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I mean, yes, I think any form of education that's more than just 'be happy and have babies' for young women will lead to this, when there's any sort of political and societal freedom for women, along with access to consistent birth control.
Now, I know people will point to say, the 50's or early 20th century or whenever about educated women going happily into marriage, but again, if you actually look at what well-educated wives of lawyers, doctors, and so on actually did, they actually didn't dote on their five kids or whatever. I bet in reality, the median middle to upper middle class woman spent far less time actually parenting her four or five children did than the median PMC girlboss does today - no, she handed the kids off to servants, than went to the League of Women Voters, Women's Temperance Union, or whatever - aka, a bunch of things that are basically non-profit NGO's do today, run by basically the same groups of women.
You can prefer the set-up, but the college-educated women weren't happy housewives sitting at home, and I bet you the vast majority of them would've happily taken the pill...because massive amounts of their children and grandchildren did, before any real cultural revolution started. As far as the vaunted post-WWII period, look at what came as a result of having millions of college-educated women in suburbs with nothing to do - massive bits of activism on both the right and left, because a bunch of college-educated women were bored and not happy - both Betty Friedman and Phyllis Schlafly basically came from that millueu.
Also, I don't think there's really a "problem" so there's nothing to solve. Also, by all measures, my 'view' is the standard view outside of maybe the right-most 5-10%, that 18 year old unmarried girls having less babies is a positive for society, so yeah, I think secularism should be loud and proud - we did that.
Why would education lead to arrested development? I'm not talking just about reproduction, I'm saying the whole system is deliberately designed to minimize one's ability to support oneself until you are quite old.
I'd counter with pointing out you don't have to look back at the 50's. You can look at now, just somewhat above doctors, and lawyers. The most rich have lots of kids.
Not education, but delayed adult responsibilities. In college, outside of occasional study and attending classes, the students don’t have any responsibilities that a junior high kid living at home doesn’t have. The dorm is paid by his parents, as is his meal plan and so on. She can do whatever she wants with time not spent studying. The lifestyle is pure hedonism with very little to force the students to mature.
And what makes people mature is not age, but having to depend on oneself and having other people depend on them. This is the value of sports and other activities— you’re dependent on yourself being committed to the task at hand if you want to keep playing that sport. Your team depends on you to show up and perform. If you can’t live up to that, at best you’ll be benched and in more competitive leagues you might well be cut. So you learn to be that dependable person, you go to practice, you run and weight train and throw a ball around because your team needs you and you want to be on that team. Alternately, you can look to rural farm kids involved in 4H. They’re much more mature than others their age. They are capable of getting things done, they have a longer time preference, and they aren’t nearly as driven by emotion as kids who live in suburban neighborhoods and don’t work or play sports.
I mean, I'd actually bet that in 2024, the life of say, a 19-year old female psychology major at a mid-tier state school (aka, the average American college student) is actually less hedonistic in many ways the median non-college educated 19-year old in the United States, working a low wage job.
Also, well I'd question the actual type of person you described actually has the qualities you describe of if it's all anecdotal just-so stories based on cultural preference, the reality is by time those rural farm kids hit 40, it's extremely likely the supposedly hedonistic college kids are ahead of them by every standard that matters, including a lot of hedonistic measures, outside of those that increasingly smaller amounts of social conservatives care about deeply - ie. how many kids you have.
Now, I do think in reality, the actual best preforming person is probably the type of person much of this comment section would despise - a serious female high school athlete who goes to college but stops playing athletics and ends up being the type of corporate girlboss that has her eggs frozen at 40, but is married and successful economically, and indeed, probably doesn't have much of a hedonistic life unless not having as many children as you can is now considered hedonistic.
I mean college kids especially from upper class homes are often able to leverage social networking to get themselves in good positions to eventually get hired. Even if you’re a fuckup, having played dozens of games of beer pong with the son of a business owner is going to get you a leg up. That isn’t because playing beer pong is less hedonistic, but because frat life introduces you to your social peers who will eventually put in a good word for you.
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He's talking about a specific subset of people who were able to take responsibility for themselves thanks to how their environment was structured, why are you responding like he meant all people earning a low wage?
Don't a lot of the latter grow up in exactly the environment you're advocating for, anyway?
The specific context of the hedonic lifestyle described by the OP is this: "The dorm is paid by his parents, as is his meal plan and so on. She can do whatever she wants with time not spent studying."
Compared to this, the "median non-college educated 19-year old in the United States, working a low wage job" is, of course, not hedonistic, because she (let's assume it's a woman) claims responsibility for herself and supports herself, and holds down a full-time job (we can assume).
That's a good point as well.
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Well, the question was rhetorical, but thank you for answering, because this is exactly what I was hinting at.
What's 4H, by the way?
4-H is a youth organization, very popular in rural US. They promote animal husbandry in particular. I go to the local 4-H Fair, where the kids show off their goats, chickens and such in very friendly competitions. Right after the fair, our local supermarket has 4-H Fair beef and lamb.
The children raise animals as food, not pets. There was quite a culture war controversy last year when a California girl put her goat up for auction in a 4-H Fair and then refused to give it up to the bidder.
$902.00 seems like way too much for a small meat kid goat. The max I have ever seen for those at our fair is like $250 and that is if you're going to breed them first. Unless that picture is from well before the goat was sold. Even then $902 for a finished meat goat direct to slaughter is too much.
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