Are Families Really Important?

[Robert F. Smith]

Maria Kouloglou, “The New Inequality: The Decline of the Working Class Family,” Quillette, June 13, 2019, online at https://quillette.com/2019/06/13/the-new-inequality-the-decline-of-the-working-class-family/ ,

Quote

The family has been called “the cornerstone of society” and for good reason. According to studies, children born to married parents are more likely to go to university and less likely to receive government benefits. Children raised in fatherless homes, however, appear more likely to face worse outcomes when it comes to well-being, education and mental health. Married people also appear to be healthier and happier.

According to a report, before the 1970s there were no large class divides in American family life. Most people got married and stayed married and the children were raised in two-parent families. This trend eventually changed, with poorer and less educated people becoming less likely to get married and stay married. The decline of marriage is also correlated with the rise of single-mother households. A similar decline of the working class family appears to exist in the UK, with men from poor backgrounds being significantly more likely to be single in their forties than richer men.

Does this bode well for the future?

[JAHS]

"Further, we warn that the disintegration of the family will bring upon individuals, communities, and
nations the calamities foretold by ancient and modern prophets"  (The Family Proclamation)

So no, it doesn't bode well. 

[The Nehor]

There are several problems. We have made it so that most families cannot survive on one income unless one of the two in the marriage is a wealthy worker. We have vastly increased the incentives and in many cases requirement for women to work and increased the labor force which naturally drives down wages. The economic and social incentives to have children are disappearing. We have stripped away the dignity of labor by magnifying the social and economic scorn on those with menial jobs so that they are ostracized to poverty. The man who cannot provide (and only the educated, smart, lucky, gifted, or clever will be able to pull it off) are of course shunned or shamed out of marriage. The rising costs of education place vast mortgages on their futures but a degree is becoming more and more worthless as their ubiquity lowers their value. Add in the porn pandemic and guys are left with little to feed their soul and sense of worth. Women face similar problems as men who cannot help them leave them to try to parent alone or they grow so frustrated they flee the marriage to seek something better.

We are also facing a looming crisis. Soon the growing automation of labor and information processing will start to cull jobs from the workplace en masse as unnecessary. We will need to face some economic realities. If jobs vanish then people will find themselves unable to buy goods which hits those that create them. Grapes of Wrath style depression may force wages lower then what people need to survive and then people labor for a pittance. This leads to unrest or revolution. We also need to rebuild the dignity of employment so that those who labor honestly can feel like they are a part of a secure society and are not endlessly on the verge of financial ruin.

I am not sure what the answer but something has got to give.

[Storm Rider]

Social activists have all inferred the family is of little value; the individual and their wants, desires, and sexual appetites are of vital, supreme importance to society. How many times have you heard, "It does not matter that new definitions of family or marriage; there is no harm to you and your chosen type of marriage?"  It has been repeated countless times and each time it has been said the public's concept of what creates and perpetuates a strong society has become more more difficult to hold onto. 

What we have today is a complete disregard of the family unit - mother, father and children. In its place, social activists of all stripes pipe the refrain of how much better we are because all may "choose" what is best for the individual. The problem is that what is best for the individual, when it is focused strictly on carnal passions or gross disillusionment, leads to social destruction. 

This has been pedaled since the free love concept of the sixties and there have been a number of permutations since. When divorce has been made easy, when the unborn are cast off because they are just too inconvenient, and marriage definitions have become meaningless, society weakens and begins to fail. 

How important is the family? Without it, societies fail.  

[Maidservant]

14 hours ago, Robert F. Smith said:

Maria Kouloglou, “The New Inequality: The Decline of the Working Class Family,” Quillette, June 13, 2019, online at https://quillette.com/2019/06/13/the-new-inequality-the-decline-of-the-working-class-family/ ,

Does this bode well for the future?

I think the issue of family is so much more complicated than the binary--yes, we have a family and lots of wonderful things happen; and no, we do not have a family and lots of horrible things happen. 

Not to mention--that a world of families--which those who wish to 'hark back to better days' say was the case--is the world that gave rise to the issues we have including less homogeneous families.  So what gives?  If a world of two-parent (ish) families was so wonderful, how did we arrive at this moment then that we say is worse?  

Not that I am, again, saying I am against two-parent (ish) families--that, again, would have me playing the binary game.  But perhaps we should ask how living in two parent families with strict roles and and and and and++ did NOT prepare us to well create and well weather the present (if that's what we wish to say about it).

Even the article speaks of university, government benefits, 'working class' as something inherent in the organization of human beings and as if inherent values of family can be drawn from these puzzle pieces.  And @The NehorNehor describes well some aspects of the organizational, institutional, and economic moment we are in historically.  But are these inherent or invented?  And do we need to do some serious re-inventing, including family structures, maybe or maybe not, but to understand the ESSENCE that a structure is meant to give and allow that ESSENCE permeate any structure we might next invent?  Maybe we need to have our social and economic structures revamped before we can know what the family ought to be.  Not to mention that everyone everywhere ought to always be family to each other.

I've said this before and I'll say it again.  Historically, "marriage" has been a horrible deal NOT a good one.  The union of man and woman is almost NOWHERE to be found in history except as an accident or anomaly.  What we have is the buying and selling of women from fathers to husbands (and other worse situations, that's the best scenario).  A WEDDING is not a MARRIAGE, but is a contract for sale and has traditionally involved a lack of agency for women (or both genders as children married who their parents told them to).  I don't know how ANY good can come of this, and it has been less than a hundred years since we have seriously punctured this after thousands of years of it, so it might be a little messy still until we reground!

The question is how men and women ought to relate to one another; and how ought children to be welcomed and raised (to what? in what?).  I don't think we've seen what the real way to do that is, yet on this planet.

 

10 hours ago, The Nehor said:

 The man who cannot provide (and only the educated, smart, lucky, gifted, or clever will be able to pull it off) are of course shunned or shamed out of marriage.

This is the case in some cultures where there is a lost generation of young men who cannot 'buy' their wives.  In the United States, I don't think women think that her husband is going to or needs to provide for her.   (Maybe Mormon ladies.)  What some men lack that women no longer tolerate is an emotional absence and authoritarianism.  Women also are not emotionally mature, either, in their own way.  No one is . . . no one is mature.  In the past, maturity wasn't necessary for marriage.  It was simply the social unit, as has been said.  Nobody has to be happy in the marriage.  Today, still very few know how to be happy in a marriage, but maybe it is at least partly because they were raised by two-parent households who stayed miserably or at least absently married.

6 hours ago, Storm Rider said:

 the individual and their wants, desires, and sexual appetites are of vital, supreme importance

I do agree that this is not the best approach.  People ask, "How do I feel?" instead of better questions like "What is the purpose?"  But, again, it's complicated.  Feeling IS important.  Purpose IS important.  Structure IS important.  Essence IS important.  Heritage IS important.  Brand new things ARE important.  The questions and the answers need to be more complicated, subtle, piercing, challenging, and based on new territory not the thousands of years of past territory which is broken, because it is basically hell and the telestial world.

Quote

 This has been pedaled since the free love concept of the sixties and there have been a number of permutations since.

Ah.  Before then . . . the roaring twenties . . . the gay nineties . . . . ancient Egypt . . . the more things change, the more they stay the same . . . .

Quote

 societies fail.  

Our society needs to fail.  We haven't had a good one yet.  Our societies for thousands of years have been based on bloodshed, oppression, things in the dark, and ignorance.  The society we have is NOT worth preserving.  There may be gentler ways to go into the future. I'd like to think so. I don't know if we need to implode.  But even a forest fire makes the conditions possible for the seedlings.  I hope we will see life, freedom, light, and knowledge as the foundation of our continuously emerging, and occasionally disrupting, society.  But in my opinion we need to ask better questions and expect better answers.

Not to mention that two-parent nuclear families are NOT how families were traditionally organized--that is also a recent come about, probably due to the pressures of the industrial age and mass immigration to a new world; and, again, I think there is a problem in that as to possibly lack of support and similar issues that could be solved with other kinds of family structures.

Edited June 16, 2019 by Maidservant

[MustardSeed]

A sense of belonging is very important. Families can provide that.  Often, they don’t. 

Safety, the most basic of needs, is too elusive.  Never mind all the higher levels of need that we expect the family to provide. 

I don’t think working women itself creates decay.  I think lack of organization, lack of intentional parenting, lack of involvement etc is a problem.  

My opinion is that happy well balanced couples create emotional security in a home.  Not enough of that out there . 

[Calm]

6 hours ago, Maidservant said:

Not to mention that two-parent nuclear families are NOT how families were traditionally organized--that is also a recent come about, probably due to the pressures of the industrial age and mass immigration to a new world; and, again, I think there is a problem in that as to possibly lack of support and similar issues that could be solved with other kinds of family structures.

Extended family living with each other provides a great safety net at all ages.  It is a shame that in our culture it is seen as evidence of lack of independence or accountability, as if family is more of an impediment to freedom than having to handle responsibilities all on one's own.

[Maidservant]

1 hour ago, Calm said:

Extended family living with each other provides a great safety net at all ages.  It is a shame that in our culture it is seen as evidence of lack of independence or accountability, as if family is more of an impediment to freedom than having to handle responsibilities all on one's own.

Yes.

To continue on the theme of what I was trying to say of 'essence' vs 'structure', I think it's good to start from scratch, at least in our thinking.  What is family?  Is it support?  Is it love?  What do those look like?  What does sex have to do with it (if anything at all, how much should it have to do with it)?  Is it about children?  Is it not?  Do we want to teach our children to meet the expectations of the past?  Or how do we prepare them for a changing future?  Does number and gender in a family matter?  How much?  Does the number of persons a person has sex with (assuming that person is mature and has integrity in the matter) really destroy them?  Do families have to live in the same house?  Do human beings have to live in houses at all?  Do we really need to go to school to learn what we need to learn?  Do we really need to have 8-5 to bring in income?  Should we all go back to being farmers?  How much time do family members need to spend together?  What is the union of a man and woman (or woman-woman) (man-man) really supposed to be about?  Is it about who does the dishes?  Or is there a much deeper calling here?  What do children need to see modeled and from how many models?  Is one okay?  Is more than two better?  Is 18 years old really the age of emancipation?  Should it be earlier?  Later?  Why is emancipation even a thing?

I could go on.  But I'm saying, we are at a period of history where we need to re-ask ALL the questions and assume nothing.

[Glenn101]

15 hours ago, The Nehor said:

There are several problems. We have made it so that most families cannot survive on one income unless one of the two in the marriage is a wealthy worker.

I disagree, partially, with that assessment. A good education can still enable a single earner family to do well. That education does not have to be college level. There are a lot of skilled trades jobs that can be obtained with training obtained through military service, trade schools, and community colleges. Training also has to be in areas where there is a job market.

Families where neither partner has education or other training in fields with where workers are needed face the obstacles that you are talking about, as well as families that live in areas with a high cost of living.

A lot depends also depends upon where a person chooses to live or has the ability to choose to live. In places like California even a high paying job is often not enough because of the high cost of housing. A lot of people there and in other areas of the country, especially the elderly living on fixed incomes, where the cost of living is exceptionally high have been priced out of the housing market and either wind up homeless or having to move to other less costly areas.

I do not know if the genesis of this trend towards two earner families stemmed from a desire to obtain and maintain a desired lifestyle or whether it was because inflation pushed the cost of living in some areas  made it necessary for both partners to work. It is a variation on the chicken and egg situation. I personally know a lot of people where a limited education necessitated that situation, and I know a lot of people where it was a lifestyle choice.

And, to get back onto the focus of the thread, doing everything we can to encourage and strengthen the family unit and to provide educational opportunities for people lacking job skills etc. would go a long way in helping families rise out of and stay out of poverty. Strong families are still the most important unit in the world.

Glenn

[strappinglad]

There definitely been a huge increase in expectations for lifestyle in the last 50 years. Families of 8 used to live in 1000 square ft , now families of 3 need 3000 sqft/  and all the goodies our society offers:  TVs, phones, computers , 3 cars etc. It comes with a price , literally and figuratively. 

 

[Robert F. Smith]

19 hours ago, The Nehor said:

There are several problems. We have made it so that most families cannot survive on one income unless one of the two in the marriage is a wealthy worker. We have vastly increased the incentives and in many cases requirement for women to work and increased the labor force which naturally drives down wages. The economic and social incentives to have children are disappearing. We have stripped away the dignity of labor by magnifying the social and economic scorn on those with menial jobs so that they are ostracized to poverty. The man who cannot provide (and only the educated, smart, lucky, gifted, or clever will be able to pull it off) are of course shunned or shamed out of marriage. The rising costs of education place vast mortgages on their futures but a degree is becoming more and more worthless as their ubiquity lowers their value. Add in the porn pandemic and guys are left with little to feed their soul and sense of worth. Women face similar problems as men who cannot help them leave them to try to parent alone or they grow so frustrated they flee the marriage to seek something better.

We are also facing a looming crisis. Soon the growing automation of labor and information processing will start to cull jobs from the workplace en masse as unnecessary. We will need to face some economic realities. If jobs vanish then people will find themselves unable to buy goods which hits those that create them. Grapes of Wrath style depression may force wages lower then what people need to survive and then people labor for a pittance. This leads to unrest or revolution. We also need to rebuild the dignity of employment so that those who labor honestly can feel like they are a part of a secure society and are not endlessly on the verge of financial ruin..........................

Excellent summary of the socio-political reality in America, Nehor..  In other words, our American system makes it likely that families will fail.  If our lodestar is the family, and if the Proclamation on the Family is a broad description on the value of that lodestar, what must be done? What specific measures could the Brethren take to advance the real value of the family?  What influence could they bring to bear on the body politic?  Are there laws and rules which destroy families -- such as the rule that welfare mothers must not have a man in the house if they want to be eligible for welfare?  The rule that there must be zero income to be eligible for help?  Do we have marriage penalties in our taxes, housing, etc.?  Do we actively devalue marriage and the family?  Do we provide real opportunity to the poor to get good vocational training (just now in Utah, Facebook is having a very hard time finding qualified, skilled workers on its massive, multi-year project at Eagle Mountain, even though they are paying top dollar)?

[The Nehor]

3 hours ago, strappinglad said:

There definitely been a huge increase in expectations for lifestyle in the last 50 years. Families of 8 used to live in 1000 square ft , now families of 3 need 3000 sqft/  and all the goodies our society offers:  TVs, phones, computers , 3 cars etc. It comes with a price , literally and figuratively. 

 

I live alone not counting pets and I have a three bedroom 2200 sq foot house. I am part of that trend and admit I like it.

4 hours ago, Glenn101 said:

I disagree, partially, with that assessment. A good education can still enable a single earner family to do well. That education does not have to be college level. There are a lot of skilled trades jobs that can be obtained with training obtained through military service, trade schools, and community colleges. Training also has to be in areas where there is a job market.

Families where neither partner has education or other training in fields with where workers are needed face the obstacles that you are talking about, as well as families that live in areas with a high cost of living.

A lot depends also depends upon where a person chooses to live or has the ability to choose to live. In places like California even a high paying job is often not enough because of the high cost of housing. A lot of people there and in other areas of the country, especially the elderly living on fixed incomes, where the cost of living is exceptionally high have been priced out of the housing market and either wind up homeless or having to move to other less costly areas.

I do not know if the genesis of this trend towards two earner families stemmed from a desire to obtain and maintain a desired lifestyle or whether it was because inflation pushed the cost of living in some areas  made it necessary for both partners to work. It is a variation on the chicken and egg situation. I personally know a lot of people where a limited education necessitated that situation, and I know a lot of people where it was a lifestyle choice.

And, to get back onto the focus of the thread, doing everything we can to encourage and strengthen the family unit and to provide educational opportunities for people lacking job skills etc. would go a long way in helping families rise out of and stay out of poverty. Strong families are still the most important unit in the world.

Glenn

I think one of the big problems is the student loan crisis. I would like to see laws passed making student loans dischargeable by bankruptcy under conditions where a strong salary is never realized. We would have fewer people studying Polisci and French Poetry if the lender needed them to make money to get their tuition back.

1 hour ago, Robert F. Smith said:

Excellent summary of the socio-political reality in America, Nehor..  In other words, our American system makes it likely that families will fail.  If our lodestar is the family, and if the Proclamation on the Family is a broad description on the value of that lodestar, what must be done? What specific measures could the Brethren take to advance the real value of the family?  What influence could they bring to bear on the body politic?  Are there laws and rules which destroy families -- such as the rule that welfare mothers must not have a man in the house if they want to be eligible for welfare?  The rule that there must be zero income to be eligible for help?  Do we have marriage penalties in our taxes, housing, etc.?  Do we actively devalue marriage and the family?  Do we provide real opportunity to the poor to get good vocational training (just now in Utah, Facebook is having a very hard time finding qualified, skilled workers on its massive, multi-year project at Eagle Mountain, even though they are paying top dollar)?

We need a massive increase in real income at the lower ends of the pay scale. Not sure how to accomplish that. While raising minimum wage would almost certainly increase real income even after factoring in inflation the marcoeconomic sideeffects would be unpredictable. Universal Basic Income sounds good but no one has figured out how to pay for it. A wholesale revamp of the economic system would be incredibly painful in the short term and the long term is unknown. Continuing as is will see the wealth gap continue to grow and historically the result of that growing too large (about where we are now) is either a depression or a revolution.

Yeah, we live in interesting times.

Edited June 17, 2019 by The Nehor

[Calm]

1 minute ago, The Nehor said:

We would have fewer people studying Polisci and French Poetry if the lender needed them to make money to get their salary back.

But all those professors would lose their jobs!  (My husband's would be safe though in business, so who cares!  )

[Robert F. Smith]

11 hours ago, Maidservant said:

I think the issue of family is so much more complicated than the binary--yes, we have a family and lots of wonderful things happen; and no, we do not have a family and lots of horrible things happen. 

Not to mention--that a world of families--which those who wish to 'hark back to better days' say was the case--is the world that gave rise to the issues we have including less homogeneous families.  So what gives?  If a world of two-parent (ish) families was so wonderful, how did we arrive at this moment then that we say is worse?  

Not that I am, again, saying I am against two-parent (ish) families--that, again, would have me playing the binary game.  But perhaps we should ask how living in two parent families with strict roles and and and and and++ did NOT prepare us to well create and well weather the present (if that's what we wish to say about it).

If you are results-oriented, the facts are that real families are a bulwark of health and happiness.  The lack of them leads to anomie.  Today, American society has less marriage, less hookups, less children being born, and more loneliness than at any time in our history.  More people live alone, and the square foot per person alone has increased markedly.  Perhaps humans are ready for extinction.

11 hours ago, Maidservant said:

Even the article speaks of university, government benefits, 'working class' as something inherent in the organization of human beings and as if inherent values of family can be drawn from these puzzle pieces.  And @The NehorNehor describes well some aspects of the organizational, institutional, and economic moment we are in historically.  But are these inherent or invented?  And do we need to do some serious re-inventing, including family structures, maybe or maybe not, but to understand the ESSENCE that a structure is meant to give and allow that ESSENCE permeate any structure we might next invent?  Maybe we need to have our social and economic structures revamped before we can know what the family ought to be.  Not to mention that everyone everywhere ought to always be family to each other.

I've said this before and I'll say it again.  Historically, "marriage" has been a horrible deal NOT a good one.  The union of man and woman is almost NOWHERE to be found in history except as an accident or anomaly.  What we have is the buying and selling of women from fathers to husbands (and other worse situations, that's the best scenario).  A WEDDING is not a MARRIAGE, but is a contract for sale and has traditionally involved a lack of agency for women (or both genders as children married who their parents told them to).  I don't know how ANY good can come of this, and it has been less than a hundred years since we have seriously punctured this after thousands of years of it, so it might be a little messy still until we reground!

The question is how men and women ought to relate to one another; and how ought children to be welcomed and raised (to what? in what?).  I don't think we've seen what the real way to do that is, yet on this planet.

Even Simone de Beauvoir, in her The Second Sex (Le Deuxième Sexe), admitted the sweet and magical nature of love between a man and a woman.  We ought to consider the powerful pair-bond between humans and other mammals.  As Jordan Peterson frequently points out, the normal relation between men and women has been one of genuine cooperation and love.

Most often that has meant being part of an extended family of grandparents, parents, aunts & uncles, brothers & sisters, cousins, etc., all caring for one another, playing together, loving each other.  That is so precious, and a terrible thing to lose.

11 hours ago, Maidservant said:

This is the case in some cultures where there is a lost generation of young men who cannot 'buy' their wives.  In the United States, I don't think women think that her husband is going to or needs to provide for her.   (Maybe Mormon ladies.)  What some men lack that women no longer tolerate is an emotional absence and authoritarianism.  Women also are not emotionally mature, either, in their own way.  No one is . . . no one is mature.  In the past, maturity wasn't necessary for marriage.  It was simply the social unit, as has been said.  Nobody has to be happy in the marriage.  Today, still very few know how to be happy in a marriage, but maybe it is at least partly because they were raised by two-parent households who stayed miserably or at least absently married.

I do agree that this is not the best approach.  People ask, "How do I feel?" instead of better questions like "What is the purpose?"  But, again, it's complicated.  Feeling IS important.  Purpose IS important.  Structure IS important.  Essence IS important.  Heritage IS important.  Brand new things ARE important.  The questions and the answers need to be more complicated, subtle, piercing, challenging, and based on new territory not the thousands of years of past territory which is broken, because it is basically hell and the telestial world.

Ah.  Before then . . . the roaring twenties . . . the gay nineties . . . . ancient Egypt . . . the more things change, the more they stay the same . . . .

Our society needs to fail.  We haven't had a good one yet.  Our societies for thousands of years have been based on bloodshed, oppression, things in the dark, and ignorance.  The society we have is NOT worth preserving.  There may be gentler ways to go into the future. I'd like to think so. I don't know if we need to implode.  But even a forest fire makes the conditions possible for the seedlings.  I hope we will see life, freedom, light, and knowledge as the foundation of our continuously emerging, and occasionally disrupting, society.  But in my opinion we need to ask better questions and expect better answers.

Yes, some anarchists and neo-Marxists do say such things, but their estimate of reality is tainted by false history and ideology.  Chairman Mao and Joe Stalin killed millions for that false promise.

11 hours ago, Maidservant said:

Not to mention that two-parent nuclear families are NOT how families were traditionally organized--that is also a recent come about, probably due to the pressures of the industrial age and mass immigration to a new world; and, again, I think there is a problem in that as to possibly lack of support and similar issues that could be solved with other kinds of family structures.

The normal and most successful form of family was always the extended family, or even the clan, and this is still the case in many societies.  You are correct that the nuclear family is a recent aberration, and is only possible nowadays when good jobs can be found, along with dependable day care -- if both parents work. Female lawyers, for example, can leave the law firm for marriage with a rich guy, and she won't go back to work until the kids are raised.

[Robert F. Smith]

36 minutes ago, The Nehor said:

I live alone not counting pets and I have a three bedroom 2200 sq foot house. I am part of that trend and admit I like it.

I think one of the big problems is the student loan crisis. I would like to see laws passed making student loans dischargeable by bankruptcy under conditions where a strong salary is never realized. We would have fewer people studying Polisci and French Poetry if the lender needed them to make money to get their tuition back.

We need a massive increase in real income at the lower ends of the pay scale. Not sure how to accomplish that. While raising minimum wage would almost certainly increase real income even after factoring in inflation the marcoeconomic sideeffects would be unpredictable. Universal Basic Income sounds good but no one has figured out how to pay for it. A wholesale revamp of the economic system would be incredibly painful in the short term and the long term is unknown. Continuing as is will see the wealth gap continue to grow and historically the result of that growing too large (about where we are now) is either a depression or a revolution.

Yeah, we live in interesting times.

Last one to leave, please turn out the lights . . .

[Hamba Tuhan]

20 hours ago, The Nehor said:

I live alone not counting pets and I have a three bedroom 2200 sq foot house.

For contrast, I share a 118m2 three-bedroom townhouse with two housemates. According to Google, that's roughly 1,270 sq feet. Personally, I would be clinically depressed if I lived alone in a house this size, and that would only multiply for me in a larger space. To each his own.

Quote

I think one of the big problems is the student loan crisis ...

We need a massive increase in real income at the lower ends of the pay scale ...

Yeah, we live in interesting times.

These are American problems. Our universities are still affordable, with most fees capped and these caps tied directly to expected future incomes. If students can't pay full fees upfront, the government will do so, and then repayments only kick in once earnings reach a certain level. 'Interest' is limited to the rate of inflation.

Our minimum wage is about double America's, and our incomes are much, much flatter. Average lifetime earnings of tradesmen and most graduates are roughly equal.

And yet, if anything, our families are in even worse shape.

We definitely live in interesting times.

Edited June 18, 2019 by Hamba Tuhan

[Benjamin McGuire]

Quillette is not peer reviewed. It self-identifies as being on the political right. It is not academic in any sense, and it shows. Why anyone would think that Tucker Carlson should be cited in an article like this is rather mind boggling. And that's before we get to the contents - and frankly, I have read a fair amount of material on the question of family stability that is much, much better than this. And of course, the 'report' that is referred to is itself not an academic report. It is a document prepared by a neo-conservative political think tank. And so the report is also ideology.

One of the challenges with the underlying report is that virtually all of the negative characteristics claimed for single parent families can be linked to economic conditions rather than marital status. Issues like fertility rates can be more easily explained in light of the fact that the poorest women do not always have adequate access to birth control (and/or abortion services). In other words, it isn't family structure that is an important indicator of all the rest - it is at least as likely that economic status is a strong indicator of family structure.  If instead of worrying about fixing the family structure we started working to fix the economic status, and we worked to make sure that reproductive services were widely and easily available (instead of trying to limit or remove them), and so on, many of these conditions would begin to trend upward.

One of the fundamental problems that we are facing in our society with regards to the family is that we are losing (and appropriately so) the social contract that marriage represented in the past. This article doesn't recognize any of this, and is sort of an appeal to the populist notion of "make America great again", which is wonderful if you are an old white person longing for the stability and order that you remember from the 1950s. And which of course sucks if you are anyone else. The failing of traditional marriage comes because the social contract that marriage represents no longer carries its traditional values. That is, in today's more egalitarian environment, women no longer need to settle for a marriage so that they and their children can be financially provided for (they can do it themselves - even if it is not yet where it needs to be). Women are increasingly educated (men are now a minority among college students). And women today have a relatively unprecedented  control over their reproductive capacity. And so on (it's a rather long list). The right (whose position is represented in this article) will never achieve greater family stability by attempting to push 'traditional' family values - because much of that historical social contract (and the family values that were supported by that contract) have become to some extent meaningless in today's environment. The way forward is not to push for a return to a historical precedent, but to work to frame a new social contract, which is based on today's (and more so the future's) social equality between men and women. And unfortunately, this is not what the political right is trying to do at this time. And this conundrum for the political right (trying to find a way to explain why the social contract of marriage is failing and what is to blame) is illustrated quite well in this article.

Ben McGuire

[Storm Rider]

21 hours ago, Maidservant said:

I do agree that this is not the best approach.  People ask, "How do I feel?" instead of better questions like "What is the purpose?"  But, again, it's complicated.  Feeling IS important.  Purpose IS important.  Structure IS important.  Essence IS important.  Heritage IS important.  Brand new things ARE important.  The questions and the answers need to be more complicated, subtle, piercing, challenging, and based on new territory not the thousands of years of past territory which is broken, because it is basically hell and the telestial world.

Ah.  Before then . . . the roaring twenties . . . the gay nineties . . . . ancient Egypt . . . the more things change, the more they stay the same . . . .

Our society needs to fail.  We haven't had a good one yet.  Our societies for thousands of years have been based on bloodshed, oppression, things in the dark, and ignorance.  The society we have is NOT worth preserving.  There may be gentler ways to go into the future. I'd like to think so. I don't know if we need to implode.  But even a forest fire makes the conditions possible for the seedlings.  I hope we will see life, freedom, light, and knowledge as the foundation of our continuously emerging, and occasionally disrupting, society.  But in my opinion we need to ask better questions and expect better answers.

Not to mention that two-parent nuclear families are NOT how families were traditionally organized--that is also a recent come about, probably due to the pressures of the industrial age and mass immigration to a new world; and, again, I think there is a problem in that as to possibly lack of support and similar issues that could be solved with other kinds of family structures.

I get the distinct impression that you are repeating social propaganda rather than actual history. To begin to get just a taste of what life was like for women, I suggest reading Memoirs, Mme. de Staal, or Letters by Mme. de Sevigne, or even Memoirs by Francois Duc de la Rochefoucauld. I recently read them and I was impressed by how active women were in politics and culture. They were just as active and had just as much influence, if not more, than most men of the time. 

If we could do one thing in education today, imo, it is immediately, permanently shut down all Women's Studies and every other faux gender/identity study program in colleges/universities today. They do not enlighten or instruct, but recruit individuals to fight the "man" - the boogeyman that has power, we want it, and we gotta have it. 

[Storm Rider]

6 minutes ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

Quillette is not peer reviewed. It self-identifies as being on the political right. It is not academic in any sense, and it shows. Why anyone would think that Tucker Carlson should be cited in an article like this is rather mind boggling. And that's before we get to the contents - and frankly, I have read a fair amount of material on the question of family stability that is much, much better than this. And of course, the 'report' that is referred to is itself not an academic report. It is a document prepared by a neo-conservative political think tank. And so the report is also ideology.

One of the challenges with the underlying report is that virtually all of the negative characteristics claimed for single parent families can be linked to economic conditions rather than marital status. Issues like fertility rates can be more easily explained in light of the fact that the poorest women do not always have adequate access to birth control (and/or abortion services). In other words, it isn't family structure that is an important indicator of all the rest - it is at least as likely that economic status is a strong indicator of family structure.  If instead of worrying about fixing the family structure we started working to fix the economic status, and we worked to make sure that reproductive services were widely and easily available (instead of trying to limit or remove them), and so on, many of these conditions would begin to trend upward.

One of the fundamental problems that we are facing in our society with regards to the family is that we are losing (and appropriately so) the social contract that marriage represented in the past. This article doesn't recognize any of this, and is sort of an appeal to the populist notion of "make America great again", which is wonderful if you are an old white person longing for the stability and order that you remember from the 1950s. And which of course sucks if you are anyone else. The failing of traditional marriage comes because the social contract that marriage represents no longer carries its traditional values. That is, in today's more egalitarian environment, women no longer need to settle for a marriage so that they and their children can be financially provided for (they can do it themselves - even if it is not yet where it needs to be). Women are increasingly educated (men are now a minority among college students). And women today have a relatively unprecedented  control over their reproductive capacity. And so on (it's a rather long list). The right (whose position is represented in this article) will never achieve greater family stability by attempting to push 'traditional' family values - because much of that historical social contract (and the family values that were supported by that contract) have become to some extent meaningless in today's environment. The way forward is not to push for a return to a historical precedent, but to work to frame a new social contract, which is based on today's (and more so the future's) social equality between men and women. And unfortunately, this is not what the political right is trying to do at this time. And this conundrum for the political right (trying to find a way to explain why the social contract of marriage is failing and what is to blame) is illustrated quite well in this article.

Ben McGuire

This does not sound correct when 75% of abortions are among poor people according to 2014 statistics. So are you saying that though 75% of abortions were from poor people, it would have been even higher if they had easier access to abortion clinics? Really? Do you have any data to support that conclusion? 

This little diatribe is filled with errors and is mostly the same old propaganda - families aren't really important. It is anything but a mom and a dad with children - kids need to be raised by the village. Oh, yeah, the feminist agenda strikes again. 

That list of "accomplishments" is why families fail, children go wanting, and Western societies are failing. I did have to laugh, yeah, if we can just stand on men's shoulders, insure they fail, then women can be elevated to new heights of success. Too funny

[Storm Rider]

Our Sacrament meeting yesterday was interesting and representative of what our society at large and even our church thinks of and values fathers/men. Not a single word was said of fathers - instead, it was a Sacrament of hymns. Members of the congregation were invited to come to the front and share their favorite hymn and why. Then the congregation would sing the first verse of the hymn. 

I love hymns and I really enjoy hearing them/singing them. However, I found it so very strange that Father's Day was omitted - scrubbed from our conscious minds. Why?  Has the topic of fathers become so uncomfortable for leaders that we must do anything and everything, but attempt to speak about them?  Would we do the same for Mother's Day?  If there is a taker on a billion dollar bet, put your money there, but it would never happen. Why?

After spending the last 50 years striving to elevate women - and consequently destroy men - we have succeeded. Boys are lagging and anywhere they are succeeding the horns have blown and all attempts to destroy their accomplishment is moving forward speedily because women must succeed in all things. 

I saw a commercial yesterday - it was about fathers taking their daughters to a baseball game. Now get this, a baseball game. Not fathers and sons - heck no. Only daughters merit the attention of fathers - can someone please stomp down those two boys in the back; they are getting just a little uppity. 

Every book written about how education and society are failing boys has been ignored. Why? Well, that would infringe upon the great Feminist agenda - it is about power - women must have it and women must always be portrayed as victims. 

So before I am carted off to the gulag, may I say proudly, Happy Father's Day. 

Edited June 18, 2019 by Storm Rider

[Benjamin McGuire]

I wasn't very clear. The problem is access to reproductive health services (which includes abortion services and birth control). In the issue of abortion, the push to eliminate abortion has made access to reproductive health services more difficult for poorer people. For many people, abortion becomes at least in part a financial decision, and so we would naturally expect there to be more abortions in the poorer sectors of society - but the goal is to reduce the number of unwanted/unplanned pregnancies and we do that through expanded easy access to reproductive health services.

I do have data.. But really, my experience is that you really have no interest in it.

[Storm Rider]

1 hour ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

I wasn't very clear. The problem is access to reproductive health services (which includes abortion services and birth control). In the issue of abortion, the push to eliminate abortion has made access to reproductive health services more difficult for poorer people. For many people, abortion becomes at least in part a financial decision, and so we would naturally expect there to be more abortions in the poorer sectors of society - but the goal is to reduce the number of unwanted/unplanned pregnancies and we do that through expanded easy access to reproductive health services.

I do have data.. But really, my experience is that you really have no interest in it.

Everyone can share an opinion here, but each of us needs to be careful how we state things. When we state something as fact - we will often be called to back it up with a CFR or withdraw the statement. 

No, I have a different opinion than yours. My interest in the topic is significant. Just because another has a different opinion does not mean anything other than it is a different opinion. We don't need to validate each other's opinion. If you don't want to expand on your opinion - that is okay. 

[USU78]

2 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

{snip} [T]he push to eliminate abortion has made access to reproductive health services more difficult for poorer people. For many people, abortion becomes at least in part a financial decision, and so we would naturally expect there to be more abortions in the poorer sectors of society {snip}

...  the practical nay inevitable conclusion of which is the extermination of black babies in America.

[MustardSeed]

4 hours ago, Storm Rider said:

Our Sacrament meeting yesterday was interesting and representative of what our society at large and even our church thinks of and values fathers/men. Not a single word was said of fathers - instead, it was a Sacrament of hymns. Members of the congregation were invited to come to the front and share their favorite hymn and why. Then the congregation would sing the first verse of the hymn. 

I love hymns and I really enjoy hearing them/singing them. However, I found it so very strange that Father's Day was omitted - scrubbed from our conscious minds. Why?  Has the topic of fathers become so uncomfortable for leaders that we must do anything and everything, but attempt to speak about them?  Would we do the same for Mother's Day?  If there is a taker on a billion dollar bet, put your money there, but it would never happen. Why?

After spending the last 50 years striving to elevate women - and consequently destroy men - we have succeeded. Boys are lagging and anywhere they are succeeding the horns have blown and all attempts to destroy their accomplishment is moving forward speedily because women must succeed in all things. 

I saw a commercial yesterday - it was about fathers taking their daughters to a baseball game. Now get this, a baseball game. Not fathers and sons - heck no. Only daughters merit the attention of fathers - can someone please stomp down those two boys in the back; they are getting just a little uppity. 

Every book written about how education and society if failing boys has been ignored. Why? Well, that would infringe upon the great Feminist agenda - it is about power - women must have it and women must always be portrayed as victims. 

So before I am carted off to the gulag, may I say proudly, Happy Father's Day. 

Oh, how disappointing.  Happy Father’s Day indeed. 

I’m afraid I might have left and taken my husband out to breakfast. 

[USU78]

4 hours ago, Storm Rider said:

Our Sacrament meeting yesterday was interesting and representative of what our society at large and even our church thinks of and values fathers/men. Not a single word was said of fathers - instead, it was a Sacrament of hymns. Members of the congregation were invited to come to the front and share their favorite hymn and why. Then the congregation would sing the first verse of the hymn. 

I love hymns and I really enjoy hearing them/singing them. However, I found it so very strange that Father's Day was omitted - scrubbed from our conscious minds. Why?  Has the topic of fathers become so uncomfortable for leaders that we must do anything and everything, but attempt to speak about them?  Would we do the same for Mother's Day?  If there is a taker on a billion dollar bet, put your money there, but it would never happen. Why?

After spending the last 50 years striving to elevate women - and consequently destroy men - we have succeeded. Boys are lagging and anywhere they are succeeding the horns have blown and all attempts to destroy their accomplishment is moving forward speedily because women must succeed in all things. 

I saw a commercial yesterday - it was about fathers taking their daughters to a baseball game. Now get this, a baseball game. Not fathers and sons - heck no. Only daughters merit the attention of fathers - can someone please stomp down those two boys in the back; they are getting just a little uppity. 

Every book written about how education and society if failing boys has been ignored. Why? Well, that would infringe upon the great Feminist agenda - it is about power - women must have it and women must always be portrayed as victims. 

So before I am carted off to the gulag, may I say proudly, Happy Father's Day. 

Our ever-shrinking Primary (no more than about 20 kids, maybe 25) sang to the fathers, "I'm So Glad" and "Families Can Be Together," and there was a rootbeer float offering after the block in the bowery.  And me all lactose intolerant.  But at least they tried.  I share your concerns.  My three grandsons (of 12 total grandchildren) and their activities are definitely in the "not very interesting" position from their other grandparents' perspective, while the girls' activities get a lot of attention.

T-Ball?  Pish.

Meanwhile, we are killing ourselves supporting each of those kids as best we can from North Logan to Saratoga.

And I'm with you, brother, all the way to the end:  Gulag after Lager after Ghetto!