Estimates vary widely, but scholars have said that changes in marriage patterns — as opposed to changes in individual earnings — may account for as much as 40 percent of the growth in certain measures of inequality. Long a nation of economic extremes, the United States is also becoming a society of family haves and family have-nots, with marriage and its rewards evermore confined to the fortunate classes.It's hard to see how this is going to get any better over time.
“It is the privileged Americans who are marrying, and marrying helps them stay privileged,” said Andrew Cherlin, a sociologist at Johns Hopkins University....
Married couples are having children later than they used to, divorcing less and investing heavily in parenting time. By contrast, a growing share of single mothers have never married, and many have children with more than one man.
“The people with more education tend to have stable family structures with committed, involved fathers,” Ms. McLanahan said. “The people with less education are more likely to have complex, unstable situations involving men who come and go.”
She said, “I think this process is creating greater gaps in these children’s life chances.”
IN THE COMMENTS: Paco Wové said:
The Gods of the Copybook Headings have come calling for the lower middle class.
Posts
110 comments:
The Gods of the Copybook Headings have come calling for the lower middle class.
Obviously we must outlaw marriage in the name of social justice. Private citizens have no inherent right to establish binding relationships that assume precedence over their pre-existing relationship with the state due to the fact of its prior existence!
You mean, men have value?
Go figure.
It's almost like social conservatives have been pointing this out for thirty years, or something.
Obviously we must outlaw marriage in the name of social justice.
I was just going to say we should levy a punitive tax people who refuse to marry, but that works too.
By Jove, he's got it.
The parenting of children by sane adults, especially between 3 and 9 with engaged and loving adults in the support system called marriage, in turn produces sane children who cope well with life.
Not that attachment defects with kids is all wrong. It is better than aborting them.
And what's worse is that the poor are getting less religious as well, so there are fewer social or internal shaming mechanisms to stem the tide of single parenthood.
One of the great triumphs of the Wesley brothers and English Methodism was in stemming the rise of alcoholism brought about by the introduction of gin, which was cheap to produce & plentiful.
I would not be surprised that the USA is now due for its Third Great Awakening, and the focus will be on marriage.
The Times article leads to an inescapable conclusion. Since it's inequitable for some mothers to have husbands and others not, those who are "privileged" to have husbands should be required to share them with those who don't. Redistribution of wealth is all very fine, but redistribution of husbands will get to the root of the problem.
Belmont vs. Fishtown
I blame Lyndon John's Great Society for making it possible for unmarried teenage girls to get a check from the government as long as they got pregnant first.
Yes, it won't change anytime soon. More children aborted and more children being born to single mothers.
Our society needs to heal itself.
We are facing an ever growing gap among the haves and have nots, the happy and unhappy and it will be increasingly more difficult for children born into these situations to extricate themselves. What happened in Russia when there was such disparity among the classes?
Of course we won't come together long enough to solve this. We can't even have a discussion without attacking one another and forgetting all about the problem itself. I include myself .
Shocking that the NYT has found out about this! They must have learned about Maureen Dowd's growing collection of house cats.
Rob: Redistribution of wealth is all very fine, but redistribution of husbands will get to the root of the problem.
That's pretty funny and well said.
I might add though that a lot of single mothers already have husbands--the county.
Cart before the horse. News flash, good choices bless you and your offspring. It is not that the poor are marrying less, it is that those who birth kids outside of marriage are dooming their kids to poverty. As a people, marrying less and having children with multiple partners makes you all poor.
That news is so old that Democrats used to say it.
Trey
"with marriage and its rewards evermore confined to the fortunate classes"
Only the liberal NYT can make marriage into a class issue that has to be dealt with by liberal government intervention...”we must bring the fortunate marriage classes down to the level of the dysfunctional relationship classes”
Maybe we should teach civics and economics and ethics and family values in public grade schools and the poverty pimps could, for a change, criticize those denizens who embrace these traits that cripple their life prospects.
It isn't the privileged that marry, it's the smart.
Through the media, the not-so-smart have been sold the idea that you can live like there's no tomorrow and there will be no consequences.
Like all the other Lefty canards that have been crashing down, this will take a few years for people to realize that the old, responsible, (dare I say) Conservative way works and the sha la, la la la la, live for today Lefty way doesn't.
AllieOop said...
Yes, it won't change anytime soon. More children aborted and more children being born to single mothers.
And who is pushing that?
Our society needs to heal itself.
That doesn't happen until the Lefties are fully discredited.
We're not there yet, but it's coming.
This is really old news.
‘The Lord is longsuffering, and of great mercy, forgiving iniquity and transgression, and by no means clearing the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation.’
Is "privilege" the word social scientists now use to explain any disparity between ethnic and income groups?
Seems to me to be quite lazy on their part.
Edutcher, no one is pushing that. It's the way in which we would solve this problem that both sides disagree.
In fact they disagree so much that absolutely NOTHING gets done to change the situation. Will there ever be a time that both sides are willing to put aside partisanship long enough to ever get something accomplished?
I doubt it, we are so screwed.
Here in Los Angeles, high school proms have become vastly more expensive and important than formerly. The reason is that many young women don't get married anymore. So this is their only chance (along with Quinceaneras) to wear a gown and have a grand party.
The other un-named co-conspirator here is feminine equality in the workforce.
Women are the drivers of assortative mating. When you get a guy rich, what does he want in a bride --- a sweet, pretty girl with big boobs, the same as a poor guy. You get a woman rich, and what does she want -- a tall, handsome, confident guy who makes more money than she does. Not just a good earner per se, but one who makes more than her.
Such marriage choices, enacted over and over, deplete the already small pool of rich-er men, leaving women at the top stranded for mates. For lower class women, it means that many men in their own class fail as marriage-material because they can't out-earn their possible brides.
This wasn't a problem in the past, well, because when guys kept women chained in the (metaphorical) economic basement, every man you looked at was a look up.
A study done a little over 30 years ago and reaffirmed a couple of years ago.
How do you stay out of poverty?
Get a HS diploma.
Don't get married until after the age of 20.
Don't have kids until after you're married.
How the great society working for ya?
Don't worry, Uncle Sam will take care of you, he cares.
"The Gods of the Copybook Headings have come calling for the lower middle class."
Thanks. I had to look up the poem. I'd never read it before.
http://www.kipling.org.uk/poems_copybook.htm
--In fact they disagree so much that absolutely NOTHING gets done to change the situation. Will there ever be a time that both sides are willing to put aside partisanship long enough to ever get something accomplished?---
We accomplished it, the "progressives" tore it down.
This is the society they wanted, they need to quit complaining.
The poor can say "I do" as well as the rich. A JOP license isn't that much.
It's BS.
Studies were done that found that homeowners were more stable than renters, so the government decided to encourage home ownership. That worked out.
Studies were done that found that college graduates made more money and were more successful, so the government decided to encourage more college graduates. Also working out.
Now a study is done that reveals (shockingly) that more successful people get married. Or is it married people are in general more successful. Anyway, can't wait to see the government encourage this one.
Seriously, how is this "news?" This research has been available for decades and was self evident before any research was done. Pat Buchanan is due an apology from the left wing smear merchants and the RINOs who drove the country leftward.
Maybe Michelle Obama should work on the marriage vs poverty issue created by multiple fathers and woman depending on government as a carrier and head of the family unit. My thought is taking away government enabling programs would make for a much healthier family than taking away the French fries....
“The people with more education tend to have stable family structures with committed, involved fathers,” Ms. McLanahan said. “The people with less education are more likely to have complex, unstable situations involving men who come and go.”
So what is the matching code words for men?
They don't want married people. Too independent.
“It is the privileged Americans who are marrying, and marrying helps them stay privileged”
The idiot has it backwards. Not marrying is a mark of the very well off and the very poor, and in the latter case it causes them to stay poor.
1. Clearly this inequality must be fixed. In the interest of fairness, not revenue, marriage must be taxed.
2. This in not about law. This is about cultural standards. When we declare it rude to make value judgments about single parenthood and cease to criticize unwed motherhood- this is what we get.
AllieOop said...
Edutcher, no one is pushing that. It's the way in which we would solve this problem that both sides disagree.
I see Oop is feeling a tad defensive and pushing her, "Can we all get along", line. His/Her/Its way is how we got in this mess in the first place.
Of course, this is being pushed. Turn on a TV, go to a movie, or listen to pop music. It's all you see and hear.
In schools and a lot of churches (the ones losing parishioners), it's all value-neutral, non-judgmental.
It's been pushed for 50 years.
"If it feels good, do it".
Ring any bells?
As I say, this is where the consequences come in.
As some of us knew they would.
"The Gods of the Copybook Headings have come calling for the lower middle class."
________________________________
I have a copy on file and read it at least once a year. There's something eerily prescient about it.
Here's a possible Copybook Heading that speaks to the root of the problem:
The more you subsidize it,
The more of it you get.
"What happened in Russia when there was such disparity among the classes?"
They had revolution where the left took over and the rapid progress that Russia had been making since 1865 ended for another 50 years. People think that Russia was nothing but serfs and nobles in 1917. Nothing could be further from the truth.
From an RU site:
With the aid of Witte's policies, Russian industrial production made huge advances. Growth rates in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were high, comparing favorably to those of the United States, Germany, and Japan at the time, and closely resembling those experienced by China, South Korea, and other dynamic Asian economies in the 1990s and early twenty-first century. The favorable comparisons that can be made between Russia's prewar industrial economy and those of West European countries were due in large part to the advances made under Witte. In 1913 Russia's total national income was nearly equal to that of Great Britain, and its industrial economic output was similar in size to that of France. Russia's steel production in 1913 exceeded France's (4.9 to 4.7 million metric tons), and its coal and iron production were not far behind. Russia's industrial output was still considerably lower than that of Britain and Germany, but much ground had been gained over Russia's lagging economy of the 1850s and 1860s.
It is a myth that the Bolshevik Revolution took over a country of serfs and modernized it.
But but but...marriage impedes the hegemony of the state!
Who needs marriage, with a baby mama and a baby daddy
And the benevolent state providing?
Why it's down right racisss and classist
To demand that folks be steadfast and cleaving and abiding.
The Gods of the copy book headings not as easy to understand unless we also know that copybooks were the universal education tool in 19th century England.
The "copybook headings" to which the title refers were proverbs or maxims, extolling virtues such as honesty or fair dealing that were printed at the top of the pages of 19th-century British students' special notebook pages, called copybooks. The school-children had to write them by hand repeatedly down the page.
Education has collapsed in this country and in England, which is for some reason now called Great Britain.
After the article read the comments.
They're mostly on the lines of 'we need more government programs' or 'raise the minimum wage' as a way to solve the problem. Baffling and depressing.
I was poor once, as a child. Don't care to be poor again. However, the poor have better cars and phones than I do. Maybe there is a method to their madness.
"Edutcher, no one is pushing that. It's the way in which we would solve this problem that both sides disagree.
In fact they disagree so much that absolutely NOTHING gets done to change the situation. Will there ever be a time that both sides are willing to put aside partisanship long enough to ever get something accomplished?
I doubt it, we are so screwed."
I have a question Allie.
How would the left solve this problem? You say that the left is not pushing to encourage more dissolution of families, so what are they pushing for? And if the *intention* is not more dissolution of families, does it matter?
Do intentions matter?
I ask this sincerely. Do intentions matter?
It's a sea change simply to be able to say, in polite company, that children with fathers do better, that mothers who are married do better, that a stable two-parent home makes a material difference.
You couldn't say that when I was growing up. You couldn't even *say* it. After all, you might hurt the feelings of some poor woman who had been abandoned or had to leave her abusive husband.
The solution, if we're talking solutions, to this poor woman's hurt feelings (her name was probably Julia) was to make *normal* single motherhood. So we spared her feelings, but at what cost?
Intelligent, cosmopolitan, sorts scorned traditional social constructs as either harmful, oppressive of women, or quaint, or crutches. Certainly nothing they needed. And so societal mores change.
And what do we see?
Those same people didn't actually give up those things for their *own* lives. They protected their own futures and the privilege of their children, while those more overwhelmed by life were left stumbling along *crutchless*.
How is this "problem" solved then? By more of the same? Solve the problem caused by the destruction of well understood, but imperfect social mores, by treating the destructive fall-out and never the cause?
Maybe instead of children's stories in Kindergarten caring more for making all families "equal" when they are profoundly unequal, those stories our public schools and government day cares provide those disadvantaged children should be pictures and "stories" of families that wait to have children until they are married, and stay married when they have children, and care lovingly for the children they have, all the *ideal* things that so many children don't see in their daily lives, so that they can see an alternative pattern and be taught to believe it possible for their own lives?
Another form of inequity to "fix" soon we'll all be so equal we'll be eating from the same trough. That is, until we reach the average age of death. Then we'll die in the most equitable way. Probably gunshot.
When you get a guy rich, what does he want in a bride -- a sweet, pretty girl with big boobs, the same as a poor guy.
Hey, wait a minute, what about us small boob loving guys? Big boobs go south in a big way and then where are you? Oh...you still don't believe there are small boob loving guys? Well...there are! And more than you think. It's called acquiring discriminating taste.
The implied arrow of causality is that marriage results in advantageous conditions. It is likely the other way around. People who are mature, educated and whom act like responsible adults tend to find others who are the same, or whom at least aspire to the same, and get married.
Focusing on marriage only leads to more divorce unless those getting married have a basic ethos of responsibility and respect for others. Moreover the broader culture needs to hold both sides accountable (versus giving one side a virtual pass to the point where a single or divorced mother is lavished with free stuff.) Government is the most destructive force in marriage and families at many levels.
The comments are amazing. Many of the suggestions would reduce the cost of single parent families which would thereby ENCOURAGE more single parent families. One of the comments bemoans economic ignorance and blames the problem on the lefty mantra of the day, the alleged shift in wealth from the 99% to the 1%. Physician, heal thyself.
@ricpic,
Hey, wait a minute, what about us small boob loving guys
Yeah, ricpic. You & Frank Zappa's "Anything over a mouthful is wasted" school of Hooterial thinking.
You know full well from the wealth of online source material that you, sir, are in a statistical minority. Perhaps, a well-bred & discriminating minority, but a teenie-weenie minority, none the less.
What does Murphy Brown have to say about this?
Synova, I wouldn't begin to know how to solve this societal problem. BUT there are very wise people out there that do from both sides of the divide. My main point is that if we can't stop fighting each other, we will be weakened as a nation, then will we be able to come together to fight foes not American?
One thing I've seen that I think is a great idea is mentoring, if enough people born into poverty get educated, then go back to mentor those at risk kids in their old community, it might help break that cycle. This is only one idea.
It's not the burden of those of us blessed with education alone, it must come from within their community, to take hold.
I should add stability, irregardless of education.
Many above have commented in ways that I think match my own reaction to this report. Various thoughts come quickly to mind: correlation does not equal causation; culture matters more than politics; winners never quit and quitters never win. A just society will have winners and losers. Life is not fair. The balancing point between two opposed arguments is not always the best decision.
The blog comments seem to be getting pithier. Conservatives and libertarians are growing tired. Why bother? The liberals and statists don't engage in debate; they just assume racism or wealthism or something else that can be painted as sinister.
Arguing for small government and liberty is a tiresome task. Most lefties I know don't want to engage in debate at all. We're getting beaten down, stuck in the muck of stupidity.
There, now I've written several sentences, and I'm tired.
AllieOop,
What happened in Russia when there was such disparity among the classes?
Well, IIRC, one of the first things that happened post-Revolution was a definite campaign by the elite to incite mass murder of slightly-more-prosperous Russian peasants by slightly-less-prosperous Russian peasants. The elite themselves were living much higher on the hog than the kulaks were, but they themselves weren't in any danger. (From the peasants, I mean; their own ranks were another matter.)
Life is hard and it's harder if you are stupid. Three kids and no husband? You make your bed and you lie in it.
Unfortunately taxpayers must pick up the food stamps, earned income credit and Medicaid.
We know how to solve it but the left will melt with the answer.
BTW - it's the "wise" people who got us here.
Read Charles Murray's "Coming Apart."
So the Times picks up on his latest book after panning it. Murray is not on the approved list.
Nothing changes at the Times.
AllieOop said...
Synova, I wouldn't begin to know how to solve this societal problem. BUT there are very wise people out there that do from both sides of the divide.
No, the Lefties want this to continue because, the more mouths at the trough, the more people to keep them in power.
Anybody who wants to get rid of this needs to go back and reverse pretty much everything the Lefties have pulled in the last 50 years, especially the business of no stigma attached to a bastard (and, yes, we should bring back that word) or to people cohabiting without benefit of marriage*.
When the Lefties began their campaign to remove social approbation from society, they knew exactly what they were doing.
Add to that food stamps, WIC, EIC and you have what Victor Davis Hanson called "the most comfortable poverty in history".
* Some hotels wouldn't allow men and women to share a room if they weren't married.
Basil said...
Pat Buchanan is due an apology...
So is Dan Quayle. Murphy Brown's bastard child could not be reached for comment.
It's hard to see how this is going to get any better over time.
THANK YOU, FEMINISM!!!! WE LOVE YOU!
With no data to back me up but with some little empirical experience at elite colleges I would posit that students that manage to matriculate at these colleges disproportionally come from intact families.
One thing I've seen that I think is a great idea is mentoring
They used to be called "grandparents" but if grandma also didn't have a husband then she won't be much help. You could also find them in churches but sayingso might offend.
They misunderstand the causal relationship. Neither social status nor financial largess are principal determinants of whether a man and woman will marry and have children. The only valid explanation is that a large minority of Americans are spoiled and selfish, and place their dreams of instant gratification (i.e. physical, material, ego) before natural obligations.
These scholars need to live outside a decadent society before offering their opinion on natural matters. Family is the primary level of social organization, and is, by design or circumstance, also the first level to invest in human viability.
YoungHegelian,
And what's worse is that the poor are getting less religious as well, so there are fewer social or internal shaming mechanisms to stem the tide of single parenthood.
Wow - seven posts and the I.Q. level goes through the floor.
I just left my friend's house, which is currently being turned upside-down because his wife is tripping HARD on religious bullshit. Tell me:
How does a worshipping of the irrational help anybody - especially kids who are supposed to be getting an education about the real world?
Look - don't answer that - I'm sick of these Alice In Wonderland conversations:
Just shut up.
I'm a single male never married and in the top 2%. Professional with no kids and have been looking for someone (female of course). My only issues in life is dealing with what comes along with being professional. I’ve traveled the world and there is no place like home.
So the way the system works now; if I am in a relationship with a woman with kids I am also in the relationship with the Federal Government, local social workers, the local schools , x husbands, child and parent psychologist, debt collectors, lawyers, her personal baggage and scars, the kids personal baggage and scars, welfare agency, child support, fights between x’s, etc...the list goes on.
Life is about choices I guess…
Phil 3:14 said...
One thing I've seen that I think is a great idea is mentoring
They used to be called "grandparents" but if grandma also didn't have a husband then she won't be much help. You could also find them in churches but sayingso might offend.
There were also aunts and uncles.
A lot of extended families were strong because of them.
@crack,
American & English history are replete with religious movements that overcame societal ills, and you know it.
As for Fantasy Island, I've challenged every atheistic commentator on this board to explicate the basis of their moral philosophy multiple times, because you know, criticizing revealed theology is shooting fish in a barrel, but coming up with something to replace it has proved, well, undo-able so far in human history.
So, don't tell me how stupid I am when you want to pretend that the Little Birdie of Natural Reason whispers moral maxims into your ear that the rest of us know nothing about.
Don't worry, Obama will come up with the Marriage Redistribution and Income Equality Act and all will be swell!
Young Hegelian @ 2:15: Flesh and blood hath not revealed this to you but your Father which is in heaven.
Allie: There are not wise people on both sides. Conservatives always wind up paying for the rebellions, social experiments and causes de jour of the Left.
OH, and we get to fuss over yet more ideas foisted on us by leftists, no fault divorce, and welfare policies.
For people that are so smart the shit the advocate sure causes a lot of problems, doesn't it?
Caplight, really? What a sad cynical statement.
Allie, one painful but necessary part of solving the problem is properly identifying what -- and if applicable, who -- caused it. And the next smart step is to stop listening to those people.
The fact is that the left has been 180 degrees wrong about at least two of the biggest issues of the 20th century: The Cold War and this one. Asking the people who were right on these issues to "work together" with the people who were ass-backward wrong (and often obnoxiously insulting toward the rest of us about it, too) is not a good prescription, frankly.
Sorry Crack but there is a historical record of the positive influence of religious movements and revivals. In fact the Wesleyan Revival of the 18th century is generally credited with keeping England from revolution and bloodshed like France.
Yup, we are so screwed.
"How does a worshipping of the irrational help anybody - especially kids who are supposed to be getting an education about the real world?"
How does worshipping at the altar of leftist thought help anyone ? Religion is something humans are hard wired for. When traditional religion fades away, the atheists turn to global warming, or crystals, or recycling. or some equally useless fad.
Personally, I;'m agnostic but I would rather live around religious people than atheists looking for the latest fad to worship.
Allie, I don't find it cynical at all. It's called experience. The last "wise" high profile politician on the left was probably Daniel Patrick Moynihan. What he said would happen in the breakdown of the family and community has come to be. But he was ignored because the truth hurt, he wasn't about victimhood and his work did not advance the feminist narrative.
I think the NYT has the chicken and egg reversed, as per usual.
"Various thoughts come quickly to mind: correlation does not equal causation;"
Correlation isn't causation, but it's still correlation. So the question is... what is the cause of the various correlated elements?
If wealth doesn't cause stable families and stable families don't cause wealth, then likely enough something else causes both stable families and wealth.
I can think of some possibilities. Perhaps someone who believes that success in both things is the sure result of hard work will succeed at both. (And why I believe that the *demand* that poor people understand how racially oppressed they are is *evil*.)
Perhaps someone with little self-discipline will fail in both endeavors... showing up for work, showing up for a marriage...
Think of all the ways that self-indulgence manifests itself. I'm in LOOOOVVEEE... not my fault. Just start with that one.
Gee, Allie. Did you ever think that maybe instead of making faux clever statements like, "Yup, we're screwed," you might actually examine the policies you've supported your entire adult life and possibly reexamine them?
And if having reexamined them, you found them, say, lacking, would you then advocate following or "working with" those policies again?
Serious question. Your answer will actually enlighten you as to whether you are, indeed, screwed.
@MichaelK
You may find it strange for me to defend Crack, but he may be many things, but a lefty is not one of them.
He would agree with your critique of lefty nonsense. He just doesn't want it replaced with righty-theistic nonsense.
Off to the gym.
Daniel Patrick Moynihan wrote a white paper when he was just an academic; I believe for Nixon, that summed this up 40 fucking years ago!!
Chef, it's quite presumptuous of you to to say I haven't. Have you? If you want to think that ONLY conservatives have all the correct answers, then you are deluding yourself as much as you think I am.
Then what are the Left/Progressive answers to the problems the caused, other than you need us in charge to fix this?
they caused, not the caused.
"How does a worshipping of the irrational help anybody..."
Religion (Christian-traditional) used to enforce a number of highly rational things.
Hard work and honesty, for one.
Self-denial. The understanding that everything about human nature had to be fought, that your "self" had to be mastered and controlled.
That you stayed with your husband, or you stayed with your wife. That you had responsibilities to your parents and to your children.
And even when life sucked, because life *did* suck, you could look forward to heaven and rewards for your labor and the end of your pain.
But we've been freed from this, haven't we? We seek our freedom in the here and now instead of the after life. We don't worry that God sees what we do in secret. We think that it's just horrible to view new babies as sinful by nature, or expect to have to suppress what we are. No, we're supposed to *express* what we are.
People who worship the irrational are going to have problems, if the irrational for them takes the form of secular hedonism or a squishy god who "just wants us to be happy."
That we've tossed the sort of religion that is useful for the structure of society and opened the way for self-centered spiritualism in place of one that at least asked us to *try* for self-mastering... that's not the fault of God.
With three kids the lady featured in the story has the eqivalent of a $70,000 plus income thanks to the taxpayers.
You're welcome
The benefits she draws don't give the kids a father in the house, but that was her decision. Especially after the first one.
I have some sympathy for the children, but little for her. I guess if you drag a hundred dollar bill through a trailer park in Ann Arbor, you never know what you'll find.
Can we get Crack banned?
Mentoring is nice. I'm sure that no one has anything against the idea of mentoring. After all, children need role models to show them what they can accomplish.
Could we, in the spirit of unity, combine a wonderful mentoring program with whatever it takes to start valuing intact families and self-discipline and opportunity, so that those mentored children grow up to marry first, work together toward a goal, and have children in stable environments with built-in mentors, first a father in their home, and later grandparents, aunts and uncles?
Or would that be mean?
How does the problem start to get solved without more money?
$5 trillion on this Great Society.
Just like the schools, it's not the money.
Chef, it's quite presumptuous of to to say I haven't.
Not presumptuous at all, seeing as you avoidied answering a very simple and relevant question.
Have you?
Yes. Liberal in college. Evolved to conservatism over the years. Then small "L" libertarianism. I belong to no political party. I constantly question. I have real life experience in Socialist and Fascist societies and found them quite similar in method and outlook. I have real experience in the society that the American left advocates and I will always be against that.
If you want to think that ONLY conservatives have all the correct answers, then you are deluding yourself as much as you think I am.
Obviously not. But, I do think - and my experience bears this out - that conservatives have MORE of the correct answers, and that's what matters. Not that they're conservative answers, but that they are answers.
So what have you done lately, Allie?
Richard McEnroe said: "Obviously we must outlaw marriage in the name of social justice."
Unnecessarily draconian to solve the problem. All we need to do is mandate divorce after some relatively short number of years. And we should tax women who have more than one child by the same man. That will fix the disadvantage.
You may be talking to others, Allie, but it's people who said much the same as I did. But I'm not a Republican-style conservative. I was a staunch anti-communist and have fairly traditional social values, but I'm an atheist, I was a union member for many years and I was against the Iraq phase of the war (though for atypical reasons).
I'm well aware that no one side has all the answers. But sometimes one side proves that it's very wrong on an issue, and that needs to be recognized.
Since you asked Chef, I do volunteer at a local women's shelter, I've tutored at risk children, I've driven people to the polls, gasp! No it didn't tell them which way to vote. I volunteer at the Veterans hospital in Milwaukee, I vounteer at a nursing home in Milwaukee, to mention a few.
I've coordinated clothing drives at my grandkid's school for the women's shelter and the nursing home.
It breaks my heart to see the venerable New York Times stooping to this sort of rank racism.
Via Rantburg:
Mass. Live] Two Massachusetts Democrats will help draft the Democratic Party's national platform. Retiring U.S. Rep. Barney Frank will be a member of the platform drafting committee. Gov. Deval Patrick will be an ex-officio member.
"Could we, in the spirit of unity, combine a wonderful mentoring program with whatever it takes to start valuing intact families and self-discipline and opportunity, so that those mentored children grow up to marry first, work together toward a goal, and have children in stable environments with built-in mentors, first a father in their home, and later grandparents, aunts and uncles?"
(Sorry for the lengthy quote.)
It seems to me that the key question really is:
What do we do with the people who fail such a program? Because some people will fail. Do we say "Oh, that's okay hon, we didn't really mean it"? Or do we say, "Tough titties, you and your brood are out on the streets"?
Because that's where the rubber meets the road. For the past 50 years, we've felt rich, powerful, and magnanimous, so we've gone with the first option. And here we are.
AllieOpp. Whose idea was it to reward single parents with welfare while giving less to the married? Whose ideas led to an illigetimacy rate around 70% for blacks and 40% for whites. In the early 60 s it was 14% for blacks and less thanfive for whites. What happened around then was the triumph of a liberalism that took judgementalism and threw it away. Along with respect for any and all authority. This is not one of these "we are all to blame" deals.
I don't know Paco.
But I do know that the way it is now we're not even ALLOWED to tell under-privileged children what an ideal family looks like.
No one cares about them growing up with the belief system that people should get married and expect to stay married while raising a family. What they care about, proven by what they *do*, is that those underprivileged kids feel like their own broken homes are the best homes in the whole wide world.
I was making the same argument in this piece, and it's not something the Left wants to hear
http://www.thedailypage.com/isthmus/article.php?article=35453
Since you asked Chef, I do volunteer at a local women's shelter, I've tutored at risk children, I've driven people to the polls, gasp! No it didn't tell them which way to vote. I volunteer at the Veterans hospital in Milwaukee, I vounteer at a nursing home in Milwaukee, to mention a few.
I've coordinated clothing drives at my grandkid's school for the women's shelter and the nursing home.
These are all fine things.
But they pale in comparison to the damage done to our society by your voting for the politicians that push for govt-funded abortion on demand, expanding entitlement, perpetuating identity grievances (especially racial), the removal of incentive for hard work and responsibility (via the high tax/high service style of govt) and the erosion of moral standards.
The information that the left/liberal/Democrat ideology has a horrible, horrible financial and social cost is easily found.
You just have to lift a finger to find it, and use your brain to understand it (instead of just repeating talking points).
"...now we're not even ALLOWED to tell under-privileged children what an ideal family looks like."
Yes, somebody will respond that such characterizations are heteronormative cisgenderist sexist patriarchal evils, and probably racist to boot. Because no one should ever be made to feel "shame" about anything they do, regardless of how harmful it is.*
--
*Unless they are white and/or heterosexual and/or male and/or non-immigrants and/or not poor. THOSE people are fucking evil.
The left doesn't want to hear about how people can make their own success. They have a vested interest in people becoming dependent. It sounds like a sweeping statement, but every society that has tried a version of socialism has ended up in failure and misery. History can be relied on for one thing...to show us patterns of human and political behavior.
I suppose you could say religion isn't the answer, but you'd have to point to a society in history that had long term prosperity and liberty for it's people that didn't also have a value system resembling religion. Strong intact families are a feature of successful societies. It's no surprise that religions encourage strong families. Whether this is causation or correlation is something people can argue about, but it's obviously present in successful societies.
And I strenuously object to their use of the word "privileged." People who wait to have babies until they are married and then work hard to raise them and nurture are not privileged, they are hard working, busy earning the love and successful outcomes of their kids.
I suspect that Team Blue realizes, deep down, how much they've fucked up on this issue, and as evidence present the notable absence of all the usual suspects on this thread, with the exception of Allie, who is giving a half-hearted "...well I don't know... what'cha gonna do?" in response.
Since you asked Chef, I do volunteer at a local women's shelter, I've tutored at risk children, I've driven people to the polls, gasp! No it didn't tell them which way to vote. I volunteer at the Veterans hospital in Milwaukee, I vounteer at a nursing home in Milwaukee, to mention a few.
I've coordinated clothing drives at my grandkid's school for the women's shelter and the nursing home.
Admirable. But I wonder if you realize that you actually could do more good, for all those causes, by the simple act of NOT voting for Obama in Nov?
"Look at them. Bloody Catholics filling the bloody world up with bloody people they can't afford to bloody feed."
Priviledge
Hmmm. Discipline to stay married vs. profligate disaster (I've intentionally omitted all middle ground).
Pretty obvious, eh?
"Various thoughts come quickly to mind: correlation does not equal causation;"
Not long ago an economist went back to look at black incomes in 1959.
They found black families closely resembles white families in habits and makeup-mother, father who lived with them(thats a sad commentary right there, having to install that caveat) and children. In fact black families in 1959 were second behind whites and ahead of hispanics on income. by 1969 it had all changed
What happened between 1959 and 1969?
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