Bill writes the following in response to earlier entry on fathers and daughters:

I think (decent) fathers want for their daughters what they have always wanted: a home and a life which give them the greatest chance of rightly-ordered flourishing.  For a long time, back to say Greek antiquity, giving her the best chance at this or something close to it meant preparing her for her role in a rightly-ordered home and helping her find a proper mate.  But this is much less true today and is becoming less true as we go along.

Women cannot simply expect that they will be able to find a suitable man who wants a traditional marriage.  The norms supporting that expectation are weak and are perhaps getting weaker still.  In northern europe now, most babies are born out of wedlock.  Among the American underclass, the same is true.  Even among the more functional elements of our society, the expectation that wives will make large contributions to the family’s financial support is nearly universal.

We have several friends and acquaintances who have four & five relatively young children and a mother who works significantly outside the home, for example.  And plenty of men and women denigrate stay-at-homes or invent implausible stories for why their family can’t do that.  So, perhaps the best we can do is to encourage our daughters to hedge their bets by ensuring that they can support themselves reasonably well and can contribute financially to their future family, should the need arise.  This means a greater career orientation than before.

What *I* want for my daughter is what my wife has.  A family in which she is free to focus on child-rearing, especially when her children are young, and free to pursue career or volunteerism when the children become less demanding.  Should I raise my daughter as if I think that outcome is nearly certain?  I think not.  Because it isn’t nearly certain, even if she is ideally prepared for that role.  I can’t change society’s current norms by preparing my daughter as if those norms were as I wish they were.  There is also the problem that, given the much later age of typical marriage today, people tend to meet their spouses at work or through work connections.  This makes it helpful for a daughter to be around workplaces where good catches are and to be interesting to the good catches there.  And the career orientation is good for both.

It would be great if couples met at dances in church basements in their late teens, took seriously their families’ opinions of the quality of their prospective mates, married in their early twenties, and had babies soon thereafter.  One of my in-laws did roughly this in the mid-1970s.  But it would be irresponsible to raise our children for that world when we don’t live in that world.

I agree that dads don’t have to be jerks about it, as the men in your stories seem to be, but there have always been jerks who get carried away.  And I think we should guard against judging people too harshly just because they don’t have full, articulated, nuanced control over the values they are passing on.  Because 50% of men are of below average intelligence . . .

Laura writes:

I agree that in day-to-day interactions, we should not blurt out our negative reactions to others. I personally like the man I mentioned who is anxious for his daughter to be a lawyer.  But, in order to retain any ideals at all, we judge. I judge of myself, as well as others. My friend, though he wouldn’t express it to me, would think harshly of me if I were not preparing my own children for what he considers to be a good life.

The purpose of this blog is to judge. The goal is not to take cheap shots at others, including those who through low intelligence or insensibility look all around and see no evidence of social disaster. Humanity, except in periods of social breakdown, has never followed the lead of the unthinking. Besides, they have their own blogs.

So the question is not whether we should judge, but what is the proper conclusion. What should fathers ideally want for their daughters? Obviously what they may want for their daughters is not necessarily attainable. I wasn’t addressing that in my original post. I was looking at what men want today and it seems to me that many do not want their daughters to devote themselves to home and think it is weak and shameful for them to do so. A father’s words and tone are significant. What he wants matters.  A daughter can sense what a father expects even if he doesn’t come right out and say, “I want you to be president someday.”

I honestly don’t think you can prepare a daughter for anything and everything. A man is still basically raised to be a man. Why must a woman be raised to be both a man and a woman? Women are not born; they are made. Or, a better way to put it might be: Women are born, but then un-made. I don’t mean girls should only be educated in baking pies. I’m talking about the general direction of their lives and, most importantly, the impressions they receive from parents and others about what is worthwhile. I constantly find parents boasting about their daughters who are heading along paths radically opposed to any kind of sane family life or personal happiness.

Parents were never guaranteed of a secure future for their daughters. It is paranoia to believe that if one’s daughter is not prepared for a full-throttle career she will not survive financially.  Most women can get ready for traditional roles and make an adequate living in lesser jobs in the meantime. That’s what women did in the very recent past. Remember: jobs, especially the best jobs, are not unlimited. The more women that occupy those jobs, the lower men’s earnings and the more men knocked down the ladder. It’s simple math.

Unfortunately, women encouraged in large numbers to be both careerists and mothers lead to what you see all around: profound social schizophrenia and the willful neglect of children, men and marriage. In any event, I don’t think you need to commit your daughters to some dangerous traditionalist experiment. But, it is never harmful to let them know they will find a happy and stimulating future if they do what women have done for many thousands of years.

By the way, I don’t agree that a job is necessarily the best place to meet a man. The many single women who return every night to empty apartments or fatherless children would tell you otherwise.

Laura adds:

Also, a woman at home is not doomed to boredom and uselessness when her children are grown. That’s another feminist assumption.

 I remember how Allan Bloom in his book, The Closing of the American Mind listed all the ill-effects of feminism on culture, particularly high culture, and then dismissed it all by saying, in so many words, “We can’t go back because women have only two or three children now and they won’t have enough to do when their children are grown!” Astounding! We must accept the demise of the American mind and American culture because women don’t (and can’t?) have more than two children anymore and because they have not a thing to do – not a thing – for their families, for the old, for their communities, for the pursuit of their own multifaceted interests when they are healthy and unoccupied by children.  Mind blowing!

In fact, there is too much for women to do.  For one, they could help find mates for all the hapless career women who are single and can only look for marriageable men on the job. For two, they might help counsel said young women, as older women have done for generations, about the foolishness and self-destructive stupidity of promiscuity and single motherhood and divorce. Three, they might bring peace and sanity to sterile neighborhoods.

They might decide to be instead of do. They might be what women had always been before they were disastrously transformed into pseudo-men: the custodians of intangibles and the caretakers of everyday existence. I can’t count all the things they can be in their own sphere. Your daughters will never be bored unless they lack for love for all that you yourself hold dear for your children and your grandchildren.

I know your fundamental point is that this is all well and good, but it’s no longer practical. I say, let’s want this first and then decide if it’s impractical . Let’s want what is best. We certainly won’t get it if we don’t.

Bill replies:

Thanks for your reply.  I have no problem with judgment, rather I think that harsh judgments should be reserved for those most culpable.

This would include people who fully understand what they are doing, who are in positions of trust and/or authority, people with significant intellectual, rhetorical, artistic, or other gifts and who choose to abuse their positions, gifts, and etc by turning them to
attacking traditional culture.  I agree with mainstream conservatives about little, but their choice to focus scorn on the academy, elite journalism, the arts, and the entertainment industry is spot on.  The stories you told and similar ones I could tell are depressing.  But I think we should be outraged not at the poor fools who parrot our modern values but at the vicious maniacs who propagate those values.

“Parents were never guaranteed of a secure future for their daughters. It is paranoia to believe that if one’s daughter is not prepared for a full-throttle career she will not survive financially.  Most women can get ready for traditional >roles and make an adequate living in lesser jobs in the meantime. That’s what women did in the very recent past.”

The story you told was short, so maybe I am filling in the details in my head differently than you intended.  The law is not synonymous with a full-throttle career.  The income and hours of lawyers are bimodal: there is a minority who work 70 hours a week and make hundreds of
thousands of dollars a year — very roughly these are the lawyers who work in “big law.”  Then there is a large majority who have much more modest work hours and salaries — they practice low-powered corporate law, real estate law, etc.  As long as you are off the big law,
high-powered track, there are lots of ways to have flexible work arrangements, to take extended periods out of the workforce, etc.

Given current conditions, I think the right way to go is to encourage daughters to go into fields where they will have the most flexibility.  Flexibility in how many hours they work and flexibility in the option to take years out of the work force.  But fields where they can rejoin and earn a middle class income by themselves if that becomes
necessary.

“Remember: jobs, especially the best jobs, are not unlimited. The more women that occupy those jobs, the lower men’s earnings and the more men knocked down the ladder. It’s simple math.
Unfortunately, women encouraged in large numbers to be both careerists and mothers lead to what you see all around: profound social schizophrenia and the willful neglect of children, men and marriage. In any event, I don’t think you need to commit your daughters to some dangerous traditionalist experiment. But, it is never harmful to let them know they will find a happy and stimulating future if they do what women have done for many thousands of years.”

There is a distinction here which it seems to me is getting  obliterated: the distinction between “how should society’s norms be” and “how shall I react, given what norms society actually has.”  I can’t boost my daughter’s future husband’s income by discouraging her
from getting valuable job skills.  Society can do so if everyone discourages their daughters from getting valuable job skills.  But it isn’t your friend who is in the way of that, it’s the dudes I mention above.

Anyway, I just discovered (or maybe rediscovered, I’m not sure) your blog, and am enjoying reading back through your posts.  It is such a joy to find a new and interesting blog since I can consume a big dose of awesome all at once, rather than in dribs and drabs as the author produces it.

Laura replies:

Thanks for reading and for the praise. 

Let me repeat that I understand your sincere desire to do best by your daughters. I recognize – believe me, I recognize – this is not easy in today’s world. Also, I take very seriously your point that we must distinguish between ideal standards and realistic choices.

The problem is that in looking for a realistic option, I think you are accepting some very unrealistic assumptions and expectations. Few careers are truly flexible, except low-level mindless ones. And, if your daughters are intelligent, these low-level jobs may offer an unsatisfying life and interfere with their natural desire to do something well.  I’m not sure why you wouldn’t encourage them to pursue simple, undemanding jobs until they get married, to get an education and broaden their minds in preparation for marriage and motherhood. Becoming a lawyer is an all-consuming committment for quite a few years. Believe it or not, no one who manages a home is entirely devoid of marketable skills. If misfortune strikes and they experience a divorce, they might not be able to put together a glamorous career, but in all likelihood they would survive (also, most husbands are still required to contribute to the support of a wife they have divorced.)

Anyway, I address this issue in greater detail in my latest article, called The Balance Myth.  Thanks for reading.

Please follow and like us: