Don’t be Carrie
The Millennials, or Generation Y, are currently aged 10-28. The oldest are just reaching the average age at marriage, and though 70% of them plan to marry and 74% want children, there are indications that many women are frustrated with their dating lives. (H/T: Stuart Schneiderman) What’s the problem? Their careers.
In Why Are So Many Professional Millennial Women Unable To Find Dateable Men?, Larissa Faw of Forbes writes:
My Millennial-aged girl friends and I never doubted that we would accomplish all of our life goals. Everything, thus far, has pretty much gone according to our plans. We were accepted into the right college, landed the dream job, and developed a network of amazing friends. Our apartments are beautifully decorated and we have closets full of stylish clothing. Romance hasn’t been entirely sidelined, but we don’t waste our time trying to cultivate a relationship unless someone is really amazing.
But now, a growing number of Millennial women are beginning to fret over the unanticipated consequences of prioritizing our careers before love. And I only need to look at my group of friends to see this reality. Again and again, year after year, my successful, gorgeous, and amazing friends remain kiss-less on New Year’s Eve. And on Valentine’s Day. And on the 4th of July. The only dateable men we encounter are either attached, gay, or otherwise involved in “it’s complicated” situations. We are coming to the realization that we were unwittingly playing a game of musical chairs — while everyone was pairing up, those focused on our careers are left standing alone.
I’ve been using the musical chairs metaphor since I began blogging – it’s been clear for two decades that women were outperforming men in education, and the current college ratio of 57% female, 43% male makes it undeniable that we have a serious problem with marriage prospects.
One third of today’s female college graduates will not marry a college educated male.
There are two reasons why Millennial women at the upper end of the age range are single and lonely:
1. They want high achieving men, and there aren’t enough of them to go around.
2. They are ambitious in their careers but lazy about their love lives.
For one, it’s not as if we are holding out for Jake Gyllenhaal, but we do have certain non-negotiable expectations for potential mates that include college degrees and white-collar jobs. Life has always gone according to our plans, so why wouldn’t we land a man with these (reasonable) requirements?
This unwillingness to settle for less than we think we deserve is joined by a lax attitude towards searching for potential mates. We’re busy dominating the world. We don’t have time to hang out at bars. While some of us explore online dating or take a more proactive approach, the majority of Millennial women have long assumed we would meet Prince Charming via friends, or through their own social circles.
There’s nothing women can do about the sex ratio in college, but they can certainly be strategic in their search for a mate. Indeed, it is not a random game of musical chairs. By making the right choices, you can get a tipoff on when the music is about to stop.
How Millennial Women Really Feel About Their Careers
Faw observes that many young women are burning out at work by age 30:
Today, 53% of corporate entry-level jobs are held by women, a percentage that drops to 37% for mid-management roles and 26% for vice presidents and senior managers, according to McKinsey research.
She notes that “Many also didn’t think of their lives beyond landing the initial first job…Even those who did plot out their lives past the initial first career have unrealistic expectations about full-time employment. It’s not as if these women expected their jobs to be parties and good times, but many underestimated the actual day-to-day drudgery.”
More importantly:
While earlier generations may have opted out of the workforce through marriage or motherhood, these paths aren’t viable for these self-sufficient women, who either are still single or unwilling to be fully supported by men.
Meghan Casserley, in Is ‘Opting Out’ The New American Dream For Working Women? confirms that most working women (not just Millennials) want to step off the career track:
At a moment in history when the American conversation seems to be obsessed with bringing attention to women in the workplace (check out “The End of Men,” or Google “gender paygap” for a primer), it seems a remarkable chasm between what we’d like to see (more women in the corporate ranks) and what we’d like for ourselves (getting out of Dodge). But it’s true: according to our survey, 84% of working women told ForbesWoman and TheBump that staying home to raise children is a financial luxury they aspire to.
“I think what we’re seeing here is a backlash over the pressure we’ve seen for women to perform, perform, perform both at work and at home,” says Leslie Morgan-Steiner, the author of Mommy Wars: Stay-at-Home and Career Moms Face Off on Their Choices, Their Lives, Their Families. “Over the past three to five years we’ve seen highly educated women—who we’d imagine would be the most ambitious—who are going through med school, getting PhDs with the end-goal in mind of being at home with their kids by age 30.”
Arguably the most famous working mom in corporate America today, Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook, wants women to stop dropping out. In her widely viewed TED Talk, Why We Have Too Few Women Leaders, Sandberg tells women the most important thing is to “Keep your foot on the gas pedal!” and not take any more time off for kids than is absolutely necessary. She holds herself up as a model of a loving and involved mother who also happens to have a big job. However, close viewing of the Talk reveals the following inconsistency:
“My daughter, who’s three…” (early in the talk)
“I have a 5 year old son and a two year old daughter.” (end of the talk)
This is a woman who does not know the age of her own child.
Kay Hymowitz, in The Plight of the Alpha Female acknowledges that Sandberg’s exhortations are futile.
Feminists have come up with some theories to explain the dearth of women in the C-suite: those in the running would necessarily be aggressive, a trait that men in power don’t like to see in women; executives and boards don’t believe that women are capable of the highest-octane work; women lack men’s sense of entitlement in the pursuit of fame and fortune. But “Why Women Still Can’t Have It All,” a recent, widely discussed Atlantic cover story, should help redirect the conversation to the obvious: it’s the kids.
…Women are less inclined than men to think that power and status are worth the sacrifice of a close relationship with their children…Nothing in the array of work/family policy prescriptions—family leave, child care, antidiscrimination lawsuits, flextime, and getting men to cut their work hours—will lead women to infiltrate the occupational 1 percent. They simply don’t want to.
Hymowitz argues that this strong female preference to be at home with children is what makes the “end of men” argument silly. Still, I don’t think society is in good shape when we expect men to play second string, getting in the game only after women have opted out by choice. And what does that mean for men who want to marry? How can they advance in their careers when women who plan to step off in less than ten years are front and center until then, scooping up promotions?
Your Best Strategy For Finding a Mate
Prioritize relationships.
Don’t waste time halfwaying it or “just having fun” if you want to marry and have a family.
Date for the long-term.
If you don’t meet your future spouse in college (few people do), immediately upon graduating think of every potential relationship as serious and lasting. No dating Mr. Right Now.
Filter, filter, filter.
Dads not cads. Filter in for character, and drop the checklist of superficial stuff.
Put the word out.
Don’t pretend to be fabulously single unless you want to stay that way. Let your friends, family and coworkers know you’re in it to win it. Accept as many invitations, blind dates, and introductions as you possibly can. Dial down the bar scene as your go-to weekend plan. Your chances of meeting your husband in a bar are not nil, but they’re slim.
Your Best Strategy For Staying Home With Your Kids
Penelope Trunk wrote a post with some excellent advice: How to plan a career in your 20s to stay home with kids in your 30s.
Key points:
Understand that your job performance is ephemeral.
For those of you who will fall into the 84% [who want to stay home], understand that the life you have as a high performer at work is going to end when you have kids. Priorities will change, and it will not matter that you are a high performer because you will not choose to sustain that when you have kids. Work is a place where you get external rewards for being smart and productive and a good team member. You do not get that at home.
Accept that you will fall behind.
Women are performing at a higher level at work than men are right now. So, statistically speaking, when you decide to stay home with kids, the people you were better than will start moving ahead of you. It will kill you. Prepare for this. It works best to think of your career as a time in your life. You were a high performer when you did it, but now it’s over.
Live below your means.
You know at age 23 if it’s likely that you’ll want to stay home with kids. Which means the minute you get married you should adjust your spending for one income. This will always keep the door open for you to stay home with kids.
Pick your spouse carefully.
If you want to stay home with kids, don’t marry a guy who can’t earn a living. If you want to stay home with kids, make it clear that even though you earn more than the guy, the guy will be the breadwinner. If you want to stay home with kids then you put all your financial hopes in the guy’s career. Whatever his earning ability is, then that is your earning ability, because you are a team, and he is the breadwinner.
Don’t be the woman who turns 30 and says, “Whaaaaa?” Plan ahead. Be smart. When the music stops, you want to get a chair, and with any luck it won’t be a barstool.
{ 1314 comments… read them below or add one }
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“What did I get out of them other than social and emotional dysfunction?
Answer: Pieces of paper that showed I was employable. That’s it”
And marriageable to college educated women who will bear your children while simultaneously supporting you while you play golf and tinker around the house.
“And marriageable to college educated women who will bear your children while simultaneously supporting you while you play golf and tinker around the house.”
Yes.
My pick up line was “I go to Duke Law School.”
@Susan
Though of course, education is only useful if you can turn it into something. In my previous post, the guy in option c) – would you classify that as a marriage up or down?
Then that’s too bad, because it means you will see less marriage, period. There are ways to “find the good” in Plumber Phil, but if no one is interested in even considering him, it will really be a matter of “who gets to marry the college grads” and “who gets to be alone.”
It’s not a compromise they’ve really had to make, until now.
I won’t say it was easy but I’ve made it work. To me, it’s a matter of being open to other options, and not being so concerned with status. IMO, anyone can keep an open mind if they really try, but YMMV.
Graduating college was like being let out of prison.
It was like a massive weight had been lifted off of me.
@susan
“Yup, women are hypergamous re status and men are hypergamous re beauty. They are analogous.”
Not to belabor it, but you are describing attraction triggers, not hypergamy. If that was the real analogy and definition, then your chart at the top of that other post would not be accurate. In that case, all the males would only be attracted to the most beautiful female, just like all the females are attracted to the top male.
@olive
“There are ways to “find the good” in Plumber Phil”
You just have to overlook his plumber’s butt.
Precisely!
@Olive/Passer_By
“Managed expectations” would be a good philosophy to apply in that scenario I think
The entire argument about education and hypergamy centres around education remaining the main route to higher status.
Most sane people use the ability to make money as a marker of status.
A woman making 40k a year with her lib art degree who declines the college degree male with his own business (more money) is lower in status than him.
I think what you are going to find is that unmarried professional women can’t or won’t “Marry Down”, are going to start poaching other woman’s husbands in a big way.
The situation should even get more interesting when those already married women dump their current husbands at 45, as close to 70% women do these days. They’ll be entering an already scarce market of “Good Men” and having to chose from some very pissed off men whose own wives have gone EPL after they discovered they didn’t like being SAHM’s. I intend to pull up an easy chair with a beer and some popcorn to watch all this play out.
@highlander
Maybe the women will fight with swords over the high status men and shout “There can be only one!” as they behead each other. That would be pretty cool to watch.
@Passer_By
SMP meets Gladiator, can’t be worse than half the stuff on television these days.
@ Passer_By
Do they/will they have handsome faces?
@sassy
“Do they/will they have handsome faces?”
Sorry, you’re too old for them. And I’m afraid they would die of exhaustion with you, anyway.
More seriously, though, they’ll be pretty good looking, but what they won’t be is tall. There must be some short genes on my wife’s side, because they won’t likely be even as tall as I am (which is only 5’11″ in socks, but I generally look like 6’1″ to most women because all the other guys lie about their heights by about 2 inches).
@ Passer_By
I’m not a “craddle robber”, so I’ll pass.
I was curious about their facial attractiveness because I’ve noticed that a lot of young women place a great deal of importance on how good looking a man’s face is. If you are considering the potential overall attractiveness of your sons, you should probably also add that parameter into your assessments.
Just a thought.
@sassy
“If you are considering the potential overall attractiveness of your sons, you should probably also add that parameter into your assessments. ”
Generally outside my control, other than straightening teeth. Can only focus on what can be controlled.
@Passer_By
“Not to belabor it, but you are describing attraction triggers, not hypergamy.”
Agree. There’s a reason the term begins with “hyper”, and it informs almost all interactions women have with men re: potential mating short or long term. You kind of have to wonder if, in order to satisfy the floor for their attraction, that women will start to find other things to be attracted to in the same way that they are attracted to conventional status markers like schools and careers if those become so scarce as not to be even realistically possible for most women. Maybe they’ll start choosing more guys who freelance across many smaller occupations, maybe they’ll start choosing guys with a greater degree of short term attraction triggers, or some combination of the above (I’d say the last may be likely), who knows.
@JP
Impressive. Did you run into Tucker Max?
@doomwolf
I think it really depends. I think women value intelligence highly in a mate, so if a guy is smart and intellectually curious and makes a decent living I think he can do fine. If he’s not as bright, then not so much. Of course, this presumes that guys like this want smart women, which is often not the case.
My roommate almost inserted Mr. Max into a fireplace because Mr. Max needed to be so inserted.
@Olive
I think that a lot of potential happiness is to be found here. I hope women will be open to other options. I agree that status is often a hollow sort of victory. I honestly don’t know exactly how hypergamous the population is. I do believe that because women today have equal earning power, they may (should?) be able to emphasize status less. I just don’t have a good handle on the effect of nature vs. nurture here.
@Passer By
Not sure what the difference is. Status is a female attraction trigger, often referred to as hypergamy.
@Passer By
Are your sons by your first or second wife? Do they live with you?
@Susan
“Not sure what the difference is. Status is a female attraction trigger, often referred to as hypergamy.”
Hypergamy has many women attracted to few men of higher status.
Attraction is not possible to someone of lower status (or thats what y’all are quibbling about) .
Men are not hypergamous in terms of beauty. We most definitely prefer it and definitely demand it for marriage however we can get it up for someone a couple points lower in SMV. Woman cannot ‘get it up’ so to speak for a man of lower status.
Thats the difference between hypergamy and an attraction trigger.
@Lokland
IOW, women are picky. I get it.
The Forbes article is nowhere on the feminist radar….yet
.
@susan
“Are your sons by your first or second wife? Do they live with you?”
Second wife. Yes, they do. But realize that I am just messing around here (well . . . mostly, anyway ).
As to your question, attraction triggers are what you like more of rather than less. Hypergamy deals with how many of the opposite sex are likely to have sufficient amounts of those to get you going. The graph a the top of your prior post illustrates this. Attraction triggers alone can’t explain that graph.
“IOW, women are picky. I get it.”
Or, more accurately, generally much pickier than similarly situated men (i.e., men of equal SMV). Certainly that’s true as to sexual attraction, without a doubt. I go back and forth as to how true it is as to relationships in general, since men are pickier that way than as to sex, and women are MAYBE a bit less picky on that issue as they get older and conclude they have less choice (even though the relationship theoretically includes sex). But that’s cold comfort to the guy who gets into a relationship only to find that her sexual hypergamy prevents her from wanting sex with him very much. lol
Either way, the hypergamy of pure sexual attraction is illustrated somewhat crudely in that chart at the top of your prior post.
@SW
No, things aren’t so gloomy. Normally, it’s your detractors who predict doom and gloom. From 2010:
http://www.adweek.com/news/advertising-branding/what-makes-millennials-happy-108019
You might think the stress of living in a time of unpredictable change—with respect to gender roles and many other things—would yield an unhappy generation. Happily, the survey’s results indicate nothing so extreme. Thirty percent of the millennial women agreed “strongly” and another 44% “somewhat” that “I consider myself happy.” Few disagreed (3% strongly, 6% “somewhat”). And there was little gender disparity on this most basic of questions. Among the men, 27% agreed “strongly” and 47% “somewhat” that they consider themselves happy; 4% disagreed “strongly” and 6% “somewhat.” If this doesn’t quite amount to generational bliss, it at least characterizes the millennials as a cohort that’s largely coping with the wear and tear of coming of age in such an era.
I wouldn’t conflate that with narcissism or excessive self-esteem. Also, Ms. Olive commented on “marrying down”. A better euphemism would be “lateral” marriage or “arbitrage” marriage. I think I linked to this stuff once before, also from 2010 and more recently:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/19/us/19marriage.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/12/opinion/sunday/marriage-suits-educated-women.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
This has actually been going on since 1970, so much so that it now represents 30% of married couples, probably Baby Boomers and Gen X’ers for the most part. Is this a “feminist” silver lining? No evidence thus far of increased divorce risk or lower marital satisfaction…
Zach
Brilliant analysis.
Maybe I need to look into this! lol
HanSolo,
OT, but I just watched The Grinch and thought of you.
Well, that line is only true for females.
INTJ males are less likely to be misanthropes and tend to consider creating new human beings a good thing.
Olive, you have good taste. What’s your favorite part? I love how the part, “Now that Grinch was so smart and so slick, he thought up a lie and he thought it up quick.” And he stuffed the tree up.
That’s odd about someone making big money for sperm donations with red hair, as a few months ago I saw a bunch of news articles on one of the major fertility companies talking about how they wouldn’t take red heads anymore as no one wants red haired children (apparently Ireland is the exception though…go figure).
@Susan #170
That makes me a feel a lot better right now.
HanSolo,
“He puzzled and puzzled, ’til his puzzler was sore,
Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn’t before,
Maybe Christmas, he thought, doesn’t come from a store,
Maybe Christmas, perhaps, means a little bit more.”
My favorite part.
JP: “Our LMC IT guy does this. Has a wife and a GF. He says it’s great and that it’s the wave of the future. One girl works, one girl provides child care.”
It probably is – hypergamy requires polygyny. The we have of the former, the more we need the latter.
Props to this guy, if he’s doing it openly, and can keep it going for any length of time. That’s tough to do!
A friend of a friend does a similar thing, has rotation of women and one of them supports him, while he keeps all his income for himself. Sweet deal!
Re INTJ/P and childlessness
Hi Kris,
I am an INTP. I found myself really absorbed by my own interests and didn’t really even think much about kids or marriage until after 30. I wasns’t actively hostile to the idea. I just assumed those things would happen in their own time if they were meant to. As it turned out, I married in my early 30s and had two sons whose births bracketed my 40th birthday. They are the most amazing thing that ever happened to me. I even walked out on an interesting and fulfilling career to be a SAHM. Most people who knew me were shocked by that decision. You just never know where your life will take you.
“Pretty sure nobody reads Chaucer without an exam to study for.”
I have. He’s pretty entertaining once you get used to the language. The Decameron is also fun.
The women in the article make it very clear they are not looking to marry down. One says outright that she would rather stay single. I don’t think you’ll see hypogamy happen, except in borderline cases where some other sort of status fills
Which is weird because in the traditionally female professions of teaching and nursing there’s generally a big range the occupations of husbands. Lots of them marry non-professional men, perhaps because teaching and nursing attract lower SES women. I suspect it’s because often these are the only professional women that lower SES women see when they are young.
Let’s not use that word. Once again, I regret its introduction into the conversation by Mike C, who really can’t resist bringing Rollo here, like a cat with a dead mouse.
LOL….I haven’t even commented on this post until now, and you bring me up. You can’t help yourself
I think it was like 2 or 3 posts ago that I used the term in response to someone already bringing it up.
It is almost hilarious you mentioning this after just very recently you were kosher with Rollo’s comment after I responded with my joke “Who are you and what did you do with Susan Walsh”. The back and forth on stances is almost schizophrenic.
>> “You forgot to add, “I bet he hurts small animals too.””
You know, I might disagree with him on a lot of things, but for some reason I feel the need to white knight for Rollo right now. Rollo is pretty much never the one who drags Rollo into these discussions. It’s always other people. …in fact, this time I think it was Susan who first brought him up!
>> “For example, I have been telling my two older kids that there will probably be fewer and fewer career-path jobs available to them than to the boomers or to the Gen-X crowd, and they need to concentrate on creating multiple streams of revenue, which is not impossible to do on the Internet.
The “jobby” type jobs are going to go to the SWPL kids, and there is going to be a knife-fight melee for them. Better to euchre your $700 a month textile import site on Etsy, together with your part time concert promoting gig, the compost pile, the Shih-Tzu breeding, the video game tournaments where you routinely win a couple of hundred dollars a month, and the crossing guard thing you do for the benefits. ”
Mules, this has actually given me quite a bit to think about. Right now I’m in the (completely unexpected!) position where I’m in an amazing LTR, but my “career” is a bit of a joke.
My bf has a pretty decent STEM job that’s likely to get better, and I honestly do think that he’ll end up making enough to support a family. But at the same time, it seems like a lot to expect him to bear the entire financial burden.
I think women who want a SAHM lifestyle will probably need to take on some of these little side-projects themselves in order to add to the family income.
“For one, it’s not as if we are holding out for Jake Gyllenhaal, but we do have certain non-negotiable expectations for potential mates that include college degrees and white-collar jobs. Life has always gone according to our plans, so why wouldn’t we land a man with these (reasonable) requirements?”
She’s forgetting another factor that does not seem to be negotiable either:
“84% of working women told ForbesWoman and TheBump that staying home to raise children is a financial luxury they aspire to”
A woman will have no problem at all finding a college degree white collar job mate if she
1) continues to support herself through the relationship, and
2) does not have children, or supports the children on her own.
In other words women can easily have relationships, if they accept having to stay independent and self supporting. If they want something more than that, they have to accept that the men are calling the shots and that they might not be up to scratch in that fierce competition. But then there’s always the possibility of marrying the State instead.
The MBTI dimension to the career/kids post is interesting. I’m INFJ. I know an INFJ with one kid (and done), an INTP without kids, an INTJ with two kids (and done), and an EN(?)J with two kids. All have full-time jobs.
I wanted kids since I was a teenager, but I never really cared about the SAHM thing. Both my grandmother and my mother worked full time. My husband’s mother worked full time as well. We turned out fine. In my case, I probably would have turned out much worse if my mother didn’t work.
I am not into careerism, but I really enjoy the social aspect of being around other working mothers and talking to them on a regular basis. It was nearly impossible to maintain that bond when I was on maternity leave. A few text messages, some Facebook posts, that was it. As soon as I went back to work, I was talking to my friends for over an hour every day.
Also, several of my friends have husbands with lesser education than themselves. One has a PhD from Berkeley and is married to a man with an Associate’s.
“How can they advance in their careers when women who plan to step off in less than ten years are front and center until then, scooping up promotions?”
If I recall correctly, one of the arguments put forward by women against the feminist movement’s encouragement of getting women into the workforce was that doing so would decrease the wages of their husbands and negatively affect the family income (as these women wanted to be stay at home mothers and have the husbands work) due to an increased labour supply.
“getting women into the workforce was that doing so would decrease the wages of their husbands and negatively affect the family income”
That is why it takes two incomes for many families today – to get back to the sum total of one income – and the feminist moaning for government supported child care.
If I recall correctly, one of the arguments put forward by women against the feminist movement’s encouragement of getting women into the workforce was that doing so would decrease the wages of their husbands and negatively affect the family income (as these women wanted to be stay at home mothers and have the husbands work) due to an increased labour supply.
That’s true… and for about ten years, the feminists were able to deny it because the number of 55+ and 65+ men exiting the workforce compensated for the 20-40 year old women entering it. That ended in 1973 and real wages have been falling steadily ever since, a decline exacerbated by 40 million immigrants, mostly from Mexico.
So, basically, young women have been working and giving up marriage and children so that old men could retire. We are going to be remembered as one of the dumbest, most suicidal and unnecessarily self-destructive societies in future world history.
In summary, jacking off to ideal virtual lovers is the same for women (emotional porn) and men (physical porn): raised expectations and disappointment with the real life alternatives.
VD: Congrats on the new novel—just downloaded it from Amazon
Wrt the six-figured guy working in the tar sands:
Do we think the prospective wife would look down on him, or would she think her friends would look down on him and thus her? Big diff.
One commenter on Dirty Jobs said that it was a kind of humorous implication that without the guys doing these jobs, the folks with the clean jobs would be in a world of hurt.
Suppose every time somebody sneered at the six-figured tar sands guy, somebody stole the gas out of the sneerer’s car and turned off his electricity for four hours. I’d vote for that.
Kris:
A marriage by any other name.
As long as you are able to bring your share of the money/resources, I guess you should be able to find a man who don’t want kids to share your life with.
But from your description it seems like you’re more interested in having fun than doing enough to support yourself. If my interpretation is correct, you may find that many men see you as a parasite…
Congrats on the new novel—just downloaded it from Amazon
Thanks very much. I’ll be interested to see what you make of it.
The college is in Boston, with a large American-Irish population, so perhaps that explains it.
@Mike C
Your obtuseness amazes. It was yesterday on the Mars and Venus post:
In all fairness, this wasn’t the case. What apparently caused all hell to break loose was my use of the term feminine imperative which appears to have been added to the ever expanding list of verboten concepts and expressions here
Unfortunately for me, that got the conversation going on this thread. You drop these turds and then I have to respond. In future I’ll just delete and not deal with it.
I specifically endorsed a post of Rollo’s on desire. I stand by that. It’s possible that he may get something right once in a while, after all. My opinion of the man remains unchanged.
@Emily
No it was Mike C! (Actually, he dropped a term invented and trademarked by Rollo,ugh.) This despite my asking him dozens of times not to do so. I don’t think he is capable of refraining. We need to break the chain!
As for Rollo’s comment, I didn’t understand why he implied he had been attacked personally, when I was simply responding to his characterization of female sexuality. I guess it worked in your case. :-/
@Chris
They called that right.
@susan
“No it was Mike C! (Actually, he dropped a term invented and trademarked by Rollo,ugh.) ”
**Passer_By hides face**
Actually, it was me in this thread – I guess I hadn’t been paying attention enough to know that the expression was a four letter word on HUS. But I was using it in a different sense than you have come to interpret it. Looking at his site after, which I usually read only sporadically, I think he uses it in different ways, but my meaning seems one of them. And you don’t seem to disagree with the underlying observation, even if the term itself makes the hair on the back of your neck stand on end. Wait, does that expression apply to women? Not sure.
@Passer By
No worries, you were not aware.
I don’t disagree with the underlying observation re the effect of feminism – I suspect there is about a 5-15% overlap. One which I am not interested in exploring.
OK, so I think I found some of what I was talking about regarding the “fun”/cocaine stage of the relationship.
Anyhow, here is one article about it:
“In the first chapter of my book, to make my argument that new love is like smoking crack cocaine, I looked up the specific effects of smoking crack cocaine on the website cocaine.org. I then substituted the phrase “falling in love” with “smoking crack cocaine” and noted how accurately this describes the new lover’s high:
Falling in love…”leads to enhanced mood, heightened sexual interest, a feeling of increased self-confidence, greater conversational prowess and intensified consciousness…It offers the most wonderful state of consciousness, and the most intense sense of being alive [that] the user will ever enjoy.”
In describing the life course of relationships, I also talked about the transition from the cocaine-rush phase of a relationship to the “testing phase.” In last week’s blog post, I pointed out that no romantic relationship can sustain the endless continuation of unfounded idealization that is the hallmark of the cocaine-rush phase. As such, I suggested setting realistic expectations in order to live into the testing phase without facing the troublesome thought, “I thought he/she was my soul mate, but after that fight, I guess I was wrong. I’d better keep looking because I haven’t found IT yet.”
Typically, the law of diminishing returns applies in the realm of love relationships. The reason we never forget our first kiss is that this was the first time our partners stimulated a massive dose of cocaine-like chemicals that produce the lover’s high. Over time, a kiss generally has relatively diminished power to produce the same explosion of feeling. Likewise, over time, we don’t get quite the same zap to our brains when our partner tells us for the 500th time (should we be so lucky in another sense!), “I love you sweetheart.”"
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-joint-adventures-well-educated-couples/201212/can-the-cocaine-rush-new-love-be-sustained-50
Is the coast clear outhere tonight, hopefully free of personal frustrations? Or is this non civil, female bashing time again?
Anyway, a few comments about this post:
First, that’s a refreshing view on how career oriented women should maybe think about prioritizing their choices. You can’t have it all, period.
And if the man they’re living with has the same frame of mind as them (assuming they don’t strangle each other), then their kids will pay a dear price, and will go on to join the already long queue of emotionally dysfunctional humans the western assembly line seems to breed.
Also, based on the excerpt from the article, those career girls seem to put themselves in the “top attractive” category. Did they take a look at themselves?
-”Falling in love…”leads to enhanced mood, heightened sexual interest, a feeling of increased self-confidence, greater conversational prowess and intensified consciousness…It offers the most wonderful state of consciousness, and the most intense sense of being alive [that] the user will ever enjoy.”
Yes, yes, love in other words. That’s about it. Once you’ve experienced something like such beginnings in a relationship, the hardest part is for the said relationship to keep going on the same level……… I guess it never lasts to the same level of intensity and has to switch to something more “pragmatical” at some point. That’s to me is at the core of long term relationships.
Re. the picture of SJP, it seems to me that must be the image that manosphere types have in mind when they use the phrase “1000 cock stare….”
@pwp: “the picture of SJP, it seems to me that must be the image that manosphere types have in mind when they use the phrase “1000 cock stare….”
Elegant allegory meaning what, exactly?
Here’s the intjforum poll: http://intjforum.com/showthread.php?t=56305
65% of INTJ male respondents wanted children, whereas only 38% of female respondents wanted them.
* 38% of female INTJs
Most intact religious Christian families with 3-8 children I’ve seen:
1 – Father is STEM and the mother did STEM as well or Humanities (Philosophy/Religion/Arts).
2 – Got together in their mid 20′s. Both chaste/virgins.
3 – Don’t watch FOX News or read NRO or follow any of the Beck/Hannity/Palin/Limbaugh personnas.
4 – Same racial group. Or almost the same. Most of the time.
5 – Thinks that culture is the way to shape society but hardly talks about a “culture war” because they think that the war was lost a long time ago so start segregating (e.g. online college classes, homeschooling, wear distinctive clothing, select what media to consume) but also engage the opposition.
6 – Anything from working class to well-off but not super-rich.
7 – Anything else?
About rich career women and men, aren’t they 1-5% of the entire population?
That’s not to say that their concerns don’t matter. They do.
But they are not most of the populace. The whole “get married after being financially stable” and “choices! travel during 20′s! enjoy life! my friends are gorgeous!” is nice and all but you material substance for that (e.g. best hotels in the world, best airplanes, great food, huge bank accounts, connections with the upper classes).
I think mid 20′s is a better proposition for many people (maybe around 40-60% of the populace?).
If people want to stay single, become the equivalent of a monk or a nun and give yourself for others as well as yourself (balance).
One of your best posts Susan. I wonder if anyone in the target audience will listen. The next generation may depend on it.
@Damien Vulaume:
@pwp: “the picture of SJP, it seems to me that must be the image that manosphere types have in mind when they use the phrase “1000 cock stare….”
Elegant allegory meaning what, exactly?
Me: It is an “elegant allegory” which fascinates me too!.
The claim is that women who have had too much experience, too much hard living–men, endless rounds of late nights with booze and cigarettes, etc., develop a certain tired and jaded look (ridden hard and put away wet). This is in comparison to women who haven’t lived like that–women who haven’t lived hard, they had fewer partners, etc. The claim is that these women age better; they are more cheerful, optimistic, not jaded, especially because they are more likely to be happily married. All the better if they take care of themselves, ie., diet and exercise… Next to a Carrie of the same age (late 30s to 40 something), she will look a lot younger.
Argh, I messed up the blockquotes.. Mrs Walsh, could you please delete my post at 51?
So finally I find out what INTJ means
And I am INTP, BTW, according to the test 
@Kris
Reproducing is moral. Not reproducing is immoral, as by not reproducing you choose to live as a free-rider in a society. You may cover up for this for contributing to society in other way, but once enough people will choose to stop reproducing, the society will start to collapse.
Over-reproducing may be immoral, OTOH, though I have not given much thought to that.
@szopen: “Reproducing is moral. Not reproducing is immoral, as by not reproducing you choose to live as a free-rider in a society.”
I don’t see in the least what morality as to do with reproducing or not.
Of course, not reproducing is not workable for the human race if practiced on a massive scale in the long run, but where does the morality/immorality debate fits in here?
There are several people that deliberately choose not to reproduce for “bad” reasons, primarily for selfish ones, but there are also lots of others would don’t want children simply because they have a (maybe overly) pessimistic view of the world they live in and do not see its future as a positive environement for kids.
And, the other way around: Just as there are many people who want to have kids for genuine, “generous reasons”, many others make babies for all the wrong reasons or out of sheer irresponsability.
@Damien Vulaume
Because sooner or later you will stop to work and you will then rely on other people (for as much as 1/4 to 1/3 of your life), and value of your savings will depend from how many working people will be there. Raising the children requires a lot of work and finances. Now, for me it is immoral that someone decides that instead she/he will invest that time and money into his/her own career, and then he will happily get gains from enormous investments made by the other people.
OTOH, maybe I was too string in judgment. Reproducing for selfish reasons is immoral. Desisting from reproducing may be moral, after all, I think.
@szopen.
But that’s another story. There is an enourmous amount of people who work hard and who don’t have children.
And by the way, I see more people who just don’t work because they have children.
@szopen #225:
Then we find common ground here
Are these cautionary tales getting through? Women plow right through that millennial gate and enter a state of delusion. Go on a site like OKcupid, punch in the age range 35 to 42 and many women state they want kids. Of course there are ways to acquire children other than conception but that is not what they mean.
Most religious Christian families don’t watch Fox news? Who do they watch, Rachel Maddow?
@ szopen
Haven’t people heard of 401ks, Roth IRA’s, and saving’s accounts?
I don’t want children, but I’m smart enough to know not to plan on being supported by social security. If people handled their money better, they wouldn’t have to depend on other people for their financial well-being. I plan to be living off of a comfortable combination of my 401k, Roth IRA, and saving’s account when I get older. That way, I won’t be a burden on the system.
@Susan (228)
Hmm, I can’t remember ever watching the news with my family, unless it was some major event and then we watched local coverage. My parents were of the opinion that tv rots your brain, so we missed out on all kinds of fun mindless stuff.
I think I know the type of Xtian family though, and they are almost always conservative Evangelical types. (The social justice/Sojourners type *would* pick RM over Fox any day of the week.)
If they are the type you have mentioned before (tend to have outcomes like unplanned pregnancies and anal sex), they are a certain kind that I actually feel quite badly for. There is SO much unhealthy behavior that ostentatiously points to sex in that culture. The “purity ring” idea is vulgar, same with the purity pledges. The father-daughter purity stuff is even more grotesque in my opinion.
This kind of stuff leads indirectly to the outcomes listed above, or else holier-than-thou condescension. They are constantly putting sex on the mind of the kids and conflating it with either evil– or their dad!
How does that teach them a healthy view? And those poor gay kids born into families like this. 
To me, it’s so weird. I mean, the sin of neglecting the poor and being mean to the outcast gets way more ink in the Bible, yet somehow this type turns all their firepower on sex. If it somehow produced healthy results it would almost be worth it, but I haven’t seen the evidence for that yet.
Is it immoral to forgo having children in a society where they can be taken from you at any moment, and used to lever future earnings out of you and keep you firmly under the thumb of state and federal agencies?
Sassy, wise people (note, not smart) people know that the current system cannot be sustained, and know that they will need to be prepared.
Roth IRAs are nice when you are young and don’t make much. Take advantage of socking away that $$ while your tax bracket is low. For those making cake, the 401k/IRA is the way to go, leveraging lower income at retirement to avoid the tax hit. Focus on companies that match contributions, it can really make a different at young ages to build your equity.
All this won’t mean much if they keep printing dollars. The value of your savings is declining in relative value to the increasing pool of dollars. This should upset you, if you actually are a forward planner with expectations at retirement.
“Is it immoral to forgo having children in a society where they can be taken from you at any moment, and used to lever future earnings out of you and keep you firmly under the thumb of state and federal agencies?”
If that is immoral, then it is immoral for the creators of those circumstances to not undo the damage they have wrought on themselves.
.
Re: The “immorality” of forgoing children:
If people don’t want to have kids, that’s all the justification they need in my book. There are enough unwanted children in the world, unfortunately, as it is.
Abbot, I’m of the opinion that the damage done to people cannot be reversed. It can only be stopped before it infects another generation.
Jackie, it’s a matter of choosing between two competing priorities. One, to procreate, which we all know is pretty powerful. The other is to live free, and not as a slave.
If I told you I would give you a million bucks, but you would have to wear a slave collar that I could use to shock you, for the rest of your life?
Would I be safe in telling people that you wouldn’t want a million bucks?
It’s not simply a matter of not wanting to have kids. It’s disincenting people to have kids. Just like the propaganda in schools on overpopulation and destruction of the rainforests, species, and all the pablum the feed to children to make them misanthropes.
@Susan
“Your cat bringing the dead mouse into your bed must be outright supplication! Is it a beta cat?”
===
Ha ha ha! I know this was spoken in jest, but I was actually thinking about this yesterday!
I have two cats: Messed Up Alpha Kitty and Super-Supplicating Beta.
MUA always gets the food first, starts fights, is needy as hell and has been VERY hard to train. Coincidentally, MUA was surrendered from a super-dysfunctional home (kept their hoard of pets in the garage in December, only food was the vermin they could catch
). MUA also had major anxiety and trust issues to overcome.
SSB, on the other hand, is so devoted that he doesn’t even need the harness for walks and will follow at my side wherever I go. Once I accidentally left the door open and he followed me down the street for a mile and a half, before I noticed.
He will let 4 year olds hold him and “reads” my moods and will cuddle next to me when I am stressed.
The truth is often spoken in jest.
JutR
Since you put it like that, I think people need to weigh their decisions and, if they’re ready to risk, take their chances.
For example, I would not wear the shock collar solely for a million dollars. But what if my dad needed a life-saving operation that would cost $1M, or my sister and brother were held hostage for a $1M ransom?
Then I would wear the shock collar for the rest of my life, no complaints. (Okay, I would probably complain once they were okay, then seek intercession with the shock collar owner to see if we could strike a better deal. I can be persuasive, sometimes.
)
JutR
I just mean, Life is not meant to be lived in fear.
If you really want kids– or anything in life worth having– there comes a certain point where you are going to have to let go of guarantees and trust in God (the universe/Fate/whatever deity in which you believe).
@sassy
Sassy, you seem not to read me (since I can’t believe you missed the point).
The value of your savings depend on whether there will be people providing services. Imagine that none has children, but everyone saves and by the end of life has a HUGE amount of $, or gold, or silver, or houses, anything.
How much will those savings be worth? Nothing.
I accept money because I expect I can buy something for those money in the future – goods or services. No children, no future workers -> no goods or services which could be bought.
In other words, the value of your savings depends on other people having children.
@ Sassy:
More people should save, but most people won’t have nearly enough to cover them through retirement and end of life care.
I hate to sound like a cynic, but throughout history having children has always been the best retirement plan! Money can be stolen and lost. Even if you saved enough, you’ll get by just fine as long as you’re healthy. But once your age advances to the point where your losing control of your body and mental facilities, that’s the tipping point.
Do you trust the nurse that your estate has hired to take good care of you? Who’s around to check in your interests when you no longer can? Who will make sure the executor of your estate doesn’t line his or her pockets with your money? How can you be sure you’ll be treated with dignity and respect if the money you saved has run out? Any siblings you have may be dead or dying at this point. You would hope your nieces and nephews could fill to role, though in their eyes “grandma” will always come first, and that’s not you.
I’m not trying to scare anyone who doesn’t want kids into having them. But my point is money have it’s limits. These are questions few people concern themselves with when they are young and healthy. If you have nephews or nieces it would be best to cultivate strong relationships with them now. They would be more inclined to look out for dear Aunt Jane or Uncle Josh once you become older, and they’re the ones who will be around…
@ szopen
Mmmhmmmmmm……..
So what do you suggest people who don’t want to have children do?
Surely there are enough unwanted children in this world already. Why encourage people who genuinely do not want children to have children?
@sassy
1) Stop caring about what szopen’s of this world are telling them
2) Do not claim moral superiority to “breeders”
Of course, you can also defend yourself quite easily by using argument, that you may not have the children of your own, but at the same time you help raise the children directly or indirectly (e.g. by paying taxes which fund better healthcare and education for children)
aaargh “szopens” not szopen’s
I really would love an edit button here…
@ szopen
See, that’s the thing.
I think it was only Kris who claimed any sort of morality in the children/no children debate. I didn’t.
I don’t claim any moral superiority over supposed “breeders”. I have no problem with people who do want to have children. It just isn’t for me, however.
I’ve noticed that people who do want children seem to take offense whenever anyone meerly claims to not want children. They take it personally, and I don’t understand why.
@Iggles
“I hate to sound like a cynic, but throughout history having children has always been the best retirement plan!
…
Do you trust the nurse that your estate has hired to take good care of you? Who’s around to check in your interests when you no longer can? Who will make sure the executor of your estate doesn’t line his or her pockets with your money? How can you be sure you’ll be treated with dignity and respect if the money you saved has run out?”
====
So the people in nursing homes who are neglected or ignored– they’re all childless? None of them have kids?
The reason — the only reason in my book– to have children is because you want them. To love them and to devote yourself– your time, your money, and a lot of it– to them.
Kids aren’t a back-up retirement plan and they’re not to be used as an economic resource. I will *gladly* take care of my dad until the day he dies, *because* he has never viewed me in such a utilitarian way. I know my parents wanted kids as kids, not as some fungible labor resource.
(Iggles, I apologize if this comes off as combative. It’s only because I’ve known people who had kids to use them for stuff that I feel so strongly about this.)
Abbot,
In summary, jacking off to ideal virtual lovers is the same for women (emotional porn) and men (physical porn): raised expectations and disappointment with the real life alternatives.
Actually, I wouldn’t say that porn for women is mostly emotional. Some of the fanfiction I’ve read lol…..those sex scenes were pretty hot
Anyway, I think another cause for raised expectations and disappointment are fangirling for actors and other entertainers – which most likely comes at no surprise. Go on tumblr and see how many girls and women say that their expectations for men are so high thanks to being fans of Chris Evans, Tom Hiddleston, Tom Hardy, etc. Guys in real life don’t do anything for them.
@Sassy
“I’ve noticed that people who do want children seem to take offense whenever anyone meerly claims to not want children. They take it personally, and I don’t understand why.”
===
Sassy, I think anyone who deviates from the traditional script (ie date, live together usually, marry, have kids) will get throwback.
Because by going outside the script, you have raised the possibility of alternatives; you have suggested that the traditional script is not the only one.
Some people will feel threatened by it because choosing the alternative means that it is a conscious choice. (Obviously, this doesn’t mean that people who follow the traditional script are not making conscious decisions. That would not be true.)
Many people are not conscious of their choices and having this pointed out, albeit indirectly, can be upsetting and even threatening to them. When that happens, they are going to strike back.
(NB: This reminds me of when of several times when I was not conscious about choices and would ask long-married couples why they didn’t have children. UGH!!!
They must have been SO annoyed with getting that question– and with good reason.)
@Sassy
Another explanation may be solipsism (YEAH I SAID IT).
This is hard for a friend of mine right now: She does not want kids and has been married since college. Her sister just had a baby and now that that my friend needs to have kids ASAP.
@ szopen
Cool! The tests aren’t always accurate, but your posts are very INTP-like, so that’s probably a correct categorization for you.
“Guys in real life don’t do anything for them.”
Its a pattern. Women are just more gullible. Those magazine publishers make millions based on that. So after a few years, a man sitting across from her on a date is looking at an emotionally corrupted, probably promiscuous and feminist marinated prospect. So who is really avoiding whom?
.
This is the last thing about the children/child-free debate:
Referring to parents as “breeders” is dehumanizing and plain wrong. I’m not sure who introduced it into the conversation, but they should stop talking about parents like that.
@ Jackie:
No worries. However, you seemed to have skipped over the entire last paragraph of my post:
I’m not trying to scare anyone who doesn’t want kids into having them. But my point is money have it’s limits. These are questions few people concern themselves with when they are young and healthy. If you have nephews or nieces it would be best to cultivate strong relationships with them now. They would be more inclined to look out for dear Aunt Jane or Uncle Josh once you become older, they’re the ones who will be around…
My whole point is, money alone should not be the only consideration when preparing for old age and end of life care. Over retirement you will go from good health to poor health, and indeed reach the point where someone else will need to make decisions for you.
Historically, children have fulfilled the role of take care of their parents. So, if you do not have kids – or are estranged from them – have other people you can trust that will be around. Whether that nieces, nephews, or younger folks you once mentored, etc.
That’s because those who claim not to want children usually judge those who do (though you’re obviously an exception).
A personal anecdote: the science honors program at UT Austin has weekly lectures by various local and visiting faculty that members of the seminar can attend. One of the talks was by a computer science professor who advocated government licensing and regulation of people having children, with limits on total number of children people can have, and only allowing people at 25% above the poverty line to have children. What amazed and shocked me was the reaction to this talk by the students, including one of my close friends. They were quite receptive to the talk and tended to think positively of it. I of course – likely due to my Indian heritage – found this talk deeply offensive. I left the honors program the next semester.
@Sassy
the link below predates quantitive easing (a great way to produce inflation, sooner or later).
the only guaranteed way to get out of the levels of debt that the western world has is to inflate it away (ok, you could just flat-out default as Iceland did).
any savings that ‘you’ have are vulnerable to inflation, but the government knows that inflation is a way of escaping the debt bubble (they just can’t be too blatant about doing it to pensioners, savers, creditors). Creditors? you ask? China in ‘your ‘case – their hard earned money that they lent to you is reduced in value by inflation – how would you like that?
money tied up in plans tends to be hard to get at when the government wants it left exactly where it is. for ‘borrowing’, ‘taxing’ or just ‘taking’. don’t assume that your savings will be there, or be worth what you paid in when you invested it – those funds are a hostage to fortune.
I agree with Jackie that having kids as an investment sucks as well (for the same reasons), so don’t really see how to escape teh future, best of luck.
I’m on the same retirement plan as the Captain, the one plan that you can count on.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/savings/2791955/How-to-protect-your-savings-from-inflation.html
Oh great… A new troll
@Iggles
“Historically, children have fulfilled the role of take care of their parents. So, if you do not have kids – or are estranged from them – have other people you can trust that will be around.”
this role historically fell to the women (or rather married women, ones that did not have to work to support themselves). single working women are going to be hard put to care for parents, or afford someone else to do it.
is ‘our’ current culture really going to deliver on this? I don’t think so.
maybe married couples with 4+ kids might be able to spread the financial / personal duties burden, but how many of those exist any more?
@ Racist
I’m confused. Why do you consider Katy Perry, Sandra Fluke, and Karen Owen to be evangelicals?
Susan@228
“Most religious Christian families don’t watch Fox news? Who do they watch, Rachel Maddow?”
We fit into almost everything on Julianne@217′s list, and we don’t watch TV at all. I think this is the case for most LRCFGTOW (large religious Christian families going their own way).
@Iggles (253)
That is a really good point, Iggles. Thank you for pointing that out to me.
There’s a lot that can go wrong. I’ve been plowing tons of cash into a 401k for close to 20 years, but I don’t have enough yet to sustain many years of retirement. Making people their own investment advisers is tough. And I am wayyyy more frugal than most (family of 5 on one income). What happens if you get sick suddenly in a down year?
Thats said, I don’t blame anyone for not having kids. I could probably sock away a ton of cash, since 99% of what I earn goes to the family, not me. In fact, I could easily be retired now if I was kid-free. A few years working overseas deployments, socking away per-diem tax free, and I’d own a mountain house in New Hampshire, skiing the rest of my life away, while I play gigs and work a low-stress, part-time job for beer money.
Skilled human attention is the only truly limited resource. Everything else has substitutes.
Automation only postpones the need for human attention. Eventually the machines have to call for assistance.
INTJ…”One of the talks was by a computer science professor who advocated government licensing and regulation of people having children, with limits on total number of children people can have, and only allowing people at 25% above the poverty line to have children. What amazed and shocked me was the reaction to this talk by the students, including one of my close friends. They were quite receptive to the talk and tended to think positively of it. I of course – likely due to my Indian heritage – found this talk deeply offensive. I left the honors program the next semester.”
I don’t think it’s only people of Indian heritage who would have found this offensive, and I would wonder about those students who responded to it positively. Regardless of anyone’s personal feelings about whether THEY want to have children or not, the professor’s proposal obviously represents totalitarian thinking that is wholly out of place in American society…but, unfortunately, this kind of thinking is all too common among academics.
I hope that when you left the honors program, you made it clear why you were doing so.
@Race Realist
Hi RR,
“Jackie at 230 seems to be throwing out the hypocrisy card.”
Yes, I am. I observe hypocrisy. What part specifically do you disagree with?
“And talking about *gasp* poverty. What a good hearted bleeding liberal little Christian who sees the real issues. Not.”
Jesus spoke more about the poor than any other issue in the Bible. Why do you suppose He did that, if it was not “the real issue”?
“She probably thinks that Katy Perry or Karen Owen or Sandra Fluke or Bristol Palin are those *gasp* dreaded evangeeeelical Christian cooooooonservativeeeee types!?!”
Actually, I never considered them. You are speaking of celebrities; I was thinking more of people like ADBG’s girlfriend’s family. But since you brought it up:
Katy Perry: Daughter of evangelical preachers (both husband and wife)
Karen Owen: Baptist Pastor’s daughter
Bristol Palin: Accepts money from Conservative Christian-based Abstinence groups
“Except they’re not truly conservative. Yes. Evangelicals are not considered genuinly conservative by various people on the far right. Amazing isn’t it?”
I didn’t know this, RR. Can you provide a source?
===
“I’m sorry but I just had to write that. I’m sick and tired of people like Jackie. They are so liberal that they think that the above mentioned are conservative.”
Where did I say this? How do you know I think this?
===
“And Jackie mentiones anal “sex” (what the heck?) and “unplanned” pregnancies. She probably thinks that porn is conservative (what on earth?).”
===
I think Susan had brought up statistics showing that evangelical Christians have a higher rate of this.
Wait, I think porn is conservative? What? From where did you get that idea?
“Those things (anal “sex”, etc) are more to happen for Hispanics and Black over White ones more. But hey… that’s racist (e.g. Mississippi has 37% black population).”
Plain Jane, is that you? 
===
Where are you getting your statistics and information?
===
“It’s not my fault that NorthEastern states are whiter and we have rich SWPL areas in the West Coast which are also segregated and full of white liberals with a smattering fo Asians.”
===
I’ve been played by a troll.
I’m not offended by the “breeder” comments. Being a parent is hard. It’s not for everyone. There are people out there who choose not do it, and I don’t think that’s bad. I have nothing against them.
For the list above, we fit some but not all:
1. He is STEM in math/coding/software with MS, I’m in tech/coding/Web field with BA. We’re both nerds.
2. Met and married in our mid-20s; not virgin or religious, but spiritual.
3. Don’t watch much TV at all, tend toward Internet and shutting out mainstream stuff including reality TV and popular shows.
4. Not homeschooling, but likely charter schools. He does do lots of gardening and has a collection of guns, but those are hobbies, not political statements.
5. He’s white, I’m Asian.
6. Not rich, just middle class and comfortable.
7. Retirement? We plan on working till we drop dead. Not counting on retirement funds at any rate. Bought some real gold and silver as hedges against inflation, not the virtual stuff.
@David Foster:
“Regardless of anyone’s personal feelings about whether THEY want to have children or not, the professor’s proposal obviously represents totalitarian thinking that is wholly out of place in American society…but, unfortunately, this kind of thinking is all too common among academics.”
You really, really have to stop some people from having children.
There’s about 5% of the population that must be stopped from having children.
10 year olds raping 3 year olds, mothers beating their children to the point where there are massive open wounds. Incest. Rape.
And that’s just cases off the top of my head.
JP…the profesor clearly wasn’t talking about those extreme cases.
“limits on total number of children people can have, and only allowing people at 25% above the poverty line to have children”
Rape, incest, and child-beating are already illegal.
“I’ve been played by a troll. Plain Jane, is that you? ”
Strange as it may seem, I’m going to step in and defend Plain Jane.
She does bizarre (very well), but that isn’t her. PJ knows you better that that.
(Peej, you owe me)
The easiest way to reduce the number of poor people having kids is to stop subsidising them. stop giving them free housing.
Simples, as the local meerkats say over here.
Jackie…you are correct, of course, that there are some (many?) Christians who are smug in their belief in their own holiness, and hypocritical in their behavior. I’d argue that there are at least an equal number (more, in my neck of the woods) who are nonreligious but are equally smug about their environmentalism and their “progressive” political beliefs.
Consider Al Gore’s endless blathering about “global warming” (this, from a man who wouldn’t know a chemical formula or a differential equation if he tripped over it) compared with his own energy consumption and “footprint” of CO2 and various actual pollutants.
Also, many of these secular people (and I myself am not religious) talk endlessly about how *smart* they are…indeed, there was a proposal in the atheist movement to rebrand themselves as “smarts.”
“Jackie…you are correct, of course, that there are some (many?) Christians who are smug in their belief in their own holiness, and hypocritical in their behavior. I’d argue that there are at least an equal number (more, in my neck of the woods) who are nonreligious but are equally smug about their environmentalism and their “progressive” political beliefs.”
Everybody has a “religion”, even if that “religion” is progressive politics. It’s a feature of being human.
“Also, many of these secular people (and I myself am not religious) talk endlessly about how *smart* they are…indeed, there was a proposal in the atheist movement to rebrand themselves as “smarts.””
I think they wanted to rebrand themselves as “brights”.
@David Foster:
““limits on total number of children people can have, and only allowing people at 25% above the poverty line to have children”
Rape, incest, and child-beating are already illegal.”
I’m arguing that there needs to be a line somewhere, or you get what I see on a regular basis.
The problem is that the line is primarily psychological and only secondarily financial.
The attorney in the office who deals with this directly would like a program where they are paid to get their tubes tied, so to speak.
@david foster
“Also, many of these secular people (and I myself am not religious) talk endlessly about how *smart* they are…indeed, there was a proposal in the atheist movement to rebrand themselves as “smarts.”
Good grief.
@ Just1Z:
You’re conflating two points.
Taking care of the elders doesn’t mean you move them into your home and provide around the clock care! (Though most families do this, there reached a point when the elderly is so sick that they need to be put into a nursing facility.)
Single women (and men) absolutely have been and are advocates for their aging parents. Whether they have the financials or not — in which case, the state will put the elderly into a home. The advocate regular visits and argues with the staff making sure their loved one isn’t treated like shit (to be blunt!).
A lot of elder abuse happens in these homes. THAT’s the most important reason one needs to have someone in their court (whether it’s a child, a niece, a nephew, or other).
@ Jackie:
Cool
It does amuse me at times when people actually respond. But, no, mostly in my head I’m like, “Oh no.. Here we go.. *sigh*”
I’ve gotten pretty good at spotting trollish comments and have learned to just back away. It’s just not worth it. Arguing with someone whom logic holds no bearing is a fruitless exercise..
(And, every since Michael exploded at me with a long misogynistic rant — which is why he was originally got put into moderation — I don’t have the patience or desire to engage them!)
@Justiz: “The easiest way to reduce the number of poor people having kids is to stop subsidising them. stop giving them free housing.”
Yes Justiz, but then what do you do with them, watch them die?
And what are meerkats?…
Good point Damien.
There are no easy answer. Although FWIW, more education and access to opportunities tends to slow down birth rates more effectively than birth control…
@Iggles
“You’re conflating two points.”
no, just that caring for others involves time and/or money.
a single woman (or man) working 60 hours a week is not going to be able to provide much on demand personal care for parents. state care isn’t great in quality here and demographics are getting worse (inescapably) so this isn’t going to improve – costs are going to get worse, people to do it increasingly elusive. robot arsewipers are our only hope.
the costs of care homes are ridiculous here, I can’t imagine that things are better in the States. so, 1 kid paying for their parents isn’t easy either.
“Single women (and men) absolutely have been and are advocates for their aging parents. ”
Doing this cost me a job and many thousands of pounds when I had little in the bank. I, personally, have put (parental) family first in the past. My point is that I could not afford to do that indefinitely financially (paying for care) or not working in order to provide the care (which would not be acceptable anyway to those concerned).
Your concerns over social care (so paid by the taxpayer at large) – those I fully share with you. the state is not a care provider that provides generously. And that is some decades away for me, with things getting tighter financially
stop making it a financially attractive path to have kids without the ability to support them yourselves.
prepare for a treat!
http://meerkat.comparethemarket.com
‘Simples!’ is the catch phrase of a marketing campaign here
so, the meerkat polka band play the theme from a soap opera that has run for decades; ‘enjoy’
http://meerkat.comparethemarket.com/coronation-street/
Your Best Strategy For Finding a Mate
The most interesting thing to me is how closely your advice parallels Lori Gottlieb’s implied advice in “Marry Him!,” and how different it is from Gottlieb’s earlier piece, “The XY Files.” It seems like a lot of this knowledge is out there, but it isn’t being processed by its presumed target audience.
I imagine a private organization offering lump sum payments to low lives with criminal histories in return for sterilization. I immediately imagine the resulting furor over it.
Good commentary on this,Susan.
I always laugh when I hear one of these women spout the “men are intimidated” line. These “intimidating” women are the kind men might have for a one nighter,but nothing long term,and certainly not marriageable.
Some women have an understanding and appreciation for the way masculinity and femininity complement one another. Women like her do not.
In other words, the value of your savings depends on other people having children.
And on those children accepting the burden with a reasonable accommodation for the childfree. If the younger population is minority and desirable they can demand whatever they want to. Who is to say that new generation will be up to provide for those that spent their youths “having fun and accumulating money” while their parents spent it on diapers, food and sleepness nights? God knows I know few people that feel “generous” towards free loaders, like none. I could be wrong but I would say that people that don’t want kids should seriously consider some alternatives to childrearing: mentoring, foster parenting, helping raise other siblings kids or just sending 90 cents to a kid on a third world country a month, or learning robotics and started to built their caregiver, just in case, YMMV.
That’s because those who claim not to want children usually judge those who do (though you’re obviously an exception).
Yep they do hate children and us for the most part.http://www.refugees.bratfree.com/list.php?2
with limits on total number of children people can have, and only allowing people at 25% above the poverty line to have children.
Yes we people raised poor are destroying society, money solves everything and prevents all the uglyness of humanity. Rich people don’t suffer incest, don’t rape, don’t cheat…./sarcasm off.
We fit into almost everything on Julianne@217′s list, and we don’t watch TV at all. I think this is the case for most LRCFGTOW (large religious Christian families going their own way).
I don’t plan to have a TV for the most part Netflix and DVD’s FTW!
there was a proposal in the atheist movement to rebrand themselves as “smarts.”
Hehehehehe not surprised at all.
robot arsewipers are our only hope.
Lack of biological contact shorten people’s lives. Make sure to get a pet aside from the robots, just FYI.
The value of your savings depends far more on a steady supply of cheap energy than anything else.
And in the U.S. the value of your savings also depends on being able to continue to extract an outsize portion such cheap energy.
@Anacaona:
“And on those children accepting the burden with a reasonable accommodation for the childfree. If the younger population is minority and desirable they can demand whatever they want to. Who is to say that new generation will be up to provide for those that spent their youths “having fun and accumulating money” while their parents spent it on diapers, food and sleepness nights?”
Nobody’s going to get rid of Social Security/Medicare anytime soon.
See the 2012 election for details.
Advantage, DINKs.
And here’s an article on college degree inflation.
http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/04/degree-inflation-jobs-that-newly-require-b-a-s/?
@Ana
I’ve got friends, I just don’t want them wiping me where the sun don’t shine. affordable robot care would be a godsend to those wanting to maintain their dignity. I believe that this is the Japanese hope – they don’t do large scale immigration so thay have no counter to their further advanced demographic crash. Hopefully we get to import the botty-bots* that they design and manufacture.
*consider this trademarked, it’s a keeper
“I imagine a private organization offering lump sum payments to low lives with criminal histories in return for sterilization. I immediately imagine the resulting furor over it.”
I believe that this has happened in India, a few decades ago wasn’t it? I don’t know if it was stopped. If the deal is made clear to all concerned then I don’t really see the problem.
in fact, it is still going on; http://www.healthcentre.org.uk/vasectomy/101-people-in-india-offered-money-for-a-vasectomy.html
sounds like intelligent policy to me.
India offers cars and TV sets for sterilisation
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/india/8610957/India-offers-cars-and-TV-sets-for-sterilisation.html
or a gun licence (in case anyone takes the piss?)
@JP
I wonder if a graduate with 5 figure debt is less likely to quit? perhaps that makes them preferred employees. in t’olden days you had to be married to climb the employment ladder.
So does travel, and it’s cheaper.
@ Sassy “I’ve noticed that people who do want children seem to take offense whenever anyone meerly claims to not want children. They take it personally, and I don’t understand why.”
I actually agree with you 100% here. They are almost like nagging feminist who take up a “this is our duty”, stance because they don’t want to be the only ones participating. I say this and I want kids!
@ Iggles
“Although FWIW, more education and access to opportunities tends to slow down birth rates more effectively than birth control…”
This makes a lot of sense.
India, China, and the rest of the “third world” (the people who must limit their expansion I assume?) don’t have section 8, do they? Poor people in the US and sharecroppers had plenty of children prior to invention of welfare, they had more actually. Most humans were poor until very recently in history. Sure enough, people kept having even though they couldn’t afford a mortgage, flatscreen or smart car…how did they ever make it? We’re here obviously, so even without section 8 and free lunches, poor people at some point had plenty of children and were successful at it.
Educate girls though, and their population will decline, so does “marry late” (which also drives up promiscuity since it’s easier to “wait for marriage” when you’re married at 17 instead of 28). Middle class women are being educated so their birth rates are declining; poor women in the U.S. are having more children in comparison because of lack of extended education. I don’t see how welfare has anything to do with it, not really.
@Just1Z
A reversible injection into the vas deferens that blocks some of the sperm and makes the rest not viable:
http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/story?section=news/health&id=8882020
http://www.wired.com/magazine/2011/04/ff_vasectomy/
And a possible drug for male birth control–works in mice:
http://www.nbcsandiego.com/news/health/Cancer-Drug-May-Double-as-Male-Birth-Control-181631761.html
Yep they do hate children and us for the most part. http://www.refugees.bratfree.com/list.php?2
I’d be hard-pressed to explain why, but these people crack me up.
@Just1Z
Here’s an article that better explains the physical process of how the sperm are disabled. Once reliable male birth control is made and male and female birth control is available to all that want it we will be at a point where by and large only those who want children will have them. Sex and reproduction will have been unlinked and there’s a good chance the population will drop to some lower equilibrium level.
http://techcitement.com/culture/the-best-birth-control-in-the-world-is-for-men/#.UMUfwYMe4gE
I’ve got friends,
I hope some of them are at least 20 years younger or more, you know two 80 year old can’t take care of each other.
Ion,
One quick note, and this is really for everyone, as I’ve seen a lot of weird misconceptions about population lately. Birth rate is not the same as population growth rate. It’s important to understand that, mathematically speaking, it’s entirely possible to have declining birth rates and still have population growth (this is primarily due to increased life expectancy in developed countries), which is why it’s very important to not conflate those two concepts.
Declining birth rates are not always a bad thing, and they are actually an indicator of economic development. Keep in mind that countries with high birth rates also often have high infant mortality rates, thus people have babies because it is assumed that many of those babies will not survive beyond childhood.
“One quick note, and this is really for everyone, as I’ve seen a lot of weird misconceptions about population lately. Birth rate is not the same as population growth rate. ”
Fair enough.
What are your thoughts on my *actual* point though?
Declining birth rates are not always a bad thing, and they are actually an indicator of economic development
Except that aging population is a problem after a while, old people can’t work to support each other past certain age, so is still a problem.
Ion,
Well correct me if I’m wrong, but this is a discussion about welfare as an incentive to have more kids, right?
I’m inclined to agree with you, that people are going to have kids whether or not welfare is an option. This is because I highly doubt people are deciding to have kids specifically because it’ll get them more government money. I forget where it was, but I had a comment around here somewhere making the point that having a kid is still a net loss, even with the welfare benefits.
I also agree with your (and Iggles’) point about education, and it’s actually a great way to reduce birth rates. As I said before, people tend to get bent out of shape about declining birth rates, but they tend to be an eventual natural consequence of development.
Ana,
Yes, that tends to be an issue in most developed countries, because there’s a boom during the period between the point at which the infant mortality rate decreases and the point at which the birth rate decreases.
The alternate, however, is exploding population forever and ever. There are people who say continuous population growth will never be a problem, because humans will always find ways to develop the technology that will help us grow more food, or colonize Mars, or whatever. I’m not that optimistic.
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