441–450 of 1001 posts
The article cites an anecdote about a young father who sat around the house arguing, fighting and drinking. He ends up getting kicked out of the house. The 1960s version of this story instead ends with the husband beating his wife behind closed doors without repercussions. Which is preferable?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
I don't know about "undermin[ing] the norm" but I see this kind of hypocrisy in my own family. They shout about all life being precious and abortion being murder and also how single mother's need to get harder and how they shouldn't have to pay more taxes to help lazy poor people. Both positions have one thing in common: they negatively impact non-whites and the poor more. They can't self reflect and see it, unfortun…
If you're not in the top 5% - I'm not sure this an insane world view.
If you just want to have an average job and not a career in the right field or run a business - life seems less like a positive sum game and more like a zero sum game.
It's easy for us at the top to talk about "making a bigger pie" when we get 90% of the bigger pie.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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 It's six of one, half a dozen of another. As the Chinese philosopher Confucious was already well aware of, a tight-knit family is the foundation of all other social structures. > Finally, historically speaking,…
> a tight-knit family is the foundation of all other social structures. But you're missing an important part there: the "tight-knit" part doesn't just mean "stays together no matter what". It means "genuinely care about each other and work well together." Yes, a close, loving, supportive family is hugely important, for everyone in it. But a) the nuclear family you're almost certainly thinking about (a married couple…
Telling people that it doesn't matter if they divorce and that they should put their own short-term happiness first and foremost is tantamount to denying this. And when it's the liberal upper class doing this, they're pretty much pulling up the ladder to effective social cohesion behind themselves, even as they hypocritically enjoy its benefits while denouncing the horrific plight of those most socially marginalized. The fact that some people in terrible relationships are genuinely better off if they split apart doesn't mean that celebrating divorce as anything other than potentially a lesser evil is a sensible idea.
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 am supposed to believe that a "sociology professor at Princeton, and Kefalas, a sociology professor at St. Joseph’s University" can somehow convince me that he knows what a "low-income woman" thinks or does in her life. I've lived around "low-income women" my whole life and I haven't figured it out.
"The conventional view is that a lack of money leads to out-of-wedlock births."
Whose conventional view? This is not the view of poor people.
"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.", the book this came from was written by a conservative scientist from Iowa. I tried to check some of the stats and every one of them seem to be wrong.
This link outright proves there are not 10 million men unemployed in America. https://www.statista.com/statistics/193244/unemployment-leve... So who's statistics are right?
This is a horrible article that seems to do nothing by try and place blame rather than provide a solution to a problem that does not exist. I will go as far as to say this article is quite racist. The article says "American" men but then only targets white American men in their statistics. Which is it, American men or white American men?
He says at the beginning of the article he was one of America's "lost boys" which already tells me he has no idea what it means to actually be lost or poor. His other blog posts reveal his religious rhetoric. Remember when Cambridge produced leaders and not followers?
This is a poorly written article based on personal views and statistics that don't even target the proper demographics of the content of the article. Unbelievable.
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…
My mother sat my 2 sibs and I down before and asked for our thoughts/feelings, and we all said "Do it" without hesitation or doubt. In my case, we were all clearly worse off materially after. I think we kids were a little better off mentally and emotionally, but a large component of that is that my mother would have continued attempting suicide otherwise, and it's possible she might have succeeded.
It's useless to speculate about whether they could have stayed together if they'd had the capacity to put others above themselves, because they didn't have it, and no amount of counseling could have endowed them with it.
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…
But this is the kind of thing that directly and immediately helps the middle / working class. Reducing their tax burden puts money back in their pocket.
[1] https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/news/politics/elections/20...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is sunday morning. I'm at work (military). Part of that job is checking in with people at a half-dozen other locations who are also at work on a sunday morning. they just happen to all be hetero guys, which is not unusual in the military no matter the day. So I asked in our chat whether they had wives/girlfriends at home today. "No." "Nope." "My car is my GF" and "Rocking a peppi shirt under my uniform". These are…
Do they play video games?
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.”…
Yay the patriarchy! :)
Any sort of "staying with the mother of their kids" argument has to acknowledge we can't just turn the clock back. The truth then and now is that a lot of men were not and are not good partners. (Anybody who doubts me should spend time reading Am I the Asshole. Not only are bad male parental partners rife, but they are often bad in ways that echo patriarchal beliefs that would have been perfectly acceptable back in the day.) Just as an example, marital rape was not outlawed in all 50 states until 1993, and it was legal everywhere until 1972.
Young men do need plenty more education and pressure on how to do it right. But we must acknowledge it's a new kind of right. And I think we need new kinds of measures. "Family stability" in an unhappy or unsafe home is not something we should be aiming for.
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…
I can’t be the only one who grew up seeing how little is expected of affluent men.
The ideal is someone “brilliant” who gets others to do what’s expected of him. And then you can afford to be divorced and retain respect.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Sure r/childfree has lots of this sort. They often seem a bit too into being childfree to me, I probably wouldn't like their shitty kids anyway. 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.