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PaperclipPerfector  6mo ago (text post)   27719 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 13, 2024

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So yes, WHY are women discounting the sacrifice of their childbearing years so heavily? Are they actually aware of the opportunity cost there?

Maybe this comes down to a drive for status and status alone? If they are encultured in a society that gives less status to mothers/housewives than it does to those in corporate positions, moving up the corporate pecking order would be the rational choice for a status-seeking agent. The exceptions—Mormons, traditional Catholics, Amish, etc.—are cultures that afford status to mothers of larger broods of children.

It's not a drive for status. It's a terror of being dependent on men. Mormons, tradCaths, Amish, etc have gotten around this by convincing their women and girls that their men will treat them well, it's the ones outside, out in the world, that you should scared of. Obviously that's harder to do on a society wide scale.

Or perhaps by convincing their men to actually treat them well?

If the rumors of (for instance) the Black community are remotely true, then, yes, it's better to be dependent on the US government, despite its flaws.

I’m not doubting that- poor treatment of women probably varies on the exact same axes as everything else, which means church attending middle class white men are fantastically unlikely to mistreat their wives and poor black men are likely enough that being dependent on one is foolhardy. And sure, Mormons and tradCaths have some social technology that makes it even less likely.

Just that this is a pitch which is hard for an entire society to make because it kind of depends on being a socially conservative minority subculture with strong endogamy norms.

My model of modern western women™ is basically this:

They have a set of three roles they want to be 'seen' fulfilling:

  1. High-powered career woman (Girlboss).
  2. Freespirited, cultured, 'independent' woman. That is, one who travels everywhere, has a fun and carefree life, and flits from party to party. Thirst traps abound here.
  3. Devoted and effective mother.

They may re-order the priority and emphasis they put on it (or if its a triangular graph, they may land on some different space on it), but its the rare woman who doesn't have one of these three as their primary concern when it comes to status-seeking. You watch Tiktok, these are effectively the three 'genres' of women you'll find, if you ignore the e-prostitutes (which are technically a subset of 2). They want to project the image that they have an important, powerful job, or that they're constantly traveling, partying, and 'living life,' or that they're supermom, handling everything in life with grace and wisdom.

Modern Western Culture heavily emphasizes 1) and 2) as desirable options, heavily de-emphasizes 3). So women naturally start clumping more towards those two points on the graph. Once they've moved too far along towards that side of the graph (i.e. they've spent their twenties girlbossing, partying, travelling, etc.) it becomes VERY HARD to move out of that section of the graph to the one where they can become a devoted mother... and so they declare 1) and 2) are high status, and 3) is low status, and claim high status for themselves, accordingly.

If we limit ourselves to strictly social explanations, I think this one sounds pretty good. As you say, cultures that emphasize 3) will confer more status on motherhood, so it'll draw more women towards that point on the graph, and thus you'll have more attraction towards that section.

Also, the 'irony' is that a woman can genuinely have it all if they locate a reliable husband and lock him down early in life, since he can support her endeavours in ALL THREE of those roles. He can give her kids, support her raising them, take her on trips and parties and generally have fun, and support her career ambitions where needed. But the subtext of the current culture is that women should be able to do all three WITHOUT male support, somehow.

Also, the 'irony' is that a woman can genuinely have all it all if they locate a reliable husband and lock him down early in life, since he can support her ambitions in ALL THREE of those roles. He can give her kids, support her raising them, take her on trips and parties and generally have fun, and support her career ambitions where needed.

This is my lived experience, but it took my wife entering a well-compensated corporate position in her mid '30s where her superiors were mothers of young children for her to entertain the idea of kids. Before that (and I mean, from her late-teens when I first met her), she had a laser-focus on her career.

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