1. I think this is wrong "And another camp consists of racists who don’t like to talk about family structure as a source of disadvantage because they believe it detracts from the idea that Black people are inferior."
I think it's more like racists point to family structure as evidence that black people are inferior.
2. This is going to be controversial as fuck, but there is a societal push to elevate single mothers, above and beyond normal mothers, which I don't necessarily think is healthy. The single mothers are saints and heroes canard could possibly do more more harm than good. But obviously, stigmatizing and ostracizing single mothers is also bad. But the fact is that social pressure is very powerful.
Being a single mother is such a powerful image that we sort of speak it in the same tone as we do veterans. It's use to almost boost a persons status. I don't think we do it consciously, but it's more of a thing where we overcompensated our support of single mothers and sort of in some ways glorify it. I have been guilty of this too.
Personal Story: My 23-year old daughter is a single mother. I mean it's true she is awesome. She is a full time student, working hard to raise my granddaughter. The effort she puts in versus a married mother is awe inspiring. But at the same time... she is a single mother because she slept with some loser Scottish dude who didn't have his life together and was lazy about birth control. Her life is hard because she messed up. Ok... I love love my granddaughter, and am blessed to have her, but you get the point. I would gladly love to be in an alternate Universe where my daughter was married to a guy while she went to school and shared the responsibilities and I still got to hang with my granddaughter. But... if she did that... I probably wouldn't brag on her as much. And that is the issue.
It’s probably worth spreading the news that a low earning husband is adding good value to the kids life. Matt acts like this is something *everybody* knows but that’s not my experience. We can see in Wilcox proposal even he doesn’t really know what he knows—his idea is to get these low wage dads working even more hours even though they could add value spending those hours doing childcare, which is quite expensive.
And eliminating the welfare state marriage penalties is simply a must and I’m tired of liberals acting like conservatives should take care of this for them. It’s our welfare state after all, when it’s not working right we should fix it! I know the senate is sooooooo busy and unable to take up a lot of legislation but they should just move a bill on this that isn’t full of poison and make Romney etc vote against it. I doubt he will. This is quite a pernicious way for the government to nudge peoples lives and getting the other party to do the work for you down the line is just not such an amazing win as our legislators seem to think.
One angle of approach here, though not fully fleshed out as policy: make working-class men more compelling as husbands. Liberals and conservatives might both like this or both hate this, depending on how you frame it.
I forget who did this research, but there was a study of the fathers of single mothers' children that found that many of them consider themselves involved parents who derive great meaning from spending time with their kids, even as their standards for what constitutes sharing the parenting load are much, much lower than those of your average high-SES married dad. If you're a single mother, and your kid's father is patchily employed or employed in a line of work that requires constant travel or on-call availability, has a home that isn't safe for kids, and maybe even has a drug problem or trouble with the law – and on top of that he likes doing the fun, "quality time" parts of parenting but never shows up for the stressful, boring bureaucracy... why would you marry him?
Conservative discourse on this tends to imply that women should be less picky about their husbands. I think that disrespects women's autonomy and their equal rights. No one should be pressured into a lifelong commitment they don't want, and women deserve better than to be the helpmeet of someone who won't pull his weight. Conversely, though, left-wing discourse often prescribes basically "do better, men". This is a viewpoint I'm pretty cautious about sharing with even some of my closest friends, but... cultural leftists have to do better than "do better, men". For one thing, "do better, men" fails the test of – of all things – intersectionality, specifically understanding the intersection of gender and class. Low-SES men may benefit from lower societal expectations on a lot of things, but they are also beset with much graver problems than low-SES women. The large majority of murder victims are men, as are the large majority of people living on the street.
My strong belief as a liberal and a feminist (and an LGBT person) is that the policy answer to the problems men face is *not* "accept gender roles as a fact of life and treat boys and girls differently as a result". I think more male nurses and more male kindergarten teachers, for instance, would be really beneficial here. But even if the consensus immediately breaks down on solutions, I think it's valuable to frame the problem in the above terms.
“And another camp consists of racists who don’t like to talk about family structure as a source of disadvantage because they believe it detracts from the idea that Black people are inferior.”
This is worse than uncharitable, it is a mistake. The entire “welfare queen” trope, which has thrived for 50 years, implies that blacks are inferior because they have suboptimal family structures or, at a minimum, that blacks have bad family structures because they lack discipline. In either case, conservatives are perfectly happy saying that blacks have undesirable family structures.
I think you might be missing something here talking about the hypothetical child that is not existing because a woman had an abortion (or used birth control). Particularly in cases of unintentional pregnancies that occur when a woman is young, the choice is less a child that exists or doesn’t; the trade-off is between a child born now when the parents are much less able to provide a good life, and a hypothetical child born a few years later when the parents are ready and better-equipped to handle parenthood. The benefit isn’t the hypothetical child existing or not, it is the hypothetical child being born in worse circumstances for the parents or better ones.
So, a main reason people cite is lack of good male partners. Better job opportunities, reduced incarceration, improving schools outcomes are often pointed to here. But if the culture shifted where “bring a successful man” = a well run home and being a great stay at home dad that could also work. How do you change the culture? A successful network comedy about a cool dad raising the family’s kids. (Well, it’s a start)
Edit: Yes, there are lots of beloved comedies already about good dads WITH jobs!
My experience is that the progressive skepticism of several of the solutions is due to a (IME, entirely justifiable) suspicion that a lot of it is trying to reduce the amount of leverage women have.
So they're fine with "marriage promotion by creating more stable occupations for working class men", don't care about "a bunch of PSAs promoting marriage", and hate "make it harder to get divorced."
I'm curious if there's much data about outcomes for children in situations where one parent dies, and then two of their uncles move in to help their dad raise them. Most of what I've seen on that specific scenario has been anecdotal.
1. Free long-acting birth control (e.g. IUDs) for everyone (insurance-blind) under 25.
2. Free high-quality therapy for everyone (insurance-blind) under 25. (The idea being to help reduce people's childhood baggage before they have kids, hopefully helping them to have kids in better circumstances, and to stay married once there.)
3. This one is harder, but being married to a guy who doesn't pull his weight (as far as housework, parenting, emotional support, faithfulness, etc.) can make a woman's life much worse than being single, and I think that's a lot of what we're running up against. Meanwhile, as a society we seem to lack 'masculinity done right' role models and ideals, leading the left to decry masculinity as toxic and try to avoid it, and the right to complain that the left just sees men as inferior women, without offering a more useful vision themselves. (For the record, I know a lot of men are already awesome - but I think that's in spite of our culture rather than because of it, and shifting the conversation might help more men get there.)
And that's unfortunate because great parenting, for example (e.g. patiently tending a kid who wakes up every 2 hours) requires hard-work, strength, self-discipline... all virtues that have traditionally been seen as at least as much masculine as feminine. I would love to hear that trumpeted from the rooftops.
I am going to venture a guess that the vast majority of Slow Boring readers are wealthy and either childless or married. There is a cultural dynamic impacting lower-income portions of our nation that we have no way of developing solutions for because we aren't part of it. All that being said, this 2 hour conversation between Nikki Giovanni and James Baldwin from 1971 is absolutely incredible and they discuss this from a human perspective. Note that on the graph above, 1971 is right around a major inflection point in marriage rates. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Jc54RvDUZU
Cultural problems are hard to solve. Look how far our "racial reckoning" has gotten us (nowhere, backwards maybe). If there are tax policy levers, great, but I'm with Matt in being skeptical that they're up to the task.
“I’m skeptical anyone has any really good marriage promotion ideas”
Shame.
Shame and opprobrium.
And intentionally raising children outside a stable family structure is, liberal “openness” notwithstanding, absolutely one of the few instances where society should employ those to maximum effect even though it’s regarding a “lifestyle choice”.
Matt is normally very fair in his characterization of conservative views. But not today. His summary of Rich Lowry's piece as "saying that Ta-Nehisi Coates should stop complaining about racism" is wrong on the merits and deliberately misleading. Lowry's summary paragraph is enough to refute Matt's characterization:
"Coates reminds us of the shame of the American inner city, where kids have so few social supports and live with little margin of error. His account of slavery and the ensuing discrimination against blacks is powerful and true. But his is a stunted version of America. Here’s hoping his son reads more widely."
I encourage others to read the piece and draw their own conclusions.
I think Matt is missing a lever conservatives (and a lot of moderates on both sides) see and act on. Sure, the Republican Party seems to be less vocal about this, but there are a lot of cultural figures and institutions pushing hard on it. I'm thinking of the attempt at culture change from people like Jordan Peterson and the general "Be a responsible man, clean up your act and get a job and become a good mate and settle down and raise a family and be a positive, contributing member of your community" strain of discourse. In this frame, the highest leverage point is making men better--they're the ones leaving their partners to raise the kids alone (either because they're not willing to commit, unable to support the family, or commiting crimes that leave them in jail and away from the kids). Clearly, there are upstream variables: why are so many men ending up without the psychological, social, and economic resources to play those constructive, positive roles in the first place? But setting that aside for a different discussion and trying to deal with the situation as it is right now, there's still what I consider an entirely worthwhile effort to increase marriage rates by increasing the character of men.
Unfortunately, I think this is offputting to progressives because it triggers three sacred cows: 1) individuals taking 'personal responsibility' for their actions, becoming more virtuous, and 'pulling themselves up by their bootstraps' are the solution to systemic social ills, 2) talking to poor people (and especially people of color) about 'engaging in more responsible behaviors' and 'developing character' reminds them of old-school thinly veiled actual white supremacy, and 3) this kind of approach is very often closely intertwined with religious institutions or messaging, which comes with baggage the left doesn't like. A more cynical take is that it circumvents progressives' ideological and political machinery, cutting them out of the loop on money and power. Seems like that's a factor for some, but I generally lean charitably on this one.
I don't think any off those three objections are legitimate critiques of a genuinely good-faith approach to developing healthier, more positive men. And tragically, I think if progressives could look past their prejudices (and many can or already do, I'm sure), they would see that this is exactly the natural complement to something like the #MeToo movement: we have a problem with men abusing their power and hurting women in this society, and what should we do about it? Develop men into stronger, more loving and capable male figures who both provide for and support their families while respecting women, themselves, and their communities. That requires not just shaming and calling them out, but also providing them with support (in particular, from other men) to grow into the kind of healthier, more responsible, strong but safe figures we would all like to see.
As usual, there seems to be an enormous amount of common ground here between working/middle class people on both sides of the aisle and across all races. In Shelby Steele's "What Killed Michael Brown?" (which I found to be kind of cringy but also illuminating), he interviews leaders of community orgs that are doing this kind of thing: pastors, nonprofit heads, etc., all of whom are focused on providing healthy outlets for (especially young, poor, or black) men to form part of a community, find redemption or hope, and contribute their efforts to something meaningful and positive (instead of, say, meaningful and destructive, like being part of a gang). They seem to be liberals and conservatives, but united by pragmatism and in-the-trenches, skin-in-the-game, real-world experience. Maybe I'm romanticizing, but they seem representative of a very positive, often-underlooked thread of community work. I think Jamil Jivani has some good thoughts on this (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D2vctUezliE).
Almost everyone who doesn't form part of the woke Ivy League crowd agrees that this kind of approach is awesome and totally not a dog whistle for "Black men are degenerate criminals who need to be reformed by white saviors". Duh, it's often black men trying to mentor other black men! But then someone like Denis Prager (an older white man) says "The solution is simple: anyone in this country can succeed and live a good life if they follow Judeo-Christian values of hard work, personal responsibility, etc." and it's off to the races on the racism stuff.
Anyway, I hope that doesn't get overlooked, because I think it's probably the best bet. And my sense is that Matt, as a left of center wonk, is going to underweight the value and legitimacy of "bottom-up culture change" as a path to improving outcomes.
Also, good piece!
**EDIT: I thought about this a bit and I feel like I kind of leaned into defending Peterson because of my frustration with progressives who annoy me, rather than because I think he's a great example of the thing I'm trying to describe. I haven't read any of his books, have just watched a few of his interviews and portions of his talks. I know what I'm thinking of, and Peterson doesn't really embody it fully; just a small part (the "have courage, think of yourself as a hero on a journey, clean up your act and at least try to be a good man" shtick). I regret falling into the either/or culture war trap (Peterson or the libs!), albeit mildly.
I also regret using the phrase "Ivy League Woke crowd," which is obviously pretty inflammatory. I do think there's something to what I'm saying there, and if I were to rephrase it less antagonistically, I'd say something like "most people who are not self-identified strong progressives, young people attending elite colleges, politically active Twitter users -- people often referred to as 'liberal elites'".
I don't think is actually that complicated - it is probably true that two parents are better than one for obvious reasons outside of weird conservative morality, but outside of incredibly terrible policies that would greatly make a lot of people's lives worse, it's virtually impossible to turn the clock back to 1960. Some of those policies that the conservative commenters on this substack are basically OK with.
Like, yeah, some wonky proposals might help on the edges, but I think this is just reality we're going to have to grapple with.
I’m a little surprised the drug war didn’t come up in this article. Correct me if I’m wrong, but my understanding is that a large percentage of black male incarcerations are for relatively minor drug infractions. I can think of almost nothing more destabilizing to a marriage or family unit than having the partner jailed, even for just a few months.
I would be interested to know how much more room we have to decriminalize non-violent drug offenses, and how much positive impact that could have on family stability.
Two comments:
1. I think this is wrong "And another camp consists of racists who don’t like to talk about family structure as a source of disadvantage because they believe it detracts from the idea that Black people are inferior."
I think it's more like racists point to family structure as evidence that black people are inferior.
2. This is going to be controversial as fuck, but there is a societal push to elevate single mothers, above and beyond normal mothers, which I don't necessarily think is healthy. The single mothers are saints and heroes canard could possibly do more more harm than good. But obviously, stigmatizing and ostracizing single mothers is also bad. But the fact is that social pressure is very powerful.
Being a single mother is such a powerful image that we sort of speak it in the same tone as we do veterans. It's use to almost boost a persons status. I don't think we do it consciously, but it's more of a thing where we overcompensated our support of single mothers and sort of in some ways glorify it. I have been guilty of this too.
Personal Story: My 23-year old daughter is a single mother. I mean it's true she is awesome. She is a full time student, working hard to raise my granddaughter. The effort she puts in versus a married mother is awe inspiring. But at the same time... she is a single mother because she slept with some loser Scottish dude who didn't have his life together and was lazy about birth control. Her life is hard because she messed up. Ok... I love love my granddaughter, and am blessed to have her, but you get the point. I would gladly love to be in an alternate Universe where my daughter was married to a guy while she went to school and shared the responsibilities and I still got to hang with my granddaughter. But... if she did that... I probably wouldn't brag on her as much. And that is the issue.
Hey everyone.
It’s probably worth spreading the news that a low earning husband is adding good value to the kids life. Matt acts like this is something *everybody* knows but that’s not my experience. We can see in Wilcox proposal even he doesn’t really know what he knows—his idea is to get these low wage dads working even more hours even though they could add value spending those hours doing childcare, which is quite expensive.
And eliminating the welfare state marriage penalties is simply a must and I’m tired of liberals acting like conservatives should take care of this for them. It’s our welfare state after all, when it’s not working right we should fix it! I know the senate is sooooooo busy and unable to take up a lot of legislation but they should just move a bill on this that isn’t full of poison and make Romney etc vote against it. I doubt he will. This is quite a pernicious way for the government to nudge peoples lives and getting the other party to do the work for you down the line is just not such an amazing win as our legislators seem to think.
One angle of approach here, though not fully fleshed out as policy: make working-class men more compelling as husbands. Liberals and conservatives might both like this or both hate this, depending on how you frame it.
I forget who did this research, but there was a study of the fathers of single mothers' children that found that many of them consider themselves involved parents who derive great meaning from spending time with their kids, even as their standards for what constitutes sharing the parenting load are much, much lower than those of your average high-SES married dad. If you're a single mother, and your kid's father is patchily employed or employed in a line of work that requires constant travel or on-call availability, has a home that isn't safe for kids, and maybe even has a drug problem or trouble with the law – and on top of that he likes doing the fun, "quality time" parts of parenting but never shows up for the stressful, boring bureaucracy... why would you marry him?
Conservative discourse on this tends to imply that women should be less picky about their husbands. I think that disrespects women's autonomy and their equal rights. No one should be pressured into a lifelong commitment they don't want, and women deserve better than to be the helpmeet of someone who won't pull his weight. Conversely, though, left-wing discourse often prescribes basically "do better, men". This is a viewpoint I'm pretty cautious about sharing with even some of my closest friends, but... cultural leftists have to do better than "do better, men". For one thing, "do better, men" fails the test of – of all things – intersectionality, specifically understanding the intersection of gender and class. Low-SES men may benefit from lower societal expectations on a lot of things, but they are also beset with much graver problems than low-SES women. The large majority of murder victims are men, as are the large majority of people living on the street.
My strong belief as a liberal and a feminist (and an LGBT person) is that the policy answer to the problems men face is *not* "accept gender roles as a fact of life and treat boys and girls differently as a result". I think more male nurses and more male kindergarten teachers, for instance, would be really beneficial here. But even if the consensus immediately breaks down on solutions, I think it's valuable to frame the problem in the above terms.
“And another camp consists of racists who don’t like to talk about family structure as a source of disadvantage because they believe it detracts from the idea that Black people are inferior.”
This is worse than uncharitable, it is a mistake. The entire “welfare queen” trope, which has thrived for 50 years, implies that blacks are inferior because they have suboptimal family structures or, at a minimum, that blacks have bad family structures because they lack discipline. In either case, conservatives are perfectly happy saying that blacks have undesirable family structures.
I think you might be missing something here talking about the hypothetical child that is not existing because a woman had an abortion (or used birth control). Particularly in cases of unintentional pregnancies that occur when a woman is young, the choice is less a child that exists or doesn’t; the trade-off is between a child born now when the parents are much less able to provide a good life, and a hypothetical child born a few years later when the parents are ready and better-equipped to handle parenthood. The benefit isn’t the hypothetical child existing or not, it is the hypothetical child being born in worse circumstances for the parents or better ones.
Matt missed the chance to posit that an increase in marital co-habitation would help the housing crisis :)
So, a main reason people cite is lack of good male partners. Better job opportunities, reduced incarceration, improving schools outcomes are often pointed to here. But if the culture shifted where “bring a successful man” = a well run home and being a great stay at home dad that could also work. How do you change the culture? A successful network comedy about a cool dad raising the family’s kids. (Well, it’s a start)
Edit: Yes, there are lots of beloved comedies already about good dads WITH jobs!
My experience is that the progressive skepticism of several of the solutions is due to a (IME, entirely justifiable) suspicion that a lot of it is trying to reduce the amount of leverage women have.
So they're fine with "marriage promotion by creating more stable occupations for working class men", don't care about "a bunch of PSAs promoting marriage", and hate "make it harder to get divorced."
I'm curious if there's much data about outcomes for children in situations where one parent dies, and then two of their uncles move in to help their dad raise them. Most of what I've seen on that specific scenario has been anecdotal.
A few thoughts:
1. Free long-acting birth control (e.g. IUDs) for everyone (insurance-blind) under 25.
2. Free high-quality therapy for everyone (insurance-blind) under 25. (The idea being to help reduce people's childhood baggage before they have kids, hopefully helping them to have kids in better circumstances, and to stay married once there.)
3. This one is harder, but being married to a guy who doesn't pull his weight (as far as housework, parenting, emotional support, faithfulness, etc.) can make a woman's life much worse than being single, and I think that's a lot of what we're running up against. Meanwhile, as a society we seem to lack 'masculinity done right' role models and ideals, leading the left to decry masculinity as toxic and try to avoid it, and the right to complain that the left just sees men as inferior women, without offering a more useful vision themselves. (For the record, I know a lot of men are already awesome - but I think that's in spite of our culture rather than because of it, and shifting the conversation might help more men get there.)
And that's unfortunate because great parenting, for example (e.g. patiently tending a kid who wakes up every 2 hours) requires hard-work, strength, self-discipline... all virtues that have traditionally been seen as at least as much masculine as feminine. I would love to hear that trumpeted from the rooftops.
I am going to venture a guess that the vast majority of Slow Boring readers are wealthy and either childless or married. There is a cultural dynamic impacting lower-income portions of our nation that we have no way of developing solutions for because we aren't part of it. All that being said, this 2 hour conversation between Nikki Giovanni and James Baldwin from 1971 is absolutely incredible and they discuss this from a human perspective. Note that on the graph above, 1971 is right around a major inflection point in marriage rates. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Jc54RvDUZU
Especially this part: https://youtu.be/4Jc54RvDUZU?t=2891
(A full transcript is also available here: https://dl1.cuni.cz/pluginfile.php/821530/mod_resource/content/1/James%20Baldwin_%20Nikki%20Giovanni%20-%20A%20Dialogue-Lippincott%20%281973%29.pdf )
Cultural problems are hard to solve. Look how far our "racial reckoning" has gotten us (nowhere, backwards maybe). If there are tax policy levers, great, but I'm with Matt in being skeptical that they're up to the task.
“I’m skeptical anyone has any really good marriage promotion ideas”
Shame.
Shame and opprobrium.
And intentionally raising children outside a stable family structure is, liberal “openness” notwithstanding, absolutely one of the few instances where society should employ those to maximum effect even though it’s regarding a “lifestyle choice”.
Matt is normally very fair in his characterization of conservative views. But not today. His summary of Rich Lowry's piece as "saying that Ta-Nehisi Coates should stop complaining about racism" is wrong on the merits and deliberately misleading. Lowry's summary paragraph is enough to refute Matt's characterization:
"Coates reminds us of the shame of the American inner city, where kids have so few social supports and live with little margin of error. His account of slavery and the ensuing discrimination against blacks is powerful and true. But his is a stunted version of America. Here’s hoping his son reads more widely."
I encourage others to read the piece and draw their own conclusions.
Link: https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/07/the-toxic-world-view-of-ta-nehisi-coates-120512/
**See edits below**
I think Matt is missing a lever conservatives (and a lot of moderates on both sides) see and act on. Sure, the Republican Party seems to be less vocal about this, but there are a lot of cultural figures and institutions pushing hard on it. I'm thinking of the attempt at culture change from people like Jordan Peterson and the general "Be a responsible man, clean up your act and get a job and become a good mate and settle down and raise a family and be a positive, contributing member of your community" strain of discourse. In this frame, the highest leverage point is making men better--they're the ones leaving their partners to raise the kids alone (either because they're not willing to commit, unable to support the family, or commiting crimes that leave them in jail and away from the kids). Clearly, there are upstream variables: why are so many men ending up without the psychological, social, and economic resources to play those constructive, positive roles in the first place? But setting that aside for a different discussion and trying to deal with the situation as it is right now, there's still what I consider an entirely worthwhile effort to increase marriage rates by increasing the character of men.
Unfortunately, I think this is offputting to progressives because it triggers three sacred cows: 1) individuals taking 'personal responsibility' for their actions, becoming more virtuous, and 'pulling themselves up by their bootstraps' are the solution to systemic social ills, 2) talking to poor people (and especially people of color) about 'engaging in more responsible behaviors' and 'developing character' reminds them of old-school thinly veiled actual white supremacy, and 3) this kind of approach is very often closely intertwined with religious institutions or messaging, which comes with baggage the left doesn't like. A more cynical take is that it circumvents progressives' ideological and political machinery, cutting them out of the loop on money and power. Seems like that's a factor for some, but I generally lean charitably on this one.
I don't think any off those three objections are legitimate critiques of a genuinely good-faith approach to developing healthier, more positive men. And tragically, I think if progressives could look past their prejudices (and many can or already do, I'm sure), they would see that this is exactly the natural complement to something like the #MeToo movement: we have a problem with men abusing their power and hurting women in this society, and what should we do about it? Develop men into stronger, more loving and capable male figures who both provide for and support their families while respecting women, themselves, and their communities. That requires not just shaming and calling them out, but also providing them with support (in particular, from other men) to grow into the kind of healthier, more responsible, strong but safe figures we would all like to see.
As usual, there seems to be an enormous amount of common ground here between working/middle class people on both sides of the aisle and across all races. In Shelby Steele's "What Killed Michael Brown?" (which I found to be kind of cringy but also illuminating), he interviews leaders of community orgs that are doing this kind of thing: pastors, nonprofit heads, etc., all of whom are focused on providing healthy outlets for (especially young, poor, or black) men to form part of a community, find redemption or hope, and contribute their efforts to something meaningful and positive (instead of, say, meaningful and destructive, like being part of a gang). They seem to be liberals and conservatives, but united by pragmatism and in-the-trenches, skin-in-the-game, real-world experience. Maybe I'm romanticizing, but they seem representative of a very positive, often-underlooked thread of community work. I think Jamil Jivani has some good thoughts on this (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D2vctUezliE).
Almost everyone who doesn't form part of the woke Ivy League crowd agrees that this kind of approach is awesome and totally not a dog whistle for "Black men are degenerate criminals who need to be reformed by white saviors". Duh, it's often black men trying to mentor other black men! But then someone like Denis Prager (an older white man) says "The solution is simple: anyone in this country can succeed and live a good life if they follow Judeo-Christian values of hard work, personal responsibility, etc." and it's off to the races on the racism stuff.
Anyway, I hope that doesn't get overlooked, because I think it's probably the best bet. And my sense is that Matt, as a left of center wonk, is going to underweight the value and legitimacy of "bottom-up culture change" as a path to improving outcomes.
Also, good piece!
**EDIT: I thought about this a bit and I feel like I kind of leaned into defending Peterson because of my frustration with progressives who annoy me, rather than because I think he's a great example of the thing I'm trying to describe. I haven't read any of his books, have just watched a few of his interviews and portions of his talks. I know what I'm thinking of, and Peterson doesn't really embody it fully; just a small part (the "have courage, think of yourself as a hero on a journey, clean up your act and at least try to be a good man" shtick). I regret falling into the either/or culture war trap (Peterson or the libs!), albeit mildly.
I also regret using the phrase "Ivy League Woke crowd," which is obviously pretty inflammatory. I do think there's something to what I'm saying there, and if I were to rephrase it less antagonistically, I'd say something like "most people who are not self-identified strong progressives, young people attending elite colleges, politically active Twitter users -- people often referred to as 'liberal elites'".
I don't think is actually that complicated - it is probably true that two parents are better than one for obvious reasons outside of weird conservative morality, but outside of incredibly terrible policies that would greatly make a lot of people's lives worse, it's virtually impossible to turn the clock back to 1960. Some of those policies that the conservative commenters on this substack are basically OK with.
Like, yeah, some wonky proposals might help on the edges, but I think this is just reality we're going to have to grapple with.
I’m a little surprised the drug war didn’t come up in this article. Correct me if I’m wrong, but my understanding is that a large percentage of black male incarcerations are for relatively minor drug infractions. I can think of almost nothing more destabilizing to a marriage or family unit than having the partner jailed, even for just a few months.
I would be interested to know how much more room we have to decriminalize non-violent drug offenses, and how much positive impact that could have on family stability.