The acceptance of single parenting as something perfectly normal has alot to do with boys having no decent role models. The loss of industry means men no longer have physical jobs, personal pride in making things, practical knowledge, a sense of purpose and an ability to provide enough to support a family. Working as a Deliveroo driver or Amazon warehouse operative doesn't give men the self confidence working in a steel plant or on an oil rig. The world has become feminised and boys/men are meant to be masculine not feminine. So they end up watching porn, playing computer games involving killing pretend people, not caring and disliking women for apparently usurping their position and not appearing to particularly want them.
Which has the knock-on effect of making girls/women feel they don't need/want men around them. It's a sad, self-fulfilling tragedy which has simply been made horrendously worse by the drowning of the world in technology, the normalisation of pornography, the continuous barrage of anti-men/anti-white/anti-christian propaganda.
Several reactions to this very interesting article: I was molested by myfather at the age of 15 -as a fat unhappy teenager-and my brother-30 years later.Family would not acknowledge nor talk about it;this has continued to this day.
Result-breakdown, anger and the retreat which our author has described and which I think many women have chosen,albeit for a variety of reasons.
My own experiences involved a failed marriage-which ,looking back, I should never have entered into,since we were unsuited but met at work-followed by a series of unhappy encounters, the last of which,during my university years, led me to bow out and withdraw.
I hope this doesn't reflect an 'O poor me'saga; it's more an example of the female choices described in our author's discussion.
Many nature films,by the way, show frantically displaying males competing to attract and win the favour of females: birds. of paradise ,bower birds
Secondly, I notice in my small town, many rootless aimless men,seemingly unattached and probably unemployed-some best avoided,given their strange demeanour.
This I think is a consequence of the rapid social and economic changes which taken hold: loss of the manufacturing industries which provided secure employment and purpose and community cohesion; the advancement of women ,facilitated by provision of contraception and abortion services and the pervasive alienation and loss of trust now prevailing.
As to pornography-being older ,I find the sexualisation of everything alarming,distasteful and degrading: young girls now wear revealing clothes even to school-bodycon pelmets which expose the buttocks popular here, while choking scenes are now considered part and parcel of encounters on screen and now apparently increasingly demanded of their partners by young men.
As to the spread of trans ideology, drag queens in libraries,primary schools and naked PRIDE celebrants: no comment,as I should risk being accused of Hate Speech.
Finally, I'll risk criticism by affirming my belief that overpopulation will do for us and that the decline in birth rates might well be our saviour rather than our doom. Furthermore,as we know, our western societies are at risk of fracturing under the relentless pressure of mass migration from Africa and the Middle East and Asia.
Social cohesion is breaking down, parallel societies with high birthrates are increasing and the advent of Net Zero constraints,automation and AI will undoubtedly result in fundamental change on a scale which we are just beginning to witness, even though our leaders seem to have detached themselves from the reality now looming.
Your post ........it doesn't come across as a 'poor me', 'uncase your violin'. It just makes you the commenter more real, if that doesn't sound too 'cheesy'.
I agree that the increasingly rapid economic and social changes must have impacts on the choices females make, and males, of course. Social norms ( civility, decency, kindness, eg) are being upended, or so it seems from what msm reports. It is almost as if msm want the norms in their garish reports to be general social norms..... But, 'the fox has strayed too far', the message/ agenda has become tainted with distrust, hence the rise of alt media. Not to say that that is pure as the driven snow! There are more choices in sourcing information, which is a positive development. Society looks bleak but it ain't ...yet. [ P.D. James 'The Children of Men', written in the 1990's and imagining this time in the 2020s, is a stark, childless future for humanity].
I think at local community levels it's a different picture - men and women still get together, and other couple combinations, because that is the nature of humans. There are, of course, individuals who are 'islands' and prefer it that way.
I disagree about "over population will do for us"....we don't know if there is an optimum number for the earth. Declining birth rates in the West don't have to be finite, and, birth rates elsewhere are balancing numbers. Numbers can be our safety....thinking of 'they' who seem determined to control us with any number of dark agendas.
Anyway, must crack on, but thanks again for your thought provoking post.
Good essay. "Choice" is the salient point here it seems to me. When I was young, to have or not to have children was, of course, a choice (for most) but it did not 'feel' like a choice. Getting married and then having kids seemed like something you just DID when you grew up....a rite of passage. Now late capitalist liberal individualism has re-framed its founding statement as "life, liberty (as long as you don't have excessively "incorrect" thoughts), the pursuit of happiness and.....'choice'. Choice is now our ultimate good....even when it turns out to be counterproductive (as - to take a trivial example - when we Brits were given endless "choice" in who to get our gas and electric from).
The logic of what I have just said would be to hope for there to be a bit less 'choice' in our future civilisational arrangements.....but - as ever - careful what we wish for.
The issues you raise can't be fixed with liberal, individualist consumerism. There is nothing in that paradigm to tell people why they should get married or have children, or do anything. For example, it is hard to argue with this chilling game theory analysis of what men and women have to offer each other within the liberal paradigm. [Psychacks: The Trap Of The High-Value Woman] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yY8bkEfvGlM&t=3s
The illusion of rationalist liberalism is that individuals have the means or the wisdom to make a successful life by themselves. Each person's personal stock of wisdom is very small, and we are dependent on others for everything we really value. It is not (so-called) rational assent to Rousseauian freedom and materialist choice which give meaning to our lives.
There's so much to say about this from the perspective of a woman. But what's coming up for me most strongly, from my personal perspective, is the same as what comes up when listening to Jordan Peterson on this subject. It's just not as easy for women to choose as men appear to think it is. The rejections and feelings of powerlessness can be equally as devastating. Which leads me to think it's more nuanced and involves aspects such as personality and cultural upbringing as much as your sex.
No doubt. All I would say is that while of course the issue is very complicated, the preponderence of the power to choose is always on the woman's side. That's just in the nature of the relationship between the sexes provided there is no very strict patriarchal barrier (of which I would not be in favour).
I'm still not convinced, and having a slight feeling of a man not hearing my experience here, but I do get it that this is your and many men's experience. Perhaps women and men need to get together to talk about what it's like to be the other before making such statements as "that's just in the nature of the relationship between the sexes...".
Btw, great that you are speaking at the Together event in Leeds, David! I'm too far away to be there, but hope it's a good evening!
As I observe to my daughters, the eldest of whom is rapidly approaching dating age: women control access to sex and men control access to relationships.
Thank you. This is beautifully written. I can relate to so much of this (and remember being disturbed by the end of that film!). It doesn't seem like there is a solution, which is sad. Maybe a different way of being will unfold which will ultimately work out.
Enjoyed this, which makes a few other abstract thoughts spring. One is about how perhaps being exposed to parasocial relating among a potential pool of billions kind of devalues the concept of people. A kind of inflationary effect. None of us turn out to be all that special after all, now that we see versions of ourselves & those in our orbit everywhere on our screens. Another effect of becoming hyper networked. Who could possibly rise out from that kind of crowd sufficiently to pair with in a serious way (BFFship or parenting)? Only half a thought, but seems worth further reflection.
I often worry about this aspect of things. Facebook and other more 'traditional' forms of social media are poisonous, but at least they were 'social' in the sense of connecting people with pre-existing ties. The new wave of apps - TikTok, X, Instagram - in simply connecting everybody with everybody else are purely antisocial in that they obviate the need to develop any ties whatsoever. There is always somebody new. This is perhaps the most socially destructive thing the internet has done.
And its emotional apotheosis is in the dating sphere, which I'm trying to summon the balls to write about from the perspective of being part of the problem.
"Nobody, I hope it goes without saying, has lived any less of a life if they cannot have children, choose not to do so, never meet anybody they wish to settle down with, or are not attracted to the opposite sex. "
That sentence -- without a lot of qualification -- seems to me untrue and in contradiction of all the rest of the essay. In very important respects I don't think my own adult life properly began until I married and had children. I wish I had married 10 years earlier and had more children than I do have. I can't believe that David McGrogan would think his own life undiminished if he were unmarried and didn't have the daughters he has. And that, for almost all of us, life without attraction to the opposite sex, a spouse and children is less of a life seems to me simply and ungainsayably true.
Those for whom it is not true seem to me not only comparatively few but that what it is about their lives that makes them undiminished derives from the ordinary married lives of that majority they live amongst. It surely is no accident that Catholic priests are called 'Father', with its assertion that fatherhood need not be lost in celibacy. (There is a wonderful poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins, "Brothers", which shows just the truth of that.) And no doubt there are unmarried, childless nurses and God-mothers and God-fathers and aunts and uncles who make a spiritual fatherhood and motherhood out of their unmarried childlessness. And all, all honour to them. But that is a very different thing from nobody's life being the less for being unmarried or childless. Even Nabokov's Humbert Humbert gets a glimpse of the ordinary, run-of-the-mill 'paradise' of fatherhood he has denied himself by denying Lolita a childhood and preferring for himself a paradise of nymphets. (p. 307 of the Penguin Classics edition) And if even he can so much as glimpse his own loss ...
I’m anxious to make clear that there are many different ways to find fulfilment, and many ways in which parents can be unfulfilled (as well as neglectful or even actively malevolent). Being a parent is not the decisive factor in itself. That’s what I meant.
I don't want to use your substack to advertise my own but if you read my essay "Father Hopkins and Dr Fell", you would see how closely we agree about that.
This is one of the better treatments I've seen of the low birth rate phenomenon. To put this as succinctly as I can, the reason (I believe) why so many people are declining the biological impulse to procreate is that they don't feel capable -- financially, emotionally, or otherwise -- of raising children. As some of the other commenters have noted, previous generations weren't even aware of 'capability of raising children' as a distinct trait -- one simply did it. The solution, therefore, is to find out why so many people feel they don't possess this trait, and do what is necessary to instill confidence in their capacity to parent.
Yes, this is a really important point. We’ve managed to convince an awful lot of young people that they are not equipped to function as adults. So why would they then go on to have children of their own?
I do enjoy your essays, even though or perhaps because you touch on these tender topics with a pin.
An old and fiendishly clever friend of mine once mused that the most important development of the last century was not the world wars, the harnessing of atomic power or the emergence of digital technology, but the emancipation of women in Western societies.
A conversation with an acquaintance this morning is perhaps relevant;my acquaintance related a recent conversation with her 15 year old nephew: having spotted two young girls in the awful skin tight body moulding leggings with thongs underneath, she asked her nephew why they now wear outfits which leave nothing to the imagination.His reply was that it is all about sex: their online milieu -run by influencers-has spread the notion that sexual availability is the way to go and is 'cool' and empowering -or words to that effect.
Apparently this prevailing and potentially dangerous groupthink encourages nights out with no underwear,which is now perfectly acceptable.
What a desperate state of affairs, when essentially vulgar displays prevail ,rather than friendship-'getting to know you' and affection.
No doubt to many I might seem like a prude, but this preoccupation with a hypersexualised world egged on by influencers ,will not end well for many young people.I should imagine that many young males find it intimidating and offputting.
The acceptance of single parenting as something perfectly normal has alot to do with boys having no decent role models. The loss of industry means men no longer have physical jobs, personal pride in making things, practical knowledge, a sense of purpose and an ability to provide enough to support a family. Working as a Deliveroo driver or Amazon warehouse operative doesn't give men the self confidence working in a steel plant or on an oil rig. The world has become feminised and boys/men are meant to be masculine not feminine. So they end up watching porn, playing computer games involving killing pretend people, not caring and disliking women for apparently usurping their position and not appearing to particularly want them.
Which has the knock-on effect of making girls/women feel they don't need/want men around them. It's a sad, self-fulfilling tragedy which has simply been made horrendously worse by the drowning of the world in technology, the normalisation of pornography, the continuous barrage of anti-men/anti-white/anti-christian propaganda.
Well said; the evidence is all around us.
Several reactions to this very interesting article: I was molested by myfather at the age of 15 -as a fat unhappy teenager-and my brother-30 years later.Family would not acknowledge nor talk about it;this has continued to this day.
Result-breakdown, anger and the retreat which our author has described and which I think many women have chosen,albeit for a variety of reasons.
My own experiences involved a failed marriage-which ,looking back, I should never have entered into,since we were unsuited but met at work-followed by a series of unhappy encounters, the last of which,during my university years, led me to bow out and withdraw.
I hope this doesn't reflect an 'O poor me'saga; it's more an example of the female choices described in our author's discussion.
Many nature films,by the way, show frantically displaying males competing to attract and win the favour of females: birds. of paradise ,bower birds
Secondly, I notice in my small town, many rootless aimless men,seemingly unattached and probably unemployed-some best avoided,given their strange demeanour.
This I think is a consequence of the rapid social and economic changes which taken hold: loss of the manufacturing industries which provided secure employment and purpose and community cohesion; the advancement of women ,facilitated by provision of contraception and abortion services and the pervasive alienation and loss of trust now prevailing.
As to pornography-being older ,I find the sexualisation of everything alarming,distasteful and degrading: young girls now wear revealing clothes even to school-bodycon pelmets which expose the buttocks popular here, while choking scenes are now considered part and parcel of encounters on screen and now apparently increasingly demanded of their partners by young men.
As to the spread of trans ideology, drag queens in libraries,primary schools and naked PRIDE celebrants: no comment,as I should risk being accused of Hate Speech.
Finally, I'll risk criticism by affirming my belief that overpopulation will do for us and that the decline in birth rates might well be our saviour rather than our doom. Furthermore,as we know, our western societies are at risk of fracturing under the relentless pressure of mass migration from Africa and the Middle East and Asia.
Social cohesion is breaking down, parallel societies with high birthrates are increasing and the advent of Net Zero constraints,automation and AI will undoubtedly result in fundamental change on a scale which we are just beginning to witness, even though our leaders seem to have detached themselves from the reality now looming.
Your post ........it doesn't come across as a 'poor me', 'uncase your violin'. It just makes you the commenter more real, if that doesn't sound too 'cheesy'.
I agree that the increasingly rapid economic and social changes must have impacts on the choices females make, and males, of course. Social norms ( civility, decency, kindness, eg) are being upended, or so it seems from what msm reports. It is almost as if msm want the norms in their garish reports to be general social norms..... But, 'the fox has strayed too far', the message/ agenda has become tainted with distrust, hence the rise of alt media. Not to say that that is pure as the driven snow! There are more choices in sourcing information, which is a positive development. Society looks bleak but it ain't ...yet. [ P.D. James 'The Children of Men', written in the 1990's and imagining this time in the 2020s, is a stark, childless future for humanity].
I think at local community levels it's a different picture - men and women still get together, and other couple combinations, because that is the nature of humans. There are, of course, individuals who are 'islands' and prefer it that way.
I disagree about "over population will do for us"....we don't know if there is an optimum number for the earth. Declining birth rates in the West don't have to be finite, and, birth rates elsewhere are balancing numbers. Numbers can be our safety....thinking of 'they' who seem determined to control us with any number of dark agendas.
Anyway, must crack on, but thanks again for your thought provoking post.
Yes indeed- civility,decency,kindness- now abandoned by many,to our detriment.
Touching, topical, tender.
Tinkling chimes in the memorial corridors
Resonant, reverberating, heralding
Thank you for your thoughtful erudition.
Good essay. "Choice" is the salient point here it seems to me. When I was young, to have or not to have children was, of course, a choice (for most) but it did not 'feel' like a choice. Getting married and then having kids seemed like something you just DID when you grew up....a rite of passage. Now late capitalist liberal individualism has re-framed its founding statement as "life, liberty (as long as you don't have excessively "incorrect" thoughts), the pursuit of happiness and.....'choice'. Choice is now our ultimate good....even when it turns out to be counterproductive (as - to take a trivial example - when we Brits were given endless "choice" in who to get our gas and electric from).
The logic of what I have just said would be to hope for there to be a bit less 'choice' in our future civilisational arrangements.....but - as ever - careful what we wish for.
Hi David.
The following is rather oversimplified, but....
The issues you raise can't be fixed with liberal, individualist consumerism. There is nothing in that paradigm to tell people why they should get married or have children, or do anything. For example, it is hard to argue with this chilling game theory analysis of what men and women have to offer each other within the liberal paradigm. [Psychacks: The Trap Of The High-Value Woman] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yY8bkEfvGlM&t=3s
The illusion of rationalist liberalism is that individuals have the means or the wisdom to make a successful life by themselves. Each person's personal stock of wisdom is very small, and we are dependent on others for everything we really value. It is not (so-called) rational assent to Rousseauian freedom and materialist choice which give meaning to our lives.
I agree entirely. As is always the case, the solutions are theological and spiritual.
There's so much to say about this from the perspective of a woman. But what's coming up for me most strongly, from my personal perspective, is the same as what comes up when listening to Jordan Peterson on this subject. It's just not as easy for women to choose as men appear to think it is. The rejections and feelings of powerlessness can be equally as devastating. Which leads me to think it's more nuanced and involves aspects such as personality and cultural upbringing as much as your sex.
No doubt. All I would say is that while of course the issue is very complicated, the preponderence of the power to choose is always on the woman's side. That's just in the nature of the relationship between the sexes provided there is no very strict patriarchal barrier (of which I would not be in favour).
I'm still not convinced, and having a slight feeling of a man not hearing my experience here, but I do get it that this is your and many men's experience. Perhaps women and men need to get together to talk about what it's like to be the other before making such statements as "that's just in the nature of the relationship between the sexes...".
Btw, great that you are speaking at the Together event in Leeds, David! I'm too far away to be there, but hope it's a good evening!
Thanks Helen! I don't mean to suggest that anything concerning matters of the heart is ever simple or straightforward.
As I observe to my daughters, the eldest of whom is rapidly approaching dating age: women control access to sex and men control access to relationships.
Very true ; thank you for putting this into perspective.
And thank you for sharing your own experiences below. (I had actually not realised you are a woman until I read that!)
Thank you. This is beautifully written. I can relate to so much of this (and remember being disturbed by the end of that film!). It doesn't seem like there is a solution, which is sad. Maybe a different way of being will unfold which will ultimately work out.
Enjoyed this, which makes a few other abstract thoughts spring. One is about how perhaps being exposed to parasocial relating among a potential pool of billions kind of devalues the concept of people. A kind of inflationary effect. None of us turn out to be all that special after all, now that we see versions of ourselves & those in our orbit everywhere on our screens. Another effect of becoming hyper networked. Who could possibly rise out from that kind of crowd sufficiently to pair with in a serious way (BFFship or parenting)? Only half a thought, but seems worth further reflection.
I often worry about this aspect of things. Facebook and other more 'traditional' forms of social media are poisonous, but at least they were 'social' in the sense of connecting people with pre-existing ties. The new wave of apps - TikTok, X, Instagram - in simply connecting everybody with everybody else are purely antisocial in that they obviate the need to develop any ties whatsoever. There is always somebody new. This is perhaps the most socially destructive thing the internet has done.
And its emotional apotheosis is in the dating sphere, which I'm trying to summon the balls to write about from the perspective of being part of the problem.
"Nobody, I hope it goes without saying, has lived any less of a life if they cannot have children, choose not to do so, never meet anybody they wish to settle down with, or are not attracted to the opposite sex. "
That sentence -- without a lot of qualification -- seems to me untrue and in contradiction of all the rest of the essay. In very important respects I don't think my own adult life properly began until I married and had children. I wish I had married 10 years earlier and had more children than I do have. I can't believe that David McGrogan would think his own life undiminished if he were unmarried and didn't have the daughters he has. And that, for almost all of us, life without attraction to the opposite sex, a spouse and children is less of a life seems to me simply and ungainsayably true.
Those for whom it is not true seem to me not only comparatively few but that what it is about their lives that makes them undiminished derives from the ordinary married lives of that majority they live amongst. It surely is no accident that Catholic priests are called 'Father', with its assertion that fatherhood need not be lost in celibacy. (There is a wonderful poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins, "Brothers", which shows just the truth of that.) And no doubt there are unmarried, childless nurses and God-mothers and God-fathers and aunts and uncles who make a spiritual fatherhood and motherhood out of their unmarried childlessness. And all, all honour to them. But that is a very different thing from nobody's life being the less for being unmarried or childless. Even Nabokov's Humbert Humbert gets a glimpse of the ordinary, run-of-the-mill 'paradise' of fatherhood he has denied himself by denying Lolita a childhood and preferring for himself a paradise of nymphets. (p. 307 of the Penguin Classics edition) And if even he can so much as glimpse his own loss ...
I’m anxious to make clear that there are many different ways to find fulfilment, and many ways in which parents can be unfulfilled (as well as neglectful or even actively malevolent). Being a parent is not the decisive factor in itself. That’s what I meant.
I don't want to use your substack to advertise my own but if you read my essay "Father Hopkins and Dr Fell", you would see how closely we agree about that.
This is one of the better treatments I've seen of the low birth rate phenomenon. To put this as succinctly as I can, the reason (I believe) why so many people are declining the biological impulse to procreate is that they don't feel capable -- financially, emotionally, or otherwise -- of raising children. As some of the other commenters have noted, previous generations weren't even aware of 'capability of raising children' as a distinct trait -- one simply did it. The solution, therefore, is to find out why so many people feel they don't possess this trait, and do what is necessary to instill confidence in their capacity to parent.
Yes, this is a really important point. We’ve managed to convince an awful lot of young people that they are not equipped to function as adults. So why would they then go on to have children of their own?
Food for thought on a summer's day, indeed.
I do enjoy your essays, even though or perhaps because you touch on these tender topics with a pin.
An old and fiendishly clever friend of mine once mused that the most important development of the last century was not the world wars, the harnessing of atomic power or the emergence of digital technology, but the emancipation of women in Western societies.
Modernity is a wild ride!
There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that that is the case, but it is a minefield that we very carefully avoid for obvious reasons.
A conversation with an acquaintance this morning is perhaps relevant;my acquaintance related a recent conversation with her 15 year old nephew: having spotted two young girls in the awful skin tight body moulding leggings with thongs underneath, she asked her nephew why they now wear outfits which leave nothing to the imagination.His reply was that it is all about sex: their online milieu -run by influencers-has spread the notion that sexual availability is the way to go and is 'cool' and empowering -or words to that effect.
Apparently this prevailing and potentially dangerous groupthink encourages nights out with no underwear,which is now perfectly acceptable.
What a desperate state of affairs, when essentially vulgar displays prevail ,rather than friendship-'getting to know you' and affection.
No doubt to many I might seem like a prude, but this preoccupation with a hypersexualised world egged on by influencers ,will not end well for many young people.I should imagine that many young males find it intimidating and offputting.
I don't think you are prudish at all. To my mind, to dress modestly is the epitome of good taste and elegance, for both women and men.
Thank you and I do set great store by good taste and discretion