[jcstk]

I can appreciate this perspective because I used to have it. I even wrote a similar blog post 10 years ago - it was on the top of HN and the comment section was a beautiful shitshow. For me, this perspective was a good story to tell myself - it justified why I was only investing my time in “work”, and validated me for having “come so far”.

Over time, I have reflected and shifted this perspective. That reflection centered around the question the author hasn’t asked himself yet: who creates these expectations? It’s always some loose definition like “society” or “elite”, or some other handy wavy grouping of people.

But, to be clear, those expectations are coming from the author. That’s his perspective of what the world thinks, based on his interactions, based on what he chooses to read, listen to, etc. He's not describing anyone but himself.

I found that if I find myself projecting onto social norms, society, or some other loose definition of “they”, what I’m really doing is projecting a part of myself that I haven’t been honest about yet.

[the_solenoid]

I agree - and will take it one step further: he misses the root causes of "instability", and I bet it tracks directly with the gutting of the middle class starting in the 70's, and/or the same flat-lining of wages (not keeping up with inflation etc) despite huge increases in productivity in about the same time period.

Money is a huge stressor in relationships. Misogyny is still a huge thing (to my utter surprise honestly). Abuse, etc. Options for financial stability to escape these things I would suspect to contribute as well.

[bradlys]

The author of this article used Charles Murray’s Coming Apart as a source. He’s a pretty… controversial figure. The counterpart to him that is more progressive and less controversial is Robert Putnam. His books are a lot more digestible. I’d suggest looking up talks with the author on YouTube. (He even has a debate with Charles Murray - as they are somewhat of friends)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowling_Alone

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22609334-our-kids

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/50124402-the-upswing

One thing I want to mention here is that it seems that social effects come before economic effects. People go through social change and then the economics follow later. That’s the one thing I would take away from the books/talks. Somewhat ironic to many here.

[parineum]

I noticed that you didn't mention which of these arguments were good or bad.

[marcusverus]

> I bet it tracks directly with the gutting of the middle class starting in the 70's

This belief is oddly common, considering it has no basis in reality. The share of adults living in households with sub-middle-class incomes has only grown by 4% since 1971.[0] The share of adults living in upper-class households grew by more (5%)! And this even as the number of single-adult households has soared[1], reducing the average number of earners per household!

[0]https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/09/06/the-america... [1]https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2011/12/14/barely-...

[ALittleLight]

The portion of double income households more than doubled between 1960 and today[1]. The middle class is working more because they want to, or because they need to? Purchasing power for the average worker is flat[2]. In some sense, it's like the middle class has been working for fifty years without a raise, only now two people in the household need to work. That fewer people are getting married or having kids is likely not because human nature shifted in the past few decades, but probably because their lives are not going well or developing properly.

1 - https://www.pewresearch.org/ft_dual-income-households-1960-2... 2 - https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/08/07/for-most-us...

[kortilla]

> Purchasing power for the average worker is flat[2]. In some sense, it's like the middle class has been working for fifty years without a raise, only now two people in the household need to work

That “flat” wage is accounting for inflation according to your own link. So not only would a single earner be doing just as good today as back then, adding a second income means they are raking in twice the spending power as back then.

The only thing that has changed are expectations. People want way bigger houses, nicer cars, computers, smart phones, more meat, dental care, better medical care, etc. Worst of all (from a financial perspective), they want both of their average kids to spend 4 years at an expensive university.

[jjav]

> Worst of all (from a financial perspective), they want both of their average kids to spend 4 years at an expensive university.

Expensive only because it's been allowed to become expensive. Decades ago it was normal for a good university to be nearly free or at least quite affordably by the student working part time to pay their way.

> dental care, better medical care

People "want" health care. I mean of course, but it's not a whim, it's a basic necessity. Which like the university, was very affordable to nearly everyone decades ago.

Not sure people want bigger houses either, every housing topic on HN is full of desire for smaller apartments to get built.

[rsanek]

> Decades ago it was normal for a good university to be nearly free or at least quite affordably by the student working part time to pay their way.

Here's a few graphs that show this more explicitly: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/gregschoofs/how-much-co...

[marcusverus]

> The portion of double income households more than doubled between 1960 and today[1].

Your data only represents "married couples with children under 18"--a (shrinking) minority of households. By definition it does not account for the dramatic rise in single-adult households.

[ALittleLight]

The single adult households are a separate and bad thing. I don't think there has been a substantial shift in human desires in the last couple generations - most people still want to get married and have kids and fewer of them are. That they are able to subsist in one family households is not a bragging point for our system.

[rayiner]

How does a “flat lining” of wages of cause family stability to go down? And how do you explain high levels of family stability in countries that are much poorer?

[danans]

> And how do you explain high levels of family stability in countries that are much poorer?

Less individual freedom, greater direct economic dependency on others in your group, and also the threat of ostracization, excommunication, and destitution if you go against its rules. Basically, there are extremely high cost/stakes associated with going it on your own.

But on the other side there are also good things that come from greater direct interdependency, like perhaps less individual alienation and a greater sense of shared purpose, and access to community resources when you follow the prescribed rules.

[jacobolus]

In some places people have centuries of social-structure adaptation to deal with the stress of being systematically oppressed (by local elites, colonial overlords, ...).

E.g. money gets shielded by community institutions (such as local religious organizations) that are harder for elites to steal from than individual peasants, and then those act as a kind of social safety net in hard times. Extended families/clans build social bonds through e.g. marriage and baptism, and help each-other.

Often there are severe social problems in rural peasant societies: alcoholism, domestic violence, seasonal migrant labor keeping people away from home much of the year, corruption, ..., but people have also learned to be tough vs. some kinds of outside threats. But large waves in the world economy (or a large natural disaster or the like) also can overwhelm those defenses.

[danans]

I think we agree that many pro-social structures exist in poor and socially rigid societies.

However these come at the expense of many liberties (i.e. religious) that are held as important in the more developed world. It's not clear that loss of such personal liberties would be an improvement in developed societies, even if it reduced the nominal divorce rate.

[rayiner]

I agree there is a trade off, but let’s explore this a bit further. Who decides how much they value religious liberty compared to lower divorce rates? Decisions about these trade offs tend to be imposed from the top, by the elites. 2/3s of Americans still disagree with the Supreme Court ruling banning school prayer.

When there is a trade off, who should get to make the decisions about where to strike the balance?

[zozbot234]

Liberties have always come paired with obligations to one's surrounding community, so there would be nothing new in this. We have a name for pure liberty or "liberation" shorn of any checks or obligations towards others: we call it licence, and every increase in licence is ultimately a step towards bondage and tyranny.

[formerkrogemp]

I don't think describing them as "rural peasant societies" is a great perspective to assume.

[jacobolus]

What do you mean? Historically most people in most places in the world (e.g. my ancestors in Europe a few generations ago, my godparents in southern Mexico recently, or most of your ancestors if you go back a couple centuries, wherever they happened to come from) have lived as rural peasants.

[philistine]

I think you're trying to think that stable families become less stable if their waged stagnate. They don't. What happens is that in aggregate, with stagnating wages, there are less stable (middle-class) families in society.

For so-called poorer countries, they are differently structured. It's tough to compare their family units with our rich nations.

[rayiner]

> For so-called poorer countries, they are differently structured. It's tough to compare their family units with our rich nations.

But that’s exactly the point! Prior to the 1960s revolution in social norms, families in poor countries weren’t structured all that differently than ones in the US.

I’m no Reaganite, but the fact is that the stuff the old “family values” conservatives said is pretty much the same thing my Asian immigrant parents told me growing up.

Meanwhile, the data shows that Asian Americans who grow up in the bottom 20% have a 25% chance of ending up in the top 20% as adults. For white kids it’s just 11%. That’s a really big coincidence to hand wave away.

[philistine]

Asian-Americans are not this rose-tinted perfect example of family values breeding success. https://www.vox.com/identities/22530103/asians-americans-wea...

The crazy successful asian immigrants are mostly those who came recently, and who are bluntly the best and brightest of Asia coming to America for a better life due to US policy attracting the very best. Just like the above conversation, you only think of one slice of data to arrive at your conclusion.

[nradov]

The issue isn't with the absolute level of wages but with increasing income inequality (Gini coefficient) and the resulting loss of social status for young men on the lower end of that scale.

[purplerabbit]

Correct. The hierarchy is getting steeper and harder to climb.

Men who don’t feel connected to a clear path of ascension become desperate and often either dangerous or losers.

It’ll be interesting to see what happens to the increasing number of men who feel they have “fallen off the path”. Could be scary

[DeathArrow]

>It’ll be interesting to see what happens to the increasing number of men who feel they have “fallen off the path”. Could be scary

They will probably seek revenge against the social norms and classes which alienated them. History tends to repeat itself.

[nightvoomer]

Community.

[rayiner]

The “community” in those countries enforces exactly the norms the author talks about.

[rayiner]

Income after taxes and transfer payments has grown for everyone since 1970: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:1970-_Relative_incom...

You can make a fair argument that the bottom 50% haven’t gotten their share of productivity growth, but that doesn’t explain why social indicators among the bottom quantile have gotten so much worse.

[dragonwriter]

> Income after taxes and transfer payments has grown for everyone since 1970

It's grown for every group used in that breakout, but while it breaks out the upper income groups on relatively fine categories, it groups the bottom half as one category.

(It's useful for the graph's original purpose of discussing top-weighted inequality, it's not useful for the argument you are trying to make with it.)

[coldtea]

>Income after taxes and transfer payments has grown for everyone since 1970

And education, housing, and health costs has sky-rocketed, number of "essential services" to pay for (mobile phone, internet, severan "rentier" subscriptions) has increased, while job stability and availability for working and middle class has plummeted...

But yes, the top 10%, the types to usually post at HN, never had it better.

[rayiner]

But a lot of those requirements are manufactured. Germany has an advanced industrial economy with half the percentage of college graduates we do (just 1/4). So why do we need to act like “cost of living” for everyone has to include saving hundreds of thousands of dollars for college?

I agree the top 10% have poor insight into what life is like for everyone else, but that cuts both ways. I think there’s a real misperception of what income is necessary to maintain a similar quality of life to the past.

[hef19898]

University is free in Germany, and a lot of jobs that require a college degree elsewhere are fulfulled by 3 year appreticeships in Germany. So hard to compare.

[danaris]

Whether it's manufactured or organic, it's still real. That's the economic reality we all have to live with in America, so it doesn't matter whether Germany can operate just fine without the crushing college debt we have: the fact is, middle-class households in America have lost real wealth and purchasing power over the past 50 years because of this and a number of other factors.

[qeternity]

Just because it's real, that doesn't make it right. You're missing the entire point: maybe the issue isn't the gutting of the middle class, but the expectation or encouragement of higher "education" even if it is unnecessary for a huge chunk of people.

[coldtea]

>Germany has an advanced industrial economy with half the percentage of college graduates we do (just 1/4). So why do we need to act like “cost of living” for everyone has to include saving hundreds of thousands of dollars for college?

Because Germany doesn't treat non-college graduates working class people as "losers".

Germany also has a quite solid social protection, not a cut throat environment where tons of people are a medical bill away from homeless.

[MathCodeLove]

> Because Germany doesn't treat non-college graduates working class people as "losers".

Neither does the United States? Not sure where you're getting this idea from. Most people I know revere trades as they're a known way to make great money without a degree. And, anecdotally speaking, I've managed to get great jobs as a software engineer without a degree. We treat non-college graduates who don't try to ascend above retail or fast-food as losers - and for good reason.

[qeternity]

> while job stability and availability for working and middle class has plummeted...

What?! The labor market has been so strong over the past decade that economists started to wonder if previous paradigms no longer apply (i.e. Phillips curve).

[coldtea]

In most empires on the way down, the scholarly narratives and the truth on the field are different things...

[pyuser583]

The author is focusing on working class families, not middle class families (they are discuss as a comparison).

How does the gutting of the middle class harm stability of working class families?

[johnnyanmac]

>Misogyny is still a huge thing (to my utter surprise honestly). Abuse, etc. Options for financial stability to escape these things I would suspect to contribute as well.

yes, this is why I couldn't quite be convinced of the thesis being proposed here. Or at the very least, they way they try to describe the "marketing" of being in a faithful marriage runs counter to the reality. While the situation of "deadbeat dad becomes alcoholic, won't get jobs, and cheats" is not an uncommon cause of divorce, the more common narrative pushes it as a liberation of women's right. Less about a man breaking away to be free and more about a woman not being trapped.

That above deadbeat stereotype has more become the "violent domestic abuser" type as of late. So divorce is a way to turn an absolute nightmare of a situation into emotional stability in exchange for what will likely be financial hardship. It turns a bad into slightly less bad, not a potentially patchful good into a bad.

Or at least, that's how society markets it. I don't have hard sources and admit these are just the notions I feel have risen over 3 decades of media consumption.

[quantified]

>> Some of the jobs he can get don’t pay enough to give him the self-respect he feels he needs, and others require him to get along with unpleasant customers and coworkers, and to maintain a submissive attitude toward the boss.”

> It used to be high-status to hold a job and take care of your family. Not so much anymore.

As though it’s ever been considered high-status to have crap pay and deal with abusive bosses and coworkers. Ask the really high-status people whether it was.

You need recordings to be able to review interactions for who is more in the right, telling the employee they need to turn off FB and get on with work seems like it management would say it’s reasonable and worker might say it’s overbearing.

[fwip]

It's absolutely wild to me that Rob quotes:

> Lack of money is certainly a contributing cause, as we will see, but rarely the only factor. It is usually the young father’s criminal behavior, the spells of incarceration that so often follow, a pattern of intimate violence, his chronic infidelity, and an inability to leave drugs and alcohol alone that cause relationships to falter and die.

Without seeming to make any sort of connection that poverty is a causative factor in every single one of these. Poor people are more likely to commit crimes of desperation. Poor people are over-policed when compared to middle-or-upper class people. Poverty makes it more difficult to escape domestic abuse. (Idk about the infidelity one). Drugs & alcohol are maladaptive coping methods that many people use to escape the reality of their daily lives - which are much worse when you're poor.

But y'know, that doesn't fit into his worldview that the dissolution of "family values" is the root cause of all this.

[paradox242]

Did you grow poor or have friends from poor backgrounds? I saw lots of drug use, stealing, petty vandalism and violence, and little if any of it had to do with their trying to survive in a material sense. There are different norms around which behaviors grant status, and this is the primary driver behind this kind of behavior in my experience.

[etchalon]

I grew up poor, but was lucky enough to go to a fairly 'rich' school district amongst fairly rich people (upper middle class more than "rich" I guess).

You know what I saw in rich kids?

Lots of drug use, stealing, petty vandalism and violence.

I just rarely saw them suffer any consequences for it.

[zozbot234]

This just goes to prove that anti-social behavior is not a "consequence" of poverty, and that solid social norms are far more relevant. Rich kids can still live in a socially frayed, marginalizing environment.

[hef19898]

If you are you get away, or even ahead, with anti-social behavor. If you are poor you go to jail.

[scotty79]

It's about survival in mental sense which lack of material means makes extremely hard.

People don't need money, but they desperately need sense of agency and entertainment and lack of money makes fulfilling those core needs in legal and moral manner super hard.

[zozbot234]

You're describing the cultural correlates of social marginalization and fraying social capital, not "poverty" per se. In many poor countries, casual anti-social behavior does not grant community status; in fact, the opposite is the case and punishments can be quite harsh indeed (though not nearly as harsh or socially damaging as the long-term imprisonment that's all-too-common in the US.) Widespread poverty in those failing communities is the consequence of such dynamics, not the cause.

[fwip]

Yeah, I did.

[rayiner]

Poverty isn’t the cause of crime. People were objectively poorer in the 1950s, even in the lower classes, and people in developing countries are much poorer than even poor Americans.

[fwip]

Absolute income (whether measured in dollars or purchasing power) means very little when compared across time periods or countries. Poverty has never been about your absolute buying power. It is relative to the society you exist in. You will find, by any objective measure, that the wealth disparity in the US is nearly as high as it has ever been (only exceeded by the Great Depression). These same objective measures will consistently score the US as worse than many developing countries.

You will find across many eras and cultures in the last two millennia that the poorest members of the society are the most vulnerable members of society and the most likely to be punished for committing crimes. If you still don't believe me, read this paper for an in-depth analysis that controls for many factors: https://web.worldbank.org/archive/website01241/WEB/IMAGES/IN...

Laws are made by those with power. In today's society, power comes in large part from wealth - that's the foundation of capitalism. The objective of capitalism is to accrue capital, and our laws and police system are set up to protect the wealthy and their wealth.

That's why graffiti is punishable by ten years in prison. Stealing a week's worth of groceries can mean years in prison. In contrast, the penalty for illegally evicting a renter, rendering them homeless, is about two or three months rent, and no prison time.

[t-3]

> Stealing a week's worth of groceries can mean years in prison.

Not even close to accurate, unless you're running off with a cartful of steaks, which might push you into criminal territory. Most shoplifting is not even a misdemeanor, just a civil infractions. Criminal charges require hundreds or thousands of dollars and usually multiple offenses to get more serious than probation.

[giantg2]

"Drugs & alcohol are maladaptive coping methods that many people use to escape the reality of their daily lives - which are much worse when you're poor."

I imagine this explains the correlation between poor minority neighborhoods during the crack epidemic or between the depressed rural areas and the opioid epidemic now.

[andreilys]

who creates these expectations? It’s always some loose definition like “society” or “elite”, or some other handy wavy grouping of people.

I suggest reading the book "Manufacturing Consent" to get an understanding of how expectations are shaped by mass media.

Just like there was a concerted effort to create public support for war (WW1/WW2/Vietnam/etc.), there are concerted efforts to shape public opinion and create expectations within our broader culture about morals/values/etc. Sometimes it's explicit, and often times it's implicit and picked up via signaling cues (i.e. high status reporter says X, to go against X would mean no more invites to fancy dinner parties)

[coldtea]

>But, to be clear, those expectations are coming from the author. That’s his perspective of what the world thinks, based on his interactions, based on what he chooses to read, listen to, etc. He's not describing anyone but himself.

The last conclusion is a little off. Everybody who expresses any opinion is describing "his perspective of what the world thinks, based on his interactions, based on what he chooses to read, listen to, etc". That doesn't mean they can't also coincide with a general trend, for example "societal expectations" at large.

[supersync]

Well said.

The glaring piece missing from this analysis is the psychology of the young men themselves.

Raising two young men myself, I’m blown away by how powerful cultivating intrinsic motivation is. My eldest just went from constant gaming/sleeping/hiding in his room to working a full-time job, launching a side hustle, and enrolling in classes.

Yes, my modeling & encouragement mattered. But the fulcrum was him accepting that living up to other people’s expectation in high school had left him tired, depressed, and lost.

The author has clearly identified that young man lack a goal worthy of their efforts.

He’s just completely ignored intrinsic motivation and the power of cultivating it.

I don’t think that’s an accident. I think our entire approach to young men as a society ignores the fundamental power of their interests.

[scotty79]

> The author has clearly identified that young man lack a goal worthy of their efforts.

For me it felt like the title would reflect reality better if it was rephrased to "Society has nothing to offer to young men and they respond by not pursuing anything."

[dandellion]

While you juxtapose gaming/hiding in your room and working/classes they're not mutually exclusive. I work a full-time job, take classes, have a sidle hustle, never leave my room, play way too many video games and sleep in almost every day.

[skyde]

father of a 4 years old boy. please help me! How do you cultivate intrinsic motivation ? any good strategy or book?

[analog31]

I've got two kids in college. Perhaps one thing is to avoid being consumed by your own fear of them failing. For a lot of the tasks they're given, if they're halfway intelligent, then the only hurdles will be attention and motivation. So, of you are the one supplying them with those things, then you're the one doing the work. "I'm not going to do your homework, but I'm going to make you do it," is doing their homework.

With that said, the tasks are going to come on hot and heavy sooner than you expect. I didn't have homework in grade school. At all. My kids had mountains of homework. Giving them too much to manage on their own, while telling you not to manage it for them, would seem like a cruel joke, but I don't know any other answer.

Also, you could be more disciplined than I was about my own chores. I didn't need to clean the bathrooms every week at the same time, but maybe had I set up a schedule like that, it might have modeled better habits in my kids. Or maybe not. ;-)

[DeathArrow]

I just use common sense, I try to explain why doing something is good and try to make the kid to have a desire to accomplish something. Also things have to feel more fun and less of a chore. If that fails, I have to resort to authority ("please do this because I ask you to"). If that also fails, I have to use carrot and stick strategy ("you will get that toy only if" or "you won't watch cartoons unless").

[simulate-me]

Can’t you invalidate all social commentary with this argument? Surely there are trends in society that can be remarked on generally.

[wpietri]

Your theory is that all social commentary is handwavey general remarks? If so, yes, let's invalidate it.

I think effective social commentary is mostly grounded in the personal, the specific, and the (thoughtfully) statistical. Otherwise it's very easy just to project one's biases onto a complicated picture. E.g., consider whatever it is that people think is "ruining the kids" these days. In the 1700s, you know what was ruining the kids? Novels: https://www.economist.com/1843/2020/01/20/an-18th-century-mo...

It's similar to how arguments about "what God wants" go wrong. Researchers showed that when people talk about what their god wants, they're unconsciously consulting their own preferences: https://www.discovermagazine.com/planet-earth/creating-god-i...

With broad social argument, it's easy to introduce all sorts of fallacy. Humans aren't really equipped to reason intuitively about things at this scale. Especially if the point is to persuade and/or entertain, simplifying into broad "logical" arguments can paint false pictures. Andrew Gelman wrote about this today: https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2022/04/24/the-perils...

[simulate-me]

The error in your line of thinking is that you assume humans are better interpreting statistical evidence than they are broad logical arguments. I don't see any evidence of that.

[wpietri]

It's not a error until a) you show that's the case, and b) it's material to my point.

Honestly, I don't think people are "better" at that (if such a fuzzy construction can have a useful meaning). But I do think they are more careful with it because it's harder to get right and more easy to visibly get it wrong. It's fine with me if expecting more concreteness just drastically reduces the total amount of social commentary. Even if it dropped by 99%, we'd still have more than we needed.

[jcstk]

The author provided data and graphs to highlight the problems in America he believes are being caused by a root problem of society having low expectations for men.

He doesn't provide any data to reflect what society's expectations are. Those are just his thoughts.

That's a big distinction.

[pyuser583]

The author provides no direct data, but cited a large number of peer reviewed articles and books. For example:

In a fascinating 2012 paper titled Sexual Economics, Culture, Men, and Modern Sexual Trends, the psychologists Roy Baumeister and Kathleen Vohs wrote:

“Although this may be considered an unflattering characterization…we have found no evidence to contradict the basic general principle that men will do whatever is required in order to obtain sex, and perhaps not a great deal more. (One of us characterized this in a previous work as, ‘If women would stop sleeping with jerks, men would stop being jerks.’) If in order to obtain sex men must become pillars of the community, or lie, or amass riches by fair means or foul, or be romantic or funny, then many men will do precisely that.”

[floodle]

I agree with what you're getting at. The prevailing belief in social science is that it's impossible to eliminate bias from your analysis of the world. In fact, I think many social scientists think that quantitative folks are kidding themselves when they think their clever statistical methods are free from their own personal biases.

[rayiner]

In Tokyo, nobody jay walks. In New York City, everyone jay walks. Do you think there’s (1) not the product of cultural norms; and (2) no way for someone embedded in that culture to be able to observe those cultural norms and comment on them?

[3np]

One thing that really stuck out to me was the implicit assumption that "stable home environment" requires or is equal to "married couple of biological parents living together until child becomes adult".

Especially the quote where an agreement that stability is important was interpreted as agreement that marriage is important.

[rayiner]

Virtually everyone in the world aside from a handful of declining European countries believes that “stable home environment” = “married parents.”

[sofixa]

Declining how? Besides natural population growth, I can't think of any other relevant decline European countries are experiencing. And even if they were experiencing a general decline, that doesn't mean there's correlation with the percent of married couples vs non-married ones. Marriage or civil union doesn't change the stability of the couple ( besides the fact that the former usually implies a party with a lot of people which could be expensive).

[jacobolus]

It’s especially jarring in contrast to Rayiner’s other comments in this conversation are about how Asian Americans are such economically successful go-getters compared to lazy white people due to their culturally superior family structure or something.

Rayiner: have you looked at the demographic pyramid in South Korea, Singapore, Japan, Taiwan, or urban China recently? https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/4a/So...

Or if we want to talk about places where “traditional family values” (i.e. opposition to women’s rights) poll very high, how about the demographics of Russia?

The demographic decline in “a handful of European countries” is substantially a matter of time since industrialization, access to birth control, urbanization, female literacy, amount of immigration, housing prices, etc. more than ethnic/cultural/religious origin, and it is going to land on everywhere else in the world (USA, South Asia, the Middle East, Latin America, Africa, ..) soon enough.

[3np]

Argumentum ad populum does not compute.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argumentum_ad_populum

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truth_by_consensus

[dash2]

The evidence is that married couples are more stable than unmarried couples.

[philosopher1234]

Maybe you could share this evidence instead of sharing an anonymous assertion

[dash2]

Sure. I'll also show you how, so you could do this yourself in future.

I googled "stability of cohabiting couples". This led me to Wikipedia [1]. From there I hit the 2002 CDC report "Cohabitation, Marriage, Divorce, and Remarriage in the United States" [2]. That provides the following statistic:

"The probability of a first marriage ending in separation or divorce within 5 years is 20 percent, but the probability of a premarital cohabitation breaking up within 5 years is 49 percent. After 10 years, the probability of a first marriage ending is 33 percent, compared with 62 percent for cohabitations."

I wondered if that had changed since 2002, so I hit Google Scholar and searched for articles after 2010. A 2020 article discussed cohabitation broadly. I scrolled down and found a 2018 article [3]. (There's an ungated PDF elsewhere if you need it.) They look at 8 countries including the US. Their findings: "cohabiting couples who do not subsequently transition to marriage... consistently have the highest predicted probabilities of separation within 5 years." Some of the gaps between cohabiting and married couples disappear if you control for (e.g.) education and other demographics.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cohabitation#Likelihood_of_spl... [2] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/02news/div_mar_cohab.htm [3] https://read.dukeupress.edu/demography/article/55/4/1389/167...

[Shocka1]

It's puzzling to me that you are getting downvoted instead of responses when it seems like your comment follows the whole progressive comment Hacker News thing... Or whatever it is they are going for this week.

[convolvatron]

i can certainly think of cases where the children and one parent are really much better off without the second

[raxxorraxor]

I had an unstable family and a lot of patchwork in my youth. Won't recommend it. It doesn't have to be negative, but it often comes with compromises. And children aren't stupid, they can leverage the conflict of their parents, but it isn't necessarily for their best in the long run.

I heavily dislike the illusionary idealism from some for something that can be quite a lot of work. The state of marriage is pretty much not relevant though. At least in my opinion.

[metadat]

Yes it happens, but isn't the rule. On average, it's ideal to have two happy, loving parents. But only on average!

[goodpoint]

Thinking in terms of averages and correlations should not justify absurd oversimplifications.

The average human being has 1.99 eyes.

[redmen]

They basically said stable relationships are more stable than unstable relationships and you want evidence?

[Strom]

Stable relationships are possible without marriage. Some people view these as synonyms and others see that as a clear mistake.

[redmen]

Oh sorry I read their comment incorrectly

[danaris]

Why are the only options "married couple" or "unmarried couple"? Or even "married couple" or "single parent"?

Why can't broader family structures be considered, and be stable?

[anamax]

Those are the options that have significant data.

No one knows how other models work. However, note that "stable" comes from the data. Maybe other models are stable, maybe they're not. Without data, it's simply unknown.

[giantg2]

I believe Harvard did a study that showed that two parent households were more strongly correlated with child academic achievement than other factors. Granted that's not married couples or biological parents, but two parent households. And academic achievement is only one measure of success.

[env123]

Stable home environment = GOOD married couple of biological parents living together until child becomes adult

Stable home environment = GOOD biological parent until child becomes adult (if other GOOD parent dies, not leaves)

Leaves = child trauma, parent BAD = child destructive behaviour

One GOOD parent dies = child trauma, but lesser extent

GOOD = morally, respect, supportive, nice, kind, good-feel stuff

/eli5

Lesson: Marry not for looks, but personality eg. Johnny Depp and Amber Heard

[redmen]

The expectations are coming from our exposure to apps, articles, videos, education and opinions. It's not all in the author's head.

I'm not at all sexually frustrated like most men and yet I still feel all of the same things.

[refurb]

It's funny you'd say "that’s his perspective of what the world thinks" when he's an academic doing a PhD on the subject chatting with other academics about the same topic.

I mean clearly psychology is a lot of "our area of study observes X and attributes Y as a part of theory Z". It's not a hard science where objective, absolute, undeniable measurements can be made.

But it's not some random dude just pontificating about social structures on the internet.

By your measure we should just throw all the great philosophers works in the toilet because "that's their perspective".

[jelly]

Perhaps 10 years of existing within the system led you away from the more revolutionary perspective and towards the status quo. I would be curious to see the blog post you wrote, I can't find it in your submissions.

[clearleaf]

I hope I never find myself popping out of trap doors to defend the status quo like they are.

[pyuser583]

Are you actually disagreeing with the author? Or are you just saying the author is forming these perceptions in his head?

[zelphirkalt]

Hm. What about other things though, which are not the job, but still require effort/work? Like working on free software, working for a social project, being politically active, doing things of charity reasons ... Those don't require one to define oneself in terms of how far one has gotten in their career, but they actually add value to society. In many cases adding more value to society than the actual job. I think it's quite OK to define ones worth using such measures. We all live in a society. People should ask themselves more often how much they contributed to the well-being of society.

[zozbot234]

Volunteering tends to be an elite activity anyway. When people have to work multiple full-time jobs just to survive, it's just not very helpful or meaningful to ask whether they might find their inner fulfillment by helping out at the local animal shelter.

[goodpoint]

> elite activity ... full-time jobs just to survive

That's a heck of a false dichotomy. People are either billionaires or working at mcdonalds now?