Reply to Why Is the Pundit Class Suddenly So Marriage-Obsessed?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Lots of young single grandmothers and aunties raise their grandchildren with single mothers. That’s common in some circles. [/quote]
This shifts the responsibilities of men (the father) even more squarely onto the shoulders of even more women than just the mother. This is not sustainable for a healthy culture.

It also creates a self-fulfilling cycle of male irresponsibility—Disengaged, low-investment, irresponsible men leave women alone with kids who raise disengaged, irresponsible boys, who grow up into disengaged, irresponsible men that women leave, etc etc. Look at cultural circles where this is de facto the case: their outcomes are abysmal.[/quote]

We saw evidence of this in the precipitous drop in crime rates in the 90s. Post-Roe v. Wade, women who weren't in a position to raise children well were more likely to get abortions. That led to fewer damaged, irresponsible boys and, therefore, lower crime rates. We should reinstate Roe. [/quote]
I disagree—all the millenial women complaining presently got married to loser manchildren who were not aborted after Roe. It’s the product of a decimation of moral virtue and cultural values, which is what the pundits are ostensibly trying to restore.[/quote]

The past was, more or less, a moral hell hole. Just look at how we treated gay people until very recently. [/quote]

It's not so black and white. Yes as to the treatment of gay people. But in the past, it was, for example, much easier to support a family on one relatively low income. It was easier to pay for housing, medical care (even though it was inferior in many ways), and education. People tended to be more connected to their communities because it was where they were raised, so they had families, friends, churches, and other charitable organizations willing and able to help. Society has become, in many ways, much more cruel generally even as we moreso recognize that it is wrong to mistreat people based on sexual orientation, gender, race, etc.[/quote]

I think a lot of the good aspects you note about life in the past is probably colored by nostalgia. How good was life for the average black woman? The average West Virginian white laborer (an example I raise, because I remember reading about Bobby Kennedy highlighting Appalachian poverty in 1968)? The wife of the average Southern rural sharecropper?

Probably my only point is that generalizations are hard to substantiate and, as the man said, "the good old days weren't always good, and tomorrow ain't as bad as it seems." [/quote]
Agree. I remember an older friend of mine used to comment that movies did not depict the past as she remembered it: that in the 1930s everything looked dirtier and simpler and people had very little—one skillet in the kitchen kind of thing. I think lots of marriages were terrible and people may have stayed together but it was because of social mores at the time. People often got married strictly because of pregnancy—the shotgun marriage, because of the shame of illegitimacy. I’m sure many of these marriages were fine, but I’m sure many were not. People also did get divorced; in researching my genealogy I found several in the 19th and early 20th century, along with people who obviously deserted their families and in one case the divorced wife called herself became a “widow” in her next marriage in a different state. I think workarounds like this existed. There was a dark joke: “He went out for a pack of cigarettes and never came back.” There were people who separated and lived apart and/or had affairs. I’m sure that lots or most gay people married and lived a lie. I think marriage is hard and neither I nor my parents or my husband’s parents got divorced, but I don’t understand the idea that it’s necessarily a better state for people because more people did in the past. [/quote]

The point is not that the past was an ideal for everybody (or even anybody). The point is that there were many aspects of culture in the past that were more humane and conducive to supporting families with children. In the US, [b]the last 30-40 years have seen massive shifts in wealth, cuts in social safety nets, concentration of power, destruction of unions[/b], etc. etc. So, yes, it is better for LGBT rights, better for women in many ways, better for POC in many ways. But it is foolish to say that we have improved morally as a society in all, or even most, ways.

By the way, on Appalachian poverty, spend some time in rural West Virginia. It's hard to say it is an improvement overall, and lots of evidence to suggest it has gotten worse over the last few decades in many of those communities.[/quote]

The overlap of pundits bemoaning the current state of marriage and pundits pushing for a reinvigorated Labor movement is tiny. [/quote]

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