JESSE POWELL WRITES:

The federal government has released the preliminary birth data for 2008. For the first time the out-of-wedlock birth ratio is over 40 percent in the United States, at 40.6. For non-Hispanic whites the ratio is at 28.6 percent; for Hispanics (who may be of any race) it is 52.5 percent. For non-Hispanic blacks it is at 72.3 percent.

Of special note, the black out-of-wedlock birth ratio stayed about the same for 10 whole years, from 1995 until 2005 at about 70 percent (in 1995 it was 69.9 and in 2005 it was 69.3.) One would have hoped that this ratio had hit some kind of natural ceiling and that it couldn’t go any higher. Perhaps that was the end point of family breakdown and human resiliency meant it couldn’t continue to climb. Sadly, that is not the case. The black out-of-wedlock birth ratio has risen steadily and quickly for three years in a row. In 2005, the non-Hispanic black out-of-wedlock birth ratio was 69.9. In 2006, it was 70.7. In 2007, it was 71.6 and in 2008, 72.3 percent.  Read More »

IT IS WRONG to say that all egalitarian marriages are bad, just as it is inaccurate to say that all traditional marriages are good. In fact, there are some very happy ones in the former category. Nevertheless, the significantly higher divorce rate among dual-career couples is no statistical quirk. There is sometimes a level of suspicion and tension in the egalitarian marriage that is utterly contrary to its ideals of equity and the sharing of burdens. There is, among other problems, what Mrs. Pilgrim calls this “fear of being snookered.”

I ran into a friend today who is a typical casualty in many ways of one of these strange and unnatural bonds. 

He was disposing of debris outside his home and I stopped to talk.

Will his wife be moving back in?, I asked. We know each other well enough for me to pry.

No, he said. She will not be moving back in. In fact, pretty soon they will both be gone. They will be selling their house.

Read More »

GUY, the pseudonymous author of What Women Never Hear, the Internet’s best source of love advice for women, regularly opens the car door for his wife. In a recent post, his wife describes the reaction of a man who witnessed this uncommon scene.

Guy remarks, “Until women figure out how to get men to change, men will continue to let their women flop around in an atmosphere of manly inattentiveness.” It’s true. Opening a car door may seem a trivial thing, but it is symbolic of the feminine privileges, including complete dependency on one man, exchanged for the cold and heartless certainties of money and power.

IN THIS PREVIOUS entry, a feminist executive laid out her vision of the egalitarian dual-income marriage, stating that it is more romantic, fairer and less stressful than the traditional model of a working husband and homemaking wife. There is nothing new about what she says. It is now utterly mainstream. Many accept it and many others believe the traditional marriage is no longer economically possible. Of course, believing it is no longer possible, regardless of whether or not that is true, ensures that it is no longer possible.

Here, a reader responds to our feminist commenter’s specific points.

James P. writes:

Maggie Fox writes,

“I stand by my statement that power corrupts. I have personally experienced the temptations of power. How easy it is in a position of power to arrange matters to suit one’s own convenience! How easy it is to become arrogant, or give short shrift to people who need things from you!”

This is the tedious feminist view that everything is a function of power relations. The idea that a man who is a sole provider has – or wants – a slave to exploit is simply weird. A normal man regards the women he loves as a treasure to be cherished, not as a resource to be utilized and arrogantly commanded. This is even more true if she is the mother of his children. And if he does want a female slave, how is it possible to obtain one in a world where no-fault divorce and restraining orders are readily obtainable? Read More »

CHRISTOPHER ROACH WRITES:

I found this story about women protesting different standards regarding male and female nudity quite funny in its earnestness, and the simultaneous demand to (a) show off sexual power while (b) castigating men for being victims of the same.

Read More »

MRS. PILGRIM WRITES:

Your continuing conversation with Ms. Fox has raised some points in my mind.

Ms. Fox is quite, quite adamant that “power corrupts,” and this is why she so vehemently opposes male authority; it might, maybe, could possibly be abused at some point to the detriment of some dumb woman who was fool enough to trust the fellow. This seemed like an interesting line of thought, so I proceeded along with it: Any situation in which one person has another at a disadvantage, requiring that the latter rely on the former for his well-being, must be eliminated in the interests of avoiding abuse of power.

Thus, we must bid farewell to the lawyer, the surgeon, the teacher, the psychiatrist, the architect–anyone who, by virtue of having greater knowledge of a subject than others, might abuse the trust that others would place in him. After all, what if the lawyer sells you out to your opponents in exchange for a healthy bribe? What if the surgeon performs an unnecessary procedure on you? What if the architect designs your house badly? What if, what if, what if? What if we started treating any specialist with the same kind of mistrust as Ms. Fox seems to demonstrate for her own husband (or at least advocates that every woman share)?

I submit that, not only would the economy come to a screeching halt, but our government would utterly dissolve — because, after all, aren’t those “representatives” we elected in a position to abuse the power we just handed them?

Extreme, is it? Ah, but it’s all the same attitude. Where does it stop, this fear of being snookered?

Ms. Fox basically proposes that trust somehow reduces or removes one’s capacity for love, and this proposal should boggle anyone’s mind. What, precisely, does she think “love” is, if relying on someone else to provide something needed can only destroy it? How does she square this “love” with the need to maintain permanent defensive walls against the possibility of being had? She claims that traditional wives “have difficulty relaxing in their own homes as they struggle to care for everyone else,” but how can the egalitarian wife ever relax if she must be on her guard against her own husband?

I think you are certainly correct, Mrs. Wood, to point out that she accuses traditional wives of being mercenary, but the question still remains why she, a very obvious egalitarian feminist, thinks that an emotional response to hormonal fluctuations heightened by temporary infatuation ranks higher in morality or self-interest than a careful consideration of the character of a prospective husband. She is saying, in effect, “Since I have my own paycheck, I can feel free to take up with any jack-leg who makes me giggle when we’re drunk“–and that this is superior! (Also, it raises the question of whether feminism is really about equality, and not about making men into lapdogs and women into wards of the State?)

I submit that, for all her talk, she cannot bring herself to trust Mr. Fox, and rationalizes it as normal and even desirable. I further submit that she undercuts her own feminism by arguing that diversity is not merely unproductive but detrimental to any functional relationship (“We understand each other’s problems at work because we have both had similar experiences”). Read More »

Jennine writes:

I saw this and immediately thought of you since you have the gift of pointing out the absurdities of our society. I love it when the news, and science, states the obvious as if it is some great revelation.

This article must mean that God intended breasts for some purpose other than being photographed, stared at, operated on, and squeezed into Miracle bras?

Read More »

ELDER GEORGE WRITES:

Western society suffers from a lack of nurturing, and is love-starved; it has attempted to supply through institutions and material means the non-material qualities necessary for the development of life.

A growing factor in creating a love-starved society is unwed motherhood, which now accounts for 40% of births in America and for 50% in France. Unwed motherhood results in a non-conducive environment for providing nurturing love, thus it exacerbates the downward spiral of love-starved Western society. Their children are dumped into after school programs when still in diapers and at best receive nurturing love on an installment basis.

….  a proper life comes from the unseen inner qualities of men and women, not from institutions. Paul said there is no single gift that you have not received. Matthew contains the words “There is nothing covered that shall not be revealed; and hid that shall not be known.”

In the duality of the physical universe there are two poles or powers. The first is the masculine principle, which is the assertive influence of the universe and supplies the structure, direction, and environment necessary for the second, the feminine principle—the receptive entity—to provide the nurturing love necessary for all of existence. These two poles working together provide a unity of purpose in the physical world as humankind progresses on its spiritual journey.

OUR INDEFATIGIBLE defender of feminism, Maggie Fox, responds to comments in the previous entry. She argues that traditional marriage, in which a woman relies on a man for financial support and the man relies on a woman for non-financial support, “thwarts romance” and should not be publicly promoted. I have interspersed my comments with hers because she makes so many points.

Mrs. Fox, a corporate manager who has been married since 1997 and has no children, writes:

I stand by my statement that power corrupts.  I have personally experienced the temptations of power.  How easy it is in a position of power to arrange matters to suit one’s own convenience! How easy it is to become arrogant, or give short shrift to people who need things from you!  Read More »

Kristor writes:

The contrast you drew here between the adversarial concept of human relations exemplified in what Maggie Fox has written, versus the Christian notion that human relations are founded upon love, got me thinking. All the talk of egalitarianism emanating from the left side of the aisle – and, nowadays, from most of the right side of the aisle, too – presupposes that power and authority are necessarily, automatically wielded not in love and self-giving sacrifice, but in self-seeking use of others as means to ends. Read More »

IN THIS previous entry, a female corporate executive stated that working mothers are good for business. Despite high levels of unemployment, especially among young men seeking entry-level positions and men in their 50s and 60s, she said she cannot find adequate workers unless she offers a good parental leave package. Here is her response to my comments along with further remarks of my own.

Maggie Fox writes:

I had mentioned following up on the issue of the separation of mothers from their children at an early age. I think the separation of family members during the work day is a product of industrial capitalism, rather than feminism. Gone are the days when extended families worked together in agrarian villages or tribes of hunter-gatherers. I am not advocating that we turn back the clock, as I am quite fond of supermarkets, flush toilets, and the like. Rather, I think we need to accept that industrialization (far more than feminism) has wrought inevitable changes to human relations, including the creation of the isolated nuclear family and a more anonymous, overwhelming society that easily leads to a sense of alienation among all too many people.

Read More »

ELIZABETH WRIGHT WRITES:

Laura wrote in the previous entry on women’s fashions:

“Most women feel the gaze of others on their exposed cleavage. It’s distracting. I don’t know how these women on television concentrate.”

How the women concentrate? I don’t know how the men concentrate. I’ve watched as a woman being interviewed by a man is sitting there in a mini-skirt that climbs half-way up her thighs with endless legs exposed. The male interviewer is supposed to concentrate on the subject matter, while confronted with a female body that is half undressed. With or without cleavage added to the scene, I’ve always thought this was most unfair. It’s as if women are saying to men, “Hey, we know how you’re made and understand your natural impulses, but we enjoy making you uncomfortable and watching you squirm.”

Read More »

ALEX A. from England writes:

Here’s an item concerning a traditional interpretation of dancing that might interest you. My source is The Book of the Governor, a sixteenth century guidebook to the acquisition of social graces. It was written by Sir Thomas Elyot and first published in 1531. Elyot gives advice on how to become a cultivated, well mannered, and virtuous member of the ruling class. Here’s what he has to say about the emblematic significance of dancing:

“In every dance of a most ancient custom, there danceth together a man and a woman, holding each other by the hand or the arm, which betokeneth concord. Now it behoveth the dancers and also the beholders of them to know all the qualities incident to a man, and also all qualities to a woman likewise pertaining. 

A man in his natural perfection is fierce, hardy, strong in opinion, covetous of glory, desirous of knowledge, appetiting by generation to bring forth his semblable. The good nature of a woman is to be mild, timorous, tractable, benign, of sure remembrance, and shamefast. Divers other qualities of each of them may be found out, but these be most apparent and for this time sufficient. Read More »

HERE, IN a miscellaneous entry, are questions from readers from the last few days.

Lisa writes:

As my daughter and I were in the goat barn for many hours this past few days after nearly all our milking does “decided” to have their kids all at once, I looked around in amused amazement at all these gals’ very female behavior. These new mothers need quiet, peace, protection, good food, kind words, a little affection, a little diversion, and attentive observation to be good mothers and milk producers. Read More »

KIDIST PAULOS ASRAT, here and here, writes about the long and often tousled hairstyles of female anchorwomen and Ann Coulter. She speculates that this loose, unrestrained bedroom look on women in power is an effort to recapture lost femininity. The more manly women become, the more they feel the need to flaunt their sexuality.

Read More »

IF YOU have never visited James Kalb’s website Turnabout, I highly recommend it, especially his Anti-Feminist Page. Kalb is the author of The Tyranny of Liberalism, a thoughtful and absorbing book on the soft oppression of “equality by command.” I will never forget visiting Kalb’s extended essay on feminism at Turnabout years ago and feeling as if clouds had dispersed after a long storm. I agreed with every word. Rereading it now, I still feel the warming influence of its clarity and insight.

Kalb writes:

The aim of feminism, therefore, is to create a new kind of human being in a new form of society in which age-old ties among men, women and children are to be dissolved and new ones constituted in accordance with abstract ideological demands. In place of family ties based on what seems natural and customary and supported by upbringing and social expectation, feminism would permit only ties based on contract and idiosyncratic sentiment, with government stepping in when those prove too shaky for serious reliance. There is no reason to suppose the substitution can be made to work, let alone work well, and every reason to expect the contrary. Feminism does not care about reason, however, or even about experience of the effects of weakened family life. It is in fact ideological and radical to the core. There can be no commonsense feminism, because doing what comes naturally gets a feminist nowhere. Read More »

  HANNON WRITES:

Have you watched ABC’s “Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution”? I watched two episodes tonight. Aside from the nutritional insights that many Americans need to have brought to their attention it is also a compelling, and chilling, snapshot of a “government program.” The setting is Huntington, West Virginia.

Read More »