The reason for the disparity between boys and girls isn’t exactly pinned down. [Harvard professor Ronald] Kessler points to various factors — community perception, interpersonal skills — as major points of influence: “We had an anthropologist working with us, and the anthropologist went and talked to and watched the kids in the old neighborhoods and the new neighborhoods, and their perception was that when the boys came into the new neighborhood they were coded as these juvenile delinquents,” says Kessler. “Whereas with the girls, it was exactly the opposite. They were embraced by the community—‘you poor little disadvantaged thing, let me help you.’”
March 6, 2014
"For Boys, Moving to a Wealthier Neighborhood Is as Traumatic as Going to War."
"Leaving poverty is more complicated than you think," writes Sarah Sloat in The New Republic.
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"boys who move into more affluent neighborhoods report higher rates of depression and conduct disorder than their female peers."
Is this disparity different than for boys and girls who grew up there?
when the boys came into the new neighborhood they were coded as these juvenile delinquents,” says Kessler.
Well, arriving in the new neighborhood with the leather jacket, the greasy "DA" hairstyle and the pack of "smokes" rolled-up in the shoulder of a white t-shirt doesn't help either.
when the boys came into the new neighborhood they were coded as these juvenile delinquents
But you get a pass if you can dunk or have a sub 4.5 forty.
"Kessler believes the money spent by the government ought to include thoughtful preparation strategies like providing young boys with a case worker or placing them in a program."
Why did I expect, before looking, that the New Republic article would include a recommendation for some Government program to deal with this problem?
BTW - off topic - we bought a set of Global knives from Amazon. Top notch! Unbelievably light, super sharp, all steel.
Father investment is everything in the development of a boy. Not government. Not social workers. Not concerned females.
Without a father to guide, discipline and love him, a boy is lost.
If you want to help boys, you encourage marriage and stable families and father involvement.
Egghead theory has no place here.
(boys) "...were coded as these juvenile delinquents,”...“Whereas with the girls, it was exactly the opposite. They were embraced by the community..."
Also true for those of us who grew up with nuns.
Remember, girls are always equal to boys, except when they're better.
As you know, you [move to a new neighborhood] with the boys you have, not the boys you might want or wish to have at a later time.
Simpler: Boys suffer a serious loss of status when they move to a "superior" neighborhood. They are more likely than are girls to resist this loss through beligerence, increasing alienation.
When you're a Jet, you're a Jet all the way. From your first living breath til your last dying day.
Poorer neighborhoods more likely provide boys places to roam and play unsupervised. It's true even in the city -- vacant lots, industrial areas, apathetic residents.
The spaces in richer neighborhoods are more tightly monitored because more of it is owned and valued.
I am male, I was born in poverty, and at the apogee of my career I was quite successful and lived in one of the most chic neighborhoods in Manhattan.
My father was the reason. He was a strong disciplinarian, moderately religious, devoted to his family and he spent every moment that he could training and development my mind and body.
Yes, I encountered class hatred and ridicule over my origins at every step along the way. Still do. We succeed in this life by overcoming competitors who are determined to trip us up, not by creating a perfect world free of strife.
"Kessler believes the money spent by the government ought to include thoughtful preparation strategies like providing young boys with a case worker..."
A Harvard professor's suggestion.
Well, arriving in the new neighborhood with the leather jacket, the greasy "DA" hairstyle and the pack of "smokes" rolled-up in the shoulder of a white t-shirt doesn't help either.
wouldn't the rolled up pack of cigarettes be too bulky to fit in the sleeve of a leather jacket?
I wouldn't know. I am Norwegian.
"Simpler: Boys suffer a serious loss of status when they move to a "superior" neighborhood. They are more likely than are girls to resist this loss through beligerence, increasing alienation."
Exactly. The article states that the poor families were given a subsidy so that they could live in the middle class neighborhood. That means that the family is still poor. Which means that the kid is not going to have access to status markers, which means the only hope for attracting girls is being the bad boy.
Haven't these people read "The Outsiders"?
So, what we have here is another liberal solution to a problem that liberals caused.
The boys in question here are blacks.
Read Thomas Sowell about the impact of the welfare society on black families and boys. Or Patrick Moynihan, if you prefer.
Concerned social workers and politicians wreaked havoc on black families, driving fathers out. Having caused the problem in the first place, those same social workers and politicians step forward with another clever "fix."
That employs them and funnels money into their political organizations, of course.
Everyone can spot the kid wearing poverty Nikes.
They should make this into a new film version of "Annie."
Krup you, society!
I thought it was 'cigarette' not 'living breath'
Fortunately, Obama is addressing this problem by ensuring that very few kids, of either sex, are moving out of poverty.
The stage version I saw used living breath; the movie uses cigarette. Not sure what the lyrics are supposed to be.
Cats that go from a one-bedroom apartment to a Cat Man House with Cat Paths often feel traumatized. This is reflected in napping.
A lot of parents move to better neighborhoods precisely to remove their male child from a youth gang culture, which the male child then brings with him into the new neighborhood. I've seen it happen a lot in the communities where I've lived.
The problem wasn't the old neighborhood, the problem is the parents not supervising their male adolescent's desire to socialize with other wanna-be thugs and budding criminals, so they simply transfer the problem to a new neighborhood, rather than actually solving the problem by actually parenting their child and holding him accountable.
My dad had a list of kids in the neighborhood that I was forbidden to be around, because he knew they were the budding young delinquents and he knew I could very well wind up on the wrong side of the law. His enforcement of that rule kept me out of a lot of trouble.
Did they test the theorem by having a control group they sent to war?
So, we're saying the Fresh Prince of Bel Aire was a lie?
This uses cigarette, so I think that's the right lyric.
From the article: Within this project, 4,604 volunteer families with 3,689 children were randomly divided into three groups. Two of them received different versions of rent-subsidy vouchers that enabled them to move into a better neighborhood. A control group did not move.
I'm sorry, but what kind of idiotic idea of a control group is that?
Maybe moving is the destabilizing event, not the neighborhood moved to.
Tag: Bad Science.
"Two of them received different versions of rent-subsidy vouchers that enabled them to move into a better neighborhood. A control group did not move."
Reynolds’ Law:
“The government decides to try to increase the middle class by subsidizing things that middle class people have: If middle-class people go to college and own homes, then surely if more people go to college and own homes, we’ll have more middle-class people. But homeownership and college aren’t causes of middle-class status, they’re markers for possessing the kinds of traits — self-discipline, the ability to defer gratification, etc. — that let you enter, and stay, in the middle class. Subsidizing the markers doesn’t produce the traits; if anything, it undermines them.”
This is yet more tax money rent seeking from the Sociologist-Therapeutic-Government Industry Complex for government funded jobs for the graduates of Social Work Degree programs, who are mostly women.
Employing more people with useless degrees in Social Work won't solved any of these problems. It is one of the biggest Progressive money scams in existence.
I bet the non-credentialed volunteers at Big Brothers/Big Sisters have a better success rate and positive impact with kids than all the over-credentialed tax leeches employed by Government.
I always enjoy social science discovering human nature.
Young women are always welcome. Who knew?
I moved into an upper middle class neighborhood from a working class town when I was 12. My mom thought she was doing me a favor.
My sister did really well. I got beat up a lot. It was awful.
I moved away when I was 16 to live with my dad in a small town and all of a sudden everything was fine again. My sister moved, too, and she did fine.
Young women, especially pretty ones, are valued for who they are. Young men have to prove themselves by doing things. No way around it.
It's hard to prove yourself at a very young age, so your background substitutes for your own accomplishments. It's unfair, but that's life.
Within this project, 4,604 volunteer families with 3,689 children were randomly divided into three groups. Two of them received different versions of rent-subsidy vouchers that enabled them to move into a better neighborhood. A control group did not move.
So, more evidence that wealth transfers don't solve societal problems, but the conclusion is to have more wealth transfers to solve the problems.
And yet they consider themselves the "smart people".
I know people that smoke a pound of weed a month that have more clarity.
Readers of the New Republic have to have simple truths explained to them in the form of social science because their life experience doesn't include having to overcome their origins. Nor does it include having to fight higher class people to get where they want to go. Increasingly our upper middle class started there and stays there.
It's like the article about racist comments at Harvard- people above you in class are always trying to put you down. That's human nature. We're still monkeys.
"So, more evidence that wealth transfers don't solve societal problems, but the conclusion is to have more wealth transfers to solve the problems."
That's because, if I can quote Thomas Pynchon, "Where ever you go, there you are."
Shouting Thomas said...
"So, what we have here is another liberal solution to a problem that liberals caused.
The boys in question here are blacks."
I wondered the same thing. The article didn't provide enough information to really understand the dynamics. Were these poor families headed by a females who had half a dozen baby daddies? Did they park broken down cars in the front yard? Were they a different race than the people already in the neighborhood? There are many factors to consider.
Despite those deficiencies, the difference between how the girls were treated and how the boys were treated is probably true under all circumstances in Western culture. The war on Western women is a myth, but the war on Western men is real and deadly.
Oh, the rigors of social scientists:
The reason for the disparity between boys and girls isn’t exactly pinned down. Kessler points to various factors—community perception, interpersonal skills—as major points of influence: “We had an anthropologist working with us, and the anthropologist went and talked to and watched the kids in the old neighborhoods and the new neighborhoods, and their perception was that when the boys came into the new neighborhood they were coded as these juvenile delinquents...
Kessler believes the money spent by the government ought to include thoughtful preparation strategies like providing young boys with a case worker or placing them in a program like Big Brothers Big Sisters. “My vague vision is to have HUD work more closely than it does now with families and with social services,” says Kessler.
We've destroyed the country following these clowns.
Maybe we should treat boys better than we do.
"That's because, if I can quote Thomas Pynchon, 'Where ever you go, there you are.'"
Is that Pynchon? I thought it was Buckaroo Bonzai.
I can understand how such moves can be traumatic for boys, but...as traumatic as going to war? That seems improbable.
If you want the answer look at the separatist LDS communities in CO. Young men are exiled from the community, while older men have multiple partners.
Muslims wage Jihad based on the promise of 70 virgins. It's all about the perception of sexual availability and the law of supply and demand.
Or you could go to the Beach Boys - "Two girls for every boy"
More boys are a threat to the status quo, More girls enhance it.
The stage version I saw used living breath; the movie uses cigarette.
Some busybody somewhere trying to sterilize lyrics for high schoolers, I'm guessing.
Maybe we should treat boys better than we do.
Probably not. The fierce competition I endured produced great results.
I like men. All my life, I had plenty of men friends. In general, I consider men to be better people than women. Even when men are being assholes, they are generally doing it for good reasons, i.e., to protect women and children.
I enjoy the company of a lot of the young men, too. I play music with them. They are enduring the feminist campaign against men in good spirits, and they know the score.
Despite all the societal forces arrayed against them, they are getting married, having children, devoting themselves to their families and helping their communities.
Maybe we should treat women and girls a lot worse.
The do-gooder vanity of women has become the plague of our society and political system.
Are we ever going to demand of women, as we do of men, productive work, instead of do-gooder fantasies?
A bunch of Credentialed Quacks calling for more credential quacks.
Where da' malt liquor??
Why ain't the store got any malt liquor?
I see feminism as a way for women to have a life other than getting married, having children, and then being bored for 40 years.
Men and women have different life experiences because of biology and human nature. We can tweak things a little bit, but those constraints are always going to be there. Young women are always going to be treated better than young men. Older women will always be treated worse than older men. We can mitigate these patterns (and we should!) but we need to understand that the patterns exist.
What feminists tend to do (and Althouse is very good about catching this) is take advantage of human nature when it suits them and excoriate it when it doesn't.
I think actually, that just none of the actors on stage smoked [since this was at a dinner theater.] But, I can't remember if they smoke in the movie either.
Robert Cook-
Moving when I was 12 was much worse than joining the military at 18. I didn't have to kill anyone, but it was much easier. At 18 I was much more ready for shocks.
Some men like Shouting Thomas do thrive despite the war on men. I'm curious whether the young men he deals with are a self selected group? Perhaps the casualties in the war on men don't hang out with Shouting Thomas.
This has nothing to do with Shouting Thomas but a thought crossed my mind. There is a utilitarian amoral way to view things. Perhaps we could view the war on men as the cutting edge of human evolution in which the boys who are destroyed are the weaker ones who have been removed from the gene pool. Those sentiments are ugly as hell but perhaps they do lurk in the background why no one seems to care about these lost young men.
Associations of Housing Mobility Interventions for Children in High-Poverty Neighborhoods With Subsequent Mental Disorders During Adolescence
The kids who were moved:
483/712 adolescents = 67% black
184/712 adolescents = 26% hispanic
14/712 adolescents = 2% white
31/712 adolescents = 4% 'other'
The parent(s):
88% had single mothers
67% never married
28% had children before age 18
38% had high school diplomas
20% still in school
22% employed
What happens when boys vs. girls move to poorer neighborhoods?
Cities:
Baltimore
Boston
Chicago
LA
New York
Conclusion:
Democrat-run cities cause PTSD in children similar to going to war.
Some men like Shouting Thomas do thrive despite the war on men. I'm curious whether the young men he deals with are a self selected group? Perhaps the casualties in the war on men don't hang out with Shouting Thomas.
My young men friends are doers and achievers. They come from strong families, generally Catholic. Most of them are working musicians. So, yes, it is a self selected group.
I meet the casualties mostly in Woodstock. In the village, the traditional family is non-existent. Women shack up with one man after another and inflict each one on their children, with devastating results. The young men who suffer through this are pathetic.
That's why I live in the mountains outside the village, not in the village.
I'm a race hustler scamming you all for donations.
Or so I've heard,...
They are most likely "coded" as juvenile delinquents because they dress and act somewhat like wanna-be thugs.
The Crack Emcee said...
"I'm a race hustler scamming you all for donations.
Or so I've heard,..."
That's OK. I'm a racist or so I've heard. So lets have fun.
Pogo is Dead has the answer - which was not mentioned in the article (but was an obvious pc incorrect possibility).
I majored in Psychology in college. Two requirements were social psych and statistics. What I learned is the social psych by itself is largely a bunch of BS, and that, when combined with statistics, you can show almost anything you want just by massaging (not even falsifying) the numbers.
I also learned that a career in Psych was not for Tank.
it is well-known that you can avoid poverty by:
1. Graduating from high school.
2. Waiting to get married until after 21 and do not have children till after being married.
3. Having a full-time job.
4. Avoid drug use/abuse.
But since this does not involve gubmint hand-outs nor secure Democrat votes, it is ignored again and again.
What I learned from my life to make my son's life better:
1. Stay married.
2. Don't move.
3. Live in a small town.
4. Make sure he's got nice clothes and a good haircut.
5. Have lots of adult family around. Don't leave him alone all the time.
Little things, but they matter.
so I take it the section 8-to-suburbia experiment is not working?
I'm a race hustler scamming you all for donations.
My God! Crack displays a sense of humor.
The Rapture must be upon us! Check the skies for the 4 Horsemen of the Apocalypse.
Now, I've got to quit farting around and learn some tunes for rehearsal tonight.
'Society' did this to them and now 'society' is going to undo it.
Now, with the right people in charge using the right social science and spending your money in just the right way....
Society!
With the new HHS rules, Carol, it won't matter.
More insights from the Professors of Fatherless Boys.
Let's get him a social worker since he doesn't have a Dad. The government is a poor substitute for a father. Let's change the incentive system.
My dad said the easiest way to make people trust me was to dress and act in a way that people who are trustworthy tend to dress and act.
I have a fun story; I was flying home from Michigan after a work trip one year, and my plane was delayed. I had left after changing to be comfy for the flight, and no one would answer my questions. I couldn't speak to the management, supervisor etc.
So, I stepped away and into the bathroom and changed into my suit and tie and combed my hair. When I came back, all of a sudden, I got all the answers I wanted and told why there was a delay and when the next plane would come.
I can understand how such moves can be traumatic for boys, but...as traumatic as going to war? That seems improbable.
One of the Big Three ordinary life stressors is moving. Its especially harder on kids.
But yea, it isn't anywhere near what warfare does. That assertion is very ignorant and most likely made for dramatic effect to justify the calls for further intervention and rent seeking.
SGT Ted said... They are most likely "coded" as juvenile delinquents because they dress and act somewhat like wanna-be thugs.
3/6/14, 9:46 AM
My guess is they act like actual thugs. I've seen this way too many times. The kid moves in with his ghetto mom and mom has loser "fiance" and 1-3 baby daddy hanging around. The kid brings his "cousins" and the police are out to the house a few times a month. Burglaries and car theft and car break-ins start.
Then the kid and mom move away one day and leave the house trashed. Things go quiet until the next ghetto refugee moves in. That is the best case scenario. The worse case is the neighborhood starts to tilt and more crime, more ghetto people, drug addicts begging in the parking lots, abandoned homes, etc etc etc
@Matthew
Zero is President, in part, because he learned your lesson.
I've had the same thing happen to me. I am treated differently in Saks, Bloomingdales, etc it:
1. Jeans and t-shirt.
2. Suit.
Even though I have the same money in my wallet.
"For example, the elevated ORs [odds ratios] of PTSD found among boys were comparable with the ORs found between combat exposure and PTSD in epidemiological studies of the military"
The severity of PTSD was not discussed, only meeting criteria for PTSD alone.
So no, not the same as war. There's PTSD and then there's PTSD.
It was written that way to get into the news cycle.
John, that's an interesting idea about small towns. When I was seven, my family moved from Tulsa to a town of 7,000 people. Someone I went to school with who has gone on to achieve much recently told me that he thought growing up in a small town was a wonderful benefit. I pondered that and thought I might agree. Then I thought, "It's good to be in this same area then while raising a family."
But wait! The area has grown tremendously, and we are now in a small city of 70,000 in a small metro area of half a million. That's not city living by any means, but it's much different than small town life. Of course, there are benefits, such as extraordinarily increased cultural amenities. Hm. Ponder, ponder.
Illuninati,
"That's OK. I'm a racist or so I've heard. So lets have fun."
No, it's not "fun" because - as with everything white and evil in this country - you guys started it.
So your "fun" is just you compounding the problem.
And THAT's why you're a racist.
And why I think you're duuuuuuuuummmmmmb,...
Per Pogo is Dead's compiled stats:
The parent(s):
88% had single mothers
67% never married
28% had children before age 18
38% had high school diplomas
20% still in school
22% employed
Nothing anyone with common sense wouldn't already know.
No father + Young, overstressed, ill equipped mother = ill mannered & lost young boys.
But look at the bright side: A welfare state that is trying it's best to make fathers obsolete is good employment, with great benefits to the credentialed class.
War on boys, redux.
(To expand on John Lynch's comment @8:57 AM:) Yeah, isn't this true of any people moving into the territory of another "tribe"? The females can be incorporated into the group as mates or slaves (or girlfriends), the young males are enemy combatants, to be killed or driven off (or ostracized).
Of course, "Section 8" moves are going to introduce another set of variables to the ones above (as is obvious to most everyone here, but apparently not to the sociologists).
I enjoyed reading John Lynch'e comments. It's pleasant to think that there are useful lessons to be learned from the shocks and dislocations of childhood......I come from a lumpenprole background and nowadays pass for middle class. I've learned my lines but I don't possess the sense memory to give a totally convincing performance. On the other hand, I never felt truly a part of the housing project where I grew up.
>Kessler believes the money spent by the government ought to include thoughtful preparation strategies like providing young boys with a case worker or placing them in a program.
That's been tried. The result was that the boys who were so treated committed more crimes and so on.
http://ann.sagepub.com/content/587/1/16.abstract
mccullough: "The government is a poor substitute for a father."
Irrelevant.
The purpose of the left and party of government is to grow the breadth and power of government at the expense of the individual and family.
Cranking up another zillion government social workers would really benefit the democrat coffers.
You, on the other hand, are merely concerned with what might be best for the individual children.
That is so "not today" man.
I'm beginning to find Ann's blog postings and comments very distracting from the main purpose of this blog which is to highlight Crack's dysfunction.
Crack Emcee said:
"No, it's not "fun" because - as with everything white and evil in this country - you guys started it."
That statement is a good summary of the thinking of racists everywhere.
"it is well-known that you can avoid poverty by:
1. Graduating from high school.
2. Waiting to get married until after 21 and do not have children till after being married.
3. Having a full-time job.
4. Avoid drug use/abuse."
You forget that "having a full-time job" is no longer something one can be guaranteed to find, or that, if one does find one, it will pay enough to keep one out of poverty.
Young males from low income homes with very high unemployment, lower than average educational attainment and absent (88%!) fathers have difficulty integrating socially in a community where those traits do not predominate.
What a shock.
Young males with the same characteristics have similar difficulties in their original communities.
I asked the wrong question at the beginning of this thread. It should have been, how are the results different than in the communities they came from.
As to the classification of these males as juvenile delinquents, the fact that most were black or hispanic may be a factor. Young "ethnic" males are going to be perceived as more of a threat by members of a white community than the females. That message gets sent throughout the society on a daily basis.
Plus, whether the newcomers (outsiders) are white or black, young males are more likely to reject and antagonize the newcomers. It's a tribal thing. You see it in lions, wild primates and humans.
And it's not just a race and class thing. When my son was in 5th grade and my daughter in 7th, we moved from Milwaukee to a Chicago suburb. The kids went to a supposedly top drawer school. My daughter fit in rather quickly. My son endured a year and a half of mean spirited cruelty from the tribe of boys in his class until we found another school for him.
In a truly primal culture, I would have killed the rotten young boys who were tormenting my son. It crossed my mind even in the "civilized" north shore of Chicago. More than once it crossed my mind.
Illuninati,
"That statement is a good summary of the thinking of racists everywhere."
No, a good summary of the thinking of racists everywhere is, they have nothing to answer for.
Ok, Robert, we will stipulate that full time jobs are not available to everyone when they want it.
How should that affect the behavior of the persons who are seeking/need the jobs?
And what does it say about the economic policies (or lack thereof) that our nation has been following.
The nation voted for "change." Change in results has not occurred. Might we at least consider that we voted for the wrong type of change?
More of the same or a different path?
I assume you will say that the evil Republicans have blocked the real change. But there just might be a different answer.
The Crack Emcee said:
"No, a good summary of the thinking of racists everywhere is, they have nothing to answer for."
That's an interesting definition of racism. If I understand your argument, you are saying that it is racist not to feel guilty because of your ethnic background. Is that right?
No, what Crack is saying is that you must agree with him, stick your nose up his ass and lick his dirty butthole, or you're a racist.
The guy is a complete fruitcake.
Also, he's the authentic spokesman for blacks.
How's it going, Crack?
How many guys, besides ARM, have volunteered to lick your butthole, today?
My guess is they act like actual thugs. I've seen this way too many times. The kid moves in with his ghetto mom and mom has loser "fiance" and 1-3 baby daddy hanging around. The kid brings his "cousins" and the police are out to the house a few times a month. Burglaries and car theft and car break-ins start.
Then the kid and mom move away one day and leave the house trashed. Things go quiet until the next ghetto refugee moves in. That is the best case scenario. The worse case is the neighborhood starts to tilt and more crime, more ghetto people, drug addicts begging in the parking lots, abandoned homes, etc etc etc
^^^This
We have one Section 8 unit and its ruined the whole neighborhood. The smart people got away as quick as they could. No one with kids stayed. Within a year, prices dropped from 400k to 250k.
Shouting Thomas said...
"No, what Crack is saying is that you must agree with him, stick your nose up his ass and lick his dirty butthole, or you're a racist."
Unfortunately I think Crack's opinion is probably representative of many on the left. White people are supposed to hate themselves and other white people. The only way to wash away your white guilt is to become a lefty and project your guilt on other people. Here is how Susan Stern expressed her self loathing, "There was no way I could explain it to my mother.... how much I hated my white skin." This self loathing quickly turned outward in hatred for other people.
p. 182 Political Pilgrims Travels of Western Intellectuals to the Soviet Union, China, and Cuba by Paul Hollander.
If you have formed an identity, personality, and habits related to your circumstances then changing the circumstances is bound to be traumatic. What was that line? You can take someone out of the country, but you can't take the country out of someone. I suspect females are less centered on their environment.
A few years ago there was a study conducted by a married pair of liberal academics (I think at Vanderbilt, not sure) tracking poor black families moved from substandard housing integrated into middle class neighborhoods. One of the pair (as I remember) specialized in some field that studies social welfare, the other in crime trends and application of resources based on statistics. The guy looked at some graphics generated by the woman for a specific city and realized changes in neighborhoods correlated exactly to the government sponsored movements tracked on a microlevel.
You forget that "having a full-time job" is no longer something one can be guaranteed to find, or that, if one does find one, it will pay enough to keep one out of poverty.
A.K.A., it's Bush's fault.
Shouting Thomas said...
How's it going, Crack?
And so the descent into madness continues. Look away fellow citizens. Simple human decency dictates that we do not add the opprobrium of decent people to this poor man's departure from sanity.
> You forget that "having a full-time job" is no longer something one can be guaranteed to find, or that, if one does find one, it will pay enough to keep one out of poverty.
Interestingly enough, the folks who do the other three things tend to have full-time jobs that do keep them out of poverty.
There are no guarantees, but some things are far more likely than others.
For example, if you can't get and keep a job that pays enough to keep you out of poverty, what are the odds that you can get and keep a job that does pay that much?
> For example, if you can't get and keep a job that pays enough to keep you out of poverty, what are the odds that you can get and keep a job that does pay that much?
Argh!
For example, if you can't get and keep a job that pays less than enough to keep you out of poverty, what are the odds that you can get and keep a job that does pay enough?
Lets test this theory more completely:
Lets all chip in and buy Crack a place in Hyannis Port.
No extra cash, of course.
Crack would be asset "rich" or "well to do" but would have to figure out a way to generate cash flow.
And that's when the fun would start....
ARM: "Simple human decency dictates that we do not add the opprobrium of decent people to this poor man's departure from sanity."
Introspection is a good thing.
Oh, it wasn't autobiographical?
Sorry.
"Maybe moving is the destabilizing event, not the neighborhood moved to."
Ahh- moving- a subject all unto itself. The original social sciences assumption was that kids who moved a lot were more likely to be in trouble, academically and otherwise.
Then- they discovered a bifurcation. Some kids were badly affected by moves, others did quite well. In fact, they made friends easier, and got along better, and did just as well academically as everyone else in their particular peer group. The difference? One group was moving ahead of the bill collecter- the other because of (mostly) fathers new job, or for us military people- new posting.
My oldest 2 moved a lot, my middle child once that he can remember, and my youngest 2 have lived in the same town their whole life. They have all done well, are all well adjusted.
Where my older ones went to school, each school year saw at least 10% of the class change faces. If the percentage of military kids were higher, the percentage change would be greater. My youngest child is a HS freshman in a class of around 100. Since kindergarten there have been less then 6 new faces in his class, with a similar number moving out. If things follow their normal pattern, his graduating class will be between 80-90, and the schools published dropout rate will continue to be zero. The school cannot explain where between 9th and 12th teh kids went- but they sure didn't drop out...
And the kids at the top of his class are from 2 parent households, the kids at the bottom- families with single moms on AFDC and free lunches, and different fathers for their siblings.
John Lynch's posting at 3/6/14, 9:55 AM is one way to successfully bring up any kid, boy or girl, but not the only way.
How cute were these girls? The world is full of high status actors marrying waitresses and yoga instructors, too. Though it's important how hot the guys were at that age since it's currency. I hope they controlled for that. Oh shit, do I have to read the article now? Oh, okay.
Robert Cook said...
"That's because, if I can quote Thomas Pynchon, 'Where ever you go, there you are.'"
Is that Pynchon? I thought it was Buckaroo Bonzai.
Read "V"
Those boys don't need a new neighborhood, they need a father in the home.
In fact, I suspect that if neighbors saw a father walking with the boy, teaching him to ride a bike, and playing with him or showing him how to fix a car, they'd be quite accepting.
It's the sense that boys without dads mean trouble that's at play here not their household income.
Once more acknowledging that anecdotes are not data, I believe the same thing was true 45 years ago. Our family moved from Hyde Park (a lower middle class neighborhood in Boston) to upper-crust Newton in 1970. I had to stop attending Boston Latin School, which at that time was one of the finest public high schools in the country; it was admission by examination only and had a full cross-section of socio-economic levels among the students (oops..."pupils" as we were called then). I had to attend a junior high school in Newton that can best be described as the patients running the asylum. Spoiled little rich kids. I went from receiving the Fidelity Prize (for exemplary conduct and fidelity) in 1969 to the principal's office in 1971 for starting a fight to keep a bully from picking on me and my friends.
I've kept up with exactly one friend from Newton after all these years, but still keep up with all my friends from the old neighborhood. 40th HS reunion this year - you couldn't pay me to go.
Re the Jet Song from West Side Story,of course the original lyrics used the word cigarette. Listen to it it here:
Jet Song
Read "V"
I tried. I also tried "The Crying of Lot 49." Didn't like either of them and didn't get far into either.
Thomas Disch said that he did not like Pynchon's authorial "voice," or style (not in these exact words); I must agree.
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