321–330 of 1001 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do they play video games?
While an answer in the affirmative would tickle your confirmation bias activations, I'll counter with my anecdote that I play "video games" and have been happily married for 13 years and have two kids.
> basic general principle that men will do whatever is required in order to obtain sex, and perhaps not a great deal more. (One of us characterized this in a previous work as, ‘If women would stop sleeping with jerks, men would stop being jerks.’) This makes it sound like it is just men who need sex and have to do things to get it. One would think that everybody needs sex and thus women need it too. And it would stan…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
when you have kids for no reason, they know they’re here for no reason, and it’s a formula for a disaffected person. i don’t know if expectations being set because of being a man makes any sense, but i firmly believe you must have goals and morals. i think we spend a lot of time struggling with the roles we’re assigned. no for any deep reason, it’s just work and people tend to hate it. i think it comes down to the in…
Previously people who bore kids but didn’t plan on it were peer pressured by society to carry their water and take responsibility and support them to some degree. Divorced parents faced significant pushback. These days, at least it seems, without this social pressure people feel free to leave more readily before giving raising their family a greater priority. The priority is their convenience and not the new generati…
Want to get married? Pay a small fee at the courthouse and get a license in a day or so. Very easy, very low cost.
Want to get divorced? The process can take over a year, cost tens of thousands or more, involve court appearances, and dividing property.
Granted both of these actions are easier or less restrictive than they were in the past. Although the lawyer fees seem to be higher, at least when considering real wages have decreased since the 70s.
With the prevalence of divorce, you would think that prenups could be made a part of the marriage license so that lawyer costs, court costs, etc could be minimized. It might even cause some people to reconsider a bad marriage. You could go farther with premarital counseling if this is really a concern.
I don't know of those are really good ideas or not. Personally, I think the government should get out of the marriage business altogether. With the wide variety of living arrangements and expectations for what a marriage is, I think it might work better for people to enter into private marriage contracts.
On the social pressures and unwanted kids part, I wonder how mate selection plays into this. Sure, there was free love in the 70s, but I still imagine that premarital sex was not as common as it has become today. I wonder how women's expectations of men have changed during this time, especially for when to allow for sex. I also wonder how the expectations men (and society) have of women have changed, especially in terms of work/home/financial responsibilities and contraception/abortion options.
This is an important read, especially this part. > This highly educated and affluent person prioritized stability for her own children. But refused to publicly endorse this value so that less fortunate children could also benefit from family stability. I’m from a rigidly socially conservative immigrant family that professes fashionably liberal values in public—imposing a double standard between “us” and “Americans.”…
> Watching and hearing about the family instability in these communities is heartbreaking. Half or more of everyone’s parents are divorced. The kids float around seeking stability and the adults can’t provide it. You seem to be attributing the cause of this to 'Telling men and boys it's cool and fine to divorce' and not attributing to say... declining material and social capitol in the lower four quintiles of wealth…
"Creating an economy where men can attain dignity and social respect."
This is an important read, especially this part. > This highly educated and affluent person prioritized stability for her own children. But refused to publicly endorse this value so that less fortunate children could also benefit from family stability. I’m from a rigidly socially conservative immigrant family that professes fashionably liberal values in public—imposing a double standard between “us” and “Americans.”…
> Watching and hearing about the family instability in these communities is heartbreaking. Half or more of everyone’s parents are divorced. The kids float around seeking stability and the adults can’t provide it. You seem to be attributing the cause of this to 'Telling men and boys it's cool and fine to divorce' and not attributing to say... declining material and social capitol in the lower four quintiles of wealth…
Tons of people dispute this. The thinking is that people staying married when they don’t want to stay married is worse for kids than people getting divorced and creating two separate households the kids float between. I don’t agree with this thinking, mostly because I’m the product of divorce that saw the aftermath and have seen the deep regret of what happened on both the parent of the previously married parents and the children. I suppose the good thing that came out of it is that neither I nor any of my siblings have gotten divorced, despite now all having been married longer than our parents ever were. Divorce is rarely the answer and does terrible things to children.
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> The political window has shifted further and further left in recent years. As an outside observer, I'm Canadian, this viewpoint of many Americans that their politics has shifted "left" is flabbergasting. The SC has definitely shifted hard right and Roe v. Wade is essentially overturned, or being, overturned in many states. "Don't say gay" and other anti LGBQT+ laws are being passed. I feel you are using a very "tru…
> "Don't say gay" and other anti LGBQT+ laws are being passed. The law could be described as “baring presentations about sex (straight or otherwise) to a classroom of 5-10 year olds” After the age of 10 discussions in the classroom can occur. And at any age (5-10), children can ask about sex, but the teachers cannot say “don’t tell your parents”. Which was happening... Anyway, it has support from all sides. It’s actu…
One of the authors of the bill was asked if a math textbook that had a word problem saying "Jimmy and his dads go to the store..." would be in violation of this law. He responded that this was precisely the sort of thing the law was intending to prevent.
The law is very much not just about direct sex education prior to 3rd grade.
This is an important read, especially this part. > This highly educated and affluent person prioritized stability for her own children. But refused to publicly endorse this value so that less fortunate children could also benefit from family stability. I’m from a rigidly socially conservative immigrant family that professes fashionably liberal values in public—imposing a double standard between “us” and “Americans.”…
This is an important read, especially this part. > This highly educated and affluent person prioritized stability for her own children. But refused to publicly endorse this value so that less fortunate children could also benefit from family stability. I’m from a rigidly socially conservative immigrant family that professes fashionably liberal values in public—imposing a double standard between “us” and “Americans.”…
"The article is right on the mark talking about the importance of social expectations for men." Those only really work if the opportunities are there for the person to succeed. If you have no hope of success, then people just give up.
Success doesn't come from hope. It comes from hard work and fighting every day for something better.
Luck might help, but is neither required nor enough for success.
I was from a poor background and fighting for a better future was the only thing that brought me some kind of success.
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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.
I think this is a reasonable course of action, of course, but also respect the DINKs who look at having kids and go “no thanks” and continue jetting off to the Alps, Turks and Caicos, or whatever. Having kids is an opportunity cost, and there’s a lot of life enjoyment to be had if you don’t have them. Kids were previously an asset a century ago, now they’re a luxury good.
There's an opportunity cost for most life decisions. Sometimes they're obscured. It's often not presented this way but for a cohort of women university and work, displaces marriage and children.