When Marxists Make the Anti-Family Argument Honestly
Isn’t it great when Marxists eschew the Saul Alinsky strategy of obscuring their unpopular objectives and instead return to the New Left tradition of openly stating their destructive goals?
Please, by all means, start telling us all about how you want to destroy each institution that sustains Western civilization.
Check out this fantastic piece at The New Inquiry by Madeleine Schwartz, “The Anti-Family,” lamenting that MTV’s Teen Mom show “does not attempt radical advocacy”:
In presenting these relationships in with dignity, Teen Mom acknowledges what it viewers may not wish to know: this is the shape of the family in America today. The show does not attempt radical advocacy, but it does understand that the most fundamental patterns in American life can’t be covered up. Teen motherhood, single motherhood, unmarried cohabitation—these are not plagues or social ills that pose a threat to the otherwise normal structures of everyday life. They are our new social reality.
What the show doesn’t get to is that this is a good thing.
There is nothing wrong with teenage or single motherhood. The things children need: economic livelihood, emotional support and an education, are not dependent on a nuclear family structure. Poverty is poverty whether it’s endured by two people or four. A couple cannot raise a child better than one can. Once we get rid of the idea that marriage is the privileged form of cohabitation and that women cannot raise children without the help of a man—ideas that the Left has been working to eradicate for decades—there is no reason that a teen should not be financially and emotionally assisted for her choice to have a family. The potential diffusion of the family (as the New York Times recently reported, it doesn’t look like the trends will stop anytime soon) is one of the most exciting things to happen to the American social pattern since sexual liberation. It means the end of what were just decades ago universal truths: every household must be headed by a breadwinning man; only when married will a woman have social value.
The problem is not teen motherhood. The problem is the legal system that makes the lives of teenage and single parents impossible. The shaming and belittling of teenage mothers is not just rhetoric: Teenage parents are actively discriminated against. Teen parents cannot receive financial assistance unless they live with their parents or marry. They cannot get welfare if they are not enrolled in an educational program.. In some cases, the state can deny all benefits to babies born to unmarried teenage parents. Welfare reform has taken money earmarked for families in need and diverted it toward programs aimed at promoting marriage and abstinence (For example: “Laugh Your Way to a Better Marriage”). All of this comes on top of the routine discriminations against single parents—higher insurance and tax rates, difficulties in obtaining housing and jobs—and those against the poor, who with the Hyde Amendment may not even have been able to abort if they had wanted. These policies were created with the explicit goal encouraging a two-parent model. They make any other option out of the question.
Really make a point to enter the parallel dimension and read the whole thing.
One almost reads stuff like this and wonders if it’s some Onion-style parody of Marxism. “The problem is the legal system that makes the lives of teenage and single parents impossible.” Translation: the real problem is that the United States has not fully implemented a wealth redistribution apparatus to subsidize teenage moms who “choose” to become single parents. Hmm… How might anyone manage that in the next four years?
About Madeleine Schwartz, whose work I look forward to following:
About
I have written for The Believer, The New Yorker online, The New Inquiry and The Daily, among other places. My work has been referenced in The Atlantic and The Economist.
Until May 2012, I was an undergraduate at Harvard, where I studied ancient and Renaissance history. As a student, I wrote a column about women at the university for The Crimson, was an editor at The Advocate and worked for the head of the Harvard library. From 2010 to 2011, I was a Ledecky Fellow at Harvard Magazine.
I am currently studying at Oxford as a Henry Fellow.
I wonder how how much money Schwartz has spent on her education…
*****
Related at PJ Lifestyle:
Yeah, having a supportive husband just sucks. How neanderthal. I hope my daughter grows up to embrace the wonderful world of single motherhood, because you know the idea of a nuclear family is so outdated, totally uncool.
It is devastatingly tragic that so many of voting age have no clue about history (all credit due to leftist academia parasitic whores)and what it means to live under totalitarian rule. For if they did, they would hardly embrace the deconstruction of society.
HISTORY has proven that Marxists, and assorted variations of totalitarian rule, first and foremost eviscerate traditional norms, in tandem with Judeo-Christian underpinnings.
And the fact that all of these deviants are becoming that much more brazen is a double edged sword. On the one hand, the Radical-in-Chief made it open sesame for them, but it also allows clear thinkers to see them in all their banality.
So, let us peer through the looking glass for added dimension – http://adinakutnicki.com/2012/10/05/if-it-looks-like-a-socialistmarxistcommunist-plan-it-is-peekingpeeling-back-into-obamas-looking-glass-his-surrogates-too-their-bomblets-waiting-to-explode-commentary-by-adina-kutnicki/
Adina, will you ever cease to self-promote? Are others only vehicles for you? Have you no shame?
I, for one, am thanful for having been introduced to Adina’s valuable blog by a link she posted here.
I think I will divorce my husband because this article really opened my eyes to how old fashioned I am for embracing this outdated concept of a nuclear family. Men suck. Who needs them?
Can’t have a family without a father and a mother. Of course, L, you know that but notice that leftist brood-enablers like the one quoted by Mr. Swindle do not:
A family is a uniquely human social organization, it is not shared by primates. Chimpanzee Mom is not married, she has a brood not a family. Same goes for Ms. Outta-Wedlock (regardless of her age).
Oh yeah, someone in the back of the room is already snarking, “You’re calling widows monkeys, ha ha.” I reply that a widow is a member of a family that has one deceased member whereas the brood-whelping Ms. Outta-Wedlock has no family. If her leftist excuse-makers wish to identify Ms. Outta-Wedlock as a monkey, I will not gainsay them.
Men, who needs them? Human families, that’s who.
I say we cut this country in half and put all the lefties on their side to do whatever they please. A huge concrete wall between us, and visas required to visit.
They’d be starving in 6 months.
And in 9 months, there would be no left problem, then down with the wall.
Quiet! You FOOL!
Don’t let THEM know!
No, they would get help from China and/or Russia, and they would head into all-out war with the Red State side of the former United States.
Wouldn’t you rather die like a man than this slow bleeding to death by a thousand paper cuts?
Indeed.
I hold that the fault is ours for being too touchy-feely “compassionate.” For decades we’ve responded far too generously — privately as well as through government — to exhortations to “help the needy.” It’s gone on long enough that a great many folks feel they’re owed, that they have no responsibility for themselves or the consequences of their actions. They’re more than enough to make up the margin of victory for Barack Hussein Obama.
One who has convinced himself that he’s “owed” will never, ever surrender that belief. The only remedy is the starvation cure…which would produce one hell of a lot of corpses. I don’t know if even the toughest of us are tough enough for that, though C. M. Kornbluth might say otherwise.
Hey Mr. Poretto, how’s tricks?
THE example for your assertion:
http://youtu.be/U0QBD6CXgdo
“Somebody Needs to Pay for all my Children!”
Really?
Sell them, or
Let. Them. Starve.
Pretty standard leftist rhetoric. “Society is incredibly racist, sexist, bigoted because we refuse to implement giant bureaucracies that enable everybody’s poor choices.”
Same reason why being anti-welfare is considered racist, even though most people against welfare want to uplift the black, urban communities (and white, rural ones) that have been devastated by the effects of welfare.
Only a person in a privileged bubble could seriously put forth such an argument. Can a single mother with a masters/Ph.D. raise children “by herself.” Yes, with some help from daycare and maybe a nanny. Can a young woman with maybe a high school diploma have a great chance of raising kids? Some can sacrifice mightily and accomplish this, but most don’t.
Yeah, right. I bet if Ms Schwartz had a daughter (pipe down in the back, there!), she’d go completely ape excrement if her speshul snowflake got pregnant out of wedlock.
It’s ok for everyone else, of course, but…..how exactly would her precious grandbaby be able to go to that pricey Waldorf school on a single income?
And of course, she would also be just hunky-dory with takin g food from her child’s mouth to subsidize some slattern’s brood of trick-babies.
http://youtu.be/bavou_SEj1E
“SOMEONE’S GOTTA PAY FOR ME & MY KIDS!!!”
Ms. Shwartz…time for YOU to step up.
“It’s OK for everyone else, of course”….I always imagine most upper-class, “educated elite” types haul their pregnant teenage daughters to the nearest “womyn’s clinic” to have the problem killed, giving the daughter no choice in the matter. Their households have enough resources that special snowflake’s educational/career plans wouldn’t be unrecoverably disrupted, but she won’t be able to pledge the right sorority, and that would be tragic.
Who is going to support these children? If the child’s mother has no marketable skills, nor is she married to someone who does have those skills, who will feed and clothe the child?
You.
You will, you heartless, Right Wing extremist!
“If anyone will not work, let him not eat!” That’s Scripture, for all you self-righteous folks. I have no desire to subsidize damnation with my tax dollars. Fornication is a mortal sin and so is refusal to support one’s family, and the most loving thing I can do for these sinners is to let them feel true hunger, driving them to turn from their sins and earn an honest living.
You beat me to it.
Let’s ask this utopian Dave Swindle guy how many other peoples’ children he’s personally willing to support….with other peoples’ money?….or with his own cash?
Here’s the pasted line from his strange article which prompted my thought…..
….”there is no reason that a teen should not be financially and emotionally assisted for her choice to have a family.”
……financially and emotionally supported by whom, exactly?….the Taxpayer?
Why should Th’ Taxpayer support some random teenager’s illegitimate offspring?
CORRECTION:
Let’s ask this utopian Madeline Schwartz many other peoples’ children she’s personally willing to support….with other peoples’ money?….or with her own cash?
Here’s the pasted line from Swindle’s strange article which prompted my thought…..
….”there is no reason that a teen should not be financially and emotionally assisted for her choice to have a family.”
……financially and emotionally supported by whom, exactly?….the Taxpayer?
Why should Th’ Taxpayer support some random teenager’s illegitimate offspring?
“There is nothing wrong with teenage or single motherhood. The things children need: economic livelihood, emotional support and an education, are not dependent on a nuclear family structure.”
She then goes on to suggest that teens or single mothers are unfairly prevented from being dependent on the State. She implies that the State is an adequate – perhaps superior – replacement for “a nuclear family structure.”
I believe she’s sincere. And totally wrong.
——————————————————————————-
The Left has developed a pretty strong meme that belittles individualism (and by implication, the individual.) “You didn’t build that,” is just the latest broadside in a long campaign that declares that an amorphous, amoral State based on “fairness” can somehow provide everyone with the “things” to which they have a RIGHT.
Note that the rights mentioned in the Declaration are not “things”; not housing, a job, health care, an education. In essence they are the right to STRIVE for these things.
The Left seems to believe that people shouldn’t have to strive “too hard” – that striving itself leads to unfairness – and that a proper role of government is to monitor and direct all that striving. I’ve come to believe that that approach leads to a stifling, soulless bureaucracy and an apathetic, soulless people.
It will just take you one day in an inner city school to find out just how a kid coming from a single parent home is acting. Now let me be clear not every kid from this situation is a discipline problem, but to be frank many are and it takes all the will of a teacher to get these problems under control. The absence of the father in a home is a tragedy.
The absence of the father in a home is a tragedy.
Absolutely. Now watch what happens:
A. Fatherless America is a national disaster! Men need to man up.
B. Single-Mother America is a national disaster! Women need to keep their knees together!
#WARONWOMEN, feminism, the divorce industry and the Sisterhood are at the root of all this.
C. A and B.
IMHO the last great thinker on the left, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, realized late in his career the validity of what you wrote. Yes, there will be exceptions, but statistically children from a single parent upbringing will disproportionately be poorer students and prone to disciplinary issues not just in school but all the way to prison.
Compassion? False compassion is more accurate. Is the black community better off because the illegitimacy rate has been going through the roof for the last 50 years? For the last 25 years the white community has been following suit. And we wonder why Asian kids are better students. It stems from the importance they still place on family.
Studies continue to show that a father in the home improves childhood outcomes.
Somehow the leftists want to ignore those pesky facts.
Frightening stats
http://www.canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/51288
“I wonder how how much money Schwartz has spent on her education…”
Really?
I wonder what she named her bastard children.
Oh, she doesn’t HAVE children?
Well…isn’t that SPECIAL!
I’m 24. Of course, I do not remember the sexual revolution, but it seems one of the most paradoxical movements in American history. Sex is both meaningless and full of meaning. Sex is amazingly liberating. But the type of relationship one has with one’s sexual partner makes no difference and is meaningless. Casual, committed. Homosexual or Heterosexual. Whatever number of partners. It apparently doesn’t matter. But actually having sex (and drugs) will liberate you.
This is why many have a complete disconnect with the likes of Sandra Fluke. Sex without consequences is now seen as a universal right to be enabled by the government.
The idea that government should enable single motherhood is no different than Fluke’s claim to free contraceptives. I’m tired of this mentality that the government must protect us from consequences. It’s these consequences that guide us into good, and just, behavior; both in the market and in our personal lives.
James–I’m 24 as well, and I feel the same way. Somewhere along the line, the sexual revolution discarded “As ye sow, so shall ye reap,” and the nation is poorer for it. Women are standing up and proudly stating that they’re not capable of taking care of themselves. It’s like people are fighting to be enslaved!
I have never seen this question asked or the issue addressed: Does a female have a constitutional right to have as many children as she wants, whether she is married or not, whether she can afford to support them or not, and received taxpayer-funded subsidies as needed to raise her children? If so, what will be the unintended consequences for both male and female behavior? If not, what sanctions, on both men and women seem reasonable to discourage such births?
Personally, I’d like to see a massive effort, similar to that made to reach the moon, to develop a male birth-control method. Can you imagine the decline in unmarried motherhood, if men could decide whether or not they wanted to be a father?
We’d see an equally sharp decline in unwed motherhood if all parental rights, responsibilities and custody went to the father.
What a heartless bastard I am!
Why, I’ve stayed married to my wife all these years, when she really would have had greater fullfilment if I’d never been around.
Our 2 daughters grew up and completed college, then got married! How 1950′s of us! They would have been so much more fulfilled to have had a couple kids back in high school.
I like both my son-on-laws, but I guess they should split now, but not before they leave my daughter’s pregnant, so they can be fulfilled.
I’ll have to send my son out to impregnate as many single girls as possible, it’s the right thing to do, so all those young women can be fulfilled.
Thank you for striking the scales from my eyes, Madeleine!
A culture of self-gratification, victimhood, and dependency.
Yes, that’ll work well.
Succinctly put, an accurate observation of our times.
My mom was 17 when she had me. My dad was 20. They got married. They wanted to. And then they behaved exactly like the goofy young irresponsible critters that they were, and had another kid. They had a guy dressed up like a Hobbit at their wedding at the county registrar’s office. In photos, my mom looks about 12 years old. She was 97 pounds, at 9 months pregnant with me. She still talks about how fat she was, at 97 pounds.
When I was stressing about my first kid, my dad’s one comment was ” what do you mean you have to settle down? babies fit into backpacks just fine.” And he sent me a baby back-pack.
My best friend’s parents were teenagers. My high-school roommate- teenage parents- My college roommate- teenage parents- my favorite neighbor-teenage parents. my next door neighbors- teenage parents.
This woman is trying to ruin some of the happiest, most adventurous marriages I know by keeping them from even existing as a possibility.
It’s easier to be on welfare, but it’s not better. And it doesn’t get better. My friends parents had to live with relatives, pay rent on garage apartments, live in section 8 housing, join the military ( and really- they did go see the world!)- wear old clothes and study hard in college- drive trucks for a living- and now they are business executives, school officials, business owners, lawyers, realtors, glass-blowers, florists. Pretty much to a person, they still think they can do anything they want, as long as they are willing to work for it- there isn’t any fear or doubt in their make-up. They’ve been married to their best friend for their whole adult lives. They are shiny with confidence and love and contentment.
Why would this woman think hovering about on Welfare, broken-hearted b/c the guy left you, alone, alienated and afraid is any way to go through life?
Thanks for relating a refreshingly different point of view.
Egads! What a fuddy-duddy I’ve been. I married young. I couldn’t legally drink my wedding champagne if that gives you an idea. I’ve stayed married to that same man for 17 wonderful years. I can’t imagine life without my best friend. We waited for 15 years to start our family both to get some financial control and to get my health issues under control. But it was worth the wait. And now, I find out I could have been fulfilled if I’d just had a random sex encounter and gotten knocked up all those years ago and let some checks come in the mail and consigned myself to public housing?! Man! How could I have thought this life I have now was any better than that would have been?
ari, that is the most beautiful thing I ever read. And so true. My husband and I graduated college in 1978 and got married that August, stupid children that we were. We were “poor”, but we stuck it out and worked hard. Had three children along the way. What a wild trip it’s been. Not all of it was good, but the spectacular parts were wonderful (and still are). And here we are, 34 years later, and there is no one else for either of us.
Adventure – that’s what’s missing from this helicopter parent of doom society.
I hope you’re all willing to believe in how deep the Gender Feminism/Female Superiority rabbit-hole really goes, now.
It’s all about setting up a never-ending victimhood cycle, a “Strength Through Weakness” position where they use the specter of Misogyny to set up legal and financial advantages in order to “level the playing field”.
By doing this, however, they can STILL make the argument later down the road that Men still discriminate against them by saying that they MUST have the government subsidize them instead of being able to go off and be the CEO.
Marginalizing and Eliminating the male gender is just another cog in the Cloward-Piven machine of completely collapsing the economic system, Gender Feminist True Believers being riled up and used as a tool by the Fabians.
One has to hope, that some day, the “True Believer” factions of these grievance/victimhood groups understand that the people at the top of the heap couldn’t give a damn about them and are just using them to crash the system.
Of course both the rate of divorce and rate of teenaged pregnancy is lower in the blue states than in the red states where for all your abstinence pledges and emotional religiosity, your daughters can’t seem to keep their legs together. There’s no mystery about it. Kids looking forward to college and a good job have a powerful motive to postpone reproduction until they genuinely afford it.
By the way, what any of this has to do with Marxism beats me. Of course words lose all meaning in the midst of ideological frenzy. That, and many of you may actually believe that everybody who disagrees with your ideas belongs to an all-embracing school of thought that can usefully be labelled “Marxist.” They don’t. You’re just abusing language.
Take off your partisan blinders, Jim. The problems of teen pregnancy and out-of-wedlock motherhood are neither red nor blue – they are AMERICA’S problems. All the available statistics show that two parent household are better for raising children, both emotionally and financially. Do you dispute that?
And the talk about Marxism is spot-on, given the fact that Marxism, like other statist ideologies, seeks to undermine the nuclear family and other traditional institutions, as a means to better control the individual. anybody who knows anything about Nazi Germany or Soviet Russia, knows this to be a fact.
I totally agree. Having traveled between NYC and Sturgis SD on my HD I met lots of truly messed up White people. And you know what, between crystal meth and booze, them country folk sure are scary and irresponsible. Anyone who wants in tact families should promote keeping jobs here, in the US, and making sure people make some scratch, and get a good education.
Oooorrrrrr – blue state babes just kill their kids.
It’s a no brainer, you know…..
‘Cuddle up Baby; Uncle pays the bill.’ – Heinlein
‘Not for much longer.’ – Me
Just to be clear for those who haven’t read Heinlein, he wrote that ironically, and his every novel and story spoke to the fact he always asserted, “There Ain’t No Such Thing As A Free Lunch”.
We just welcomed our eighth grandchild into the world tonight. Seven pounds 12 ounces. Present in my daughter’s room this evening were her husband and her two other children, four grandparents, one sister-in-law, her husband, and their four children. Tomorrow my daughter’s brothers will visit with their four children, as will her other sister-in-law, her husband and her three children. Each adult holds a job, including two of the grandparents, while my wife will take up the task of caring for the newborn while my daughter’s other children are in school and she is at work. Among us we have three cleaning ladies to help out once a week, plus some additional baby-sitting help from member of the community and various in-laws. None of the children have as yet had their hearts broken by abandonment or similar arrangements that are not called abandonment. None of the children suffer from attachment disorder. Each sibling and cousin got to hold the new baby and smiled genuinely when they did so.
I seem to remember that during the 30′s Hitler encouraged unwed young women to have babies. They were called Hitler’s babies. The regime sponsored programs titled ‘Strength Through Joy’ and ‘Healthy Eroticism’ in order to encourage more out of wedlock births among minors. His ulterior motive was his need for cannon fodder. I wonder what the left’s true motives are – other than the obvious – their continued war on the nuclear family and men.
Didn’t Obama mention a few times his desire to put together a civilian army? Shades of Mao!
While reading this balderdash, one sentence stuck out in Madeleine Schwartz’s screed:
“A couple cannot raise a child better than one can.”
Gay issues aside, how can it be possible for one person to raise a better adjusted child than two? How can that child learn to be truthful and responsible to someone else without an example follow? How can it be better when the one parent is ill with the flu? How can it be better for providing continuity for children in case of incapacitation or death?
And this is just the tip of the iceberg with such broken reasoning. We know from extensive statistical evidence that children raised by two parents are better adjusted, better educated, and socially more adept than children raised by one. There is something missing from Madeleine Schwartz’s family model: Commitment to each other. Children need to see this.
Madeleine Schwartz has forgotten what the primary purpose of a marriage is: Commitment to each other, responsibility to each other, and responsibility for a community.
She just threw the babies out with the bathwater.
Madeleine says, All of this comes on top of the routine discriminations against single parents—higher insurance and tax rates, difficulties in obtaining housing and jobs—and those against the poor, who with the Hyde Amendment may not even have been able to abort if they had wanted. These policies were created with the explicit goal encouraging a two-parent model. Like two parents is a bad thing? and not an obvious plan for backup in case something goes wrong?
First Madeleine goes to Harvard… then to Oxford…
To paraphrase Miller from Repo Man, The more you go to school, the less intelligent you are.
It’s a tough call whether their greatest enemy is families, religion, work, individualism, success, white people, freedom, capitalismm, or heterosexuals. With a list that long, it’s really difficult to pick the leader.
Economic IQ test: If the national debt doesn’t matter, then why are we still paying federal income taxes? Friday, November 23, 2012 by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
http://www.naturalnews.com/038069_national_debt_income_tax_social_engineering.html
Over the holiday weekend I read a book that was assigned to my high schooler, “There are No Children Here”. Its the true story of 2 kids growing up in the Chicago projects in the late 1980′s. One thing that caught my eye was the State took away the mother’s welfare check because her husband had stopped by a few times, which had been documented by the author for a magazine article. That seems like a pretty strong reinforcement of single parenthood I think. Just another way to destroy the family. BTW, its an interesting and quick read.
There is even a tax penalty for being married. What’s up w/that?
The Left does have a point. According to Congress, last year the federal government spent a total of $1 trillion on welfare programs. That comes out to $60,000/person living in poverty. Why doesn’t Congress just print out a $5000 monthly check to every “poor” person?
SHEEESH! Where DO Leftists get the clap-trap they spew?! Guess the examples can be found by comparing Adam Smith’s books on economics and karl Marx’ rantings.
Smith based his writings on observations of what does and does not work in human society; i.e. reality…the way it is.
marx based his rantings on his own opinions on fantasy…the way he THOUGHT things should be.
The stable family has been the nucleus of society for as long as humans have been around. Anthropologists have found evidence of this going back 10′s of thousands of years.
Yes, we do have a social safety net for the children born out of wedlock, but this is for “emergency use only” and must not be regarded as an alternative to the traditional concept of formal union between responsible mother and father.
Few single, teenage girls are prepared for motherhood and self-support.
Someone please explain to me why the Left feels it must destroy civilization?
That’s easy! There are too many people in the world. That common belief among Leftists drive their other social agendas.
A bit off topic, but I do have a question:
How do I create and post my own article on PJmedia? I’m thinking of doing an article that analyzes some anti-Americanism in some of today’s video game series, including the Metal Gear and Resident Evil series. They’re largely from Japan, and if I could, I’ll try to find other instances foreign and domestic.