Why do so many men these days, particularly young men, not make and build tangible things like their grandfathers did?
I’m stipulating men not because I’m a sexist flower but because unlike men, for whatever reasons, women have retained hobbies through recent decades (why is the idea of having “hobbies†so cringe-inducing?).
Women are knitting, sewing, scrapbooking, painting, quilting, decoupaging cross-stitching, doing leatherwork, making paper sculpture into the small hours all over the world. Sewing cafes are springing up like Sweat Shop in Paris.
What are men doing?
Not much it seems. On Etsy, a site where you can buy and sell handmade and vintage goods, the proportion of women versus men is outrageously, stupendously, shamefully unbalanced – 96% women, 4% men (according to a 2008 study) given that all humans benefit from creating something tangible in the world. Uh-huh, a website where you can sell anything you make with your own wee hands is predominately used by women!
Humans, c’mon, this is sad.
Making stuff is a creative process that is deeply meaningful and, I believe, fundamental to our sense of wellbeing. Being in the zone when creating with your hands. Feeling the sense of accomplishment, achievement and resolution at having manifested something new in the world, no matter how hideous or lame it may be, are crucial feelings.
Why have most men in developed countries turned their backs on whittling, turning driftwood into furniture, making clocks, weaving, building bookcases and treehouses and all the rest? Is it to do with technology and global business? Are men using their creation vibes to instead make intangibles like websites, companies, design?
I’ve worked with so many designers and art directors who are brilliantly creative in their jobs but who are easily crushed when their ideas or designs don’t fly for whatever reason.
Why? Because so much of their ego is tied-up in what they make at work since they don’t have an outlet for creativity at home. While they are well-paid to have the creativity sucked out of them at work, what does it do to their own creative spirit, the spirit that spends all its time locked up at work?
It’s even more disheartening when you consider how much women like men who’re ‘good with their hands’!
Lots of professional men I know refuse to fix or repair things saying, ‘why do it yourself when you can pay a man to do it for you?’. Well, there’s everything right about that. But that’s not what I’m talking about. (Even while it might make a guy feel great to fix something tangible like his grandpa would have done.)
What did you like doing when you were little? Do that again. Yes, I really am including Airfix kits. What did your dad, granddad, uncle or other man in your life show you how to make? Have a go now. Remember, reconnect, recreate.
An ex-boyfriend of mine, a supremely creative person who inexplicably has his own successful accountancy business, had to be coerced to walk into a model shop at age 40 to buy his heart’s desire, an Airfix airplane kit.
He was embarrassed. I mean WTF is going on with that? Why? I can’t see Tim Burton thinking twice about nipping into a model shop and spending days gluing bits of plastic together to create a replica if he fancied it.
I suspect the men who’ve made and created empires like Richard Branson and the Amazon dude also have hobbies that involve making other things manifest with their own hands. I am sure the physical manifestation of a toy airplane, a wooden birdhouse, a metal coat hook, lollipop stick cabin or whatever, actively helps men create business success.
Etsy dominated by women? Men without tools? Why? What is going on?
Men need hobbies. Someone start a movement.
POST SCRIPT: 16.04.20 I sent a Tweet out asking some lovely men whose opinions I value to comment on this post – Leo Babauta, Jonathan Mead, Charlie Gilkey, Jonathan Fields, Tim Ferriss, Glen Allsopp, Chris Guillebeau, Alain de Botton. Imagine my utter delight that two of them noticed my request and responded below. Click ‘comments’ to see.
Leo says:
Right on.
I suspect that Etsy appeals more to women, for some reason. Maybe we need a similar site for men? I’d guess there would be more hand-made furniture, robots, computers, model airplanes, things like that. 🙂
16/04/2010 — 3:47 am
Charlie Gilkey says:
There are several trends going on here.
First, young men still have a lot of pressure to be breadwinners. Given the nature of our economy, it’s simply not lucrative to be maker of things – that’s all been shipped to Asia – and since we socialize our boys to chase the money, they don’t learn to make stuff.
At the same time, we still socialize and teach our girls to be makers of things, so they integrate those things as hobbies and potential income generators.
Additionally, our grandfathers made things because our economy still depended on them making things, and they learned from their fathers and grandfathers. The economy shifted post-WWII and fathers stopped teaching their boys to make things as a way of life, and those “hobbies” got swallowed up by the pace of keeping up in the workplace.
From my view, the shift from making things is just a consequence of the shift in our economy and technology. Men are still making things, but it’s moved from furniture to web applications. I’m more concerned with the expression and use of creativity than on what’s created, so I don’t feel the same tension that you do on this.
Men need hobbies, yes, but why should “hobbies” be understood strictly as activities that create physical things in the world?
16/04/2010 — 3:26 pm
Naomi F. says:
Charlie Gilkey took the words right out of my mouth…
17/04/2010 — 9:34 am
Flora says:
TO: Leo, You are a hero of mine. You have actively made my life and my self so much better and happier through your incredibly useful Zen Habits and Mnmlist blogs. When I saw, just before my bedtime, you had a left a comment I was so excited I couldn’t sleep for ages! Thank you! I am very grateful to you for so very much.
17/04/2010 — 10:47 am
Flora says:
TO: Charlie, You articulated those wonderful insights so eloquently. Thank you. I agree. And look, I slipped up there because I didn’t mean to infer that ‘hobbies’ describe only activities that are created in the physical world, or using our own hands.
You intuitively picked me up on a very personal experience I’ve had recently which somehow subverted itself into this piece about men.
I’ve spent many years creating intangibles from intangibles and valuing greatly the creative process without attachment of any kind to a physical outcome – and loving it.
I’ve lived very much on the mental and creative planes and scorned the physical. The ‘tension’ you picked up on there so cleverly is that I’ve been shocked by how deeply satisfying it has been for me to swing 180 degrees and also make physical things like toys.
I call these my ‘sheltered workshop’ activities and devalue them. However, they have helped me enormously with all my other creative pursuits. For example, things like forcing myself to finish a small manual project like a knitted donkey has helped me overcome the common creative trap of not completing more cerebral projects for fear of being judged. Hmmn, judging by the length of this comment response that’s a whole other article!
Thanks so much Charlie. You’re a legend. I really appreciate your wonderful contribution.
17/04/2010 — 11:08 am
ron ostlund jr says:
my opinion is that all a load of crap!! Economey blah, asia blah! Whatever your excuse is as a “man” that you cant use your hands to fix or create is mostly crap. Why cant you fix your car? Why cant you build a model airplane? Why cant you do a damn thing but type on a computer and call someone to level the washing machine? LAZY people as a whole have become LAZY! HHHMMMMM let me call some poor ass to fix something because “I” have the money and “I” dont want to and “I” DONT KNOW HOW. Blame it on your father or his father sure go ahead! Guess what my father tought me alot but he didnt teach me the electronics part of it. I explored on my own. I learned and wanted to learn! I filled my time with crafting things. Why? Just for the simple pleasure of it!! just because I could!! So what I have seen so far is lots of excuses for why you cant make anything! why you dont have any hands on skills! That maybe if there was a website for men there would be more stuff! I dont thinks so! Etsy is not just for woman! yet its women who are on there the most! I didnt not know I was a minority when i started my shop! So all the “men” out there need to stop making stupid excuses for themselves and trying to over compinsate for their lack of “whatever it might be” and just be a MAN! Go teach your kid how to sharpen a stick into a spear on the sidewalk!!
17/05/2010 — 1:07 pm
ron ostlund jr says:
sorry for the rough spelling and mistakes! i was in a hurry and didnt read back through! and a little peaved at the comments before me!
17/05/2010 — 1:09 pm
Mark B says:
Ron and I see eye-to-eye a lot on this… not surprising, since we work together, often pulling ‘creativity’ out of our nether regions to accomplish some project some dilettante manager wants done.
My father (1916-1995, RIP) was a hands-on, physical man, who was conversant in all the building trades, yet enjoying puttering in a flower garden. There was no ‘ego’ there to cause conflict, he simply did all that he did because that was how he was raised.
Modern-day ‘men’ are besieged, not by the pressure to ‘make money’, but by the false pressure to NOT BE effeminate — “gay”, unmanly, etc. The falsity of machismo has supplanted manhood, and adult-age males today have little or no clue as to what the difference is.
That said, the reluctance to be a hands-on, DIY, self-sufficient man (“ah, just call the guy”)is a complete load of crap, and waste of our male resources. Hell, my DAUGHTER will be more capable than many young men are being taught to be!
BTW, I don’t exclude women from this, either; I am such a feminist that I tick off the feminists! Equal pay for equal work? ALL FOR IT — just DO the equal work! The next woman who tells me, “I can’t do that, I’m a woman, I’m not gonna risk ——– on this!” is gonna get a thorough, multi-lingual cursing. It was said best in 1975 — “Look, she wants to be a lumberjack, she needs to learn to handle her end of the log.”
It’s sad that there are so few ‘lumberjacks’ left nowadays. Hands-off prima donnas could not have built this country, or won ANY of the wars we’ve won, righteous or not. No matter what elevated status our nation achieves, we still need the pioneer spirit, and it doesn’t just happen; it needs to be passed from father to son, mother to daughter (more simply, parent to child).
PEOPLE — GET UP OFF IT AND DO SOMETHING!!!
17/05/2010 — 11:18 pm
ron ostlund jr says:
AAAAHHHHHHHHH beautiful words Mark! Most definatly needed to be said!! Wonderful this is amazing!
18/05/2010 — 1:37 am
Flora says:
Hello Mark,
Yeah, see I think we’re all, men and women, going full swing back to valuing the ability to make, create, engineer, mend, repair, build etc and some of us are kinda gob-smacked to discover we actually can’t. Something weird has definitely happened in the last twenty years where lots of people have turned their backs on the satisfaction of making do and mending while at the same time the DIY movement has skyrocketed but people are learning from em, TV shows instead of people they know.
I think there are a lot of societal issues involved too that have knee-capped us in this area like manufacturers selling us disposable, totally un-repairable products so we have to buy a replacement one in 2 years, city living, convenient, cheap products, families living apart, loss of community, absent parents, etc.
Your point about learning from parents is crucial, am so glad you said that. I’ve always consciously had my daughter pass me screwdrivers etc when I am fixing stuff so it is normal for her and she learns easily by imitation. In fact, recently my cousin was fixing a stiff drawer, he’s a real fixer guy, and my daughter automatically helped him. I said, see what a good assistant she is? He said, yeah, I noticed that and I was really proud!
Oliver Burkeman has just written a superb article along similar lines for The Guardian “Working with your hands: the secret to happiness?” – worth reading.
19/05/2010 — 10:51 am
Mark B says:
Just checked out that article — there’s a lot of truth there. Working with your hands produces satisfaction because there are tangible results right in front of you, not on some corporate spreadsheet; there’s sweat on your brow, not acid in your stomach. Your hands and fingers may ache a bit, but your eyes don’t burn from keeping them pried open on some community play-date.
I don’t make a lot of money; I do, however, get a lot of satisfaction from my job. Challenging my skill-set instead of taking the easy way out is fulfilling! I keep it simple — I ride my bike to work, I work (and mix play in with it, absurdity is alive and well in our shop!), I get back on the bike and pedal home. Sometimes, the ride home is more ‘scenic’ than others, depending on the weather and my cargo load.
You trade in a piece of your irreplaceable life every day for pay, for wages, for your daily bread. Since there is no possible value comparison, you might as well get as much intangible personal reward as you can!
22/05/2010 — 2:07 am