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Comment by Helitioo | Hacker News Reader

We need to find a better reason why this happens. I don't believe it's liberal social values which are not lived by.

First of I would believe it's an educational problem and second it's a 'who cares' problem.

There are plenty of areas/ghettos of low income and low education around.

The blog also contains the following:

"The people with the most money and education—the class most responsible for shaping culture and customs—ensure that their children are raised in stable homes. But actively undermine the norm for everyone else"

How do they undermine the norm? They don't do this on purpose they are also just humans.

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> How do they undermine the norm?

Richer people have kids in their thirties, so the media is full of people in their twenties living it up. Poorer men have kids in their twenties and then they feel like losers for living the boring lifestyle of a responsible breadwinner. They want to copy the carefree lifestyle shown as "normal" by our culture.

That’s an interesting point, one I wish the article had made explicitly.

Perhaps the best way to copy that lifestyle would be to, well, copy the choice to not have kids in their twenties (or teens). It’s hard to see how the choice by some to delay kids is somehow undermining others.

Conversely, the choice to have kids earlier brings its own set of benefits (having more physical energy is one that I wished for somewhat often and I think there’s evidence of earlier pregnancies being lower risk).

It’s sort of funny: they make the same mistake the “red pill” crowd makes. First they want to emulate a false reality that doesn’t exist, then some of them end up rejecting that same false reality that never existed (the red pill crowd) and end up tilting against windmills. Both groups have deluded themselves by choosing keep their eyes closed to the actual reality they exist in which is far more mundane.

> How do they undermine the norm? They don't do this on purpose they are also just humans.

I read a book [1] that argued the upper middle class follows very traditional values (two-parent families, marrying before having children, having at least one adult working 40 hours a week) but doesn't really advocate for those traditional values.

People in the upper middle class will praise the bravery of single mothers and say there's nothing to be ashamed of - but when it comes time to have children of their own, rarely choose that for themselves.

It's not entirely hypocritical, of course; just because I think gays have nothing to be ashamed of, doesn't mean I have to become gay myself!

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coming_Apart_(book)

Probably because single motherhood is generally not a choice made willingly.

There isn't any hypocrisy here, they don't endorse single motherhood because it's fashionable they "endorse" it because the alternative is worse.

they endorse it in order to reduce stigma; but reduced stigma leads to greater prevalence

Changing the meaning of words (i.e, reducing stigma) never works. It's a practice used by authoritarians to get what they want fast because it's cheap and relatively easy.

I'm curious what the GP was told that makes them think the alternative to endorsing single motherhood is worse. The alternative to reducing stigma would be fixing the underlying issues that cause the stigma...in this case the lack of ability for a single parent to provide. We have plenty of resources to fix this, but they're disproportionately distributed in favor of those at the top. Funny enough, both the left and right at the top have solutions different than what I described. The left wants to destigmatize, and the right wants to shame (another cheap and relatively easy tactic used by authoritarians).

The Modest Proposal is to put all children of single mothers into foster homes. Done, no more single mothers.

Destigmatizing doesn't increase prevalence more than the conditions that actually cause it (welfare donut hole, the drug war).

Curious what you see as these worse alternatives? Abortion, adoption, abandonment, forced marriage, forced labor for child support?

Yes, I think all of those are worse if they are effectively coerced.

There is a stigma in pushing stable values. In a very real sense, it’s created by a media environment that eschews non-progressive (it’s not liberal - at least in the USA) family structures.

Let’s face it, Homer Simpson is the face of traditional American family structures.

> Homer Simpson is the face of traditional American family structures.

The life available to Homer Simpson included a skilled job that he could obtain without a college degree (and also while being an idiot). He was able to purchase a four bedroom home in the community he grew up in and provide for his wife and three children on that one income.

That was the norm, now it's practically gone. The lack of accessible economic opportunity, housing, and childcare are major barriers to having kids. If the same opportunities were available to my generation as they were to Homer Simpson's, this article wouldn't exist.

No one I know is delaying or avoiding a family because "the media" didn't show them how to start a "non-prgressive" one.

So was Al Bundy or Dan Conner from Roseanne.

The great reset theory many were down playing might be coming true where people don't own anything they rent everything from society

> That was the norm

I don’t think you should blindly trust everything you see on TV. I doubt being able to afford a 4 bedroom while working in a low skilled job was ever the norm (even without being an idiot).

In any case Homer was an engineer in a nuclear power plant, while he was probably quite underpaid, his income should had still been relatively decent.

Being able to support a family on one, non-degree necessary income absolutely was the norm.

When I was in my twenties, I thought having a family before you were in your thirties meant you were kinda dumb. That’s what people who didn’t have ambitions did.

Fast forward to now and it is one of my very few regrets. I have three kids, but wish I would have started in my twenties and prioritized family more.

When I was in my twenties, the homer Simpsons of the world were idiots. In my thirties, they were the ones who got it right.

I've came to the very same conclusions.

Most people follow the conservative values, being "normal" is easiest. Its a matter of tolerance to other ideas or situation. Some either utterly rejects things that don't conform, or just wish to hide and shame them. Other people feel tolerance to differences is a good idea. And some people go full circle and want to shame anyone who doesn't completely identifies with the different ideas.

It makes sense upper middle class wouldn't advocate for traditional values. They instead put up barriers to join the upper middle class. The book "Dream Hoarders" captures this well (restrictive zoning, parents helping finding internships, etc) [0]. If the playbook was available to everyone, then it would make maintaining your own position in the hierarchy all the more difficult. One thing the upper middle class fears the most is losing their position in society: the class provides solid income, but it isn't enough wealth to prevent being wiped out by a health incident or a bad investment.

I'm paraphrasing, but Charlie Munger [1] recently said that our economic system depends on agony to get ahead.

> what makes capitalism work is the fact that if you’re an able-bodied young person and you refuse to work, you suffer a fair amount of agony. It’s because of that agony that the whole economic system work.

[0]: https://www.brookings.edu/book/dream-hoarders/

[1]: https://junto.investments/daily-journal-2022-transcript/

From what I've heard the problem are divorce courts granting women nearly everything. That rigs the game against dads.

Marriage is a huge liability. Men are gambling with nearly all their lives on their partner's unwillingness into a divorce.

On the other hand I've heard rumors where therapists were suggesting divorce to married women. I don't know how widespread that is but maybe something worth looking into.

>I don't know how widespread that is

There's a proverb about apples that seems relevant.

Plenty of much more sophisticated and educated men continue to get married despite that, but you're suggesting that these less educated and knowledgeable men are incentivized by modern family law?

It seems obvious to me there are situations where a therapist should help their client/patient explore divorce as an option.

As far as I know, in the US, the custody and house/apartment is almost always given to the parent who /wants/ the children. Men often don't fight for custody. They should.

Also, the division of assets is not out of proportion I think. If I got married and my partner left the workforce to take care of the home/children, I do think they should get their fair share of assets in case of divorce.

> Men often don't fight for custody.

In the cases where both do, majority custody is almost always given to the wife.

Do you have a study for this? When I researched it briefly years ago it seems when men ask for custody they often get exactly the custody they ask for, and the narrative they don’t is something largely spread by people who are either ignorant or men who were denied custody for heinous examples of abuse. Men simply ask for custody less or ask for less custody broadly.

https://scholarship.law.stjohns.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?arti...

> noting that nearly 30% of fathers surveyed did not want physical custody

> The outcome matched the re-quest for maternal custody in nearly 90% of such cases. See id. In contrast, paternal physical custody was awarded in only 75%

> in a 1992 study of 1,124 divorced families, 67.6% of children lived with their mothers; 15% lived with both parents on a joint custody basis; and only 9.5% lived with their fathers

This was published well over 20 years ago. Do you have anything more reflective of modern days? Taking it at face value, assuming nothing has changed (a big assumption) it’s still the case that the vast majority of men who ask for custody are awarded custody.

I'm not sure how you possibly reached that conclusion.

~30% of men don't want ANY custody. Yet ~67% of children live only with their mother.

Assuming that 100% of children that the father didn't want go to the mother (they don't - some go to the system or relatives) - that means in 47% of the other cases, the mother gets FULL custody.

So this means for 100% of those 47% of cases, the father did not want the mother to get FULL custody, but that's what the court decided.

This fails to correct for how many fathers won't even ask for custody because there's such a low chance of getting it.

If it was the 19th century and I observed that most women who took the bar exam passed the bar exam, would that prove that men and women were on an equal footing?

> If it was the 19th century and I observed that most women who took the bar exam passed the bar exam, would that prove that men and women were on an equal footing?

It would require other evidence (of which there is plenty, for the 19th century legal training pipeline, including explicit institutional discrimination) to show the bias.

But other evidence isn't just an unsupported narrative.

The laws and the system against that are openly and publicly against men, its not exactly a secret.

Women also file for divorce 60 - 75% of the time (up to near 80% in the black community). Men are risk assessors by nature, and see no benefit to risking their livelihoods for such little benefit.

By nature? Really? What are women, by nature?

:popcorn:

Lmgtfy which might encourage you to reconsider making flame bait comments that serve no useful purpose.

http://journal.sjdm.org/jdm06016.pdf

I loved the idea of this comment, so I read the article.

It says that men are more likely than women to take risks across several domains. This does not support the idea that men (more than women) are "risk assessors by nature".

The article also says that women and men are equally likely to take risks in the social domain... which probably includes marriage.

In general, I think the blithe characterization of men and women in this way does not move the dialogue forward.

My point was it’s roughly equal, why make a shitty comment trying to start a fight instead of looking up the information.

Because the parent comment was ignorant and stupid. Making statements like "one gender does a thing by nature" that is not tied to a core biological function is ridiculous. Now, if we want to have a discussion about "by nurture," then we're able to talk honestly. It's beliefs and statements like that, that make honest conversation nearly impossible and therefore true equality just an idea.

Does it though? In a typical marriage, one side goes to work and the other stays home. The one who stays home has a pretty stale resume during the years kids can't be in school and they often don't make it back to the workforce at all. This is a decision that's usually agreed to because the long term plan is to stay together and this is the agreed upon model for load distribution. Then comes divorce.

The party that has always been the primary caregiver is expected to keep that role, in general. Without a partner who works and gets paid, they are left scrambling to find a job. Since their resume has gone stale, they end up making a fraction of what they would have, had they stayed working. Don't forget, they're still probably the primary caregiver and have to handle finding daycare or babysitters so they can work and take care of of kids.

You can guess which parent generally get the more difficult role. So which side has it better?

My wife hasn't worked since she completed her Masters. If we split, she'd have a degree that qualifies her to be a teacher but not valid certifications. I make a very good salary. She'd have our kid because there's no math that would make sacrificing my job a reasonable option. I could give her half my net and I'd still live the high life but she would have to deal with all the details of scheduling our kid's life and I'd be able to opt out of it. I never plan to split but my life would be much easier than her life would be, if we did.

>Does it though? In a typical marriage, one side goes to work and the other stays home.

This is flat out incorrect. More than 2/3rds of married mothers in the US work.

> How do they undermine the norm? They don't do this on purpose they are also just humans.

I don’t think they do this on purpose; I think they’re well meaning and don’t “want to judge.” The problem is that social judgement is what creates signals for what’s good and bad and what’s worthy and unworthy; what has value and what doesn’t. And people respond to signals.

Imagine that you’re just an average dude growing up in the middle of nowhere. College isn’t in the cards for you—you’re not cut out to be a Facebook engineer. But the local canning plant needs people to work. Do you think social signals don’t affect what choices you make?

Military or a trade would be a better choice.

https://www.esd.whs.mil/Portals/54/Documents/DD/issuances/do...

There's the 40 page document of all the medical reasons you won't qualify for military service, one of which I have. Everyone says just join the military, but I suppose 7 year old me should have thought of that before I chose to get bone disease.

7 year olds often make poor choices.

Military and trade jobs require an element of physicality, it's the nature of the work. It's not for everyone, but neither is University.

They undermine it by:

- claiming a single parent household is no worse for children than a two parent household

- claiming men have no particular importance in the raising of children

- financially supporting (in some cases subsidizing) single parent families

Do they? I can see the third bullet in practice, although I think it’s more of a fix than a cause for single-parent homes.

On the other hand, my social circle is highly educated and well-off and I’m not sure I know a single person who would agree with the first bullet.

The second point I’m less clear on myself: is there evidence that children of lesbian couples are somehow worse off?

> The second point I’m less clear on myself: is there evidence that children of lesbian couples are somehow worse off?

No the aren't: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/01/100121135904.h... "The family type that is best for children is one that has responsible, committed, stable parenting. Two parents are, on average, better than one, but one really good parent is better than two not-so-good ones. The gender of parents only matters in ways that don't matter."

i don't think that is what the second point is about. there is a difference between having two involved parents and having one of the parents present but not involved with the kids at all. regardless of the gender, the latter will affect the children in different ways.

The third bullet here is basic economics. When you create demand for a product by subsidizing it, people will create supply.

Practically, these subsidies mean that poorer women who could marry the father of their children will often choose not to because they are getting money from the government that exceeds what the man can bring in. It is a little bit like the effect of a very high minimum wage: it helps a certain group of people, but prices many others out of the market. Each step of the process is a perfectly rational economic decision, and it completely destabilizes the home.

I have witnessed this firsthand with some of my relatives, who unfortunately behaved exactly as the microeconomics predicted. They had children out of wedlock, wanting to get married but also wanting to keep their benefits, and then ended up separating because the man's attempt to work like a dog to provide more than the government burned him out (he actually wanted to get married and do the right thing).

Edit: I also want to add that I'm pretty sure the second point here is not true. Lesbian and gay two-parent households don't seem to have worse outcomes than heterosexual couples.

Thank you for sharing. It sounds like this is an unfortunate side effect of the law and not the intention, though. I wonder whether the laws could be updated to prevent these perverse incentives.

So are government benefits super generous or are these men just unable to make good wages despite "the man's attempt to work like a dog"?

Minimum wage * 50 hours per week is less than the benefits you would lose from it. There is literally a >100% marginal income tax at the bottom income brackets if you factor in loss of benefits. This also was in New York where benefits and taxes are high.

Ok, is this a problem? And if so does that mean there is some solution?

For point #2, we can follow the idea to its logical conclusion. (Note: I have zero issues with gay parents, this is just a thought exercise)

If it stands to reason that if the children of lesbian parents are indistinguishable from those of mixed-sex parents, then men play no particular role in the upbringing of children, no? They can be swapped out by a woman with no change for the child.

And conversely if a child raised by two gay men are indistinguishable from mix-sex parents, then woman play no particular role in the upbringing of children, no? Replace the mother with another man and nothing changes in that child's upbringing?

And therefore, one could argue that a single parent (only a man or woman) are only worse off due to limited parental resources (not to be underestimated), but not because an opposite sex partner would add anything unique to the childrearing.

Children raised in a non-dysfunctional two parent household (regardless of parental gender / sexual orientation) witness healthy interdependence, cooperation, negotiation, trust, respect, conflict resolution, love etc. between their primary caregivers during their critical development period. Raising a child with a good partner is about more than resource availability.

So you agree males add nothing of value to a two adult parental unit?

Having both genders is really valuable, by providing role modelling and interaction with the neuro-diversity of both genders.

Of course these days some people think the genders are not different, or whatever, some people think every strange though under the sun. I'm not speaking to those people they can believe whatever they want.

Have a read of 'Families and how survive them' for some detailed analysis of the roles of both genders in childrens development at various stages in their life.

No I don’t agree - see sibling comment about neurodiversity.

That's an entirely partisan take, and a hacky one.

There are plenty of wealthier families who shelter their children in ways poorer families cannot who have exactly the opposite views & approaches from what you described. Those efforts are often carried out through churches.

> We need to find a better reason why this happens. I don't believe it's liberal social values which are not lived by.

So we need to find a reason that you agree with. Not a better reason.

It’s a camouflaged variant of No True Scotsman.

I can have different reasons why I don't believe in it.

It's not that the article delivered any proof.

Schools in the US are funded by property tax. It makes no sense to do that unless the goal is to keep everyone in their place and prevent kids born into poorer areas from competing on equal footing with the children of wealthy people.

Schools in poor areas have higher funding than schools in rich areas, the property tax funding is only one part of where schools get their money from. See this report for example: https://nces.ed.gov/pubs95/web/95300.asp (it's a bit old but nothing substantive has changed).

The paper you linked to opens its summary of results with the following:

"How do education expenditures vary with alternative district and community measures? Students in districts enrolling the lowest percentages of students in poverty and the lowest percentages of students in need of special education services received the highest expenditures."

I disagree.

https://foxbaltimore.com/amp/news/project-baltimore/census-b...

I don't know about "undermin[ing] the norm" but I see this kind of hypocrisy in my own family. They shout about all life being precious and abortion being murder and also how single mother's need to get harder and how they shouldn't have to pay more taxes to help lazy poor people. Both positions have one thing in common: they negatively impact non-whites and the poor more. They can't self reflect and see it, unfortunately. My family is not unique. It may not be intentional but they still clearly think that the only way they can succeed is by having others fail.

90% of economic gains are captured by the top 5%.

If you're not in the top 5% - I'm not sure this an insane world view.

If you just want to have an average job and not a career in the right field or run a business - life seems less like a positive sum game and more like a zero sum game.

It's easy for us at the top to talk about "making a bigger pie" when we get 90% of the bigger pie.

No fault divorce, girl bossing, anti-shame messaging, delayed marriage.

There are many reasons. Values, mental health, family baggage, opportunities (there is no shortage of opportunities in America - regardless of race). Yes you may need to work twice as hard but none the less it’s an opportunity.

Assuming young healthy men, the next big issue is values. Are they self centered? Prideful? Presumptuous? These are values parents teach to avoid and cultivate beneficial qualities - they cannot be delegated to others. A growing trend is the absent parent (entire other thread on its own - not faulting the parent). Schools or anyone else should not teach children this. Out of need it happens at times and what you see is a reflection of the broader community.

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