> This highly educated and affluent person prioritized stability for her own children. But refused to publicly endorse this value so that less fortunate children could also benefit from family stability.
I’m from a rigidly socially conservative immigrant family that professes fashionably liberal values in public—imposing a double standard between “us” and “Americans.” Meanwhile my wife’s family is from a working class part of the Oregon coast. Watching and hearing about the family instability in these communities is heartbreaking. Half or more of everyone’s parents are divorced. The kids float around seeking stability and the adults can’t provide it.
The article is right on the mark talking about the importance of social expectations for men. My family’s rigid expectations have been such a blessing. It made a difference that the way to earn their respect was to get an education and a good job and support my family, and knowing that I would lose that respect if I did anything selfish to destabilize my kids’ lives. The contrast made me realize that professing liberal social values that one doesn’t live by harms society. It matters what we say about what’s good and what’s bad, what works and what doesn’t. Creating a culture where men can attain dignity and social respect by providing for their family and staying with the mother of their kids matters. And creating a culture where men are told it’s okay not to do those things creates harm.
This isn’t really a political point though it sounds like one. Social change has swept through America so thoroughly that the head of the “conservative” party is a three-times-divorced man of little character. The social and cultural guard rails have been removed from the whole country. But the impact is obviously felt most damagingly in parts of the country where men need to find dignity in working at the animal feed plant are harder hit by that cultural change than parts of the country where men can find dignity earning half a million dollars a year doing interesting knowledge work.