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Family instability fuels rising nihilism among young men

city-journal.org

11–20 of 137 posts

Re: Family instability fuels rising nihilism among young men

#11

Having two parents greatly reduces the change of a young adult committing a crime.

Even when controlled for income? I'd imagine single parent households are strongly correlated with lower socioeconomic status, as is antisocial behaviour.

Re: Family instability fuels rising nihilism among young men

#12

Having two parents greatly reduces the change of a young adult committing a crime.

If we break out children who lost a parent to catastrophe vs children who lost a parent to that parent's decision to leave, do they have the same crime rates?

"Having two parents" isn't what's generating the effect.

Re: Family instability fuels rising nihilism among young men

#13

> This is how my friends and I treated one another, and others. There were other examples of stupidity. Taking baseball bats to taillights in parking lots. Driving around town shooting pedestrians and bicyclists with airsoft guns. Getting blackout drunk and racing down the freeway wearing a blindfold. At no point in my life have I ever wanted to damage someone else or their property for the fun of it, and I wouldn’t…

Did you grow up in a city?

Mix of suburban and rural. Suburban for high school.

Re: Family instability fuels rising nihilism among young men

#14

> This is how my friends and I treated one another, and others. There were other examples of stupidity. Taking baseball bats to taillights in parking lots. Driving around town shooting pedestrians and bicyclists with airsoft guns. Getting blackout drunk and racing down the freeway wearing a blindfold. At no point in my life have I ever wanted to damage someone else or their property for the fun of it, and I wouldn’t…

Did you grow up in a city?

I grew up right in the middle of a very large American city. Did plenty of stupid shit like smoke cigarettes on subway trains, go to parties in abandoned buildings in sketchy neighborhoods, threw up on the sidewalk. Never once have I decided to commit property or violent crimes.

Re: Family instability fuels rising nihilism among young men

#16

Having two parents greatly reduces the change of a young adult committing a crime.

No, having two parents Living at home reduces the probability that you will be Arrested for a crime.

You are implying causality, when much of that correlation is because single parent homes are affected by the same policies of over policing of vulnerable communities twice. Once with a parent and once with a child.

Re: Family instability fuels rising nihilism among young men

#17

Having two parents greatly reduces the change of a young adult committing a crime.

If we break out children who lost a parent to catastrophe vs children who lost a parent to that parent's decision to leave, do they have the same crime rates? "Having two parents" isn't what's generating the effect.

And children who lost a parent to the criminal justice system...which is highly predictive of coming from an over policed community where the child will be targeted by law enforcement and the judicial system.

Re: Family instability fuels rising nihilism among young men

#18

> This is how my friends and I treated one another, and others. There were other examples of stupidity. Taking baseball bats to taillights in parking lots. Driving around town shooting pedestrians and bicyclists with airsoft guns. Getting blackout drunk and racing down the freeway wearing a blindfold. At no point in my life have I ever wanted to damage someone else or their property for the fun of it, and I wouldn’t…

I think you're the exception, not the rule. I've never done anything like what the author wrote, but being involved in mischief is something every male I know did. You can even see it in animals, where the young males try to push boundries with authority figures.

Re: Family instability fuels rising nihilism among young men

#19

> This is how my friends and I treated one another, and others. There were other examples of stupidity. Taking baseball bats to taillights in parking lots. Driving around town shooting pedestrians and bicyclists with airsoft guns. Getting blackout drunk and racing down the freeway wearing a blindfold. At no point in my life have I ever wanted to damage someone else or their property for the fun of it, and I wouldn’t…

in a society where parenting is letting your children do whatever they want or be accused of being violent guess what they end up doing?

Re: Family instability fuels rising nihilism among young men

#20
post #18

> This is how my friends and I treated one another, and others. There were other examples of stupidity. Taking baseball bats to taillights in parking lots. Driving around town shooting pedestrians and bicyclists with airsoft guns. Getting blackout drunk and racing down the freeway wearing a blindfold. At no point in my life have I ever wanted to damage someone else or their property for the fun of it, and I wouldn’t…

I think you're the exception, not the rule. I've never done anything like what the author wrote, but being involved in mischief is something every male I know did. You can even see it in animals, where the young males try to push boundries with authority figures.

My point was those examples weren’t mischief. Waking up their friend with firecrackers is mischief. Shooting people with airsoft guns and driving blackout drunk easily putting them in harms way is not mischief, at least not in the “kids will be kids” way.
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