Progressive Solutions to Familial Decline

https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/open-thread-251/comment/10613169

So I don't think I've fully communicated the progressive challenge to supporting families. Let me try to expand while also answering @Bullseyes prompt.

The conservative solution to familial decline is basically Mormonism. You can insert whichever highly religious community you want but Mormons, despite their many faults, are basically synonymous with a high marriage, high fertility, and generally pleasant society.

Conservatives point to this because, when we look internationally, only religiosity and female literacy have really strong explanatory power; everything else is basically noise. So we have an existing society that, despite numerous costs and problems, we can essentially copy and implement.

Which is where the progressive priorities fail, because the solutions to this aren't really policy ones. We've tried a variety of policy interventions from Norway to Hungary without any notable success. Which means it kinda doesn't matter what policies you support. What matters is cultural, how you raise your kids and, more importantly, what their surrounding friends, neighbors, teachers, and entertainment teaches them. And, when it comes to the marrow like this, Mormons live that life, not only personally but as a community, and progressives don't and can't credibly.

You can google stats, just grab the top DDG result for, say, "birth rates by political affiliation" (1). Or you could just follow basic sense; how often do you see single unmarried women at 35 in San Francisco vs Provo? Again, the Mormons have a ton of problems, but the religion with a ton of happily married families that regularly puts out commercials about how fathers should sacrifice advancing their career to spend more time with their family (2) is always, always going to be far more credible than the liberal society which prizes career women and basically despises housewives. It's fine to point to alternative lifestyles and alternatives but we've been experimenting with these since the 60's and there is no scalable alternative.

And allow me to bring this really into focus with two questions, both getting somewhat heated.

First, an oldie but a goodie is Scott Aaronson's reflections on his romantic life and our Scott's commentary (3). Allow me to contrast this with all of the very real and legitimate horror stories of ex-Mormons. We don't have a perfect society and we don't have any clue how to get there. In a very real sense, you can have broken, atomized men and women or you can have an overly strict and oppressive religious, all we can choose is our failure mode. This is the real cost, the real heart of this issue, barring some fantastic romantic breakthrough, and I haven't met a progressive yet who was willing to pay that cost. (4)

So let go to the personal. I'm sure you want the best for your children but I'm also sure you're aware that the community they get raised in has a deep and profound effect on who they become. And, quite frankly, they're far less likely to get married and have children if you raise them in SF than if you raise them in Provo. Are you actively putting them, and yourself, in subcultures and societies that prioritize marriage and family? Because those subcultures, over the past 60+ years, have consistently gotten different life outcomes that progressive culture, or the general culture at that. Either you prioritize certain outcomes and are willing to accept the costs of that or you aren't.

Hopefully that clarified this a bit. It's not about policy, policy has not had traction on this issue, it's about culture and outcomes. Progressives do not live in a way that prioritizes family or marriage and as such consistently get poor results. No one is confused that the religious right, for all its many faults, has much higher marriage rates, more children, and less divorce.

(1) https://www.fatherly.com/health/republicans-have-more-children

(2)

(3) https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/01/01/untitled/

(4) Yes, I know Scott Aaronson eventually got married, I'm bringing it up more for his honesty and eloquence than the outcome. Suffice to say there are lots of men suffering far more, with far less eloquence and far less hope because they're not a genius MIT professor.