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> It is not ‘privilege’. I was the potential contained in the passed on genes of my family and they wanted to make sure I didn’t squander it. So they created th

by pm90 7y ago

> It is not ‘privilege’. I was the potential contained in the passed on genes of my family and they wanted to make sure I didn’t squander it. So they created the best environment for me. I had the added bonus of a large joint family which meant that the family was a miniature village of aunts, uncles, grandparents, cousins, nieces and nephews as one family unit. Single parenthood is tough. I wish society would stop telling people that it’s easy. Community can take the place of family. Just don’t hand it over to govt that needs to be elected to maintain power and status quo. That is quite literally the definition of privilege. What you call potential contained in the genes of your family is a myth. For whatever reasons, your family happened to be successful, but genetic fitness isn't the sole reason for their success. What you characterize as the elasticity of youth is also privilege btw. Kids from many backgrounds aren't able to survive pitfalls, the safety nets that privilege creates is what enables those who have it to continue their success while others are penalized heavily by institutions. > Community can take the place of family. Just don’t hand it over to govt that needs to be elected to maintain power and status quo. In a democracy, the government is representative of the communities it governns. Again, you and should rely on both: community for setting principles and culture, Government for securing law and order and maintaining peace. In the current situation, the Government is actively hindering many communities by heavily penalizing mistakes, setting those communities back by a lot.

zozbot234 7y ago
I think you may have missed parent's point. What he's saying is that having a "stable and supportive" family should really not be a privilege in the first place, regardless of material resources. Plenty of folks throughout history, even folks of very limited means and quite low station for their time, have had stable and supportive familied behind them. Families are an extremely important bedrock and building block of a community's social capital, and policy should explicitly recognize this. Calling all this mere "privilege" is a defeatist and devaluing attitude, that betrays a facile lack of empathy for the plight of those involved.
- pm90 7y ago
  > Calling all this mere "privilege" is a defeatist and devaluing attitude, that betrays a facile lack of empathy for the plight of those involved. I would advise you to not resort to name calling if you want to have a honest discourse. Now to the substance of your argument: yes families have been the bedrock in the past, but the assumption that everyone may have stable, reliable families to depend on does not hold in the modern world. As fertility rates plummet, families are smaller in size. Many children born in the past couple of generations in the US lived in divorced households or were raised by single parents, and this is only going to increase in the future. To ignore that reality and insist on people forming families is going to be as effective as insisting on abstinence as a form of birth control. So yes, having a stable family is most certainly a privilege today, regardless of whether it’s defeatist or not. It’s a fact. Recognizing that reality will allow us to dedicate resources to help the present and coming generations of kids, instead of abandoning or incarcerating them.
  - zozbot234 7y ago
    > but the assumption that everyone may have stable, reliable families to depend on does not hold in the modern world How convenient then that this assumption just so happens to hold quite well even in the longer run for those you would think of as "privileged", while others will just have to do without. Sorry, I don't buy it. Uptake of sensible, middle-class values should not be construed as some privilege that will always be inherently out of reach for others. I am indeed sorry if you felt that I was name-calling in my previous comment; but it seems clear to me that attitudes like yours are doing these folks a pretty big disservice. Should we commit resources to help "present and coming" generations? Of course - various sorts of criminal justice reform can be a big help here, for example. But that's a wholly separate argument than whether forming families is only for the 'privileged'.
    - jelliclesfarm 7y ago
      FWIW, I didn’t think there was any name calling. [..] priv·i·lege /ˈpriv(ə)lij/ noun a special right, advantage, or immunity granted or available only to a particular person or group. [..] Creating and raising stable families is not a zero sum game. I don’t think it should be categorized as ‘privilege’. It makes light of the sacrifices and hard work of families and parents who deliberately steer the fate of their offsprings. Every American by default is more privileged because of accident of birth vs immigrants who move to the United States. And yet, immigrants have consistently braved the odds to become successful and grant it to their offsprings, kin and extended families. It is dedication and hard work. Not luck or privilege.

by pm90 7y ago

zozbot234 7y ago

I think you may have missed parent's point. What he's saying is that having a "stable and supportive" family should really not be a privilege in the first place, regardless of material resources. Plenty of folks throughout history, even folks of very limited means and quite low station for their time, have had stable and supportive familied behind them. Families are an extremely important bedrock and building block of a community's social capital, and policy should explicitly recognize this. Calling all this mere "privilege" is a defeatist and devaluing attitude, that betrays a facile lack of empathy for the plight of those involved.

pm90 7y ago
> Calling all this mere "privilege" is a defeatist and devaluing attitude, that betrays a facile lack of empathy for the plight of those involved. I would advise you to not resort to name calling if you want to have a honest discourse. Now to the substance of your argument: yes families have been the bedrock in the past, but the assumption that everyone may have stable, reliable families to depend on does not hold in the modern world. As fertility rates plummet, families are smaller in size. Many children born in the past couple of generations in the US lived in divorced households or were raised by single parents, and this is only going to increase in the future. To ignore that reality and insist on people forming families is going to be as effective as insisting on abstinence as a form of birth control. So yes, having a stable family is most certainly a privilege today, regardless of whether it’s defeatist or not. It’s a fact. Recognizing that reality will allow us to dedicate resources to help the present and coming generations of kids, instead of abandoning or incarcerating them.
- zozbot234 7y ago
  > but the assumption that everyone may have stable, reliable families to depend on does not hold in the modern world How convenient then that this assumption just so happens to hold quite well even in the longer run for those you would think of as "privileged", while others will just have to do without. Sorry, I don't buy it. Uptake of sensible, middle-class values should not be construed as some privilege that will always be inherently out of reach for others. I am indeed sorry if you felt that I was name-calling in my previous comment; but it seems clear to me that attitudes like yours are doing these folks a pretty big disservice. Should we commit resources to help "present and coming" generations? Of course - various sorts of criminal justice reform can be a big help here, for example. But that's a wholly separate argument than whether forming families is only for the 'privileged'.
  - jelliclesfarm 7y ago
    FWIW, I didn’t think there was any name calling. [..] priv·i·lege /ˈpriv(ə)lij/ noun a special right, advantage, or immunity granted or available only to a particular person or group. [..] Creating and raising stable families is not a zero sum game. I don’t think it should be categorized as ‘privilege’. It makes light of the sacrifices and hard work of families and parents who deliberately steer the fate of their offsprings. Every American by default is more privileged because of accident of birth vs immigrants who move to the United States. And yet, immigrants have consistently braved the odds to become successful and grant it to their offsprings, kin and extended families. It is dedication and hard work. Not luck or privilege.