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Again you should really take a trip out to the rural area where I live as well as many rural areas in the country. You'll see this isn't only an inner city problem.
I am quite well aware of that. But to add other disadvantages to lingering racial discrimination (yes it exists) is not a great idea. Also taking a bad idea and expanding its use doesn't make it a good idea.
Except that in that situation most teens would have friends who are in intact families even if theirs is not. Also, when children from intact families have more options in jobs and colleges it would educate others to consider remarriage. I agree that the "Ozzie and Harriet" days were not ideal. Women were too dependent on often dominating if not abusive husbands. But there should be a balance, a mid-point.
My children are just turned 20 and 21 1/2. They were teens within my very recent memory. My wife and I are happily married. My children have no children (that I know of )
See my response to phetaroi above.
My so-called "constant obsession" is that others, including myself, pay for increased welfare and other subsidies, and policing. When an "inner city male" fathers multiple children through multiple women it's us who wind up footing the bill, even if the "father" goes off to jail for some robbery, drug dealing or other crime.
See The Other Wes Moore: One Name, Two Fates by Wes Moore. Two kids with the same name lived in the same decaying city. The book author went on to be a Rhodes Scholar, decorated combat veteran, White House Fellow, and business leader. The other is serving a life sentence in prison. The book revolves around their life stories and ultimate meeting when the successful Wes Moore visited the other in prison.
Are you really going to tell me these are isolated occurrences?
I've seen figures that the average citizen pays less than $50 through taxes for welfare programs. Unless you're counting "corporate welfare", which costs that same citizen about $6,000 a year in subsidies.
I said "primary" reason for marriage, not sole reason. Please don't put words in my mouth.
Children, for generations, have been raised by mixed-gender families, some nuclear, some extended. Seeing different genders and their roles is educational. I don't know why anyone in their right mind would voluntarily experiment with "alternative."
The fact that you think same-sex families adopt children just for some experiment says a couple of things about your thought process. None of it good.
Quote:
Originally Posted by censusdata
I see history as cyclical, see sawing between extremes but always returning to the middle. In the 1950s no one in the majority population questioned the American creation myth and anything negative was swept under the rug. Since then it's been moving the other direction and now we've reached the other extreme where young people often people the US is uniquely evil and is the only nation to ever have slavery or steal land from weaker neighbors. Neither extreme is healthy or accurate. I am confident that soon things will return to the mean.
By the same token the 1950s appeared to have ideal nuclear families because people stayed in terrible marriages and everyone focused on image. Many women (including my mom and many aunts) where beat to a pulp and constantly cheated on by their husbands because society said "stand by your man". None of siblings or myself were born out of wedlock but our childhoods were hell. Today people are more open about their flaws and don't hide the fact that they only want sex. Again, neither extreme is good.
I agree with JBG on Trump and Obama. Both were at other extremes, only difference being Obama was a polite and well mannered extremist while Trump is a bull in a china shop. I think America needs another Eisenhower, a boring moderate who gets things done. Would have been a great time to have a John Kasich or Jim Webb as president.
I actually agree it would be nice to have a more moderate president who doesn't rely on a cult of personality to find support as we have had with our last president and current president.
Between the 24 hr. news coverage and the rise of social media have given the extremists, uncompromising fringe elements on both side more power than they had in the past.
It takes some mental effort to find a middle ground. Binary thinking at the extremes takes little effort.
I am starting this thread from a post on the "Gun Violence" thread since many posts not directly related to the Las Vegas shooting are being stricken, with good reason.
This poster, apparently born in 1987 makes some excellent points. I was born in 1957 so I got to experience at least the fading days of somewhat traditional values. And by that I do not mean WASPish conformity.
I went to First Grade in 1963-4. It was the beginning of the end of the calm post-war era. Kennedy was shot that November and the center began to wobble. In hindsight the rot reached to the top. Britain's sex scandal was in the headlines. Kennedy's was not until much later. In the schools, which NY_refugee87 mentions education was still time-tested and proven, but "duck and cover" made people inordinately scared of "the Bomb" and took that weapon off the table. Its substitute, conscription of affluent, comfortable suburbanites to fight in far-away wars was even scarier. This led directly to "the degenerate hippies from (NY_refugee87's) parents era."
As the Vietnam War era and the "draft" progressed the result was full-blown revolt. There was the mostly meritorious "civil rights" era, addressing evils that needed rectification. Much less defensible was the campus and ultimately urban nihilism. The adults of the 1960's, largely born during the era from WW I to around 1930, responded by electing Nixon, and giving George Wallace an important amount of votes. The tragic accident of history was that this deeply flawed man was the one given the job of restoring societal order.
Thus, what we got was the degeneration that NY_refugee87 decries.
Easy sex, drug use and other pathologies led to the decline of the nuclear family and intact marriage. Gay marriage and the rights of transsexuals or people with gender dysphoria trumps (pun not intended) everyday concerns, until it got Trump elected. The schools, for their part, are busier indoctrinating than teaching. Thus the focus on "offensive" or "racist" statues rather than study of the good sides and the bad sides of our history.
This started with "duck and cover" and teaching children that they're "better red than dead" but did not end there. America is unique because if fights for what is right. Europe is focused on appeasement; go along to get along. Thus, the U.S.'s resistance to global initiatives such as the Paris Accords, the Law of the Sea Treaty and the League of Nations.
We need to restore the center. We need adults in leadership. Sadly, neither Obama nor Trump fits that bill.
Easy sex and drugs didn't lead to the decline in the nuclear family. Easy divorce did. The divorce laws went through a process of loosening up in the 60's/70's, arriving at "no-fault" divorce, so that women wouldn't have to be trapped in bad marriages.
RE: the underlined--this is complete gibberish. No one ever taught children any such thing.
Today we see far more young women getting pregnant some of whom are from middle class families.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Cheesesteak Cravings
"Far more"?
Compared to what?
Do you have anything to back up this claim?
It is not clear what the definition of "young women" is in that post, but teen pregnancy is on the decline and has been for a while. Unfortunately that fact does not fit the doom and gloom narrative many are trying to spin.
Easy sex and drugs didn't lead to the decline in the nuclear family. Easy divorce did. The divorce laws went through a process of loosening up in the 60's/70's, arriving at "no-fault" divorce, so that women wouldn't have to be trapped in bad marriages.
RE: the underlined--this is complete gibberish. No one ever taught children any such thing.
On the other hand, I have seen children suffer greatly when parents decided to stay together "for the sake of the children".
Here's the problem with what I see in modern times and it all started back to grade school.
Progressive values made society weaker. In what... 1st or 2nd grade?, there was a presentation given by a lady who claimed if your parents spanked you or used a belt on you for discipline it was "abuse" and theygave us a list of phone numbers to use.
My parents were old school in how they raised me and my little sister.
I see today people who are around my age +/- 10 years, unfit to raise a puppy, having kids. These kids jump around in restaurant booths scream and carry on like they're at a gymnasium. No. If I did that, you'd get cuffed upside your head, hand placed over your mouth and locked inside the car to eat to not disturb the other patrons in the restaurant. Therfore you didn't act out like a spider monkey on bathsalts.
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Why such extremes? There's a happy medium, in which there's enough discipline in the home so that kids don't act out in public, but if they do, cuffing and locking them in the car isn't necessary to stop the behavior, unless it's extreme. But if it's extreme, the question is: why? Especially if that's a regular tendency, when taking the child out to a meal. Is the child allowed to do that at home? Is there such a thing as family dinners, with everyone together at the table daily, in the child's home? Is the child allowed to make disruptive noise around adults at home? If so, then that's the child's norm. It's unreasonable to expect behavior different from that when out in public, so the child should be left at home or with a caregiver.
The "unique advantages" of the United States have been:
- Nobody bombed us to rubble in WW I and WW II
- 250 years of political stability
- A constitution with property rights clearly spelled out
- Until recently, a pretty good K-12 public education system for all citizens
- Immigration that produced a good labor supply of motivated workers
I don't see what Millennials have to do with any of this. The problems in the United States are largely caused by a huge glut of poorly educated and not particularly skilled adults. The permanent underclass problem, the rust belt and flyover state problem, and the occupy Wall Streeters kind of all stem from that. The Millennials who were born smart, had good parents, and went to good colleges taking a 'hard' major are all doing just fine. They will be the ruling class in 20 years just like every previous generation.
I don't see what Millennials have to do with any of this. .
This is what I've been wondering. The OP doesn't include anything to tie Millennials in with his sky-is-falling musings. The thread title doesn't connect with the OP.
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