Don’t miss this post at The Atlantic by senior editor Garance Franke-Ruta (brought to you by First Links). Mainstream intellectuals continue to make really admirable progress up the learning curve:
What if the goal of women’s equality within the American political system is partly dependent on the persistence of marriage as an institution here?…The problem for women’s political power is that unmarried mothers turn out at the lowest rate of any group of women, when you divide women by whether they are married and have children…In short, as more and more women become unmarried moms, more mothers will find themselves too pressed to vote…The transformation of motherhood into a non-marital phenomenon — a social practice that at the same time hurts women economically and pulls them away from the political world — could well lead to a decline in political power for mothers, and eventually for all women, since more than 80 percent of women eventually have kids. Given that, it’s hard to see how we get to the world Anne-Marie Slaughter is calling for, where women have more power to influence the governance of their country, and eventually transform the workplace to make it more family friendly.
Check out the whole thing – it’s replete with lightbulb-over-the-head data.
The Atlantic has a history of being in the vanguard on this issue. They published “Dan Quayle Was Right” in 1993, when the point was still all but universally sneered at in their world. The Washington Post finally caught up this May with “20 Years Later, It Turns Out Dan Quayle Was Right about Murphy Brown and Unmarried Moms.” Sorry it took them 20 years, but we should welcome them to the party rather than punishing them for doing the right thing! And of course the coup de grace was the New York Times’ lengthy piece last week on how divorce and illegitimacy are driving an increasing economic and social class division.
Could it be that the American cultural elite is taking the first halting steps toward preaching what they practice?
July 20th, 2012 | 3:17 pm
“The transformation of motherhood into a non-marital phenomenon — a social practice that at the same time hurts women economically and pulls them away from the political world — could well lead to a decline in political power for mothers, and eventually for all women, since more than 80 percent of women eventually have kids. And it also could lead to a decline in the political fortunes of Democrats in all but the most motivating contests.”
while i appreciate ms. franke-ruta’s insights and think them interesting, she writes as if political and economic consequences (at least for women and democrats!) were all that mattered…. which is yet another example of crass consequentialism….
there are truths sane human beings cannot not know. some actions, dispositions, and intentions truly are wrong, always and everywhere, regardless of political and economic consequences.
July 20th, 2012 | 4:16 pm
I predict we will see the same delayed light bulb phenomena regarding homosexuals and child rearing, i.e. that both genders matter in raising healthy well-adjusted children.
July 21st, 2012 | 5:36 am
I predict we will see the same delayed light bulb phenomena regarding homosexuals and child rearing, i.e. that both genders matter in raising healthy well-adjusted children.
The children of the sexual revolution are the real civil rights movement here – at least if by “civil rights” we mean the movement toward equality and fairness.
There’s a narrative that says the power of civil rights is in the power of the idea that truth will always win out in the end. If that’s true, then the “marriage” debate will end with us recognizing – belatedly – that kids are just as much stakeholders in the marriage debate as grownups are.
We’ve been rotten to our kids – having kids out of wedlock, divorcing, manufacturing them via IVF, treating them as houseplants that can simply be transplanted whenever we feel like moving. Above all, we have made excuses for why it’s not really such a bad thing to do what we know is wrong.
Now, these kids are starting to speak up – IVF experiments and the daughters of prominent activists are starting to say, “What my parent(s) did to me was not right.”
July 21st, 2012 | 5:40 am
I don’t ‘get’ why they keep talking about women’s issues as if being a woman meant being an unwed mom.
Aren’t women better off (according to virtually every measure) if they’re married?
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