This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Fair point.
This brings in the uncomfortable idea that there might need to be punishments and negative consequences for these anti-family forces for all they've done.
I didn't touch on that one in the screed up there but, uh, there will probably be some portion of the population that will keep trying to undermine family formation, and our policies should also be keeping them at bay too.
Physical removal, so to speak?
More options
Context Copy link
I don't know if punishment is necessary; step one would be to get them out of the driver's seat and see what happens. The bigger problem is it's widely agreed that delay IS necessary; even among natalists, very few are going to think that a girl having a baby before finishing high school is a good idea. And that amount of delay might be tolerable. But I think expecting delay until after undergrad ends up just building in the habit of delay past the point of biological baby-craziness.
And if you want this to work without too many bad side effects, you're going to want the father to be married to the mother, too, which would be a big change as well; the model of the residential university would either go away or change a LOT. The larger problem may well be intractable.
I read this and think of my parents: Mom was fresh out of high school in the late 1970s when she married Dad, who is just two years older than her, and was already in the workforce (having dropped out of high school after 10th grade). Just a few years later, in the early 1980s, Mom pops me out a few weeks before her 22nd birthday; my first brother a year and a half later; and then my other brother, her youngest, just a couple of days after turning 26. And this family of 5 lived entirely off my Dad's handyman income, with Mom being a SAHM, and not entering the workforce proper until Youngest Brother was out of high school.
And this was just a few decades ago, not some ancient days of yore here. So really, I'd say the issue is simply the whole everyone-goes-to-college things. Is that bachelor's degree really necessary to do the job? If so, would it still be necessary if we hadn't devalued high school diplomas with "social promotion," grade inflation, and so on?
(Again, I keep coming back to how many of our problems would be solved if we got someone in power who went after Academia with an approach somewhere in the range from Henry VIII to Qin Shi Huang.)
More options
Context Copy link
Not the most familiar with it, but I seem to recall someone describing to me that BYU is particularly supportive of students having families. I don't remember the details there, though.
More options
Context Copy link
Congrats, you’ve discovered why the modal marriage arrangement throughout history was ‘teenaged girl with an older man’.
If you think we’re going to bring that back, I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you. The fact of the matter is that at least part of the reason that 20 year old brides are so rare is the dearth of young, college aged men ready to be husbands. I suspect destigmatizing age gap relationships would boost the fertility rate dramatically. So start a TikTok trend of bragging about silver Fox husbands or something, I don’t know how you’re going to replicate the social conditions(aka patriarchy) that convinced young women in historical societies to marry older men.
In a word? Inflation.
Sure, there's some snark there, but there's a lot of stories from the Depression about wild age gap relationships just due to economic realities.
I am close to convince that the American economy of the next 20 - 30 years is utterly bifurcated. Zero "middle class." An utter divide between permanently dependent on the state for near serfdom conditions, and the independently able who are literally starting companies with the help of AI overnight and have more money than they know what to do with. The upper class status games will start to get very strange.
I certainly don’t think there’s nothing to this- my great-grandparents married at 17 and thirty because he was a millionaire in the early depression- but the pattern of ‘young woman seeks marriage to established man for economic reasons’ is one that our culture lacks the inclination towards- we have near-unlimited personal debt, a constant diet of TikTok fear porn about abusive men, and a much smaller gap in gender based economic prospects.
I also strongly doubt the narrative that artificial stupidity will be an economic wonderwaffe- a few people, disproportionately already very wealthy, will become even more wealthy from selling it as customer service improvements and it still won’t be able to turn on a wrench or supervise a construction site or get around all sorts of occupational licensing barriers.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
The age gap has rarely been more than 5 years, and you have to go back hundreds of years before average age of a woman at her first marriage was under 20. Teenagers weren't generally marrying "silver foxes" (though it happened).
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link