No One Expects Young Men to Do Anything and They Respond by Doing Nothing (2022)

Re:No One Expects Young Men to Do Anything and They Respond ... by Amezarak on Monday July 22, 2024 @11:29AM (#41035566)

I think they're making the argument that the upper classes make the argument that family stability is unimportant and should be de-prioritized in favor of "doing what makes you happy", but they don't actually believe that when it comes to their own families. The effect (according to OP) is that the upper classes are destabilizing the lower classes by advertising norms they don't actually believe in.

> The people with the most money and education—the class most responsible for shaping politics and culture and customs—ensure that their children are raised in stable homes.

> But actively undermine the norm for everyone else.

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Re:No One Expects Young Men to Do Anything and They Respond ... by when_creaks on Monday July 22, 2024 @12:02PM (#41035952)

For ease of reference the author cites the following studies in his article in support of his argument that elites shape political views, culture and norms:

1. "Elite Influence on General Political Preferences"

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S266731932...

2. "Exploring the direct and indirect effects of elite influence on public opinion"

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...

3. "Trickle-Down Preferences: Preferential Conformity to High Status Peers in Fashion Choices"

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...

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Re:No One Expects Young Men to Do Anything and They Respond ... by Vegenoid on Monday July 22, 2024 @11:52AM (#41035831)

> they're making the argument that the upper classes make the argument that family stability is unimportant and should be de-prioritized in favor of "doing what makes you happy", but they don't actually believe that when it comes to their own families

Yes, but they do not support this with data, just an anecdote.

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Re:No One Expects Young Men to Do Anything and They Respond ... by ryandrake on Monday July 22, 2024 @11:47AM (#41035767)

Yea, this is what I got out of it too: The "elite" (whoever they are) are deliberately changing cultural norms to promote single motherhood, unmarried cohabitation, family instability, and so on, but they hypocritically forbidding these things in their own families, and will only admit it in private.

Two questions he doesn't seem to answer:

1. How are The Elite™ actually doing this? Cultural norms are set by culture itself, not some "cultural lawmakers" holed up in an ivory tower somewhere. By what mechanism are these upper class mustache-twirlers "setting cultural norms" for the rest of us? I think this needed more discussion.

2. Why are they doing it? How do they benefit from growing dysfunction and deprivation and society in general going down the drain? How are they benefiting from unmoored non-productive men sitting around all over the place? What is the end game?

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Re:No One Expects Young Men to Do Anything and They Respond ... by AnimalMuppet on Monday July 22, 2024 @12:03PM (#41035964)

I wonder if the elite might be trapped by the culture. (Hear me out, here...)

I don't think the elite actually control the culture. To a large degree, the culture controls the (external behavior of) the elite. They have to appear to be everything they're supposed to be. So they give verbal agreement to single motherhood, unmarried cohabitation, and so on, so that the culture doesn't condemn them. But for themselves, they know that those things cause damage to the next generation, and they avoid it like the plague.

Note that this may be true even if "culture" means elite culture. I could see the culture among elites being that 1) you would be condemned if you were not sufficiently verbally supportive of single motherhood and related shibboleths, and 2) you would be condemned if any such thing happened in your family. (I don't actually know; I don't hang out in those circles, and I don't have a good handle on actual elite culture.)

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Re:No One Expects Young Men to Do Anything and They Respond ... by ryandrake on Monday July 22, 2024 @12:13PM (#41036099)

> They have to appear to be everything they're supposed to be. So they give verbal agreement to single motherhood, unmarried cohabitation, and so on, so that the culture doesn't condemn them.

But why?

Article>> Yes, she agreed, stability does matter to children; but having made that enormous concession to my point of view, she suggested jokingly that I had better leave now. It was not a concession she would make openly, and nor could she have articulated it in the course of the meeting.

Why is she so uncomfortable about saying it openly? Is this some kind of controversy I'm too un-elite to get?

We tell our kid "Don't be a single mom, it's a really tough life, and usually ends up as poverty." And she sees examples of this just looking at her peers' single moms. Not a single person I know would ostracize me for this take. It's pretty uncontroversial and backed up by data at this point.

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