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I think he is sort of viewing everything from 500 feet as though every person acts a as a perfect automaton blindly acting exactly like every other person as a perfectly rational being. TBH I find the same flaws in most theoretical constructions— they ignore that humans are not little Spock’s running about perfectly enacting logical self interest. It also tends to elide the degree to which relationships between people and groups of people tends to totally change how people perceive their self interest and make choices.
The entire conversation about feminism and anti-feminism falls apart if you introduced a single wrinkle— humans tend to form these crazy things called families. And thus a lot of “rights” type arguments don’t work because every right asserted on one member of a family without imposing either a constriction or duty on someone else in that family. So if you say “well, women shouldn’t have to do all the housework, the cooking, the cleaning, the child care, because she is equal to the man,” you immediately have a problem because somebody has to do that stuff. So now you’re putting this on the other adult in the relationship— the man. But then he claps back with his own rights claims “why should I have to do all this? Why is it my job to do the laundry?” She wants to have a career, but someone else has to support her to make that happen. If one person could get a huge promotion by uprooting and moving to New York, you either move everyone or you don’t.
These simple mistakes always floor me because they’re pretty obvious. It’s not possible to ignore the individual choices, nor possible to ignore the relationships between people that inform those choices. The entire edifice is built on two lies — first the notion of an individual without tastes and preferences that don’t lead directly to maximizing utility on every axis, and second the idea that every man exists by himself with no relation to others around him. They’re both absurd. Humans have cultures that shape their preferences, and they have relationships with other people, not just families, but communities, cultures, political systems, and so on.
Even with regard to education, I think he’s right — in America especially, because the expense of college has made it that way. We have a fairly unique relationship with college. I’d argue we’ve basically turned it into a very expensive career casino in which you bet 4-5 years of your life and hundreds of thousands of dollars (over the course of the loan) on the chance that a given combination of the right school, major, activities, internships, and GPA will grant you a middle class career. And really a lot of his (correct) understanding of education works best in the American system where the entire point of our college system is to get a credential, get a job, and never think about that stuff again. In that context, attending Yale courses, but not getting the credentials is a waste of time and money. But if we’re talking about aristocratic students who for various reasons don’t need college specifically to get a job after college, they aren’t looking at college in the same way. They’d see the education part as more important as a way to impress people, as a sign of prestige, or a way to find a spouse. They would read the readings they are interested in, and maybe wouldn’t care as much about the diploma. Attending a lecture at Yale is much more intrinsically valuable when the diploma doesn’t matter.
Again, the context matters in how this stuff happens in the real world. If you want people to choose the education over the diploma, you need to make the education cheap and the diploma matter less.
This no longer works, and has not for generations. A man making such a complaint -- or worse, pointing out that as the main (or sole) source of external income, he's doing a lot for the household already -- by doing so proves himself a boor and probably a wifebeater. That has been part of the influence of feminism on culture; a man is obligated to do his share of everything, and his share is whatever the woman says it is.
I tried this one weird trick called "going to church" and through that met a hot girl in her 20s (I was mid-late 30s) who was excited about homemaking and being a mother. Rolls her eyes at the word 'feminism'. More people should try it.
Her take is that I'm already working hard to support us and she's obviously biologically/psychologically better-suited to making babies and cleaning the house. Why would she expect that of me?
My mom taught me to never buy a household/kitchen appliance as a gift for a woman, as that would somehow be denigrating. But for Christmas I bought my wife the snazzy new vacuum cleaner she'd had her eye on and she just loves the thing to pieces. Vacuums the house twice a day.
Turns out women can be really happy to be women, and act as the natural compliment to men, when no one raises them to hate the idea. Our next baby is due any day now and I'm working hard to expand my business to more than cover all the new expenses that will bring. I can do this because she supports me as I support her. I come home to a clean (and pleasant-smelling) house, good food, thriving children, and usually a decent massage before bed. Really takes the stress of the day out of me before I fall asleep. Getting up the next day and rocking hard comes easy.
Meanwhile, last night, I was hanging out with a mixed crowd when a lonely, bitter, circa 35-year old woman I've been acquainted with for several years -- has a professional career and a house -- was crowing about some article she'd read regarding how men are feeling bad about 'falling behind' economically. The satisfaction in her voice was palpable.
Teach your children well.
Just saying, look! Turning away from Christianity has been a social disaster on a scale previously impossible to imagine. I'd rather be single than try to date a secular woman. Meanwhile the landscape is dotted with little islands of sanity where men, women, and families are still quietly humming along in harmony and deep cohesion. Isn't the protocol obvious?
Is your wife's role in the family actually complimentary to you or simply a lower station? Because it seems to me like if you swapped positions, you could do her job perfectly well (minus the pregnancy bit), but she'd have no idea how to run your business.
I suppose that your relationship might be described as harmonious compared to alternatives, but you and other trad types have to own the fact that (edit: modern) homemaking is a low status occupation and that many women won't be happy with that.
While it's true that he could almost certainly do all the actual tasks, it's very likely that he couldn't do it happily, without becoming bored and alienated, which is actually quite rare and valuable. Assuming, of course, that his description is accurate.
Have you read the recent ACX post about Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids? I want to have a top level post about it, but haven't thought of anything interesting to say for that. I enjoy Scott's honesty about being an introverted professional writer with twin babies and a wife who's probably something like him, and very much not a Christian twenty-something who's happy about vacuuming. His wife is apparently staying with the kids, but he feels guilty (presumably she's overwhelmed, not happily keeping a clean house and warm meals), and hires a nanny. Even with the nanny and wife at home, they are still overwhelmed.
Scott:
Which is just such a funny exchange.
Neither Scott nor Caplan sound like they could successfully do the non childbearing parts of Mrs. TitaniumButterfly's work.
I spend a lot of time around hippies where the women are into archaic revival stuff. They love to pick fruit and can it, do sewing and quilts, cook every meal at home, make candles, split firewood, stoke the fire in the wood stove, let a man slaughter but then pluck and butcher chickens, tend hens for eggs, pick up raw milk, worry 100x too much about recycling, run a homebrew kit, etc
(Ironically, the only thing that they don't bring back is washboard laundry. Washing machines are totally cool with hippies)
Anyway, housewifery was actually really fucking hard? Pretty sure the average modern man would have a nervous breakdown if they had to be a 17th century housewife.
It's a lot easier than it used to be but the level that women think on if they own housewifing is certainly something I feel like a tourist in and would be shitty at no matter how much a feminist dad I wanted to be.
That's true, a lot of archaic household tasks require true skill and specialization such that they're legitimately complimentary to men's work; I don't mean to diss actual traditional housekeeping. The problem is that we're living in the 21st century, and you can't meaningfully specialize into vacuuming and Crock-Pot operation.
Maybe I'm especially retarded but if I was house husband I'd probably outsource so much of the food and cleaning because I'd lose my mind trying to plan the day/week and stick to it and go to pieces if something came up that threw it off. And I'd also feel like none of this shit fills my cup and I'd be miserable.
To say nothing of how much worse it would be if I added kids to take care of.
My husband has done it, and finds it harder than most jobs, emotionally. We buy a lot of half prepared food from Costco. Out house is not clean.
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