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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   34549 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 30, 2023

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A recent tragic event: Mother accused of killing three children in Massachusetts

A mother is accused of strangling three of her children before she jumped out a window in an attempted suicide at their suburban Boston home, officials said Wednesday.

An arrest warrant had already been issued Wednesday for Lindsay Clancy for two counts of homicide in connection with the deaths of her 5-year-old daughter and 3-year-old son. Her 8-month-old son, who she's also accused of strangling and was "grievously wounded," has since died, NBC Boston reported.

First responders found three children in the home in Duxbury. The children were unconscious and “with obvious signs of severe trauma,” Cruz said. "Preliminarily it appears that the children were strangled,"

The Culture War angle: Following this event some TikTok accounts have released videos in support of the mother and voicing concern over mothers and their mental health, leading to discussion. Examples: https://postimg.cc/NKpX61ty, https://postimg.cc/vxT8d6jK, https://postimg.cc/CnnyNC9w, https://postimg.cc/8FvttKzK, https://postimg.cc/TK6wKhWK, https://postimg.cc/K3cXXSKv

Considering the nature of the crime I find the wording in the TikTok's off putting. This isn't phrased as something the mother, Lindsay Clancy 'did'. It's something that 'happened to her' and that she 'needs support'.

On a tangential note: This reminds me of an older sex war question surrounding female violence towards children and how women are treated in society. Specifically the terminology of SIDS. Sudden Infrant Death Syndrome. Which became a notable issue when multiple women who murdered their own children ended up, after a few years, being released scot-free. Neven Sesardić, a Croatian philosopher, wrote a very interesting article published in the British Journal for the Philosophy of Science. Specifically relating to Sally Clark, a woman in the UK who was accused of murdering two of her children, and some relevant statistical analysis that cast aspersions on the validity of SIDS as it was relied on by expert witnesses to defend Clark in court. Along with leveraging statistical critiques against the Royal Statistical Society.

The tangential relevance here is whether or not Lindsay Clancy will be afforded similar legal leniency on top of everything else. Though with the hellish nature of the crime, one could only really hope for punishments that far exceed all the comforts that a lifetime in a women's prison will afford her.

However terrible this crime is, I'm not sure she should be imprisoned.

Consider the multiple punishment purposes: (1) incapacitation, (2) deterrence, (3) restitution, (4) rehabilitation and (5) vengeance.

Incapacitation seems insignificant. Family annihilators do not necessarily kill people outside the family, especially not for a time after the event. It is very unlikely that social care will allow her to start a new family with children. Can such a crazy criminal commit other crimes because of their insanity or lack of impulse control? Again, I will say that this is unlikely, from the stories of other family annihilators who were often completely normal until they were suddenly not.

Deterrence is unlikely. Would any punishment stop someone from doing something so crazy? I would emphasize that she was crazy when she murdered her children and was immune to reason or consequences. Deterrence works against rational actors, not literal crazy dogs. There is even a case for wandering towards the penalty side to prevent feigned unreason, but she literally murdered her children. It's as crazy and irrational as possible.

Restitution is irrelevant without significant advances in biotechnology.

Rehabilitation is similar to incapacitation: she will not have a similar opportunity, so rehabilitation (even if it works, which can not be slightly assumed) does not matter.

I see vengeance as a subtype of deterrence that our evolutionary environment has integrated deep into our minds. There may be a pro-social reason to punish criminals even if it does not serve any of the above rational purposes. It can bind the public and signal a commitment to deterrence. But I do not believe that we are already in our evolutionary environment, and its adaptations are no longer necessarily adaptation to civilized people. When there is a conflict between deeply illegible emotions and reasonable thought, we should pay respect to our emotions but not allow them to govern us entirely.

It sounds cold, but one of the people the most damaged by it is herself. No one feels the loss of a child more than his parent. And her genes will not pass on to the next generation, which is a double incapacitating and deterrent effect. I won’t get as far as TikTokkers and say she deserves compassion—she is a terrible, bad being. But I will say that I am not at all sure what purpose a further punishment is for.

Not to dogpile, but all of this presupposes that there are no "bad" people, only bad actions, and that nobody would rationally choose to commit an evil act (let's lay aside how unevenly applied these ideas are based on the racial/sexual attributes of the person in question). I reject this premise, and so it makes complete sense to me to inflict vengeance on her so that at least some imperfect justice can be achieved. There is a cosmic disharmony due to her actions that must be corrected. This is an idea that comes naturally to all people (just watch how children behave when arguing or fighting) and is only deadened or destroyed by the WEIRD education system. I want her to be punished not because it's good for her, but because she must suffer in return for the suffering and evil she caused. Deterrence and rehabilitation might be an added bonus, but it should definitely a secondary aim.

Also: obligatory short C.S. Lewis essay on rehabilitative justice

I'm not sure she should be imprisoned.

Permanent exile at the minimum. Crazy people really don't have a place in polite society- doubly so if it wasn't caused by legitimate mental illness because "depraved heart" isn't something you can fix with pills- and demonstrating that you're sufficiently boundary-blind that you think "I'll wait for my husband to leave, and then I'll kill all my kids" is ever a valid course of action to take means that you don't belong.

Now, exile has some practical problems in modern times- namely, that virtually all land on Earth is owned by someone- so you'd have to stake out a plot of land on which you can confine exile-ees (we usually call these "prisons in Scandinavia"). It doesn't need to prevent them from leading an otherwise normal life after that (though they shouldn't reproduce, and should be segregated by sex to prevent that)- we don't need to stop them from pursuing goals/doing anything else with their lives, or subject them to 20 years of functionally unpaid hard labor in a concrete sardine can- but we do need them away from everyone else so they can't kill us again given they've demonstrated the stark inability to stop themselves from killing us in the first place. There's no difference between them and a hostile invader at that point, and if they break exile (note that this isn't "leaves the country") the penalty should be the same for both, as it would be were the murderer trying to kill you per the natural right of self-defense.

They broke trust in an extremely fundamental way, and must stay out- an exclusion zone is just the natural consequence of humankind now unable to use "punishment is to return to the state of nature" for a bunch of mostly self-imposed reasons.

I would emphasize that she was crazy

What does this mean?

It is very unlikely that social care will allow her to start a new family with children

You are then suggesting that she spend the rest of her life in a mental institution? That doesn't seem significantly different than prison to me. Prison with better healthcare.

Deterrence is unlikely.

immune to reason or consequences.

people committing crimes do consider the possibility of themselves being caught. For example, that is why she waited until her husband left, she was aware that if her husband caught her strangling her three children to death their would be consequences to those actions, like not being able to kill her children. If people believe they can strangle their children to death and get out of it because a doctor diagnosed them with psychosis, there will be less of a deterrence to killing their children.

she will not have a similar opportunity, so rehabilitation (even if it works, which can not be slightly assumed) does not matter.

you are assuming that because she killed only children, and only her children after her pregnancy, that she is only capable or willing to kill that specific category of people after her pregnancy. If I were to commit a complete genocide of a race/ethnicity/religion you can say the same argument for me, no point in rehabilitation as they are all dead.

I am aware that she is not going to do this again, but something just doesn’t sit right with allowing her to get away with killing her children.

Have you seen the documentary Dear Zachary? This was almost exactly the reasoning used when keeping Shirley Turner out of prison after murdering her boyfriend, that she was unlikely to hurt anyone else. Of course she went on to kill her son.

Point being, people doing this are sufficiently abnormal that trying to predict their future behavior and saying “She would never do this again” seems really really unwise.. There is no way you can convince me that Bayes doesn’t say she has a far higher risk of murdering again than an average woman. She has done a couple lifetimes worth of damage already, what is the benefit of keeping her free? Just lock her up, throw away the key and we never have to worry about her again

It's something that 'happened to her' and that she 'needs support'.

If she suffered a psychotic break this could indeed be correct no? There is a reason why we have insanity defenses and the like, sometimes people are not responsible for their own actions. We don't have enough information either way here it appears, but a suicide attempt might be indicative. It also may not be and she is a manipulative murderer.

It does not appear uncommon for parents under stress (and often sleep deprived) to have intrusive thoughts (there was a time period when my first 3 kids were all not sleeping that lasted about a week or 10 days, where I was very close to snapping), and it is probably important that this is talked about, so that people who do have those thoughts don't feel there is no support and the thoughts turn to actions. A Clinical psychologist says:

"Postpartum psychosis is extremely rare, comprising about 0.01 to 0.02 percent of cases of postpartum depression, Goldberg and Sukhera said.

The condition is marked by hallucinations, delusions, hearing voices and a detachment from reality, Goldberg said. Only about 5 percent of those diagnosed with postpartum psychosis will attempt to harm themselves or their children, she said.

"The numbers are very small, but the cases are very serious," she said. "If someone is having thoughts of harming themselves or their child, it should be taken very seriously."

Her husband (who knows her better than any of us) is reported to say she had some kind of condition which might support some kind of mental illness.

"He added that her “condition” had recently worsened, even though he did not specify what she was battling." and “The real Lindsay was generously loving and caring towards everyone — me, our kids, family, friends, and her patients. The very fibers of her soul are loving. All I wish for her now is that she can somehow find peace,” he added.

She should still be tried given the circumstances but if the outcome is that she needs psychiatric treatment then it may indeed have been something that happened to her, like getting cancer or schizophrenia. It's certainly possible she fooled her husband but it would seem the most likely explanation of an otherwise normal mother murdering her kids and attempting suicide who was suffering from some kind of worsening condition according to the person who knew her best is that she was mentally ill. If it is true that more support for future mothers is able to identify cases where kids would be at risk then that seems reasonable as well.

There is a reason why we have insanity defenses and the like, sometimes people are not responsible for their own actions

How could they not be responsible? Did someone forcibly take control of her body? Why should I care whether a mental illness was at work? A mental illness is part of you, it is inseparable from you. If her mental illness did it, she did it, there is no difference. If someone murders me and they were mentally ill, does it make me any less dead than if they were mentally healthy?

In some sense any murderer is self-evidently mentally unwell. Murder isn’t a normal response to anything (outside of things like self defense shich isn’t considered murder). So why does it matter if their particular form of mental abnormality has or doesn’t have a specific label? They are a danger to their fellow citizens all the same.

I would suggest that you take a look at the development of the insanity defense, which has been well developed over several centuries of experience.

A diagnosis of mental illness is not a free pass. The defense is considerably narrower in its availability, and even then, a jury must find it persuasive, which is itself very rare.

A mental illness is part of you, it is inseparable from you.

Illnesses can be treated or dealt with, some of them at least. Let's imagine it was PPP, if she has no more kids it is unlikely to ever be an issue, and/or anti-psychotics may resolve the issue.

My ex-wife's mother was bipolar, when not on her meds she was abusive including beating her kids with a wire coathanger and much much worse. On her meds she's a devout Christian horrified at her actions. Which of those is the real person? They appear to be somewhat separable at least. Now that doesn't undo the trauma she inflicted, some of her kids forgave her, some did not, it's a complex and emotive subject.

I would say not all murderers are mentally unwell, murder can be a rational option in many situations. There is a difference between not normal and mental illness I think.

This reminds me of another recent tragic event. A new mother in Italy fell asleep while nursing her baby. She had been left alone in her hospital room with no one allowed to visit or help. While asleep, she crushed and killed her newborn.

This tragic event has lead to a large number of Italian mothers talking about how they had been in similar dangerous situations. When they asked for help from medical staff, they were told that other mothers are able to take care of their newborns after childbirth, the mothers need to stop being lazy. This was after major abdominal surgery (C-sections), medical complications of blood loss, etc.

Pregnancy and the post natal period is really hard on a woman. The hormone changes are immense. Mom Genes is a good book to read on the topic, but to give it the personal angle:

The first night we brought my first baby back from the hospital, I remember her staying awake all night, eating. I couldn't put her down. I had trouble getting out of bed. I sat there in the long hours of the night, my husband asleep next to me, and sobbed as quietly as I could manage. I didn't want to be a bother and wake him. I didn't know how I could live another moment without sleep. I had just gone through a physically exhausting and torturous experience. I had torn myself while giving birth to the point they had to cauterize my clitoral hood. I needed rest and healing. I was mommy now and had to do it alone, like all the pioneer women before me. I felt like I had made a huge mistake. My husband needed to rest. He had stayed up at the hospital the night before. I wasn't ready to be a mom. I didn't want to be a bother.

In the morning my husband took the baby away from me and we settled into sleeping in shifts. Nursing meant that I never got more than a couple hours of sleep at a time, but eventually I began to heal.

There was a moment several months later when my daughter choked while drinking milk and I just kind of sat there, staring at her. "She's not breathing," I said aloud, emotionless. I didn't move her into a better position or do anything. My husband came over and held her on his arm, whacked her back like the baby heimlech. She cleared her passage and started eating again like nothing was wrong. My husband thought I panicked and froze. I can't actually remember what I was thinking at the time, but afterwards I connected the event with my thoughts and emotions on the second day of her life - that I wasn't ready for a kid, that I should have waited for a better time.

The next time my daughter choked while nursing I held her on my forearm, jaw between my finger and thumb, and firmly wacked her on her back with my other forearm, just like I learned in lifeguard training a decade prior. I didn't freeze. I didn't ponder deep thoughts. I was her mother and her only defense against a harsh biology that wants infants dead.

My second child was much easier the first three months, though I became depressed the second three months (a depression that went away by eating fermented food. What's up with that?). My third child also went well and I was actually filled with immense energy the two weeks after his birth. Then I noticed that I had lost both all religious feeling and all belief in the legibility of the universe, rationality itself. Both senses came back around his first birthday.

The point isn't that the Boston woman was correct to kill her kids, or does not face some sort of culpability for killing her kids. My point is that the post partum period is weird and has unpredictable effects on a mother's brain. We can probably find better ways to make not killing kids attractive to psychotic mothers. Does society have a responsibility to do so? I don't know. I don't think that the threat of being locked up in prison is enough incentive to someone whose mind is already in their own circle of hell.

Isn't it on aggregate better for the world for the children of mentally unstable murderers to die before they can continue the cycle of harm?

As for the fathers, it really doesn't requite a lot of effort not to impregnate a crazy person.

As for the fathers, it really doesn't requite a lot of effort not to impregnate a crazy person.

If you know they are crazy I agree it's low effort. But figuring out if someone is crazy can be pretty difficult.

Some forms of crazy are sporadic. Months or even years of normal behavior, followed by bouts of crazy.

Some forms of crazy are only unlocked in prolonged stressful situations, like a single mother taking care of multiple kids.

Other forms of crazy are just plain subtle and hard to notice.

Finally, being in love/lust with someone is an extreme form of blinders. So you are asking someone to be rational and logical while they undergo one of the most common and universal forms of irrationality.

I disagree with your assessment of the situation because to me there is a significant distinction between "weak, injured or malformed" and "psychopathic, murderous, criminal". In a crude analogy with another important system of life, the immune system, the former represent damaged cells that need to be repaired, and the latter represents cancerous cells that need to be excised.

Side note, I don't think dwarf fortress is a representative simulation of the social dynamics at play, because it doesn't model what it's like to have, say, an asshole boss whose coworkers actively suffer because of his ongoing existence.

thoughts and prayers for those wireheaded by the kafkaesque stochastic egregore

Reading rationalist literature prepared me to understand half of the uncommon words, knowing time-series modeling for the other half, so I don't see the problem here. /s

I do think there should be a wiki for all the words commonly thrown around here that often deviate quite a bit from their literal or commonly used meanings. Some might say gatekeeping is the point, but I don't know. I don't know how much heed to pay to Scott Alexanders' insistence that it's a good idea to not sound like "an evil robot". Even though all his recommended alternatives are making the message less precise and worse. Ultimately I'd say the motte is a walled garden of evil robots and we might as well go all in on that; prioritizing precise communication over reach (or not sounding ridiculous)?

Nonetheless, the argument that certain groups of people are being wireheaded by a Kafkaesque stochastic egregore is a defensible one.

when multiple women who murdered their own children ended up, after a few years, being released scot-free

Or conversely, some doctors started witch-hunting just like in the 'Satanic Panic'. SIDS was newly diagnosed, there have always been cases of women overlying their children and yes, infanticide, and some experts decided newborns couldn't just die from nothing, the mothers must have killed them.

I remember the Sally Clark case. I also remember the same kind of Satanic abuse panic in the UK where various parties got children taken away from their families on account of Satanic Ritual Abuse which later was discovered to be a total invention.

About the TikTok screenshots;

Other than all speaking from a position where the woman lacks any agency at all, They also state that violent intrusive thoughts are just a step in a series of actions that eventually leads to violence. Is that a valid theory of mind? My model of unexpected acts of violence is akin to a pressure cooker going off. A perfect storm where all the bad things that possibly happened, happened and the person at the center of it lost control and lashed out.

I can certainly see the former model working for let's say.. a stereotypical serial killer. But I think it's off when the person committing the violence tried to take themselves out as well.

E: Unless she was suicidal and wanted to do maximum damage.

I'm someone (a man) who has definitely experienced the twin phenomena of (1) violent intrusive thoughts, including towards my loved ones, and (2) a general lowering of my impulse control in situations where I am stressed or distressed.

Now, (2) has (fortunately) never led me to actually acting out anything that occurs in (1) but I can imagine how it could if the stress or distress were severe enough.

To cohere with your model I think the kind of intrusive thoughts I and the TikTokers talk about would be part of that "perfect storm" of bad things. After all, to do evil things you have to have some idea of what those things are (which may include self harm) and how to do them.

From the lack-of-agency perspective I think it's common to describe people in heightened emotional states such that they aren't acting rationally as lacking in agency. Sometimes we even recognize this lack of agency in the law. For example killing someone may not be murder depending in part on the emotional state you were in when it occurred and what caused that emotional state.

Intrusive thoughts that happen without accompanied desire (and which are feared) are unrelated to acting out the thoughts. There are studies on exposure therapy where a father who had intrusive thoughts about strangling his child was specifically told to let the intrusive thoughts occur while holding child’s neck. The crucial ingredient is intrusive urges which are its own thing.

That sounds like a hit or miss theory of mind.

Not everyone's violent thoughts translate to violent actions. People can be in the process of slowly losing control of their actions while continuing to have violent thoughts, or continuously gaining control of their actions while continuing to have violent thoughts.

Violent thoughts can indicate repressed violent tendencies that are building to a popping point, or they can provide the simulated schadenfreude that negates any need for violent action.

It's not generalizable a priori.

The tangential relevance here is whether or not Lindsay Clancy will be afforded similar legal leniency on top of everything else.

I don't know if America has the same problem as the UK, but it's exceedingly difficult to actually get a woman sent to prison in the UK, seemingly. We have had a political party actually put abolishing the concept of jail for women in their party manifesto here. So my expectation is that yes, she will, assuming the lack of standards is the same across both countries.

The US does not have compunctions about locking people up, particularly sensational cases of multiple murder.

We have had a political party actually put abolishing the concept of jail for women in their party manifesto here.

Really? Which one was that? It's the first I've heard of it. I'm not doubting you, I'm just really curious.

The Green party.

Who also believe that TWAW and gender fluidity, so they will in fact end up imprisoning nobody.

Where did you read that? I had the idea it was that jail should only be for serious or violent offenders which sounded more reasonable.

Cheers, should've expected it'd be them.

Although women probably get somewhat shorter sentences on average than men, ceteris paribus*, the US does not seem to have a particular hesitancy re imprisoning women, esp for murder. Eg here and here and here and here

*Or perhaps not, since the average male defendant probably has a longer criminal record than the average woman charged with the same crime

This study claimed to account for criminal history and still found much harsher sentences for men. I didn't read beyond the abstract, so it might be an awful study, but it's at least a point in the direction of ceteris paribus.

And this one that was published the same year found that "female defendants with lower criminal history scores received more lenient treatment (relative to male defendants) whereas those with higher criminal history scores received more severe sentences." I also have not read any more than the abstract.

My wife and I were talking about this case. I told her I didn’t understand how the husband would forgive the wife. If anything, I’d mete out the judgment myself.

I don’t understand how he isn’t driven mad.

If my mom killed my dad, I no more have a mom, if my brother killed my mom, I no longer have a brother. This guys wife killed 3 of his kids and he forgives her? Fucking insanity, nothing else.

I’ve listened to enough crime podcasts to say this is a common response. If I had to guess, these people just completely lose it and become unwilling to lose their last family member, so they cling to some delusional narrative that let’s them keep their last family

I don’t think this woman deserves sympathy, but motherhood today is very stressful. Before feminism, motherhood was considered an important job and girls were raised at a young age to master the skill. Hence, girls were given dolls young so they could model the way their mother raised them at a young age, and so they would learn to multitask activities (mothers would gently reprimand their daughters if the doll was misplaced while eg cooking). Girls would spend time with women and mothers to learn from them and the separate spheres of male/female interest ensured that women didn’t have men’s stressors. Female culture and its emphasis on “nurturing feelings” like making a scarf for a loved one or beautifying a home was simply a way to prepare the mind for the bond required to raise a healthy child. A girl by the age of 14 would probably have mastered all of the domestic tasks she would be using at 24 as a wife. And so the tasks involved with motherhood would be mastered, which means their stress would be minimized. Women by and large did not have stressful work in addition to duties of mother/wife, or if they did, they would have wet nurses and hired help. Once a woman had a child, family would usually come to minimize the stress at the home. Women would also be around their child much more, forming a bond, because exclusive breastfeeding was common for 1-2 years and then intermittently reduced over 4.

We have essentially raised generations of women who are untrained in being a mother. It shouldn’t be surprising that PPP and PPD are high and that women feel overwhelmed. Motherhood is more like a musical instrument than a college course, you simply cannot learn it by studying from a book for a year at 25 or something. When you see a girl raised by a traditional family and especially if she had many younger children (having to act as a mother to them) her entire nature is different, you can literally feel the the nurturing soul.

Female culture and its emphasis on “nurturing feelings” like making a scarf for a loved one or beautifying a home was simply a way to prepare the mind for the bond required to raise a healthy child

I don't think this is an accurate representation of female culture for most of human evolution. Maybe 1900s american culture or parts of european aristocratic female culture? Do you have a source to elaborate on what you mean?

motherhood today is very stressful

It has literally never been easier

Medicating your child, giving him formula and an iPad, and sending him off to the BPD factory daycare has never been easier. But that’s not motherhood. That’s the industrial baby factory that the industrialized women of America can sense is their destiny (but hysterically impugn on the traditional mode of life, often in the traditional costume of the handmaid’s tale). The actual act of motherhood and meeting the needs of babies has never been harder. The depletion of oxytocin from insufficient mother-baby bosom contact and the eradication of mother-born bonds in the high alertness circadian rhythm hours are what leads to PPD and PPP (and BPD in the baby) and are exactly why these women commit infanticide, like a baboon in the wild doing the same when facing predation and lack of food or facing “male immigrant” stressor knowing that the new authority will slay their children like Herod (and unable to flee to the older tradition encoded in the flight to Egypt)

So the near-complete eradication of childhood mortality is outweighed because…bosom contact is slightly more inconvenient? The vast increases in housework efficiency by microwaves, refrigerators, vacuums, laundry machines and dishwashers thereby giving you more time for your children is outweighed by…circadian rhythms? The complete elimination of starvation as a realistic threat/stress is outweighed by…?

Any slightly objective assessment would find the scales tipped dramatically towards the past having far more dramatic stressors, hardships and timesinks than the present. I don’t see how you can realistically just handwave away six children in a row dying of scarlet fever as less stressful than the present

Childhood mortality and mortality in childbirth are stressful events, naturally, and every animal species deals with the death of children. That does not turn the entire enterprise into stress. A death during early years is stressful for the mother after it occurs, but this does not mean that all of motherhood and all of its tasks and labor spent are stressful. Women miscarried and their children died young, but this was normal during that period, and it’s not as if they didn’t social bonds to help them through the emotional pain.

The vast increases in housework efficiency by microwaves, refrigerators, vacuums, laundry machines and dishwashers thereby giving you more time for your children

… Are you kidding? The key difference is the 9-5 work week that most women are forced by conditions to deal with; the lack of training in motherhood; insufficient time spent with child and breastfeeding. That was the whole post. Mothers do not spend more time with their children in America today. Especially when you consider that “time” is not “experience salience”; the importance hours are during high alertness, not making them dinner after they’re exhausted from daycare/school.

I don’t see how you can realistically just handwave away six children in a row dying of scarlet fever as less stressful than the present

Sure I can. How about three children in a row being infanticided by their mother? How about women not even trying to have children because they find it too stressful? How about the increase in childhood obesity and autism which are associated with stressed mothers, or BPD increases associated with poor mother-child bond?

Women by and large did not have stressful work in addition to duties of mother/wife, or if they did, they would have wet nurses and hired help.

No. What about wet nurses and hired help? Did they have no stressful work, or did they have wet nurses or hired help of their own? Cooking and laundry and spinning used to occupy a lot of women's time.

Once a woman had a child, family would usually come to minimize the stress at the home.

Yes. Living in an extended family is much easier. Judging by the ages of her children, she has been a full-time mom for five years. It's impossible to do this alone and lead an "instagrammable" life at the same time. At some point you have to say, "fuck it, I don't care if your pants are covered in dry mud, they are dry and that's all that matters" or "fuck it, we're eating frozen lasagna today. Again" or "fuck your colic, Imma put the cot outside and listen to some relaxing music instead" or "fuck it, I ain't ironing anything ever again". If you have a sufficiently neurotic personality that you can't do this, you will break down sooner or later.

It’s easy to be confused about the etiology of stress. Wet nursing is not a stressful occupation. Generally speaking, when humans are doing tasks that they evolved to do, the task isn’t mentally taxing. (There was a study last month about how loggers have high life satisfaction, one of the highest of any profession. This is weird until you realize, “wait, men were designed to cut out trees and be in forests, of course they do.) A young woman who previously had a child nursing a child is possibly the least stressful task a person can do. Wet nursing was a regulated and solid profession for these women. Some of the oldest contracts we have are Babylonian contracts specifying nursing protocol for wet nurses. Remember that some women are born with what we moderns call humongous mommy milkers, and that breastfeeding significantly reduces their risk of breast cancer. Someone like Abigail Shapiro was designed by God to nurse babies, not to be an eh opera singer, and because she didn’t nurse babies she had to cut her boobas off (which is a crime against God). Women are literally designed to be around babies and there are a number of studies showing extensive health benefits for woman-child contact. Of course, when you raise every girl from 6-21 in a sterile classroom and tell them they should be a girlboss, maybe it’s stressful for them.

Spinning is a flow state activity. Not only is it not stressful, it is the very antagonist of stress. Cooking and cleaning are not stressful when you were raised to do this at 6 and mastered it at 10. Plug in “cleaning inspo” to YouTube and behold a bountiful gender imbalance. Then check out the gender ratio of whoever watches the great British bake-off.

But yeah, hired help would certainly have stressful lives. They were the bottom rung of society. Today we just feed them GMO slop and over-medicate them and whatever.

A young woman who previously had a child nursing a child is possibly the least stressful task a person can do. Wet nursing was a regulated and solid profession for these women.

Yes, but they still had to cook and wash and clean and do the rest of chores. It's not like they could scroll TikTok all day between the feedings.

Generally speaking, when humans are doing tasks that they evolved to do, the task isn’t mentally taxing

... no? Both "strenuous exercise", "difficult intellectual work", and "complex conflicts" are things people evolved to do, yet are 'mentally taxing'. Most efficient use of resources usually involves almost exhausting them sometimes (otherwise you use more!). This is like saying 'during evolution, human life was always good', forgetting the prevalence of disease / parasites.

You’re right that moderate exercise is something humans evolved to do, which is why it shown to be healthy in a number of ways and protective of stress.

Semiregular strenuous exercise is something humans evolved to do, and it's still mentally taxing - no matter how fit you are, you'll be tired and a lot less able to do difficult intellectual stuff after a long game of / session at the gym. I'm not saying it's bad, just that it's 'mentally taxing'. Evolution involved playing a lot of different tradeoffs against each other, not just a bunch of unreserved goods in all contexts.

The kinds of exercise humans evolved to do were long walks or jogs as a group to obtain a reward. The Hunter gatherer tribes still existent would walk to follow herds, and there are some that jog out to tire an animal (humans are the best at endurance jogging, not sprinting). You then have the exercise of chopping wood or obtaining dwelling materials.

Modern strenuous exercise attempts to be cost efficient but humans didn’t quite evolve for “sprinting for no reason” or “repeatedly lifting up extremely heavy thing while laying down”. When you take a fat American and you place him in a European city where he has to walk 30 minutes to obtain the buffalo meat cappuccino, this is generally considered relaxing and is why a lot of people are promoting walkable cities. There are studies on this. Importantly, humans evolved to not exercise when there is no salient appetizing reward.

Human males often evolved to fight, I suppose. I think men would be a lot more relaxed if they got to punch their boss.

But I’m at a loss why you think humans evolved to do difficult intellectual work. That’s the one thing we do that we are least evolved to do, and so it requires tremendous social incentive, decades of training, and the decidedly non-evolutionary skill of reading to accomplish. We did evolve to learn complex physical skills through imitating older members of the community, but that is much different.

I agree that most exercise was light over long durations, and the fact they're light + long-duration means they don't cause one to be that tired, but that coexisted with less-frequent shorter periods of strenuous exercise, which do cause exhaustion. Things like fighting other humans, moving heavy things.

We did "evolve to do difficult intellectual work". Things like planning for human conflicts or making boats are quite complicated.

While I have no doubt that most women would rather hold babies than make spreadsheets, and that mothering is probably much less stressful for women who are used to being around children requiring active care, being incredibly busy all the time(and just mathematically most women cannot have hired help, at most 50% of them can, and that’s assuming women do literally nothing else) is actually really stressful.

Of course. Women today are stressed because they have to work stressful jobs in addition to being mothers, in addition to being informed citizens. But it’s not busyness per se, it’s disparate tasks, non-mastered tasks, and ennui. The Amish fill up their day with busyness in excess of the girlboss cohort, and yet they have limited stress. This is because many of their tasks fit the Csikzentmihalyi model of optimal flow (among other reasons)

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1049386707000369

If you have a sufficiently neurotic personality that you can't do this, you will break down sooner or later.

I wish I had a meme of a woman thinking she can handle a situation, with a giant looming monster behind her labelled "Statistically likely to be highly neurotic". And I doubt their statistical likelihood of being highly agreeable helps either. That peer pressure to fit in with all your "friends" instagrammable life is a bitch and a half.

These counterfactuals of "Yeah, if women just weren't neurotic, their lives would be a breeze" make me want to go "And while we're playing in fantasy land, what if I earned $1m every time I jacked off?"

But they are what they are. They appear to have a biology purpose designed to extract care for children out of them with a big ass stick of neuroticism, and not much carrot to go along with it. It's no wonder when Dworkin style feminist began exploring the human condition with respect to women, they began reacting with horror and disgust to childbearing and families.

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