Richer people have kids in their thirties, so the media is full of people in their twenties living it up. Poorer men have kids in their twenties and then they feel like losers for living the boring lifestyle of a responsible breadwinner. They want to copy the carefree lifestyle shown as "normal" by our culture.
Conversely, the choice to have kids earlier brings its own set of benefits (having more physical energy is one that I wished for somewhat often and I think there’s evidence of earlier pregnancies being lower risk).
I read a book [1] that argued the upper middle class follows very traditional values (two-parent families, marrying before having children, having at least one adult working 40 hours a week) but doesn't really advocate for those traditional values.
People in the upper middle class will praise the bravery of single mothers and say there's nothing to be ashamed of - but when it comes time to have children of their own, rarely choose that for themselves.
It's not entirely hypocritical, of course; just because I think gays have nothing to be ashamed of, doesn't mean I have to become gay myself!
There isn't any hypocrisy here, they don't endorse single motherhood because it's fashionable they "endorse" it because the alternative is worse.
I'm curious what the GP was told that makes them think the alternative to endorsing single motherhood is worse. The alternative to reducing stigma would be fixing the underlying issues that cause the stigma...in this case the lack of ability for a single parent to provide. We have plenty of resources to fix this, but they're disproportionately distributed in favor of those at the top. Funny enough, both the left and right at the top have solutions different than what I described. The left wants to destigmatize, and the right wants to shame (another cheap and relatively easy tactic used by authoritarians).
Destigmatizing doesn't increase prevalence more than the conditions that actually cause it (welfare donut hole, the drug war).
Let’s face it, Homer Simpson is the face of traditional American family structures.
The life available to Homer Simpson included a skilled job that he could obtain without a college degree (and also while being an idiot). He was able to purchase a four bedroom home in the community he grew up in and provide for his wife and three children on that one income.
That was the norm, now it's practically gone. The lack of accessible economic opportunity, housing, and childcare are major barriers to having kids. If the same opportunities were available to my generation as they were to Homer Simpson's, this article wouldn't exist.
No one I know is delaying or avoiding a family because "the media" didn't show them how to start a "non-prgressive" one.
I don’t think you should blindly trust everything you see on TV. I doubt being able to afford a 4 bedroom while working in a low skilled job was ever the norm (even without being an idiot).
In any case Homer was an engineer in a nuclear power plant, while he was probably quite underpaid, his income should had still been relatively decent.
The great reset theory many were down playing might be coming true where people don't own anything they rent everything from society
Fast forward to now and it is one of my very few regrets. I have three kids, but wish I would have started in my twenties and prioritized family more.
When I was in my twenties, the homer Simpsons of the world were idiots. In my thirties, they were the ones who got it right.
I'm paraphrasing, but Charlie Munger [1] recently said that our economic system depends on agony to get ahead.
> what makes capitalism work is the fact that if you’re an able-bodied young person and you refuse to work, you suffer a fair amount of agony. It’s because of that agony that the whole economic system work.
[0]: https://www.brookings.edu/book/dream-hoarders/
[1]: https://junto.investments/daily-journal-2022-transcript/
Marriage is a huge liability. Men are gambling with nearly all their lives on their partner's unwillingness into a divorce.
On the other hand I've heard rumors where therapists were suggesting divorce to married women. I don't know how widespread that is but maybe something worth looking into.
The party that has always been the primary caregiver is expected to keep that role, in general. Without a partner who works and gets paid, they are left scrambling to find a job. Since their resume has gone stale, they end up making a fraction of what they would have, had they stayed working. Don't forget, they're still probably the primary caregiver and have to handle finding daycare or babysitters so they can work and take care of of kids.
You can guess which parent generally get the more difficult role. So which side has it better?
My wife hasn't worked since she completed her Masters. If we split, she'd have a degree that qualifies her to be a teacher but not valid certifications. I make a very good salary. She'd have our kid because there's no math that would make sacrificing my job a reasonable option. I could give her half my net and I'd still live the high life but she would have to deal with all the details of scheduling our kid's life and I'd be able to opt out of it. I never plan to split but my life would be much easier than her life would be, if we did.
This is flat out incorrect. More than 2/3rds of married mothers in the US work.
Also, the division of assets is not out of proportion I think. If I got married and my partner left the workforce to take care of the home/children, I do think they should get their fair share of assets in case of divorce.
In the cases where both do, majority custody is almost always given to the wife.
> noting that nearly 30% of fathers surveyed did not want physical custody
> The outcome matched the re-quest for maternal custody in nearly 90% of such cases. See id. In contrast, paternal physical custody was awarded in only 75%
> in a 1992 study of 1,124 divorced families, 67.6% of children lived with their mothers; 15% lived with both parents on a joint custody basis; and only 9.5% lived with their fathers
If it was the 19th century and I observed that most women who took the bar exam passed the bar exam, would that prove that men and women were on an equal footing?
It would require other evidence (of which there is plenty, for the 19th century legal training pipeline, including explicit institutional discrimination) to show the bias.
But other evidence isn't just an unsupported narrative.
~30% of men don't want ANY custody. Yet ~67% of children live only with their mother.
Assuming that 100% of children that the father didn't want go to the mother (they don't - some go to the system or relatives) - that means in 47% of the other cases, the mother gets FULL custody.
So this means for 100% of those 47% of cases, the father did not want the mother to get FULL custody, but that's what the court decided.
:popcorn:
It says that men are more likely than women to take risks across several domains. This does not support the idea that men (more than women) are "risk assessors by nature".
The article also says that women and men are equally likely to take risks in the social domain... which probably includes marriage.
In general, I think the blithe characterization of men and women in this way does not move the dialogue forward.
There's a proverb about apples that seems relevant.
I don’t think they do this on purpose; I think they’re well meaning and don’t “want to judge.” The problem is that social judgement is what creates signals for what’s good and bad and what’s worthy and unworthy; what has value and what doesn’t. And people respond to signals.
Imagine that you’re just an average dude growing up in the middle of nowhere. College isn’t in the cards for you—you’re not cut out to be a Facebook engineer. But the local canning plant needs people to work. Do you think social signals don’t affect what choices you make?
There's the 40 page document of all the medical reasons you won't qualify for military service, one of which I have. Everyone says just join the military, but I suppose 7 year old me should have thought of that before I chose to get bone disease.
Military and trade jobs require an element of physicality, it's the nature of the work. It's not for everyone, but neither is University.
- claiming a single parent household is no worse for children than a two parent household
- claiming men have no particular importance in the raising of children
- financially supporting (in some cases subsidizing) single parent families
On the other hand, my social circle is highly educated and well-off and I’m not sure I know a single person who would agree with the first bullet.
The second point I’m less clear on myself: is there evidence that children of lesbian couples are somehow worse off?
Practically, these subsidies mean that poorer women who could marry the father of their children will often choose not to because they are getting money from the government that exceeds what the man can bring in. It is a little bit like the effect of a very high minimum wage: it helps a certain group of people, but prices many others out of the market. Each step of the process is a perfectly rational economic decision, and it completely destabilizes the home.
I have witnessed this firsthand with some of my relatives, who unfortunately behaved exactly as the microeconomics predicted. They had children out of wedlock, wanting to get married but also wanting to keep their benefits, and then ended up separating because the man's attempt to work like a dog to provide more than the government burned him out (he actually wanted to get married and do the right thing).
Edit: I also want to add that I'm pretty sure the second point here is not true. Lesbian and gay two-parent households don't seem to have worse outcomes than heterosexual couples.
No the aren't: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/01/100121135904.h... "The family type that is best for children is one that has responsible, committed, stable parenting. Two parents are, on average, better than one, but one really good parent is better than two not-so-good ones. The gender of parents only matters in ways that don't matter."
If it stands to reason that if the children of lesbian parents are indistinguishable from those of mixed-sex parents, then men play no particular role in the upbringing of children, no? They can be swapped out by a woman with no change for the child.
And conversely if a child raised by two gay men are indistinguishable from mix-sex parents, then woman play no particular role in the upbringing of children, no? Replace the mother with another man and nothing changes in that child's upbringing?
And therefore, one could argue that a single parent (only a man or woman) are only worse off due to limited parental resources (not to be underestimated), but not because an opposite sex partner would add anything unique to the childrearing.
Of course these days some people think the genders are not different, or whatever, some people think every strange though under the sun. I'm not speaking to those people they can believe whatever they want.
Have a read of 'Families and how survive them' for some detailed analysis of the roles of both genders in childrens development at various stages in their life.
There are plenty of wealthier families who shelter their children in ways poorer families cannot who have exactly the opposite views & approaches from what you described. Those efforts are often carried out through churches.
So we need to find a reason that you agree with. Not a better reason.
It's not that the article delivered any proof.
"How do education expenditures vary with alternative district and community measures? Students in districts enrolling the lowest percentages of students in poverty and the lowest percentages of students in need of special education services received the highest expenditures."
If you're not in the top 5% - I'm not sure this an insane world view.
If you just want to have an average job and not a career in the right field or run a business - life seems less like a positive sum game and more like a zero sum game.
It's easy for us at the top to talk about "making a bigger pie" when we get 90% of the bigger pie.
Assuming young healthy men, the next big issue is values. Are they self centered? Prideful? Presumptuous? These are values parents teach to avoid and cultivate beneficial qualities - they cannot be delegated to others. A growing trend is the absent parent (entire other thread on its own - not faulting the parent). Schools or anyone else should not teach children this. Out of need it happens at times and what you see is a reflection of the broader community.
First of I would believe it's an educational problem and second it's a 'who cares' problem.
There are plenty of areas/ghettos of low income and low education around.
The blog also contains the following:
"The people with the most money and education—the class most responsible for shaping culture and customs—ensure that their children are raised in stable homes. But actively undermine the norm for everyone else"
How do they undermine the norm? They don't do this on purpose they are also just humans.