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About the Boys
“It’s about what these women will let guys get away with.” You may not expect to hear commentary like that at your garden variety think tank panel discussion, but it got pretty lively at the American Enterprise Institute discussion on the topic “Do Healthy Families Affect the Wealth of States?”
Megan McArdle of Bloomberg View is author of the above comment. The question at hand was: Why are so many young women (64 percent of moms under the age of 30) having children out of wedlock? The class divide in America is nowhere as wide as on the matter of marriage. College educated men and women are sticking with the traditional order of marriage first, children after. Not only that, but they are far less likely to divorce than their parents’ generation. Those with only some college or less, by contrast, are much less likely to marry before having children, and much more likely to divorce if they do marry.
McArdle was answering her own question in a sense. She noted that many who had studied the retreat from marriage among the uneducated propose the “working class men are garbage” thesis. According to this view, lots of young men are unemployed and playing video games all day. Why would a young woman want to marry such a loser? She’d just be getting another kid.
But as McArdle observes, someone is enabling that behavior on the part of the young men. Someone is putting a roof over their heads, food in their bellies, and paying the electricity bill so that the game console stays on. Is it his parents? Or is it a young woman? If she has a child (possibly his child), she is eligible for a whole panoply of government assistance, including TANF, food stamps, WIC, housing assistance, low income home energy assistance, and much more. Thirty years ago, in Losing Ground, Charles Murray wondered whether the welfare state was enabling the sort of behavior that isn’t good for people – like having children out of wedlock.
The question still stands. In the interim, Congress passed and President Bill Clinton signed a welfare reform bill that was successful in reducing welfare dependency to some degree and certainly contributed to a drop in childhood poverty. Two disheartening things have happened since: 1) the Obama administration unilaterally vitiated the work requirements in the welfare law through regulation; and 2) the secular trend toward unwed parenthood continued unabated.
Is it the lack of jobs for high school graduates that has made young men less “marriageable” or is it the retreat from marriage that makes kids who grow up in unstable homes less able to take advantage of job opportunities? Chicken? Egg?
Most of the panel members agreed that causation is probably a two-way street. What is not in doubt is the association of intact families with greater wealth, employment, security, and all-around high functioning. A study by W. Bradford Wilcox, Joseph Price, and Robert I. Lerman found that states with higher than average percentages of married parents were associated with higher median incomes, lower levels of child poverty, greater social mobility, and higher male labor force participation rates, among other measures of success, than states with higher levels of unwed parenting.
Life ain’t fair, and cannot be made perfectly fair. But it almost seems a conspiracy of silence among the college educated to keep from the working class the key secret to their success. Particularly in families with college-educated couples who don’t divorce (the vast majority), children are given security, stability, money, time, a kin network, and a thousand other advantages. The children of single parents, by contrast (and yes, many do fine) are much more likely to suffer from feelings of abandonment, to live in poverty, to cope with emotional tumult in their mother’s life (most live with mom), to be sexually abused, to be forced to adapt to a blended family, and so on. Also, as David Autor and Melanie Wasserman suggest in their report Wayward Sons for The Third Way: “A growing body of evidence … indicates that the absence of stable fathers from children’s lives has particularly significant adverse consequences for boys’ psychosocial development and educational achievement.”
There may be lots of reasons, starting with their parents, why many young, high school graduate males are unemployed and playing video games. But if young women consider them unfit husbands, they ought also to be unfit fathers, right? Unless, the state is the father. Over to you, Charles Murray.
Published in Domestic Policy, Marriage
So, another article on those evil video game playing men who live in a basement somewhere. Well, video games are a classic example of escapism. When you feel that you are a miserable failure at life, stuck on the dole or at job that will lead nowhere, video games let you succeed at something. As a plus, if you play the same set of games or buy used or inexpensive games, it isn’t that expensive. It also is not directly damaging to the body like booze or tobacco.
I understand that the Ricochet solution is obviously to start your own business, or aggressively mold yourself into the ideal resume. This dismisses the talent of small-business owners and the current saturated job market. No amount of chanting “Bootstraps! Man up! Free Market!” will change that.
I’d suggest that the gig economy will help turn this around. Doing minor jobs on their own will help them get out of the rut, and start to move toward self-sufficiency.
As far as women are concerned, it is most certainly a two-way street. I think other comments have summarized it.
This is certainly true for one sector of males, usually white and coming from middle class backgrounds. “The Eternal Geek”. But not all of them.
I wouldn’t call it a scam so much as I’d call it an entitlement mentality. Girls are taught in schools (and in some neighborhoods) that the government will take care of them if they have children out of wedlock. It’s widely considered a right to be supported by the state if a girl gets pregnant while unmarried. This sets up an atmosphere of “Go ahead, do whatever you like, there’ll be no consequences”.
Ann’s approach overall was a failure because she argued facts about “populations” to people – including the despicable padre – who replied with facts about individuals. Thus, they deemed her “mean” and “uncaring.”
Ann should have announced that she was addressing the much bigger audience not in the studio: those women sitting on their fat rears watching the show while their kids were God knows where.
Or perhaps your perception of the problem has no basis:
https://dalrock.wordpress.com/2012/12/17/in-search-of-the-peter-pan-manboy/
And is instead an exercise in bias confirmation…
or whatever.
Ricochetti! Here’s the link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gSoKoDS179c
Watch it and weep for your country.
And Catholics, weep for your religion, falling under the spell of Cultural Marxism.
I will take the catholic church seriously on family issues when they put away the annulment rubber stamp.
Free,
Father Feel Good. He tells them just what they want to hear. He makes sure to ride over even Ann Coulter’s straight hard verifiable truths. He is not alone. I have heard plenty of Rabbi’s doing the same thing. We are in big trouble when there is no one left in this society in a position of social responsibility who is actually responsible.
Regards,
Jim
When the woman said half of them had never heard of her before today, Ann should have responded, “That’s because I write books”. Would’ve been classic Coulter.
Yes, there was a legitimate reason people stopped using the term, but it was not inconsequential to the acceptance of the practice.
Given how large the video game industry is and the breadth of people who play them, it’s getting a little ridiculous that people continue to cling to negative stereotypes of those who play them.
Although as a Catholic we do have our share of Catholic clergy who are enamoured with cultural marxism and seem to preach THAT instead the word of the Lord. This guy is an Ex- Catholic, he switched to over to be an Episcopalian priest to get married.
Absolutely, tut-tutting about games and gamers in general makes people sound the town folks fretting about the new pool table in the Music Man. My comments were geared towards a specific subset of gamers that could aptly be called “manboys.”
Working in comics and seeing many of the students who go to my wife’s “tech” school can confirm they’re real and appear to be growing.
England saw this trend of 20 something’s refusing to grow up and move out decades before. The Japanese has a particularly strident strain of young recluses called hikikomori. It’s definitely seems to be more than just a problem with modern culture- or the nasty ol’ videa games.
It is also lot cheaper addiction than Booze or Drugs with the added benefit it does does not make you due stupid things other than procrastinate.
I have issues with this whole lazy generation discussion. We are only copying our elders. How many lazy “Retired” people are out there who sit around all day doing nothing but watching TV, fishing, ect. We just happen to be Rich young people historically speaking, so it does not take a lot of money to start a partial retirement early. When all you care about is information and most of the material things are only to get at the information, you don’t need a lot of money, especially with free government handouts.
My generation are not Materialistic driven but we are Entertainment driven. So it is perfectly rational behavior were we maximize entertainment time and minimize working time.
When as a society the only value we place on work is the money we get from it, you are going to get minimal work time to maximize what we really value, fun. I mean 70% to 80% of hard working people I work with that are middle age want to win the lottery so they can do the old people equivalent of play video games all day sooner. So stop pointing the finger at generational differences on the entertainment median. We are only copying our elders and because we are so much richer than they were at our age and we are not nearly as materialistic we are just living the example they have shown us a little early.
We are in this mess because we have a nation full of self-centered, now lazy, narcissistic 65+ year old who care more about doing nothing and retirement than the next generation and young people. When the elders of any society don’t teach and pass on their experience to the younger generation, the next generation is going to go downhill.
So watch were you point your figure because you have three pointing right back at you.
Too true. Mollie wrote this excellent piece over at The Federalist a couple years ago regarding our culture’s new loathing of having babies. I’m reminded of Huxley’s Brave New World in which motherhood was a dirty word. When you suggest babies are “punishment” with the world’s biggest microphone, yep, people are going to listen. But in this case I think he was reflecting a view that was already growing in our culture.
“Fecundophobia” as Mollie calls it, combined with the systematic destruction of the nuclear family, militant feminism, and the decades-long crushing of the male spirit, yeah, no surprise that men have pretty much checked out. Society tells them they have no purpose, and they only cause trouble anyway.
I’m happily married with two kids, and all this makes me want to check out, too.
With all due respect, it’s ridiculous to make a correlation between a woman’s success in the marketplace and male slackers.
Yikes; what a sorry a** excuse for poor parenting! My GG father who had high expectations for both me and the man I married would claim acting like a man must include the sense to select an accomplished mate.
Brian’s comment #74 is just about the most depressing comment I’ve ever read on Ricochet, assuming it is not tongue-in-cheek.
For the working generation to say about retirees, “Hey, we’re just imitating those lazy sacks of ____” is appalling. Firstly, retirees have completed their working lives, in many or most cases after having worked hard. Secondly, this excuse is merely an example of tu quoque – a logical fallacy.
Sadly, I do believe that a change has occurred where there are more consumers than doers. There was a day when our society had a certain vigor and (sorry, ladies) much of it was an expression of masculine striving. Today, masculinity is expressed by fake testicles swinging under the trailer hitch of a slacker’s pickup truck.
Ah, I should’ve known from the full-white collar.
But he’s not saying anything that the majority of the Catholic clergy aren’t, wouldn’t or won’t say.
After all, “Who am I to judge?”
Saying “it’s ridiculous” is not an rebuttal.
Look around you. Observe the differences in what men and women do and how they act now to what men and women did and how they acted in your GG-father’s time.
What are you going to believe, your ideology or your lying eyes?
Agree. Read the second paragraph of my comment.
Some of us lazy retirees are going “Galt,” from the novel Atlas Shrugged. My personal goal was submitting at least one patentable idea each year I worked. During the Obama years, the Defense Companies were not as interested in new ideas, only milking Uncle Sam for re-boxing the same old stuff. So rather than just get a paycheck, I decided to give mine to someone else that needed to make a mortgage payment.
Hey, don’t knock the Truck Nuts. It makes the pick-up, a vehicle already loathed by feminists of both genders for its association with toxic masculinity, even more offensive. And every time you make an SJW cry, an angel gets its wings.
EThompson: parents in general are probably not any worse now than they used to be; some are great, some are horrible, most are somewhere in between. It has always been that way, and it always will be. In the past, most men became productive citizens even though they didn’t necessarily have brilliant parents. If feminism can only work with exceptional parents, then we should give it a second look.
Judith, I don’t speak of brilliant parents (although my father would love to argue this) but simply of those who just do their damn job by enforcing the code:
Buck up, act like a man or a warrior princess and take personal responsibility.
How complicated is that message?
EThompson, what would you attribute the problems that some young men are experiencing to? Do you believe that the parents of the past were superior to those of the present? If they were superior, it should be noted that they respected the fact that boys and girls are different.
That is an interesting comment.
I think that GG parents had an advantage in the fact that societal values were far more homogeneous than they are now. Parents could rely upon other families for backup.
My mother and father traveled a lot during our youth but their mischievous children were never able to get into any serious trouble. The entire neighborhood was keeping an eye on us. :\
As for gender id, there was very little discussion. My brother and I were both expected to achieve accordingly.
EThompson: I am not suggesting that feminist child rearing will always be a disaster for every family that does it, but in general young men aren’t doing as well as they used to. I think feminism might have something to do with that. I am radical on this issue, but for those who are less radical, then at the very least we should get rid of affirmative action for women. That, along with all of the anti male rhetoric that goes on in schools, must be so demoralizing for boys and young men.
We can certainly agree upon that but why are parents allowing schools and society to feminize their sons?
I would add that this ‘trend’ is no fun for girls either; I’ve always enjoyed the natural behavioral differences between the sexes and continue to do so as an aunt to two rowdy nephews. They’re absolutely exhausting and eat gi-normous amounts of food but are highly entertaining. :)
It’s definitely no fun for girls, that’s why I hate it :)
As for why parents are allowing this all to happen to their sons, I have no idea. In some ways, I am glad that I don’t have children: my values are so far away from the way most kids are being raised these days, I really don’t know how my kids, if I had any, would deal with it. I cannot understand how parents can allow their sons to be attacked the way feminism attacks them.