I have listened to these two for some time now and have come to the conclusion that middle-aged men suffer from a distinct biological disadvantage: They don't go through menopause.
I know, I know. This is not a widespread opinion. The average man does not rage at the heavens because he has been denied the growth experience of hot flashes. Wishing menopause on men sounds like the sort of curse once uttered by covens of radical feminists at meetings in lofts in lower Manhattan.
Indeed, if women could vote on their biology, they might well outlaw the ''change of life." It seems like a leftover from another age, an appendix of inequality. If men can have babies into their 70s, why can't women?
I know more women who resent the midnight on their biological clock than men who would welcome it with hats and horns. Menopause just doesn't fit our social calendar. It certainly doesn't fit the all-American notion that we have interminable choices and unlimited options in life. The fertility deadline forces women to make those choices and take up those options.
Which is, when you come to think of it, an advantage.
If a number of single American men suffer from what the pop psychologists call the Peter Pan syndrome, it may be biology that has destined them for Never Never Land. There is, for some, rooted in this lifelong fertility, the sense that as fatherhood is open-ended so is life. It allows some men to postpone so much, even maturity.
I don't want to exaggerate this. I don't believe that fertility makes most men less aware of mortality. But it makes it marginally easier for men than for women to be alienated from their own life cycle. It makes it marginally easier for them to postpone paternity and also to push off the realization of age.
