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

robkhenderson.substack.com

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

#461

Post by tootie »

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 also complete hearsay. Idk why these random opinion blogs are getting so much traction on HN. Actual science exists.

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

#462

Post by AlexandrB »

> A common answer from the chattering class is money. The conventional view is that a lack of money leads to out-of-wedlock births.

> But broken homes are a fairly recent phenomenon.

I don't get why the author dismisses income, and especially income inequality, so quickly. Since the 1960s the income gap between the affluent and the working class has grown a lot. The quality of "working class" jobs has also declined. Where in 1960, "working class" meant you could afford a house, a car, healthcare, and often had a pension provided by your employer. A 2022 working class job looks more like Amazon warehouse work where you can be fired at any time for failing to meet some algorithmic quota.

It's no wonder then that respect plays a role:

> Money usually becomes an issue because he seems unwilling to keep at a job for any length of time, usually because of issues related to respect. Some of the jobs he can get don’t pay enough to give him the self-respect he feels he needs, and others require him to get along with unpleasant customers and coworkers, and to maintain a submissive attitude toward the boss.

Perhaps the real failing of the upper class is creating jobs that treat the working class like disposable cogs, liable to be discarded at will. And yet the author subtly shifts the blame for onto the working class for not putting up with it.

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

#463

Post by dudul »

mola wrote: post #390
photochemsyn wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So much of the elite wealthy class and their media sock puppets on both sides of the traditional left/right political divide are dedicated to pushing the identitarian culture war theme - because what they don't want to deal with is something like this: "Creating an economy where men can attain dignity and social respect."

This! Most of the flaming identity cultural wars are basically a distraction. The problem as always is class, and elites vieing for control. Yes progressive values are a thing, but its media representation is nuts, on purpose. The it's us vs them narrative leads to subjucating all values to pure "survival". This promotes long term irrationality. The powers at be know this and capitalize it. On both "sides". In my bia…

Why do you think it's more common with conservatives?

You said it yourself, cultural wars are just distraction to keep the elite in power and talk about everything except classes. People in power don't care about conservatives or liberals, they just pick a team and play the game.

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

#464

Post by crmd »

refurb wrote: post #266
kevinventullo wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do they? I can see the third bullet in practice, although I think it’s more of a fix than a cause for single-parent homes. On the other hand, my social circle is highly educated and well-off and I’m not sure I know a single person who would agree with the first bullet. The second point I’m less clear on myself: is there evidence that children of lesbian couples are somehow worse off?

For point #2, we can follow the idea to its logical conclusion. (Note: I have zero issues with gay parents, this is just a thought exercise) If it stands to reason that if the children of lesbian parents are indistinguishable from those of mixed-sex parents, then men play no particular role in the upbringing of children, no? They can be swapped out by a woman with no change for the child. And conversely if a child ra…

Children raised in a non-dysfunctional two parent household (regardless of parental gender / sexual orientation) witness healthy interdependence, cooperation, negotiation, trust, respect, conflict resolution, love etc. between their primary caregivers during their critical development period. Raising a child with a good partner is about more than resource availability.

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

#466

Post by tootie »

> Norms were loosened around being an absentee father. So more men took the option.

> But nobody wants to admit it because it upsets people.

This is the main thesis of the post sandwiched by loads of data and charts yet completely unsourced and devoid of evidence. Maybe true, maybe not. This is basically a well-reasoned hypothesis but there's no reason to believe it's true.

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

#467

Post by AviationAtom »

deebosong wrote: post #194
AviationAtom wrote: post #79

I teach many folks that have just left high school, and entered the military. Their being content with doing pretty much nothing shocks me. Seeing the military enabling the behavior, even more so. All because recruiting is so hard right now. Many of the recruits do join the military because they have exhausted other options. It's sad to see how productive society once was, versus where we are now. It legitimately mak…

I'm not that young, but not old enough to have witnessed generational patterns of young men shifting as a cultural phenom. That being said, what do you feel is the cause of a drain in motivation on the endemic level? For some reason my gut reaction is to think that it's the outsourcing of jobs to other countries, and wages stagnating while prices go up. And then couple that with social media, of the life we're all to…

I can't definitively say, but I think the Internet and gaming culture has changed much, and it seems to be the only thing some of the people I am educating seem to really care for, or get excited about.

It used to be that you had a limited set of people controlling the messaging that went into your mind, often limiting negative messages for the majority of people. The Internet has made it far too easy to stumble upon, or seek out, negative messaging. I could definitely see where if you have been conditioned to feel that you don't need to try, or shouldn't even try, then you will believe a life without accomplishment is acceptable and sustainable.

They used to say that the apple doesn't fall far from the tree, but now that tree is a forest. If you are a parent, a mentor, or similar, you are competing for airtime with billions of other voices on the Internet. You really have to make sure your voice stands out amongst the rest. I try to offer that in my classroom, but I only get them for a short period, then they're onward to their next training in the pipeline.

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

#468

Post by hotpotamus »

AbrahamParangi wrote: post #161
gumby wrote: post #19

It’s interesting to read these (plausible, far from absurd) analyses from the Anglosphere when we have an alternative to compare, to whit the northern European democracies where marriage is in steep decline across all social classes yet the societies are more successful (at least if your metrics are things like poverty rates, lifetimes, nutrition, stress, etc).

I think missing from this comparison is that while the US is quite different from Finland, New Hampshire when taken on its own is quite similar. But we never ask, “how could we make the whole US like New Hampshire?” and probably for good reason! I don’t think we’d want the whole US to be that way. The US is big and diverse and that’s a good thing.

I like the diversity of accents and cuisine, but the difference in maternal mortality not so much.

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

#469

Post by fundad »

pydry wrote: post #42
poszlem wrote: post #17

Rob Henderson also coined the term "luxury beliefs" which is one of the most apt name for something we've been witnessing lately ("defund the police" or "healthy at every size" or "marriage is just an oppressive institution of the patriarchy"). I highly recommend that other essay too https://nypost.com/2019/08/17/luxury-beliefs-are-the-latest-...

Defund the police blew up because certain communities' only experience of police is of being harassed, beaten and robbed. It's hardly an attitude that's dripping with privilege. The backlash, on the other hand...

Agreed, Like any social program there is a constituency that supports policing. They experience far less violence and use the service an outsized amount.

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

#470

Post by playpause »

franciscop wrote: post #5

This has been a really good read! Thanks for sharing, the only place where I had a strong disagreement was this, which could definitely be based on cultural differences: > The people with the most money and education—the class most responsible for shaping culture and customs—ensure that their children are raised in stable homes. But actively undermine the norm for everyone else. I am not from the USA but I don't beli…

My feeling is that the 'undermining' the author refers to is not a conscious attempt to keep the lower classes down. It's just middle/upper class people spouting fashionable political views, going along with the 'right message', and not really thinking about it. When it comes to their own personal behavioural decisions that will affect their kids, they take it more seriously, basing their decisions on their deep-down sense of 'how things really are', and then they come up with some kind of rationalisation of how this conservative behaviour actually fits in with their anti-conservative political views. This rationalising process has become second nature and they don't notice they are doing it at all.
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