It would have to be were we to restrict women from behaving in the way they do now. For, you see, as we so aptly demonstrate in our society if you give people the freedom to not be locked in their chaste little towers and court “from a position of strength,” but instead to go out and live life, then they will pick the latter, and it is this choice which makes people who think women should stay inside break out into cold sweats. Since women will not voluntarily submit themselves to the Old World Order, the only workable solution to the problem is to restrict their freedom of action. Oh, maybe we’ll let them vote, though, even if we don’t let them work, so I’ll give you that.

I certainly share their confusion.

Please—they’re not anything sociologists. Kass is in biomedical ethics at Chicago, and has no affiliation with the sociology department. Gallagher is a journalist / pundit. I imagine she visited Linda Waite’s office once or twice, but that’s about as close as she’s ever been to a sociological text.

I say this has to be worth a try. Unlike most schemes for restoring moral tone, it has absolutely no oppressive content – at worst, it simply won’t work. There is no discrimination in this plan (except by head size); we’re not proposing that only straight people should wear hats, or that Jews should wear a different sort of hat, or women should only wear pink hats – hats for all! Martin Luther King wore a hat! Churchill wore hats! Lincoln wore a terrific hat!

On a more serious note: on the absent father issue, has any work been done on post-war Britain? A million dead – one in ten of the total male population – in the Great War would have left a lot of fatherless children, it would seem.

As if Ms. Gallagher, or any of her ilk, were seeking to roll back the scientific progress (as opposed to social change) that has lowered mortality rates.

As if female suffrage were under threat.

Of course, if your idea for improving the morality of women is nothing more insidious than asking them nicely to put down the Bacardi Breezer and get back in the kitchen to wait for that nice man to come a-courtin’, then I wish you every luck with that. I’m sure your audience will give your suggestions the consideration it deserves.

Before belittling the “moral panic” of Mr. Kass and Ms. Gallagher, could you display some statistics as to what portion of the population grew up in single-parent households in 1950, or even (in a much more dangerous world) 1850? It seems plausible to me that their pessimism is justified.

Second, no mechanism has been found to connect men with other men’s children; so connecting them with their own fathers is at present the only possibility.

Our culture perpetuates a myth that childhood is an idyllic state, and this belief is just nonsense when viewed from the perspective of a child.

Oh, and they’ll take my Baskin-Robbins away from me when they pry my cold, dead fingers off the cone.

I was three then and free of any responsibilities. So count one vote for happier fifty years ago.

There’s a mechanism for connecting men with their own children? You mean, like, child support?

Oh my, this question opens up a can of worms.
The answer on self-reported happiness, for the UK, is a rise after WW2 till the 70’s followed by a very mild fall; rising from about 6.5 out of 10 to about 7.6 out of 10 falling to about 7.4 out of 10. (Figures from memory, so may be slightly off.)
This can be viewed two ways. The obvious way(relevant to this post) is some sort of rant about the good old days of the 70s when society still existed and people cared about their brother man.
The alternative is to say that this is just not much of a change when viewed in light of the changes of society, and the 3x increase in income over this time period (especially when this happiness scores are viewed across societies all over the world, including those much poorer than the west, and which likewise are in the same sort of range). One’s happiness seems for the most part hardwired, or, to put it more explicitly, people seem hardwired for discontent with what they have.
(Daniel Nettle’s book on happiness,
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0192805584/qid=1129926176/sr=8-1/ref=pd_bbs_1/104-6988525-9343169?v=glance&s=books&n=507846
covers this material.)

This raises very interesting (and unanswered, as far as I can tell) questions about what the goal of public policy should be. If happiness is out of reach, what else makes sense? National greatness? Sharia and creation of God’s Kingdom on earth?
(My personal answer would be something along the lines of “veil of ignorance type justice for all”, and if that reduces the rate of growth of GDP, well, why exactly is that such a tragedy?)
I’d love to see some serious discussion of these findings—- I think they raise some uncomfortable questions for both the left and right.

Why exactly is the US so intent on beating them up? As far as I can tell, the way they run their societies is everything a certain segment of the Republican party wants for the US.