Dating, higher education, sex ratios, and the hookup culture

[Xantippe]

The 300K to 750K is a small price to pay. I had a family member who ran a daycare business and she practically raised those kids.

Also, there’s so much garbage, scandal and corruption in the education system in the last 50 years or so, it would probably shock a lot of parents if not turn them pale as to what really goes on from K through post-doc.

Let’s just say that the days of Miss Beadle and Mr. Richie Cunningham are over in many cases.

Personally, I’d rather property tax than income tax. Your part of TX may be the exception, but it’s kind of hard for me to feel sorry for people on paying so much in property taxes and they wither every time the education system holds up a kid as a marketing gimmick and says “hey, now you’re not gonna want this kid to not learn and end up on the street,are ya?” and for voting in people who raise their taxes or they vote for the increase themselves.

It sounds like you are changing your line of argument.

First you said that kids aren’t expensive, that it’s all the unnecessary stuff we buy for them that makes them expensive.

Then I pointed out 1) that buying into a “good” public district is often very expensive (this is very true in coastal areas of the US–somewhat less true elsewhere) 2) that private school is very expensive and 3) that the cost of homeschooling might amount to somewhere between $300k and $750k in lost wages (assuming 10-15 extra years at home for a SAHP who is foregoing a yearly salary of $30k-$50k).

Now, you’re saying that the “300K to 750K is a small price to pay.”

So, I guess kids aren’t cheap to raise.

I think people are often confused because the ratios have changed so much from when we were kids. When we were kids, stuff (clothes, shoes, toys, etc.) was expensive, while school (along with other services) was relatively cheap. Right now, however, it’s reversed–thanks to imported goods, stuff is generally very cheap, but services (like education or medical care) are very expensive. It’s not small consumer goods that are breaking the bank–it’s the big stuff like housing and education.

 

[Xantippe]

#46 In this post I responded to Xantippe’s righteous disgust at my use of the colloquialism in #18, admitting my error and attempting to put my assertions into the proper context by pointing out the biological fact that a woman can only carry the child of one man at a time whereas a man can procreate with several (even hundreds) of women in the same period. This is where I first mentioned evolution because logically there is no evolutionary advantage for women to mate with dozens of men if she could only bring one of their offspring to term whereas men who were inclined to impregnate several women would be more likely to get their genetic material into the next generation than those men who were not so inclined.

**And yet female chimpanzees do pretty much exactly that…

I guess they haven’t had a chance to talk to evolutionary psychologists to set them straight.

That’s one of the reasons that it’s so easy to mock evolutionary psychology–the failure to deal with fairly obvious biological, anthropological and historical facts.
**

 

[MatthewTrainor]

Continuation of post #140

#76

#78 In this post I reiterated that we need to act contrary to those instinctual behaviors developed through evolutionary psychology that are harmful to individuals as well as society as a whole.

#81 While my succinct message was also very blunt, I stand by the accuracy of every word. (In case anyone is confused, the definition of accuracy as used here is: “n. the condition or quality of being true, correct, or exact; freedom from error or defect; precision or exactness; correctness”) If anyone feels they are capable of demonstrating otherwise I would be happy to discuss it.

#83, #85

#87, #90, #94, #95, #100 This group is part of a snippy exchange that was quite frankly rather juvenile on both sides. I still stand by the factual accuracy of all my assertions as no one is capable of demonstrating otherwise.

The remaining posts (#89, #99, #111, #113, #117, #124, #125, #130) also do not pertain to my use of evolutionary psychology. This completes my comprehensive refutation to BlueEyedLady’s claim that I used a method of psychological hypothesis as a basis for moral conduct.

 

[MatthewTrainor]

**And yet female chimpanzees do pretty much exactly that…

I guess they haven’t had a chance to talk to evolutionary psychologists to set them straight.

That’s one of the reasons that it’s so easy to mock evolutionary psychology–the failure to deal with fairly obvious biological, anthropological and historical facts.**

You should be more careful with the quotation tags since your post made it appear as if you were attributing the above quote to me. Fortunately you made it bold so there should be less confusion.

As for your claim, you may or may not have noticed but chimpanzees are a wee bit less evolved than humans are. Give them a few more millennia and the behavior will breed itself out of the population.

 

[SuperLuigi]

=Xantippe;13211918]It sounds like you are changing your line of argument.

:nope:

First you said that kids aren’t expensive, that it’s all the unnecessary stuff we buy for them that makes them expensive.

The idea, Xantippe, is that life with kids doesn’t have to expensive.

 

[MatthewTrainor]

Do you really think this is what the modern dating world looks like? Women who want to marry and only offer sex to men in hopes of getting a commitment? I’m in my mid-late 20’s, and I don’t know any women who would be willing to wait until marriage, much less want to. One of the best kept secrets of life is that women really like sex, often for it’s own sake and without the promise or hope for more.

I’d say that women more frequently acquiesce to sex to avoid abandonment and loneliness (as others have implied) and not so much with the expectation that a commitment would be forthcoming. It has been my argument that it is the very acquiescence that actually makes a commitment even less likely.

 

[MatthewTrainor]

I would really encourage you to read the archives here seraphicsinglescummings.blogspot.com/

and here (that’s the sequel blog by the same author): edinburghhousewife.blogspot.com/

I will definitely check them out in depth when I can. She even writes with a Scottish accent so what’s not to like!

 

[MatthewTrainor]

MatthewTrainor, I’d like you to think long and hard about how the stuff you’re saying sounds to women who are waiting virtuously, but who aren’t finding anybody, and are starting to lose hope that they will be able to find a husband in time to have children (or at least a child).

I fully understand the sacrifice that virtue imposes on all of us, but I cannot bring myself to deny reality simply to spare someone’s feelings. It is true that there are many millions of men who have been properly raised and cultured and have overcome their baser instincts. This does not erase the fact that there are still very many who have not (as pointed out here). It is unfair to those who are still seeking a man worthy of them to pretend otherwise.

 

[MatthewTrainor]

We are not trying to argue against virtue. We told you again and again but it is not getting through to you.

Virtue is its own reward but we all know that, even if we do not always get what we want. You are not the only one capable of thinking that.

I’m glad we agree, but I’ve not seen it stated as plainly as you claim. (It’s getting late and this thread just keeps getting longer. If I missed one, please let me know.)

Prior to your post he closest anyone came was

The main prize of chastity is being chaste (and probably avoiding certain avoidable bad experiences). Being chaste doesn’t mean that you will marry a wonderful person or have wonderful children.

It’s like saying “chastity is good for chastity’s sake, if you’re into that sort of thing.” Not exactly a ringing endorsement.

 

[jlc2k2]

I’m glad we agree, but I’ve not seen it stated as plainly as you claim. (It’s getting late and this thread just keeps getting longer. If I missed one, please let me know.)

Prior to your post he closest anyone came was
It’s like saying “chastity is good for chastity’s sake, if you’re into that sort of thing.” Not exactly a ringing endorsement.

But as faithful Catholics shouldn’t it be a given that “we are into” the idea that chastity is good for chastity’s sake? Or do you prefer to assume that no other poster thinks that or cares about virtue?

 

[fnr]

BlueEyedLady:

Do you really think this is what the modern dating world looks like? Women who want to marry and only offer sex to men in hopes of getting a commitment? I’m in my mid-late 20’s, and I don’t know any women who would be willing to wait until marriage, much less want to. One of the best kept secrets of life is that women really like sex, often for it’s own sake and without the promise or hope for more.

I do know some women who are willing to wait for marriage in their 20s, or at least that’s what they say. They’re devoutly Catholic, and living a very counter-cultural lifestyle. Some of them live in a house specifically designed for religious discernment. I can personally attest that such women are far from the norm.

As part of my personal conversion, I’ve had the experience of finding myself at a dive bar, still looking for a date at last call. There were quite a few other men and women there doing the same thing, and it struck me as just really pitiful. Everyone is looking for a genuine connection, and it seems like in most cases, sex is just the initial interview.

Since then, I’d say that in my experience living chastely, most women – including Catholics – just assume that sex is a matter of course. I’ve explained my desire to wait for marriage, and some of them are alright with it. Some aren’t. However, in my own personal experience, there are women who just don’t understand chastity, and they seem to think that the chastity commitment is just a cover for living a life of sexual abandon. Men have demanded sex from them in the past, and they have been confused by my desire not to have sex.

 

[fnr]

I’d say that women more frequently acquiesce to sex to avoid abandonment and loneliness (as others have implied) and not so much with the expectation that a commitment would be forthcoming. It has been my argument that it is the very acquiescence that actually makes a commitment even less likely.

I think you’re overlooking how strong a force acculturation is. Culture, the product of the rational human mind, can override evolutionary norms – if we think that gene self-propagation is the goal.

Evolutionary psychology, in my opinion, isn’t the best “secular approach” to explain modern sexual behavior – economic rationalism is. Our culture is one that enshrines Homo economicus, where each person decides, using their own norms and values, how to define and maximize their own happiness. Sexual norms are part of that world.

Since the Industrial Revolution began, birth and death rates have been declining. However, in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, birth rates have fallen below death rates in many industrialized countries. Part of that trend, evo psych can explain – with declining death rates, fewer births can achieve the same level of genetic perpetuation. However, since the early 19th century, women have been entering the work force in greater and greater numbers. Starting with the “Lowell Girls” of the Massachusetts textile industry, continuing through the Bengali workers in the factory that collapsed in Dhaka in 2013, women who have acquired their own financial resources have had increasing independence from their families.

In 1930, the Anglican Church’s Lambeth Conference opened the door to the use of artificial contraception. The industrialization of condom production in the 1930s really kicked their use into high gear, and the Army made them standard-issue during WW2. The Beats in the 1950s celebrated sex for its own sake, and “deviant sexuality.” The Baby Boom generation grew up as the first generation where a significant fraction of their parents were having active sex lives with a low probability of pregnancy. When the Pill was developed, and particularly after Griswold v. Connecticut, women had legal access to contraceptive pills. Unsurprisingly, that corresponds very closely to the Sexual Revolution. We’re living in that world now.

Sexual acculturation in the U.S. starts at an early age – during the teenage years. I think that’s when the acquiescence “to sex to avoid abandonment and loneliness” you mentioned occurs. I’ve had conversations with quite a few women who told me that they had sex with boyfriends in high school because “that’s what you do to show you love him.” I’ve also talked with lots of people who see sex before graduating high school as a “coming of age” ceremony.

Impose on top of that the sex ratios I mentioned – where more women are highly educated in post-1970s America, and you have a situation where the most highly-desired men get to play the field a whole lot.

 

[Xantippe]

You should be more careful with the quotation tags since your post made it appear as if you were attributing the above quote to me. Fortunately you made it bold so there should be less confusion.

As for your claim, you may or may not have noticed but chimpanzees are a wee bit less evolved than humans are. Give them a few more millennia and the behavior will breed itself out of the population.

Sorry! Technophobe/technoidiot here. I’m not very evolved with regard to HTML.

I don’t get this. You are an evolutionary psychology fan, but then you don’t want to talk about primate behavior. Why be an evolutionary psychology guy at all if you’re going to avoid talking about primate behavior? Apologies for using Wikipedia again (it seemed better than the Guardian or some no-name web site), but chimpanzees apparently split off from the human line something like 4-6 million years ago.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chimpanzee

That’s 4-6 million years of separate evolutionary pressure they’ve been under. With that kind of time line, a millenium is just a rounding error.

Again–evolutionary psychology is not really science, it’s not really psychology, and it’s definitely not history. As widely practiced, it’s basically just a party game. The practitioner takes some piece of human behavior and ask, “What could have caused this behavior?” and then comes up with an unprovable, unfalsifiable theory about what life was like at the dawn of human society.

 

[MatthewTrainor]

But as faithful Catholics shouldn’t it be a given that “we are into” the idea that chastity is good for chastity’s sake? Or do you prefer to assume that no other poster thinks that or cares about virtue?

I absolutely agree. If someone wishes to encourage others to pursue chastity, and they choose to list some of the potential negative temporal consequences for those who practice it, they should also include a clear statement like: “No matter what happens, being chaste is always right and abandoning chastity out of fear of missing out on worldly pleasures is always wrong.”

Omitting the last part leaves the impression that the speaker feels being virtuous for the sake of virtue isn’t really worth the hassle…

 

[Xantippe]

The idea, Xantippe, is that life with kids doesn’t have to expensive.

If one has forgone $300k-$750k in lost income in order to homeschool (as discussed earlier), that by itself is already expensive, without having spent a dime.

While it is true that stuff is not expensive these days, those are not the primary cost of having children. The primary costs come from such things as a larger home (before my husband and I had children, we lived fairly happily in a one-bedroom apartment), lost wages for the at-home parent and educational costs (whether a more expensive house to get into a good public school district, private school tuition or additional lost wages due to homeschooling).

Just those items alone (larger home, educational costs, lost wages) add up to literally thousands of dollars a month, even at the most conservative estimate. And that’s before feeding anybody or buying a single pair of shoes… Thousands of dollars a month in expenses or lost earnings is expensive, unless you’re fabulously wealthy.

I’d also add that a family with children will generally prefer a safe, clean, friendly, convenient neighborhood with lots of other families with children. Those often don’t come cheap.

 

[MatthewTrainor]

I don’t get this. You are an evolutionary psychology fan, but then you don’t want to talk about primate behavior. Why be an evolutionary psychology guy at all if you’re going to avoid talking about primate behavior?

I didn’t avoid discussing it at all, you just don’t like the fact that my answer fits logically within the evolutionary psychology theory. I said that as chimps continue to evolve, those behaviors stemming from inherited traits that fail to propagate with sufficient frequency will eventually be lost. The precise time scale necessary cannot be known with any precision.

I believe that there is sufficient evidence to support the theory of natural selection and evolution within a species, but I do not believe that there is sufficient evidence to establish one species can evolve into another. Much of the valid criticism of evolutionary psychology as to do with the “evolutionary” part. And while I tire of such repetition, the practice has nothing to do with “what life was like at the dawn of society.”

But I don’t want to get bogged down in another side discussion on the underlying tangential support for my main argument. Let’s cut to the chase: Do you believe men and women should remain chaste throughout their lives or should they abandon chastity out of fear of potential negative consequences?

 

[Xantippe]

I didn’t avoid discussing it at all, you just don’t like the fact that my answer fits logically within the evolutionary psychology theory. I said that as chimps continue to evolve, those behaviors stemming from inherited traits that fail to propagate with sufficient frequency will eventually be lost. The precise time scale necessary cannot be known with any precision.

I believe that there is sufficient evidence to support the theory of natural selection and evolution within a species, but I do not believe that there is sufficient evidence to establish one species can evolve into another. Much of the valid criticism of evolutionary psychology as to do with the “evolutionary” part. And while I tire of such repetition, the practice has nothing to do with “what life was like at the dawn of society.”

But I don’t want to get bogged down in another side discussion on the underlying tangential support for my main argument. Let’s cut to the chase: Do you believe men and women should remain chaste throughout their lives or should they abandon chastity out of fear of potential negative consequences?

Why the continual orthodoxy checks? It’s rude, especially when you’re a relative newcomer to the forum. Yes, men and women should remain chaste (or get chaste as soon as they can). No, it won’t be easy, and no, there won’t be prizes for everybody.

 

[pianistclare]

Where the h## have I said that women are required to offer a test drive?! No, no one here thinks women should offer a test drive. Why do you falsely attribute views to us? You do it again and again and again. This is tiresome.

My main point was to say there are no guarantees even in a virtuous life and if what you say is correct, women pay an even higher price for sticking to their morals. That is all I am saying.

:clapping:

Agreed.

 

[MatthewTrainor]

I think you’re overlooking how strong a force acculturation is. Culture, the product of the rational human mind, can override evolutionary norms – if we think that gene self-propagation is the goal.

And I think you’ve overlooked these posts: #46, #67, #75, #78

 

[Xantippe]

Why the continual orthodoxy checks? It’s rude, especially when you’re a relative newcomer to the forum. Yes, men and women should remain chaste (or get chaste as soon as they can). No, it won’t be easy, and no, there won’t be prizes for everybody.

Just as a general philosophical point, I’ll add to that that I think that it’s bad psychology to tell people, “XYZ is fun and easy!” if XYZ isn’t actually all that easy and your target audience is eventually going to figure that out. For example, there’s been a lot of justified criticism of old-style NFP boosterism. Better to say, “XYZ is hard and important” rather than “XYZ is easy and fun.” I’m a returned Peace Corps volunteer, and the Peace Corps slogan is “The toughest job you’ll ever love”–they don’t sell it as being easy, they sell it as being hard. The US Marine Corps seems to do something very similar with their marketing.

Looping back to the more specific, I think this has some application to the discussion of whether or not kids are cheap. I think it’s poor marketing–as well as inaccurate–to say that kids are cheap. I would personally go with the formulation that children are costly (both in terms of money and effort)–and worth it.