Stacy McCain has triggered some thoughtful and frisky responses with his long post on the benefits for women of keeping their virginity intact until marriage (and, if no longer intact, changing their ways). Little Miss Attila, Cassandra at Villainous Company, and Bride of Rove (best blog name ever) all take McCain to task on some points but rip him on others.

Many will, I’m sure find McCain’s advice not to “give the milk away for free” to be terribly old fashioned. But old fashioned morals and practicality, I like. Unfortunately, I think McCain goes wrong in the very first paragraphs by assuming that men are the same now as they were when he and I were young men (i.e., 20-something). It begins thus:

Not long ago, at a social event in D.C., I found myself talking to a very intelligent, funny, attractive woman who is 31 years old and not married. She had just ended a “relationship” with a guy, and I was sort of amazed.

Why was she still single? And why would this guy date her and dump her? Surely, if he had any appreciation of her wonderful qualities — some qualities evident to the eye, and others that might be learned in a brief conversation — he would have spent all he had to buy her a diamond ring, fallen on his knees and, with tears streaming down his face, begged for her hand in marriage.

I wonder this all the time myself. I don’t hit the cocktail party circuit, like McCain must as a journalist in Washington, but I will run across a woman from time to time about whom I’ll wonder the same thing: Why the hell isn’t she married? Are young men these days idiots? And the answer, in large measure, an unfortunate YES.

I’ve been Googling around without success to find the source of the following information, which I heard presented by an author being interviewed by Dennis Prager about her book on the immaturity of the American male, and thus I may have some of it wrong, but here’s the gist:

• Portrait of the typical 26-year-old American male in 1960: Married. Two kids, good chance of a third already on the way. Employed in a trade or working his way up in management in a white collar job.
• Portrait of the many 26-year-old American males today: Single. Job with no future. Spends a couple of hours a day playing video games. Lives with 2 0r 3 roommates who are just like him.

Now, even if those details are wrong, I think the relative immaturity of the more contemporary of those two demographics is pretty hard to dispute. And I don’t say that because I was 26 in 1960. Born in 1960, I fall squarely between those two demographics, as does McCain (who, if I’m not mistaken, is around my age), and I’m afraid I didn’t measure up to the 1960 standard, either. But as much as my contemporaries may have spent their time chasing skirts and avoiding commitment — which I refrained from not on moral grounds but because I was damn clumsy with women — many of my friends got married before I did at 26.

Anyway, what this means is that when I ask myself that question these days — Why isn’t she married? — I assume its in large part because good, marriageable men in their early to mid-20s, and even slightly beyond, are rare.

It’s a chicken-and-egg-argument whether men have gotten this way because women have let them get away with it, or that women started “giving away the milk for free” in response to this decline. Probably a little of both. But if women widely followed McCain’s advice — and men worked harder at keeping it zipped — I think men would improve.

The problem with McCain’s advice (as a strategy, not as a moral code) is that it can only work for some women. If good, marriageable young men are indeed few and far between, then the women who hold out are likely screen out a lot of losers and nab the good ones. What are the rest of women — those stuck with the leftovers — to do? Well, McCain’s advice would still help, if it was widely followed. That night force men to grow up some.

Overall, it seems a sad state of affairs.