Was the American Middleclass an Historical Aberration?

[aaron]

Re: Animal Slaughter

That is a whole can of worms you are throwing in here. Regardless, that is definitely not a middle class area.

[Polish_Silver]

decline of "traditional family"

Maybe being middle class is just too much work, a lot of guys seem to not care to participate:

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/...cross-america/

The article is correct that traditional two parent families are in decline.
However, violent crime is way down from 30 years ago!
Drug use is also down from 1980 highs.
Think how many abusive marriages there were then. Women trapped, men trapped, children trapped.

Now is the first time that the median single woman out earns the median single man.

Women do not need men on an economic level. Could that have something to do with it?

The "traditional family" was a historical aberration, if understood as "two parent nuclear family. "

Two generations ago, extended family was the norm. Going further back in time, the group was the fundamental social unit, not the "family".

During our first 5 million years of exisitence, humans lived in tight knit groups of 30-150 people. The strongest relationships were mother-child, male-male and female-female peer groups. Father-child relationships were not especially strong. This is how our nearest relatives, bonoboes and chimps, live today in the wild. Only the last 10 thousand years, since the agricultural revolution, have we tried to live in families, so that inheritance of land from father to son would be orderly.

To see this, considerd the Mosuo people of western China. The land is inherited mother to daughter. It is forbidden to discuss the male paternity of anyone. Guess what? No double standard of sexual behavior, no "cult of virginity". Women are free to take as many lovers as they want. Expectations of exclusiveness and commitment between men and women are taboo. The long lasting relationships are between siblings, mothers and children and within peer groups. Men have no special relationship to the children they sire, and they do not even know who those children are.

A post agricultural revolution society does everything to strengthen the father child bond. For example, using the father's surname for the wife and the children. Women keeping their maiden name is highly symbolic. It does indeed reflect the increasing equality of the women and the end of her status as the husbands property. If you doubt this, read through the 10 commandments, especially the ones about coveting. The wife is listed right along with livestock, servants, and other articles of property.

All the great men of the old testament had more than one wife: adam, abraham, Moses, Noah, David, Solomon. (Check Noah, I'm not so sure about him). If these highly privileged people had many sexual partners, perhaps other men wanted that, but could not attain it.

There are profound reasons for this: sexual desire cannot be sustained in a long term relationship. See "Sex Motiv" by Klusmann. The problem is called "incest imprinting", Coolidge effect, and "habituation". The longer you live with a woman, the more the experience is like living with your sister, not having a lover.

The changing family structure is a new phase human relationships, but not necessarily a bad thing. It could be the final stage of sexual liberation!

[c1ue]

Re: decline of "traditional family"

During our first 5 million years of exisitence, humans lived in tight knit groups of 30-150 people. The strongest relationships were mother-child, male-male and female-female peer groups. Father-child relationships were not especially strong. This is how our nearest relatives, bonoboes and chimps, live today in the wild. Only the last 10 thousand years, since the agricultural revolution, have we tried to live in families, so that inheritance of land from father to son would be orderly.

This is true, but to say that matrilineal societies of the past - where people lived in largely static small groups - can be comparable to 'liberated women' of today... seems a stretch.

A woman with a child - quite difficult indeed to survive unless said women makes a whole pile of money. Just having median earnings doesn't cut it.

[Polish_Silver]

Re: decline of "traditional family"

This is true, but to say that matrilineal societies of the past - where people lived in largely static small groups - can be comparable to 'liberated women' of today... seems a stretch.

A woman with a child - quite difficult indeed to survive unless said women makes a whole pile of money. Just having median earnings doesn't cut it.

I strongly suspect that women will form groups to achieve income security, economies of scale in housing, and cooperation in child rearing. Men will also form groups, or go into stag mode. They will operate like baboons, exchanging baby sitting for sex.

[shiny!]

Re: decline of "traditional family"

I strongly suspect that women will form groups to achieve income security, economies of scale in housing, and cooperation in child rearing. Men will also form groups, or go into stag mode. They will operate like baboons, exchanging baby sitting for sex.

They may exchange something for sex, but not likely babysitting. How many women today leave their children in the care of their boyfriends only to come home and find them molested, battered or killed? Too many.

The extended family or groups of extended families living together makes more practical sense. The elderly provide babysitting and wisdom to the young. The youth help care for the elders, while the working age people work.

[Polish_Silver]

Re: decline of "traditional family"

They may exchange something for sex, but not likely babysitting. How many women today leave their children in the care of their boyfriends only to come home and find them molested, battered or killed? Too many.

The extended family or groups of extended families living together makes more practical sense. The elderly provide babysitting and wisdom to the young. The youth help care for the elders, while the working age people work.

Baboons do exchange baby sitting for sex, though chimps apparently do not. Baboons are doing it in a group situation where there others watching. That could also be part of my model, since the women would be sharing a large house and would not all be gone at the same time.

My impression was that most child abuse takes place with a "captive audience" and that the other family members know about it but are helpless to do anything, because they are economically dependent on the man. This would not be the case in the group situation described above, because the woman would have access to several men as well as women. Any of them who got out of line would be dismissed.

[seobook]

Re: decline of "traditional family"

violent crime is way down from 30 years ago

maybe reported violent crime is way down, but now a lot of it happens behind bars.

a particularly sobering read on this shift: http://nplusonemag.com/raise-the-crime-rate

Before last year, the federal government had never bothered to estimate the actual number of rapes that occur in prisons. Its data relied on official complaints filed by prisoners, which in recent years have averaged around 800. One such complaint was filed in 1995 by Rodney Hulin, a boy from Amarillo, Texas, who had been arrested as a 15-year-old after throwing a Molotov cocktail into a pile of garbage. The trash burned, causing about $500 worth of damage to the exterior of an adjacent house. Hulin’s prank was unimpressive, but Texas in the mid-’90s had little tolerance for teenage ruffianism; in 1994, George W. Bush had become governor, defeating Ann Richards, a popular incumbent, by depicting her as soft on crime. Hulin was charged with two counts of second-degree arson. He was a small guy—just five feet tall and 125 pounds—but he got a big sentence: eight years in adult prison.

Within a month of arriving at Clemens Unit, a temporary holding facility outside Houston for juveniles on their way to adult prison, Hulin was raped by another inmate. He asked to be moved out of harm’s way, but his request was denied, and the rapes continued. In a letter to prison authorities, he wrote, “I might die at any minute. Please sir, help me.” Help was not forthcoming: getting raped was not deemed urgent enough to meet the requirements of the prison’s emergency grievance criteria. When Hulin got his mother to complain to the prison’s warden, she was told that Hulin needed to “grow up” and “learn to deal with it.”

Hulin’s method for dealing with it was to kill himself. Ten weeks after his arrival, he was discovered dangling from the ceiling of his cell.

Hulin’s case was unusual: most prisoners who get raped do not write letters to the warden. It isn’t hard to see why: resisting an inmate who claims your body as his own, or, worse, acquiring a reputation as a “snitch,” can turn an isolated incident into months of serial gang rape. Just ask Roderick Johnson, a petty thief who was attacked by his roommate shortly after arriving at a Texas prison. Johnson asked to be transferred to a different section of the facility, and got his wish. But news of Johnson’s physical availability had spread throughout the complex—after you’re raped once, you’re marked—and he was soon enslaved by a gang. In addition to passing Johnson around among themselves, Johnson’s new overseers sold his ass and mouth to a variety of clients for $3 to $7, a competitive enough price that it resulted in multiple rapes every day for the eighteen months that Johnson spent in prison. When he went to the authorities, they laughed and told him to “fight or fuck.”

[aaron]

Re: decline of "traditional family"

That is a terribly sad story. Was this before private prisons or after? They might not get paid if they transfer a kid to a different prison, I would guess.

[reggie]

Re: decline of "traditional family"

[LorenS]

Re: decline of "traditional family"

maybe reported violent crime is way down, but now a lot of it happens behind bars.

a particularly sobering read on this shift: http://nplusonemag.com/raise-the-crime-rate

Read the comments on any high profile crime story. A large portion of the US public assumes that prisoners will be raped and they cheer it on. It's "part of the sentence" in their bitter, vengeful minds.

And, of course, prison is the ultimate in "gun control". Is serial rape, hangings, beatings and such a fair trade for no mass shootings? We could make the entire US just like a prison. Be careful what you wish for.

[don]

Re: decline of "traditional family"

The longer you live with a woman, the more the experience is like living with your sister

maybe the quote of the week

[c1ue]

Re: decline of "traditional family"

I strongly suspect that women will form groups to achieve income security, economies of scale in housing, and cooperation in child rearing. Men will also form groups, or go into stag mode. They will operate like baboons, exchanging baby sitting for sex.

While the situation you describe could work - it requires something which also doesn't exist: stability (or stagnancy).

For people hanging on the margins, there isn't much of this either.

In a hunter-gatherer or even a small town/village situation, the situation is different.

[dcarrigg]

Re: decline of "traditional family"

I strongly suspect that women will form groups to achieve income security, economies of scale in housing, and cooperation in child rearing. Men will also form groups, or go into stag mode. They will operate like baboons, exchanging baby sitting for sex.

Back to serfdom. People always cope. Go into very low income neighborhoods now.

I'm not sure it's a natural product of sexual liberation.

But I'm pretty sure it's a natural product of poverty.

Get desperate enough and you'll rely on anyone, trade sex for anything, and do anything to get by.

[reggie]

Re: decline of "traditional family"

I believe this presention, from earlier this week in Australia, is relevant to this thread... I've posted in forum video section at

2 Billion Jobs to Disappear by 2030. Dr. Thomas Frey
http://www.itulip.com/forums/showthr...-Frey?p=246438

[NCR85]

Re: Was the American Middleclass an Historical Aberration?

I would suggest instead that the reason why productivity diverged from compensation is simply because the "wealth" represented by the productivity numbers is a financial fiction engendered by the Fed's new monetary actions in the wake of the relinquishment of the Bretton Woods system. The de-linking of the two happens almost exactly when the gold standard was dropped and the time since 1971 was always either plagued by high inflation (1971-1983) or unsustainable credit market growth (1983-2007), both of which were precursors to the asset market crises of the 2000s which wiped out a lot of the paper wealth that those productivity figures were supposed to represent.

Let me explain my point here a little more elaborately:
If compensation is a rough proxy for what is consumed and productivity is a rough proxy for what is produced (in theory), then the difference between the two is deferred consumption. When you call this by it's conventional name, "saving", this sounds innocuous, but let's break it down a bit. Saving is nice when you get rewarded for it at a later point, but it's effect in the presence is negative to the saver: he has to live "below his means" for a while to build up savings capital. I'm interested in the situation where a monetary authority forces people into the role of savers indefinitely by forcibly inducing credit market growth every time people try to "pull out" of the savers market. If the savings pool is never built down again and turned into what people sought to achieve by saving, i.e. consumption, the effect would be: perpetually deferred consumption, in other words, claims to wealth that can by definition not be turned in for the wealth it is supposed to represent. Which on a society-wide scale means GDP and productivity numbers that way overstate the amount of wealth the society can generate.

The story is a little hard to square with the fact that the US still has about 70% it's GDP consisting of consumption, so I'm not 100% confident in stating that this is what is going on, but it's a worthwhile thought.