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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

#801

Post by skrbjc »

rayiner wrote: post #709
giantg2 wrote: post #203

Wow, lots of controversial things in here. "You put a guy in chaotic and impoverished circumstances. And then you decide not to expect anything out of him. How can anyone possibly believe this will lead to anything other than disaster?" I think the author has neglected a hugely important factor in this. Sure, what others expect of you can influence you greatly. But what one expects for themselves is a huge factor too…

What are real wages like in lower middle class America compared to Asian or African countries that have a fraction of the rate of kids being raised without both parents?

Africa is seeing increasing rates of single motherhood. According to this study: http://paa2019.populationassociation.org/uploads/191108 All Africa single motherhood is 22%, with Eastern Africa at 37%.

They had this to say about marriage in traditional African cultures: “ Marriage in the traditional African society was described by Evans Pritchard (1965) as a “given”, there was no such thing as unmarried adult woman or one who was childless by choice; ... and women could not choose a career instead of marriage” (Gage and Bledsoe 1994). Most African societies had sanctions for childbearing outside marriage, in some East African communities, it was punishable by death, in other places in Africa it was abortion or infanticide (Gage and Bledsoe 1994). There was no place for permanent singlehood except for religious celibates.”

On the increasing rates of single motherhood: “ The rising levels of single motherhood in the region is occasioned in part by adaptation to changes brought about by education, mobility associated with employment, gendered migration, poverty, shortage of marriageable men, increased death rate due to HIV/AIDS pandemic, decline in early and arranged marriage and polygyny (Gage and Bledsoe 1994; Isiugo-Abanihe 2000; Gustafsson and Worku 2006; Smith 2007; Moyo and Kawewe 2009).”

My guess is the reason we see lower rates of single motherhood in very poor countries is less to do with the fact they are poor and more likely to be because they are closer to their traditional cultural norms that strongly push for marriage and child rearing. It seems as countries get greater access to education and industrialization, as they modernize, they start to see these societal issues like single parent households and the negative consequences that result from that. Kinda like how as societies get greater access to more food they move from starving to getting obese and those associated medical issues.

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

#802

Post by pyuser583 »

jcstk wrote: post #397
simulate-me wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can’t you invalidate all social commentary with this argument? Surely there are trends in society that can be remarked on generally.

The author provided data and graphs to highlight the problems in America he believes are being caused by a root problem of society having low expectations for men. He doesn't provide any data to reflect what society's expectations are. Those are just his thoughts. That's a big distinction.

The author provides no direct data, but cited a large number of peer reviewed articles and books. For example:

In a fascinating 2012 paper titled Sexual Economics, Culture, Men, and Modern Sexual Trends, the psychologists Roy Baumeister and Kathleen Vohs wrote:

“Although this may be considered an unflattering characterization…we have found no evidence to contradict the 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.’) If in order to obtain sex men must become pillars of the community, or lie, or amass riches by fair means or foul, or be romantic or funny, then many men will do precisely that.”

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

#803

Post by danans »

jacobolus wrote: post #764
danans wrote: post #744

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And how do you explain high levels of family stability in countries that are much poorer? Less individual freedom, greater direct economic dependency on others in your group, and also the threat of ostracization, excommunication, and destitution if you go against its rules. Basically, there are extremely high cost/stakes associated with going it on your own. But on the other side there are also good things that com…

In some places people have centuries of social-structure adaptation to deal with the stress of being systematically oppressed (by local elites, colonial overlords, ...). E.g. money gets shielded by community institutions (such as local religious organizations) that are harder for elites to steal from than individual peasants, and then those act as a kind of social safety net in hard times. Extended families/clans bui…

I think we agree that many pro-social structures exist in poor and socially rigid societies.

However these come at the expense of many liberties (i.e. religious) that are held as important in the more developed world. It's not clear that loss of such personal liberties would be an improvement in developed societies, even if it reduced the nominal divorce rate.

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

#804

Post by danaris »

dash2 wrote: post #672
3np wrote: post #535

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing that really stuck out to me was the implicit assumption that "stable home environment" requires or is equal to "married couple of biological parents living together until child becomes adult". Especially the quote where an agreement that stability is important was interpreted as agreement that marriage is important.

The evidence is that married couples are more stable than unmarried couples.

Why are the only options "married couple" or "unmarried couple"? Or even "married couple" or "single parent"?

Why can't broader family structures be considered, and be stable?

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

#806

Post by skrbjc »

solveit wrote: post #727
OminousWeapons wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A counter is that other countries (Japan, Korea, Italy, ...) that enforce traditional values have had a collapse in the birth rate. Yes, but the value systems (at least in Asia) are quite different than even conservative ones in the US so I don't think that's a fair comparison. In Asia there is an expectation that relationships will lead to marriage, that you will marry well before thirty, that women will exit the…

> In Asia there is an expectation that relationships will lead to marriage, that you will marry well before thirty, that women will exit the workforce following marriage I don't know about the rest of Asia, but the parts that were explicitly named (Japan, Korea) absolutely do not have this expectation.

I lived in Korea with my wife and while we were looking for work, she was told in several interviews that they didn’t want to hire her because she was married and they assumed she would have a child and stop working.

I don’t know where you are getting the idea that that isn’t the norm in those countries.

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

#807

Post by AvocadoPanic »

Nimitz14 wrote: post #791
igetspam wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having come from a large family, I never realized that people didn't understand just how much work kids are. It's relentless. My wife is regularly astonished. I'm lucky to have been able to stop at one. I would have preferred married but childless but I'll take married to her over any other option, so I compromised. At with just one, we aren't spread so thin.

Older kids can help raising the others, I think having just one is where you do the maximum amount of work, also because with the later ones you are more experienced.

You also miss the economies to be had with reuse. Much happier buying many things knowing all four are going to get use.

Everyone gets there own new underwear.

Also after the collapse of civilization, the labor of the children will be especially helpful. :)

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

#808

Post by itronitron »

newbamboo wrote: post #734
itronitron wrote: post #629

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since it seems like you have a pretty good sample size, I am curious whether you have noticed a difference or pattern in upbringing among the current and/or former wives of your childhood friends.

Sure. Children of divorced parents are more likely to opt for divorce themselves, based on my sample. That is consistent with everything we know and expect about humans. Whether and how these apparently heritable differences are due to nature vs nurture is to me the more interesting question. Many in the lower class have imperfections that seem plausibly linked to biology rather than culture, like fundamental biologi…

I tend to think any imperfections are a result of negative socio-cultural (parenting) impacts, although that can of course be driven by one whack-a-doodle relative (biology as the pebble and socio-cultural as the ripples.)

In my experience families that are dirt-poor but land-rich tend to have successful offspring. Maybe that sense of place contributes to the needed stability for children to do well as adults.

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

#809

Post by qeternity »

coldtea wrote: post #775
rayiner wrote: post #751

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Income after taxes and transfer payments has grown for everyone since 1970: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:1970-_Relative_incom... You can make a fair argument that the bottom 50% haven’t gotten their share of productivity growth, but that doesn’t explain why social indicators among the bottom quantile have gotten so much worse.

> Income after taxes and transfer payments has grown for everyone since 1970 And education, housing, and health costs has sky-rocketed, number of "essential services" to pay for (mobile phone, internet, severan "rentier" subscriptions) has increased, while job stability and availability for working and middle class has plummeted... But yes, the top 10%, the types to usually post at HN, never had it better.

> while job stability and availability for working and middle class has plummeted...

What?! The labor market has been so strong over the past decade that economists started to wonder if previous paradigms no longer apply (i.e. Phillips curve).

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

#810

Post by ThrowawayR2 »

tyronehed wrote: post #62

What an amazing article, and bravo to the researchers for this amazing analysis. Now, I will get onto my down voting. I have watched generations of men devote himself to video games. They develop amazing skills in these artificial worlds. At the same time, I was reading tons of books, writing a few of my own and generally avoiding TV and video game. Of course, I was the freak. But I cannot wonder if that life in the…

> "I was reading tons of books, writing a few of my own..."

How is this not the a different flavor of the same "fantasy land"? Even if the majority were non-fiction, there's a difference between acquiring skills and acquiring trivia [1]; pop non-fiction is not all that deep.

[1] And I say this as a person whose book collection is measured in tons.

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