So what seemed unthinkable a few years ago—when people might chalk up their homosexual urges to onetime experiments, or private fantasies, and walk down the aisle with a woman or man they truly cared for—has now become thinkable. And doable. And so increasing numbers are doing it.

  More men, it seems, than women. That is because there are more gay men than lesbians, and because, according to experts, wives are often slower to move from lesbian self-awareness to actual divorce. Sure, Ross’s wife on Friends left him for a hot woman at the gym, and the Mom in Augusten Burroughs’s best-selling 2002 memoir Running with Scissors (played by Annette Bening in the 2006 movie) had some midlife lesbian affairs. But in real life, the more common situation is like Dennis Quaid in 2002’s Far from Heaven. Married man in suburbs. Two kids. Upstanding civic life. Burbling homosexual attraction that won’t be ignored. Exit closet, age 40.

  Late-Breaking Gays in America have needs, especially within the gay community. While it may be easier than ever for teens and 20-somethings to come out of the closet, “middle-aged” debutants often still have lingering discomfort—not to mention their newness in the gay scene. The author of www.comingoutat48.blogspot.com recounts that when he started his new life as a gay man, he had no idea what to wear to bars, and he showed up way too early. Will & Grace centered at least a few episodes on Will or Jack “shepherding” a Late-Breaking Gay into their community.

  But Late-Breakers’ own needs aside, it cannot be overstated how Late-Breaking Gays transform the worlds of their spouses and children. According to a 1990 study on the Social Organization of Sexuality (and substantiated by the Family Growth data cited earlier), there are about 3 million women who were or are married to men who now sleep with other men. In addition, there are about 3.5 million children whose parents came out later in life. Talk about the awkward sex conversation with Mom and Dad.

  Straight Spouses Left Behind have a resource in the International Straight Spouse Network, which coordinates nearly eighty support groups in the U.S. and abroad. Their Web site, www.straightspouse.org, reportedly gets 300 visitors a day. And support is needed. According to the experts, spouses of Late-Breaking Gays go through all the stages that one experiences upon a loved one’s death—anger, sadness, denial, rage. Sometimes, there is relief, in the form of “it wasn’t me, it was him.” Sometimes there is fear, especially regarding sexually transmitted diseases and AIDS. But almost always, for a Straight Spouse Left Behind, there is rejection, humiliation, and betrayal, and sometimes the forcing of a radical reexamination of one’s own judgment, and grasp of truth.

  All this, while at a practical level, they are also working through issues of separation, the chance of trying to stay together anyway (which about a third of couples do), and/or the mixed emotions of seeking out new relationships. Many Straight Spouses find themselves in their own sort of closet until it all goes public—at which time they have to endure reams of difficult questions from friends, parents, colleagues, and children. Sure, they now rank alongside the once distraught wives of Oscar Wilde, Rock Hudson, and Elton John—but that doesn’t cure the pain.

  Two million Late-Breaking Gays rock at least 4 million adult worlds—but they also fundamentally alter the altar prospect for everyone else. Marriage in America is having a hard enough time these days, what with only 7.5 per 1,000 people getting married, down from 10.6 in 1980. But now even the people who aspire to marry, meet a compatible match, and actually walk down that aisle have a new problem to contend with. In fifteen years, will my spouse be Late-Breaking—or worse, secretly Brokebacking? Can he say he loves me—and in fact never desire another woman—and yet still leave me for a greater passion when we’re 45? How do I turn on the Gaydar now, and here, while we’re still dating?

  Perhaps the dating Web sites, and prenuptial counseling services, will want to add a couple of questions about sexual preference. Hopeful couples today take all kinds of personality tests to learn who matches them, how to anticipate (and diffuse) relationship conflict, and how to maximize the chances of marital bliss. Might it not be a bad idea to make sure people are even on the right dance floor, before they start lining up a partner?

  Arguably, if the tolerance for homosexuality in America keeps on rising, the number of Late-Breaking Gays will subside, on the theory that gay people will be just gay from the get-go, and cut out the diversionary detours of heterosexual marriage. Particularly if gay marriage and childrearing gain mainstream approval, gays will lose nothing by choosing same-sex partners, and Straight Spouses will be spared the agony. (As comedian Jason Stuart has said, “I wish you straight people would let us gay people get married. If you did, we’d stop marrying you!”)

  But that day in America is not coming soon. Fifty-one percent of Americans still consider homosexuality “morally wrong,” and nearly 60 percent oppose gay marriage. Many Americans (36 percent) think gays should be less accepted, not accepted the same or more. And so as long as homosexuals are second-class in America, a good number of people with gay feelings will shelve those feelings in favor of a heterosexual wedding, a white picket fence, and biological kids. But if, years later, the feelings recur, or arise in whole new ways, there will be Late-Breaking News about their sexual orientation—and a reorientation for everybody else.

  Dutiful Sons

  Male Caregivers in America

  By now, we know well that Americans are living much longer—a person born today can expect to live well past 70, compared to the life expectancy of 47 if you were born in 1900. And living into your 80s and 90s is increasingly common.

  We also know that when people die, they do it more slowly—suffering from chronic conditions like heart disease and Alzheimer’s, rather than from some of the quicker-killing diseases of the past.

  As a result, most seniors end up needing some kind of end-of-life care, and yet, contrary to popular belief, very few of them get it in nursing homes or assisted care centers. In fact, only 4 percent of people 65 and older actually live in such places. The vast majority of seniors who need care either get help at home from unpaid relatives, or move in with family members altogether. And that’s for an average of four to five years. That’s a serious obligation for the caregiver.

  Clearly, the bulk of the caregiving burden in America falls to women. There is even a term for professional women who put their demanding careers on hold to care for their aging parents: the Daughter Track—reflective of the Mommy Track that many of these women chose twenty years before, when they put their demanding careers on hold to care for their children.

  But while women handle more of the care, and much more of the really serious care, there is a quietly growing—and potentially powerful—group of unpaid caregivers in America who are men. According to a 2004 study by the National Alliance for Caregiving and the AARP, nearly 40 percent of the 44 million people in America who provide unpaid care to infirm adults are men. That’s about 17 million sons, sons-in-law, nephews, brothers, and husbands caring for loved ones in their “spare” time. Throughout the 1990s, the fastest-growing group of relations providing care to chronically disabled adults was sons.

  And it’s not just your occasional weekend stop-by to help Dad move the old sofa he can no longer lift by himself. America’s caregiving men spend an average of nineteen hours a week tending to infirm loved ones. And for some, it’s many more hours than that: Almost one-third of caregivers to the neediest relatives are men.

  There are some traits of Dutiful Sons that distinguish them from their Dutiful Sisters, and that could in the end have political significance. Male caregivers tend not to suspend or cut back on work, and they are much more likely (60 to 41 percent) to be working full-time, with all the additional resources and influence that implies. Male caregivers more often help other men—35 percent compared to only 28 percent of caregiving women who do. Third, more so than women, male caregivers choose their situation: Almost two-thirds say they had a choice in the matter, compared to fewer than 3 in 5 women.

  Another interesting twist is that Dutiful Sons are disproportionately of Asian descent. While only a handful of male caregivers are Asian-American, 54 percent of Asian-American caregivers are men—compared to only 41 percent of Hispanics, 38 percent of whites, and 33 percent of African-Americans. Indeed, Asian-Americans are the only subgroup in which the majority of adult caretakers are male. That no doubt stems from the core Asian value of filial piety, which dates back to Confucius, and in traditional Asian culture is at the heart of a person’s moral development. The result is that in Asian families, the firstborn son is generally expected to care for his parents.

  Finally, many male caregivers are gay. There was a touching piece in the New York Times in December 2006 by Peter Napolitano, a 48-year-old, single, gay man who moved home to care for his 81-year-old mother—mainly because his heterosexual brother and wife couldn’t integrate Mom into their already bustling household.

  So perhaps guys have been taking a bad rap—many of them are truly thoughtful when it comes to their Moms, Dads, spouses, and partners. Clearly the Asian-American men have a lot to teach the rest of us, but this growth in Dutiful Sons portends some potentially larger shifts in outlook. While it is one of the Ten Commandments to honor thy father and mother, America is not really oriented toward filial piety as a primary value. America is fundamentally child-oriented; we are always talking about the next generation, not the previous one. It is a strength that we’re focused on the future—but that is perhaps sometimes at the expense of our parents.

  As we see with Old New Dads, the Working Retired, and other groups in this book, this older generation is going to do a lot more than just play golf—they are going to be living longer, getting more involved in their kids’ lives, and over time developing much deeper bonds with them. So statistically, the issue of taking care of our parents is going to be a far larger one in our lives and in theirs. This means that while Dutiful Sons are on the rise, what we really need to avoid intergenerational calamity is for the next generations to see their responsibilities more broadly than just “paying it forward.” Paying it back is still a very real concept that, increasingly, we have to ingrain in our society and in our values.

  Dutiful Sons need more help than they are getting. Like female caregivers, they need more geriatric case managers to help guide them through the mazes of Medicaid and Medicare; backup care if work requires them to go out of town; and the kind of quasi-medical training necessary to care for a loved one who has just been released from a hospital or short-term-care nursing home. A negligible number of workplaces provide any real benefits for elder care, and even though elder care is technically covered under the Family and Medical Leave Act, “parent care” leave has hardly penetrated mainstream culture like maternity leave has. Nor does the maternity leave model really fit senior care. You can chart the developmental needs of kids aged 0–3 and plan for a transition to day care or school. Also, they live with you. Aging parents can be far away, erratic in their health needs, and entirely unpredictable in the length or intensity of care they will need.

  But Dutiful Sons could also use some support tailored just for them. Since they are less likely to have been the primary caretakers of children, they may find tending to vulnerable, frustrated, and sometimes unappreciative human beings—even those they love—more exasperating than even women do. Having fewer brothers-in-arms at work, they probably find even less sympathy there when their obligations to care for Mom and Dad make them come late, leave early, or miss work entirely.

  Maybe their parents, especially their Dads, are rougher on the sons as they decline than they would be on the daughters. Gay men, in particular, may have a host of complicated issues caring for parents who, perhaps to some degree, never completely accepted them.

  Some help is on the way. In late 2006, Congress passed the Lifespan Respite Care Act, authorizing some $300 million in competitive grants for states and local agencies to help provide relief to people giving long-term, emotionally draining care to family members.

  But of course, there is much more to do. Three hundred million dollars is a good start, but the care that family-givers provide is estimated at closer to $300 billion. We are just beginning to recognize a problem that is mushrooming, and we are just starting to assess where we will get the home health care workers we need to do this right.

  Specifically, as America gets older, and as geriatric specialists decline, we need a greater recognition that more and more of America’s 50-somethings are caring for America’s 70- and 80-somethings—and they need appropriate accommodation in the workplace. Dutiful Sons have the power and ability to transform this from what has been perceived as just a “women’s issue” to a broad societal issue that can finally generate the political head of steam it will take to put this on the table alongside Medicare and Social Security.

  And attention is required. In 1997, companies lost between $11 and $29 billion because of departing workers, absent workers, and workday interruptions from employees taking care of infirm relatives. Public policymakers must see the value in that “free” $300 billion contribution caregivers are making. If adult sons and daughters don’t do this work, who’s going to pick up the slack for America’s elderly? The Social Security system that is already buckling under the weight of the boomers?

  Democratic presidential candidate Joe Lieberman was said to call his mother every day of his adult life, until she died in 2005 at the age of 90. Teddy Roosevelt was at his mother’s bedside when she died. As more and more Dutiful Sons embrace the call to honor their fathers and mothers, they will add yet another moral dimension to life in America—one that has perhaps been on the wane.

  PART VI

  Politics

  Impressionable Elites

  Every day in this 2008 election season, I hear two kinds of comments. First, I hear, “If only X or Y candidate were warmer, and friendlier, I would vote for him/her.”

  Second, I hear, “I like the candidates who address the issues. This is a serious election, and we need a president who truly gets our problems and will help solve them.”

  Which of those attitudes, do you think, comes from America’s Ph.D.’s? The one focused on personality, or the one focused on issues?

  The Ph.D.’s, believe it or not, are all about personality. Because a funny thing has happened to the American electorate; it’s flipped upside down. America’s elite—the wealthiest and best educated of our society—have become less interested in America’s economic and strategic challenges than they are in candidates’ personalities. Go to any upscale cocktail party, and listen in on what they think is most important in the presidential election. I guarantee it—they will start off dissecting the personal traits of every candidate. And there is a good reason for this—today’s elites are so far removed from the mainstream concerns like health care, college affordability, job loss, and child care that most Americans face. Perhaps it has always been true that the elites have concerns different from the masses, but in the American meritocracy of the twentieth century, elites were a special breed who had worked their way up the ladder and had a very real appreciation for those now struggling to come up as well. They were, in short, a serious lot who had been through World War II and had a real respect for the seriousness of life and politics. Today’s elites have been spoiled longer, and are more removed from the struggles of their parents and grandparents.

  While today’s elites are reading Tom Friedman’s The World Is Flat, the rest of America is living it. The elites are seeing unprecedented economic success, while those struggling lower down are getting nowhere. Income data released in March 2007 show that those in the top 10 percent have been getting a raise every year, with the biggest raises (about 14 percent) going to the top 1 percent. The bottom 90 percent of Americans have been taking pay cuts. A rising tide is not, in fact, lifting all boats.

  This is what makes it particularly ironic that when you ask elites why they are focused on personality, they will tell you that “The Voters”—i.e., lower-income and less-well-educated Americans—don’t understand the issues and so they vote on the basis of personal traits. But nothing could be further from the truth. The so-called herd in America is better educated and more issue-focused than ever. Come to a political town hall, with America’s regular voters, and you’ll see that personality never comes up. Voters zero in on health care, education, and friends who are serving in Iraq. They have levels of knowledge about Medicare, Medicaid, our school system, and the global economy that would put many Ph.D.’s to shame. When Hillary Clinton held an online town hall in early 2007, she received 11,000 questions. Ten were about her favorite foods and movies. The other 10,990 questions were about people’s real challenges and how she could help address them. Elites today often look down on the general public, but I have noticed that it is the elites who are easily captivated without many real facts, while the larger groups are much more grounded in facts, values, and experiences. Just as college students have always had views that change when they get out and have life experiences, so today’s elites are like perpetual college students, far removed from the experiences and struggles shaping everyday American life. And so it is a lot easier to spin America’s elites than it is to spin the voters.

  The other day, I was on the phone with a reporter from an elite newspaper who kept talking about the importance of presidential personality. He said, “I have an e-mail right here on this from a professor.” I said, “A professor—is that your idea of the typical American?” America’s professors are acting out their vision of non-college-educated voters, and non-college-educated voters are acting like what you’d expect from professors. And when I challenged the reporter on some of his other observations, he said that he’d checked, and “other reporters” felt the same way. Elites look to other elites to reinforce their views, and they convince themselves that the way they see life is how the other 90 percent of America is also experiencing it.