221–230 of 1001 posts
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Moving women into the workforce as certainly reduced fecundidity and marriage.
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Curious to see the source showing European democracies are more successful, controlling for socioeconomic status.
What does it mean to be "successful, controlling for socioeconomic status"? Their success is defined by their peoples' socioeconomic status.
Even Massachusetts would be superior than every European country per capita.
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We need to find a better reason why this happens. I don't believe it's liberal social values which are not lived by. First of I would believe it's an educational problem and second it's a 'who cares' problem. There are plenty of areas/ghettos of low income and low education around. The blog also contains the following: "The people with the most money and education—the class most responsible for shaping culture and cu…
From what I've heard the problem are divorce courts granting women nearly everything. That rigs the game against dads. Marriage is a huge liability. Men are gambling with nearly all their lives on their partner's unwillingness into a divorce. On the other hand I've heard rumors where therapists were suggesting divorce to married women. I don't know how widespread that is but maybe something worth looking into.
I think there are quite a few alternative explanations for the data cited in the article than the ones the author proposes: > "Today, one in six American men between the ages of 25 and 54 are unemployed or out of the workforce altogether: about 10 million men. This number has more than doubled since the 1970s." We have this place in the USA called "The Rust Belt" which was once a dynamic and active manufacturing cent…
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What about married couples that decide not to have children ? The truth is it’s hard, and if the community does not support families then you have less children. Think about both parents working full time + and barely having enough to provide from a material standpoint, let along emotional and education. Point is parenting is hard and life today makes it harder. I don’t believe wedlock is a deciding reason for people…
We rearranged our life from DINK to SIWK for this reason. If I'm paying for childcare the expenses often increase linearly with the number of children, with my wife caring for our children we were able to double the number of children while substantially reducing costs. We are no longer jetting to Alps for skiing, and we've not had a night out without the kids in 9 years but we've different priorities now.
Kids were previously an asset a century ago, now they’re a luxury good.
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It all depends on what you’re aiming for, socio-economically. If you want billionaires then the US model is much more successful. If you want a wide middle class then the Swedish model is more successful. If you want happiness then the Danish model is more successful. If you want to eliminate poverty then the Finnish model is more successful.
It's disingenuous to compare a country with another country with 1/30th the size. Otherwise, you'd come to the conclusion that Sweden would be better off as a tax haven like Luxembourg. Massachusetts matches the Nordic nations by most metrics, and blows them out of the water in terms of median income.
We’re talking about countries and the claim that the USA is too big for decent social systems is just about the most stupid thing I’ve ever heard.
Either you have enough GDP for each state that it could be it’s own country, or you don’t. But it feels picky and choosy to say “we are extremely wealthy” and then later say “ah. But we’re too big for social programmes. It would cost too much”.
It’s a weird kind of double-speak that might have an iota of truth in either direction, but those positions cannot be simultaneously held.
It’s really no surprise that if your only options for work don’t pay much and demand a ton, you’re not gonna be too invested in that work. If you don’t see how you can build a stable life for yourself through work…why work?
Expectations go both ways. We used to expect people to work hard at one job that a household could survive on. Such jobs basically no longer exist outside of tech or law, so it’s natural that other behaviors change too.
And to the author’s fevered insistence that nobody can talk about this…I suggest talking to people. This is a very common discussion on the left, outside of his weird caricatures.
All the institutions that promoted marriage are ignored, so people are testing the shark-filled waters and going it alone.
Society-wide, this is self correcting over a couple centuries though, as the families which prioritize values are out-breeding those that do not (e.g. birth control is quickly segregating population growth by culture).
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> How do they undermine the norm? They don't do this on purpose they are also just humans. I read a book [1] that argued the upper middle class follows very traditional values (two-parent families, marrying before having children, having at least one adult working 40 hours a week) but doesn't really advocate for those traditional values. People in the upper middle class will praise the bravery of single mothers and s…
There is a stigma in pushing stable values. In a very real sense, it’s created by a media environment that eschews non-progressive (it’s not liberal - at least in the USA) family structures. Let’s face it, Homer Simpson is the face of traditional American family structures.
The life available to Homer Simpson included a skilled job that he could obtain without a college degree (and also while being an idiot). He was able to purchase a four bedroom home in the community he grew up in and provide for his wife and three children on that one income.
That was the norm, now it's practically gone. The lack of accessible economic opportunity, housing, and childcare are major barriers to having kids. If the same opportunities were available to my generation as they were to Homer Simpson's, this article wouldn't exist.
No one I know is delaying or avoiding a family because "the media" didn't show them how to start a "non-prgressive" one.