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| Typical single mother who just can't find a decent man |
Just Say No
For white working-class women, it makes sense to stay single mothers.
By Naomi Cahn and June Carbone
The following is based on Marriage Markets: How Inequality Is Remaking the American Family, out in May 2014 from Oxford University Press.
Lily had grown up in a rural town, more than an hour from Kansas City, Mo. She was four months pregnant and not feeling well, and she was in tears. She was also not married, but that’s not what was upsetting her. The car that she needed to get to her two jobs in the city had broken down, and she had no other way to get to work. We asked whether her boyfriend, Carl, could help her. Lily frowned. She had recently broken up with Carl, she explained, because “I can support myself. I always have. I can support myself and our kid. I just can’t support myself, the kid, and him.”
You know, Lily, if Carl is such a loser that you don't want to marry him, why did you want 50% of your child's genes to be his? Are you really that convinced that your 50% are going to be so awesome that your kid won't wind up a loser?
... A generation ago her decision would have seemed narrow, misguided, and difficult to understand. But now we have to conclude that it makes a lot of sense. Although it defies logic, socioeconomic, cultural, and economic changes have brought white working-class women like Lily to the point where going it alone can be the wiser choice. And the final irony: The same changes that have made marriages more equitable and successful among elite couples have made it less likely that marriage will look attractive to Lily.
When Lily looks around at the available men, they don’t offer what she is looking for.
That picture above from Slate is not actually Lily, it's just a stock photo of a model. But that's probably how Lily pictures herself, if she just found the right diet.
Lily, just like better-off men and women, believes that marriage means an unqualified commitment to the other spouse. When you marry someone, you support him in hard times. You stick with him when he disappoints you. You visit him if he ends up in jail. And you encourage him to become an important part of your children’s lives. It’s just that Lily doesn’t believe that Carl is worth that commitment.
But he's worth making a baby with, apparently.
Nor does she believe that she will meet someone who will meet her standards anytime soon, and the statistics back her up.
The economy has changed. A higher percentage of men today than 50 years ago have trouble finding steady employment, securing raises and promotions, or remaining sober and productive. Blue-collar men like Carl have lost ground while more highly educated men have gained. The unemployment rate for all men ages 20–24 is almost 13 percent, and those with only a high school education are more than twice as likely to be unemployed as those with a college degree.
... At the same time that men like Carl have lost ground, women like Lily have gained. While almost no one outside the top executive ranks has gained much since the financial crisis, women in the middle of the American economy saw greater increases than the comparable men in both pay and job stability through the ’90s. That doesn’t mean that ideas about who should be the breadwinner have changed much, though. Both men and women generally agree that a man who can’t hold a steady job shouldn’t marry. Indeed, “the less education and income people have, the more likely they are to say that to be a good marriage prospect, a person must be able to support a family financially.”
The women ready for marriage in this group have grown larger than the group of marriageable men who would be good partners. These men—the ones with better jobs and more stable lives—have become more reluctant, in turn, to settle for only one woman. ...
She has very few friends, married or unmarried, in strong relationships, and she did not see much point in waiting for a Prince Charming she did not expect to find. Indeed, while less than 20 percent of the most highly educated Americans believe that marriage has not worked out for most of the people they know, more than half of those who are least educated believe that marriage has not worked out. ,,,
In our view what would make the most difference to this unfair marriage market are policies that would increase the number and quality of jobs available to working class men, retraining and unemployment benefits that fill in the gaps between jobs, and ongoing support for women’s autonomy. Since the ’80s, the gender gap in wages has increased at the top but shrunk in the middle.
In the past, young people molded each other into better people. Lots of guys start out as feckless as Carl, but shape up so they can have a woman.
Lily, of course, in her very 2014ish egotism and heedlessness sounds like she'll be a horrible mother to their poor misbegotten bastard child. That's a real failure of society when we fail to inculcate basic maternal virtues in young women by encouraging them in the Life of Julia, Bride of the Obama Administration mindset.
... Let’s not make raising a child become yet another marker of class.
How about having a child?
Posts
131 comments:
"The economy has changed. A higher percentage of men today than 50 years ago have trouble finding steady employment, securing raises and promotions, or remaining sober and productive. Blue-collar men like Carl have lost ground while more highly educated men have gained. The unemployment rate for all men ages 20–24 is almost 13 percent, and those with only a high school education are more than twice as likely to be unemployed as those with a college degree. "
Has she been reading charles murray lately?
Has he been readi
A certain class of white person will soon be added to the Endangered Species list.
That is, if anybody cares.
Anon.
Lily, of course, in her very 2014ish egotism and heedlessness sounds like she'll be a horrible mother to their poor misbegotten bastard child.
Snark overkill, Sailer. Not quite sure where you're getting the notion she's a horrible person.
By separating with the guy, she could very well be avoiding the making of a sunk cost fallacy. Unemployment with zero prospects doesn't exactly bring out the best in 20 year-old males of low or middling IQ.
(continuing prior comment...) On second reading, I really hope this isn't you, Steve. Your guest writer puts out overly caustic/immature/low brow shit. It's not even humorous, aside from Slate's stock photo.
"where you're getting the notion she's a horrible person"
A nice person who takes bad decisions may be a bad mother. Just not as bad as a bad person who takes bad decisions.
"The women ready for marriage in this group have grown larger than the group of marriageable men who would be good partners. These men—the ones with better jobs and more stable lives—have become more reluctant, in turn, to settle for only one woman.... "
Paging Drs Dalrock and Tomassi !
Pretty much. Career hasn't taken off, so I'm not breeding.
If I don't breed at all, no huge loss.
...Slate's XX after the usual Bad White Man verbiage...Lily had grown up in a rural town, more than an hour from Kansas City, Mo...The car that she needed to get to her two jobs in the city...That picture above from Slate is not actually Lily, it's just a stock photo of a model.
Why do you assume Carl, the father of the child, is White?
Shouldn't be surprising in the least if her baby daddy is a black male from Kansas City.
There seems to be a full court press with these sorts of articles:
The American Dream is now just that for its middle classes – a dream
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/apr/26/middle-class-american-dream-just-dream
Realizing that Paul Krugman is too unattractive, old, inarticulate, and just plain not smart enough, they have a new point man:
Thomas Piketty is a rock-star economist – can he re-write the American dream?
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/apr/27/thomas-piketty-economist-american-dream
Unmentioned is that the American dream still lives for those that have pensioned government employment. Government workers live in the 1950s with protections against immigrants depressing their wages, union bargaining, pension, cost of living increases even after they retire. I suspect they also have stable marriages mostly with other government workers.
And when you hear there is opposition to immigration amnesty from the 'public' I suspect US politicians regard the public as almost exclusively government workers who need immigrants to justify their own employment, but are shielded from direct competition with them. Explaining why open borders and opposition to amnesty can coexist.
Is Heartiste now ghosting at iSteve?
Or maybe GBFM?
Evo-psych is way too powerful of a predictive tool for it not to be moving front and center in the Dark Enlightenment.
Alpha f*x, Beta bux indeed.
They're using a photo of some wholesome looking white people to cover over the grimy reality of what they seem to be promoting. Children growing up with the complex of not having gotten to know their father, a life of waiting for one's monthly Food Stamp issuance, a downward drift towards poverty and dysfunction. Advocating the destruction of the family unit and presenting it as progress is what the authors are doing.
Does this "Lily" really exist or did the authors make her up? She seems apocryphal.
I can understand her desire to have children,but her choice of who will father them makes no sense. If he winds up being just a sperm donor, why not go for the real thing?
There are plenty of bright good-ing guys who' ve been screened for genetic diseases donating to clinics. I know it sounds coldblooded but when doing something as serious as b ringing a new life into the world, it is a diservice to the kid not to give it the best genes possible.
They HATE HATE HATE beta males!!!!
You keep up with this thematic material, and before you know it, YaReally will be over here to teach you how to hit on "Russian" Mafia prostitutes in the lounges of Sheldon Adelson's casinos without Brennan's peeps being able to catch up with you in order to Donald Young your posterior.
http://www.city-journal.org/2014/bc0425fs.html
Yes, in the past, a worthless young man like Carl had to shape up to have a woman. Today, women are easier to have.
In the past, Lily had to put up with a worthless young man like Carl because unmarried mothers were vulnerable and acutely felt they needed the protection of a badass male. As society becomes more feminized, more policed and less violent, young men are less necessary.
But it is an illusion.
http://www.spiked-online.com/review_of_books/article/indias-election-the-worlds-largest-question-mark/14906#.U10GJ4FdVA0
Growing up with a single parent is so boring for a kid. Let's hope she has extended family around. And that she has a lot of energy to get the kid involved in things, instead of just withdrawing to TV and comfort food, like my parent did.
What Lily needed was a crash course on heredity and how crucial it is for her to select the right sperm donor for her child. Unfortunately for her, she's still married to her ex's DNA.
Naomi Cahn.
Lol.
I guess Government will take over the role of the father. Providing benefits for single mothers and teaches the child values in the education system.
Why the white working class woman?
Oh tempora, oh mores!
Blaming others for misfortune is the classic sign of losers.
Winners think obstacles as exciting challenge to conquer. Easy victory is not fun.
Man, you have truly turned into a useless scold. The point that the economists are making isn't that Lily is a model of rational decision-making, but that she's making the best decisions that someone with a truly horrible set of options will make.
Who the f*ck is she going to have kids with? Bill Gates? A college graduate? No. She has a bunch of losers to choose from.
She had sex, people do. Should she have had an abortion? You're against that, aren't you?
Should she be childless? Then you and your crowd would mock at and jeer her, poor childless hag.
Half of the stuff you write is about the oligarchs who've destroyed our society, the other half is shitting on the poor people who live in their world.
What good do you do?
I concede the point about the stock photo. Any woman I see who looks like that is wearing a $20,000 platinum and diamond wedding set.
By separating with the guy, she could very well be avoiding the making of a sunk cost fallacy. Unemployment with zero prospects doesn't exactly bring out the best in 20 year-old males of low or middling IQ.
However, why are Slate encouraging low IQ women to keep having babies with men who are of low quality as well? Are they only interested in future Democratic voters?
She has very few friends, married or unmarried, in strong relationships, and she did not see much point in waiting for a Prince Charming she did not expect to find.
So, the choices are Prince Charming or low-class sperm-donor. These kinds of false dichotomies are ruining the possibility of even discussing standards in an intelligent manner.
Snark overkill, Sailer. Not quite sure where you're getting the notion she's a horrible person.
She has made the decision to create a child with someone with whom she can't even depend on to get her through the pregnancy. That isn't just bad decision making, that is setting her child up for a miserable life. Given the abundance of birth control available, such horrible decisions should be scorned.
"When Lily looks around at the available men, they don’t offer what she is looking for."
could as easily be read as
"When men look around at the available women, Lili doesn't offer what they are looking for."
I know I don't want Lili and her 'other man's' child. Who wants to go looking for trouble?
The growing number of women in politics has resulted in a culture where women are systematically shifting financial responsibility for their children from beta male providers to the American taxpayer. Too many of these women are intentionally using and abusing their children in order to abuse the welfare system. This behavior is rewarded by a federal government that believes it’s their responsibility to feed, clothe, house and educate everyone’s children. Where is this written in the Constitution?
The economy has changed.
Passive voice is the enemy of clarity of though. The economy has been changed. And it could be changed again, if the left-wing oligarchs who run the country were so inclined. But they're not.
Part of the change has been to encourage women like Lily to not get married, by giving them a "surrogate husband" in the form of the state which is superior to the men available to them. By getting knocked up and staying single Lily is a good deal better off financially than she would be either married to Carl or without the baby. She gets a free apartment, free food, free health care, and a range of other benefits which nobody can take away from her.
""""In our view what would make the most difference to this unfair marriage market are policies that would increase the number and quality of jobs available to working class men""""
And therefore this is even MORE reason of why we should support greater numbers of undocumented workers. After all, by flooding the job market with more and more immigrants from Latin America and various third world nations, this will adversely effect the lower working classes job potentials and...
Oh wait. You mean there could be a correlation between the lower levels of working classes working and higher levels of illegal immigration?
Really?
Seriously?
Well, best not to think about such things as Slate, and fortunately, they don't.
Whew for them by dodging a potential bullet by nearly having to bring up and discuss the adverse effects immigration has on the working classes of America and perhaps that it may at some level effect employment levels.
Oh well.
Steve, do you think these people have a purpose or are they just aimlessly churning the culture?
(Note, Putin's big achievement seems to be that he has got the Russian People believing in Russia again after a long time adrift under the Communists.)
"The women ready for marriage in this group have grown larger"
Indeed.
OT: As Don Draper would say, "If You Don't Like What's Being Said, Change the Conversation"
Does Traditional College Debate Reinforce White Privilege?
Hardy and others are also disappointed with what they perceive as a lack of civility and decorum at recent competitions, and believe that the alternative-style debaters have contributed to this environment. “Judges have been very angry, coaches have screamed and yelled. People have given profanity-laced tirades, thrown furniture, and both sides of the ideological divide have used racial slurs,” he said.
To counter this trend, Hardy and his allies want to create a “policy only” space in which traditional standards for debate will be enforced. However, this is nearly impossible to do within the two major debate associations, CEDA and the National Debate Tournament (NDT), as they are governed by participants and have few conduct enforcement mechanisms. For instance, while CEDA and NDT’s institutional anti-harassment policy would normally prohibit the term “nigga” as it was used at the recent Indiana University tournament finals, none of the judges penalized the competitors that used it. In fact, those debaters took home prizes.
14 schools expressed interest in sending debaters to Hardy’s proposed alternative tournament, scheduled to occur last month. But after word got out that a group of mostly white teams from elite universities were trying to form their own league, Hardy and his supporters were widely attacked on Facebook and other online forums.
“I can support myself. I always have. I can support myself and our kid...
And yet, oddly, Lily apparently can't afford to get her car fixed or find and pay for alternate transportation while it's in the shop. (When I was a teenager in these straits, this was labeled "not really supporting oneself", and invoked by my parents in support of their fascist view that they were still the boss of me.)
Others, like Charles Murray, would cut programs such as Medicaid, food stamps, early childhood education and child care, mandatory family leave, and other policies that make it easier for women like Lily to raise a child on their own.
So, you're telling me that Lily can't, as a matter of fact, support herself and her child. Lily wouldn't lie to me, would she?
...women in the middle of the American economy saw greater increases than the comparable men in both pay and job stability through the ’90s.
So great that I'm sure the availability of welfare of all kinds in no way affects Lily's choices, right?
Why is it that none of these deep thinkers on the subject of single motherhood ever think seriously about the fact that, while the primary incentive for Lily not to marry may be the economic funk that men of her class are mired in, the primary incentive to have a child without marriage is not the economic prospects of potential mates? That incentive is never raised for serious discussion, only mentioned in passing for the purpose of dismissing its critics out of hand.
I don't think Lily's crazy or even reprehensible. If you're at the 30th percentile or below (and that number is rising all the time), the men around really aren't sorts you'd want around a kid--violent, drunk, poor impulse control.
A two-parent family's better than a one-parent family (as feminists will never admit unless the second parent is gay), but a one-parent family's better than a mother-and-thug family.
Maybe if we didn't import millions of low-wage foreigners, more young Americans would have jobs. Immigration is war by other means on the working class.
They didn't mention it in the article, but luckily the Slate writers know just the solution for getting America's Carls decent jobs so they can be more responsible. Mass amnesty and another 40 million immigrants as a supply of cheap labor to perk up the economy.
30 years ago guys like Carl who can't hack an MBA degree could have made a living manufacturing appliances or roofing your house, but today the appliances factories are in Mexico and Mexico is on your roof.
I don't think Mr. Sailer's remarks are snark or overkill. I've seen people like Lily and Carl my entire life (although they're much more common lately). Once Lily gets inevitably on welfare, she'll
likely hook up with other Carls and have a couple more kids by them. The future for the children is not auspicious.
I have been involved with foster care for years. Unfathered children are soooooo fucked up. Even having some attentive uncles and a grandfather doesn't make up for having no dad on the premises.
>Your guest writer puts out overly caustic/immature/low brow shit.<
You marry her, then.
No one ever addresses what happens to dumb people when the society around them takes away social strictures and, yes, old-fashioned shame.
They do more dumb things, more than they would have under a previous society that was less tolerant and yes, judgmental.
Do people realize that having a child out of wedlock makes that child a bastard? Do they even care?
In the end, we will all be paying for this reckless fornication either directly (taxes) or indirectly (higher crime, lost productivity, more constituents for a special interest group).
"...2014ish egotism and heedlessness..."
An apt description of the times.
Pregnancy is taking seriously something that was poked in fun.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tymWDB7gtK4
It aint UK no more.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2611943/Millionaire-Tech-CEO-filmed-hitting-kicking-girlfriend-117-times-brutal-30-minute-attack-sentenced-25-hours-community-service.html
If you know the right people and donate to the right causes....
Sheesh, talk about a war on women.
The title is
White Working Class Women Should Raise Kids Alone
wtf?
That is not at all what they want. No wonder they have such low satisfaction with life. First the elite witches tell these women they should stop staying home with their kids and go out and work. Now they are saying to these women that they don't even deserve a husband to help (other than to supply child support $$) This point of view is freakin' evil. How about sustaining the weak with kind advice like don't sleep with guys till you are married, that way you get a better deal.
These Slate writers are sick and evil. Their ideas are just abusive. They should have to work "Lily's" two jobs.
I can support myself and our kid...When Lily looks around at the available men, they don’t offer what she is looking for.
Lily cannot support herself w/o the $10K to $20K of annual government support provided to her and her child. Like the three generations of NAMs before her, Lily doesn't need a husband. She's already married - to Uncle Sam.
Once again, kudos on calling a bastard a bastard. The poor, noble, fatherless child meme has got to go, along with that of the sainted single mother.
Perhaps another topic for you to take on, Steve, would be that of the "selfless" grandparents who, having massively failed with their own progeny, are now at work raising their grandchildren to be equal failures. This is especially beloved by the press when it's White grandparents raising mulattoes. Gee, what a grand way to spend old age.
They want quantity not quality. After WW1 France encouraged Spanish, Italian and Polish immigration. They had workplace nurseries. Social housing and other state or state mandated benefits were introduced. This wasn't a socialist or feminist agenda, but rather intended to add weight to France internationally. An expanding population is supposed to be the USA's trump card. Against China!
Funny, I'm reading this as I'm watching "16 & Pregnant" on MTV. One thing lacking for the girls on this show and "Teen Moms" is a father in the home.
...policies that would increase the number and quality of jobs available to working class men...
How about restricting legal & illegal immigration of poor people into the US and controlling the US southwest border.
Snark overkill, Sailer. Not quite sure where you're getting the notion she's a horrible person.
Probably from the fact that she got knocked up with some worthless loser's kid. She herself said he's so worthless and stupid he would actually be an obstacle to raising her child--and yet she was screwing this village idiot.
Typical concern-troll whining:
Wow, just wow. I can't even... I just can't. These words... so hurtful.
Lily may have her dubious reasons for wanting to go it alone, but not marrying is more and more a rational choice for non-elite men as well. Marriage is just not what it used to be when a man who remained employable and was not abusive could reasonably expect fidelity, life-long commitment (both to him and their children), and a bit of respect.
Today, marriage for a man is a risky prospect that offers him less and less. Should his wife decide she merits an upgrade or simply tires of his presence, she can walk away with his children and half his wealth. If he has not much wealth, the government will be her surrogate husband. If she is a terrible spouse or mother and he wants out, she gets the same deal. His end of the bargain consists mainly of obligations.
If Lily had decided to abort this baby, it would not matter if Carl wanted her to have it, whether he was married to her or not. If Carl did not want her to carry it to term, Lily could choose to do so and Carl would be on the hook for 18 years of child support.
As it now stands, women have most of the reproductive rights while men have the bulk of the legal responsibilities.
I think it is Carl who sees the handwriting on the wall. Why commit to spending his life supporting this selfish naif when she will quite likely dump him and abscond with his family at the first sniff of opportunity? He is already in for a considerable bill for the next couple of decades, why compound it? Better to cut your losses now, get your act together and find a woman worth the risk.
Good luck.
I'm interested in Carl's take on all this, but of course we'll never hear it. The only thing that matters now is the woman. Here's hoping Carl comes into some major lottery winnings soon, so he can sweeten up his woman with some new shoes and handbags, and get back to raising his kid. The last thing we need is another spoiled-brat, weed-smoking, hoodie-wearing kid of a selfish single mom.
The "lose some weight" snark jolted me.... more broadly, the bottom 90% have problems in the new plutochrat globalized economy, you could just as well write this same article about China (see the SCMP Sunday mag article today about China's women). See zerohedge about the cutoffs and tradeoffs for working and getting married vs getting on the dole. The state has encouraged bastardry for the last generation (i.e., 40 years), the real story is why is this not news even now for the mass media?
"The women ready for marriage in this group have grown larger than the group of marriageable men who would be good partners. These men—the ones with better jobs and more stable lives—have become more reluctant, in turn, to settle for only one woman."
In other words, many of these women are not marriageable either - under the current rules.
"In our view what would make the most difference to this unfair marriage market are policies that would increase the number and quality of jobs available to working class men,..."
Will these "policies" be compatible with the policy needs of the bubble builders?
"...retraining and unemployment benefits that fill in the gaps between jobs,..."
Retraining should pay for itself in a market with strong demand for labor. In the absence of such a market, what jobs are the workers being retrained for? I also question whether extending unemployment benefits makes men more marriageble, although it might make them more fun to party with.
"...and ongoing support for women’s autonomy. Since the ’80s, the gender gap in wages has increased at the top but shrunk in the middle."
Not sure what this has to do with increasing the marriageability of working class men. The policy paragraph appears to be an add-on to an essay on the declining usefulness of the once respected and feared workingman.
Neil Templeton
It's not even humorous, aside from Slate's stock photo.
Why does the truth need to be humorous?
Is it a modern fallacy that there are always diamonds hidden in coal?
Not quite sure where you're getting the notion she's a horrible person.
Having a child with a man you don't have a future with is strike 1. Needing 2 jobs to support the child is strike 2, there won't be time when the child is born. Having a broken car and not being able to just call a cab to take you the rest of the way is strike 3. It means she is going to be using federal and state subsidies to take care of this child. As a bonus, she thinks she is taking care of the child herself when she clearly isn't. Horrible person.
By separating with the guy, she could very well be avoiding the making of a sunk cost fallacy.
You're an idiot. Making babies with attractive losers should be discouraged, with far stronger language than Steve used.
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2014/04/27/business/berlin-ends-eu-youth-job-program/#.U11YsYFdVA0
What are the odds that Lily's bastard child votes Democrat when he turns 18? I'm guessing it is close to 100%.
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2014/04/27/world/politics-diplomacy-world/russian-zuckerberg-quits-homeland/#.U11ZLYFdVA0
"On second reading, I really hope this isn't you, Steve. Your guest writer puts out overly caustic/immature/low brow shit. It's not even humorous, aside from Slate's stock photo."
Agreed that Steve seems unusually hostile in this posting. However, speaking for myself, I get usually hostile when I think about the pain that these people - Lily, Carl and SWPL crowd - bring into the world. Outside of a few exceptions, children like Lily's live miserable lives. Lives! Seventy years of shit.
Yes, that gets me a little angry. The callousness that the top of today's society shows for bulk of our country is damn near pathological. The wreckage that they leave behind in the name of making themselves feel better about themselves and to allow themselves to act as they want seems to not bother them a whit. (They make Tom and Daisy Buchanan look like pikers.)
Carl's a jerk, of course, but it's Lily that seems to have willingly chosen to very likely sentence another human being to seventy years of failure. That's cruel. Give the kid a shot at life by marrying a relatively decent guy. If you can't find such a man, don't have a child. It's as simple as that.
Julia is Exhibit A for why conservatives and libertarians are natural allies at this point of time.
We conservatives know that the welfare state, as in the fictional case of Julia, destroys traditional families and institutions. Libertarians, for the purposes of atomistic individualism, would also like the welfare state to be curtailed.
Though their philosophical assumptions and final goals are wrong, libertarians would be wise to align more closely with conservatives on current issues like this one. After all, conservatives have made quite a few concessions to libertarians, so it's about time libertarians do likewise.
"Snark overkill, Sailer. Not quite sure where you're getting the notion she's a horrible person."
She's beyond being a horrible person. She's a hot mess. Having a kid out of wedlock she can't afford is akin to child abuse.
She may be able to pay the bills to manage her crappy little apartment, but carrying two jobs, along with no father, means that kid is going to grow up emotionally destitute.
Also, good luck to her finding someone who will marry a wayward, and barely solvent middle-aged woman with a needy bastard child. The kid can always retort, "you're not my father," and the specter of her loser sperm donor coming back into the picture and remaining in it for the rest of your life is repulsive.
Most men who have any intelligence whatsoever would run away from that pile of hell. Why would you settle for someone like her unless you were a loser to begin with?
And finally, as a taxpayer, I know when she loses ONE of those jobs, she's going to need me to take responsibility for her kid, and send her money. This I resent deeply.
Just because you can accept random sperm and spew out an unwanted kid 9 months later doesn't give you the moral high ground to impose your stupid decisions upon society.
So yes, she is a horrible person.
"(continuing prior comment...) On second reading, I really hope this isn't you, Steve. Your guest writer puts out overly caustic/immature/low brow shit."
Coming from someone attempting to venerate slut behaviors and their horrible outcomes, I think Steve can consider the source, and not change a word.
In the meantime, where's YOUR website full of essays? Show us how it's done, "anonymous."
Hi Anon
>sunk cost
You seem to be missing the point that by making herself a single mother she has almost no chance of extracting resources from any man better than Carl for the next decade. Whether or not she is a horrible person is not clear from the original article. What is clear, and what I think the blog is conveying, is that her choice is horrible, when aggregated across the extra demands on the state and society.
if Carl is such a loser that you don't want to marry him, why did you want 50% of your child's genes to be his?
My wife has to be the poster child for choosing her sperm donor poorly.
Her first husband was (and is) brilliant and successful at everything he does. When they were married he was well on his way to his first million, and today I'd be surprised if his net worth is less than nine figures. She could have had a kid with him.
Before and between marriages, she lived with three different guys for a couple of years each. Two were successful professionals, the other a top executive whose family owns a large part of the island of Kauai. She could have had a kid with any of them, although it might not have been planned or wanted by any of the men.
Her second husband (not me, I'm her third) is a high school dropout. Alcoholism has been passed down from father to son in his family for several generations, and he supplements it with a cocaine habit. Him, she had a son with. Sure enough, the kid has an IQ in the 80s and started on meth in high school.
"She was four months pregnant and not feeling well, and she was in tears. She was also not married, but that’s not what was upsetting her. The car that she needed to get to her two jobs in the city had broken down, and she had no other way to get to work. We asked whether her boyfriend, Carl, could help her. Lily frowned. She had recently broken up with Carl, she explained, because “I can support myself. I always have. I can support myself and our kid. I just can’t support myself, the kid, and him.” "
When you can support yourself, and your car breaks down, you just drop it off at the mechanics to get it fixed. You don't cry.
She's crying because she's lying. She can barely support herself.
If she thinks fixing her crappy car is an unpleasant expense, just wait till she has the baby.
The authors of this article are just a couple of self-indulgent assholes, and are part of the problem of broke unmarried women having kids they can't afford, who wind up as wards of the state, either through welfare, or prison time.
I hope the stupid woman has a miscarriage, for her own good, and the good of her community.
Dear Anonymous White Knight:
This woman is a horrible person because she's failed to provide the one thing her child is going to need the most--the one metric that will determine more than any other whether or not her child will be a success--a decent father.
Fathers don't just provide financial support to a child--they're essential in providing guidance and in shaping the moral character of their children. Children with good fathers are far less likely to end up impoverished, in prison, or mentally ill.
The fact that this slag mated without properly vetting the father of her child means she is grossly irresponsible and will mostly likely be a selfish mother. Civilization can ill afford an army of breeders like her.
Methinks Anonymous (at 3:10 and 3:20) doth protest a bit too much.
My brother-in-law was straightened out by his wife. She got him off drugs and into a steady job. She's a bit of a ball buster but he needed that and they've been married now nearly 30 years and have great kids.
We are friends with a couple with a similar story. He's in construction, makes decent money but used to drink a lot and gamble.
It wasn't easy, but she straightened him out. They are married now more than 30 years.
I admire that. Where would these guys be without these women who were willing to make an effort?
While Lilly can produce new Democtratic voters, it takes her about 19 years to do so. (Some sex, then 9 months then 18 years.)
On the other side, those Democratic voters do not produce much tax farmable income.
The guys who work as pipeline welders in ND or TX on the other hand ... can support a plethora of parasitic voters. It's a pity they do not understand that they would destroy the beast quicker if they weren't so keen on working hard.
"The authors of this article are just a couple of self-indulgent assholes, and are part of the problem of broke unmarried women having kids they can't afford, who wind up as wards of the state, either through welfare, or prison time."
More than likely you're right.
An Anonymous wrote:
"While Lilly can produce new Democtratic voters, it takes her about 19 years to do so. (Some sex, then 9 months then 18 years.)"
I'd be willing to be that poor whites have a below average rate of voting. Whether it is as low as Hispanics in general, I have no idea.
Blacks are really an outlier in this regard, as far as economics and voter participation go.
Carl's a jerk, of course, but it's Lily that seems to have willingly chosen to very likely sentence another human being to seventy years of failure.
Don't think too harshly of Lilly, after all, she is only doing what generations of women have done before her. Her failure was to be forced by her genes to be infatuated by a man and to get pregnant.
Rather, get pissed at Obama and those other symbols who would exploit women as producers of Democratic voters.
The point that the economists are making isn't that Lily is a model of rational decision-making, but that she's making the best decisions that someone with a truly horrible set of options will make.
Actually she is a model of rational decision making. Given the options, incentives, and disincentives before her, her choice to get knocked up but not get married makes perfect sense.
The problem is not Lily, the problem is the people who've created a world in which the choices she made are the best ones she can make.
"while more highly educated men have gained" - no they've lost ground as well.
In the meantime, where's YOUR website full of essays? Show us how it's done, "anonymous."
That kind of touches on where I'm coming from.
There are important stakes at play. Assuming it's not already too late, a general public acceptance of HBD will be necessary for the survival of Western Civilization as we know it.
For better or worse, Steve is the face of HBD.
When Steve missteps, HBD becomes guilty by association.
"By separating with the guy, she could very well be avoiding the making of a sunk cost fallacy." - that ship sailed at the 8 months and 29 days mark.
Well apparently Komment Kontrol frowns on the titillating tawdry tautology of Alpha *** Beta ***.
[Rhymes with "clucks" or "ducks" or "shucks".]
"'The women ready for marriage in this group have grown larger'
Indeed." - I see what you did there.
I seriously wonder if the writers at Slate.com can write just one article without using the word "white". It might just be impossible for them. The same could also be said of Salon, The Atlantic, and numerous others.
"Lily, just like better-off men and women, believes that marriage means an unqualified commitment to the other spouse. When you marry someone, you support him in hard times. You stick with him when he disappoints you. You visit him if he ends up in jail. And you encourage him to become an important part of your children’s lives. It’s just that Lily doesn’t believe that Carl is worth that commitment. "
She thinks the other person should be willing to show unqualified commitment to her through thick and thin, yet the first little disagreement or trouble, and she is so willing to walk out the door and call it quits forever. What spoiled little solipsists this society is creating these days.
I am sure the authors have never liked in a blue collar town to see how this ends up. But the @#$% they writes sure sounds cool to the swpl hipster crowd.
Wealthy women in the media have it in their power to really make things harder for poor women, and they are taking every opportunity to do so. Why they want to do this is anybody's guess.
Also, don't articles like this support the worst possible behavior from men- just getting random women pregnant and walking away. Feminists always seem to want to make things even easier for the worst kind of man, always at the expense of the well being of women and children.
This is what happens to an 81 year old who because of his age, is not ever mindful of the electronic age in which people the skank's age live. While he doesn't sound cognitively impaired, no doubt at the age of 71 or 61 he'd likely have been more on the lookout for recording devices on something as simple as a phone.
Lily is a dumb shit, true, but not nearly so bad as those privileged and powerful purple who have created the box she's trapped in. We've always had dumb shits like her, but we once had better choices available for them. Isn't that what a society's leaders are supposed to do? (Leaders, not rulers)
Lily is an example of more and more White women acting Black: picking out sexy but useless as providers, biological fathers while relying on middle class Whites to pay the bills.
No, of course Lily cannot support herself let alone a kid. And yes, there were and are even in her Socio Economic Stratus men who make able providers and dutiful husbands. They are not sexy bad boys however.
Guys like Theodore Dalrymple and Charles Murray come close, but don't get the female hypergamy. Dalrymple describes how his professional nurses to a woman all chose abusers as husbands and only leave them when ... they hit menopause.
What society is now is oriented around satisfying women's lady parts. That's it. Hunky sexy men with bad boy dispositions and a few arrests and so on to show for it? Sure lets have them father most of the kids, and let the beta male drones support them in taxes while feminists demand even the narcotic, stupefying effect of pr0n be eliminated. Yes lets see what happens then.
Stable, wealth producing societies depend on preventing a few Alpha men from setting up harems on the one hand, see the ME, and women forming hypergamous transient hookups with zero paternal involvement see West Africa on the other extreme. This means curbing Women's appetite for sexy men by stimulating their appetite for the things beta male providers bring, and minimizing the Welfare State, while controlling the Alpha men at the top from going Joseph Smith.
So Chicks Dig Chechens. And violent, unemployed, Chechens who kill people. Big surprise, night-time TV is filled with hot chicks "changing" violent Alpha men who murder with abandon. Buffy, Marvel's Agents of Buffy, Breaking Bad, Sopranos, Boardwalk Empire, Game of Thrones, etc. Mad Men being the non-killing type of bad boy lothario, more upper class.
"This point of view is freakin' evil. How about sustaining the weak with kind advice like don't sleep with guys till you are married, that way you get a better deal"
The men wouldn't stay. Believe me. That worked in past generations, and women were often excoriated for it to such a degree that you didn't have to be "feminist" to feel like a guilty leech if you suggested marriage (or at least a formal commitment).
It wasn't just "feminists." Plenty of men, since forever, gave the same message. It's just that neither the feminists, nor the marriage-wary men, could prevail against the forces of biology, church, and law (all enforced by both men and women). We're free of them all to a great extent these days.
Let me add, the Murray "Superzips" probably have discreet affairs but manage to make sure the kids are theirs (discreet dna testing no doubt) and stay together in what Murray dubs corporate mergers to afford that Hamptons beach house and make Summer a verb not a season.
The Middle Class is tending towards Black levels of illegitimacy, around 20% now from less than 2% in 1960 according to Murray. The Working Class is over 40%, and that is for Whites. [All Data from Murray's Coming Apart.]
The super-super famous and rich split up and act like well, Donald Sterling, Rupert Murdoch, Donald Trump, Jerry Buss, Gwyneth Paltrow, etc. for the most part. They can afford it.
What we are doing is creating a massive dysfunctional single-mother led White underclass I suppose the better to fight street battles and form their very own Right Sector. Since White guys born to single mothers are not going suddenly to find Black girls attractive nor will Black guys be understanding of a White guy dating one of the five non-obese Black girls in his neighborhood.
So, a bunch of White guys on the dole does not create the Colors of Benetton but a Freikorps likely to burst into the Horst Wessel song. Or, Right Sector.
But hey, the super geniuses at Salon have it all covered! They'll shame them with a snarky tweet.
Actually the one who I feel most sorry for is the kid. If a boy, will likely grow up a totally emasculated beta. If a girl a slut with father issues. In either case it doesn't end well.
The problem with calling someone a bastard is that the two adults who had any choice in whether a kid would be born a bastard don't get rhe nasty names--that gets stuck on the kid, who is the only completely innocent party in the whole affair.
"I don't think Lily's crazy or even reprehensible. If you're at the 30th percentile or below (and that number is rising all the time), the men around really aren't sorts you'd want around a kid--violent, drunk, poor impulse control.
A two-parent family's better than a one-parent family (as feminists will never admit unless the second parent is gay), but a one-parent family's better than a mother-and-thug family."
So it's ok for her to have unprotected sex with and get pregnant by a loser of a man who might be violent and drunk, bringing the bastard into the world and helping to ruin this country? Shouldn't she be lambasted for having the kid in the first place?
You all should read the comments on the original article.
Believe it or not, most of them are against Lily and the authors.
I saw a woman on OKCupid who has an illegitimate two year old son who said she was looking to marry a rich man now. Good luck with that.
This reminds me of Charles Murray's WSJ op-ed piece many years ago about the coming white underclass. His recommendation was to cut off welfare to single mothers (pay for abortion or orphanages) and to eliminate unmarried fathers' rights or obligations to their illegitimate children so that people would think twice about having children outside of marriage. No way feminists would allow this at this point.
By blaming the victims, those who have declared open season on white working class Americans can pretend that the misery they have caused is the working class's fault.
Ruling class, government class, working class, welfare class. Fashionable opinion comes from the ruling and government classes. The working class is the victim of the other three classes.
As working class families disintegrate due to lack of resources (their incomes and assets having been stripped from them), fashionable opinion blames the husbands/fathers who are no good.
Lily is admired because she
testifies and proves by her actions that these men are no good. "When Lily looks around at the available men, they don’t offer what she is looking for."
Most men whose livelihoods and assets have been stolen do not have have what Lily is looking for.
Well I spoke too soon.
Komment Kontrol did indeed oKay my Komment.
Apocryphal? A few years ago in SF there was a woman who not only fits this story exactly, but who even looked much like the woman pictured. She was a waitress in a very popular San Francisco pizza joint, whose lousy attitude so turned off customers she was eventually fired despite her great rack. In pre-assortative mating days she would have latched onto some hedge fund guy, but as it was she had her baby by a Mexican dude. It seems the financial types now want tall gaunt women with no curves and 1500 SAT's.
It's sort of grossly amusing how all parties are assuming "Carl" is a useless character based on a pair of dodgy journalists rendering of the accounts offered by his quondam girlfriend.
Yesterday I attended a big church wedding for a single white mom with two mulatto boys. A nice white guy married her. Here in flyover there are still young guys who want to be heroes. Touching, really.
We'll see how it goes.
Man, you have truly turned into a useless scold. The point that the economists are making isn't that Lily is a model of rational decision-making, but that she's making the best decisions that someone with a truly horrible set of options will make.
Who the f*ck is she going to have kids with? Bill Gates? A college graduate? No. She has a bunch of losers to choose from.
She had sex, people do. Should she have had an abortion? You're against that, aren't you?
Should she be childless? Then you and your crowd would mock at and jeer her, poor childless hag.
Half of the stuff you write is about the oligarchs who've destroyed our society, the other half is shitting on the poor people who live in their world.
What good do you do?
I love how you lefties have excised that awful word, "adoption," from your vocabularies. It causes you so many problems, so why not banish it?
This behavior is rewarded by a federal government that believes it’s the taxpayers' job to feed, clothe, and house the federal gov't vampires, who will then feed, clothe, house and educate everyone’s children.
FIFY.
Steve, do you think these people have a purpose or are they just aimlessly churning the culture?
Endlessly churning the culture is not aimless; if you look busy, people are less likely to give you some real work to do.
She thinks the other person should be willing to show unqualified commitment to her through thick and thin, yet the first little disagreement or trouble, and she is so willing to walk out the door and call it quits forever. What spoiled little solipsists this society is creating these days
Even in her account, it's a dispute over a three-digit sum of credit card charges and how she 'knows she will never be able to depend on him...'
You think maybe the woman's problem is a time horizon which does not extend past the end of the week and a habit of never acknowledging error?
While we are at it, did you catch what was encoded in the authors' understanding of domestic life (which they attribute to their subject, perhaps correctly)?: his function is posited to be that he be there to produce services for her, full stop. The authors' consider it perfectly defensible that she refuse to marry him because to marry him would confer upon him prerogatives (which we do not allow dinks).
This reminds me of Charles Murray's WSJ op-ed piece many years ago about the coming white underclass. His recommendation was to cut off welfare to single mothers (pay for abortion or orphanages) and to eliminate unmarried fathers' rights or obligations to their illegitimate children so that people would think twice about having children outside of marriage. No way feminists would allow this at this point.
That's my advice, as well. The ideal solution would be to give fathers and mothers equal reproductive rights and equal reproductive responsibilities, but that's not really feasible. Next best solution is to (continue to) give mothers all the reproductive rights and give them all the responsibilities, too. Meaning, no state support (can't support your child? Give it up for adoption). It even comes with a pithy motto: "your body, your choice, your responsibility."
@Anonymous 6:50 PM
I sure hope that "touching" comment was dripping with sarcasm.
Anonymous wrote:
"Yesterday I attended a big church wedding for a single white mom with two mulatto boys. A nice white guy married her. Here in flyover there are still young guys who want to be heroes. Touching, really.
We'll see how it goes."
I just can't imagine any way he will get a happy life out of that.
Why did he marry her exactly? Seems like he could have found someone else.
Well I spoke too soon.
Komment Kontrol did indeed oKay my Komment.
Might you give us the benefit of the doubt and conclude that we figured that out when we read the comment in question?
Why the white working class woman?
Damn good question.
Blaming others for misfortune is the classic sign of losers.
"You raped me. It's my fault. I'm a loser." That's what you like to hear?
Fuck you, misanthrope.
"The women ready for marriage in this group have grown larger"
Indeed.
LOL!!!!!!
We are fast approaching fifty percent fatherlessness in America. Little boys desperately need, and want, both biological fathers, and men in general, in their lives. When that happens, the nation prances around with prada shoes, and dies.
Making fathers an option for women, along with preferential treatment across the life spectrum, has been a (shhh!) disaster in America. Empire money can only mask social pathology for so long.
Good article, thx.
An important fact left out of this emotionally retarded essay is the fact that, thanks to the inter nets, men have a HELL of a lot of alternatives to marrying willful assholes like Lilly. Thanks to the plethora of "dating" websites, a man with a plan can accumulate a pretty nice lineup of "friends with benefits" which satisfies what used to be a major impetus for marriage: fairly regular sex.
Besides the dating sites, if you're looking for a "quick fix," there are a massive number of gals with webcams on the internets very enthusiastic about stripping for you in real time, and taking requests, for a nominal fee, generally much less than you'd spend on a date with uncertain outcomes. The best feature being, once you've had sex with them, you can turn them off immediately, unlike the old school reality we've been stuck with until recently.
To the male readers, honestly ask yourself, if sex wasn't on the table, would you even HAVE any female friends, let alone get married, and get your finances entangled to one of these predatory mantraps?
Think about it before you answer.
"Dalrymple describes how his professional nurses to a woman all chose abusers as husbands"
Any links for that, Whiskey? Sounds very unlikely to me. And all the years that Dalrypmple worked in the British NHS (he's retired now) publishing stuff like that would be a firing offence.
(Of course I don't know the demographics of the Birmingham UK nurse population. But I've never heard such a thing of UK nurses, who make good and bad choices like other women)
The problem with calling someone a bastard is that the two adults who had any choice in whether a kid would be born a bastard don't get the nasty names--that gets stuck on the kid, who is the only completely innocent party in the whole affair. --NOTA
Florence King once wrote that, while this situation was indeed unfair, it was still worth it. The fear of their potential child's mistreatment persuaded women to contain their childbearing within marriage. Hence, fewer bastards to suffer. (Not to mention for the rest of us to suffer.)
Also, in the bad old days bastards, from Alexander Hamilton to Svante Pääbo, could still rise above their station.
Pääbo's legitimate half-brother was born the same year as Svante. Ouch. No wonder he feels for the Neanderthals.
(BTW, I had to go to Swedish Wikipedia to learn that.)
Large concentrations of money have traditionally attracted that type of woman formerly known as the adventuress.
Over ten years ago, I was familiar w/ an attractive, outgoing 19 y/o black female. She worked as a hostess at a Denny's restaurant in Tampa near the Buccaneers training facility, and she got to know a few of the players that came into the restaurant. She soon started attending Bucs practices and had a one-night stands with a couple of the players. She's now 30 y/o w/ two sons from two absentee, unemployed losers.
She's now 30 y/o w/ two sons from two absentee, unemployed losers.
And yet who has made the larger contribution to The Tree of Life?
Your Denny's hostess, or, say, Maureen Dowd?
The future is made by those who show up for it.
Everyone else goes extinct.
Might you give us the benefit of the doubt and conclude that we figured that out when we read the comment in question?
Dude [or maybe Chick?], I'm apologizing to Komment Kontrol.
You're just an eavesdropping bystander.
"To the male readers, honestly ask yourself, if sex wasn't on the table, would you even HAVE any female friends, let alone get married, and get your finances entangled to one of these predatory mantraps?"
"Women invented sex so men would have to keep them around."
-Anon
"Anonymous said...
Snark overkill, Sailer. Not quite sure where you're getting the notion she's a horrible person.
By separating with the guy, she could very well be avoiding the making of a sunk cost fallacy. Unemployment with zero prospects doesn't exactly bring out the best in 20 year-old males of low or middling IQ."
It's called social opprobrium - what, today, is derided as "being judgemental" - and it is what permits healthy societies to function. It is because most people do not react with this scorn, that things have gotten as bad as they are.
This woman has demonstrated a propensity for making bad decisions, by making a bad decision in what used to be considered one of the most important things a woman (or her kin) would ever have to make a decision about - who would be the father of her children. She is now stuck with a child who will be like the man she deems unfit to be the child's father. The child is stuck with a mom who made such a bad choice, and he or she can look forward to eighteen more years of poor parental decisions.
She feels she can get away with it because the government will step in as surrogate father, i.e. by socking you and I with the bill for her bad decisions.
Besides the dating sites, if you're looking for a "quick fix," there are a massive number of gals with webcams on the internets very enthusiastic about stripping for you in real time, and taking requests, for a nominal fee, generally much less than you'd spend on a date with uncertain outcomes. The best feature being, once you've had sex with them, you can turn them off immediately, unlike the old school reality we've been stuck with until recently.
So, by "once you've had sex with them" you actually mean "once you've masturbated"? Because you're not having sex with them. At all. Not in the reality of any school.
ray said...
We are fast approaching fifty percent fatherlessness in America. Little boys desperately need, and want, both biological fathers, and men in general, in their lives. When that happens, the nation prances around with prada shoes, and dies.
Making fathers an option for women, along with preferential treatment across the life spectrum, has been a (shhh!) disaster in America. Empire money can only mask social pathology for so long."
Exactly
Down the memory hole went all those laments from children whose fathers were absent because they were working long hours to support their families. Well, family men are still working hard to support six kids, the majority of kids not actually being their own rather living as wards of the state on the taxpayer's dime.
I see that Whiskey sees this as about sex, race and dominance. No surprise there.
But everyone seems to be missing the critical element in this story - auto mechanics.
Her real problem is that her car is broken. Women just aren't very good with cars. In the old days women were attracted to the guy who could handle the Short Faced Bear which was prowling around the entrance to the cave. Today she needs a guy who can adjust her valve gear - and apparently it ain't Carl.
Pat Boyle (AKA Albertosaurus)
Speaking of Chechens, Tolstoy's Anna Karenina is about the sexy bad boy and the provider cuckold husband.
It's an old theme. Arthur and Lancelot Spring to mind.
Lily's excuse-makers implicitly assume all females have a right to a child. They don't.
Also, when the Lilys of the world make a boo-boo with their choo-choo, the alternatives aren't abortion or raise a baby into bastardy. Adoption remains an option.
P.S. Pope Paul VI, who didn't make the cut to be canonized this past weekend, is up there saying "I told you so." He predicted so much of this unwed sperm-chasing baby momma disaster in a little essay he published, Humanae Vitae. You may have heard of it.
"To the male readers, honestly ask yourself, if sex wasn't on the table, would you even HAVE any female friends, let alone get married, and get your finances entangled to one of these predatory mantraps?
Think about it before you answer."
Hey Roissy! Well actually there's always been porn and Penthouse. The net makes it all easier. So yeah, but what's your point? Like attracts like.
"
"Women invented sex so men would have to keep them around."
-Anon"
Does that include all species, or only humans?
She is Jewish so it's not really surprising she would advocate break down of white families and without doubt she is not incl. Jews under this 'white' term.
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