No wonder men are opting out

The warning signs have been there for decades. Back in 1983, American author Barbara Ehrenreich wrote a powerful book - The Hearts of Men: American Dreams and the Flight from Commitment - arguing that a male revolt was underway. Since the 1950s, she suggested, men had begun rebelling against the breadwinner ethic - inspired by Playboy culture, the counterculture, and a desire for personal freedom. They were rejecting the cultural ideology that had shamed them into tying the knot and becoming a good provider, lest they be seen as immature, irresponsible, and less than a real man.

Ehrenreich understood that marriage was the mechanism by which society harnessed male productivity. Remove the shame, and the yoke comes off.

Forty years on, the yoke has disappeared. In April 2026, the American male labour force participation rate hit its lowest level since records began in the 1940s, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. One in three American men - roughly 33% - were not working or actively looking for work. The overall male participation rate for men aged 16 and over stood at just 67%, down from 73.5% two decades ago and from 87% in the postwar years when Ehrenreich's story begins.

The trend is not confined to America. Australian men's workforce participation has fallen from around 79% in 1978 to approximately 71% today (see below), while similar declines - though less dramatic than in the United States - have occurred in the UK and Canada.

The marriage collapse runs in lockstep with the workforce data. According to US Census Bureau data, married-couple households made up 71% of all US households in 1970 - today just 47%. As University of Virginia sociologist Brad Wilcox documents in his 2024 book, Get Married, the marriage rate has fallen 65% in the last half century.

Australia tells a similar story. The marriage rate has more than halved since 1971, from 13 per 1,000 people to just 5.5 in 2024 - and much of the slack has been taken up by de facto relationships which carry the legal obligations of marriage but none of its commitment or permanence. The numbers are moving in one direction only.

Ehrenreich had made the argument that marriage and productivity were inseparable - that the same mechanism which got men to the altar got them to work. The data suggests she was right.

What Ehrenreich did not fully reckon with - could not have foreseen in 1983 - was that the inducements for tying the knot would collapse. The shame mechanism has disappeared, yes. But the incentive has simultaneously imploded. The product on offer has changed beyond recognition.

If you want to understand why men are voting with their feet, you need to look not just at what marriage now costs them - and the costs are severe - but at what it delivers. Increasingly, what it delivers is a pretty dud deal.

The modern woman: a prospectus.