of my dreams.

That’s what a lot of the racial and ethnic stories that captured our attention this summer are about (except, perhaps, the Dr. Laura rant): Someone different from me is getting something I’m not. These issues aren’t just about race. They’re about class, immigration and jobs, too. They’re about race and money.

Obama is the embodiment of an American who can and has crossed multiple racial and economic groups and this is the second reason he should be talking more about these problems. He is the son of a white American and black Kenyan. He grew up in a working-class family in Hawaii as well as some time in Indonesia. He attended two elite Ivy League schools in the East, and he was a community organizer in Chicago. His life is a range of race and class in America. It’s multi-racial, multi-ethnic, and spans different geographic regions and economic classes.

Race and ethnicity make up part of who we are as individuals. For some, money is viewed as the means to make lives and families better. It’s viewed as opportunity. So, they are very emotional issues. Obama has proven himself to speak intelligently about them. At the same time, he can speak from his own life story to connect to many different American experiences.

In that 2008 speech Obama said, “Race is an issue that I believe this nation cannot afford to ignore right now.” Indeed. And getting heated and screaming at the people who don’t look like you isn’t the way Americans should be addressing it. He shouldn’t let political opportunists like Palin, Beck, Limbaugh, and Breitbart take the lead and bring attention to themselves by preying on the fears and insecurities people feel about race and class.

Obama can’t do it alone. Americans will eventually have to talk to each other honestly and calmly about race and class. If anyone can get the conversation going, though, and guide the nation toward a better understanding of itself, it’s Barack Obama.

See Also:
What Did We Learn About The Ground Zero Mosque Debate?
The NAACP Was Right About The Tea Party

The London Sun reported that the terms of Elin Nordegren’s divorce from Woods are final. The paper said she will get $750 million along with full physical custody of their kids and several pieces real estate. Nordegren also can’t talk publicly about Tiger, ever. A source who claims to be a friend of Nordegren is quoted as saying, “The price of the huge sum is her silence: no interviews, tell-all books, or TV appearances about this for the rest of her life – even if Tiger dies first – or she’ll lose the lot.”

Forbes disputes that three-quareters of billion dollar figure saying Tiger doesn’t even have a net worth of $750 million. They put his net worth at $600 million, but half of that is still a lot of money.

It must be extremely devastating and painful to have the entire world know your husband cheated with umpteen cocktail waitresses, strippers and porn stars. Three hundred million or three-quarters of a billion dollars, though, would definitely soothe some of that pain, and is, apparently, the price to make sure the public never knows about it.

Famous people who cheat always get the public’s attention. Lately, though, it seems that we’re bombarded with stories about the rich and powerful who are unfaithful.

The latest, of course, is the allegation that Sandra Bullock’s husband, Jesse James, cheated on her. We’re still in the midst of the whole Tiger Woods saga – he’ll make his professional comeback at the Masters this week – and the John Edwards story has been a slow drip of revelations for about two years now. While the three might seem the same – famous people who cheat – the fame and income dynamics of James and Bullock’s relationship is the opposite of Edwards, Woods and their wives. Even though James is famous (well, semi-famous, perhaps infamous) and presumably makes a good living on his own, Bullock is an A-list superstar and surely makes more money than he does.

So, why do men cheat? There have been a ton of recent stories trying to answer that question. (Don’t be fooled, though. Women cheat too. Yes, men cheat more than women, but not by a huge margin.) On Saturday, “Larry King Live” had a show to discuss try to answer the question and get into what causes cheating. I won’t tell you the entire motley crew of guests. All you need to know is that addiction expert Dr. Drew Pinsky, comedian Adam Carolla, “Survivor” host and LKL guest-host Jeff Probst, and Dr. Daniel Amen, a psychiatrist and brain imaging expert, (as I said, a motley crew) got into an exchange about whether driven and high-powered people might cheat more:

CAROLLA: I have a question for Dr. Drew. I’m going to don the Larry suspenders for one second. Celebrities, athletes, people that are driven, already focus and motivated, a higher percentage of cheating or is it just opportunity?

PINSKY: A higher percentage of trauma, and thereby a much higher percentage of the kinds of things Dr. Amen is talking about in their brains.

PROBST: Dr. Amen, when you — I think a lot of people look at someone like Tiger Woods, so controlled. That’s what he was known for, the calm golfer. And then all this chaos in the other part of his life. Does that show up, or is there an explanation based on the brain?

AMEN: You know, what I would say is people who are celebrities, who are very successful, well, they’re always getting the pleasure center of their brain stimulated. So it’s stimulated repeatedly. You know, you win a Masters. You win another tournament. People talk about how wonderful you are. You get tens of millions dollars of contracts.

Well, pretty soon, the pleasure center in your brain starts to get warn out. And it takes more and more and more excitement in order to feel anything at all. So I think that’s one of the things that celebrities have to worry about.

While drive and success is only one factor in determining who will cheat, could wives be more likely to cheat on their husbands now compared to in the past? A recent Pew Research study showed more women were more educated and making more money than their husbands in 2007 compared to 1970. So, could there be an up-tick in the percentage of women who cheat on their husbands?

Or will insecurity about their wives’ success and bigger income cause even more husbands to cheat?

Leave your thoughts below.

Before I wrote this post about more wives earning more money than their husbands, I sent an email to several male friends about the trend. Why just guys? Because I first read about “The Rise of Wives” in this New York Times article. The piece only quoted women who said who said they had difficulty finding and staying with male companions. They claimed the men they dated were insecure about being out-earned. I found a few articles on the increase in stay-at-home dads, but nothing from men on this study. It was like half the story was missing.

So, I emailed some of my guy friends. Here are responses from two of them.

Feliciano wrote:

I don’t mind when I find out the woman I’m dating makes more than me. The real challenge is deciding when or if to reveal how much I make. It’s something that should come out naturally. I’m always wary of women who want/need to know how much I make right away. It’s funny, I wonder if more guys are figuring out clever ways to find out how much the woman they’re dating earns…sort of a new twist on gold-digging.

Rich, who said his mother makes more than his father, doesn’t have a problem dating a woman who out-earns him. He wrote:

I think there’s more going on [in the New York Times article] than just ‘the guy was insecure about how much money I make.’ At the end of the day women’s salaries, while having increased as much as they have in the past forty years, are still not equal. Because of this, for a woman to be successful she most likely has to put forth more effort and time, to rise on her own merits and abilities rather than through a buddy system of golfing and racquetball partners. It seems like the man might resent that she spends more time than he thinks she should working towards success, rather than the amount of money she makes.

I find this trend fascinating. It has so many implications for our expectations of marriage, what men and women look for in a mate compared to a generation ago and who’s more likely to be a child’s primary caretaker. It’s also related to the fact that women are out-graduating men from college, the recession (or “mancession“) and, as Rich pointed out, pay equality in the workplace.

I would love to hear from more of you: stay-at-home dads, wives who earn more than their husbands, people who are currently dating.

Join the conversation and leave your comments.

Then, after hearing about their job, their last vacation and their spotless apartment, you’re pretty sure they earn more money than you. They may not have a trust fund, but you’re pretty sure they’re worrying about money a less than you are.

Now, if you’re a guy, is this a problem? Did her level of hotness just take a nosedive after finding out she out-earns you? Is she now undateable? If you’re a woman and realize your salary is bigger than your date’s, did this romance just end? Did you lose interest?

Or does it matter anymore that a man doesn’t make as much as the woman he’s dating?

These questions are certainly presenting themselves more and more in light of the Pew Research Center Study that was released last week. In “The New Economics of Marriage: The Rise of Wives,” the folks at Pew looked at Americans between the ages of 30 and 44 in 2007 and found it’s more likely for a wife to out-earn her husband than in 1970. Back then, only 4% of married couples were ones in which the wife made more than the husband. In 2007, that number rose to 22% of married couples.

While the study is related to the increasing number of women in the workforce and the change in how the responsibilities of home and childcare are divided, the study doesn’t give insight into the financial potential we look for in a mate. The study didn’t indicate when the wife began earning more money than the husband. Was she already earning more when they met, was it when they were dating, or after they were married?

Marriage is different than dating. In a marriage, two reasonable and loving people would hopefully realize that it doesn’t matter who makes the most money. Only a cold – and idiotic – person would get a divorce just because the bigger paycheck belongs to the other spouse. What’s important is that both are happy and contributing to the family to the best of their abilities. This study shows married couples are realizing it doesn’t matter who makes more money.

But dating can be different. When someone is in a relationship, it’s an opportunity for them to see if their companion can fit into the dreams they have. Because money fuels many of our dreams – traveling, buying a house, supporting kids, buying a second house – the current salary and earning potential of a partner are things to consider.

Which brings us back to your hypothetical date with straight teeth and good manners. Does it make a difference?

To you single guys out there, is it intimidating if a date earns more money than you? How do you feel about the idea of making less than a potential wife? Are you willing to be the one who primarily takes care of your children? Must you be the financial provider for the family?

For women who are dating, are you willing to be the family’s financial provider? Is it unattractive if your date makes less than you? Can you envision yourself working long hours while your husband is home with the kids?

Leave a comment below.