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Article's full of that. Mostly it's about how all these now-unemployed and uneducated men aren't worth marrying. Which makes all the posts in this thread about
by ashark 9y ago
Article's full of that. Mostly it's about how all these now-unemployed and uneducated men aren't worth marrying. Which makes all the posts in this thread about how it's caused by men not wanting to marry women because it's too risky kinda funny. Article's all about too few men being marriage material.
They end on a hilariously useless and misguided piece of advice that wouldn't be out of place in The Onion's version of this article:
> Mr. Wilcox suggests a bigger emphasis in high schools and pop culture on what’s known as the success sequence: degree, job, marriage, baby. “The idea is that if people follow that sequence, their odds of landing in poverty are much lower,” he said.
- humanrebar 9y ago> The idea is that if people follow that sequence, their odds of landing in poverty are much lower. Half of all babies are accidental, regardless of marital status. If sex is in the equation before "degree" (it is), then the whole sequence is flawed.
- ashark 9y agoI like that the advice is nearly indistinguishable from "be born into a family where you'll be socialized to follow this pattern and provided resources to help follow it and to help get you back on track if things go awry, and golly, you probably won't be poor!"
- humanrebar 9y agoHe's not actually wrong. I just think leaving the word "sex" out of the description misstates the actual problem. One could start following that pattern, get pregnant in college, drop out, and be slightly better off than having a baby in high school (since you check the "some college" option on the application instead of "some high school"). If the problem is education and socialization, shouldn't the philanthropic classes be educating teens more about the statistics involved in getting pregnant and poverty rates? It seems like we're too busy not judging (which is an admirable instinct) to be explicit in our culture about the relationship between sexual activity, poverty, family structure, and pregnancy. We spend tons of energy on all sorts of techniques to level playing fields and give kids a leg up, but fail to broach this subject. If we think kids are mature enough to decide to be sexually active, we should make sure they're educated enough as well.
- greglindahl 9y agoI don't know what sex education classes you had, but the ones I had (public high school, late 1970s in the deep South) definitely mentioned the impact that early childbearing had on education and lifetime income.
- humanrebar 9y agoThe ones I experienced were heavy on science and light on statistics and social science. Also, I was speaking more broadly than just what was covered in health class. We have smoking ads and drunk driving ads, but don't care to publicize hard facts about other lifestyle decisions.