Joe:

Thanks for the reference to my piece. I don't think Rev. Sensing is entirely wrong in the assessment that since childbearing is now controllable this severs the necessity of a connection with marriage. At least in one very important sense that's true: "shotgun" weddings. As Frank Fukuyama demonstrates, rather conclusively in my view, in The Great Disruption, removing the obligation associated with unintended pregnancy from men and placing it on women has done anything but liberate them. The issue isn't really childbearing, it's child rearing. This shift in the obligations associated with consequences of sex has led to an enormous increase in single parenthood, which in turn has undermined both the will and the ability of the children of such unions to be productive, well-behaved and competent members of society, when they reach adulthood. And you ain't seen nuthin' yet.

Beyond social disruption, in terms of undermining rule following behavior, recent research on risk factors associated with the development of intelligence in early childhood (see David J. Armor) suggests that simply having a family with two biological parents, up to the point where children reach the age of three, makes a difference of about 0.5 standard deviations in the child's IQ. Add that to other risk factors such a birth weight, and the absence of stimulating and nurturing child rearing practices in the home, and the cumulative effect of family dissolution is a full standard deviation in IQ, or more. That's before factoring in other effects of family dissolution already alarmingly discussed by Moynihan, Fukuyama, and James Q. Wilson.

Moreover, if we choose to do nothing about these risk factors, at least making some attempt to save marriage, and simply choose (as Sensing does) to regard the project as "specious," you can just forget about closing the "race gap" in IQ and achievement. Schools have almost no effect on the gap. They simply happen too late in the child's development. Moreover, the narrowing of the gap through the 1980s is directly related to a counter-trend within black families that, for a brief period, actually improved family circumstances and child rearing. And this suggests that Sensing may be wrong to give up on the project.

There's an interesting social experiment going on in Japan if you doubt the Social Disruption thesis, because "the pill" was legalized there only in 1998 (or 1999?). If we begin to see the same pattern of family dissolution tied to social disruption that we've already seen in the US and Western Europe, beginning to emerge in Japan, then the case is pretty much closed.

Now, I'm not entirely sure what one does to salvage such an institution, but simply giving up on it isn't really a "liberal" attitude, since it's hardly going to have the effect of preserving civil society. Sorry to burst a few bubbles on that score. In fact, I'd rate the threat posed by family dissolution as somewhat greater than the threat posed by terrorism, since the latter is merely a tactic, and the effects are not only temporary, but probably reversible. There may be a point of no return in the effects of family disruption.

"This shift in the obligations associated with consequences of sex has led to an enormous increase in single parenthood,"

There was just as much single parenthood before contraception became available, through death or abandonment. The young girl seduced and abandoned, with a baby coming, has been a stock figure in song and literature throughout Europe at least, from the middle ages on. Probably elsewhere as well.And if a husband died, or abandoned his family - not rare either - remarriage didn't immediately occur any more than it does now.

Arguments against contraception or gay marriage which posit a rosy past for the marriage function are suspect.

There may have been in a past we can probably all agree was less than rosy as much, or even more given the current ease of obtaining abortions, single parent birthing, but much less single parent rearing, which is much more important to all the factors Scott discusses in producing healthy, competent, well adjusted adults. It would be interesting to see what the numbers were for pregnancy outcomes of unmarried women by decade. Undoubtedly there was more adoption and rearing in orphanages. I am sceptical that there was more death or literal abandonment. The task of rearing the father abandoned child has now been moved to the least powerful party least able to deal with it effectively, the rejected young woman in much the same fashion that de-institutionalization has placed the marginally mentally ill into homelessness. While not trying to paint the past as rosy, it is not clear that our present solutions are better.

Also, to Yehudit's comment about the early death of a father, society treated their children very differently. I recall two friend's whose father died when they were about 10. The treatment, breaks and subsidies, they received from merchants and at scouts and other activities was in stark variance to the treatment of another friend whose parents had committed the then inexcusable act of divorcing.

Yehudit has it exactly right. This issue has people pointing to a fantasy past.

The violins are playing again. Been there, done that, have the t-shirt and the book:

The Way We Never Were, by Stephaoie Coontz. Here's the Amazon URL and two reviews.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0465090974/qid=1079632091/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/103-0999661-8312637?v=glance&s=books

"From Publishers Weekly

The golden age of the American family never existed, asserts Coontz ( The Social Origns of Private Life ) in a wonderfully perceptive, myth-debunking report. The "Leave It to Beaver" ideal of breadwinner father, full-time homemaker mother and dependent children was a fiction of the 1950s, she shows. Real families of that period were rife with conflict, repression and anxiety, frequently poor and much less idyllic than many assume; teen pregnancy rates in the '50s were higher than today. Further, Coontz contends, the nuclear family was elevated to a central source of personal satisfaction only in the late 19th century, thereby weakening people's community ties and sense of civic obligation. Coontz disputes the idea that children can be raised properly only in traditional families. Viewing modern domestic problems as symptoms of a much larger socioeconomic crisis, she demonstrates that no single type of household has ever protected Americans from social disruption or poverty. An important contribution to the current debate on family values."

"Amazon.com

Did you ever wonder about the historical accuracy of those "traditional family values" touted in the heated arguments that insist our cultural ills can be remedied by their return? Of course, myth is rooted in fact, and certain phenomena of the 1950s generated the Ozzie and Harriet icon. The decade proved profamily--the birthrate rose dramatically; social problems that nag--gangs, drugs, violence--weren't even on the horizon. Affluence had become almost a right; the middle class was growing. "In fact," writes Coontz, "the 'traditional' family of the 1950s was a qualitatively new phenomenon. At the end of the 1940s, all the trends characterizing the rest of the twentieth century suddenly reversed themselves." This clear-eyed, bracing, and exhaustively researched study of American families and the nostalgia trap proves--beyond the shadow of a doubt--that Leave It to Beaver was not a documentary.

Gender, too, is always on Coontz's mind. In the third chapter ("My Mother Was a Saint"), she offers an analysis of the contradictions and chasms inherent in the "traditional" division of labor. She reveals, next, how rarely the family exhibited economic and emotional self-reliance, suggesting that the shift from community to nuclear family was not healthy. Coontz combines a clear prose style with bold assertions, backed up by an astonishing fleet of researched, myth-skewing facts. The 88 pages of endnotes dramatize both her commitment to and deep knowledge of the subject. Brilliant, beautifully organized, iconoclastic, and (relentlessly) informative The Way We Never Were breathes fresh air into a too often suffocatingly "hot" and agenda-sullied subject. In the penultimate chapter, for example, a crisp reframing of the myth of black-family collapse leads to a reinterpretation of the "family crisis" in general, putting it in the larger context of social, economic, and political ills.

The book began in response to the urgent questions about the family crisis posed her by nonacademic audiences. Attempting neither to defend "tradition" in the era of family collapse, nor to liberate society from its constraints, Coontz instead cuts through the kind of sentimental, ahistorical thinking that has created unrealistic expectations of the ideal family. "I show how these myths distort the diverse experiences of other groups in America," Coontz writes, "and argue that they don't even describe most white, middle-class families accurately." The bold truth of history after all is that "there is no one family form that has ever protected people from poverty or social disruption, and no traditional arrangement that provides a workable model for how we might organize family relations in the modern world."

Some of America's most precious myths are not only precarious, but down right perverted, and we would be fools to ignore Stephanie Coontz's clarion call. --Hollis Giammatteo"

Program on the emergence of civilization.

"14 species of large animals capable of domesitcation in the history of mankind.
13 from Europe, Asia and northern Africa.
None from the sub-Saharan African continent. "
Favor.
And disfavor.

They point out Africans’ failed attempts to domesticate the elephant and zebra, the latter being an animal they illustrate that had utmost importance for it's applicability in transformation from a hunting/gathering to agrarian-based civilization.

The roots of racism are not of this earth.

Austrailia, aboriginals:::No domesticable animals.

The North American continent had none. Now 99% of that population is gone.

AIDS in Africa.

Organizational Heirarchy
Heirarchical order, from top to bottom:

1. MUCK - perhaps have experienced multiple universal contractions (have seen multiple big bangs), creator of the artificial intelligence humans ignorantly refer to as "god"
2. Perhaps some mid-level alien management
3. Mafia (evil) aliens - runs day-to-day operations here and perhaps elsewhere (On planets where they approved evil.)

Terrestrial management:

4. Chinese/egyptians - this may be separated into the eastern and western worlds
5. Romans - they answer to the egyptians
6. Mafia - the real-world interface that constantly turns over generationally so as to reinforce the widely-held notion of mortality
7. Jews, corporation, women, politician - Evidence exisits to suggest mafia management over all these groups.

Survival of the favored.

Movies foreshadowing catastrophy
1985 James Bond View to a Kill 1989 San Fransisco Loma Prieta earthquake.