jims musings

The title above is a quote (of a quote) in an arti­cle Joy Jones wrote in the Sun­day (26 March 2006) edi­tion of The Wash­ing­ton Post. Allow me to quote a sec­tion of the article:

[A]s a black woman, I have wit­nessed the out­rage of girl­friends when the ex failed to show up for his week­end with the kids, and I’ve seen the dis­ap­point­ment of chil­dren who missed hav­ing a dad around. Hav­ing enjoyed a close rela­tion­ship with my own father, I made a con­scious deci­sion that I wanted a hus­band, not a live-in boyfriend and not a “baby’s daddy,” when it came my time to mate and marry.
My time never came.
For years, I won­dered why not. And then some 12-year-olds enlight­ened me.
“Mar­riage is for white peo­ple.“
That’s what one of my stu­dents told me some years back when I taught a career explo­ration class for sixth-graders at an ele­men­tary school in South­east Wash­ing­ton. I was pleas­antly sur­prised when the boys in the class stated that being a good father was a very impor­tant goal to them, more mean­ing­ful than mak­ing money or hav­ing a fancy title.
“That’s won­der­ful!” I told my class. “I think I’ll invite some cou­ples in to talk about being mar­ried and rear­ing chil­dren.“
“Oh, no,” objected one stu­dent. “We’re not inter­ested in the part about mar­riage. Only about how to be good fathers.“
And that’s when the other boy chimed in, speak­ing as if the words left a nasty taste in his mouth: “Mar­riage is for white people.”

Joy shares some sta­tis­tics, which she uses to point out that, sta­tis­ti­cally, “a black child was more likely to grow up liv­ing with both par­ents dur­ing slav­ery days than he or she is today” (empha­sis mine). She con­tin­ues her dis­cus­sion, writ­ing how tra­di­tional con­cepts of fam­ily have changed so much that its is dif­fi­cult to define ‘nor­mal’ fam­ily life. With the cur­rent behav­iors of African-American men, “link­ing one’s fate to a man makes mar­riage a risky busi­ness for a black woman.” She quotes a young black woman:

“A woman who takes that step is bold and brave,” one young sin­gle mother told me. “Women don’t want to marry because they don’t want to lose their freedom.”

The arti­cle goes on to say much more, and heads in a dif­fer­ent direc­tion than my com­ments here. I rec­om­mend the entire arti­cle to you.

I feel like I’m becom­ing an old cur­mud­geon, and I’m only 35. The last quote struck me, as it echoed sim­i­lar sen­ti­ments I have heard and read else­where. In my view, peo­ple have ratio­nal­ized many choices in the name of free­dom. Not mar­ry­ing because you don’t want to lose your free­dom? Mar­riage gives you more free­dom than you give up. A sin­gle par­ent, strug­gling to raise a fam­ily alone, does not have free­dom. A sin­gle adult, with­out the oblig­a­tions of spouse or fam­ily, has more per­sonal free­dom but at the great loss of joy with fam­ily and loved ones. This nation was set up, founded upon, the free­doms nec­es­sary to have and raise fam­i­lies. Now the fam­ily, the atoms and mol­e­cules of soci­ety, is being shat­tered so indi­vid­u­als can pur­sue self­ish free­doms. If we con­tinue this much longer, we won’t have a soci­ety in which to be free. Soci­ety is a mesh, and at some point it will become so frayed and unrav­eled that it will no longer hold together.

There was an arti­cle in my local news­pa­per a few days ago, which says things pretty well:

A Minute for Par­ents: Is this a “drug” prob­lem we need?

JoAnn Hamil­ton 23.MAR.06
Allow­ing for a sense of humor in the way this arti­cle is writ­ten, you might find some ideas here. The arti­cle, found in the July 2005 Utah Retired School Employ­ees Asso­ci­a­tion Bul­letin, offers a solu­tion in a most unique way for the increase of drug prob­lems, includ­ing metham­phet­a­mine labs in our towns and cities.

I am not nec­es­sar­ily endors­ing the type of con­duct used in this arti­cle, but con­se­quences, rela­tion­ships, expec­ta­tions and bound­aries do help in the build­ing of solid youth.

An older per­son asked another older per­son, “Why didn’t we have a drug prob­lem when you and I were grow­ing up?” He answered:

“I had a drug prob­lem when I was young.

“I was drug to church on Sun­day morning.

“I was drug to church for wed­dings and funerals.

“I was drug to fam­ily reunions and com­mu­nity socials no mat­ter the weather.

“I was drug by my ears when I was dis­re­spect­ful to adults.

“I was also drug to the wood­shed when I dis­obeyed my par­ents, told a lie, brought home a bad report card, did not speak with respect, spoke ill of the teacher or the preacher or if I didn’t put forth my best effort in every­thing that was asked of me.

“I was drug to the kitchen sink to have my mouth washed out with soap if I uttered a bad four-letter word.

“I was drug out to pull weeds in mom’s gar­den flowerbeds and cock­le­burs out of dad’s fields.

“I was drug to the homes of fam­ily, friends and neigh­bors to help some poor soul who had no one to mow the yard, repair the clothes­line or chop some firewood.

“And if my mother had ever known that I took a sin­gle dime as a tip for this kind­ness, she would have drug me back to the woodshed.

“Those drugs are still in my veins, and they affect my behav­ior in every­thing I do, say and think. They are stronger than cocaine, crack or heroin, and if today’s chil­dren had this kind of drug prob­lem, Amer­ica would be a bet­ter place.”

I am not a believer in “forc­ing” youth to do things, but I am a believer in expec­ta­tions and nat­ural con­se­quences, which hope­fully they learned as children.

Youth will work hard to live up to expec­ta­tions. Some­times they only live up to them because they don’t want the con­se­quences. Some things like doing chores, get­ting hair­cuts, telling where they are going, ask­ing per­mis­sion, attend­ing school, not get­ting tat­toos, not drink­ing, not doing drugs, doing home­work, going to church, telling the truth, not hit­ting fam­ily or other peo­ple, etc. are expectations.

Kids need to be TAUGHT why these expec­ta­tions are whole­some and why they would want to choose these val­ues. Hope­fully we can entice them into want­ing whole­some activ­i­ties and behaviors.

Youth need to know that not only do you expect these actions, but you are sure that they will not dis­ap­point you. All edu­ca­tors say that youth thrive if they live within bound­aries. All of the above are bound­aries. If a youth has NO bound­aries, and every­thing is up to him, you can expect trou­ble down the road.

Also self esteem is built because a youth does some­thing and then feels good about what he did. If he doesn’t do any chores, he can’t feel good about the ones he didn’t do, and he can’t have the self esteem that comes from giving.

Amer­ica has a fas­ci­na­tion with the super­hero. Super­man, Bat­man, Spi­der­man… and yes, there are some super­women there too. But why do we have super­heroes in the first place?

Because we believe in the super-villian. The crook who out-smarts or over-powers the reg­u­lar police and mil­i­tary. The threat that is so large, so beyond the pale, that the legal sys­tem and the law can’t com­pre­hend it. Thus, the super­hero to fight these crooks and sub­vert their crimes.

The super­hero always seems to be a per­son with a strong moral char­ac­ter and sense of jus­tice; some­one who can be trusted to pro­tect the weak and inno­cent. Some­how, they are above the law, if only because they com­bat oth­ers in that realm.

Supervil­lians have always been around– Genghis Khan, Hitler (and many of his cronies), Stalin, Sad­dam Hus­sein, Tim­o­thy McVeigh, bin Laden, al-qaida. The lat­ter is seen almost as the ‘league of evil’ in west­ern eyes.

Do we need a super­hero to com­bat these evils? Some sort of star cham­ber to decide what must be done? Amer­i­cans are not happy with the war in Iraq, but I think this dis­tem­per stems more from the gen­eral unease that some­thing wrong is hap­pen­ing to our soci­ety and free­doms. We hear of wire­tap­ping, increased fed­eral pow­ers, protests against the Patriot Act. Could a star cham­ber allow us to address the prob­lem at hand while at the same time pro­tect civil lib­er­ties and freedoms?

Com­ments welcome.

Stum­bled across this inter­est­ing arti­cle today:

http://www.vdare.com/sailer/050508_family.htm

Steve Sailer, the author, draws a num­ber of inter­est­ing con­clu­sions, link­ing the afford­abil­ity of a fam­ily (home, cost of liv­ing, schools, etc.) to polit­i­cal lean­ings. Inter­est­ing thoughts, par­tic­u­larly in light of the cur­rent debate regard­ing ille­gal aliens and what to do with them.