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Comment by onionisafruit | Hacker News Reader

People tend to be absolutist about whether it’s better for kids if unhappy parents get divorced, but as the saying goes every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. Some marriages are hell for everybody involved and need to end. I put abuse situations in that category of course and also marriages that have so much animosity that they can’t stop fighting. On the other end of marriages that may end in divorce are situations where one partner gets wanderlust and doesn’t want to be tied down by a family or are disappointed that their lifestyle isn’t what they expected. In those cases it is probably best for the kids if the parents learn to be happy within the bounds of their family.

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Women control the social capital and function as norm setters in our society. Fixing men won’t help if women and the prevailing culture remain broken. All the divorces I’ve witnessed, nearly every married childhood friend of mine has been the victim of unwanted divorce - in every instance initiated by women who simply wanted a younger, richer, more x partner. All were heavily endorsed by the surrounding social groups. It’s framed by their culture as an issue of women having equal rights to live life the way that makes them happy. Well who could argue with that. It sounds great that people should just be free to be happy, and to restrict women’s freedom in this domain harkens back to the past which we as a society have decided was a bad time, when women couldn’t vote and were the property of men. I can’t argue with that! But the children are robbed of a chance at something better, something their parents had, a stable family. Sometimes the little boys will then decide to become females. Who could blame them! I have learned that it’s better to accept these changes than to swim upstream like an old salmon or something. As long as boys can become girls, hypergamy seems fair, more symmetrical. That said, this current state of affairs amongs the coastal working class doesn’t seem like the optimal arrangement with respect to mental health outcomes.

I don’t understand how you get from family instability to sexual identity confusion. Can you explain the connection and preferably substantiate it with data.

The gist of what you’re saying is true: family instability causes one to question their identity. You fixated on sexual identity so explain why.

Since it seems like you have a pretty good sample size, I am curious whether you have noticed a difference or pattern in upbringing among the current and/or former wives of your childhood friends.

Sure. Children of divorced parents are more likely to opt for divorce themselves, based on my sample. That is consistent with everything we know and expect about humans. Whether and how these apparently heritable differences are due to nature vs nurture is to me the more interesting question. Many in the lower class have imperfections that seem plausibly linked to biology rather than culture, like fundamental biological differences in capacity for impulse control, cognitive deficits whether congenital or epigenetic in origin, etc If someone is abusive due to lead exposure for instance, maybe them divorcing their partner capriciously, as a result of poor impulse control, may in fact be the best outcome for everyone. But what if these biological factors can be ameliorated through culture, say through meditation or more traditional means, then problems of nature can be addressed through culture, and perhaps there alone. That’s a line of thought that might fructify other progressive efforts to improve our culture, should the progressivists pursue it.

I tend to think any imperfections are a result of negative socio-cultural (parenting) impacts, although that can of course be driven by one whack-a-doodle relative (biology as the pebble and socio-cultural as the ripples.)

In my experience families that are dirt-poor but land-rich tend to have successful offspring. Maybe that sense of place contributes to the needed stability for children to do well as adults.

“Moving forward, McFarland is analyzing the racial disparities of childhood lead exposure, hoping to highlight the health inequities suffered by Black children, who were exposed more often to lead and in greater quantities than white children.”

https://today.duke.edu/2022/03/lead-exposure-last-century-sh...

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