Vince Vaughn, one of America’s most outstanding bachelors, announced this month that is tying the knot with Canadian real estate agent Kyla Webber. It seems that Vaughn’s movie, Couples Retreat, may have been therapeutic. What happened to the lovable party animal from Swingers? What will become of the Frat Pack?
Interestingly, he told Oprah.com that he decided to get married not in order to find greater fulfillment, but to have kids. He is actually sprinting towards responsibility. He isn’t letting out many details about his relationship, but seems excited mostly excited about the new possibilities of a responsible life.
On the other side, he has expressed ambivalence about whether the relationship is going to change him. Good luck on that.
The anthropological observation of importance here is that many men in America today are experiencing a mid-life crisis. In contradistinction from a generation ago, however, these men are making moves towards resposibility, not irresponsibility. Men today get married and have a child, where the boomer escapees were running from their wives and kids. The midlife crisis today is not a new adolescence. It is the late departure from it.
The political right – as in Kay S. Hymowitz’s recent article – continues the drumbeat for earlier marriages. Certainly a wife and child and mortgage will force men to grow up. Maybe. But in a world where marriages are dissolvable as aspirin tablets, will this really do this trick? Besides, men like Vaughn are going into marriage these days with the caveat that they don’t have to change their immature ways. The a-woman-will-whip-me-into-shape days are over. Which is why bearing children has become the real test of maturity. Offspring are so, well, concrete.
In the end, maybe the only weapon the cause of maturity can wield is the promise of a better life. Being a man is better than being a boy. Attending a city council meeting is better than watching Southpark. Wooing a woman is far superior to beating off to Maxim magazine. Raising a child is more satisfying than being one. If Vince Vaughn can come to that realization, why not others?
Men on the Moon 