“Note to unattached liberal women above 40: you are ugly hags who have lost your chance with men and all your eggs have dried up and nobody will ever value you anymore, you should either beg for some fat alcoholic guy to take you in since that’s the only man you can get, or resign yourself to being a cat lady growing old with nothing to do but dwell on your regrets and what could have been.”
This bit seemed both out of place and oddly unremarked upon. How low does the total fertility rate have to go before this level of shaming becomes prosocial?
Shame only has utility for steering behavior. You don’t shame someone who can no longer modify their behavior (40 and no children), you shame them only when their behavior is malleable. For this problem, it is prosocial to shame young people who don’t settle down, so that they modify their behavior in the relevantly prosocial way. (You can also make them afraid of not settling down, which is distinct from shame, and you can heap praise and respect on those who do settle down, which would be purely positive reinforcement; or you can make them desire it through the awareness of contingent rewards, which is what we used to do through female-centric media and rituals, but contingent reinforcers compete with each other — you can’t desire girlmom and girlboss at the same time, sorry).
The discourse on shame in America is so confused that it’s hard to even talk about it objectively. But shame is just the felt sensation of not meeting a social standard, and it occurs as a necessary consequence wherever there is a social standard. There is no social standard without esteem and shame working together to modify behavior. This is obfuscated in mainstream discussions, where one day a person might complain about “shame culture” (a nonsensical term), and the next day they take to social media specifically to shame a petty social infraction, like cutting in line or a gross Tinder message. What we mean by shaming is the expressed disapproval at someone else’s actions explicitly or implicitly, which (by the way) can only induce shame when the recipient is actually tied in some way to a social group. A homeless person probably can’t shame you, because they don’t matter to you, but a peer can, and a boss can even more. If shame discourse were an Olympic sport America would have the most gold medals in gymnastics right now.
Shame only has utility for steering behavior. You don’t shame someone who can no longer modify their behavior (40 and no children), you shame them only when their behavior is malleable. For this problem, it is prosocial to shame young people who don’t settle down, so that they modify their behavior in the relevantly prosocial way.
These seem related to each other. Young people who don't settle down eventually become 40 years old, and many of them don't have children due to not settling down. If such people are shamed, then young people have an incentive to avoid growing up to become one of those people.
You’re imagining something like “24yo woman witnesses 40yo being shamed and doesn’t want that to happen to them”, but there’s a better and more accurate reinforcement structure to put in place. 24yo woman don’t put themselves in social contexts where they see the social shame of 40yos because of how age-specific social contexts are, and humans are bad at making 15-year plans, so even if we enacted that plan it wouldn’t work, and that’s implying “shame every older childless woman always” is an acceptable amount of pain administration for prosocial result. We can just shame the 24yos whose lifestyle deters them from fertility, which winds up promoting a lifestyle which is pro-fertility. We don’t have to shame the 40yo at all; when they turn 40, we can completely stop promoting the fertility behavior with shame, because by that point it’s too late. People care most about immediate social pride, rather than what happens when they are 40.
It’s like with shaming bad students. You can shame a bad student because you want to promote study habits so they get the best job they can. Shaming their poor habits is beneficial and for their greater good. But shaming people whose occupation you deem inferior would be sociopathic, even if it had the byproduct of (in theory) promoting good study habits among poor students. This relates broadly to the concept of forgiveness and mercy, which I suppose is very apropos the article…
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Notes -
This bit seemed both out of place and oddly unremarked upon. How low does the total fertility rate have to go before this level of shaming becomes prosocial?
Shame only has utility for steering behavior. You don’t shame someone who can no longer modify their behavior (40 and no children), you shame them only when their behavior is malleable. For this problem, it is prosocial to shame young people who don’t settle down, so that they modify their behavior in the relevantly prosocial way. (You can also make them afraid of not settling down, which is distinct from shame, and you can heap praise and respect on those who do settle down, which would be purely positive reinforcement; or you can make them desire it through the awareness of contingent rewards, which is what we used to do through female-centric media and rituals, but contingent reinforcers compete with each other — you can’t desire girlmom and girlboss at the same time, sorry).
The discourse on shame in America is so confused that it’s hard to even talk about it objectively. But shame is just the felt sensation of not meeting a social standard, and it occurs as a necessary consequence wherever there is a social standard. There is no social standard without esteem and shame working together to modify behavior. This is obfuscated in mainstream discussions, where one day a person might complain about “shame culture” (a nonsensical term), and the next day they take to social media specifically to shame a petty social infraction, like cutting in line or a gross Tinder message. What we mean by shaming is the expressed disapproval at someone else’s actions explicitly or implicitly, which (by the way) can only induce shame when the recipient is actually tied in some way to a social group. A homeless person probably can’t shame you, because they don’t matter to you, but a peer can, and a boss can even more. If shame discourse were an Olympic sport America would have the most gold medals in gymnastics right now.
These seem related to each other. Young people who don't settle down eventually become 40 years old, and many of them don't have children due to not settling down. If such people are shamed, then young people have an incentive to avoid growing up to become one of those people.
You’re imagining something like “24yo woman witnesses 40yo being shamed and doesn’t want that to happen to them”, but there’s a better and more accurate reinforcement structure to put in place. 24yo woman don’t put themselves in social contexts where they see the social shame of 40yos because of how age-specific social contexts are, and humans are bad at making 15-year plans, so even if we enacted that plan it wouldn’t work, and that’s implying “shame every older childless woman always” is an acceptable amount of pain administration for prosocial result. We can just shame the 24yos whose lifestyle deters them from fertility, which winds up promoting a lifestyle which is pro-fertility. We don’t have to shame the 40yo at all; when they turn 40, we can completely stop promoting the fertility behavior with shame, because by that point it’s too late. People care most about immediate social pride, rather than what happens when they are 40.
It’s like with shaming bad students. You can shame a bad student because you want to promote study habits so they get the best job they can. Shaming their poor habits is beneficial and for their greater good. But shaming people whose occupation you deem inferior would be sociopathic, even if it had the byproduct of (in theory) promoting good study habits among poor students. This relates broadly to the concept of forgiveness and mercy, which I suppose is very apropos the article…
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