tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-190326263026916588.post5105593919925297009..comments2024-03-04T21:50:12.306+11:00Comments on Upon Hope: Why Don't the Poor Marry?Mark Moncrieffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07988061141727262837noreply@blogger.comBlogger14125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-190326263026916588.post-63618604355108578202015-04-01T00:46:14.006+11:002015-04-01T00:46:14.006+11:00Dear Brian
I don't know where to begin!
Firs...Dear Brian<br /><br />I don't know where to begin!<br /><br />First off people didn't send their sons off to die in war, they sent them to be victorious. Death was a byproduct of war, not the intended result. People sent their children into the Church, for the rich, too many claimants to a title lead to violence and for the poor the Church offered a better life. But I think you make a common mistake, while the average life expectancy might have been low, most people died either as young children or in their fifties's and sixties's. In other words if you lived to be 5 you had a good chance of living into your fifties.<br /><br />In all ages in nearly all cultures marriage has been important. I think your arguing that that isn't the case. <br /><br />Only in very rare cases is war so disastrous that marriage is damaged. That was true of WWI for most European Countries (including Australia, Canada and New Zealand) and for some in WWII. But you just cannot argue that for the United States, in WWII America lost 0.34% of its population in the war. Marriage in America was affected much more by the great depression than by WWII, although WWII did extend the effects.<br /><br />"Instead, we cherry-pick anecdotes – too often from ancient biblical accounts of royalty – and assume that all moderns should be falling into predictive patterns."<br /><br />You must hang out with very different Conservatives than I do!<br /><br />The fact remains that todays culture of marriage is unhistorical and doomed. <br /><br />Mark MoncrieffMark Moncrieffhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07988061141727262837noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-190326263026916588.post-31823899087320043482015-03-31T11:30:59.199+11:002015-03-31T11:30:59.199+11:00And there's the problem, you're being sele...And there's the problem, you're being selective in both time and (apparently) cohort. Throughout human history, marriage is something that even few of Western Christendom could afford – hence why families traditionally sent children off to both war and the Church, as well as why most of the feudal poor actually historically died both single and virginal (made easier of course by the dearth of calories; our modern conceit of poverty in the West isn't what our ancestors understood). The Black Death's removal of so much of the "surplus" peasant population let enough of the survivors have a marriage market, but those same social forces of individuation helped spurn on the Reformation from what would otherwise been one of a hundred other doctrinal tiffs.<br /><br />Likewise, over the past century in the West overall and the past sesquicentury in the US, total warfare has killed off enough young men that we've artificially held down the number of singletons – along with marital ages grossly lowered post-WWII by the GI Bill (our "late" marriage ages now are still actually lower than prior to WWI, and that's which life expectancy nearly doubled). With 2-3 generations of men NOT being murdered in trenches en masse now, we're back in the direction of normal humanity, where marriage is rarer, albeit the conservative community structures like churches and extended families have opted to ignore their role in helping the young build a social role for themselves.<br /><br />Instead, we cherry-pick anecdotes – too often from ancient biblical accounts of royalty – and assume that all moderns should be falling into predictive patterns. However, we fail to take into account that we live in grossly-distorted post-industrial economics (not even to take into account what industrial economics did to marital dynamics), where families are nucleating and moving around constantly and the young are being forced to gain new credentials that they can't afford so as to artificially lower the unemployment rate while no jobs exist for them in a structure that has yet to congeal (I mentioned the lengthened life expectancy – that's why the industrial age propitiated retirement, but the end of that concept means that those at work's end aren't leaving, so there's no "moving up the ladder" to allow for new workers to move in, so they're forced into the pretense of new degrees instead.<br /><br />It's easy to presume that the media image of the Hookup Culture is everywhere rather than just in the wealthy – as surely as the image we have of the 18th-19th centuries (and the medieval world) now are fallacies of the wealthy, and the disastrous images their own media presented of themselves contemporaneously were likewise. We need to stop considering, as conservatives, that Jane Austin and the Old Testament are the start-and-stop of depicting the past and start considering a broader range of sources...<br /><br />[I say all of this as someone who degreed in History (specialized in European Studies) and Anthropology and has worked extensively in oral history of multiple generations of veterans regarding wartime and pre/post-war lives.]Brianhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10058171030261812885noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-190326263026916588.post-28820138978177687662015-03-17T03:34:58.111+11:002015-03-17T03:34:58.111+11:00The baby boomers get a bad rap but I'm not con...The baby boomers get a bad rap but I'm not convinced they always deserve it. They didn't create the sixties, they had to try and live in it and make sense of it. They didn't always do a good job of it. I'll give just one example, no-fault divorce, this was introduced in the 60's and 70's when most baby boomers were only teenagers or in their twenties. They didn't get to choose it, they like the rest of us just had to live with it. <br /><br />I hope your right and the next generation are good people.<br /><br />Mark MoncrieffMark Moncrieffhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07988061141727262837noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-190326263026916588.post-10692703229436840732015-03-17T03:28:29.016+11:002015-03-17T03:28:29.016+11:00Sadly, I agree with you.
Mark MoncrieffSadly, I agree with you.<br /><br />Mark MoncrieffMark Moncrieffhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07988061141727262837noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-190326263026916588.post-45148149186168172852015-03-16T08:31:43.788+11:002015-03-16T08:31:43.788+11:00The baby boomers and their intellectual courtiers ...The baby boomers and their intellectual courtiers glorified selfishness, and largely ruined GenX and Y. But the present generation of young adults are different. They want to be good people, leading good lives. They volunteer, and are more serious about themselves and their relationships. I have high hopes they will be better than us. Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-190326263026916588.post-43388918966402385632015-03-14T17:38:15.350+11:002015-03-14T17:38:15.350+11:00Family and marriage law are now so slanted in favo...Family and marriage law are now so slanted in favor of women that many men who would otherwise be inclined to marry simply opt out - or shack-up (live together) in perpetuity. I myself am lucky-enough to be in a wonderful marriage of more than twenty years duration, but I know many single/divorced men who - having been once-burned by a legal system slanted against them - prefer loneliness and single life to the risk of being hammered again. Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-190326263026916588.post-90943606309722576922014-08-16T04:53:21.597+10:002014-08-16T04:53:21.597+10:00They kinda do now still, only after the birth of t...They kinda do now still, only after the birth of the second child:) Do you remember Eliza Doolittle from "My Fair Lady"? If I'm not mistaken, her father inherited some money and decided to marry his live-in mistress because he now became a gentleman. Lower classes used to marry, but they also used to live together much more than middle and upper class, and that's what we see now, too. Well, at least, over here where I live, it may very well be different in Australia! Sannehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08124283361844607678noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-190326263026916588.post-61814209381885717092014-08-16T03:54:25.309+10:002014-08-16T03:54:25.309+10:00Dear Sanne
I have to disagree with you I'm af...Dear Sanne<br /><br />I have to disagree with you I'm afraid, before our generation the lower classes married, just as regularly as any other class. I look at my own ancestry and for two hundred years (the furthest I've gone back so far) they were all married. <br /><br />Mark MoncrieffMark Moncrieffhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07988061141727262837noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-190326263026916588.post-41971177263225510852014-08-16T03:29:21.635+10:002014-08-16T03:29:21.635+10:00Lower class just returned to their default positio...Lower class just returned to their default position before the 20th century experiment of creating a broad middle class, as for middle and upper class, in my country they still do marry. Sannehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08124283361844607678noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-190326263026916588.post-31294097543331041832014-08-15T10:51:19.773+10:002014-08-15T10:51:19.773+10:00Agreed re the hollow achievement of another notch ...Agreed re the hollow achievement of another notch on the bedpost. It is difficult to convince men that marriage is worth it these days. Marriage is presented as a raw deal for men and it is hard to disagree. You discussed the lack of job security directly affecting a commitment to marriage, well lack of security in marriage would also be a factor for men. Andrew Simmondsnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-190326263026916588.post-43525867922136172812014-08-15T03:38:19.337+10:002014-08-15T03:38:19.337+10:00Mr. Simmonds
Good to see a comment from you!
&qu...Mr. Simmonds<br /><br />Good to see a comment from you!<br /><br />"I do think however it is slightly mistitled. It is originally focussed on the poor but quickly begins to summarise why ALL people in Western countries are choosing not to marry."<br /><br />Guilty as charged your Honour!<br /><br />I started on a narrower theme and then it branched out. But in my defence, nothing I said is not applicable to the poor. <br /><br />In Asia they have gone from a very traditional marriage pattern to modern Liberal marriage in one generation. It is a disaster in the West when we had generations of easing into it. But in one generation thats just too much and I think we are seeing the consequences now. Japan is simply the first Asian domino to fall but it won't be the last.<br /><br />I think everything else you've said is correct, but I would like to make a further comment on your comments. You said that men who are in demand don't settle down and I think for those in the "buffet lounge" were women are plentiful that is the case. But I would warn them that it is a false happiness as it doesn't last. Men want to achieve and when you've had sex with 1000 women it can seem like a real achievement, something hardly any man will achieve. But where is your wife? Where are your children? Where is your companion? What is your legacy? When compared to those things it is a pretty pale imitation of a real achievement.<br /><br />Mark MoncrieffMark Moncrieffhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07988061141727262837noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-190326263026916588.post-52081900867306866462014-08-15T03:19:48.693+10:002014-08-15T03:19:48.693+10:00Mr. Doom
I understand your position I'm just ...Mr. Doom<br /><br />I understand your position I'm just not sure if I agree with it or not. You may be right and the stigma of illegitimacy is such a vital part of providing marriage with legitimacy that the two are linked and any breaking of that link weakens marriage.<br /><br />But the stigma of illegitimacy means that an innocent party, the child who through no fault of their own is stigmatized. When the shame should be the parents. <br /><br />I'm afraid I don't have the answer to this one.<br /><br />Mark MoncrieffMark Moncrieffhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07988061141727262837noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-190326263026916588.post-45713508580003160132014-08-14T13:21:41.613+10:002014-08-14T13:21:41.613+10:00A very detailed and well-thought out essay. I do t...A very detailed and well-thought out essay. I do think however it is slightly mistitled. It is originally focussed on the poor but quickly begins to summarise why ALL people in Western countries are choosing not to marry. <br /><br />A few more points I would like to add. The greater emphasis on women attending university and putting off family for their "career" has left thousands of Australian women with fewer options once they decide to marry. In their 30s, professional woman are shocked to discover that the men of similar age and economic status are not interested in them, rather their 20-something interns. These days meeting a single woman in her 30s means soon finding out she has had more than 10 sexual partners and quite possibly an abortion. For men, this thought is never far from his mind.<br /><br />The removal of arranged marriage from society has sent the number of "never to be marrieds" skyward - especially in Asia. <br /><br />While this system never officially existed in Australia, in small to medium sized towns where everybody knew everybody, a single woman approaching 30 would not go unnoticed and men of her age would be pushed in her direction by parents, the church, employers and friends. These things took care of themselves in time. Today however, women have left these towns in search better opportunities in terms of both jobs and men. The modern city is a great study in hypergamy where women are constantly in search of high-status men who are rich, funny, cool, loyal and attractive. The problem though, is that men like this are extremely rare and they themselves have no interest in settling down. It then goes back to my original point of when women in their 30s realise they are running out of time and they are being pushed out of the market place by women 10 years younger, their options are few, if any. Andrew Simmondsnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-190326263026916588.post-39603168834418541082014-08-14T01:48:15.383+10:002014-08-14T01:48:15.383+10:00Removing the stigma attached to illegitimacy was t...Removing the stigma attached to illegitimacy was the step that doomed marriage. At the time people were convinced it was a just and humane change, but it turned out to be one of those ideas that sounds great in theory but has catastrophic unintended consequences.<br /><br />At least the consequences were not intended by well-meaning conservatives who failed to oppose the change. The Leftists who supported the change certainly intended it to be a step on the path to the destruction of marriage.dfordoomhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02306293859869179118noreply@blogger.com