Just because you have anecdotal evidence of the contrary doesn't mean it can't be true, quantitatively. I, too, am a childless man - although I do have a wife - and don't resonate with this, but that doesn't mean I'll just cast aside the findings. Many, especially young, men are unhappy in their everyday, partly due to a lack of sense od community in the "modern" world.

I work in a bar, and I love seeing most of my coworkers. I obviously can't speak on the WFH aspect, as it'd be impossible for me, but enjoying the company of the people you work with isn't a foreign concept, especially in the service industry

As a childless woman, SAMEEEEEE. My dog is a fantastic coworker.

A lack of non alcoholic third spaces is what I would like to talk about.

It's something I've noticed in general.

I had an amazing boss who was single and lived alone, and really love her staff. We had unecessarily long staff meetings every week. When I started I was annoyed by them until someone pointed out that the time we spent with everyone getting distracted and going off-topic and padding out the meeting while we ate our lunch around the conference room table was, for her, the weekly family meal.

I still don't like unnecessary meetings, but it gave me a different perspective on why some people like them.

The ability to work from home has given me innumerable benefits, but I must admit that as a very introverted guy who's been going through some shit, and who's go-to move during times of anxiety and depression is to distance themselves from everyone... yeah, sometimes I do miss my coworkers. A lot of them are pretty great people. Doesn't mean I'd rather spend 3 hours a day sitting in traffic to see them, just means I low-key miss someone to bitch with.

I'm not young

Try reformulating your question in English and I’ll see if I can answer you.

I would love to work remote, but the nature of my job kinda conflicts with that (field service engineer).

That said, I actually like my coworkers quite a lot (there's only 4 of us). This is the first place I've worked where I genuinely feel like we all care about each other's well-being. I was in the hospital for a few days back in March and they texted periodically just to check how I was doing. Wishing each other happy father's day/birthday/anniversary/etc, congratulating baby births, invited to kids' birthday parties, and other things of that nature. Not just surface-level stuff, either. I would hang out with these guys.

No it fucking ain't.

Well, that settles it. Who can argue with this kind of airtight logic?

Your post is unnecessarily hostile and offers nothing, son. I’ve worked at the same place for 8 years now, probably longer than you’ve been out of diapers, and yes, working alongside people does form a bond. If you’ve ever had to cooperate with someone, trust someone, get through difficulties with someone, you’d know all this. But from the way you enjoy flinging obscenities at strangers I doubt you have much experience forming bonds with people, period.

Oh, you're one of those fucking extroverts.

And here’s the part where I just laugh in your face.

I'll concur - same stats as you too.

I was and am in a situation where WFM became voluntary because we outgrew the space while everyone was at home.

We have no limit of volunteers to work in the office, we have multiple people who never left the office, they continued to commute and went in every day.

So my anecdotal experience is the exact opposite of yours, which is why we don't put a ton of stock in them and look at aggregates in studies. Making sense?

childless men miss sense of community

Myself and everyone I know works remote. We're all childless/childfree and not a single one of us miss any community, we all feel there are zero downsides to it. This just comes across like propaganda to stop people working remote and return to office.

I'm single and childless and I personally like being hybrid. Full work from home fucks my mental health up pretty bad. I'm definitely in the minority among my peers though. I also wouldn't ever ask that anyone else be forced to come back to the office just because it isn't for me.

Best thing about working from home is stepping away from my desk, popping upstairs, and tossing my little baby boy up in the air a few times while he giggles and smiles.

In theory, we have the Third Space for that kind of socializing. Parks, plazas, union halls, club spaces and dance halls, churches, community centers, libraries...

In practice, they've been gradually privatized and monetized until everything is The Mall. If you don't have $10 to spend for the hour, there's nowhere you can legally so much as sit down. Hard to socialize on these terms.

My city decided to take its $7B budget and close a $330M shortfall by gutting parks, libraries, and other public amenities. Meanwhile, the police and fire departments are seeing a budget surge of over $100M.

The study isn’t bs.

There's a lot of "I'm childless and proud and how dare you suggest living in isolation and screaming at my computer screen all day has had any negative impact on my mental health. You're just trying to trick me into breeding! A thing I became intensely averse to just recently, after spending 16 hours a day on incel forums full of reactionary influencers."

So much of the knee-jerk ingrained responses online are indicative of people who have utterly lost the ability to think for themselves and are only capable of lashing out in defense of their latest favorite social media trend. Add in the artificial interactions created by bot accounts and people spamming content for self-promotion, and you've got a real recipe for mass psychosis.

Yeah, every sense of community I've ever felt with a job was also ruined by that same job. I don't remotely miss it, and I'm firmly child-free.

I agree that forcing return to office is either stupid or harmful. But I do like the people I work with, and not seeing them anymore would be saddening

The solution is obvious though, simply allow choice

I go in office when I want to, a few hours a day or a few times a week for a couple hours. But full work from home had me talking to myself… way too much.