There's a fascinating insight into the mindset of the patriarchy, or at least of one of its defenders, in Foreign Policy this month. Phillip Longman's argument in a nutshell is that only the rule of the fathers will ensure that large numbers of children are born. Therefore we must have a full on, father-knows-best-and-rules-all (probably with a heavy leather belt), patriarchy.
Throughout the broad sweep of human history, there are many examples of people, or classes of people, who chose to avoid the costs of parenthood. Indeed, falling fertility is a recurring tendency of human civilization. Why then did humans not become extinct long ago? The short answer is patriarchy.Patriarchy does not simply mean that men rule. Indeed, it is a particular value system that not only requires men to marry but to marry a woman of proper station. It competes with many other male visions of the good life, and for that reason alone is prone to come in cycles.
The fallacies are obvious. One is that Earth can continue to support an infinitely increasing population, until, presumably, each person has just enough space to stand. That's so obviously ridiculous—when the world's ecosystems are already showing severe signs of collapse—that it hardly requires a response.
But let's for a moment follow his social Darwinism, and consider the claim that societies that outbreed other societies will eventually come to rule them, which seems thus far to have done India and China little good. What has finally started to lift them is education, training, investment in people—things that are only possible with relatively small families. For what is needed today is clearly a skilled, educated workforce.
That leaves me thinking about what the fundamentalists are doing to America, for here is only an, apparently, respectable, intellectual face of the rabid anti-abortionist, anti-women's rights, anti-anyone-except-their-own-rights campaigners. They are trying to take control of women's bodies (and minds) and turn them into Stepford wives. And they think that will produce some sort of Fifties Brady Bunch idyll.
But what is it going to do to the economics of America? If you force women (and men) not to have sex outside marriage (for fear of pregnancy, if nothing else, having restricted and often ended access to birth control) they will, inevitably, marry young. And that will stop them getting education, stop them participating to their full capacity in the workplace, in short cost them vast amounts of money. To consider a British study:
A 24-year-old mid-skilled woman giving birth would, she found, earn a staggering £560,000 less at today's prices over her lifetime than a childless counterpart. Giving birth at 28 would only cost £165,000.
Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - goomns
One correction: The Brady Bunch took place in the late sixties or early seventies if I'm not mistaken. Valerie Salanas? Now there's a radical pistol-packing feminist.
2 - Ruvy in Jerusalem
I hate to tell you this, Natalie, but the concept of the kibbutz waa based in part on removing the patriachy present in Jewish life in Europe. While the kibbutzim and many of the concepts they represented are now things of the past, their paedagogoc practices were translated into much general education here.
The result is the present Israeli brat - undisciplined, having no sense of respect for his elders of anyone else for that matter, thinking that rules apply only to others and not to himself, etc. Now imagine a whole society where these kids grow into adults...
3 - Akeel Shah
Natalie,
I agree that Longman's piece is somewhat over the top and doesn't address some key points.
One of the things that isn't easy to dismiss in Longman's article is the simple demographic fact that conservatives are outbreeding their liberal counterparts by a significant margin within the West. This is particularly evident in the USA. Even if you exclude the third world, the reality of political demographics seems to naturally reinforce 'patriarchical' structures. Of course the counterargument to this is that conservatives having larger families has been the case for probably 100 years or so in the West and society as a whole has still progressivly become more 'liberal'. This is true but I think when fertility starts dipping below replacement levels we're entering into a new realm.
4 - Natalie Bennett
The encouraging thing, Akeel, is that as soon as you send children off to university, they suddenly start to think for themselves, and get a lot more liberal.
Now from what I've read about the US, the Right is trying to fight this by setting up their own, frequently hideous, creationist, racist (no "mixed dating"!) places where the students won't learn to think for themselves or have their views challenged).
I would think, however, that their graduates would not be equipped to work anywhere serious - well except perhaps the US government, if that counts as serious.
And Ruvy, your complaints about the "brats" coming out of the kibbutz system - well they are echoed by all other parts of the world that didn't have the system, indeed have been echoed by people going back at least to the Ancient Greeks. If humankind were really going backwards at the rate each generation thinks, we'd have been back in the trees centuries ago.
I can't comment on Israel, but generally in - well Europe anyway - children are now better-educated, more capable, and generally at least as decently behaved as ever before: that's my view.
5 - Nancy
Throughout the history of literature, the current generation of elders have thought the younger gens were going to hell in a handbasket, as the saying goes. I wish I could find an online ref to that several-thousand-year-old lament by a Sumerian (?) father about his son; it could have been written today, with only a change or two to allow for technology.
However, also throughout history, it's evident that patriarchy is synonymous with chattel slavery of every kind, usually of the more vicious & mindless sorts. "Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely...." As the author of this excellent article says, the sooner it is kicked for good into the trash can of history where it belongs, the better.
BTW, do notice that where ever women are better educated & have significant control over their own lives & reproductive fates, birthrates not only drop, but so does child mortality, while (as noted above) economic circumstances generally improve as does general public health. Men are only hardwired mentally to spread their seed around as far as possible, while women have more interest in seeing that the products of their long gestation actually live to make it to adulthood. Finally, we've tried the patriarchal system for the past several thousand years, and the results suck. Why not give the alternative a try - or are men so afraid of losing influence if they can't beat others into submission instead?
6 - Natalie Bennett
Can't do Sumerian, can do the Roman Horace, from his Odes: "Our parents were not the men their fathers were,/and they bore children worse than themselves,/whose children will be baser still."
Thanks for the compliment Nancy, and I do agree. We should get a turn for 4,000 years or so, then humankind can judge which worked out best...
7 - Baronius
Natalie - Always (unintentionally) hilarious.
8 - Arch Conservative
The encouraging thing, Akeel, is that as soon as you send children off to university, they suddenly start to think for themselves, and get a lot more liberal.
Think for themselves Natalie? More like regurgitate the lefist indoctrination that thier professors instill in them.
Today's college campuses are the furthest thing from bastions of free speech and independent thought as anyone who doesn't espouse leftists ideas is roundly ridiculed and silenced.
Give me a break!
9 - Natalie Bennett
Sorry Arch Conservative, do you have children who don't agree with you any more? Maybe it is because they have been exposed to a range of views - say from Hobbes, Rousseau, Mill, Marx, Foucault - a fairly standard politics course say, with a very wide range of views - from which they have chosen for themselves.
10 - Steve
Re. "If humankind were really going backwards at the rate each generation thinks, we'd have been back in the trees centuries ago."...
I think every society goes thru periods where the general standards of decency increase or decrease depending on the cultural winds of the times. The cultural winds depend upon how activist or constructive each society is (as opposed to how apathetic or complacent), about it's problems.
As any archaeologist can tell you, many societies have deteriorated to the point where those societies have ceased to exist, so the notion that parents negative opinions of their children are ALWAYS wrong (while granting they are not always right, either) is simply hubris. At the end of the day, though it takes alot to destroy a society, it has been done time and time again throughout history.
11 - RedTard
"If humankind were really going backwards at the rate each generation thinks, we'd have been back in the trees centuries ago."
By the same token, if every child born 'cost' more than it was worth then society would not continue to progress as it clearly has.
"We should get a turn for 4,000 years or so,"
Your braver than I am. Seeing as mostly western paternalistic societies pulled us from the prehistory to the moon, tripled the lifespan and improved quality of life immensely in that amount of time I wouldn't want any system to have to face the challenge.
12 - Baronius
You see, Red, that's the beauty of a completely theoretical construct like "patriarchy". It can be blamed for anything bad, and anything good would have happened anyway.
The trick is to use multiple definitions. If you define patriarchy as wife-beating and clitorectomies, then you've got the higher ground. If you also define patriarchy as 1950's television, you've got extended your definition to cover a generation of Americans. As if Dragnet and Gunsmoke featured non-stop clitorectomies.
But here's the surprise move: declare that 1950's television was unrealistic anyway. That somehow negates any conservative argument. Watch closely -
"Abortion is wrong."
"You're just saying that because you want to go back to 'Ozzie and Harriet'."
"No I don't; I think that abortion is immoral."
"But Ozzie and Harriet weren't real."
"Oh, you're right. I guess abortion is fine."
You may not have caught it at first read, but if you read this dialogue carefully, you'll find a logical fallacy. I often think that the definitive moment in a liberal's development was the realization that TV isn't real. It's referenced in nearly every conversation. Maybe they still believe that TV is always right; that's why they fell for Dan Rather. It would also explain their wild-eyed reaction to Fox News. They don't understand that most people view TV news, and TV in general, with a certain scepticism.
13 - Arch Conservative
I think you ment to say Lenin, Marx, Engells, and Trotsky Natalie. I don't have any kids of my own and graduated college withtin the last 10 years myself.
You're extremely ignorant if you think today's colleges offer a broad spectrum of different points of views. Today's colleges are all about advancing the leftist agenda at the expense of intellectual honesty and objectivity.
Of course you aren't capable of realizing this Natalie because you are the prototypiocal narcissistic, condescending, elitist leftist that is currently poisoning our nation's higher education system, but that doesn't change the fact that what I said is the absolute truth.
14 - Natalie Bennett
Steve, indeed societies have previously declined and died out, as well might ours due to the massive damage we have inflicted on the environment. (Easter Island, the Maya etc.) The theory that "moral decline" destorys societies, however, went out with Gibbon.
Baronius, it is not in this case me making some "theoretical construct" like patriarchy (although I think as a broad concept it is a useful category of analysis), but one of its defenders, who certainly believes that it exists.
And ah, Arch Conservative, thank you, from your viewpoint "elitist leftist" sounds like a compliment (although for the record I'm not American). Unlike you I have confidence in human nature and don't believe that you can "poison" a higher education system, because young people, given the time and space, will always think for themselves, search out different information sources and form their own views. Which is why I'm less worried about conservatives having lots of children than I might otherwise be.
15 - Joanie
Thankfully, the vast number of women I know won't fall for the old "banana in the tailpipe" trick...er...reasoning of the extreme conservative/religious right. Not only won't they fall for it, they fight it. And, many of them are - gasp! - Republicans.
I think it's natural for some to long for "simpler times", especially those who only know about those "times" via TV and movies. Ask any honest person who lived through them and they'll tell you things weren't all that simple or great. That's why women's rights became such a big issue. And that's why we'll never take a step backwards.
16 - Nancy
What's the "banana in the tailpipe" trick?
17 - Arch Conservative
OK Natalie......have you even been on an American college campus in the last five years? I have been on plenty and I can tell you what the reality is.
On the vast majority of American college campuses today any thought or speech that isn't left of center politically and socially is usually attempted to be ridicules and silenced. Period. That's the way it is. All of your pretty posts about faith in humanity and Republicans not having children are nothing but a bunch of pap that having nothing to do with what's really going on at college campuses.
Most faculty are liberal who only provide one side of any issue that may be discussed in class, the liberal side and despite your belief in our young people most of them are too intelectually lazy to question anything stated by thier professors.
That's the way it is Natalie and any objective person who has visited a college recently realizes this.
18 - Bliffle
Gee, all this time I thought "patriarchy" was an illusion, created by the females who dominate human society, to bind fathers to their children and keep them from wandering away.
19 - Mark
Natalie, If you think children are going to go out on their own and look for their own ideas then you wouldnt mind if all the universities took a staunchly rightist approach to things. I just graduated from a conservative Catholic college. I was taught in class that abortion is wrong, contraception is immoral, life is sacred, their is a natural order to the family which places the man as the head and the woman is his support and this mindset will breed a happy family. I feel all of these assertions are true. Patriarchy is natural. Men are supposed to be the head of the family. Women are supposed to be the childbearers. Do I just feel that way because my teachers presented it that way? Do I feel this way because they exposed me to all the other views, Hobbes, Rousseau, Mill, Marx, Foucault and illustrated where they went astray in true Augustinian method? I and every single other person in my graduating class feel the same way about the issues I mentioned. We all had access to both sides of the arguement. We all fell on the right side of it, literally. How can you say that the leftward trend in the American college system doesnt affect the mindsets of those graduating from those institutions?
20 - Arch Conservative
Mark she won't even admit that there is a leftist trend at American colleges because she herself is so far left that she cannot see it.
21 - Natalie Bennett
I haven't been to America, or an American college campus, let alone been visiting them regularly for decades and comparing curricula and teaching methods, which is the only way you could actually arrive at anything like an unbiased conclusion. But my suspicion is that society - or at least the most vocal bits of society - have gone abruptly to the right, while campuses have stayed pretty well in the middle, teaching a broad range of views and letting students make up their own mind.
That's what I saw from the inside of the Australian education system, and Australia has seen pretty much the same societal shift to the right (although for rather different reasons). In the equivalent of eight years of full-time uni there I had three lecturers who were not prepared to tolerate views that differed from their own (two rightist, one leftist), and about 30 who were happy for you to argue any position at all, as long as you argued it well.
22 - Arch Conservative
Natalie [Edited]
I suggest you keep your "suspicions" about the American education system to yourself.
You obviously know nothing about American culture and should therefore preface any future remarks you make about American culture with "As an Austrailian who has never even been to America I feel..."
23 - Natalie Bennett
Arch Conservative, there's this thing called the internet (you're on it if you hadn't noticed), and even before that there were newspapers, radio, television, hey the telegraph even. It is has been globalised world for a good century or so, and the nature of media networks mean no one can avoid being rather well informed about America. (Unfortunately that seldom means America is well informed about the rest of the world.)
24 - Josh
The Leftist agenda has become associated with college campuses because many of the self-proclaimed "intelligencia" feel that they must go against the established norm in order to be so enlightened. The greatest fault of universities today is the blind adherence to Leftist dogma without any honest intellectual scrutiny.
25 - Mike
1. It has done China a lot of good. Economists predict that China will eventually surpass the US as the worlds largest economy.
2. When population decreases or remains static, an economy is affected. This was one of the key components of why our economy collapsed in the Great Depression.
3. God forbid the woman who wants the abortion should be RESPONSIBLE ENOUGH TO CONTROL HER BODY IN THE FIRST PLACE. But, i guess its a woman's right to act carelessly, and then end the life of the product of actions.
Thats fair.