Imagine the following scenario and note how families require a grounded household, largely provided by a stay-at-home mom - child comes home very distraught after something bad happened at school.
Then:
Oh honey, what happened? Here's a small cookie and a fresh glass of milk. Let's talk about it for a little bit. After that, you can mope around for a few hours or go play with your friends outside, but when your Dad comes home I want you to get some advice from him on how to resolve the problem. Then you can make sure to do that tomorrow in school. And tonight I'll make your favorite meal from scratch.Now:
What the fuck happened? Oh wait, I don't have any time. I have to finish up these reports, then I'm meeting my live-in boyfriend for a motorcycle ride. We might be back tonight. In the meantime, here's a cookie, soda, Dorritos, and some potato chips. Don't be too messy eating while on your Playstation. If you get hungry, heat up some mac and cheese or a microwave dinner. If you're still feeling really bad, call your Dad. I know he lives on the other side of the country, contacts you twice a year, and provides child support which I use on Botox treatments, but maybe he'll have something to say. Tomorrow when I get back, we'll figure out who to sue, then call a press conference in order to shake down the school district. Then in 20 years, you can blame all your failures on them.Companion post: The Liberal Version of "Try Your Best"
31 comments:
They HAVE TO try to humiliate women into denying their own instincts so that the labor market can be flooded, thereby driving wages down, thereby requiring a two-income household for the necessary middle-class lifestyle in which to raise children. That's assuming the women who have been successfully humiliated into denying their own instincts ever have children, or even get married. It's all going according to plan, One.
I agree. Mixing of traditional gender roles has caused major problems. You seem to have left out one very important factor though- most families can't make it on only one salary these days.
There is a good post at Dalrock's blog titled "Playing Career Woman" that matches my observation that domesticity and stay-at-home-motherhood are strong in the SWPL upper middle classes. In fact, working while you have children is somewhat frowned-upon as merely middle class or worse.
The twist: the woman should first get a degree and a job (I mean, "career") and stop working when she has children in her early 30s.
You can see the unnecessary effects at play here: college expenditures, delayed fertility, and likely a carousel-riding twenties that anticipate the SAHM that she may as well have just done right away in her early 20s.
Thus, this career that inevitably leads to dropping out of the white collar workforce satisfies the feminist notion that a "career" experience fulfills a woman.
An apt comparison of younish women dabbling in careers with Mary Anotinette playing milkmaid is made, followed by an even better one of Zoolander playing a coalminer, as relating to the unseriousness of higher-status women having "careers" before becoming full-time homemakers.
The worst part IMO is that the good guys end up marrying used 25-30 year olds instead of lovely fresh 18-20 year old women. I mean if you marry a woman who is 30 and still kinda okay, in just 10 years, she is 40. Whereas if you marry an 18 year old, in ten years, she is only 28 and still pretty good compared to your 35-40 years.
PA, you beat me to it: I was going to link to Dalrock's post.
I always had SAHM-hood in mind for myself, but getting married young was something I was told (by well-meaning parents/family and toxic friends/society) was something only rednecks and pregnant teens did. So I did what I thought I was supposed to do to find fulfillment: went to college, got an excruciatingly painful office job where I had to put up with bitchy women and non-stop celebrity-fellating chit chat, and the worst of them all: a female boss who saw me not as a protege but competition. Then I started teaching, and that was the catalyst I needed to stop nibbling the red pill and just wake up already.
I made my intentions about SAHMing to my husband before we were married. One high spot on our list of compatibility factors was that he agreed, and felt that way about his future wife's responsibilities before I met him. I worked, we saved, then when kids came I stayed home.
I don't regret school so much as I do the time I spent in a bad relationship, hoping for marriage and a life with a guy who was more interested in pursuing side and buying trucks, boats, and motorcycles. I don't begrudge him those things, but we couldn't have the life I wanted and the one he wanted together. Sometimes you have to spend time badly in order to have it good; I wasn't on the carousel but I was wasting my 20s with a guy who didn't have the same goals as I did. I am glad I worked rather than settle with him and have kids; we'd be divorced or at least profoundly unhappy right now.
The term "housewife" should be abandoned,and in place of it,the more useful,and descriptive term Chatelaine should be encouraged.
to wit,"The Wife of the Lord of the Castle."
With responsibilities strictly her own,such as organizing the household budget. Overseeing the estate in times of war or whenever the husband is gone for any length of time. The supervision and education of the children.
And so on. You people reading this are a pretty smart batch and should be able to run with this idea on your own.
They HAVE TO try to humiliate women into denying their own instincts so that the labor market can be flooded, thereby driving wages down, thereby requiring a two-income household for the necessary middle-class lifestyle in which to raise children.
Very good point.
@ PA:
If the post was a little longer, I would have linked to that Dalrock post. (For some reason, Dalrock's site depresses me more than almost any other blog on women, with that being a huge compliment considering how fastidiously he points out the flaws of modern soft-feminist thought. And to think, I made him :)
The twist: the woman should first get a degree and a job (I mean, "career") and stop working when she has children in her early 30s.
Reason for twist: The belief, mistaken nor not, that this what is required to meet an alpha worthy of begetting said children.
Liberalism, feminism and post modernism drive the whole society in a crazy manner towards a huge destruction.
You got the secretary part wrong, though. When the jobs for women were mainly schoolteacher and secretary, the universe remained in balance. As a secretary, you got to leave work at 5:00. It was the notion that women had to be more than a secretary that's led to all the mischief. I've been a secretary and the one thing you can say about it is that it's real labor. You're actually doing something tangible. There's little doubt in my mind that it's precisely the lack of substance in jobs like H.R., or even defense lawyer ("objection, overbroad!") that generate the need for endless meetings and omnipresent office contact, thus making a real homelife impossible. The one thing today's career woman just couldn't stand to hear is that her job actually requires less real work than being a secretary in the '60's or '70's did. And, of course, being a secretary meant kissing fewer asses, which is mainly what today's career women are good at.
True. But another factor is the stagnation of living standards in the US. Median personal income is around $30,000 per year, and this number has been flat for at least two decades. For those with bachelor's degrees, median income is around $45,000. Median income for male workers hasn't increased since the late 70's. A lot of women are in the workforce today more because they have to be than because they want to be. Of course, for some it may be both. But if we consider the traditional family with a couple of kids and a male breadwinner, well, even if he has a college degree, $45,000 doesn't go too far. Many people would consider that level of income supporting three or four people to be not far above the poverty level. But if Mom can go to work for the same wage, the family income doubles to $90,000 - hardly affluent, but certainly much more livable.
On the flipside of this is the Huffington Post bit (yes, I know, but interesting insight into what the SWPL are thinking) on why women should not get married in their twenties:
"A previous relationship left them heartbroken. They say you never really get over your first love. Tara, a 26 year-old freelance writer from North Carolina admitted during our interview, "I didn't think I would ever fall in love again so I figured it didn't matter who I married."
I can relate. Breaking up with my college boyfriend left me devastated. He wasn't just my first serious relationship; he produced the beats to my heart for years. I never thought anyone could ever make me feel that way again, so I settled for the memories and pledged my honor to someone with whom -- wait for it -- I was in a convenient relationship.
Madison also attributes a past heartbreak as a reason why she became Mrs. to Mr. Wrong. After being told over the phone by her first fiancé, "I have cancer and can never see you again," Madison had an understandably hard time trusting love. She married her ex-husband because "We were both financially stable and could have a good life. I loved him, but I'm not sure about actually being in love with him. I felt that I would never be hurt by him as long as I didn't give my whole heart."
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I don't think you can "humiliate" women as much as this process is driven by declining male incomes, noted above, increased competition for Alphas (as noted by Roissy) and Dalrock's courtship prolonging. Plus a lot of the compromises inherent in a female workforce make a lot of guys unsexy.
But women are genuinely struggling with this as well. Most are desperately unhappy. I mean, REALLY unhappy.
"Dalrock's site depresses me more than almost any other blog on women..."
Yes; when you examine most family tragedies in modern America you can see - time after time - the gender issues discussed abstractly on these blogs "in the flesh", so to speak. And the results are horrific.
http://newsandinsight.thomsonreuters.com/Legal/News/2011/10_-_October/Friend_says_lawyer_in_murder-suicide_was__gentle_/
Several points, some of which were not included in the article:
-The wife was a "high powered" executive who married late at 36 y/o, after spending her prime child bearing years in the rat race.
-The wife abandoned her original career track after giving birth and went into business as a tutor. Thus placing the husband under greater financial stress.
-Acquaintances say she loved belittling her husband in front of them. He never defended himself.
-The husband was soft-spoken bespectacled, & quiet. Hardly likely to have been an Alpha Male able to "game" an insubordinate wife.
-The couple lived in an expensive home they would have been unable to afford with either one of their incomes.
-Wife and her parents seemed to have resented the husband, feeling that she could have done better than him.
-The husband worried constantly about losing custody of the children. As a lawyer, he probably knew what it's like for men in most family courts.
End result? Nobody gets the kids. Or walks out of this thing alive.
IMO a good SAHM should homeschool her children. Assuming you picked a wife of comparable intelligence, she should have no problem with this task. Homeschooling 3+ children contributes plenty of value to the household, tax-free value at that.
"IMO a good SAHM should homeschool her children."
Given my current job, I realized I'm probably biased on this issue, but i'm not confident that home-schooling is the way to go. I believe there's too much loss in socialization development that a kid misses who's home-schooled. I realize parents can supplement that loss with social activities they can initiate and monitor more closely than those that occur in a M-F, 8-to-3:30 scholastic environment, but it's hard to replicate that experience via self-teaching and scheduling a few extra after-school activities; there's a rite-of-passage element to the grade-school experience that is just too primal and I would say necessary that can't be provided for through even the most rigorous home-schooling experience.
Better to put due-diligence into picking the right private or public K-8; and perhaps at home parse and counter any dreaded p.c. or other unappreciated cultural-indoctrinations with your own, smaller-but-focused parental educational curriculum; i've had experience with kids who've been home-schooled, only entering public education for the first-time at the h.s. level. Anectodally culled observations haven't been pretty; many are 'Aspies,' and perhaps those 'officially' diagnosed should have some sort of alternative education, but there actually is a school in my district that was specifically created for kids who experienced 'bullying' and/or are a part of the 'LGBT Community,' as the district lit prefers to put it. Kids that go there are certainly brighter than the norm; i haven't seen it to verify, but i'm certain their state and district test scores exceed those of the other schools in their cumulative average scores ------ but I also notice a incredible overindulgence of such kids, some of whom practically have a 'V-for-Victim' mark tatooed to their forehead; they make an art of out of their whinings, and at atimes are comically overindulged within a school-wide policy that is much more lax and greatly departs from district rules and standards, formal and not. What's really crazy about this particular school is that, along with focusing on matriculating classes wiht LGBT kids, it's also a depository for 'alternative-school' kids ----- e.g., those who've been expelled from several other schools in the district and come to this school as a last-chance option; it's sort of a powder-keg situation: combining the worst juvie-delinquent kids with the 'culturally vulnerable,' though to date that particular ingredient of this school hasn't made for any well-publicized problems. Anyhow, imho the laxity in standards is so extreme that I believe it greatly impeded the integrity of the curriculum (here, I could go on but won't), yet this particular school has received write-ups in Time and other national rags, and recently won 'charter of the year' honors for a state educational award. All these accolades focus on its 'anti-bullying' focus, which apparently is a highly 'noble-ized' mission in public-ed these days. I can sign-on to that to some extent, but i think some of these kids are going to be in for a very, very rude awakening when they get out into the real world and have to deal with general society's reaction to their outcast status ----- hence, my skepticism about the socialization pitfalls of home-schooling and over-secluding younger school-age kids in general.
Sort-of a 'damned if you do or don't situation, possibly only best handled in a case-by-case method.
I don't think you can "humiliate" women as much as this process is driven by declining male incomes, noted above, increased competition for Alphas (as noted by Roissy) and Dalrock's courtship prolonging.
It's all part and parcel. The steady drumbeat of feminist shaming of young women to delay motherhood until they can get a "career" going, to never settle for beta, to blame the husband (and the "patriarchy") if all their media-fueled dreams and desires don't come true, etc. Yes, these tactics wouldn't work so well if those hypergamous instincts weren't already there. That's what civilization was set up for in the first place--to keep those instincts in check. But fems & libs have hijacked this ancient mechanism for their own ends.
Nikcrit,
Grade school is the only place on Earth that has such profound age segregation a la Lord of the Flies. Why EVER subject your kids to that? Homeschool kids tend to not specialize in dealing with other kids who are exactly their own age and as a result tend to have circles of friends with a far wider age dispersion than do public schoolers. Which specialization do you think is more valuable? Age-segregated public education is a VERY new thing historically, so I don't buy your primal 'rite of passage' argument.
"Homeschool kids tend to not specialize in dealing with other kids who are exactly their own age and as a result tend to have circles of friends with a far wider age dispersion than do public schoolers"
Yes, but home-schoolers still tend to expose their kids to much fewer people during those years, children and adults alike. If it's a wider interaction of ages for your elementary-age children you seek, why not consider a Montessori school? As you might know, they often integrate varying ages within the same classroom; of course, your kid has to be in other ways attuned to Montessori-type education before taking such a step, etc.
I was speaking anecdotally and perhaps should've made it clear that I don't have firm arguments against home-schooling. Still, my unvested observations of those who have such a experience lead me to discourage others from going that route, if they happen to ask.
Nikrit,
Anecdotally, I know quite a few homeschooled students. I find them vastly less annoying than their public schooled counterparts. But that's anecdotal.
Statistically, they've got much better indicators than public schooled students also. Higher levels of marriage, civic participation, more children, lower levels of dysfunction, and so forth.
Montessori has a model that's not terribly different from homeschooling in a large family, but why allow the indoctrination that inevitably occurs along with education to be under the control of a party that you don't necessarily agree with? The question of indoctrination isn't a question of 'IF', it is a question of 'Who...Whom'.
Nikrit, at least around here in North Texas, the Montessori schools are the exclusive province of Iranians and Indians, with a smattering of DWLs. The goal of most Whites, in either homeschooling or private school, is not merely the acquisition of facts and knowledge, but also Biblical wisdom and cultural mores. The Montessori model as practiced in the U.S. is just another version of globalism. The racial divide is still there, but instead of black/White it's White/Asian.
You also failed to address Jehu's point that age-segregated public schooling is quite a recent invention. Historically, particularly among Anglo-Saxons, innate merit and disciplined scholarship were the criteria for academic advancement; age was incidental.
While you admit your experience is anecdotal, the fact that you regard a large percentage of the home schoolers you've met as "aspies" indicates they're atypical.
RE:"Nikrit, at least around here in North Texas, the Montessori schools are the exclusive province of Iranians and Indians
That's not true in my part of the country (third-coast; e.g. Milwaukee, Chicago area), and I wasn't aware of that being so in Texas.
"You also failed to address Jehu's point that age-segregated public schooling is quite a recent invention. Historically, particularly among Anglo-Saxons, innate merit and disciplined scholarship were the criteria for academic advancement; age was incidental."
Actually, the truth is I've never really thought about 'age-segregation' in public schools; it seems a worthy concern, but for whatever reason, I haven't considered it. When you say it's relatively recent a tradition, I realize I don't have the slightest idea what it's history may be and how that compares to public or private education elsewhere.
Still, I don't see how a Montessori education alleviates the situation; while it takes a kid out of a 'x-years-old only' situation, it doesn't necessarily provide the opposite, as I figure most home-schooled kids are educated either alone or beside their siblings.
While you admit your experience is anecdotal, the fact that you regard a large percentage of the home schoolers you've met as "aspies" indicates they're atypical.
RE:"Nikrit, at least around here in North Texas, the Montessori schools are the exclusive province of Iranians and Indians
That's not true in my part of the country (third-coast; e.g. Milwaukee, Chicago area), and I wasn't aware of that being so in Texas.
"You also failed to address Jehu's point that age-segregated public schooling is quite a recent invention. Historically, particularly among Anglo-Saxons, innate merit and disciplined scholarship were the criteria for academic advancement; age was incidental."
Actually, the truth is I've never really thought about 'age-segregation' in public schools; it seems a worthy concern, but for whatever reason, I haven't considered it. When you say it's relatively recent a tradition, I realize I don't have the slightest idea what it's history may be and how that compares to public or private education elsewhere.
Still, I don't see how a Montessori education alleviates the situation; while it takes a kid out of a 'x-years-old only' situation, it doesn't necessarily provide the opposite, as I figure most home-schooled kids are educated either alone or beside their siblings.
While you admit your experience is anecdotal, the fact that you regard a large percentage of the home schoolers you've met as "aspies" indicates they're atypical.
p.s. ---- my apologies for the double post; dk what happend; also neglected to trm the last graph from my comment, which was from Sheila's question.
"They HAVE TO try to humiliate women into denying their own instincts so that the labor market can be flooded, thereby driving wages down, thereby requiring a two-income household for the necessary middle-class lifestyle in which to raise children."
The ultimate goal was to weaken the country via destabilized families and cause division among men and women. The downward wage pressures are a secondary benefit, not the ultimate goal. Modern feminism is a Marxist construct.
The question of indoctrination isn't a question of 'IF', it is a question of 'Who...Whom'.
All education is indoctrination.
So, whose view do you want taught to your kids?
The ultimate goal was to weaken the country via destabilized families and cause division among men and women. The downward wage pressures are a secondary benefit, not the ultimate goal. Modern feminism is a Marxist construct.
Granted, but corporations on the other hand want cheap labor and lots of it, which is why they push feminism and multicult. Looks like both sides got what they wanted.
"Actually, the truth is I've never really thought about 'age-segregation' in public schools; it seems a worthy concern, but for whatever reason, I haven't considered it. When you say it's relatively recent a tradition, I realize I don't have the slightest idea what it's history may be and how that compares to public or private education elsewhere."
Nikrit, may I refer you to http://johntaylorgatto.com/index.htm for a thorough history of public education in America. There's a lot of info to read and process; I highly recommend it as extraordinarily educational.
"While you admit your experience is anecdotal, the fact that you regard a large percentage of the home schoolers you've met as "aspies" indicates they're atypical."
Perhaps. But what I was really pointing out was that, at least in terms of my district and experience, 'home-schooled' kids often are taught in that method because of some social reason or exception that brought problems to them if they went to regular schools (e.g, they were bullied, or had some personal tick or detail that sort-of called them out in a negative way in the eyes of fellow school kids; that is how I ended up going off on that sort-of tangent re. the charter in my district that's earned national prestige by focusing on 'anti-bullying' policies and matriculating up-n-comers in the 'LGBT' community.'
I'll have to examine those links; it really does floor me a bit to realize that I've never really thought specifically about the fact that age-specific classrooms are the norm from K-12; I've just sort-of blindly accepted it as a logical norm. Oddly enough, I'll be in a pair of my district's Montessori school's this week, and while aware that Montessori technique involves a calculated blending of ages among students within a given classroom, the idea initially struck me as odd, though I wasn't particularly against it; eventually, I fully understood the logic when it was explained to me.
Also: I know nothing about this supposed Iranian/Indian slant on Montessori student bodies; must be something particular to your area. Here, until recently, it's been almost solely the province of white-middle-class kids whose parents kept their kids in public school; though, interestingly, a few Montessori schools with majority-black students opened in recent years and those kids clearly score higher on several key educational metrics.
Yet I don't really have nearly enough info to render a judgement on Montessori schools.
But: I DO know that anything seems to indicate improvement from some sorry scenarios I often see definitely gets my attention!
I'll have to examine those links; it really does floor me a bit to realize that I've never really thought specifically about the fact that age-specific classrooms are the norm from K-12; I've just sort-of blindly accepted it as a logical norm.
Funny thing-Mom ( whose grandfather was a one-room school teacher,and who attended a one room school ) and I were talking about this a few days ago. She is of the opinion that everyone in the one-room school hearing the same lessons from 1st to 8th grade did a lot to get those lessons hammered into thick young skulls. And she and I are both of the opinion that the first two-and maybe three years of school should be very heavy on repetition of basic concepts.
i.e.,those kids should be writing out "see Spot run" and "4+3=7",and that sort of thing a lot more that seems to be the current fashion. Her reasoning is very simple,and I agree with it-
A 6 year old cannot,and should not be expected to do much in the way of reasoning and deduction. But kids that age can memorize,and are very good at it.
Old fashioned rote learning is much underrated.
A 6 year old cannot,and should not be expected to do much in the way of reasoning and deduction. But kids that age can memorize,and are very good at it.
Old fashioned rote learning is much underrated.
Unfortunately, I think this leads to the modern epidemic of worksheets and staying inside for recess. Rote memorization is probably good, but it can be a slippery slope.
Unfortunately, I think this leads to the modern epidemic of worksheets and staying inside for recess. Rote memorization is probably good, but it can be a slippery slope.
True enough,but here's an anecdote:
After having that conversation with Mom about one room schools,I had the chance to help my nephew with his homework. My nephew is 6 years old.
One of his worksheets was on geometry(kinda sorta) and was titled "Attributes of Geometrical Shapes",no kidding.
I honestly can't recall hearing the word "attribute" until I was in college,and I don't think I used it very often then,if I ever used it at all. And the modern education establishment thinks that it's a good word to use with a 6 year old whose primary interest is sitting in a deer blind with his Dad or Grandfather?
Of course a lot of this nonsense is driven by funding tied to standardized testing. But having said that,a certain amount of memorization still has to take place,and from my experience,the best way to do that is to write,repeatedly,what it is that's being memorized.
And come to think,that "One teacher/6 to 8 grades" model provided a built in safeguard against overloading kids with work. The 1st and 2nd graders would be assigned a task,then the teacher would have to jump to the next grade,and so on. Everyone stayed busy ( I'm sure the teachers would have been OD'ing on Prozac,had it existed ),and most kids learned enough to function.
Not a perfect system,by any means,but it did have some advantages.
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