I looked up the author, Johann Kurtz. I'm not sure of Kurtz's background otherwise - any economics? Kurtz has a position at the C.S. Lewis Institute, which describes its mission, "we develop wholehearted disciples of Jesus Christ who articulate, defend, share, and live their faith in personal and public life." That website describes him thusly:
https://www.cslewisinstitute.org/?speaker=johann-kurtz
"Johann Kurtz is a legacy adviser and succession strategist, helping individuals and families to arrange their affairs towards lasting good. He is a Substack bestseller, and his blog Becoming Noble – on philosophy, theology, and history – is read by tens of thousands each week. He recently published a book titled Leaving a Legacy: Inheritance, Charity & Thousand-Year Families which reveals that true charity is a multi-generational project—and that virtuous family dynasties are its indispensable guardians. It equips leaders to embrace this sacred duty and forge a legacy they will be forever proud of."
Here is the substack, Becoming Noble:
https://becomingnoble.substack.com/
"Build family, resources, and security as the West declines. Get the weekly email to join the new elite." and "Our old ways have been forgotten. Subscribe to learn them again."
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I think the OP is to a significant degree an intellectual rationalization (and application) of some standard politics, stopping just short explicitly saying it:
> For example: an American family in 1975 could send their children to public school on the assumption that the vast majority of other children would belong to intact families, communities like their own, and would speak English as a first language.
I've read about family decline going back decades, maybe forever. I strongly doubt the first language of children affects other kids' educations - except maybe exposing other kids to new languages and perspectives. Kurtz includes no specific claim about and no basis for the state of these issues or their impacts. It's all just implied, a dog whistle: Who are these other people?
> My argument is that previous generations received an enormous stock of social capital: trusted neighbors, functional public schools, a productive courtship culture, predictable career arcs, and a public square in which children could roam and adults could be relied upon
In the latter, I think a lot of those things would be news to prior generations, and of course you can read people in any generation in history decrying current failure of morals (which I think means, it's not like the idealistic views I formed in my childhood).
And he even cites fictional, rose-colored nostalgia as evidence (quoting Scott Alexander):
> The childhood depicted in nostalgic media rested on a dense web of adults who knew each other, shared a rough moral sense, and could be relied upon to mind each other’s children. That web is now a feature of particular places (often expensive places) rather than a general inheritance, and discerning which places have kept it is of key importance for families hoping to raise agentic children with deep networks of trusted friends.
And there are things that rest on speculation:
> The socializing that happened in parks, neighborhoods, boy scouts, etc. now must happen in the private domain.
Why? I see plenty of kids in parks and neighborhoods, in all sorts of neighborhoods in cities. It also ignores where much childhood socialising takes place now: Online.
And he also seems to verge into incel territory, again without saying the quiet part out loud:
> Women now substantially outnumber men on university campuses and outpace them in degrees earned, yet the preference for husbands who match or exceed a wife’s income and education has not correspondingly relaxed. ... For a regular man, this implies that becoming marriageable now requires clearing exceptional bars: a degree (with the debt that comes attached) and an income well above the male median (also — 6ft, muscular physique, etc. etc.).
I read: those women ruining everything by getting educations and careers, and declining to do free menial labor for men!
> Move the at-home spouse into the labor market and every service she provided must be repurchased from the latest private equity roll-up (nursery, takeaway, cleaner, security system…).