No one expects young men to do anything and they are responding by doing nothing • Hacker News Board

Re: No one expects young men to do anything and they are responding by doing nothing

#371

Post by jchanimal » Sun, Apr 24, 2022, 2:51 PM UTC

irrational wrote: post #326

lkey wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> Also, divorce sucks when kids are involved, I don't think anyone on earth, left or right, would dispute that. 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 a…

Divorced dad, anecdote. My kids, my ex, and I are much better off now. Having the kids around 50% time is a huge sanity boost and allows me to be there for them more than before. I’m lucky to have remarried to a very engaged stepmom, but even without her we’d probably still be better off.

I also saw my parents become much happier after they split up (when I was an adult.)

Re: No one expects young men to do anything and they are responding by doing nothing

#372

Post by DeathArrow » Sun, Apr 24, 2022, 2:52 PM UTC

UncleMeat wrote: post #319

rayiner wrote: post #3

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.”…

Pros and cons. A big challenge with rigid social expectations is identifying the beneficial ones and removing the harmful ones. In practice, there tends to be little introspection about which traditional expectations help and which ones hurt. Instead, people appeal to tradition itself as evidence that an expectation is helpful. If we could more effectively iterate on these social expectations then we'd be able to mor…

The tentatives to artificially engineer the society to be more just, fair and inclusive only resulted in a less just, less fair and less inclusive society.

The society should be left to evolve on its own, in a natural way. If we don't want to replace small disasters with big disasters.

Re: No one expects young men to do anything and they are responding by doing nothing

#373

Post by paulryanrogers » Sun, Apr 24, 2022, 2:53 PM UTC

mediumiqsad wrote: post #100

michaelt wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Probably because single motherhood is generally not a choice made willingly. There isn't any hypocrisy here, they don't endorse single motherhood because it's fashionable they "endorse" it because the alternative is worse.

Curious what you see as these worse alternatives? Abortion, adoption, abandonment, forced marriage, forced labor for child support?

Re: No one expects young men to do anything and they are responding by doing nothing

#374

Post by croes » Sun, Apr 24, 2022, 2:53 PM UTC

FabHK wrote: post #301

rayiner wrote: post #3

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. My family’s rigid expectations have been such a blessing. Émile Durkheim basically introduced the discipline of sociology with his study of suicide. He found that the ratio of suicide was higher among protestants than among catholics, and concluded that it was because they were less embedded in strict norms, and freer to d…

From your link

"Durkheim explores the differing suicide rates among Protestants and Catholics, arguing that stronger social control among Catholics results in lower suicide rates. According to Durkheim, Catholic society has normal levels of integration while Protestant society has low levels.

This interpretation has been contested. Durkheim may have over-generalized. He took most of his data from earlier researchers, notably Adolph Wagner and Henry Morselli, but they had been more careful in generalizing from their data. Indeed, later researchers found that the Protestant–Catholic differences in suicide seemed to be limited to German-speaking Europe, thus suggesting a need to account for other contributing factors."

Re: No one expects young men to do anything and they are responding by doing nothing

#375

Post by camgunz » Sun, Apr 24, 2022, 2:53 PM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #3

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.”…

I think the post fails to make the case that male behavior (or the culture that induces male behavior) is the root cause of divorce rates.

- The rise in imprisonment is basically entirely a result of the War on Drugs, aka carceral slavery.

- The problems with employment are that unions have disappeared, jobs are hyperexploitative (a better measure than the unemployment rate here is the Social Security Disability rate), and real wages have stagnated.

- Middle-class divorce rates (different than what the author references, which is not-getting-married rates) have only started to decline over the last decade or so. The link between middle-class families--where the author writes "Poor and working-class people follow suit"--is totally unsubstantiated by his sources.

- I've not read this book, but looking at a synopsis [0], it's unclear to me how you could take a book clearly about women (162 of them!) and walk away with the conclusion that the root problem is no one expects men to stick around. It feels to me like more of a character study of broken systems (again War on Drugs, income inequality, etc.)

- The paper referenced at the end [1] is junk? Contains a lot of self-cites and no original research? I can't dig into the secondary sources, but the amount of editorializing makes me skeptical of the foundations here. It also seems at odds with the rest of the post: if men will do whatever it takes for sex, it seems like they should be working hard to stay out of prison? Or to hold down a job? Is the argument that women should be more discerning?

I'll also say I keep seeing this weird line from conservative or conservative-ish posts about people on the left not speaking up for marriage. I'm super left and that's not my experience or anyone else's I know? I mean, we're very in favor of gay marriage, and everyone I know acknowledges the research is pretty unequivocal in favor of two-parent households, so I think there's some nuance missing from this conversation.

---

Broadly though, I do 100% agree our society is busted, and not just for systemic reasons (though those are big pieces). Many of us have lost a sense of community and place we once had. I don't know what about our culture has done this, but it's bad.

[0]: https://searchworks.stanford.edu/view/13738165

[1]: https://carlsonschool.umn.edu/sites/carlsonschool.umn.edu/fi...

Re: No one expects young men to do anything and they are responding by doing nothing

#376

Post by f38zf5vdt » Sun, Apr 24, 2022, 2:54 PM UTC

irrational wrote: post #326

lkey wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> Also, divorce sucks when kids are involved, I don't think anyone on earth, left or right, would dispute that. 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 a…

I was the opposite. My parents "stayed together" in that they lived in the same house but had separate bedrooms and lives. Most of the time when they were interacting it was some kind of power struggle. By age 13 my sibling became an addict and is to this day unable to sustain a job. I attribute it to the instability in the household growing up.

We're always going to see this through the lens of the experiences we grew up with.

Re: No one expects young men to do anything and they are responding by doing nothing

#377

Post by octopoc » Sun, Apr 24, 2022, 2:54 PM UTC

DebtDeflation wrote: post #276

lettergram wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> America so thoroughly that the head of the “conservative” party is a three-times-divorced man of little character. I think that’s an interesting point. The political window has shifted further and further left in recent years. The fact is he’s not the head of the conservative moment, he’s the head of the Republican Party. There are differing factions and he promised something most in the party could support. For ex…

>Finally, there was a decent support of policies for the working class. Please provide actual policy examples. I don't mean like when he put on a hard hat and pretended to dig coal with an imaginary shovel while on stage, I mean actual tangible policy proposals that would have improved the lives of working folks. Tariffs were very likely a net negative. Tax giveaways to build domestic factories almost never resulted…

Massively increasing the child tax credit.

Re: No one expects young men to do anything and they are responding by doing nothing

#378

Post by temp3444 » Sun, Apr 24, 2022, 2:54 PM UTC

Longlius wrote: post #315

rayiner wrote: post #3

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.”…

It's not merely expectations but intergenerational poverty. I get that you think that you came from a less privileged background than your in-laws and in some respects that's true, but even being able to immigrate to the US indicates a degree of social mobility that simply isn't available to the intergenerationally poor in rural America. These are people who grew up in places without anything to do, no training for h…

No post body was provided.

Re: No one expects young men to do anything and they are responding by doing nothing

#379

Post by DeWilde » Sun, Apr 24, 2022, 2:54 PM UTC

awillen wrote: post #359

s1artibartfast wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The funny part about expectations is they don't have to match reality to have an impact. If you raise a child telling them they have no opportunity, their chance of success is quite low.

That only works in one direction though. If opportunity doesn't exist, it doesn't matter if you set expectations that it does.

Still better to instill expectations even if opportunity currently does not exist. If it arises one day that person will do better.

Re: No one expects young men to do anything and they are responding by doing nothing

#380

Post by 127 » Sun, Apr 24, 2022, 2:55 PM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #3

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.”…

We have been riding four positive tidal waves in the west: (momentary) end of war, positive population pyramid, rapidly improving technology, extremely cheap resources.

Now that all of those trends are reversing or at least stagnating, we are in for a really rough landing, as our values and systems have eroded as a consequence of those easy times.