Gareth Southgate says that young men need role models (Richard Dimbleby Lecture). Not ‘toxic’ role models but sportsmen like him. Sorry Gareth but you are way off beam.
Very thought provoking article, thank you. I would add that it's very hard to get a man to marry you these days or agree to have children. There is no societal push if you're British; I have 3 friends (2 British and 1 Canadian) who have children through sperm donors, and these mothers have no choice but to send the children to nursery and continue working. The alternative is an even lower birthrate than the abysmal one we have now.
Another thing is it's hard to survive on a man's income only. My ex and I costed it up and saw we couldn't do it. But don't believe that in our hearts a great proportion of British women wouldn't have preferred to have husbands and stayed at home with the kids!
It seems to me there are no mothers praised in the media, apart from perhaps royals, the praise is for female entrepreneurs, businesswomen and celebrities.
As you indicate, generations of British people now see divorce as the norm. I would say because of this ease of divorce women fear being left alone with the kids and sinking into poverty, while men fear having their kids taken off them and having to pay dearly for it.
"I would say because of this ease of divorce women fear being left alone with the kids and sinking into poverty, while men fear having their kids taken off them and having to pay dearly for it. "
Coming late to this but anyway: you put your finger on something that is too often overlooked amongst all the angst about male role models. There are in fact loads of perfectly decent male role models still around in British society: Sportsmen, craftsmen, artisans, men in the armed forces, men in business; these have all been role models for young men for countless generations and they are still available in abundance. For women, however all the supposed role models given prominence in our culture are simply women copying men. My daughters cannot look back even one generation and find women they admire because the lives of my mother and my grandmothers are baffling to them, revolving as they did around raising families, albeit combined in every case with part-time work.
As David Goodhart has pointed out, the young mum who drops off her toddler at nursery every morning so that she can go to work represents a triumph for the patriarchy, not for female empowerment.
You're right! Women in traditionally male jobs are praised more highly than women in traditionally female jobs, and mothers are not praised at all.
Mothers and housewives evidently just form part of the slacker Not in Education, Employment or Training group.
I would say also modern woman view our grandmothers' lives as having been very precarious. Mine both left school at about 12, so what would they have done in the case of being widowed, or if their husbands turned out to be violent, or were long term unemployed? At least we modern spinsters can usually support ourselves financially to avoid poverty.
My mother was focused on love. This was a long time ago.
I can still recall her and my father reacting severely to my brothers and I when we strayed. But next day she gathered her principles around her and forgave us and cared for us. We could do nothing else but apologise without being asked.
My father's love demanded that we grow straight and had the resources to do this. My mother's love taught us the nature of love as service and freely given sacrifice.
It was mothers who created society. Looking back many women were like my mother. When I look at modern couples the parents, both male and female, are either both fathers or not parents at all.
Re-reading my comment above it poses the question "what principles?".
The whole of British society was either Christian or deeply influenced by Christianity (like my mother and father respectively). Life was construed as a creation of the individual that would be "good" according to Christian principles.
This is radically different from the modern outlook. The purpose of a modern life is to have material security and enjoy the transient pleasure of any surplus. (As you say above).
We need to reclaim our Christian heritage - I recently started going to a C of E church and it's striking to be in a communal environment that's not focused on making money/politics. It's also a lovely environment for children (and the rest of us!) to see many good role models of adults and families.
Most lives were precarious by current standards. I lived with my grandmother for a couple of brief periods when I was tiny because my mum was in hospital and my dad could not afford to stay at home – no work no pay. In the olden days at least my nan lived just round the corner and she stepped up with no difficulty. That was always one of the solutions to precarity of course, less so now.
That's true. I've often thought that people used to a precarious lifestyle are more likely to have kids in a precarious environment. Renting in a mixed council block my ex and I never dreamed of having a baby, but there were migrant mothers with several. Likewise with people historically.
The Corporate Elite will employ anyone who offers a competitive wage rate for a job.
The Patriarchy ran the Church which condemned women for working and the government and unions demanded re-instatement of male employment after the 20thC wars. The principle discrimination against women was due to employers being unprepared to risk the disturbance due to pregnancy or child care.
The Equal Pay Act 1970 and Sex Discrimination Act 1975 were responses to female pressure groups, not the Patriarchy.
The rest is history. More legislation occurred and the balance between the influence of men and women in society tilted right over to favour women over men, children and small businesses.
Points well made. Goodhart's argument, in his latest book, is not dissimilar to what you're saying here. He invokes the patriarchy only to point out that women have largely adopted male priorities, to the detriment of care for the young and the old. Mary Harrington calls it the triumph of the feminism of freedom over the feminism of care.
It's not quite right to see all this as a shift towards matriarchy, because the matri- is out of alignment with distinctively female priorities.
I like the author but it is men not women who have abandoned the family. I have seen this pattern IRL (including personal experience) scores of time and very rarely the opposite. And it’s obviously true because it is women who have the drive to have children at a very deep and immovable level. There may be loser men out there who can’t get a women but I’m a right wing man and so don’t care about that and also they should sort themselves out.
I like the author but it is men not women who have abandoned the family. I have seen this pattern IRL (including personal experience) scores of time and very rarely the opposite. And it’s obviously true because it is women who have the drive to have children at a very deep and immovable level. There may be loser men out there who can’t get a woman but I’m a right wing man and so don’t care about that and also they should sort themselves out
After divorce we do see men deserting previous families. Perhaps there are several phases in what has happened: Women desired financial independence, laws were changed to make divorce easy, the State provided social security, women resolved marital problems with divorce (65% of divorces initiated by women, 35% men), men and women avoid marriage because of insecurity about divorce. After divorce the men lose interest.
Fair. Divorce where there are children is a fundamental breach of trust and duty and ought to be the subject of personal shame for the sheer selfishness of it, as well as enormous social stigma/sanction for both parties and that irrespective of who instigates it - as should the bad behaviour that is upstream of divorce.
Why are there no historical societies which are matriarchal? Because as soon as women get control over their own fertility they choose to have less children. And this society will die out in a generation. Read gods of the copybook headings by Kipling
I did see a matriarchal tribe in China a few years back but the practice is very rare globally. My chief memory is of a couple of men in the communal house buried in washing up while the women played with their phones. :)
The West is becoming matriarchal because the taxpayer finances females to have children without husbands/partners. It looks like you are right about Western culture dying out.
It won’t die out , it will just get subsumed by those cultures who strictly control women’s fertility ie make more sons, they will take over things one way or another. There’s a good chance the ideas and beliefs of somebody who has 8 kids will survive longer than somebody who has like , none (and a bunch of cats and some memories of hard dancing to Kylie at madam Jojos)
Read about the Lancaster plan. Basically our ruling elites only care about staying in charge. And they have established that nobody will actually fight to defend liberal progressive society. So they (their organs that is) are slowly and surely steering UK society back into a more easily controlled , disciplined and orthodox religious basis. This will avoid any civil or chaos war and their potential loss of control…as long as the tenement rent gets paid at the end of each month who cares which direction you pray towards? Been the same since Roman times . And if he wombs of U.K. women aren’t producing just pull some wombs in from wherever the hell.
I studied climate systems at a reputable university, where we examined how complex, dynamic systems respond to change. When certain thresholds are crossed, these systems can undergo rapid and dramatic transformations, reorganising themselves around a new stable state.
A system may trend in one direction for years, but once it breaches a critical point, cascade reactions and positive feedback loops can trigger a complete structural shift. It’s a concept worth considering when thinking about societal dynamics.
In a way, it's akin to Quidditch in Harry Potter—a team can be losing by a wide margin, but catching the Snitch can instantly turn the game in their favour.
Very thought provoking article, thank you. I would add that it's very hard to get a man to marry you these days or agree to have children. There is no societal push if you're British; I have 3 friends (2 British and 1 Canadian) who have children through sperm donors, and these mothers have no choice but to send the children to nursery and continue working. The alternative is an even lower birthrate than the abysmal one we have now.
Another thing is it's hard to survive on a man's income only. My ex and I costed it up and saw we couldn't do it. But don't believe that in our hearts a great proportion of British women wouldn't have preferred to have husbands and stayed at home with the kids!
It seems to me there are no mothers praised in the media, apart from perhaps royals, the praise is for female entrepreneurs, businesswomen and celebrities.
As you indicate, generations of British people now see divorce as the norm. I would say because of this ease of divorce women fear being left alone with the kids and sinking into poverty, while men fear having their kids taken off them and having to pay dearly for it.
"I would say because of this ease of divorce women fear being left alone with the kids and sinking into poverty, while men fear having their kids taken off them and having to pay dearly for it. "
Well put.
Coming late to this but anyway: you put your finger on something that is too often overlooked amongst all the angst about male role models. There are in fact loads of perfectly decent male role models still around in British society: Sportsmen, craftsmen, artisans, men in the armed forces, men in business; these have all been role models for young men for countless generations and they are still available in abundance. For women, however all the supposed role models given prominence in our culture are simply women copying men. My daughters cannot look back even one generation and find women they admire because the lives of my mother and my grandmothers are baffling to them, revolving as they did around raising families, albeit combined in every case with part-time work.
As David Goodhart has pointed out, the young mum who drops off her toddler at nursery every morning so that she can go to work represents a triumph for the patriarchy, not for female empowerment.
You're right! Women in traditionally male jobs are praised more highly than women in traditionally female jobs, and mothers are not praised at all.
Mothers and housewives evidently just form part of the slacker Not in Education, Employment or Training group.
I would say also modern woman view our grandmothers' lives as having been very precarious. Mine both left school at about 12, so what would they have done in the case of being widowed, or if their husbands turned out to be violent, or were long term unemployed? At least we modern spinsters can usually support ourselves financially to avoid poverty.
My mother was focused on love. This was a long time ago.
I can still recall her and my father reacting severely to my brothers and I when we strayed. But next day she gathered her principles around her and forgave us and cared for us. We could do nothing else but apologise without being asked.
My father's love demanded that we grow straight and had the resources to do this. My mother's love taught us the nature of love as service and freely given sacrifice.
It was mothers who created society. Looking back many women were like my mother. When I look at modern couples the parents, both male and female, are either both fathers or not parents at all.
Re-reading my comment above it poses the question "what principles?".
The whole of British society was either Christian or deeply influenced by Christianity (like my mother and father respectively). Life was construed as a creation of the individual that would be "good" according to Christian principles.
This is radically different from the modern outlook. The purpose of a modern life is to have material security and enjoy the transient pleasure of any surplus. (As you say above).
We need to reclaim our Christian heritage - I recently started going to a C of E church and it's striking to be in a communal environment that's not focused on making money/politics. It's also a lovely environment for children (and the rest of us!) to see many good role models of adults and families.
Most lives were precarious by current standards. I lived with my grandmother for a couple of brief periods when I was tiny because my mum was in hospital and my dad could not afford to stay at home – no work no pay. In the olden days at least my nan lived just round the corner and she stepped up with no difficulty. That was always one of the solutions to precarity of course, less so now.
That's true. I've often thought that people used to a precarious lifestyle are more likely to have kids in a precarious environment. Renting in a mixed council block my ex and I never dreamed of having a baby, but there were migrant mothers with several. Likewise with people historically.
Is it "a triumph for the Patriarchy"?
The Corporate Elite will employ anyone who offers a competitive wage rate for a job.
The Patriarchy ran the Church which condemned women for working and the government and unions demanded re-instatement of male employment after the 20thC wars. The principle discrimination against women was due to employers being unprepared to risk the disturbance due to pregnancy or child care.
The Equal Pay Act 1970 and Sex Discrimination Act 1975 were responses to female pressure groups, not the Patriarchy.
The Sex Discrimination Act in 1975 was the biggest change ( https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1975/65/enacted ). This forced employers to hire women even if there was a risk of pregnancy etc.
The rest is history. More legislation occurred and the balance between the influence of men and women in society tilted right over to favour women over men, children and small businesses.
Points well made. Goodhart's argument, in his latest book, is not dissimilar to what you're saying here. He invokes the patriarchy only to point out that women have largely adopted male priorities, to the detriment of care for the young and the old. Mary Harrington calls it the triumph of the feminism of freedom over the feminism of care.
It's not quite right to see all this as a shift towards matriarchy, because the matri- is out of alignment with distinctively female priorities.
I like the author but it is men not women who have abandoned the family. I have seen this pattern IRL (including personal experience) scores of time and very rarely the opposite. And it’s obviously true because it is women who have the drive to have children at a very deep and immovable level. There may be loser men out there who can’t get a women but I’m a right wing man and so don’t care about that and also they should sort themselves out.
I like the author but it is men not women who have abandoned the family. I have seen this pattern IRL (including personal experience) scores of time and very rarely the opposite. And it’s obviously true because it is women who have the drive to have children at a very deep and immovable level. There may be loser men out there who can’t get a woman but I’m a right wing man and so don’t care about that and also they should sort themselves out
After divorce we do see men deserting previous families. Perhaps there are several phases in what has happened: Women desired financial independence, laws were changed to make divorce easy, the State provided social security, women resolved marital problems with divorce (65% of divorces initiated by women, 35% men), men and women avoid marriage because of insecurity about divorce. After divorce the men lose interest.
Fair. Divorce where there are children is a fundamental breach of trust and duty and ought to be the subject of personal shame for the sheer selfishness of it, as well as enormous social stigma/sanction for both parties and that irrespective of who instigates it - as should the bad behaviour that is upstream of divorce.
Why are there no historical societies which are matriarchal? Because as soon as women get control over their own fertility they choose to have less children. And this society will die out in a generation. Read gods of the copybook headings by Kipling
I did see a matriarchal tribe in China a few years back but the practice is very rare globally. My chief memory is of a couple of men in the communal house buried in washing up while the women played with their phones. :)
The West is becoming matriarchal because the taxpayer finances females to have children without husbands/partners. It looks like you are right about Western culture dying out.
It won’t die out , it will just get subsumed by those cultures who strictly control women’s fertility ie make more sons, they will take over things one way or another. There’s a good chance the ideas and beliefs of somebody who has 8 kids will survive longer than somebody who has like , none (and a bunch of cats and some memories of hard dancing to Kylie at madam Jojos)
Read about the Lancaster plan. Basically our ruling elites only care about staying in charge. And they have established that nobody will actually fight to defend liberal progressive society. So they (their organs that is) are slowly and surely steering UK society back into a more easily controlled , disciplined and orthodox religious basis. This will avoid any civil or chaos war and their potential loss of control…as long as the tenement rent gets paid at the end of each month who cares which direction you pray towards? Been the same since Roman times . And if he wombs of U.K. women aren’t producing just pull some wombs in from wherever the hell.
The culture of the West will change. The elite do not care so long as they keep power, as you say.
What is sad is how ordinary English people think they have the moral high ground backing the elites.
I studied climate systems at a reputable university, where we examined how complex, dynamic systems respond to change. When certain thresholds are crossed, these systems can undergo rapid and dramatic transformations, reorganising themselves around a new stable state.
A system may trend in one direction for years, but once it breaches a critical point, cascade reactions and positive feedback loops can trigger a complete structural shift. It’s a concept worth considering when thinking about societal dynamics.
In a way, it's akin to Quidditch in Harry Potter—a team can be losing by a wide margin, but catching the Snitch can instantly turn the game in their favour.
Awful