This headline inspires a thought, as a female child of the sixties in a relatively affluent community (often blamed for this mess). I get that most of the “stories” suggest that the increase in divorce in the sixties was about indulging in sex. That story makes for much more entertaining stories than what I remember. My experience was that most divorces were precipitated when mothers went back to college. They hadn’t finished because babies came along. In the more stable 2 parent relationships, both had finished college before marrying. So completing college (in those days) could have contributed to parental relationship stability. Excuse the pun but “Don’t throw the baby out with the bath water! “
So you’re saying that if both parents complete college before having kids, there’s less chance for divorce? And this is a bigger factor in divorce than indulgence in sex?
Rob isn’t saying “don’t finish college.” He’s not saying, “don’t go to college” for those who college is a good fit.
I’m on chapter 9 in Rob’s book. So far it’s about the choices that parents make that cause instability for children. He’s arguing for more emphasis on stable, loving families. I agree with him. I have a feeling he will say more about college in chapters 9-12. He wrote about college a bit in the preface. So where is he going with this? Gotta read the book!
Hey Scott, I totally agree that a caring 2parent family is more important to future healthy adults than just getting that kid through college. And I believe that parents who complete college and post-grad education before parenting is related to more stable parenting.
I base the latter on my experience that divorces during the ‘60’s-70’s coincided with mothers who tried to go back to college after having kids, while 2 parent households with mothers who had already completed college were more stable. That could be because the parents who completed their education were more ready for the responsibilities of relationships and parenting because they were more mature, and may have studied subjects that contributed to good parenting. It may also be because going to school, raising kids and being in a relationship is too much to take on at one time.
My memory of the goal of feminism was gender blindness, just like the civil rights movement’s color blindness. The sexual freedom angle of feminism was amplified in soap operas, movies, etc.
The implication is that “luxury beliefs” may be the product of “for profit” media and people of every class are gullibly virtue signalling instead of questioning and thinking for themselves.
Sorry for the delay in getting back. Just finished the book. Maybe the something deeper going on in luxury beliefs is found on page 231, discussing the ideas of Isaiah Berlin regarding “positive liberty”, which is more familiar than, “negative liberty” - the absence of coercion when making our own choices. When coercion has diverse voices it isn’t as influential as when all the voices align (social as well as peers). In the 70’s when almost every HH owned a tv and there were only three networks, the viral effect started by reaching nearly every HH in prime time with (in those days) a very well researched and high production value) message. That dissipated in the 80’s and 90’s with the fragmentation of audiences across 100’s of cable channels and VCR machines. But the Social Media viral effect has eclipsed what network television could do. Partly because it is less regulated with the 230 exemption from the Communications Decency Act and because the technology is exponentially more sophisticated to maniplulate behavior to make more ad revenue. It’s like the Perfect Storm.
“I want people to be a bit more skeptical of the self-proclaimed activist leaders who could be trying to push an agenda, trying to elicit sympathy, and trying to exploit people’s concerns.”
Bingo. The role of professional activist should generally be considered as becoming harmful to the very cause it claims to fight for. The “Shirky Principle”
“I am perfectly at ease, though, with saying we can shame absentee fathers.”
I’m not. The divorce system is stacked against fathers. I’m sorry, but with many friends and family that divorced, the mother was a raging covert narcissist bent on retribution and the courts generally support that type of behavior. I see many fathers that want a better relationship with their kids but for this constant hostility from their ex. Often they are made destitute with alimony and childcare awards from the courts.
Changes to the economy have also not helped. When fathers cannot provide for their family, it destroys their self-worth and they check out. Lastly, we live in a time of man-shaming and female hero worship. Fathers feel it as a sense of not being valued. That is reinforced.
For strong father involvement after divorce, generally it is up to the mother to help make it happen.
I agree with the importance of two-parent families - we were more than a little fanatic ourselves with our first two and ended up adopting three more - but there is an interesting twist in the statistics that one wouldn't think of if they weren't obsessed with noticing how genetics is left out of social science studies. In a large and longitudinal Swedish study, the children who had one parent die prematurely had nearly identical results to those where both survived...in the intact relationships. That is, if you were the sort of parent who would have stayed had you survived, that pretty much works for the kids as well. Given that income, sense of stability, and amount of attention would all almost certainly be lower, it suggests a powerful role for passing on the right sort of genes. We have learned much about the heritability of physical characteristics and intelligence, but are only now starting to see that personality and character traits are heritable as well. After all, Mr. Bilbo was motivated by "something Tookish" in himself long after his parents had died.
I see the review in Commentary indicates Rob may actually agree with me here, saying that he was lucky in that
“I did not have to experience the revolving door of toxic biological parents continually entering and exiting my life the way so many of my foster siblings did.”
But does that indicate that it’s a genetic issue, or is it not that the single mother who becomes one for that reason is also the kind of mother who can still provide an emotionally secure and stable environment for her child, while even a two parent family can fail at that and instead create an emotionally chaotic and damaging environment for kids?
I was raised by a single mother until I was 13, and had she stayed married to my biological father it would probably have been even more chaotic. She tried very hard to shield us from the ill effects, and did well. After she remarried my brother and I had stability, but we were not welcome and it was unhappy. So yes, chaos is quite possible in two-parent families and one-parent families can provide stability even with divorce. But the overall numbers are what they are, and the tendency is that a parent killed in war or in a car crash does not create the chaos one would expect. The kids turn out the same. Liberals try to pretend that alternative family structures should not be disapproved of (and they are right that the INDIVIDUALS, often more vicitim than perpetratior, should not be disapproved of) and conservatives blather on about how having a Dad around rescues everything on the basis of correlation rather than causation studies. Both can make me crazy.
I grew up in an emotionally chaotic family, although it was financially stable.
My takeaway is that emotionally unstable people should not be encouraged to get married, or at least not to have children.
If more emotionally unstable people today, decide marriage is not a good idea, that is a good thing. Maybe not for demographics, but certainly, for the sake of their potential children.
I’m looking for statistics on the absentee father question and hoping to find some assistance here. When I was growing up my best friend’s mother was a single mom and a prostitute and when she couldn’t make rent, she told him to pay, and when he couldn’t pay (he was nine years old) she tortured him. His father sued for custody for years, but family court sided with the mother until he was eleven and the judge asked him who he wanted to live with. Many of my other friends had similar, but far less extreme circumstances, with their father suing for custody while their kids were in abusive situations. My cousin was stabbed by his mother. My other cousin was thrown against a wall so hard by his mother when he was an infant that it broke it skull, even though his skull was still soft. My experience is obviously anecdotal, and my neighborhood perhaps not representative of the average American. Henderson keeps asserting that single parents are due to absentee fathers, but cites no statistics. He just cites his own other blog posts as supporting evidence but those don’t cite any statistics on this. Does anyone have actual statistics? Single parents are about 85% female, what percent of those fathers are incarcerated versus absentee versus blocked due to the mother gatekeeping the father? My personal experience is almost entirely the later, but I’m looking for hard data, not conjecture or anecdote or ideology.
Yeah, you should’ve hyped up your book list even more. You wrote up one page for each book! It’s more than I bargained for. Bravo and thank you. Book launch finally here! I hope it sells out
Great newsletter today. Very pleased to see the new reviews that you linked, although I’m a little perplexed why Pippa Bailey of The New Statesman labeled you a conservative. I think you have conservative tendencies but your political beliefs are a complete mystery. Both reviews went into detail on Luxury Beliefs, a topic that is so important in the current chaotic social environment. As I see it, the theory of luxury beliefs can reach a wider audience by making the information so accessible via this engaging and emotional book.
I bought the book at Amazon UK, and wrote up Mr review for gooreads. But US Amazon wouldn’t publish it, since I live overseas and basically don’t buy from US.
The list of books is interesting and mostly books I’ve wanted to read, some I’ve read, and a few I didn’t know about. Should finish in a few years …
One thing about marriage/luxury beliefs that I have observed in my personal life. The upper class, while espousing the greatness of alternative family structures and downplaying the importance of marriage will look down on you or make little digs or biting remarks should you be in a relationship where you’re not married (common law). There is a whole unwritten rules thing happening within the upper class and if you’re not married - you’re out and will never be part of the inner circle.
“Two-Parent Families Are More Important Than College.” Fantastic title! Thank you.
This headline inspires a thought, as a female child of the sixties in a relatively affluent community (often blamed for this mess). I get that most of the “stories” suggest that the increase in divorce in the sixties was about indulging in sex. That story makes for much more entertaining stories than what I remember. My experience was that most divorces were precipitated when mothers went back to college. They hadn’t finished because babies came along. In the more stable 2 parent relationships, both had finished college before marrying. So completing college (in those days) could have contributed to parental relationship stability. Excuse the pun but “Don’t throw the baby out with the bath water! “
So you’re saying that if both parents complete college before having kids, there’s less chance for divorce? And this is a bigger factor in divorce than indulgence in sex?
Rob isn’t saying “don’t finish college.” He’s not saying, “don’t go to college” for those who college is a good fit.
I’m on chapter 9 in Rob’s book. So far it’s about the choices that parents make that cause instability for children. He’s arguing for more emphasis on stable, loving families. I agree with him. I have a feeling he will say more about college in chapters 9-12. He wrote about college a bit in the preface. So where is he going with this? Gotta read the book!
Hey Scott, I totally agree that a caring 2parent family is more important to future healthy adults than just getting that kid through college. And I believe that parents who complete college and post-grad education before parenting is related to more stable parenting.
I base the latter on my experience that divorces during the ‘60’s-70’s coincided with mothers who tried to go back to college after having kids, while 2 parent households with mothers who had already completed college were more stable. That could be because the parents who completed their education were more ready for the responsibilities of relationships and parenting because they were more mature, and may have studied subjects that contributed to good parenting. It may also be because going to school, raising kids and being in a relationship is too much to take on at one time.
My memory of the goal of feminism was gender blindness, just like the civil rights movement’s color blindness. The sexual freedom angle of feminism was amplified in soap operas, movies, etc.
The implication is that “luxury beliefs” may be the product of “for profit” media and people of every class are gullibly virtue signalling instead of questioning and thinking for themselves.
The concept of luxury beliefs seems accurate, but I think there’s something deeper going on. Any thoughts on what it might be?
Sorry for the delay in getting back. Just finished the book. Maybe the something deeper going on in luxury beliefs is found on page 231, discussing the ideas of Isaiah Berlin regarding “positive liberty”, which is more familiar than, “negative liberty” - the absence of coercion when making our own choices. When coercion has diverse voices it isn’t as influential as when all the voices align (social as well as peers). In the 70’s when almost every HH owned a tv and there were only three networks, the viral effect started by reaching nearly every HH in prime time with (in those days) a very well researched and high production value) message. That dissipated in the 80’s and 90’s with the fragmentation of audiences across 100’s of cable channels and VCR machines. But the Social Media viral effect has eclipsed what network television could do. Partly because it is less regulated with the 230 exemption from the Communications Decency Act and because the technology is exponentially more sophisticated to maniplulate behavior to make more ad revenue. It’s like the Perfect Storm.
“I want people to be a bit more skeptical of the self-proclaimed activist leaders who could be trying to push an agenda, trying to elicit sympathy, and trying to exploit people’s concerns.”
Bingo. The role of professional activist should generally be considered as becoming harmful to the very cause it claims to fight for. The “Shirky Principle”
“I am perfectly at ease, though, with saying we can shame absentee fathers.”
I’m not. The divorce system is stacked against fathers. I’m sorry, but with many friends and family that divorced, the mother was a raging covert narcissist bent on retribution and the courts generally support that type of behavior. I see many fathers that want a better relationship with their kids but for this constant hostility from their ex. Often they are made destitute with alimony and childcare awards from the courts.
Changes to the economy have also not helped. When fathers cannot provide for their family, it destroys their self-worth and they check out. Lastly, we live in a time of man-shaming and female hero worship. Fathers feel it as a sense of not being valued. That is reinforced.
For strong father involvement after divorce, generally it is up to the mother to help make it happen.
I agree with the importance of two-parent families - we were more than a little fanatic ourselves with our first two and ended up adopting three more - but there is an interesting twist in the statistics that one wouldn't think of if they weren't obsessed with noticing how genetics is left out of social science studies. In a large and longitudinal Swedish study, the children who had one parent die prematurely had nearly identical results to those where both survived...in the intact relationships. That is, if you were the sort of parent who would have stayed had you survived, that pretty much works for the kids as well. Given that income, sense of stability, and amount of attention would all almost certainly be lower, it suggests a powerful role for passing on the right sort of genes. We have learned much about the heritability of physical characteristics and intelligence, but are only now starting to see that personality and character traits are heritable as well. After all, Mr. Bilbo was motivated by "something Tookish" in himself long after his parents had died.
Aha!
I see the review in Commentary indicates Rob may actually agree with me here, saying that he was lucky in that
“I did not have to experience the revolving door of toxic biological parents continually entering and exiting my life the way so many of my foster siblings did.”
But does that indicate that it’s a genetic issue, or is it not that the single mother who becomes one for that reason is also the kind of mother who can still provide an emotionally secure and stable environment for her child, while even a two parent family can fail at that and instead create an emotionally chaotic and damaging environment for kids?
I was raised by a single mother until I was 13, and had she stayed married to my biological father it would probably have been even more chaotic. She tried very hard to shield us from the ill effects, and did well. After she remarried my brother and I had stability, but we were not welcome and it was unhappy. So yes, chaos is quite possible in two-parent families and one-parent families can provide stability even with divorce. But the overall numbers are what they are, and the tendency is that a parent killed in war or in a car crash does not create the chaos one would expect. The kids turn out the same. Liberals try to pretend that alternative family structures should not be disapproved of (and they are right that the INDIVIDUALS, often more vicitim than perpetratior, should not be disapproved of) and conservatives blather on about how having a Dad around rescues everything on the basis of correlation rather than causation studies. Both can make me crazy.
Yep.
I wish my parents had divorced.
I grew up in an emotionally chaotic family, although it was financially stable.
My takeaway is that emotionally unstable people should not be encouraged to get married, or at least not to have children.
If more emotionally unstable people today, decide marriage is not a good idea, that is a good thing. Maybe not for demographics, but certainly, for the sake of their potential children.
I’m looking for statistics on the absentee father question and hoping to find some assistance here. When I was growing up my best friend’s mother was a single mom and a prostitute and when she couldn’t make rent, she told him to pay, and when he couldn’t pay (he was nine years old) she tortured him. His father sued for custody for years, but family court sided with the mother until he was eleven and the judge asked him who he wanted to live with. Many of my other friends had similar, but far less extreme circumstances, with their father suing for custody while their kids were in abusive situations. My cousin was stabbed by his mother. My other cousin was thrown against a wall so hard by his mother when he was an infant that it broke it skull, even though his skull was still soft. My experience is obviously anecdotal, and my neighborhood perhaps not representative of the average American. Henderson keeps asserting that single parents are due to absentee fathers, but cites no statistics. He just cites his own other blog posts as supporting evidence but those don’t cite any statistics on this. Does anyone have actual statistics? Single parents are about 85% female, what percent of those fathers are incarcerated versus absentee versus blocked due to the mother gatekeeping the father? My personal experience is almost entirely the later, but I’m looking for hard data, not conjecture or anecdote or ideology.
Yeah, you should’ve hyped up your book list even more. You wrote up one page for each book! It’s more than I bargained for. Bravo and thank you. Book launch finally here! I hope it sells out
I am going to do my damnedest to make it to your book event.
Great newsletter today. Very pleased to see the new reviews that you linked, although I’m a little perplexed why Pippa Bailey of The New Statesman labeled you a conservative. I think you have conservative tendencies but your political beliefs are a complete mystery. Both reviews went into detail on Luxury Beliefs, a topic that is so important in the current chaotic social environment. As I see it, the theory of luxury beliefs can reach a wider audience by making the information so accessible via this engaging and emotional book.
Hmmmm….the same bookstore chain that refused to let you do book signing events?
Another homerun from Rob.
I bought the book at Amazon UK, and wrote up Mr review for gooreads. But US Amazon wouldn’t publish it, since I live overseas and basically don’t buy from US.
The list of books is interesting and mostly books I’ve wanted to read, some I’ve read, and a few I didn’t know about. Should finish in a few years …
One thing about marriage/luxury beliefs that I have observed in my personal life. The upper class, while espousing the greatness of alternative family structures and downplaying the importance of marriage will look down on you or make little digs or biting remarks should you be in a relationship where you’re not married (common law). There is a whole unwritten rules thing happening within the upper class and if you’re not married - you’re out and will never be part of the inner circle.
Ooh, that hardcover looks nice. That’s the one I ordered. ☝🏽