My favorite stat highlighting the values disconnect between my peer group (I’m a college professor) and the general population: only about 20% of younger women (age 18-49) keep their last name after marriage. (The number is even smaller in older generations.)
Taking your husband’s name isn’t quite unheard-of in my circles, it’s rare enough it would be considered eccentric.
I’m late to this thread but just wanted to say that Milan does a great job with the charts. It’s awesome to have original visual content like that here.
Most parents have a more nuanced and complicated relationship with spanking /beating children than can be reflected in polling.
My impression is most don’t want to hit their kids, but do so in a spur of the moment fashion. Either the kid did something that angered or frightened the parent (she ran into traffic) or they’re taking out their own personal frustration on someone who can’t fight back.
I grew up in a blue collar family. My mother “switched” me a few times as a small child. I got one massive beating with a belt from my father when I stuck my tongue out at him! I’m also old enough that I got spankings at school. Getting hit didn’t make me a better person. It just made me resent and distrust the people handing it out.
That’s why a lot of spanking is less calculated than it is like getting hit by lightening from out of the blue. And I think it also doesn’t accomplish what the parent intends. Unless they think it is better to be feared than loved. And some (mostly but not exclusively like the Evangelical Christians I grew up with) do.
And while I get the impression that corporal punishment can be satisfying to some parent, it can also do a lot of damage.
For example, I know a couple of women who are haunted by the memory of their father pulling down their pants and spanking them. Years later they still felt violated by the most important person in their life.
I grew up in Singapore, where corporal punishment is (famously) very much a normal part of the culture (as is, probably unrelatedly, respect for your elders). While my parents rarely used corporal punishment (I think I was spanked a few times as a kid), educators were free with corporal punishment to enforce discipline, and was I caned or spanked with a ruler for everything from talking in class to getting words wrong on a spelling test.
Based on my personal experience, I’ve come away with the impression that corporal punishment is a) highly effective in the short term as a tool of discipline, b) not any more or less effective in the long term in changing overall attitudes, instilling better work habits, etc. than time outs or other non-corporal forms of discipline, c) not, as far as I can tell, especially psychologically scarring, and d) if used to excess, very likely to turn you against the punisher—I never liked or respected the teachers who hit me. Thus, while I don’t personally think spanking is a particularly big deal, I don’t plan to use corporal punishment on my kids.
Interesting that emphasizing a relationship with Jesus Christ gives one conservative credibility as the basis of Christian values is love of neighbors and not the primacy of individual liberty.
This resonates with me quite a bit...nobody has to convince me that liberals (and sometimes even leftists) tend to be better on actual policy-as-enacted, across multiple domains. But the values just became intolerably suffocating at some point...it became too tiresome holding my nose while filling in ballots, holding my opinions in PMC circles, holding my reservations when peers all around would bash conservative strawmen. The farther the Democratic Party moves into white-collar/college-educated hegemony, the less welcome I feel, as a blue-collar frontline retail grunt.
Relatedly, on child discipline: so, working in a grocery store near multiple schools, I'm no stranger to parents shopping with kids in tow. Sometimes the kids are great, they might even help unload the cart (saves my back a lot of pain, thanks!). Other times...well...they're squalling tyrants. Not just in the "crying a lot, generally unresponsive" way...but like the "throwing an absolute shitfit tantrum in public" way. It's very, very rare to see physical punishment out here. And yet...I can't help but feel really vicariously bad, when an overwhelmed outmatched parent keeps trying to use Jedi mind tricks, and the kid is just not having it. It doesn't matter how robust the literature is, how much I "know" "spanking" "doesn't work". The whole situation is mortally embarrassing for everyone involved, and I can't imagine having to live down that sort of humiliation in front of strangers.
Same for the kid, later on - they're making an absolute fool of themselves, I sure hope no one's recording that outburst. I don't know if bratty kids actually continue to be bratty teens/young adults, but...I dunno, man. Those kinds of "independent" customers and coworkers are an absolute nightmare to work with. The ones who "respect their elders" instead? A real pleasure. There are almost certainly better ways to raise disciplined children than the rod. But to the extent the rod "works"...or just actual discipline period...those archetypes often seem like rare, precious, and valuable outcomes. So I really can't be too critical, ultimately. (Although kids effectively being parented by screens continues to make me very sad. One generational difference I just can't get behind. It's heartbreaking when a toddler would rather look at a phone than their own mother...)
Lastly, I now intend to enter "One Billion Americans" as a write-in candidate next time I've gotta fill out a ballot and there's only one candidate on it. Safe spoiler votes!
I'm very confused by the "Bible is the word of God" polling
The results show 71% of Democrats believing that the Bible is either the literal word of God, or inspired from God — meaning they are Christians. But we also know 71% of Democrats *aren't* Christians
Will McCaskill brought up an interesting view on adult corporal punishment. Would you choose to get say 20 lashings instead of say 2 years in jail? What is more moral?
I choose getting paddled in high school instead of detention. I doubt that is a choice given today.
A Democrat could be open about values if the delivery is good. Political talent matters.
It is surprising that so many politicians are so unlikeable. You would expect just a like able candidates like Reagan or a Clinton (Bill obviously) and Obama on and on and on. But it’s not that. It’s much more Clinton (Hillary obviously) Pelosi, McConnell, Pence, etc. I guess Joe is okay from the like ability standpoint.
One of the reasons talking about values like this is hard is because, if the design and content of policies is not consistent with the purported values, then verbal espousal of the values is obviously phony. It's not enough to have Whig measures; the measures should be designed in a way that Tory men would design them if they were forced to do so.
Take healthcare policy as an example. Democrats could say that the twin values they are trying to implement are, one, ensuring broadly equitable access, and two, promoting and encouraging technological innovation, flexibility and market efficiency in the delivery of healthcare. Honoring both of those values in the actual design of healthcare policy requires greater technical expertise and intellectual versatility and flexibility than honoring just one of them. If the actual policies Democrats put forward don't reflect that, they can talk all they want about how important both values are, but it obviously not true, because their actual policies only give effect to one of them.
I struggle with this a lot because I don’t care that much about a lot of the popular part of the Democratic agenda but like really super don’t want to be assaulted, prayed for, have it be easy to move away as far as they need to whatever.
Like I’m okay with moderation but I just don’t think I can moderate that much on my values because a lot of them are I should be allowed to be as fully integrated in life as anyone else.
There have been comments about spanking being used to deter really dangerous behavior. And there have been comments that spanking has declined over the last 17 years (35%) (possibly as the world has become a safer place?).
And there have been comments that blacks are more likely to utilize spanking. Is it perhaps that blacks actually raise their children in a less safe world? This might be true, both in the areas where they live and in the societal repercussions if their children behave badly. Perhaps, their stronger embrace of corporal punishment is not merely understandable but advisable?
We're over-generalizing here because there's obviously a range of practices and environments among people of all ethnicities, but that said, Black people disproportionately live in rougher neighborhoods with more violence and yes, it's very clearly understandable but less clearly advisable.
The reason it's understandable is because when growing up in more violent neighborhoods you have to be more ready to use violence or at least look like you're prepared to use violence. Otherwise you'll be preyed upon. Personally I remember learning this very clearly in middle school when I would spend a few summer weeks or a month living with my cousin in Reading, PA, one of the poorest and most violent small cities in the country. It's also fresh on my mind because I just read Jill Leovy's Ghettoside, which goes really deep into the culture of South Central LA, and Rafael Mangual's on what depolicing gets wrong, which touches on culture a lot.
The reason it's not clearly advisable is because once you're older the same traits that protect you from other teens - a readiness to use violence, etc.. are the same traits that attract the attention of law enforcement and make it harder to succeed in "square" culture. It's kind of a damned if you do, damned if you don't. The central character of Ghettoside, Bryant Tennelle was raised in South Central but schooled privately and sheltered from "the street". That left him well-prepared for life in most ways but ill-prepared for how to function as a young adult who was starting to explore a social life in South Central, and it may have cost him his life. The tradeoff between protection in the hood and attention from police officers is a major point in Mangual's book, too.
Your position is that spanking teaches violence? If true, then I agree that spanking would be not be advisable in a dangerous environment. But what if, instead, at the cost of some psychological damage, it more strongly implants the learning (don't do that shit).
I am not sure that is the right model but it feels right to me.
I think it probably teaches not to do the thing you were doing, as much as any other meaningful punishment does. Or maybe it's better than other methods and I'm failing as a parent. Or maybe it's best used very judiciously to really emphasize certain things. I'm not so sure there would be that many more things to emphasize in a dangerous neighborhood, though. Traffic is probably the big one anywhere you live. I'm also not so sure it has to cause psychological damage, it probably depends on how it's done.
But it could additionally teach that the way to punish something or enforce your will is through physical violence. That's less my personal opinion than the opinion of parenting experts as I understand them. More generally, though, I think people in rougher or more violent neighborhoods probably parent in more physical ways, and spanking is probably a portion of that difference in style.
I think whomever it is who compiled the list of top words that drive engagement on SB posts is going to need to update it to include "spanking" after today.
Yeah, I saw something like this in Minnesota today where a progressive online news source published an article pointing out that air pollution kills more people in the Twin Cities metro than the recent surge in murders. While this is factually correct its an idiotic way for progressives to talk about a real problem right before an election. It would be much better for them to talk about the idea of "investing in communities" and "promoting opportunity" and those sorts of values etc than sneering "Well achtually..." at voters concerned about all these people getting shot less than 90 days before E-day.
>>the values of secular cosmopolitan liberals are much more marginal than many people realize<<
Is this true, though? At any one moment in time, I think so yes, but it changes as time's arrow flies.
Take spanking. Beyond the fact that the group differences in today's post don't seem *that* large to me, what is really striking is how quickly the population is moving away from spanking as a parental tool. One study followed a very large cohort of Americans and found that their use of spanking fell more than a third (50% to 35%) over just 17 years (1993 to 2010). https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapediatrics/article-abstract/2768829
One imagines that there was at least a similar decline in the previous 17 years, and so on as we go back. The society, in Pinker-like fashion, is moving strongly against corporal punishment.
We don't really know why this is, except that liberal values have a way of permeating through all levels of society -- take gay marriage (or interracial marriage for that matter). It's probably smart for liberals not to lecture the general population about spanking during a political campaign, but at the same time what we're probably seeing is other "elites" -- your family pediatrician up to the American Academy of Pediatrics -- telling parents that it is a bad idea.
So I guess I'm in agreement with this post that liberals shouldn't tout their values which haven't (fully?) won over non-liberals *in a political campaign* but in other cases liberals should proudly assert those values and know that more often than not, doing so will help move society in the direction they see as good.
Do you want to lose and be right or do you want to win and do the right things? I think a lot of Matt’s article and his stance toward dogmatic lefty rhetoric/strategy is “no you’re not wrong Walter you’re just an a**hole!”
My favorite stat highlighting the values disconnect between my peer group (I’m a college professor) and the general population: only about 20% of younger women (age 18-49) keep their last name after marriage. (The number is even smaller in older generations.)
Taking your husband’s name isn’t quite unheard-of in my circles, it’s rare enough it would be considered eccentric.
I’m late to this thread but just wanted to say that Milan does a great job with the charts. It’s awesome to have original visual content like that here.
Most parents have a more nuanced and complicated relationship with spanking /beating children than can be reflected in polling.
My impression is most don’t want to hit their kids, but do so in a spur of the moment fashion. Either the kid did something that angered or frightened the parent (she ran into traffic) or they’re taking out their own personal frustration on someone who can’t fight back.
I grew up in a blue collar family. My mother “switched” me a few times as a small child. I got one massive beating with a belt from my father when I stuck my tongue out at him! I’m also old enough that I got spankings at school. Getting hit didn’t make me a better person. It just made me resent and distrust the people handing it out.
That’s why a lot of spanking is less calculated than it is like getting hit by lightening from out of the blue. And I think it also doesn’t accomplish what the parent intends. Unless they think it is better to be feared than loved. And some (mostly but not exclusively like the Evangelical Christians I grew up with) do.
And while I get the impression that corporal punishment can be satisfying to some parent, it can also do a lot of damage.
For example, I know a couple of women who are haunted by the memory of their father pulling down their pants and spanking them. Years later they still felt violated by the most important person in their life.
I grew up in Singapore, where corporal punishment is (famously) very much a normal part of the culture (as is, probably unrelatedly, respect for your elders). While my parents rarely used corporal punishment (I think I was spanked a few times as a kid), educators were free with corporal punishment to enforce discipline, and was I caned or spanked with a ruler for everything from talking in class to getting words wrong on a spelling test.
Based on my personal experience, I’ve come away with the impression that corporal punishment is a) highly effective in the short term as a tool of discipline, b) not any more or less effective in the long term in changing overall attitudes, instilling better work habits, etc. than time outs or other non-corporal forms of discipline, c) not, as far as I can tell, especially psychologically scarring, and d) if used to excess, very likely to turn you against the punisher—I never liked or respected the teachers who hit me. Thus, while I don’t personally think spanking is a particularly big deal, I don’t plan to use corporal punishment on my kids.
Interesting that emphasizing a relationship with Jesus Christ gives one conservative credibility as the basis of Christian values is love of neighbors and not the primacy of individual liberty.
This resonates with me quite a bit...nobody has to convince me that liberals (and sometimes even leftists) tend to be better on actual policy-as-enacted, across multiple domains. But the values just became intolerably suffocating at some point...it became too tiresome holding my nose while filling in ballots, holding my opinions in PMC circles, holding my reservations when peers all around would bash conservative strawmen. The farther the Democratic Party moves into white-collar/college-educated hegemony, the less welcome I feel, as a blue-collar frontline retail grunt.
Relatedly, on child discipline: so, working in a grocery store near multiple schools, I'm no stranger to parents shopping with kids in tow. Sometimes the kids are great, they might even help unload the cart (saves my back a lot of pain, thanks!). Other times...well...they're squalling tyrants. Not just in the "crying a lot, generally unresponsive" way...but like the "throwing an absolute shitfit tantrum in public" way. It's very, very rare to see physical punishment out here. And yet...I can't help but feel really vicariously bad, when an overwhelmed outmatched parent keeps trying to use Jedi mind tricks, and the kid is just not having it. It doesn't matter how robust the literature is, how much I "know" "spanking" "doesn't work". The whole situation is mortally embarrassing for everyone involved, and I can't imagine having to live down that sort of humiliation in front of strangers.
Same for the kid, later on - they're making an absolute fool of themselves, I sure hope no one's recording that outburst. I don't know if bratty kids actually continue to be bratty teens/young adults, but...I dunno, man. Those kinds of "independent" customers and coworkers are an absolute nightmare to work with. The ones who "respect their elders" instead? A real pleasure. There are almost certainly better ways to raise disciplined children than the rod. But to the extent the rod "works"...or just actual discipline period...those archetypes often seem like rare, precious, and valuable outcomes. So I really can't be too critical, ultimately. (Although kids effectively being parented by screens continues to make me very sad. One generational difference I just can't get behind. It's heartbreaking when a toddler would rather look at a phone than their own mother...)
Lastly, I now intend to enter "One Billion Americans" as a write-in candidate next time I've gotta fill out a ballot and there's only one candidate on it. Safe spoiler votes!
I'm very confused by the "Bible is the word of God" polling
The results show 71% of Democrats believing that the Bible is either the literal word of God, or inspired from God — meaning they are Christians. But we also know 71% of Democrats *aren't* Christians
Will McCaskill brought up an interesting view on adult corporal punishment. Would you choose to get say 20 lashings instead of say 2 years in jail? What is more moral?
I choose getting paddled in high school instead of detention. I doubt that is a choice given today.
A Democrat could be open about values if the delivery is good. Political talent matters.
It is surprising that so many politicians are so unlikeable. You would expect just a like able candidates like Reagan or a Clinton (Bill obviously) and Obama on and on and on. But it’s not that. It’s much more Clinton (Hillary obviously) Pelosi, McConnell, Pence, etc. I guess Joe is okay from the like ability standpoint.
One of the reasons talking about values like this is hard is because, if the design and content of policies is not consistent with the purported values, then verbal espousal of the values is obviously phony. It's not enough to have Whig measures; the measures should be designed in a way that Tory men would design them if they were forced to do so.
Take healthcare policy as an example. Democrats could say that the twin values they are trying to implement are, one, ensuring broadly equitable access, and two, promoting and encouraging technological innovation, flexibility and market efficiency in the delivery of healthcare. Honoring both of those values in the actual design of healthcare policy requires greater technical expertise and intellectual versatility and flexibility than honoring just one of them. If the actual policies Democrats put forward don't reflect that, they can talk all they want about how important both values are, but it obviously not true, because their actual policies only give effect to one of them.
I struggle with this a lot because I don’t care that much about a lot of the popular part of the Democratic agenda but like really super don’t want to be assaulted, prayed for, have it be easy to move away as far as they need to whatever.
Like I’m okay with moderation but I just don’t think I can moderate that much on my values because a lot of them are I should be allowed to be as fully integrated in life as anyone else.
There have been comments about spanking being used to deter really dangerous behavior. And there have been comments that spanking has declined over the last 17 years (35%) (possibly as the world has become a safer place?).
And there have been comments that blacks are more likely to utilize spanking. Is it perhaps that blacks actually raise their children in a less safe world? This might be true, both in the areas where they live and in the societal repercussions if their children behave badly. Perhaps, their stronger embrace of corporal punishment is not merely understandable but advisable?
We're over-generalizing here because there's obviously a range of practices and environments among people of all ethnicities, but that said, Black people disproportionately live in rougher neighborhoods with more violence and yes, it's very clearly understandable but less clearly advisable.
The reason it's understandable is because when growing up in more violent neighborhoods you have to be more ready to use violence or at least look like you're prepared to use violence. Otherwise you'll be preyed upon. Personally I remember learning this very clearly in middle school when I would spend a few summer weeks or a month living with my cousin in Reading, PA, one of the poorest and most violent small cities in the country. It's also fresh on my mind because I just read Jill Leovy's Ghettoside, which goes really deep into the culture of South Central LA, and Rafael Mangual's on what depolicing gets wrong, which touches on culture a lot.
The reason it's not clearly advisable is because once you're older the same traits that protect you from other teens - a readiness to use violence, etc.. are the same traits that attract the attention of law enforcement and make it harder to succeed in "square" culture. It's kind of a damned if you do, damned if you don't. The central character of Ghettoside, Bryant Tennelle was raised in South Central but schooled privately and sheltered from "the street". That left him well-prepared for life in most ways but ill-prepared for how to function as a young adult who was starting to explore a social life in South Central, and it may have cost him his life. The tradeoff between protection in the hood and attention from police officers is a major point in Mangual's book, too.
Your position is that spanking teaches violence? If true, then I agree that spanking would be not be advisable in a dangerous environment. But what if, instead, at the cost of some psychological damage, it more strongly implants the learning (don't do that shit).
I am not sure that is the right model but it feels right to me.
I think it probably teaches not to do the thing you were doing, as much as any other meaningful punishment does. Or maybe it's better than other methods and I'm failing as a parent. Or maybe it's best used very judiciously to really emphasize certain things. I'm not so sure there would be that many more things to emphasize in a dangerous neighborhood, though. Traffic is probably the big one anywhere you live. I'm also not so sure it has to cause psychological damage, it probably depends on how it's done.
But it could additionally teach that the way to punish something or enforce your will is through physical violence. That's less my personal opinion than the opinion of parenting experts as I understand them. More generally, though, I think people in rougher or more violent neighborhoods probably parent in more physical ways, and spanking is probably a portion of that difference in style.
I think whomever it is who compiled the list of top words that drive engagement on SB posts is going to need to update it to include "spanking" after today.
And "porn"!
And yes, Rule 34 is more than proven by the combination of those two words!
Yeah, I saw something like this in Minnesota today where a progressive online news source published an article pointing out that air pollution kills more people in the Twin Cities metro than the recent surge in murders. While this is factually correct its an idiotic way for progressives to talk about a real problem right before an election. It would be much better for them to talk about the idea of "investing in communities" and "promoting opportunity" and those sorts of values etc than sneering "Well achtually..." at voters concerned about all these people getting shot less than 90 days before E-day.
>>the values of secular cosmopolitan liberals are much more marginal than many people realize<<
Is this true, though? At any one moment in time, I think so yes, but it changes as time's arrow flies.
Take spanking. Beyond the fact that the group differences in today's post don't seem *that* large to me, what is really striking is how quickly the population is moving away from spanking as a parental tool. One study followed a very large cohort of Americans and found that their use of spanking fell more than a third (50% to 35%) over just 17 years (1993 to 2010). https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapediatrics/article-abstract/2768829
One imagines that there was at least a similar decline in the previous 17 years, and so on as we go back. The society, in Pinker-like fashion, is moving strongly against corporal punishment.
We don't really know why this is, except that liberal values have a way of permeating through all levels of society -- take gay marriage (or interracial marriage for that matter). It's probably smart for liberals not to lecture the general population about spanking during a political campaign, but at the same time what we're probably seeing is other "elites" -- your family pediatrician up to the American Academy of Pediatrics -- telling parents that it is a bad idea.
So I guess I'm in agreement with this post that liberals shouldn't tout their values which haven't (fully?) won over non-liberals *in a political campaign* but in other cases liberals should proudly assert those values and know that more often than not, doing so will help move society in the direction they see as good.
Do you want to lose and be right or do you want to win and do the right things? I think a lot of Matt’s article and his stance toward dogmatic lefty rhetoric/strategy is “no you’re not wrong Walter you’re just an a**hole!”