Jon Stewart's monologue on The Daily Show was typical of how people were feeling and expressing their grief.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJl9iqnvkOE
What Stewart is doing is called virtue signaling. We humans are social animals and have an instinctive desire to seek approval from our peers. Virtue signaling is one way to accomplish this. By casting the incident in South Carolina as a racial issue and condemning it, he elevates his moral standing in the eyes of his peers. Stewart is also charismatic and has influence with his audience so he would likely be able to influence policy since many of his audience will want to signal their virtue as well. In this particular case, Stewart directs our anger at South Carolina's state flag, the Battle Cross of one of the Confederate Armies during the American Civil War, which prompted a popular movement to take the flag down, hence giving people across the country an opportunity to signal virtue to their own peers by supporting Stewart's mandate. It's in cases like this where virtue signaling can be abused. Attacking the Confederate Battle Cross allowed people to signal that they are a good person that is fighting racism while not actually being good nor doing something constructive about race relations in this country.
All of this is assuming that the shooting was motivated by racism and that the state flag of South Carolina is a symbol of this racism. Both assumptions are false. Something tells me that the shooting would have happened regardless of which flag was flying so it's a non sequitur. Assuming that Stewart and others are right and this is really about racism and racial strife, changing the flag and street names would seem to aggravate the issue more than help it. You don't fight intolerance with more intolerance and you don't repair rotten wood by repainting it. I also argue that race is peripheral to the incident and that there is a deeper root cause that we aren't seeing because we are so eager to signal our virtue in regards to issues of race. This is ironic since a lot of this virtue signaling is coming from the same people who claim that race is a social construct and not simply genetics.
A Chinese Finger Puzzle
Most people are familiar with Chinese finger puzzles. You can easily insert your fingers into a small woven sleeve, but you can't easily pull them back out. The harder you pull, the tighter the sleeve grips your fingers, which makes the situation worse. But once you know the secret, which is pushing your fingers together to free yourself, you laugh at yourself over how difficult you made it seem.This type of violence is our Chinese finger puzzle and right now we are pulling to try and free ourselves from it when we should be pushing. We've been locked into a racist paradigm as a country for so long that it's difficult for any of us to see past it and Jon Stewart in no exception. The knee-jerk reaction in our culture is to assume racist motives if the shooter is white and the victim is black. However, looking at the data we see that most violence isn't racially motivated. Black on black violence dominates the statistics with white on black violence being the most rare. In a city like Chicago black on black violence happens about a dozen times a week. Yet, there isn't the virtue signalling that we've seen over South Carolina's state flag when both the shooter and the victim are black.
Looking at this table, it seems that media coverage and public outcry is very disproportionate in their response to violent events. Despite white on black violence being the rarest type of violence, it gets the most media coverage and the most commentary in social media. It's seems apparent that a combination of virtue signalling and opportunism explains this skewed media coverage. It makes one wonder who the real racists in this country are and who has most to gain by inflaming the issue.
People's frustration and general helplessness over the situation suggests that we haven't discovered a root cause yet due to our inability to see past the racial angle. New ideas are needed.
NOTE:
I'll be exploring some root causes and effects that may explain this form of violence. A sizable portion of the people reading this won't understand the nuances between describing causes and factors that contributed to tragedies versus actually advocating for them. If this is you, then you are too ignorant to contribute meaningfully to this discussion. Go back to playing Candy Crush and let the adults talk.
There's nothing new or unknown in what I'm presenting. We've all heard of the information I'm presenting before. I'll present supporting evidence and data for the salient points in this article if possible, but some data will be anecdotal. The reader is encouraged to use their preferred search engine to verify what I'm saying is accurate and representative. I fear that our inability to see past race is due to individuals eager to signal that they are not racist while constructing their own echo chamber in doing so. This needs to stop.
Hypothesis: Violent Men Are Lonely Men
Jon Stewart goes off on a weird tangent in his monologue by comparing incidents like the Dylann Roof shooting with terrorist actions against the United States while suggesting that our differences in responses to these acts reveals our hypocrisy. But it does nothing of the sort. For one thing, terrorism against the US is being sanctioned and encouraged by other countries or terrorist organizations that are using sympathetic countries as a sanctuary. Who's encouraging men like Dylann Roof into committing these violent acts?
Or are there root causes that are similar? Imagine that you're a young man, your life sucks, you're sexually frustrated, and you have no opportunities to better yourself, and then, somebody comes to you and tells you that there will be virgins in the afterlife if you hijack a plane and fly it into a skyscraper. Would you do it?
"That's crazy!" you say?
Do you remember Andreas Lubitz? After his girlfriend broke up with him, he crashed his Germanwings flight into the Alps killing 144 people, including himself. I've read nothing to suggest that Lubitz was overtly religious like our hypothetical hijacker. How crazy do you think this idea is now?
The Dead Speak, Will We Listen?
While were busy focusing on race, many seem oblivious that our boys and even some men are slipping through the proverbial cracks in society and society doesn't seem to care. I see many common features between Dylann Roof and Elliot Rodger.
Elliot Rodger
Elliot Rodger went on a shooting spree last year near the University of California, Santa Barbara. He shot to death six people and injured about a dozen others before killing himself. The interesting thing about Rodger is that he left a very lengthy manifesto and some videos that explain his motives. If you can get past Rodger nonchalantly describing the massacre he was planning in his videos, you can see that he was pretty good-looking and was well-spoken.
Yet, he was having a lot of problems attracting the attention of girls despite him doing everything right (in his opinion). In reality, he seemed very shy and was resenting the attention that girls he had a crush on were showing to other men that he felt were beneath him. He also seemed to come from an affluent family, albeit they were divorced and he seemed to take his parent's separation hard. His parents tried to buy his affection by doting on him (even buying him a BMW that Rodger thought would improve his chances with women) fueling an entitlement complex. His manifesto rambles on and on, but this is the gist of it. He wasn't getting any interest from the ladies and he decided to target the people he thought were responsible.
George Sodini
Adam Lanza went on a shooting rampage a few years ago at a school in Connecticut that killed dozens of children and teachers but not before killing his own mother in the process. He later turned the gun on himself when the carnage was done. He didn't leave any manifesto but he was also from a broken family, a history of mental illness and an outcast, so I it would seem he had no success with girls either. His mother taught him how to use guns in an attempt to bond with him so Adam was being raised by a parent that wasn't the sharpest tool in the shed.
Cho Seung-Hui
Cho went on a murderous rampage that left dozens of students dead at Virginia Tech before killing himself. He also left a manifesto that suggests problems socializing with people, especially women. Mental illness also likely played a factor and he may have been bullied.
James Eagan Holmes
Back in 2012 Holmes shot up a theater in Colorado during a screening of The Dark Knight Rises. He killed at least a dozen people and injured dozens more. Strangely, he waited outside near the theater for police to come and was apprehended without a fight. Facts that interested me were that he was a brilliant medical student that also seemed to have trouble with the opposite sex. He was in an on-again-off-again type of relationship before the shooting. He had profiles on dating sites and even hired prostitutes. One of his comments on AdultFriendFinder reportedly said, "Will you visit me in prison?" Was he planning this massacre to get female attention while behind bars? It's hard to say for sure. Certainly many prisoners that have committed violent crimes get letters and marriage proposals from love-struck damsels. But Holmes didn't strike me as douchey enough or have that alpha look to attract such feminine pathology. Apparently, I'm mistaken. A recent photo of Holmes' jail cell reveals a collage of many attractive women that would be interested in meeting him. Many women think Holmes is attractive and his apparent sex appeal has the "sorority journalists" at Jezebel pulling their hair out. Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty for Holmes, but at least he can live out the rest of his short life knowing that women desire him.
There are many others perpetrators but I think you get the point. These are just mass shootings that gained media attention, but this happens by one's and two's all the time. Girl breaks up with boyfriend or dismisses an expression of interest from a man and man decides that if he can't have her than nobody will.
The salient fact is that, for most men, the relationships that they seek with women are getting more and more uncommon and infrequent, or if he finds himself in one, he can no longer assume that it will lead to anything permanent, even if he marries her.
A man will dread the idea that he may be alone for many years if his current relationship ends so he tends to overcompensate in a fashion that will make many women think that he's clingy. Or he may decide to turn to a darker element of his nature that ends up dominating newspaper headlines.
There are two factors at play here:
1. Divorce
Men that are lucky enough to be married (a relationship that used to be considered permanent) stand a 50% chance of losing his wife, his children, half of the accumulated wealth of the marriage and additional future income in the form of alimony and child support during the process of divorce.
I'll be honest, the statement trips my BS-meter, big time. I can't believe that anybody with a firm grasp of reality would even utter such nonsense. But it seems to be quoted by a respected author in child psychology and this hasn't been the first time that a woman calling herself a feminist feels that she's qualified to comment on subjects that she hasn't studied.
But Mantilla's statement doesn't stand alone in isolation. In the June 1999 issue of American Psychologist, Louise B. Silverstein, Ph.D.and Carl F. Auerbach, Ph.D. write in their article, "Deconstructing the Essential Father" (abstract)
Advocacy for the importance of fathers has come from some unusual places. Heather Barwick was raised by two lesbians since she was about three years old. In an open letter that she sent to The Federalist, she writes (emphasis added),
This is an interesting testimony because there's been growing acceptance in society that households where parents are the same sex are just as good of an environment for raising children as households with a mother and father, but Barwick is implying that such nontraditional arrangements are depriving children or harming them emotionally. Even some research bears this out. Children raised in same sex households are much more likely to witness abuse between partners. This has become such a problem that an advocacy group called Broken Rainbow has emerged to try and deal with it (albeit in the UK). Children raised in single parent homes are also more likely to be abused or even killed by the single parent. Children from gay and lesbian couples may be more likely to develop emotional and social problems than with straight couples. Even then, Barwick's story can easily apply if she was raised by a single mother instead of a lesbian couple, so it has broader utility in arguing for the importance of fathers than one might think.
The importance of fathers wasn't as apparent to Barwick until much later in her life when she actually witnessed the impact that having a father has on her own children. So we should be careful about our claims in regard to what is best for the children because it took a liberal progressive like Barwick her whole life to realize it. She felt "a huge hole" in her life because she never knew her father. Recent research has provided insight to what that hole really is. An article in Scientific American describes how fatherhood actually induces neurological changes in both the infant and the father and how the lack or abandonment of a father during critical years of a child's neurological and cognitive development results in more aggression, more addiction issues and more problems with the law.
These neurological changes have actually been witnessed in other animals as well. Experiments on degu rats show that pups raised without fathers developed fewer synapses in areas of the brain designed to regulate decision making and emotion, in other words, the areas of the brain that are responsible for exercising self-control which our troubled X and Millennial generations seem to be having a problem with ever since divorce culture emerged. That "hole" that Heather Barwick talks about in her open letter may actually be missing or underdeveloped brain cells!
If you think about it, this actually makes sense. Who do you think is in better position to teach our youth how men are suppose to act and behave, mothers or fathers? Who do you think could be better at teaching a boy the best way to handle his emotions and channel his aggression in constructive ways instead of snapping one day like Dylann Roof did; a father who was once young himself and knows what it feels like, or a woman that knows nothing about the minds and desires of men?
It's at this point of the discussion that we'll have various single mothers, lesbians and gays parade their well-mannered and successful sons and daughters in front of us to show that everything I've discussed is a load of bologna. It certainly makes good television and it gives the media an opportunity to show that they are doing balanced reporting. Certainly, most children in these troubled circumstances can beat the odds and succeed. Nobody suggests that this can't happen. We should look at these cases as inspiration. Unfortunately, the data is very clear. Children living in households without a father:
Many have noted that the low median ages in the 50's and 60's were a quirk and that median ages at marriage have always been a little high for men in the more distant past. Except the median age at marriage is only half of the story. To get a complete picture we also have to look at marriage rates. In other words, how frequently are people getting married within a given population? How many are divorcing? A blogger at this website compiled over 100 years worth of data from the National Center of Health Statistics and charted it.
It's interesting how certain historical events heavily impact the marriage rates while the divorce rates only slowly increase over time. We don't see the divorce trend really ramp up until the late 1960's as the cultural revolution changed our attitudes towards marriage and laws were passed that made divorce much easier and much more profitable for women. Both the divorce rates and marriage rates begin to decline after about 1980. This makes sense since you can't have too many divorces when people stop getting married.
It's often noted that marriage isn't the only end goal that it used to be. Attitudes have changed in regards to cohabitation, and entering and leaving a series of short term and long term relationships, sometimes with or without children. To a large extent, this is true. However, this arrangement still leaves a significant number of men unpaired at any given time.
Another blogger back in 2006 compiled data of unmarried men and women and plotted them on an interactive map by city to represent gender ratios. Blue dots represent cities that have a man surplus and red dots represent a woman surplus. Singles were counted as men and women that are unmarried, divorced or widowed. It's unclear whether or not men or women that are cohabiting or in a relationship are marking themselves as single on the census questionnaire, but I suspect that this washes out of the results on a 1 for 1 basis. You can adjust the age ranges on the map at the website to see how the gender ratios change. I copied the map featuring the prime age ranges for marriage below and it's obviously a sausage fest in the land of opportunity. There are simply not enough women for every man in this age range.
There's reason to believe that this is understating matters.
The popular dating site, OKCupid posted results of an analysis that they did. Most of the results they found aren't to surprising to people who have done any online dating. Good looking people get most of the attention. Women also get more attention than men, generally speaking.
What was interesting was that the men's ranking of the attractiveness of female users resulted in a bell curve which is what one would normally expect when sampling a large population.
Considering the media saturation of airbrushed and photoshopped models and celebrities. It was interesting to note that men generally had realistic standards of beauty for women. On the other hand, women's ratings of male users was heavily skewed towards least attractive. The OKCupid analysis calculated that female users rated 80% of male users as unattractive!
Looking at these trends, it seems that the median age of marriage, the marriage rate, the abundance of men, the assessed lack of attractiveness of such men and acceptance of alternative pair bonding arrangements, such as long term relationships and cohabitation, is really screwing a lot of men over and leaving them dateless and single for extended periods of time. Men like Elliot Rodger and George Sodini obviously struggled coming to terms with this.
So how does this all relate to Dylann Roof and his shooting of a bunch of black people? Fortunately, Dylann was apprehended alive and we may get a testimony or psychological evaluation from him. If what I've said is correct than we should hear a narrative unfold in the media suggesting that Dylann was likely infatuated by a girl or a few girls who ended up dating black men. Bonus if these black men ended up bullying or ostracizing him. The fact that they were black would be incidental. If Dylann's love interest ended up dating frat boys, Dylann would have shot up a fraternity. If it were hipsters he would have shot up the nearest microbrewery.
This time, he was targeting Christians and not black people so race doesn't enter into this incident at all. The media and pundits aren't getting very wound up if shooters target religious people unless they are Jews or Muslims. The only opportunity for virtue signaling by politicians and pundits is by supporting gun control.
As usual, they miss the issue entirely. Mercer also comes from a broken and fatherless home. In Mercer's case, the parents were separated before he was born and he never knew his father. Mercer is also quoted as "looking for the yin to my yang" and expressing admiration to other shooters who are lonely and unknown until they "spill blood". This strongly indicates to me that Mercer also had trouble with girls. Mercer and other troubled youth are obviously looking up to other shooters as role models so we might want to reconsider how we cover and discuss these incidents in the future.
Or are there root causes that are similar? Imagine that you're a young man, your life sucks, you're sexually frustrated, and you have no opportunities to better yourself, and then, somebody comes to you and tells you that there will be virgins in the afterlife if you hijack a plane and fly it into a skyscraper. Would you do it?
"That's crazy!" you say?
Do you remember Andreas Lubitz? After his girlfriend broke up with him, he crashed his Germanwings flight into the Alps killing 144 people, including himself. I've read nothing to suggest that Lubitz was overtly religious like our hypothetical hijacker. How crazy do you think this idea is now?
The Dead Speak, Will We Listen?
While were busy focusing on race, many seem oblivious that our boys and even some men are slipping through the proverbial cracks in society and society doesn't seem to care. I see many common features between Dylann Roof and Elliot Rodger.
Elliot Rodger
Yet, he was having a lot of problems attracting the attention of girls despite him doing everything right (in his opinion). In reality, he seemed very shy and was resenting the attention that girls he had a crush on were showing to other men that he felt were beneath him. He also seemed to come from an affluent family, albeit they were divorced and he seemed to take his parent's separation hard. His parents tried to buy his affection by doting on him (even buying him a BMW that Rodger thought would improve his chances with women) fueling an entitlement complex. His manifesto rambles on and on, but this is the gist of it. He wasn't getting any interest from the ladies and he decided to target the people he thought were responsible.
George Sodini
Elliot Rodger's set of circumstances reminded me of George Sodini. Back in 2009, Sodini entered an LA Fitness near Pittsburgh and shot to death three women and injured several others before killing himself. A note left in his duffel bag at the scene and notes on his website chronicle his difficulties with women. He hadn't had a girlfriend or even a date in almost 20 years despite him being good-looking and "not weird", according to his words. He also seemed to have read literature and went to seminars about how to pick up women, but it didn't seem to have helped. He had planned this massacre for months and chickened out a couple of times before following through. It would be safe to assume that he was frustrated by his lack of success with women and lashed out against them.
Adam Lanza
Cho Seung-Hui
James Eagan Holmes
Back in 2012 Holmes shot up a theater in Colorado during a screening of The Dark Knight Rises. He killed at least a dozen people and injured dozens more. Strangely, he waited outside near the theater for police to come and was apprehended without a fight. Facts that interested me were that he was a brilliant medical student that also seemed to have trouble with the opposite sex. He was in an on-again-off-again type of relationship before the shooting. He had profiles on dating sites and even hired prostitutes. One of his comments on AdultFriendFinder reportedly said, "Will you visit me in prison?" Was he planning this massacre to get female attention while behind bars? It's hard to say for sure. Certainly many prisoners that have committed violent crimes get letters and marriage proposals from love-struck damsels. But Holmes didn't strike me as douchey enough or have that alpha look to attract such feminine pathology. Apparently, I'm mistaken. A recent photo of Holmes' jail cell reveals a collage of many attractive women that would be interested in meeting him. Many women think Holmes is attractive and his apparent sex appeal has the "sorority journalists" at Jezebel pulling their hair out. Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty for Holmes, but at least he can live out the rest of his short life knowing that women desire him.
There are many others perpetrators but I think you get the point. These are just mass shootings that gained media attention, but this happens by one's and two's all the time. Girl breaks up with boyfriend or dismisses an expression of interest from a man and man decides that if he can't have her than nobody will.
All the Lonely Men
The salient fact is that, for most men, the relationships that they seek with women are getting more and more uncommon and infrequent, or if he finds himself in one, he can no longer assume that it will lead to anything permanent, even if he marries her.
A man will dread the idea that he may be alone for many years if his current relationship ends so he tends to overcompensate in a fashion that will make many women think that he's clingy. Or he may decide to turn to a darker element of his nature that ends up dominating newspaper headlines.
There are two factors at play here:
1. Divorce
Men that are lucky enough to be married (a relationship that used to be considered permanent) stand a 50% chance of losing his wife, his children, half of the accumulated wealth of the marriage and additional future income in the form of alimony and child support during the process of divorce.
Today, a divorce is a lot easier to get than ever before. Betty Friedan wrote about married women having a "problem with no name", but in reality, they were just bored. Modern conveniences such as washing machines, vacuum cleaners and prepackaged meals were making their way into millions of homes across America giving the American housewife much more free time.
In addition to this "problem" that Friedan describes, feminist influences convinced us that men were beating and raping their wives all across America and they needed an escape hatch. Efforts were made to make divorce much easier to get. But in modern-day divorces, the woman doesn't simply end her marriage and move back in with her parents. Many financial incentives in divorce settlements, including custody of the children and child support, encouraged many wives to file for divorce. Very quickly, marriage became the only legal contract where the person breaking it could be entitled to a big cash award instead of being penalized. Let that fact sink in for a minute.
Feminists often chant for the government to keep their laws off their body while simultaneously directing laws onto an ex husband's wallet and argue that it's only fair. Meanwhile, the man is committed to indentured servitude against his will in the form of child support. If he refuses or fails to pay the court mandated child support, he can end up in prison. Let that second fact sink in for a minute. There's a lot of discussion about how privileged men are in society, but can anybody doubt the fact that the American woman is the most privileged group of people the world has ever known?
Women are the main drivers of divorce statistics. This is likely because it's too costly for men to even attempt it regardless of whether or not he is satisfied with the marital arrangement. He stands to lose too much in the deal for it to be worth it. As they say, "It's cheaper to keep 'er! " Statistics vary by region but roughly 60-70% of divorces are initiated by women. The rate of divorce declines among higher economic class and education, but women file in 9 out of every 10 of these divorces. At first this is a puzzling observation considering that a woman's economic standing tends to decline after divorce. Why would she attempt it? A study conducted by researchers from the University of North Carolina summarizes and analyzes many divorce statistics by region and have concluded that presumed custody of the children was the most influential factor in determining whether or not any given spouse will file. This is a nice gender-neutral way of saying that wives will have a greater tendency of divorcing because they have a lot less to lose during the act than a man will. A settlement that includes child custody, alimony, child support and continued residence in the marital home are virtually guaranteed for women in any divorce proceedings.
Divorce can be extremely devastating to men, but what about the children bearing witness to it? The damage to the father being divorced by his wife is pretty straight forward to calculate, but what about the children? There used to be a sense of shame when a couple divorced and this was likely put in place to safeguard children, but lately we've put a lot of effort into dismantling shame culture in the US. One of these efforts was pushed by the pop psychology of the day that had suggested that children living with parents that didn't love each other were being emotionally harmed and it would be better for parents to split and do what makes them happy so that they can be better parents. Some people even began to question whether or not a father was really needed to rear children (but he better pay his child support, or else!).
In addition to this "problem" that Friedan describes, feminist influences convinced us that men were beating and raping their wives all across America and they needed an escape hatch. Efforts were made to make divorce much easier to get. But in modern-day divorces, the woman doesn't simply end her marriage and move back in with her parents. Many financial incentives in divorce settlements, including custody of the children and child support, encouraged many wives to file for divorce. Very quickly, marriage became the only legal contract where the person breaking it could be entitled to a big cash award instead of being penalized. Let that fact sink in for a minute.
Feminists often chant for the government to keep their laws off their body while simultaneously directing laws onto an ex husband's wallet and argue that it's only fair. Meanwhile, the man is committed to indentured servitude against his will in the form of child support. If he refuses or fails to pay the court mandated child support, he can end up in prison. Let that second fact sink in for a minute. There's a lot of discussion about how privileged men are in society, but can anybody doubt the fact that the American woman is the most privileged group of people the world has ever known?
Women are the main drivers of divorce statistics. This is likely because it's too costly for men to even attempt it regardless of whether or not he is satisfied with the marital arrangement. He stands to lose too much in the deal for it to be worth it. As they say, "It's cheaper to keep 'er! " Statistics vary by region but roughly 60-70% of divorces are initiated by women. The rate of divorce declines among higher economic class and education, but women file in 9 out of every 10 of these divorces. At first this is a puzzling observation considering that a woman's economic standing tends to decline after divorce. Why would she attempt it? A study conducted by researchers from the University of North Carolina summarizes and analyzes many divorce statistics by region and have concluded that presumed custody of the children was the most influential factor in determining whether or not any given spouse will file. This is a nice gender-neutral way of saying that wives will have a greater tendency of divorcing because they have a lot less to lose during the act than a man will. A settlement that includes child custody, alimony, child support and continued residence in the marital home are virtually guaranteed for women in any divorce proceedings.
Divorce can be extremely devastating to men, but what about the children bearing witness to it? The damage to the father being divorced by his wife is pretty straight forward to calculate, but what about the children? There used to be a sense of shame when a couple divorced and this was likely put in place to safeguard children, but lately we've put a lot of effort into dismantling shame culture in the US. One of these efforts was pushed by the pop psychology of the day that had suggested that children living with parents that didn't love each other were being emotionally harmed and it would be better for parents to split and do what makes them happy so that they can be better parents. Some people even began to question whether or not a father was really needed to rear children (but he better pay his child support, or else!).
Karla Mantilla, feminist author, has been quoted as saying in Bringing Up Boys by James Dobson,
Even by pop psychology standards of the 1980's and 90's, this is a shockingly ignorant statement. Not only is Mantilla claiming that fathers are superfluous to the upbringing of children, she implies that fathers do more harm than good to children!“I am highly suspicious of the upsurge of praises of fatherhood and the necessity of kids to have a male role model. I come by this suspicion after much experience with my own two kids and their male role model, their father … The propaganda that children, especially boys, need fathers I think, has contributed incalculably to the misery of children all over the world. Contrary to all the pro-father rhetoric of late, to the extent that we value fathers precisely for their ‘discipline’ and ‘toughening up’ qualities, we create children (especially boys) who are less empathetic and caring. If we want kinder, gentler (and less violent) adults, we need to focus on kinder gentler parenting.”
I'll be honest, the statement trips my BS-meter, big time. I can't believe that anybody with a firm grasp of reality would even utter such nonsense. But it seems to be quoted by a respected author in child psychology and this hasn't been the first time that a woman calling herself a feminist feels that she's qualified to comment on subjects that she hasn't studied.
But Mantilla's statement doesn't stand alone in isolation. In the June 1999 issue of American Psychologist, Louise B. Silverstein, Ph.D.and Carl F. Auerbach, Ph.D. write in their article, "Deconstructing the Essential Father" (abstract)
Neoconservative social scientists have claimed that fathers are essential to positive child development and that responsible fathering is most likely to occur within the context of heterosexual marriage. This perspective is generating a range of governmental initiatives designed to provide social support preferences to fathers over mothers and to heterosexual married couples over alternative family forms. The authors propose that the neoconservative position is an incorrect or oversimplified interpretation of empirical research. Using a wide range of cross-species, cross-cultural, and social science research, the authors argue that neither mothers nor fathers are essential to child development and that responsible fathering can occur within a variety of family structures. The authors conclude with alternative recommendations for encouraging responsible fathering that do not discriminate against mothers and diverse family forms.Just from reading the abstract, it's apparent that the authors are seeking to discredit the idea that the nuclear family is the best environment for raising well-adjusted children while trying to push the idea that other family structures can give equal outcomes. This is obviously highly biased advocacy research designed to change public opinion and government policy. I also wonder what "range of cross-species, cross-cultural" research they drew from to come to this conclusion. Just from a casual glance at nature and around the world, it seems that the nuclear family model has been naturally selected for over the millions of years of evolution and thousands of years of recorded human history. It most assuredly gave a species or culture the best chances of survival. I would have to pay to get the full paper, but it looks like I don't need to.
Advocacy for the importance of fathers has come from some unusual places. Heather Barwick was raised by two lesbians since she was about three years old. In an open letter that she sent to The Federalist, she writes (emphasis added),
...as I watch my children loving and being loved by their father each day, that I can see the beauty and wisdom in traditional marriage and parenting.
Growing up, and even into my 20s, I supported and advocated for gay marriage. It’s only with some time and distance from my childhood that I’m able to reflect on my experiences and recognize the long-term consequences that same-sex parenting had on me. And it’s only now, as I watch my children loving and being loved by their father each day, that I can see the beauty and wisdom in traditional marriage and parenting.
Same-sex marriage and parenting withholds either a mother or father from a child while telling him or her that it doesn’t matter. That it’s all the same. But it’s not. A lot of us, a lot of your kids, are hurting. My father’s absence created a huge hole in me, and I ached every day for a dad. I loved my mom’s partner, but another mom could never have replaced the father I lost.
The importance of fathers wasn't as apparent to Barwick until much later in her life when she actually witnessed the impact that having a father has on her own children. So we should be careful about our claims in regard to what is best for the children because it took a liberal progressive like Barwick her whole life to realize it. She felt "a huge hole" in her life because she never knew her father. Recent research has provided insight to what that hole really is. An article in Scientific American describes how fatherhood actually induces neurological changes in both the infant and the father and how the lack or abandonment of a father during critical years of a child's neurological and cognitive development results in more aggression, more addiction issues and more problems with the law.
These neurological changes have actually been witnessed in other animals as well. Experiments on degu rats show that pups raised without fathers developed fewer synapses in areas of the brain designed to regulate decision making and emotion, in other words, the areas of the brain that are responsible for exercising self-control which our troubled X and Millennial generations seem to be having a problem with ever since divorce culture emerged. That "hole" that Heather Barwick talks about in her open letter may actually be missing or underdeveloped brain cells!
If you think about it, this actually makes sense. Who do you think is in better position to teach our youth how men are suppose to act and behave, mothers or fathers? Who do you think could be better at teaching a boy the best way to handle his emotions and channel his aggression in constructive ways instead of snapping one day like Dylann Roof did; a father who was once young himself and knows what it feels like, or a woman that knows nothing about the minds and desires of men?
It's at this point of the discussion that we'll have various single mothers, lesbians and gays parade their well-mannered and successful sons and daughters in front of us to show that everything I've discussed is a load of bologna. It certainly makes good television and it gives the media an opportunity to show that they are doing balanced reporting. Certainly, most children in these troubled circumstances can beat the odds and succeed. Nobody suggests that this can't happen. We should look at these cases as inspiration. Unfortunately, the data is very clear. Children living in households without a father:
- Are at greater risk of drug and alcohol abuse, mental illness, suicide, and criminality
- More likely to go to prison
- More likely to exhibit antisocial behaviors
- More likely to commit suicide
- More likely to suffer from psychological disorders
- Have more trouble establishing proper gender roles and identity
- More likely to be treated for psychiatric and emotional problems
- More likely to score lower on intelligence tests
- More likely to repeat a grade in school
- More likely to drop out of high school
- More likely to be expelled or suspended from school
- More likely to experience mood disorders
- Exhibit greater levels of aggression
- More likely to live in poverty
- 63% of youth suicide are of youth from fatherless homes
- 90% of all homeless and runaway children come from fatherless homes
- 85% of children with behavior disorders come from fatherless homes
- 80% of rapists motivated by displaced anger come from fatherless homes
- 71% of high school dropouts come from fatherless homes
- 85% of youth sitting in prison came from fatherless homes
It doesn't seem possible to overstate the social damage that easy
divorce is causing. I personally know of one happily married couple
that had a 5-year old daughter that suddenly couldn't eat or sleep
despite the absence of any health problems. The child later asked if
her mom and dad would ever stop loving each other. It turns out that at
a recent birthday party, the daughter met another child who's parents
were divorced. When she asked him why he didn't have a daddy, the kid
replied that sometimes mommies and daddies fall out of love (likely what
he was told by his well-meaning, divorcing parents). This caused a lot
of stress in the daughter that effected her sleeping patterns and
appetite because she feared that the same thing would happen to her own
parents. Her parents had to give every possible assurance that this
wasn't going to happen to them and the daughter's mood subsequently
improved. The lesson seems clear, divorce even effects the health of
children of happily married parents!!
I'm sure there are a lot of married couples that will insist that they are extremely devoted to their marriage vows. That's great. What you need to understand is that it wasn't just the married couple that decided to devote their lives to each other in the past. Society invested in marriages as well. They recognized it as the fundamental political and economic unit of a culture and great efforts were expended to preserve it and even shame couples who didn't take the vows seriously.
While everybody celebrates their new found freedom to enter and live relationships as we see fit. We didn't bother asking the children what they thought. We assumed we knew better than that. We didn't.
I'm sure there are a lot of married couples that will insist that they are extremely devoted to their marriage vows. That's great. What you need to understand is that it wasn't just the married couple that decided to devote their lives to each other in the past. Society invested in marriages as well. They recognized it as the fundamental political and economic unit of a culture and great efforts were expended to preserve it and even shame couples who didn't take the vows seriously.
Today, not only does society not invest in marriage, but they
actively encourage its destruction while profiting off of it. I'm not
just talking about the lawyers. Examples of divorce encouragement abound in movies such as Eat, Pray, Love and How Stella Got Her Grove Back.
Both movies feature a woman who is married to a normal guy but find
that her life is missing a little bit of excitement and hits the
self-destruct button, detonating her marriage. The selfish act is
presented as empowerment and the beginning of a journey of
self-discovery with woman finding herself before she falls in love
with a better man.
Wannabee
writers in real life are getting into the act as well. Web tabloids
such as Salon, Huffington Post and Yahoo Smile often feature divorcees
airing their dirty laundry about how they divorced loyal, supportive
husbands who may have been a little bit boring or emotionally unavailable. We're supposed to be inspired by her renewal on life as she lives off the spoils collected from the husk of her ruined marriage while we celebrate her courage and conviction of being a single mother that manages to juggle all of the demands of modern life while raising a well-mannered child until she finds her (second? third?) soul mate.
This is a particularly cruel fantasy that we are selling to women. It's not just because of the men and children that are being affected, but divorced women quickly find men pretty much ignoring them when they try to get back into the dating scene with a few more wrinkles, a few more pounds and a few more kids. The idea that they aren't as hot as they used to be is like a cold splash of reality in the face. Unfortunately, by the time they realize how desolate the post-divorce landscape is, the damage has already been done.
This is a particularly cruel fantasy that we are selling to women. It's not just because of the men and children that are being affected, but divorced women quickly find men pretty much ignoring them when they try to get back into the dating scene with a few more wrinkles, a few more pounds and a few more kids. The idea that they aren't as hot as they used to be is like a cold splash of reality in the face. Unfortunately, by the time they realize how desolate the post-divorce landscape is, the damage has already been done.
While everybody celebrates their new found freedom to enter and live relationships as we see fit. We didn't bother asking the children what they thought. We assumed we knew better than that. We didn't.
Decades pass and some of these children grew up and became Adam Lanza, Dylann Roof and Cho Seung-Hui. Even well adjusted, law-abiding people are coming forward as adults and describing how disruptive their parents divorces were to their social development and performance in school and other endeavors.
Nobody would dare suggest that the role of mothers were superfluous or
not needed for a child's development. It would be career ending
suicide to anybody who proposed it. Yet, we assume this is the case for fathers despite the
correlation between fatherlessness and crime and antisocial behavior. Now, scientific
research is elucidating a causal mechanism. Denying these scientific
developments, and the social consequences where people end up dying
violently, while recklessly pushing the rights for married couples to divorce and pushing gay and lesbian
couples to marry and adopt, is a textbook example of failing to learn
from history.
2. Delaying Marriage
Closely related to the divorce culture that I've described is the fact that we are delaying marriage later and later in life and that's assuming that people even get married in the first place.
A generation or two ago, in the 1950's and 1960's men would marry in their late teens or early twenties. Now, they don't marry until almost 30 years of age! The graph below shows that this age has been the highest it has ever been.
It's interesting how certain historical events heavily impact the marriage rates while the divorce rates only slowly increase over time. We don't see the divorce trend really ramp up until the late 1960's as the cultural revolution changed our attitudes towards marriage and laws were passed that made divorce much easier and much more profitable for women. Both the divorce rates and marriage rates begin to decline after about 1980. This makes sense since you can't have too many divorces when people stop getting married.
It's often noted that marriage isn't the only end goal that it used to be. Attitudes have changed in regards to cohabitation, and entering and leaving a series of short term and long term relationships, sometimes with or without children. To a large extent, this is true. However, this arrangement still leaves a significant number of men unpaired at any given time.
Another blogger back in 2006 compiled data of unmarried men and women and plotted them on an interactive map by city to represent gender ratios. Blue dots represent cities that have a man surplus and red dots represent a woman surplus. Singles were counted as men and women that are unmarried, divorced or widowed. It's unclear whether or not men or women that are cohabiting or in a relationship are marking themselves as single on the census questionnaire, but I suspect that this washes out of the results on a 1 for 1 basis. You can adjust the age ranges on the map at the website to see how the gender ratios change. I copied the map featuring the prime age ranges for marriage below and it's obviously a sausage fest in the land of opportunity. There are simply not enough women for every man in this age range.
There's reason to believe that this is understating matters.
The popular dating site, OKCupid posted results of an analysis that they did. Most of the results they found aren't to surprising to people who have done any online dating. Good looking people get most of the attention. Women also get more attention than men, generally speaking.
What was interesting was that the men's ranking of the attractiveness of female users resulted in a bell curve which is what one would normally expect when sampling a large population.
Considering the media saturation of airbrushed and photoshopped models and celebrities. It was interesting to note that men generally had realistic standards of beauty for women. On the other hand, women's ratings of male users was heavily skewed towards least attractive. The OKCupid analysis calculated that female users rated 80% of male users as unattractive!
Looking at these trends, it seems that the median age of marriage, the marriage rate, the abundance of men, the assessed lack of attractiveness of such men and acceptance of alternative pair bonding arrangements, such as long term relationships and cohabitation, is really screwing a lot of men over and leaving them dateless and single for extended periods of time. Men like Elliot Rodger and George Sodini obviously struggled coming to terms with this.
So how does this all relate to Dylann Roof and his shooting of a bunch of black people? Fortunately, Dylann was apprehended alive and we may get a testimony or psychological evaluation from him. If what I've said is correct than we should hear a narrative unfold in the media suggesting that Dylann was likely infatuated by a girl or a few girls who ended up dating black men. Bonus if these black men ended up bullying or ostracizing him. The fact that they were black would be incidental. If Dylann's love interest ended up dating frat boys, Dylann would have shot up a fraternity. If it were hipsters he would have shot up the nearest microbrewery.
What does this all mean?
The reason why the discussion of divorce, delaying marriage and marriage rates is important is because, like other mammals, humans are social creatures and we respond to social cues. Much like we respond and react to virtue signaling that ended up persuading a state to give up its state flag, we also take cues from other people in our peer groups in regards to what we should be doing at various stages in our lives. This is why parents are often worried about the effects of peer pressure if its compelling their children to act in destructive or irresponsible ways.
In the past, men and women married early in life and nearly everyone did. So our children and teens were getting a strong social signal that they had to mature quickly and dedicate their efforts to being a good husband or wife while looking and selecting a spouse that would exemplify the qualities of a good husband or wife. We also regarded marriage as a permanent arrangement and not one that can be broken so easily. Dating and courting were also being conducted with the intention that marriage would be the ultimate goal.
When a boy sees that men around him aren't getting married until they are 30 this social signal that he receives is very weak or background noise. He sees, that he has a lot of time and won't man up to prepare and take responsibility for a family. He also sees that a lot of girls aren't willing to date him or consider him for marriage, assuming they date him at all. Since women aren't getting a strong social signal to marry they aren't picking men that would be responsible husbands or "good dads". She chooses the cads with an expectation that when she has finished having her fun (and heartbreak), the "dad" will be waiting for her on bent knee. Unfortunately, men and boys that are coming of age are noticing who such women pair off and mate with. Instead of investing themselves into being "good dads" some of them try to emulate the behaviors that are contributing to the cad's success with women. Others will give up entirely. A few become Dylann Roof.
Idle minds are the devil's workshop. The Dylann Roof's, Adam Lanza's and Cho Seung-Hui's had every reason to believe that they may never be with a girl, or if they did it would be after many years of frustrating searches, and even if they succeeded, it could end at any time at the woman's whim, costing him untold pain and wealth. Their mental problems that contributed to their violent behavior may be rooted in the fact that they had difficult times with members of the opposite sex. Man may not be meant to be alone!
What Can Be Done?
It's difficult to say, how we would solve this problem. I don't suggest that we force women to marry certain men. However, a lot could be gained by making divorces a little harder to get and advocating marriage at earlier ages so more men can pick up on social cues to man up. We can even dangle some economic incentives to encourage this. But this is in direct contradiction to the prevailing wisdom and will likely get mocked.
Before you sneer at this, let me ask you something:
Who do you think is more likely to be a law-abiding and productive citizen? A man who's only supporting himself or one that has to support a family?
The data is pretty clear on this. The government and social justice advocates should be encouraging earlier marriages and discouraging divorces on economic grounds alone. It might even pull us out of this sluggish economy and balance the federal budget. The possibilities are endless.
Epilogue
As I finished writing this, another shooting happened at Umpqua Community College in Oregon. Chris Harper Mercer shot and killed several people before authorities intervened and killed him.This time, he was targeting Christians and not black people so race doesn't enter into this incident at all. The media and pundits aren't getting very wound up if shooters target religious people unless they are Jews or Muslims. The only opportunity for virtue signaling by politicians and pundits is by supporting gun control.
As usual, they miss the issue entirely. Mercer also comes from a broken and fatherless home. In Mercer's case, the parents were separated before he was born and he never knew his father. Mercer is also quoted as "looking for the yin to my yang" and expressing admiration to other shooters who are lonely and unknown until they "spill blood". This strongly indicates to me that Mercer also had trouble with girls. Mercer and other troubled youth are obviously looking up to other shooters as role models so we might want to reconsider how we cover and discuss these incidents in the future.
