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Comment by jacob2484 | Hacker News Reader

These stats focus on fatherless homes, which are dire:

#1. 85% of youth who are currently in prison grew up in a fatherless home. (Texas Department of Corrections)

#2. 7 out of every 10 youth that are housed in state-operated correctional facilities, including detention and residential treatment, come from a fatherless home. (U.S. Department of Justice)

#3. 39% of students in the United States, from the first grade to their senior year of high school, do not have a father at home. Children without a father are 4 times more likely to be living in poverty than children with a father. (National Public Radio)

#4. Children from fatherless homes are twice as likely to drop out from school before graduating than children who have a father in their lives. (National Public Radio)

Sidenote - A central tenet of Marxism is the dismantling of the “nuclear family structure.”

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Not sure why you're being downvoted, we can't have a discussion about the topic of single parent homes without asking where %50 of the parents are, what incentives make that route seem more economical, and what the effects of missing one might be.

Discrediting the nuclear family unit as the tool of patriarchy is absolutely a central tenet of anti-oppression education programs. I would be surprised if anyone who had exposure to that kind of curriculum would find that controversial.

If that is controversial, perhaps we need better frameworks and tools that enable people to discuss it.

Agreed, for instance BLM's website used to say:

> We disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement by...

[0] https://web.archive.org/web/20190118185735/https://blacklive...

why didn't you post the entire statement?

   We disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement 
   by supporting each other as extended families and “villages” that 
   collectively care for one another, especially our children, to the degree 
   that mothers, parents, and children are comfortable.

I don't see anything nefarious or particularly "Marxist" about this. A conservative or Christian would surely agree that greater community and cultural bonds and involvement in the welfare of youth is morally just and in alignment with traditional American values.

Because only the first part of the sentence looks bad.

It is bad. How in the world would having both your parents living at home somehow limit connection and relationship with other familiy members and the community?

I agree with your last statement 100%. Why in the world would it be necessary to disrupt the nuclear family to have greater community and cultural bonds?

Some of the founders of BLM are self-proclaimed Marxists. I don't think it is much of a stretch to say there is some sort of a connection between Marxism and being anti-family.

It doesn't seem that disruptive to me, but trying to portray it as a Marxist anti-family statement is still a stretch. It appears to advocate "disruption" of the nuclear family model through greater community involvement rather than "disruption" through dismantling it. It's still not an anti nuclear-family statement per se, it's just against having the nuclear family unit being the only relevant influence in societal upbringing.

Which in a rural white community would literally be a Sunday church sermon.

krapp, BLM explicitly states that they want to disrupt the nuclear family.

Again, why in the world would it be necessary to disrupt the nuclear family to gain greater connection to extended family and the community??

You are misplacing the disruption on the nuclear family, when it is actually saying to disrupt the requirement on nuclear families.

This refers to ways our society benefits 2-parent households and makes things harder for single parents. They suggest addressing this by providing more support and community for each other, not by tearing down nuclear families.

As an analogy, installing wheelchair ramps doesn't prevent people from climbing stairs, it just makes building more accessible.

It isn't society making it easier for two parents to raise a child vs one parent. It's having double the number of people raising that child.

I see no way to read that as BLM supports the nuclear family. So the largest social justice movement in the US doesn't support two parent families. That seems pretty significant

Why was this downvoted?

I think it was downvoted because of his sidenote on Marxism.

note that many snide comments about Christianity exist in this discussion. They're not down voted. This place is becoming a left-wing echo chamber.

Like what?

I'm perhaps a little sensitive to this and may have overstated things. The comment in particular I was thinking of has indeed been down voted now.

I do see it in maybe a less overt way in a lot of comments on HN. There are comments in this discussion blaming a lack of social programs in the US for the problem. Things like that. There's nothing wrong with believing that, but the counter arguments don't get much visibility around here.

Tech industry in general is suffering the same fate. If your views run counter to what’s trending and work in tech you’re putting your job at risk if you communicate them.

I didn't downvote it. But the closing line about Marxism seems both dubious and, at most, tangentially relevant.

It is accurate, based on both The Communist Manifesto (1848) and The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State (1884).

Can you offer more specific citations -- say, to particular passages?

The relevant passages are far too long to quote here.

I suggest reading chapter 2 (starting at "Abolition of the family!") for the first, and chapter 2.3 and 2.4 for the second.

Citing 3 facts and then adding a sidenote about how Marxism wants this is indirectly implying that Marxism is a noteworthy cause.

I don't believe Marxism is a primary cause.

While I don't really know anything about Marxism, I doubt it baselessly advocates for the removal of family structures without something to replace it like community engagement

It's annoying to hear people preach about the woes of Marxism, because, and this is a biased US perspective, a very small proportion of left leaning individuals would ever describe themselves as Marxist. People doing so would be seen as holding extreme opinions. Hearing fearmongering about communists comes off as a red flag that someone's out of touch with reality and fearful of the amorphous blog that is "the left". It comes off as an implicit strawman. Attacking Marxism as means to undermine the credibility of the left is eye-rollingly tiresome to hear. And yeah, of course, comes with plausible deniability. Nothing good will come of that comment but an unpleasant debate of predictably mainstream left folks arguing semantically that marxism doesn't matter, a fringe actual marxist doing their own thing, and a conservative viewpoint playing off both to say "look there's marxist" or "well I saw this extreme opinion on twitter so no".

https://www.csustan.edu/sites/default/files/History/Faculty/...

Marxism and Marxist-influenced movements are also very represented in academia, which naturally makes them influential among the literati at large.

That's great, but also, nobody cares about the opinions of "the litearti". Actual political structures are pretty clear. Marxism is not a popular ideology in America by any definition.

I think you are uninformed in contemporary critical theory and other popular movements, most of which are absolutely influenced by Marxism, if they aren’t strictly Marxists or Marxians themselves.

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