Excellent post, Echidne! I love the clarity and cool reason with which you rip apart this kind of bogus feminist-bashing bullshit.
As you point out, Dowd's "evidence" for the trends she bemoans is entirely bogus -- based entirely on anecdote and (other) badly reasoned, poorly sourced articles and books. I've often thought that all journalists should be required to take a course in social science research. They need to get it through their thick skulls that highly selective anecdotes are NOT the same thing as actual evidence.
Another thing I can't help but thinking is that this book is Dowd's way of dealing with her own unhappiness. Any regular reader of hers can tell you that she's written numerous columns about her problems with men. Dowd seems to think that the reason she's never found true love/marriage/whatever is that she's too successful and therefore intimidates men. Well, I don't know what her issues are, but it seems to me that this book of hers is an attempt to blame feminism for her failed romantic relationships. This kind of feminism-bashing reveals something sad and decidedly unattractive about Dowd. Rather than looking within herself and taking responsibility for her own problems, she'd rather blame the one force that, more than any other in history, has dramatically improved women's lives.
Unlike you, Echidne, I've never exactly been in the position of "swatting men away like flies." But I'm smart, strong, and an outspoken feminist who also happens to be (very) happily married. And I know plenty of other strong, feminist women who are likewise happily partnered. This proves nothing, of course -- these are just my counterexamples to Dowd's anecdotes. But it's an example of how anecdotes are too individualistic, impressionistic, and prone to selection bias to serve as the basis of a solid argument, let alone prove anything real about the outside world.
Thanks for your kind words, vulture (!).
Adding the fly-swatting bit may have been a mistake, however true it happens to be. 
As a certified male of the species, I can confirm that some of us do enjoy being hunted...
.
Dowd's full of horse-pucky on this one. If she'd get her head out of Mt. Olympus from time to time (or whatever rarefied atmostphere she's travelling in), she'd see that for most women, work is a financial necessity regardless of their marital status. And that not all men are Rolex-wearing "hunters" seeking out their next Maxim-babe. I don't know if this is Maureen's problem with men, but I have known women who are high-achievers yet will only consider men who are even higher-achievers as mates. You can't blame feminism for that.
some days i think, "ooh prada!" other days i think, "ooh babies". i like to shop, but it's not my life. i also like baseball and love playing sports. sometimes i feel flirty and want to go skirty, but usually i'm sporting jeans and sneakers. i like getting my hair done, but i don't have to get it blown out before going shopping.
my point is, when it comes to me and all of my friends really, we fit no mold of what is female as defined by the stereotypes. we are all many things. and we're able to be so because those brazen women in the past stood up to stereotypes. those brazen hussies helped women like maureen dowd get to where she is today, being able to speak her mind (in my opinion). we all know gals who love to shop and do their nails, but for every one of them is another who doesn't, and another who likes it but also likes playing ice hockey and beating the crap out of someone. what's so wonderful about us is that we are not easily defined and categorized, sometimes, it just depends on which way the wind blows. some people call that fickle. others call it complex and/or undefinable.
i call it wonderful, and have come to love being a woman. which was not always so.
we fit no mold of what is female as defined by the stereotypes. we are all many things.
That's terrific and as it should be. This reality should clear the decks of the odious calls for token women on the Supreme Court, for afterall a woman doesn't fit any particular mold and every justice is an individual. While we're at it we should do away with Affirmative Action quota schemes in the workplace because here too every woman is an individual and she doesn't fit any stereotype. It would be stereotypical of employers to hire women to fit into stereotypical quota slots.
we fit no mold of what is female as defined by the stereotypes. we are all many things.
That's terrific and as it should be. This reality should clear the decks of the odious calls for token women on the Supreme Court, for afterall a woman doesn't fit any particular mold and every justice is an individual. While we're at it we should do away with Affirmative Action quota schemes in the workplace because here too every woman is an individual and she doesn't fit any stereotype. It would be stereotypical of employers to hire women to fit into stereotypical quota slots.
You are confusing the assertion at the beginning of this quote with who does the viewing of women as stereotypes. If it is those who refuse to hire them because they are women, then your argument disappears. And this is how I see it.
I like the part where everyone's shocked that women like to be considered attractive. Of course women like to be considered attractive. The PROBLEM is when the idea of "attractive" is extremely narrow, and when a person's entire worth turns on how attractive they are.
Pamela Anderson looks like a prostitute. No thanks.
On the other hand, I sent a bill to my highly successfull 1980 girlfriend. To cover all those fine dinners I paid for.
I'm still waiting for her payment.
MoDo is a twerp. Not that this is news, but then neither is anything in her book, so I guess we're even.
I wonder, when I bother to think of her at all, if she's ever interacted with a real live feminist? What would she make of me, I wonder, fifty years old, married to a man 12 years my junior, mother of 3, grandmother of 5, no longer in the work force but for stretches of our marriage the household's sole support? Feminist for 40 years, and still perfectly happy to pull my weight lifting gloves on and admire how my sparkly red nail polish contrasts with the buff leather... would her head explode?
(And if the answer is yes, would anyone like to front me the travel money to go find out first hand?)
Very nice comments by Echidne, vulture, Barbara, and everyone. MoDo is indeed a twerp and a good representative of NYTimes culture: privileged, powerful, and in the pocket of the status quo. They all know which side their bread is buttered on and enjoy the perks of their cultural power. Her entire take on women is journalistic impressionism. She has no serious ideas about "feminism" and, as everyone has pointed out, makes no effort to develop a serious argument or support it with real evidence. The Times and the people who write for it really need to get a clue.
MoDo is the female journalistic counterpart to David Brooks - all anecdote and emoting. You don't learn anything from reading their columns, nor do you encounter truly new ideas. And both are lacking in the empathy and imagination needed to produce insights about worlds other than their own Manhattan highlife circles, straight and gay.
Thank you for this wonderful post, your extraordinary blog, and for being you, whoever you are. You are a true treasure.
MoDo is the female journalistic counterpart to David Brooks
Ow. NancyP, that was true, but caustic - I can smell the burning flesh from over here.
Why don't we let these people download themselves into the Matrix and play their own game of There or Sims Online and leave the rest of us alone?
They want to be advertising, identifying with the images, or they are the folks behind the scenes, running and promoting the huge lifestyle industries and media that depend on the notional "girly chick" and the upper-middle-class SAHM and on "feminism" being a bad word.
The girls who read too many bridal magazines and want the dream wedding, the slightly older woman obsessed with marrying a doctor so that she can raise beautiful kiddies in a McMansion before she's too old, the young business man or lawyer who wants a model-calibre date on his arm -- they all bought the advertising.
NYC is infested with these people, which is why Dowd and the Times promote these memes: they're real to them. Feminism blows the upscale Sims world to bits, because it suggests that (a) these status quests are not important and (b) they actully reflect and promote social (gender) injustice.
The pomo turn or "postfeminism," evinced by Amy and Tango above, was a bad idea because it supports the image industries. If you can stay pomo enough to know that you're playing and that dress-up night isn't real, that's good, but some women don't know this.
Go ahead, say that I'm unattractive and can't get a man (I don't want one anyway). Keef at David Neiwert's blog abused me the other day, on the thread about the "Republican women are better looking" meme.
On edit:
replace "download" with "upload" (as a Ken MacLeod fan, I should know better);
replace "NYC" with "Manhattan," and probably specific neighborhoods.
Sara, I am quite sure that you are attractive. Republican women have stiffer hair, due to hairspray. That's the difference I've noticed. Hair. Must. Not. Romp.
Maureen Dowd can't find a man? Neither can I. Oh, wait, that might be because I ain't lookin'.
She's the Sylvia Ann Hewlett of the...whatever it is she is. What is she, anyway? I've never taken her for a feminist, though she's taken the feminists for plenty and never paid any of it back, not even with the courtesy to be grateful. She's got hers, she's done.
If she does find a man, she'll quit her job and start writing about babies and marriage.
This is such lazy-ass writing by Dowd. I guess I'd need to check the book itself to see what she says about her sources, and the degree to which she's made them composites...but I still expect she's employed the research methodology of "Cosmopolitan" magazine - they just make the shit up out of stuff they've overheard, or whatever the prevailing trend-winds have blown their way.
Doesn't Dowd have enough money? Can there be any other reason for writing this than easy money? IMO she's not unlike Coulter in this instance: she's dancing like a rhinestone be-decked poodle, for some kind of yummy patriarchal treat. (Poodles - actual real poodles? I like.)
I so have to go read me some Molly Ivins or Barbara Ehrenreich.
I have fun waiting to see how MoDo relates every topic to male/ female differences. Like that one of a couple of weeks ago that was about something stupid Bush did and how it's because men are lazy lions, or something.
Maybe this country is too rich Manhattan -centric. Doesn't MoDo seem like Carrie in Sex and the City? Maybe this is an affectation, or maybe there really are forty year old women who still go to discos and wax philospohical about men all the time.
Am I the only one who has absolutely no idea what "quid profiterole" is?
Am I the only one who has absolutely no idea what "quid profiterole" is?
I have no idea what it is, either, but I suspect that it's a play on "quid pro quo" and the idea of the fluffiness and sweetness of a profiterole.
Thank you for this wonderful post, your extraordinary blog, and for being you, whoever you are. You are a true treasure.
Thank you for this, Ann Bartow. I added it to my bragfile, to be read during darker moments of life. But it's you, the readers here, who are the real treasure, of course.
I know I'm going to buy this book in a guilty mad dash to Barnes & Noble and sit at home in my parlor reading it all night, stuffing my face with Trader Joe's low-fat cheetos and chewing my nails all the while.
Because I NEED some reason why I -- funny, loving, successful, talented, Ivy-educated,strong family & friend relationships, nice house, good relationship skills, no desire to make babies, leadership position in the community -- haven't had a date in 1.5 years. And not for lack of trying.
It's because I'm fat, right?
Peacebang,
Don't worry. After you read Dowd's book, just go read some Garance Ruta-Franka and you'll feel much better realizing that you, as a datum, don't exist.
I'm not sure if this is a joke, but Garance Ruta-Franke's article is a very careful one on the misuse of statistics in Hewlett's book. She points out why the figures Hewlett uses don't mean what Hewlett says they do, and she gives us better data.
There are always people who differ from averages, of course, if that is what Tangoman means by a datum not existing.
And the reasons why one doesn't get dates are varied. Have you tried asking someone out, Peacebang?
Echidne,
We both know that there are ways to massage data. You may have noticed my absence in the comments and my lack of effort in defending Hewlet's statistics. That doesn't mean that Garance's analysis was a true reflection of the problem - it just means that she outgunned Hewlet at the same game. For instance, did you notice Garance's omission of fertility data? Did you notice the omission of analysis for salaries quintiles? ($55,000 is a pretty low floor by which to judge success.) Did you notice that there was no mention of marital longevity? (women with higher levels of education tend to marry later so to do a comparison of marriage rates for 36-40 year old women doesn't tell you the same thing as comparing the marital success of women from the subgroups for each year of marriage. If the chance of divorce increases with marriage length then taking a snapshot of 36 year old women will overstate the divorce rate for the lower educated women and understate it for the over educated women because of their different mean ages of first marriage.) Did you notice the fudging around age categories:
High-achieving women between 28 and 35 are just as likely to be successfully married as other women who work full time, according to the national data. Fully 81 percent of high-achieving women between ages 36 and 40 had married at least once, as had 83 percent of all other working women, though only 62 percent of high-achieving and 60 percent of all other working women remained married, thanks to America's high divorce rate.
Hewlet's study was ideologically driven, and probably instigated by an ever increasing frequency of anecdotal evidence. Her study was poorly done. Garance's study was done in the service of putting out the fires of criticism that threaten the ideological foundations of feminism - "see everyone, there's no fire here, why there's not even any smoke."
Knowing Garance's professional ethics from reading her work I suspect that she too massaged the data and only reported results which were congruent with her thesis of obscurantism. Notice the omission here:
Only 7 percent of never-married high-achieving women between 28 and 35 had had children, according to the CPS. In contrast, fully 32 percent of other never-married working women had done so.
Elsewhere in the article she's talking about fertility of the 36-40 group of women. Here she gives up data on the fertility of the 28-35 group but only for the never marrieds. Where is the mention of the fertility of the 28-35 group who are married compared to the lower performing peers?
Also, both studies were conducted with a cohort of women who graduated from colleges when women were still in the minority. Today's graduates and young career women are facing a different "male situation" than their sisters of 15 years ago.
Where are the statistics for the over-40 groupings? Lot's of mid-life crisis happening here - lot's of men marrying younger women and lot's of women aren't going to get married again. How does this dynamic differ for high achieving women versus the control group?
If I have to go by anecdotal evidence I would favor Hewlet's take on the situation rather than Garance's "no smoke here" version, for of the professional women of my acquaintance, I know far more, proportionally, who are currently unmarried than the non-professional women. I know more over-40 divorced men who are remarried than over-40 divorced women. The remarriage rate for the non-professional women is higher than the professional women.
An honest look at the data would be interesting, for it would either confirm the anecdotal impressions or set up an interesting question of why anecdotal impressions are so powerfully diverging from the reality of women's lives. I think the former is more likely than the latter. Garance's article was by no means that study.
Anytime I see something by Garance Franka-Ruta my "bullshit detector" goes into super-sensitive mode. This time, again, she didn't disappoint.
I'm sure that there are problems with Ruta-Franke's analysis, but she wasn't doing a study. She just showed where the data was that should have been used by Hewlett. Instead, Hewlett manipulated the data that she had gathered.
Anecdotal evidence is problematic because we don't necessarily live in circles so wide that we'd catch everything that happens in the society, in the exact frequencies that a statistical study would find.
Besides, I know enough of Hewlett to know where her bias lies. Her whole life has been about babies, pretty much, so that is what she will assume everybody else wants to have, even after they turn fifty.
One problem with such anecdotal evidence you quote is that it tells us nothing about what the women who are married or unmarried would like to be. Maybe it is true that nonprofessional women are more likely to be married, maybe not, but if they are, perhaps it is because they can't afford to leave the marriage? Likewise, it could be that some professional women remain unmarried because they like it better that way.
The 50,000 floor in the salary data is actually pretty realistic, in my opinion. During the time frame of these studies the average full-time salary for women was in the high twenty-thousand range, if I remember correctly, so 50,000 would be almost twice that amount.
I actually have another critique of the Hewlett study somewhere, one that was done by a statistician, and it is very good. But I looked for it when I wrote the post and I can't find it. I changed computers inbetween so it might only be on an external disc.
And now that I think of my own circle for anecdotal evidence, I only have one high-achieving friend who is not married in her forties. She was, though, for many years, but the marriage went sour (for reasons having nothing to do with her job or earnings or such). And she has a new boyfriend these days.
On the other hand, I do know several women who are not professionals who are divorced or single in that age group.
LOL, 
I knew the counter-anecdotes would be deployed.
You'll still notice that I'm not defending Hewlett's study. There are far more works that speak to these sociological issues. Hewlett's, like Ruta's, is ideologically driven.
But of course I would use counter-anecdotes. That's the whole point of anecdotes. If one tells a true one (assuming one interprets it correctly), all one is saying that there is at least one case with certain characteristics.
But an anecdote can't even disprove something unless it is shared by those discussing the issue. I could always lie about anecdotes, for example.
Hewlett's, like Ruta's, is ideologically driven.
Sure. I have difficulty believing that any studies about something like this would NOT be ideologically driven. There is no neutral participant, after all. One can try to employ as neutral techniques as possible and one can use peer reviews to help clarify the issues, but there is still probably a certain amount of interest in the results turning one way or another. That's why it is so important that people with different ideologies all participate in research projects, though it is not enough, alone. The peer review system and seminars are necessary, too.
The type of knowledge we want to garner from these types of studies fall into the "the road not taken" category. There is little understanding to be gained in comparing the marriage and fertility data of Ph.D's and high school drop-out minimum-wage earning women for it's unlikely that the life trajectories of these two groups would mirror each other. More useful would be comparisons of the Ph.D cohort against their college graduating peers who made different life choices. What are the trade-offs each group made and how do they rate the happiness of their lives and how do the objective metrics compare.
Cool, I see that the time stamp just changed, or did I just travel backwards in time.
Feminism mostly changes the feminist, not the rest of the world.
There you go, Mo. There's your clue. Make good use of it.
This is such an interesting discussion.
Dowd's anecdotal data reads like the phony Time Magazine "trend stories" that Susan Faludi ripped to shreds in "Backlash".
This continual drumbeat in the MSM that successful career women are oh, so unhappy and oh, so unfulfilled is amazing to me. Where are all these terribly unhappy women who want to be housewives and Maxim models? My wife is a management design consultant and she's brilliant at it. She would go stir-crazy if she had no career and just stayed home all day. And I can't imagine the waste that that would entail -- the waste of talent and brainpower and business savvy.
Yet these books and articles and studies seem to be trying to convince successful women that they're alone, that they're freaks, that they don't realize how unhappy they are. It's very weird.
Yet these books and articles and studies seem to be trying to convince successful women that they're alone, that they're freaks, that they don't realize how unhappy they are. It's very weird.
Weird and an intended political effect, or so I believe. I have an archive of similar stories over the last fifteen years or so, and there is a point to these stories. For example, their numbers rise whenever jobs are harder to get. So the effect would be to cut competition. And their numbers also rise when the radical cleric wing is especially powerful because they want women at home.
I am...
-single, never married, and unconcerned about it
-a high school graduate with a smattering of college courses here and there
-childless
-kinda old
-mostly straightish
-very low income (and concerned about it)
-computer literate
-feminist
-a person with friends of both sexes and all orientations
-totally not into expensive footwear
-not all that worried about dying alone, except for if they don't find my body for a few weeks, because that's gross, so I clearly have issues about post-mortem grossness, even though I will not be there to deal with it
-not at all certain that Maureen Dowd and I are part of the same species
Consumer culture wants me to hate what I am and long for something more, something that, when I finally buy it, will make me feel almost good about myself. But not quite. Once you've gotten where you've always believed you're supposed to be, you realize it's not the place, there's not the there there that you expected. You're not meant to find that place, because you might stop the endless spending of your money and your energy, and start noticing stuff.
If I ran into Maureen Dowd, I'd buy her a beer and chat with her. But I'm not going to buy her book, and I'm not going to buy the social model that generated it.
larkspur, that is so real and good.
larkspur,
I'm glad you're happy with your life's choices. I fully favor freedom for people to make up their own minds about how they want to live their lives. It's unfair for communities to impose such social obligations on people who don't want to take them on, for whatever reasons.
But you see there is a problem here, you knew there would be, didn't you. I sure hope that you've been economically productive earlier in your life because I don't relish the idea of having to suppport you in your old age. Back in the day when people relied on their families and communities to support them in old age, the childless old folks were an unwanted burden on the community. People had children as a form of old-age security. Today we live in more enlightened times and we've off-loaded the burden of senior to government and away from family. However this compact really only makes sense if people fulfill their obligations to produce "little economic engines" to fund their retirement in the future. Right now, you've saved yourself the burden of raising children, which is quite an expensive and time consuming task, but you will benefit from the taxes of other people's children in the future. Statistically your medicare and social security benefits will not be covered by the time adjusted value of your contributions. Hopefully you've been a productive member of society and have created enough economic value to self-finance your life's journey without being a burden on the rest of us.
Those people who have children make an investment in them and thus have a stronger moral claim to receive retirement and health benefits for their children are now working to support them, only this is done via the proxy of gov't. People who want to break the social compact should be free to do so if they also relieve the taxpayers of the social compact to support them in old age.
A few of my related thoughts on this here: http://www.nyu.edu/classes/siva/...ves/
002326.html
Back in the day when people relied on their families and communities to support them in old age, the childless old folks were an unwanted burden on the community
Like the Pope, say? Or the rest of the Catholic church? Or the Buddhist monks and nuns? Or George Washington?
Florence Nightinggale? Leonardo da Vinci? Michelangelo?
And what about the people who produce little engines not of economics but of crime? Should they be thrown into a debtor's prison in old age? Or what about those who have children with health problems? Debtor's prison for them, too? And then there are all those parents whose children may die young. Tsk, tsk.
Also, most people will not have children who earn enormous amounts. Maybe we should determine the economic value of everyone's potential offsprings and then decide if they are allowed to have any retirement benefits at all.
Like the Pope, say? Or the rest of the Catholic church? . . .
LOL. The Catholic Church and other organized religions have institutions to care for their elderly members. Washington was a man of means. Nightingale, though ill from her service in the Crimea, didn't rely on public assistance, and Da Vinci and Michealangelo both worked right to the end and both didn't rely on society to provide for their care.
Really, what's the problem here? If the social compact we have relies on intergenerational transfers to finance elder care then there had better be sufficient people in the younger generations to finance the care of the elderly. Falling fertility rates are a breaking of the implicit promises of this deal. And if you boil the problem down to its essence it really is immoral to expect strangers to support you - you should over the course of your life generate enough wealth to fund your way through life. That wealth generation can take a few forms apart from money in the bank, such as having children who in turn will be contributing to society, or generating wealth for other people. The point is that it is the wealth generation, not the wealth distribution, that underlies the moral stance. If you generate the wealth but you don't capture it you still have a moral claim to taxpayer support later in life.
Also, most people will not have children who earn enormous amounts.
That's completely fine, and expected. The point is that at the end of your life the books should balance. We can't have the majority of people being leeches on the public purse. A balance, rather than a surplus, is all that is required, and what's unfair about that - you take out of the system what you put in.
You can have as gentle and kind a society as you please with lots of social programs and still follow the rule. You may benefit from generous social handouts early in your life in the form of subsidized education but then be expected to be a net contributor during your working life and then again a net recipient in your retiring years. Terrific. However, if you contribute very little over the course of your working life then why does everyone owe you support in your later years. Some may want to support you through charity, and that's their decision, but others may have better uses for that money.
Tangoman, you are ignoring the point I was trying to make that people who don't have children may leave enormously important legacies for the rest of us. That is what I tried to show by the short list of people who died childless.
And people without children may have been supporting the previous generation and may also be taking care of the next one through taxes or direct service to the society in various ways. People with children may be a drain on the society from day one, too. Or not, but it's really simplistic to assume that it falls as neatly as you argue. But I'm very glad that I don't have to support you in your old age, though I'd like to point out that you should have no more children than is needed for the replacement rate as otherwise the contract is broken by making all of us pay too much in school taxes.
you are ignoring the point I was trying to make that people who don't have children may leave enormously important legacies for the rest of us.
I certainly do appreciate that argument. The legacies of those you cited were very important, however legacies are also left by people who do have children, and conversely, we can't assume that those who don't have children perfectly substitute societal legacy in place of children.
And people without children may have been supporting the previous generation and may also be taking care of the next one through taxes or direct service to the society in various ways.
And people with children may have been doing the same too. What you're saying here isn't a binary situation that applies strictly to childless people.
Seriously though, there are troubling demographic trends that are brewing. Social mobility is stagnating, entitlements are crowding out many functions of gov't, even if we start raising taxes on the rich. Most new job creation is being taken up by illegals. The fertility of our best and brighest is below replacement level and the fertility of our least promising citizens is at more than replacement level.
Any good liberal should be worried about the concentration of wealth, and what we're going to see if the middle and upper classes are having only 1 child is the estates passing to fewer children and thus a greater concentration of wealth. Think of a funnel and every generation the wealth of two families passes to the one family that their child married into. Why even that paragon of class warfare, Noam Chomsky, has created a trust to benefit his daughter and stiff the IRS.
With low social mobility the gini coefficient is going to rise higher. The best vehicle for raising social mobility is education but entitlements are growing at a pretty rapid clip and closing down opportunities to further subsidize education. Also, class, culture and genetics are playing a part in the roadblocks of education. Our underclass is growing and most of the underclass are net tax recipients over their lives. Societies must have a minimum level of "Smart Fraction" people who are the engines of economic growth. With the below replacement levels of fertility we're experiencing from our most able, and the road of opportunity for the small fraction of the underclass with the potential to climb to the upperclass being somewhat impeded, our "Smart Fraction" is decreasing.
At the same time many people are expecting gov't medicare and SS to finance their needs in the elder years.
And no, this isn't all some wingnut conspriracy - these are structural issues. For instance, we know that parental SES is correlated to success in school. With below replacement level fertility from those with the higher SES, and thus children who would reap the greatest benefit from schooling, we're counting on the children from lower level SES groups to capture the same benefit from their schooling experiences. That's not going to happen.
Earlier, in another comment, when I wrote about seed corn, and you didn't appreciate the comment, this is what I meant.
"...Back in the day when people relied on their families and communities to support them in old age, the childless old folks were an unwanted burden on the community...."
I don't accept this premise. It's a rhetorical device being used as an historical narrative. Everything I've read indicates that there were plenty of roles for them to fulfill, including parenting orphaned children, watching children while parents worked, teaching - either by formal classroom situation, or by story-telling, doing the less-strenuous work around the community, helping the sick and injured. (Suddenly I am remembering my great-grandfather on my mother's side, walking slowly down the gravel road in his beat-up overalls, all skinny and ancient, on his way to the pond to feed the ducks.)
So I guess I need to know what you're picturing in your "back in the day when people relied on their families..." scenario.
I'm also curious if it would make a difference to you if my failure to reproduce was not a "lifestyle choice", but caused by infertility. Or if I'd had children but had lost them to illness, a car crash, or an IED. Would that change your regard for me? Surely you can't view me the same way you would someone like Cindy Sheehan, whose carefully planned old-age support device got killed so young.
I don't know what is going to happen, not to me or to this society. All I know is that I'll continue to vote, obey the laws, support education, and stay alert. None of us survives childhood without the repeated - and usually invisible and unmemorable - intervention of strangers: the steadying hand on the escalator, the verbal reminder to a child about to cross a street, the instinctive foot on the brake when you see a ball bounce into the street, the cupped palm over a sharp table-edge as a little one toddles through a diner.
Believe it or not, I do these typical adult things not expecting a return on my investment. I do it because that's what we do for each other. It's the only thing that makes sense.
God knows I'm not unmoved by contemplating your portrayal of a toxic, parasitical old age. But your view seems to hinge upon intentionality. Would you regard me differently if I'd worked damned hard all my life, only to see my retirement nest egg smashed in the Enron collapse? Would you think that I ought to have been sharp enough to see that one coming?
Please understand I'm not telling you to shut up. We have to talk about these things. But dude, if you come by my house, please know I will always share my supper with you.
Maybe the reason MoDo can't get a date is that no man wants to see details of his sex life outed the next next time she's facing a column deadline?
Or maybe it's that whiff of desperation she exudes.
I was glad to see Echidne take her goddessly hatchet to this mess. I was embarrassed for MoDo. And it goes on for pages...
With low social mobility the gini coefficient is going to rise higher. The best vehicle for raising social mobility is education but entitlements are growing at a pretty rapid clip and closing down opportunities to further subsidize education. Also, class, culture and genetics are playing a part in the roadblocks of education. Our underclass is growing and most of the underclass are net tax recipients over their lives. Societies must have a minimum level of "Smart Fraction" people who are the engines of economic growth. With the below replacement levels of fertility we're experiencing from our most able, and the road of opportunity for the small fraction of the underclass with the potential to climb to the upperclass being somewhat impeded, our "Smart Fraction" is decreasing.
This tells me more than I want to know about your basic values. I don't want the particular topic of social Darwinism discussed on my blog.
I could have had Prada instead of babies?
DAMN. [thwacks forehead]. I blame the feminists.
Does this apply to Yves San Laurent as well? Because I could probably arrange a one-for-one swap, if it's from one of the classic collections, like say the gypsy collection of the early '70s. My kids are classics too, so it's even-steven.
Larkspur,
My point really boils down to an issue of contributing versus taking over the course of one's life. On a moral level, it really comes down to a personal calculus that is difficult to translate into gov't policy.
If someone can't have children then that isn't their fault. If someone loses their children then they shouldn't be penalized. The examples of old age activities that you provided were actually very useful contributions to society.
The problem is that many retired folks are not parenting orphaned children, watching children while parents work, teaching, doing the less-strenuous work around the community, or helping the sick and injured. Our society has lost that sense of community and we're mostly acting as disconnected units. It's not uncommon these days to find people who never talk to their neighbors.
One need only look to the looming crisis in Medicare, or the fiasco of the Pharmiceutical Drug benefit, to see that people want to suck from gov't more and more. The problem is that many of these retired people haven't contributed enough in taxes over their working lives to build up a surplus that can be drawn down in their golden years. Social Security isn't the big problem because the benefits are capped every month.
Back to my original point - kids used to be the parent's retirement plan. In a way that's still true, because you need a younger generation to pay the taxes to support the older generation, and this can work wonderfully if the optimum level of births is maintained. Couples who have at least 2 children implicitly keep their end of the bargain and people who chose not to have children are voiding that part of the bargain, so shouldn't they be compensating in another way to help prepare for their retirement years? Afterall, it is other people's children who will have to pay to look after them. The heart of the injustice in this situation is that the parents bear the largest financial expense of raising children and it is society that reaps the biggest financial reward. This injustice is compensated, in part, by the moral claim that the parents have to state financed support in their old age. What justification do purposely childless retirees have? I would think that their claim is morally restricted to drawing out via benefits what they contributed via contributions. Now some of these people could have been high earners and taxpayers over the course of their lives and were paying into the system far more than they were consuming as citizens. Who would argue that they shouldn't be entitled to support considering that over the course of their lives they've been net contributors to society.
The problem with generous social programs that are divorced from economic and demograhic reality is that they are not sustainable. It is not the design of the program that is the cause of the failure, it is the separation from reality. You can have a Leftist's nirvana of wealth redistribution schemes in society and if they're built on economic and demographic reality then they can be sustained, though now you get into optimization arguments. However, they will fail if there slowly develops an imbalance between those who are paying the bill and those who are receiving the goodies. Declining fertility combined with ever more generous social programs is a recipe for disaster.
Echidne,
This tells me more than I want to know about your basic values.
Actually that paragraph doesn't tell you anything about my basic values. All it tells you is that I'm aware of demographic trends, financing projections associated with social programs, and education outcome models correlated with SES, and lastly that I'm aware of the stagnation of social mobility in this country. No where have I advocated any policy based on my values that anyone could construe as being grounded in social darwinistic thought.
You're more than welcome to argue that Medicare doesn't have an unfunded liability in the trillions. You're more than welcome to point out to me that declining fertility doesn't pose a problem to intergenerational tax transfers, you're more than welcome to show me counterfactual data that demonstrate that low SES is not an impediment to education and has no correlation whatsoever to IQ. Show me I'm wrong in my analysis of this data.
"...If someone can't have children then that isn't their fault. If someone loses their children then they shouldn't be penalized....Couples who have at least 2 children implicitly keep their end of the bargain and people who chose not to have children are voiding that part of the bargain, so shouldn't they be compensating in another way to help prepare for their retirement years?...."
The wheels fall off this argument before it gets to the end of the driveway. Being penalized is at the heart of your point of view. What if one of the social-bargain children grows up to be Timothy McVeigh? Among other things, he cost the judicial system and various government entities a whole lot of money. (Among the other things, of course, is that he killed a lot of people, thus removing them from the pool of economic contributors, current and future.) McVeigh annihilated his parents' participation in your bargain. What do you do about that? How can your model not judge them?
It seems pretty much like the position of those who oppose legal, accessible abortion except in cases of rape or incest. Intentionality is everything: if you didn't mean to have sex, you shouldn't be penalized. If you meant to have sex, but didn't mean to get pregnant, you must be penalized.
If you meant to have at least two productive, useful children/workers, but couldn't (or did but they died under circumstances for which you can't be held culpable), then you shouldn't be penalized. If you didn't mean to have children, and subsequently didn't have them, you must be penalized.
That looks like an awful world. I'm done with this now. Of course I'll respond to any questions you want to ask, but other than that, I'm done.
Being penalized is at the heart of your point of view.
Give me a &^*(& break. You're kidding right?
Like penalizing those earning more money is any more virtuous.
Like using the ballot box to vote more benefits to the disadvantaged but shifting the bill onto the out-voted is a virtuous tactic and not penalizing the minority.
Like penalizing parents by expecting them to bear the majority of costs of raising the children but then expecting other people's kids to pay the taxes that will support the elderly in the future.
TangoMan,
I'm having flashbacks of wonderful arguments with my econ major friends! Thank you for bringing back such nostalgia! Have you considered the environmental impact of every person replacing themselves as your suggest? More pollution, less fresh water, more trash, more consumption of nonrenewable resources, etc etc. I can't imagine looking around the world and thinking that we need to sustain the current world population.
It is more morally permissible if I wish to live into old age and also work at a job which pays poorly that I have children I don't want and wouldn't be able to devote real love/time/interest in, rather than leaching off the government and my fellow tax payers in my old age?
Kathryn.
I'm having flashbacks of wonderful arguments with my econ major friends!
Glad to oblige
Have you considered the environmental impact of every person replacing themselves as your suggest?
The choice isn't up to anyone but the indiviudal. If you don't want children, no one is forcing the decision on you. Simply, you should be prepared to pay higher taxes that will be used to help finance your journey into old age. No muss, no fuss, that is unless you expect to be a freerider and take from society more than you've contributed. If you're unwilling to pay, through time deferred taxation, for your own medical expenses when you get old, then why should my kids pay them for you? I mean, isn't that really the heart of the question?
I can't imagine looking around the world and thinking that we need to sustain the current world population.
This remark reminds me of The Voluntary Human Extinction Movement, VHEMT:
As VHEMT Volunteers know, the hopeful alternative to the extinction of millions of species of plants and animals is the voluntary extinction of one species: Homo sapiens... us.
Each time another one of us decides to not add another one of us to the burgeoning billions already squatting on this ravaged planet, another ray of hope shines through the gloom.
When every human chooses to stop breeding, Earth's biosphere will be allowed to return to its former glory, and all remaining creatures will be free to live, die, evolve (if they believe in evolution), and will perhaps pass away, as so many of Mother Nature's "experiments" have done throughout the eons. Good health will be restored to the Earth's ecology... to the "life form" known by many as Gaia.
If you don't want children, no one is forcing the decision on you. Simply, you should be prepared to pay higher taxes that will be used to help finance your journey into old age.
And the childless already do pay higher taxes...
This remark reminds me of The Voluntary Human Extinction Movement, VHEMT:
As VHEMT Volunteers know, the hopeful alternative to the extinction of millions of species of plants and animals is the voluntary extinction of one species: Homo sapiens... us.
Each time another one of us decides to not add another one of us to the burgeoning billions already squatting on this ravaged planet, another ray of hope shines through the gloom.
When every human chooses to stop breeding, Earth's biosphere will be allowed to return to its former glory, and all remaining creatures will be free to live, die, evolve (if they believe in evolution), and will perhaps pass away, as so many of Mother Nature's "experiments" have done throughout the eons. Good health will be restored to the Earth's ecology... to the "life form" known by many as Gaia.
reductio ad absurdum
My brother's technique in all arguments. Gets tiresome.
Great post-great comments.
One of the reasons MoDo can't bag a man (grrr)is that she wouldn't look twice at anyone who makes less than 500K a year. Why would some Captain of Industry, or Michael Douglas, marry a fifty three year old woman (no matter how well preserved) who can't even pop out one or two heirs to the family fortune?
It's time to drop the crap, Maureen.
BTW, I don't have children, but every year my husband and I vote to raise our property taxes, so that other people's kids can still have sports and other after school programs.
You're welcome.
For instance, we know that parental SES is correlated to success in school. With below replacement level fertility from those with the higher SES, and thus children who would reap the greatest benefit from schooling
The thing you're leaving out here, and it's an awfully big thing, is that the children who would reap the greatest benefit from schooling adequately performed in a fully-funded and -staffed system would be the children who aren't being educated at home by their parents.
It always surprises me how many "realists" cheerfully elide the potential societal benefits of an educated and successful workforce.
I suppose it's that the people who are doing well now might not do as well if they had competition. Sort of a public-school version of legacy preference.
Julia,
is that the children who would reap the greatest benefit from schooling adequately performed in a fully-funded and -staffed system would be the children who aren't being educated at home by their parents.
Not quite. You seem to be operating under the impression that the SES causes IQ rather than the reverse or bidirectional effects. If your hypothesis (if I'm inferring correctly) was true then we wouldn't be seeing continual stories, and studies, like this:
On average this year, the state's 31 special-needs districts are outspending their suburban counterparts by about $3,500 per student.
Trenton, which receives 84 percent of its budget from the state, now spends $14,567 per child, higher than its most affluent neighbor in Mercer County, Princeton Regional ($13,230), and far above rapidly growing Washington Township ($9,383).
Or this story about the performance of minority students at Princeton High School, which I think you would agree is a well funded and well regarded school:
An uneasy amalgam of pride and discontent, Caroline Mitchell sat amid the balloons and beach chairs on the front lawn of Princeton High School, watching the Class of 2004 graduate. Her pride was for the seniors' average SAT score of 1237, third-highest in the state, and their admission to elite universities like Harvard, Yale and Duke. As president of the high school alumni association and community liaison for the school district, Ms. Mitchell deserved to bask in the tradition of public-education excellence. . . .
Last month, the school was cited for the second year in a row, this time because 37 percent of black students failed to meet standards in English, and 55 percent of blacks and 40 percent of Hispanics failed in math.
One of the standard complaints about No Child Left Behind by its critics in public education is that it punishes urban schools that are chronically underfinanced and already contending with a concentration of poor, nonwhite, bilingual and special-education pupils. Princeton could hardly be more different. It is an Ivy League town with a minority population of slightly more than 10 percent and per-student spending well above the state average. The high school sends 94 percent of its graduates to four-year colleges and offers 29 different Advanced Placement courses. Over all, 98 percent of Princeton High School students exceed the math and English standards required by No Child Left Behind.
It always surprises me how many "realists" cheerfully elide the potential societal benefits of an educated and successful workforce.
Odd how you didn't quote the the following:
The best vehicle for raising social mobility is education but entitlements are growing at a pretty rapid clip and closing down opportunities to further subsidize education.
Our taxes support the military more than anything else; including the elderly or any other human needs. Especially with the Iraq war going on.
Personally, I find the idea of my tax dollars supporting the elderly - childless or not - much more appealing.
Sorry, hit the publish button too fast.
As for Maureen Dowd - I like her columns, but when it comes to Are Men Necessary, I think she needs a dose of the real world.
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