This is so fresh! It doesn’t read like recycled ideology (unlike much written around this issue on both ends of the political spectrum). I feel like you could expand this into a cool essay for Fairer Disputations (a sex realist feminism publication by the Abigail Adams Institute).
ah you think so? that's great to hear Amelia because I know we differ ideologically but have common interests! I will write more about this in the future. I felt like I needed to start laying down a skeleton on my thoughts on this issue and Freya's piece was a good opportunity for me to start structuring my thoughts.
Notions of romantic love are of course a form individualism. An important driver of social stratification is assortative mating. Many of your concerns revolve around a process of cultural evolution (much deeper than capitalism) that is especially prominent in anglophone cultural - the Western Educated Industrialized Rich Democratic (WEIRD) places.
The fundamental hurdle to your normative vision here is that notions of equality are now intertwined with individuality. Hence, the pressing political concerns are about dignity and identity. The idea of social obligation, nay, abnegation have largely evaporated because the mechanisms that compelled and/or rewarded such things have long been destroyed.
I would add that the "nature of women" is the nature of females writ large. Our species, like so many others, have certain tendencies based on location in certain circumstances. I don't think it's entirely accurate to say that women simply *learned* or were *taught* to be as they are, especially from Capitalism. Instead, certain realities of mating systems help influence the behavior of women, including modern women. Admittedly, though, our modern niche in the West tries to hammer both men and women into the mold of "compliant worker, diligent consumer". As a result, both sexes feel deeply unfulfilled in life.
Destroying the idea of social abnegation is entirely beneficial. NO ONE should have to negate all of herself — and it was always women doing the self-negation — in order to be part of a social group. Loneliness is preferable to self-negation.
You're expressing a normative preference. It's common to WEIRD societies - even approaching a dominant, traditional way of thought.
However, there are plenty of those who disagree past and present.
My original comment was just highlighting the fact that satisfying individualistic romantic sentiments is ultimately in conflict with materially-based egalitarianism and closely knit civic institutions.
"My original comment was just highlighting the fact that satisfying individualistic romantic sentiments is ultimately in conflict with materially-based egalitarianism and closely knit civic institutions."
I don't see how. Why can't two people fall in love, marry, raise a family and stay in love the entire time while living in an egalitarian society with closely knit civic institutions? I don't see a conflict there. Why would there be?
There's is plenty of literature and complexity on this subject. So I'll give a simplified answer. (Side note: The Economist recently triggered some discussion about this from the investigator (Jo Henrich) behind a lot of this literature by publishing a piece soft-pedaling cousin marriage. See his X account for details).
Basically, we have data on mating/marriage behavior across many societies and those with liberal attitudes (i.e. free to choose mate freely) have very strong assortative mating (AM). Strong AM increases the transmissibility of social status (Greg Clark wrote a book about this but it's been observed by others too). In short, AM increases stratification and makes that stratification more resilient across generations.
Alternatively, traditional mating/marriage practices were often social decisions made to promote social cohesion and/or preserve familial wealth/welfare. Marriages of choice rather than arrangements disrupts kinship and tribal networks. Over time, this has helped establish things we think of as liberal norms, such as treating strangers fairly.
Maybe our ideas of "assortative mating" are different. My understanding is that it means marrying within one's own socio-economic class. Besides class, cultures that still arrange marriages today take into account other assortive spheres such as religion, education level, caste (such as in India where marriages are still arranged within caste), etc. Therefore cultures that arrange marriages have more "assortative mating" than cultures where people freely choose their spouses, hence their societies are more stratified than ours. Of course in free choice cultures most people probably still marry within their own socio-economic class, but there is more variance than in arranged marriage cultures.
I still don't see how notions of romantic love result in less egalitarian societies or less closely knit civic institutions. If anything, they would result in more of these.
And nobody should be soft-peddling cousin marriage. Repeated over generations it is very unhealthy. See the data on cousin marriages in Muslim populations.
Assortative mating means nonrandom matching based on phenotypic similarity. This can incidentally mean matching on similar genotypes as well.
The rate of AM has been argued (by Clark again) to be roughly consistent across all societies and universally high. Notheless the character of the AM may differ (as it what composite phenotype is being matched on in aggregate). Plus, AM is probably a bit higher in liberal societies in terms of impact on inequality. There are several reasons for this. One of them is that jin liberal society AM is paired with high mobility in nuclear family units. So we get little independent family units matched of a social phenotypes all clustered together.
You argue here that India's caste system should increase its stratification, but there is technically less inequality in India than in America. The Gini coefficients are ~36 vs ~50. Both have a global social mobility index above the median of OECD countries.
They're almost completely disrupted in the West. I presume you're from such a place. We can't really wind the clock backwards so I don't think there's reason for concern. We just have to find ways to salvage some of the solutions to social problems that tight-knit societies found.
So, I live in Utah where the ballerina farm woman lives. Along with 70,000 look alikes because the norm here is blond beautiful smiling middle class people who marry at 22 and have 4 kids by their early 30s. It's red pill neo con tradwife paradise.
Let me tell you what they don't see. That Utah has one of the highest divorce rates in the nation. That almost everyone has multiple marriages and complicated sets of step children and ex in laws and blended families. That this place is FILLED TO THE GILLS with 55 year old women who used to live the real housewives life til their husband got sick of them and traded them in, and they never got a real job so now they're living in an apartment and working as a cashier at Target, and their only friends are their kids. That the ones who do stay married are so economically dependent on their husbands and terrified of getting dumped that they have more and more cosmetic procedures and that it's basically the plastic surgery capital of the world here. That the stay at home wives wrangling 3 toddlers are all deeply paranoid and suspicious of all the carefree and fancy free career women that their husbands work with while they're home, so they spend all their time stalking them online and obsessively checking their social media. That when their husbands decide that actually they think their religion is kind of bullshit and at 40 they're upset they missed out on having fun in their youth and want to go experience all the things they didn't at 25, that these women are screwed (and this happening is a total epidemic here, people are leaving the Mormon church in droves, but way more men are then women). That their husbands ARE in fact hitting on the secular child free career women at work, and the fucked up thing is that they're the absolute worst about it when their wife is pregnant...like they unconsciously sense she's stuck with him and now's the time to risk it all to hit on the chick at work.
I live among these women, and let me tell you there is nothing to envy or aspire to there. SO many of them will tell you they wish they waited longer to get married and have kids, they wish they established a career. When a young woman here posts asking for advice "to your younger self" on the women's groups, the #1 piece of advice is "don't be in such a hurry, you don't need to settle down in your 20s." Which is hilarious bc it's the complete opposite of what men try to propagandize.
So apparently some young women who've never actually experienced what real trad life in a real trad culture have Instagram fantasies about what it'd be like (and Utah moms bat way out of the park on being influencers, people love looking at their blond happy family images).
Yet the actual human women who grew up and lived that way are about 5,000 times more likely to switch course and become (the horror) feminist career women, then the other way around. When you actually live around it and see what it's really like, it's not remotely appealing.
But you get it. It's too bad the Gen Z neo cons you're talking about don't have any actual real world examples to compare to whatever abstract theory is in their head.
Sadly, this is very important. Especially the 40 y.o. husbands, now with 36+ y.o. wives, and cheating with the hot young babes in the office. Like my dad did in the 60s*.
These slut-jerk married womanizers remain far too admired in the media, and politics. Like Presidents Clinton, LBJ, & JFK cheating without divorce, and Trump cheating with 2 divorces. Or Brad Pitt, or Clint Eastwood, or Woody Allen, or Pres. Reagan.
Reagan might be the example of the most admirable/ least slimy early divorce & 2nd marriage, and then being faithful.
Making divorce so easy socially and legally has been bad for marriages where the comfy executive wants more casual sex / hot young babe sex. It’s the way most men are, in desire, feelings, which is opposed by commitment, duty, honor & the non-sexual parts of love.
Huge feminist fail is the idea that men getting more in touch with their feelings leads to more faithfulness rather than casual hot sex with hot babes, or maybe hot horny guys, young & hung.
Stable, monogamous marriage is best for raising kids. All other parental relationships are sub-optimal for the kids.
*My 3 sisters and I were raised with Dad & stepmom after very ugly divorce & custody battles, before no-fault and an example of how bad blame divorce can be.
Less damaging divorce but a lot more divorce is the trade-off society chose. Less damage per crash, but more crashes. Maybe more total damage, maybe not.
It’s clear today many young folk don’t want to go thru a divorce—which is easily avoided by not marrying, tho this has other social problems.
Yeah, my parents divorced when I was in elementary school, which was traumatizing, and I got to "enjoy" all the fun of having to live with the new boyfriends/girlfriends and eventually step-parents too.
Though in my cace, it was actually my mom who left my dad for a man (now my stepfather) she met at work...who likewise left his wife and four kids. This was all decades ago and is water under the bridge, and I truly like my step parents now, it's all good. But I hated it growing up, suddenly having to live in a house with some random adult who your parent has googly eyes for.
And I was one of the lucky ones because my dad was responsible and stayed involved in my life. My whole friend group as a kid was all kids with divorced parents (naturally...we were the wild "bad" kids because we could get away with so much with our distracted parents and usually empty houses). But most of my friends had virtually no contact with their dad after he left to go take up with a new woman and start a second family. They all had normal lives til the divorce, then afterwards the dad slowly faded away, visits became less and less often, til after a couple years there was no relationship left at all. Many of them had not had so much as a birthday card or phone call on Christmas from their dads, in years. This is not at all uncommon (or at least, it wasn't in the 80s and 90s), and almost no one talks about it. The dads don't ever admit it because they're ashamed, and the kids don't like to talk about it because they're so hurt by it and usually build up very high emotional walls, to avoid that type of hurt ever again.
Did your stepdad keep in touch with his 4 kids? Are you friends with any?
I remain friends with my ex-stepsister Sue, still alive in N. Michigan, having grown up with her & 3 sisters from grades 1-7, when the parents split and 3 sisters with JoMa, stepsis with Patty, and I with grandparents.
Dad married a third wife, had a half-brother I don’t really know, while JoMa married her third husband & had a half-sister same year, who I met more often but died in a truck crash. I’d like to connect more with family, just a little.
Wife has big family here in Slovakia, plus 3 grandkids to keep me more busy.
That said, if monogamy really was so natural for humans, it would never have to have been "enforced", now would it? We should just make peace with the fact that monogamy is a spectrum, not a binary, and that there are three kinds of monogamy: strict, lifelong, and universal. Pick at most two out of three, because that is all that Mother Nature would allow, to so say nothing of the iron laws of supply and demand.
When it's comes to cheating, of course, it's not the lechery that's the problem, it's the TREACHERY.
I would also add that what you are observing is NOT a result of feminism, but rather men have largely been like that since before Jehovah had witnesses. If anything, men's cheating is far less tolerated by women nowadays, especially compared to the other way around, as the shoe is on the other foot now. But in some circles, like in Utah, the more things change, the more they stay the same.....
Monogamy is the single, optimal, social norm. And all norms have to be enforced, as well as taught, learned, and practiced by high status folk.
Intimacy and being trustworthy need to be taught, practiced, and given higher status. Treachery is indeed a bigger problem, but most often occurs because of cheating.
Not cheating always needs some enforcement.
While socially optimal, monogamy might well not be theoretically optimal for many people. Many young women who get involved with married men don’t think that man’s monogamous marriage to another is optimal for the young woman, and too many men also don’t think so, but the left older women thought so, and is now treacherously hurt. In most cases the increased hurt is greater than the small increased pleasure of the cheaters, which is why it’s sub-optimal for those 3, with kids involved, the hurt is usually worse.
Stopping violence against women was a big, positive step, even to accept more divorce. Reducing marriage is a small negative step.
BINGO. Indeed, the "neo cons" (or more accurately, reactionaries) are being VERY "economical with the truth" in that regard. They need to be VERY careful what they wish for!
“I saw a commenter under Freya’s piece who attacked communism for destroying the family unit, and indeed, it is a line neo-cons often employ.”
We realize that this is propaganda after taking one glance at America. America moved to the nuclear family in the 1950s as US capitalism began to peak, shifting away from extended families and toward a more individualized society. Americans and Brits are arguably culturally more independent and individualistic than anyone else on earth and it shows: our families are in shambles, we have little contact with extended family, people are growing up without one or both parents, kids are isolated in sprawling suburbs, and no one feels connected.
We’re also two of the most capitalistic societies on earth and we, especially Americans, have a very unique version of hyper-individualistic, cutthroat capitalism that is hostile to not only collectivism but even the collective projects that have paved the way for our past peace, prosperity, and social and technological advancement.
America is capitalism in its most unfettered form, financialization with limited regulation, just as North Korea is totalitarianism at its peak. Americans and Brits blaming the left for destroying the family is as ridiculous as North Korea blaming capitalism for its totalitarian state.
"We have raised them to value money and status. These, again, are capitalist ideals, not socialist ones."
Oh Stella. Men value money and status because women value money and status. If a man could get a woman while living in a cardboard box, he would do so. Money and status are merely tools to get women. If we lived under universal communism, men would still strive for money and status, because women demand it. Capitalism's got nothing to do with it
It is very late, and I am a long way from home on this part of Substack, but this was a fantastic essay. Very poignant.
I'm on the "radical right." Always have been, and always will be. But, time and again throughout my life, I've had excellent discussions with high-powered female acquaintances of mine who were on the "radical left." The thing I have always felt about them, and still do, and feel now having read this essay, is that they stand at the ledge, but aren't ready to take the leap.
Your critiques and points in this essay (and others that brought me here) don't miss. There's good data showing that political radicalization right now is fracturing between the sexes, with women pushing to the left, and men to the right. I think the reason for this is that the men and women who are capable (whatever that means) of analyzing the problems we are all facing, see the same exact problems from two different perspectives, like standing on opposite sides of a statue. This is a generalization, of course. I found myself nodding my head in agreement time and time again with respect to the points you raised here, despite having absolutely no relevant personal experience, being male.
When I say "take the leap," I DONT mean that radlibs are actually just temporarily embarrassed right wingers, and that they should all just take the leap into the right wing. Not at all.
I mean that they, along with so many on the trapped-right, need to take the leap into a different way of understanding the world and our place in it, not into "neo-con traditionalism" but into Tradition. Capital "T." We've been hurtling along on this Enlightenment experiment for some four hundred years now. We fling shit at one another, saying that "it's Capitalism!" or "It's Marxism!" or feminism, or patriarchy, or whatever other ideological scapegoat we can drag to the slaughter.
I saw a comment somewhere below that noted the extremely high divorce rate amongst ostensibly traditionalist families in Utah. That's a perfect example of what I mean. If these people "believed" in the value of marriage in the same way as our ancient ancestors, this wouldn't be the case. Marriage for them is a LARP. It lacks any form of transcendent meaning.
"Why get married; why have kids; why go to church" they have answers to all of these questions, but they are inherently wrapped up in the materialist framework. We want love, and recognize it is important /for some reason/, but we have divorced it, like all things, from any kind of higher, metaphysical, supernatural meaning. We don't recognize love, marriage, war, sex, birth, or death, as having any kind of intrinsic meaning that exists beyond their material manifestations. Even most of religious groups lack this kind of authentic metaphysical belief, hence the booming market for divorce lawyers in Salt Lake. We've had it beaten out of us for centuries now, if not longer.
Like, why is it important to get married? Why is it important to love your spouse and be the best you can for them? Why is it important to have children? Why is it important to build something beautiful, or to lay down your life for your kin? These things are all important because we aren't individuals, and we aren't bags of meat, but rather links in a great chain of /being/ that extends far into the past and into the future. All of these actions have real intrinsic meaning beyond their temporary material forms, that is as real and true is the morning sun in the East and the blue sky. We can't fix these problems we're all talking about (albeit from different perspectives) until we realize that we've divorced ourselves from a way of being that our ancestors took for granted and that we've reasoned our way out of.
Interesting comment. It's notable how many young(ish) people are casting around for new lifestyles and ways of living, often trying the opposite of whatever they were raised to assume was normal.
In Utah, most natives were raised in a strictly conformist LDS culture that is simultaneously insistent on the importance of marriage and family (most married in college as virgins, most have multiple children by 30) yet ALSO extremely materialistic and superficial. Your typical LDS family is aggressively socially competitive, and they all strive to win the contest of who's the most perfect in their neighborhood...most perfect house, most perfect clothes, most attractive children, nicest car, etc. And in addition to the cracks showing via the high divorce rates, Utah also has one of the highest per capital personal debt loads in the country, as they spend money they don't have to keep up appearances (and if debt was calculated by household rather than per capital it would stand far and away as the highest, since all those kids who dont yet have debt drag the number down). But the 20 to 40 somethings are leaving the church in droves, leaving the LDS culture and breaking ties with their traditions. They move out of the suburbs and start going out to bars and trying hallucinogens and casual sex. They're all casting about looking for a new set of rules to live by, which often involves a few years of degeneracy as they experiment with everything formerly off limits and often screw up their lives a bit before finding a new equilibrium on their path towards trying to find a more authentic life.
Then on the other side of the coin, you can drive across state lines to Colorado or Montana or Idaho and you'll find the opposite. Thousands of new transplants, escaping the hyper competitive and expensive mega cities, sick of the rat race and trying to slow down and live a more authentic life centered in nature and small towns. Those people are trying their hands at homesteading and growing gardens and making homemade bread, all yearning for a simpler life more connected to land and small community. Sometimes it works, but often they get bored or give up after a few years.
"I saw a comment somewhere below that noted the extremely high divorce rate amongst ostensibly traditionalist families in Utah. "
Muslims tend to have high divorce rates in many countries as well. For divorce rates to rise, a society or religion has to allow for divorce in the first place.
Thank you so much for this! You put into words what I have been thinking. Especially about reading discourse from the past...I am Indian American and feel that pain of seeing what my mother could have been. Conservatism is too close for me to forget or idealize it. Also....seriously about the baby with the bath water for the sexual revolution...could not agree more.
Yes exactly, while I feel like I have a lot of small 'c' conservative values I still see how traditional conservatism can be extremely stiffling for many people and particularly women.
I read an interesting article here recently entitled, "The Rise of Right-Wing Progressives" by N.S. Lyons - super fascinating discussion on what constitutes conservatism vs. progressivism and left-wing vs. right-wing (that is, in some sense, egalitarianism vs. hierarchy).
I actually jotted down in my notebook, "...does this make me a conservative leftist?"
I observe that many of today’s neo-trade female thought leaders are maintaining good careers by talking about how important it is to prioritise marriage and children. Nice work if you can get it, eh?
I found the essay interesting, and definitely think that the neo-traditionalists take a somewhat ahistorical approach to tradition, and in a funny way are very reflective of a hyper individualism that isn’t traditional at all. Being from the US, I have some (not very original) thoughts about how hyper individualism evolved in the US. I apologize in advance about the wall of text.
I think that in the US, increased liberalism/leftism, hyper-individualism, lack of social trust and civic engagement, and declining religiosity all go hand and are part of a single phenomenon. I don’t know if this is true in the UK or Greece, but in the US churches were largely run by their parishioners, not by an ecclesiastical hierarchy. So in the US, decreasing religiosity isn’t just about beliefs, it also functionally increases atomization, and decreases social trust and civic engagement, as churches were the most prevalent institution in which neighbors would come together and do the work of building a community. Churches are also still important in the US in terms of civic engagement, with churches engaging in a lot of volunteer work and also being one of the primary ways in which ordinary folks organize and get involved in politics, on both the right and the left. For an example, there were regular protests against the conservative legislature in North Carolina called “Moral Mondays”, and the people who did the organizing and led the protests were pastors and church groups.
Also, at least in the US, I don’t think that it is capitalism per se that has led to a loss of social trust, lack of civic engagement, and hyper individualism. The US has been capitalist for a long, long time, arguably since sometime in the 1600’s. The decline in social trust, atomization, etc. is rather a recent phenomenon in the US, not a persistent feature. It only started to get going maybe in the 1950’s, but really gathered steam in the 60’s and 70’s with the baby boomers. Which makes me suspect that it is changing technology that led to the atomization. The usual culprits being cited (by the left no less) as television, automobiles, and auto-centric suburbs. The right also have traditionally cited birth control and women in the workplace, though women in the workplace is now the norm in the US and not the exception, so much of the right has changed their tune on that. The commonality is that all of the technologies enabled more choice, and also decreased the need to rely upon others.
For example, my grandparents grew up without automobiles and television, and with limited access to telephones. The way that they learned to inhabit the world was to join groups in their neighborhood, both religious and civic, not as part of some belief in higher ideals, but just because hanging out with other people was their primary form of leisure/entertainment, and joining a group was the easiest way to do that. And since they were limited to places they could easily get to without a car, they couldn’t be too picky about finding groups that perfectly aligned with their beliefs, and indeed developed a habit of not holding beliefs so strongly that they got in the way of forming friendships, and being willing to change their opinions to better fit in. Again, none of this happened for religious or ideological reasons, it just happened because they were trying to do their best with limited choices. Even once they got a car, it was a pain to drive very far, as there weren’t many highways even in the major city where they lived, so travel was still a lot slower compared to today and their options were still pretty limited to their own neighborhoods or neighborhoods very close by.
The boomers, on the other hand, grew up with television. They still spent far more time hanging out with other kids in their neighborhood than millennials or gen Z, but much less than their parents. By the time they were teenagers, many (most?) households had cars and phones. They could call and talk to friends on the phone if it was difficult to see them face to face. They could connect with a larger number of people because they could travel farther than their parents could. And then by the time the boomers are adults, a lot of the interstate highway system had been built, so they moved to far flung suburban neighborhoods where you needed a car to get anywhere, and didn’t see your neighbors all that much. Those that were religious could, and did, shop around for churches that better fit their beliefs and identities, and when they got unhappy with whatever church they were attending, they would just go find a new one, leaving a lot of relationships behind. They watched far more television than their parents did, and participated in church life and civic organizations far less than their parents did. Again, not because of strongly held convictions, but just because staying home watching television was easier and frequently more satisfying for them in the moment than going through the pain of getting in the car and driving someplace to hang out with people they often felt they didn’t have much in common with, and hadn’t known for years or decades.
The internet and smartphones are in many ways less of a disjunctive break with previous trends than a lot of people acknowledge. They are another technology that gives people more choice, and that people substitute for time spent irl with other humans.
Econonic inequality and such never prevented other foreign cultures (which similar or more inequality) to maintain the intimacy and not gave the same "loneliness epidemic, mental health crisis, destruction of marriage and family and falling birthrates".
Economic inequality is one part of the equation, but I am not sure that's true. Just because other cultures are having more babies does not mean they are neccessarily happier or live more meaningful lives (two very different goals).
I hope I am not guilty of holding a luxury belief. I was an "older single" like you. I am now married to a good man. While I think marriage and kids can have an edge in terms of benefits, I still believe dying old alone is a fine option. And this is because, at the ripe old age of 37, I have come to an ingenius new observation: happiness is a state of mind. Singles have time for personal development, but are bored and complain of lack of intimacy. Parents with kids can have a meaningful life, but are harried and lonely together. Divorce comes with benefits and downsides of its own. And everyone, at every stage in their life, feels unhappy and blames the vagaries of their existence. Perhaps existence is the problem, after all.
To agree somewhat with a conservative above: what we seem to lack overall is a sense of purpose. Having jettisoned religion and service as admirable, we are left groping around for a framework to make us feel like we aren't merely marking time. I find myself sliding rightward as I age for I see that "good old fashioned values" really do have value. And when we destroy things because they "cause harm" to some people, we create a vacuum that causes harm to some people. And there is no way to go back.
People are innately religious. It is not what we do but who we are. We need transcendent purpose; to strive toward an higher state of being (which the traditionally religious would call reunion with God).
Even if one doesn’t practice a traditional religions, we all uphold religious structure: we all have a God, scripture, gurus, sacred art, commandments, sin, and means of salvations, etc.
Instead of organized religions, people have simply applied their religious impulse to political obsession, social justice wokeness, consumerism, cheating, substance abuse,
People jettisoned organized religion, in part, because they failed to recognize that the “problem” with is innate human frailty. You can’t escape institutional harm because we can’t escape our nature. Many many people seek “reunion with God” by simply separating themselves from “impurity” aka harm or “wrong thinking.” Hence why Utopianism and political purity culture is far more rampant on the Left. Makes sense: it’s less traditionally religious.
In the US context, I normally identify as an extreme right-wing reactionary, but I found absolutely nothing to disagree with here, and much to admire. I wish voices like this were the most prominent representatives of "the left." Thank you for writing.
Also- I was confused at first about your use of the word “neo con women” I was in college during the Bush years and assumed your use of the phrase meant feminists who want to export American democratic and capitalist values to non western, conservative countries. 😅 lolz
I agree with Stella AND the neo cons, but at the end of the day we are the descendants of APES 🦧. I think it’s important to acknowledge that children and the creation of a stable family offers the mind a certain kind biological satisfaction that can only really be known once experienced. Motherhood was strictly a theoretical concept for me until I had my daughter, but once I had the experience of pregnancy and caregiving it became clear that my love for her was the most fulfilling experience I’ve ever had. More worthwhile than any of my jobs trying to extract larger profit margins for business owners.
Ultimately, there is so much flippant discussion about mothering and childcare in the feminist space amongst women who have never had the experience themselves and though I often agree with the arguments being made, I only do so in part, as I know the arguer has in some sense no idea what they are taking about vis-a-vis motherhood if they are discussing it theoretically and not practicality. Thus, I find the arguments of Mary H and Louise P the most compelling in the feminist discourse today.
I love your writing Stella, if you do want marriage and family, I hope you find them. They are the best things that ever happened to me anyway. All my jobs were somewhat tortuous, lame, and low paying. My full time gig is caregiver for my husband and daughter, I love it. My “career” is as a painter, I make no money to speak of but my darling husband earns enough so that I may indulge in my fulfilling bullshit no money job. Most days I somehow do feel like I have it all, and that somehow that happened by accident.
Thanks for the writing, I love reading your work and found you through a repost from Rob Henderson.
A lot of this online #SAH wife or #SAH girlfriend b.s. is a social media grift. They don't want to work a regular job (who does?) but they DO want to make money from social media. So on top of having their husbands or boyfriends pay for their lives, they are also making additional money from the grift. In some cases they may be the primary earner in the couple and thus supporting their partners, but they won't tell you that. Stay At Home wife can make sense but Stay At Home girlfriend makes absolutely no sense at all. Especially if the woman wants to get married and have kids. She's just wasting her energy and fertile years with a social media "boyfriend" who refuses to marry her.
"It still holds today, for me, at least. I want marriage and kids. Life without a blueprint is chaotic. I won’t do what Rob Henderson accuses some leftists of doing with luxury beliefs. Discouraging people from doing things I’d pick for myself, like settling with a spouse and having a family. But it’s not a panacea. Marriage and kids won’t solve our problems. We will not be alone in a full house, but we may still be lonely."
That's the human condition. Nothing is panacea. The question is whether on average people will be less or more lonely than on a hedonistic treadmill. Judging from the latest numbers on loneliness, depression, sexlessness and related statistics, how do you think those "luxury beliefs" adoption is working out for the general "us"?
that's the thing though, nothing is a panacea but social media has made us more self-aware, we look at ourselves as if we are a person starring a hollywood film, but real life is mundane and banal. Generations before us were slightly batsit crazy, too, just in different ways. Also, crisis, wars and famines focus the mind wonderfully. Idle hands etc.
Definitely a great article. My only real and extremely minor critique would be I don't know if I would say these are neocons; they don't seem to ring true of the 2000 Bush-era rightoids. Maybe neo-traditionalists? It seems like they are hoping to do more than conserve, but actually (selectively) dial a long ways back towards an (imagined) past.
Like a said, a very tiny quibble about an otherwise good read.
I agree, I wanted to use a word to describe the new conservative feminists, which I have most often heard being referred to as neo-con feminists, but you are right that this is not how the word is used in political science.
Yeah, a lot of these terms really don't age well. The word 'moderism' nominally means, well... Modern. Yet 'modernism' is an 18th/19th century movement/ideology.
Neocons suffers from the same issue. It nominally means 'new conservatives' but represents (what I'd argue) a mostly dead rightwing movement that became very popular in the 1980s. Now what do we call the actually new rightwing? It's a neverending problem 😓
This is so fresh! It doesn’t read like recycled ideology (unlike much written around this issue on both ends of the political spectrum). I feel like you could expand this into a cool essay for Fairer Disputations (a sex realist feminism publication by the Abigail Adams Institute).
ah you think so? that's great to hear Amelia because I know we differ ideologically but have common interests! I will write more about this in the future. I felt like I needed to start laying down a skeleton on my thoughts on this issue and Freya's piece was a good opportunity for me to start structuring my thoughts.
Notions of romantic love are of course a form individualism. An important driver of social stratification is assortative mating. Many of your concerns revolve around a process of cultural evolution (much deeper than capitalism) that is especially prominent in anglophone cultural - the Western Educated Industrialized Rich Democratic (WEIRD) places.
The fundamental hurdle to your normative vision here is that notions of equality are now intertwined with individuality. Hence, the pressing political concerns are about dignity and identity. The idea of social obligation, nay, abnegation have largely evaporated because the mechanisms that compelled and/or rewarded such things have long been destroyed.
very well said
Thank you!!
I would add that the "nature of women" is the nature of females writ large. Our species, like so many others, have certain tendencies based on location in certain circumstances. I don't think it's entirely accurate to say that women simply *learned* or were *taught* to be as they are, especially from Capitalism. Instead, certain realities of mating systems help influence the behavior of women, including modern women. Admittedly, though, our modern niche in the West tries to hammer both men and women into the mold of "compliant worker, diligent consumer". As a result, both sexes feel deeply unfulfilled in life.
Destroying the idea of social abnegation is entirely beneficial. NO ONE should have to negate all of herself — and it was always women doing the self-negation — in order to be part of a social group. Loneliness is preferable to self-negation.
You're expressing a normative preference. It's common to WEIRD societies - even approaching a dominant, traditional way of thought.
However, there are plenty of those who disagree past and present.
My original comment was just highlighting the fact that satisfying individualistic romantic sentiments is ultimately in conflict with materially-based egalitarianism and closely knit civic institutions.
"My original comment was just highlighting the fact that satisfying individualistic romantic sentiments is ultimately in conflict with materially-based egalitarianism and closely knit civic institutions."
I don't see how. Why can't two people fall in love, marry, raise a family and stay in love the entire time while living in an egalitarian society with closely knit civic institutions? I don't see a conflict there. Why would there be?
There's is plenty of literature and complexity on this subject. So I'll give a simplified answer. (Side note: The Economist recently triggered some discussion about this from the investigator (Jo Henrich) behind a lot of this literature by publishing a piece soft-pedaling cousin marriage. See his X account for details).
Basically, we have data on mating/marriage behavior across many societies and those with liberal attitudes (i.e. free to choose mate freely) have very strong assortative mating (AM). Strong AM increases the transmissibility of social status (Greg Clark wrote a book about this but it's been observed by others too). In short, AM increases stratification and makes that stratification more resilient across generations.
Alternatively, traditional mating/marriage practices were often social decisions made to promote social cohesion and/or preserve familial wealth/welfare. Marriages of choice rather than arrangements disrupts kinship and tribal networks. Over time, this has helped establish things we think of as liberal norms, such as treating strangers fairly.
Maybe our ideas of "assortative mating" are different. My understanding is that it means marrying within one's own socio-economic class. Besides class, cultures that still arrange marriages today take into account other assortive spheres such as religion, education level, caste (such as in India where marriages are still arranged within caste), etc. Therefore cultures that arrange marriages have more "assortative mating" than cultures where people freely choose their spouses, hence their societies are more stratified than ours. Of course in free choice cultures most people probably still marry within their own socio-economic class, but there is more variance than in arranged marriage cultures.
I still don't see how notions of romantic love result in less egalitarian societies or less closely knit civic institutions. If anything, they would result in more of these.
And nobody should be soft-peddling cousin marriage. Repeated over generations it is very unhealthy. See the data on cousin marriages in Muslim populations.
Assortative mating means nonrandom matching based on phenotypic similarity. This can incidentally mean matching on similar genotypes as well.
The rate of AM has been argued (by Clark again) to be roughly consistent across all societies and universally high. Notheless the character of the AM may differ (as it what composite phenotype is being matched on in aggregate). Plus, AM is probably a bit higher in liberal societies in terms of impact on inequality. There are several reasons for this. One of them is that jin liberal society AM is paired with high mobility in nuclear family units. So we get little independent family units matched of a social phenotypes all clustered together.
You argue here that India's caste system should increase its stratification, but there is technically less inequality in India than in America. The Gini coefficients are ~36 vs ~50. Both have a global social mobility index above the median of OECD countries.
Kinship and tribal networks SHOULD be destroyed. They do nothing but make anyone but the men who lead them miserable.
They're almost completely disrupted in the West. I presume you're from such a place. We can't really wind the clock backwards so I don't think there's reason for concern. We just have to find ways to salvage some of the solutions to social problems that tight-knit societies found.
So, I live in Utah where the ballerina farm woman lives. Along with 70,000 look alikes because the norm here is blond beautiful smiling middle class people who marry at 22 and have 4 kids by their early 30s. It's red pill neo con tradwife paradise.
Let me tell you what they don't see. That Utah has one of the highest divorce rates in the nation. That almost everyone has multiple marriages and complicated sets of step children and ex in laws and blended families. That this place is FILLED TO THE GILLS with 55 year old women who used to live the real housewives life til their husband got sick of them and traded them in, and they never got a real job so now they're living in an apartment and working as a cashier at Target, and their only friends are their kids. That the ones who do stay married are so economically dependent on their husbands and terrified of getting dumped that they have more and more cosmetic procedures and that it's basically the plastic surgery capital of the world here. That the stay at home wives wrangling 3 toddlers are all deeply paranoid and suspicious of all the carefree and fancy free career women that their husbands work with while they're home, so they spend all their time stalking them online and obsessively checking their social media. That when their husbands decide that actually they think their religion is kind of bullshit and at 40 they're upset they missed out on having fun in their youth and want to go experience all the things they didn't at 25, that these women are screwed (and this happening is a total epidemic here, people are leaving the Mormon church in droves, but way more men are then women). That their husbands ARE in fact hitting on the secular child free career women at work, and the fucked up thing is that they're the absolute worst about it when their wife is pregnant...like they unconsciously sense she's stuck with him and now's the time to risk it all to hit on the chick at work.
I live among these women, and let me tell you there is nothing to envy or aspire to there. SO many of them will tell you they wish they waited longer to get married and have kids, they wish they established a career. When a young woman here posts asking for advice "to your younger self" on the women's groups, the #1 piece of advice is "don't be in such a hurry, you don't need to settle down in your 20s." Which is hilarious bc it's the complete opposite of what men try to propagandize.
So apparently some young women who've never actually experienced what real trad life in a real trad culture have Instagram fantasies about what it'd be like (and Utah moms bat way out of the park on being influencers, people love looking at their blond happy family images).
Yet the actual human women who grew up and lived that way are about 5,000 times more likely to switch course and become (the horror) feminist career women, then the other way around. When you actually live around it and see what it's really like, it's not remotely appealing.
But you get it. It's too bad the Gen Z neo cons you're talking about don't have any actual real world examples to compare to whatever abstract theory is in their head.
Sadly, this is very important. Especially the 40 y.o. husbands, now with 36+ y.o. wives, and cheating with the hot young babes in the office. Like my dad did in the 60s*.
These slut-jerk married womanizers remain far too admired in the media, and politics. Like Presidents Clinton, LBJ, & JFK cheating without divorce, and Trump cheating with 2 divorces. Or Brad Pitt, or Clint Eastwood, or Woody Allen, or Pres. Reagan.
Reagan might be the example of the most admirable/ least slimy early divorce & 2nd marriage, and then being faithful.
Making divorce so easy socially and legally has been bad for marriages where the comfy executive wants more casual sex / hot young babe sex. It’s the way most men are, in desire, feelings, which is opposed by commitment, duty, honor & the non-sexual parts of love.
Huge feminist fail is the idea that men getting more in touch with their feelings leads to more faithfulness rather than casual hot sex with hot babes, or maybe hot horny guys, young & hung.
Stable, monogamous marriage is best for raising kids. All other parental relationships are sub-optimal for the kids.
*My 3 sisters and I were raised with Dad & stepmom after very ugly divorce & custody battles, before no-fault and an example of how bad blame divorce can be.
Less damaging divorce but a lot more divorce is the trade-off society chose. Less damage per crash, but more crashes. Maybe more total damage, maybe not.
It’s clear today many young folk don’t want to go thru a divorce—which is easily avoided by not marrying, tho this has other social problems.
Yeah, my parents divorced when I was in elementary school, which was traumatizing, and I got to "enjoy" all the fun of having to live with the new boyfriends/girlfriends and eventually step-parents too.
Though in my cace, it was actually my mom who left my dad for a man (now my stepfather) she met at work...who likewise left his wife and four kids. This was all decades ago and is water under the bridge, and I truly like my step parents now, it's all good. But I hated it growing up, suddenly having to live in a house with some random adult who your parent has googly eyes for.
And I was one of the lucky ones because my dad was responsible and stayed involved in my life. My whole friend group as a kid was all kids with divorced parents (naturally...we were the wild "bad" kids because we could get away with so much with our distracted parents and usually empty houses). But most of my friends had virtually no contact with their dad after he left to go take up with a new woman and start a second family. They all had normal lives til the divorce, then afterwards the dad slowly faded away, visits became less and less often, til after a couple years there was no relationship left at all. Many of them had not had so much as a birthday card or phone call on Christmas from their dads, in years. This is not at all uncommon (or at least, it wasn't in the 80s and 90s), and almost no one talks about it. The dads don't ever admit it because they're ashamed, and the kids don't like to talk about it because they're so hurt by it and usually build up very high emotional walls, to avoid that type of hurt ever again.
Did your stepdad keep in touch with his 4 kids? Are you friends with any?
I remain friends with my ex-stepsister Sue, still alive in N. Michigan, having grown up with her & 3 sisters from grades 1-7, when the parents split and 3 sisters with JoMa, stepsis with Patty, and I with grandparents.
Dad married a third wife, had a half-brother I don’t really know, while JoMa married her third husband & had a half-sister same year, who I met more often but died in a truck crash. I’d like to connect more with family, just a little.
Wife has big family here in Slovakia, plus 3 grandkids to keep me more busy.
That said, if monogamy really was so natural for humans, it would never have to have been "enforced", now would it? We should just make peace with the fact that monogamy is a spectrum, not a binary, and that there are three kinds of monogamy: strict, lifelong, and universal. Pick at most two out of three, because that is all that Mother Nature would allow, to so say nothing of the iron laws of supply and demand.
When it's comes to cheating, of course, it's not the lechery that's the problem, it's the TREACHERY.
I would also add that what you are observing is NOT a result of feminism, but rather men have largely been like that since before Jehovah had witnesses. If anything, men's cheating is far less tolerated by women nowadays, especially compared to the other way around, as the shoe is on the other foot now. But in some circles, like in Utah, the more things change, the more they stay the same.....
Monogamy is the single, optimal, social norm. And all norms have to be enforced, as well as taught, learned, and practiced by high status folk.
Intimacy and being trustworthy need to be taught, practiced, and given higher status. Treachery is indeed a bigger problem, but most often occurs because of cheating.
Not cheating always needs some enforcement.
While socially optimal, monogamy might well not be theoretically optimal for many people. Many young women who get involved with married men don’t think that man’s monogamous marriage to another is optimal for the young woman, and too many men also don’t think so, but the left older women thought so, and is now treacherously hurt. In most cases the increased hurt is greater than the small increased pleasure of the cheaters, which is why it’s sub-optimal for those 3, with kids involved, the hurt is usually worse.
Stopping violence against women was a big, positive step, even to accept more divorce. Reducing marriage is a small negative step.
I listen to John Dehlin's "Mormon Stories" podcast.
BINGO. Indeed, the "neo cons" (or more accurately, reactionaries) are being VERY "economical with the truth" in that regard. They need to be VERY careful what they wish for!
“I saw a commenter under Freya’s piece who attacked communism for destroying the family unit, and indeed, it is a line neo-cons often employ.”
We realize that this is propaganda after taking one glance at America. America moved to the nuclear family in the 1950s as US capitalism began to peak, shifting away from extended families and toward a more individualized society. Americans and Brits are arguably culturally more independent and individualistic than anyone else on earth and it shows: our families are in shambles, we have little contact with extended family, people are growing up without one or both parents, kids are isolated in sprawling suburbs, and no one feels connected.
We’re also two of the most capitalistic societies on earth and we, especially Americans, have a very unique version of hyper-individualistic, cutthroat capitalism that is hostile to not only collectivism but even the collective projects that have paved the way for our past peace, prosperity, and social and technological advancement.
America is capitalism in its most unfettered form, financialization with limited regulation, just as North Korea is totalitarianism at its peak. Americans and Brits blaming the left for destroying the family is as ridiculous as North Korea blaming capitalism for its totalitarian state.
exactly, the hyper-individualism is a lot more to blame rather than any false notions of being left wing
Capitalism is the problem. What was the question?
But seriously, we need to move towards post-capitalism.
"We have raised them to value money and status. These, again, are capitalist ideals, not socialist ones."
Oh Stella. Men value money and status because women value money and status. If a man could get a woman while living in a cardboard box, he would do so. Money and status are merely tools to get women. If we lived under universal communism, men would still strive for money and status, because women demand it. Capitalism's got nothing to do with it
Yes, exactly! I wrote this below in a less concise and cogent fashion. Men will do exactly as they are rewarded by women
Capitalism is the means to that end. Men building more and more taller Towers of Babel and other phallus-extenders to impress women.
It is very late, and I am a long way from home on this part of Substack, but this was a fantastic essay. Very poignant.
I'm on the "radical right." Always have been, and always will be. But, time and again throughout my life, I've had excellent discussions with high-powered female acquaintances of mine who were on the "radical left." The thing I have always felt about them, and still do, and feel now having read this essay, is that they stand at the ledge, but aren't ready to take the leap.
Your critiques and points in this essay (and others that brought me here) don't miss. There's good data showing that political radicalization right now is fracturing between the sexes, with women pushing to the left, and men to the right. I think the reason for this is that the men and women who are capable (whatever that means) of analyzing the problems we are all facing, see the same exact problems from two different perspectives, like standing on opposite sides of a statue. This is a generalization, of course. I found myself nodding my head in agreement time and time again with respect to the points you raised here, despite having absolutely no relevant personal experience, being male.
When I say "take the leap," I DONT mean that radlibs are actually just temporarily embarrassed right wingers, and that they should all just take the leap into the right wing. Not at all.
I mean that they, along with so many on the trapped-right, need to take the leap into a different way of understanding the world and our place in it, not into "neo-con traditionalism" but into Tradition. Capital "T." We've been hurtling along on this Enlightenment experiment for some four hundred years now. We fling shit at one another, saying that "it's Capitalism!" or "It's Marxism!" or feminism, or patriarchy, or whatever other ideological scapegoat we can drag to the slaughter.
I saw a comment somewhere below that noted the extremely high divorce rate amongst ostensibly traditionalist families in Utah. That's a perfect example of what I mean. If these people "believed" in the value of marriage in the same way as our ancient ancestors, this wouldn't be the case. Marriage for them is a LARP. It lacks any form of transcendent meaning.
"Why get married; why have kids; why go to church" they have answers to all of these questions, but they are inherently wrapped up in the materialist framework. We want love, and recognize it is important /for some reason/, but we have divorced it, like all things, from any kind of higher, metaphysical, supernatural meaning. We don't recognize love, marriage, war, sex, birth, or death, as having any kind of intrinsic meaning that exists beyond their material manifestations. Even most of religious groups lack this kind of authentic metaphysical belief, hence the booming market for divorce lawyers in Salt Lake. We've had it beaten out of us for centuries now, if not longer.
Like, why is it important to get married? Why is it important to love your spouse and be the best you can for them? Why is it important to have children? Why is it important to build something beautiful, or to lay down your life for your kin? These things are all important because we aren't individuals, and we aren't bags of meat, but rather links in a great chain of /being/ that extends far into the past and into the future. All of these actions have real intrinsic meaning beyond their temporary material forms, that is as real and true is the morning sun in the East and the blue sky. We can't fix these problems we're all talking about (albeit from different perspectives) until we realize that we've divorced ourselves from a way of being that our ancestors took for granted and that we've reasoned our way out of.
Interesting comment. It's notable how many young(ish) people are casting around for new lifestyles and ways of living, often trying the opposite of whatever they were raised to assume was normal.
In Utah, most natives were raised in a strictly conformist LDS culture that is simultaneously insistent on the importance of marriage and family (most married in college as virgins, most have multiple children by 30) yet ALSO extremely materialistic and superficial. Your typical LDS family is aggressively socially competitive, and they all strive to win the contest of who's the most perfect in their neighborhood...most perfect house, most perfect clothes, most attractive children, nicest car, etc. And in addition to the cracks showing via the high divorce rates, Utah also has one of the highest per capital personal debt loads in the country, as they spend money they don't have to keep up appearances (and if debt was calculated by household rather than per capital it would stand far and away as the highest, since all those kids who dont yet have debt drag the number down). But the 20 to 40 somethings are leaving the church in droves, leaving the LDS culture and breaking ties with their traditions. They move out of the suburbs and start going out to bars and trying hallucinogens and casual sex. They're all casting about looking for a new set of rules to live by, which often involves a few years of degeneracy as they experiment with everything formerly off limits and often screw up their lives a bit before finding a new equilibrium on their path towards trying to find a more authentic life.
Then on the other side of the coin, you can drive across state lines to Colorado or Montana or Idaho and you'll find the opposite. Thousands of new transplants, escaping the hyper competitive and expensive mega cities, sick of the rat race and trying to slow down and live a more authentic life centered in nature and small towns. Those people are trying their hands at homesteading and growing gardens and making homemade bread, all yearning for a simpler life more connected to land and small community. Sometimes it works, but often they get bored or give up after a few years.
Everyone's searching.
That they are...
"I saw a comment somewhere below that noted the extremely high divorce rate amongst ostensibly traditionalist families in Utah. "
Muslims tend to have high divorce rates in many countries as well. For divorce rates to rise, a society or religion has to allow for divorce in the first place.
Thank you so much for this! You put into words what I have been thinking. Especially about reading discourse from the past...I am Indian American and feel that pain of seeing what my mother could have been. Conservatism is too close for me to forget or idealize it. Also....seriously about the baby with the bath water for the sexual revolution...could not agree more.
Yes exactly, while I feel like I have a lot of small 'c' conservative values I still see how traditional conservatism can be extremely stiffling for many people and particularly women.
"Small 'c' conservative values."
I read an interesting article here recently entitled, "The Rise of Right-Wing Progressives" by N.S. Lyons - super fascinating discussion on what constitutes conservatism vs. progressivism and left-wing vs. right-wing (that is, in some sense, egalitarianism vs. hierarchy).
I actually jotted down in my notebook, "...does this make me a conservative leftist?"
Highly recommend!
ooh thank you, googling it now!
I observe that many of today’s neo-trade female thought leaders are maintaining good careers by talking about how important it is to prioritise marriage and children. Nice work if you can get it, eh?
I know, right?
I found the essay interesting, and definitely think that the neo-traditionalists take a somewhat ahistorical approach to tradition, and in a funny way are very reflective of a hyper individualism that isn’t traditional at all. Being from the US, I have some (not very original) thoughts about how hyper individualism evolved in the US. I apologize in advance about the wall of text.
I think that in the US, increased liberalism/leftism, hyper-individualism, lack of social trust and civic engagement, and declining religiosity all go hand and are part of a single phenomenon. I don’t know if this is true in the UK or Greece, but in the US churches were largely run by their parishioners, not by an ecclesiastical hierarchy. So in the US, decreasing religiosity isn’t just about beliefs, it also functionally increases atomization, and decreases social trust and civic engagement, as churches were the most prevalent institution in which neighbors would come together and do the work of building a community. Churches are also still important in the US in terms of civic engagement, with churches engaging in a lot of volunteer work and also being one of the primary ways in which ordinary folks organize and get involved in politics, on both the right and the left. For an example, there were regular protests against the conservative legislature in North Carolina called “Moral Mondays”, and the people who did the organizing and led the protests were pastors and church groups.
Also, at least in the US, I don’t think that it is capitalism per se that has led to a loss of social trust, lack of civic engagement, and hyper individualism. The US has been capitalist for a long, long time, arguably since sometime in the 1600’s. The decline in social trust, atomization, etc. is rather a recent phenomenon in the US, not a persistent feature. It only started to get going maybe in the 1950’s, but really gathered steam in the 60’s and 70’s with the baby boomers. Which makes me suspect that it is changing technology that led to the atomization. The usual culprits being cited (by the left no less) as television, automobiles, and auto-centric suburbs. The right also have traditionally cited birth control and women in the workplace, though women in the workplace is now the norm in the US and not the exception, so much of the right has changed their tune on that. The commonality is that all of the technologies enabled more choice, and also decreased the need to rely upon others.
For example, my grandparents grew up without automobiles and television, and with limited access to telephones. The way that they learned to inhabit the world was to join groups in their neighborhood, both religious and civic, not as part of some belief in higher ideals, but just because hanging out with other people was their primary form of leisure/entertainment, and joining a group was the easiest way to do that. And since they were limited to places they could easily get to without a car, they couldn’t be too picky about finding groups that perfectly aligned with their beliefs, and indeed developed a habit of not holding beliefs so strongly that they got in the way of forming friendships, and being willing to change their opinions to better fit in. Again, none of this happened for religious or ideological reasons, it just happened because they were trying to do their best with limited choices. Even once they got a car, it was a pain to drive very far, as there weren’t many highways even in the major city where they lived, so travel was still a lot slower compared to today and their options were still pretty limited to their own neighborhoods or neighborhoods very close by.
The boomers, on the other hand, grew up with television. They still spent far more time hanging out with other kids in their neighborhood than millennials or gen Z, but much less than their parents. By the time they were teenagers, many (most?) households had cars and phones. They could call and talk to friends on the phone if it was difficult to see them face to face. They could connect with a larger number of people because they could travel farther than their parents could. And then by the time the boomers are adults, a lot of the interstate highway system had been built, so they moved to far flung suburban neighborhoods where you needed a car to get anywhere, and didn’t see your neighbors all that much. Those that were religious could, and did, shop around for churches that better fit their beliefs and identities, and when they got unhappy with whatever church they were attending, they would just go find a new one, leaving a lot of relationships behind. They watched far more television than their parents did, and participated in church life and civic organizations far less than their parents did. Again, not because of strongly held convictions, but just because staying home watching television was easier and frequently more satisfying for them in the moment than going through the pain of getting in the car and driving someplace to hang out with people they often felt they didn’t have much in common with, and hadn’t known for years or decades.
The internet and smartphones are in many ways less of a disjunctive break with previous trends than a lot of people acknowledge. They are another technology that gives people more choice, and that people substitute for time spent irl with other humans.
Spot on.
Econonic inequality and such never prevented other foreign cultures (which similar or more inequality) to maintain the intimacy and not gave the same "loneliness epidemic, mental health crisis, destruction of marriage and family and falling birthrates".
Economic inequality is one part of the equation, but I am not sure that's true. Just because other cultures are having more babies does not mean they are neccessarily happier or live more meaningful lives (two very different goals).
I hope I am not guilty of holding a luxury belief. I was an "older single" like you. I am now married to a good man. While I think marriage and kids can have an edge in terms of benefits, I still believe dying old alone is a fine option. And this is because, at the ripe old age of 37, I have come to an ingenius new observation: happiness is a state of mind. Singles have time for personal development, but are bored and complain of lack of intimacy. Parents with kids can have a meaningful life, but are harried and lonely together. Divorce comes with benefits and downsides of its own. And everyone, at every stage in their life, feels unhappy and blames the vagaries of their existence. Perhaps existence is the problem, after all.
To agree somewhat with a conservative above: what we seem to lack overall is a sense of purpose. Having jettisoned religion and service as admirable, we are left groping around for a framework to make us feel like we aren't merely marking time. I find myself sliding rightward as I age for I see that "good old fashioned values" really do have value. And when we destroy things because they "cause harm" to some people, we create a vacuum that causes harm to some people. And there is no way to go back.
People are innately religious. It is not what we do but who we are. We need transcendent purpose; to strive toward an higher state of being (which the traditionally religious would call reunion with God).
Even if one doesn’t practice a traditional religions, we all uphold religious structure: we all have a God, scripture, gurus, sacred art, commandments, sin, and means of salvations, etc.
Instead of organized religions, people have simply applied their religious impulse to political obsession, social justice wokeness, consumerism, cheating, substance abuse,
People jettisoned organized religion, in part, because they failed to recognize that the “problem” with is innate human frailty. You can’t escape institutional harm because we can’t escape our nature. Many many people seek “reunion with God” by simply separating themselves from “impurity” aka harm or “wrong thinking.” Hence why Utopianism and political purity culture is far more rampant on the Left. Makes sense: it’s less traditionally religious.
In the US context, I normally identify as an extreme right-wing reactionary, but I found absolutely nothing to disagree with here, and much to admire. I wish voices like this were the most prominent representatives of "the left." Thank you for writing.
I truly believe there is common ground, thanks for reading 🙏
Also- I was confused at first about your use of the word “neo con women” I was in college during the Bush years and assumed your use of the phrase meant feminists who want to export American democratic and capitalist values to non western, conservative countries. 😅 lolz
I agree with Stella AND the neo cons, but at the end of the day we are the descendants of APES 🦧. I think it’s important to acknowledge that children and the creation of a stable family offers the mind a certain kind biological satisfaction that can only really be known once experienced. Motherhood was strictly a theoretical concept for me until I had my daughter, but once I had the experience of pregnancy and caregiving it became clear that my love for her was the most fulfilling experience I’ve ever had. More worthwhile than any of my jobs trying to extract larger profit margins for business owners.
Ultimately, there is so much flippant discussion about mothering and childcare in the feminist space amongst women who have never had the experience themselves and though I often agree with the arguments being made, I only do so in part, as I know the arguer has in some sense no idea what they are taking about vis-a-vis motherhood if they are discussing it theoretically and not practicality. Thus, I find the arguments of Mary H and Louise P the most compelling in the feminist discourse today.
I love your writing Stella, if you do want marriage and family, I hope you find them. They are the best things that ever happened to me anyway. All my jobs were somewhat tortuous, lame, and low paying. My full time gig is caregiver for my husband and daughter, I love it. My “career” is as a painter, I make no money to speak of but my darling husband earns enough so that I may indulge in my fulfilling bullshit no money job. Most days I somehow do feel like I have it all, and that somehow that happened by accident.
Thanks for the writing, I love reading your work and found you through a repost from Rob Henderson.
thank you, I am very very curious to see how my views change when I have kids (if I manage to find someone to have them with, lol).
Your life sounds lovely to me btw!
A lot of this online #SAH wife or #SAH girlfriend b.s. is a social media grift. They don't want to work a regular job (who does?) but they DO want to make money from social media. So on top of having their husbands or boyfriends pay for their lives, they are also making additional money from the grift. In some cases they may be the primary earner in the couple and thus supporting their partners, but they won't tell you that. Stay At Home wife can make sense but Stay At Home girlfriend makes absolutely no sense at all. Especially if the woman wants to get married and have kids. She's just wasting her energy and fertile years with a social media "boyfriend" who refuses to marry her.
"It still holds today, for me, at least. I want marriage and kids. Life without a blueprint is chaotic. I won’t do what Rob Henderson accuses some leftists of doing with luxury beliefs. Discouraging people from doing things I’d pick for myself, like settling with a spouse and having a family. But it’s not a panacea. Marriage and kids won’t solve our problems. We will not be alone in a full house, but we may still be lonely."
That's the human condition. Nothing is panacea. The question is whether on average people will be less or more lonely than on a hedonistic treadmill. Judging from the latest numbers on loneliness, depression, sexlessness and related statistics, how do you think those "luxury beliefs" adoption is working out for the general "us"?
that's the thing though, nothing is a panacea but social media has made us more self-aware, we look at ourselves as if we are a person starring a hollywood film, but real life is mundane and banal. Generations before us were slightly batsit crazy, too, just in different ways. Also, crisis, wars and famines focus the mind wonderfully. Idle hands etc.
Definitely a great article. My only real and extremely minor critique would be I don't know if I would say these are neocons; they don't seem to ring true of the 2000 Bush-era rightoids. Maybe neo-traditionalists? It seems like they are hoping to do more than conserve, but actually (selectively) dial a long ways back towards an (imagined) past.
Like a said, a very tiny quibble about an otherwise good read.
I agree, I wanted to use a word to describe the new conservative feminists, which I have most often heard being referred to as neo-con feminists, but you are right that this is not how the word is used in political science.
Yeah, a lot of these terms really don't age well. The word 'moderism' nominally means, well... Modern. Yet 'modernism' is an 18th/19th century movement/ideology.
Neocons suffers from the same issue. It nominally means 'new conservatives' but represents (what I'd argue) a mostly dead rightwing movement that became very popular in the 1980s. Now what do we call the actually new rightwing? It's a neverending problem 😓
Mary Harridan...I mean Harrington, calls it "Reactionary Feminism".