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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

#901

Post by ALittleLight »

marcusverus wrote: post #861
the_solenoid wrote: post #410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree - and will take it one step further: he misses the root causes of "instability", and I bet it tracks directly with the gutting of the middle class starting in the 70's, and/or the same flat-lining of wages (not keeping up with inflation etc) despite huge increases in productivity in about the same time period. Money is a huge stressor in relationships. Misogyny is still a huge thing (to my utter surprise hone…

> I bet it tracks directly with the gutting of the middle class starting in the 70's This belief is oddly common, considering it has no basis in reality. The share of adults living in households with sub-middle-class incomes has only grown by 4% since 1971.[0] The share of adults living in upper-class households grew by more (5%)! And this even as the number of single-adult households has soared[1], reducing the aver…

The portion of double income households more than doubled between 1960 and today[1]. The middle class is working more because they want to, or because they need to? Purchasing power for the average worker is flat[2]. In some sense, it's like the middle class has been working for fifty years without a raise, only now two people in the household need to work. That fewer people are getting married or having kids is likely not because human nature shifted in the past few decades, but probably because their lives are not going well or developing properly.

1 - https://www.pewresearch.org/ft_dual-income-households-1960-2... 2 - https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/08/07/for-most-us...

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

#902

Post by hackerfromthefu »

DeathArrow wrote: post #310

I can't find a point in history where the extreme left produced anything else than doom. As someone who grew up in a poor Eastern European country, I felt both envy and admiration for the US. I thought the Americans had best of everything. US seemed like an ideal in many senses. 20 or 30 years later, I feel grateful we still have families, traditions, respect for ourselves and a way of life which can lead to moments…

Yeah I do wonder if the massively destabilizing influences of the left on the social structure of the west are fomented by psyops from adversarial countries.

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

#903

Post by hackerfromthefu »

mkl95 wrote: post #384
SnowHill9902 wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what’s your point?

> And a lot did use to be expected. There were social norms to work hard, provide, take care of loved ones, and so on. Today, these norms have largely dissolved. Young men have responded accordingly. I mostly agree, but I think there are more causes than what is implied by OP. My suspicion is that working hard is still a social norm, but the way wealth has been distributed over the previous decades no longer lets wor…

In Australia with a strong safety net for single parents its very adverse consequences, there's quite a lot of children with parents on welfare, then 'middle classes' are opting out or having less and later, while upper middle and above still having them though trend is above 30 even to early 40s for women.

If having children, and time, is a big reward in life many of those who work harder and getting a worse deal than those who didn't bother.

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

#904

Post by zozbot234 »

etchalon wrote: post #900
paradox242 wrote: post #701

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you grow poor or have friends from poor backgrounds? I saw lots of drug use, stealing, petty vandalism and violence, and little if any of it had to do with their trying to survive in a material sense. There are different norms around which behaviors grant status, and this is the primary driver behind this kind of behavior in my experience.

I grew up poor, but was lucky enough to go to a fairly 'rich' school district amongst fairly rich people (upper middle class more than "rich" I guess). You know what I saw in rich kids? Lots of drug use, stealing, petty vandalism and violence. I just rarely saw them suffer any consequences for it.

This just goes to prove that anti-social behavior is not a "consequence" of poverty, and that solid social norms are far more relevant. Rich kids can still live in a socially frayed, marginalizing environment.

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

#905

Post by hef19898 »

rayiner wrote: post #788
coldtea wrote: post #775

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

But a lot of those requirements are manufactured. Germany has an advanced industrial economy with half the percentage of college graduates we do (just 1/4). So why do we need to act like “cost of living” for everyone has to include saving hundreds of thousands of dollars for college? I agree the top 10% have poor insight into what life is like for everyone else, but that cuts both ways. I think there’s a real misperc…

University is free in Germany, and a lot of jobs that require a college degree elsewhere are fulfulled by 3 year appreticeships in Germany. So hard to compare.

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

#906

Post by hef19898 »

zozbot234 wrote: post #904
etchalon wrote: post #900

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I grew up poor, but was lucky enough to go to a fairly 'rich' school district amongst fairly rich people (upper middle class more than "rich" I guess). You know what I saw in rich kids? Lots of drug use, stealing, petty vandalism and violence. I just rarely saw them suffer any consequences for it.

This just goes to prove that anti-social behavior is not a "consequence" of poverty, and that solid social norms are far more relevant. Rich kids can still live in a socially frayed, marginalizing environment.

If you are you get away, or even ahead, with anti-social behavor. If you are poor you go to jail.

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

#907

Post by sofixa »

rayiner wrote: post #756
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.

Virtually everyone in the world aside from a handful of declining European countries believes that “stable home environment” = “married parents.”

Declining how? Besides natural population growth, I can't think of any other relevant decline European countries are experiencing. And even if they were experiencing a general decline, that doesn't mean there's correlation with the percent of married couples vs non-married ones. Marriage or civil union doesn't change the stability of the couple ( besides the fact that the former usually implies a party with a lot of people which could be expensive).

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

#908

Post by shapefrog »

AvocadoPanic wrote: post #330
toomuchtodo wrote: post #226

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.

> They often seem a bit too into being childfree to me, I probably wouldn't like their shitty kids anyway.

You seem a bit too into being childfull, I probably wouldn't like your shitty kids anyway.

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

#909

Post by DeathArrow »

bilbo0s wrote: post #82
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 hate to be "that guy", but you guys have this whole thing backwards. What men do is based on what men want. What men want is sex. If sex is free then you can have all the liberal or conservative values you want, but it won't cause those men to work harder. Why? Because sex is free. Full stop. If sex costs more than most men will ever have, then you can have all the liberal or conservative values you want, most men…

>What men do is based on what men want. What men want is sex.

Both men and women want sex. And they want sex because Nature taught them so, as sex is vital for perpetuating the species.

Both men and women want food, shelter, financial stability and to feel good.

Both men and women were taught by their natural instincts and by the thousands of years of evolution of the society that they have to care for their offspring for the human kind to evolve and for their genes to spread.

What has the violent sliding of the society to the left has taught both men and women is to be hedonistic, selfish to not care about the others and to only search for instant gratification.

So both men and women were fooled by this poisonous ideology but while biology has made men more independent, they made the children more dependent of their moms than their dads, so once a woman has a child, it is harder for her to walk off.

Otherwise, women have a very low interest to get married, keep their marriage and have children. So they have a very similar attitude to men.

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

#910

Post by raxxorraxor »

convolvatron wrote: post #724
philosopher1234 wrote: post #698

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe you could share this evidence instead of sharing an anonymous assertion

i can certainly think of cases where the children and one parent are really much better off without the second

I had an unstable family and a lot of patchwork in my youth. Won't recommend it. It doesn't have to be negative, but it often comes with compromises. And children aren't stupid, they can leverage the conflict of their parents, but it isn't necessarily for their best in the long run.

I heavily dislike the illusionary idealism from some for something that can be quite a lot of work. The state of marriage is pretty much not relevant though. At least in my opinion.

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