Speaking Up for the Family

A week ago the administration put out the news, quietly, on a Friday, that they were doing something earth shaking and historic. Which they didn’t want to call undue attention to? It was “the first ever national gender strategy to advance the full participation of all people, including women and girls, in the United States and the world.”

You can read the fact sheet here, which includes a link to the full Gender Strategy Report.

This was brought to my attention a few days ago in commentary by Glenn Beck. He read from the report, and then made some comments. And I’ll get to his. But first I want to cover a couple of things I notice—which may not be anything beyond an editor’s eye.

Glenn Beck talks about the new National Strategy on Gender Equity and Equality,
screenshot from here

There is a high saturation of abstract words: fundamental, essential, ensuring, opportunity, potential, imperative, inflection, exacerbated, underscored, systematic, interconnected, priority. It’s not wrong to use such words—unless you’re using them to hide plain meaning. I’ll leave that issue for another time.

Another thing that caught my attention is a list of priorities:

The strategy identifies ten interconnected priorities: 1) economic security; 2) gender-based violence; 3) health; 4) education; 5) justice and immigration; 6) human rights and equality under the law; 7) security and humanitarian relief; 8) climate change; 9) science and technology; and 10) democracy, participation, and leadership. These priorities are inherently linked and must be tackled in concert.

The first one that jumped out at me was 2) gender-based violence. Certainly that’s something we don’t want. But number 1 was something I’m assuming we’re supposed to want—as are the remaining 8. Why is there a priority to avoid among a list of priorities to aim for? Without clarification? It appears, then, that it is a priority to achieve greater gender-based violence. No, I don’t think that’s what they literally intend; but I think that unclear writing shows unclear thinking. So there’s that.

Then there are the priorities containing “and.” Why is “justice and immigration” a single item; why is there not a separate priority for justice and for whatever it is you want related to immigration? Or, if it’s something about immigration that ought to have justice and doesn’t, why not “immigration justice,” whatever that might be? How do "justice and immigration" fit together as one thing?

I don’t really have a problem with “human rights and equality under the law,” other than that, for clear-thinking people, equality under the law is a human right already, so it’s redundant.

Then there’s “security and humanitarian relief.” Security, in government terms, is like border security, and protection from our foreign enemies (military defense), and protection from domestic enemies to the people of the nation (FBI, or lawbreaking involving multiple states). Humanitarian relief is not a bona fide enumerated power, but as it happens we give aid to foreign nations, ostensibly to improve our relationships with them. But the connection of those two things as a single item is odd—unless they’re doing some conflation of security and economic stability and assuming that’s a government responsibility instead of the natural outgrowth of appropriate limited government.

“Science and technology” probably do go together, no problem there. But then there’s a three-part item: “democracy, participation, and leadership.” Why those three words together? All three abstractions sort of relate to self-government of the people, but what are the separate aspects of them requiring all three to be mentioned, and the common elements that make them together one item? I don’t know. And I suspect whoever wrote this doesn’t know either; they just thought it sounded weightier.

The real issue with this statement hidden on a Friday afternoon release is what Glenn Beck identifies: it attacks the family.

Here at the Spherical Model, we identify the essentials of civilization: 1. Civilization requires a religious people—including honoring God, life, family, truth, and property ownership; 2. Family is the basic unit of civilization. You see family come up twice—because it’s such a big deal. Family is what enables the perpetuation of both the species and the civilization. The Spherical Model has three overlapping spheres: political, economic, and social. And we have a long article identifying the principles in each, leading respectively to freedom, prosperity, and civilization—and away from tyranny, poverty, and savagery. In the section on civilization, we have a large sub-article on family, and why it’s essential to civilization.

So I’m on the same page with Glenn Beck. Beyond that, I recognize the words he’s using—because he’s referencing, and doing a lot of quoting from, “The Family: A Proclamation to the World,” signed and sent out to the world September 23, 1995. I wrote about it for the 20^th anniversary. In that I tell the story of the late Richard Wilkins, who helped institute the World Congress on Families, when he attended his first international conference on families:

He told me that he spoke about the Proclamation on the Family, issued shortly before that by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, to which he was a devout member (as I am). At the time it came out, the issues in the Proclamation were such standard doctrine to us that he said he wondered at the reasoning. Since that time, he says he sees it as prophetic; every line in it is challenged in the world today. But in 1996 he happened to take a brochure of the Proclamation with him and had it in his pocket. When he shared those ideas, the opponents to the family (the previous speakers) hissed their disapproval, but the room at large gave him a standing ovation. They came up to him afterward to thank him for speaking what so many of them believed, and they formed long-standing alliances to work toward protecting the natural family from the international onslaught.

I remember that feeling at the time it was given, of “Why are we being told this? Isn’t this all obvious?” It was obvious then. But I look at it now, and it seems even more prophetic than it did six years ago. The family, sex and its purpose, procreation, gender, marriage—all of it. It’s all still true, but you might get yourself booted from social media, or fired from your job, for saying what was so obvious in 1995 that we didn’t even know it needed to be said. And it will put you at direct opposition to our current government.

So, as Glenn Beck speaks the words, they sound very bold. They need to be said—again. I’ve transcribed the last 6 minutes of his clip and include that in full: 

I want to share with you the fact that the family is under attack. That the sacredness of being a man, and the sacredness of being a woman, is under attack. And it’s under attack to do one thing: destroy the family. That’s it. This is the most evil plan I have ever encountered—to destroy the family.

Some organizations, like BLM, have that in their manifesto—to destroy the family. This is now going to be implemented by the federal government, through our banking systems and ESG [Environmental, social, and governance]. And through everything else. It will touch every aspect of your life.

screenshot of the BLM beliefs page, August 24, 2020
since removed from their website.

 

So I’m gonna go through a few things that are true. And, if you disagree with them, well, then we can still be friends, but I don’t think we’re on the same side. You may be fighting for the wrong side. And I want to share what I hold to be self-evident truth.

I’ll give you 90%, 95% Agree 95%? Great. Let’s fight together. If not, we should part ways.

Now, if one of your objections to what I’m about to tell you is that there is no God, see if you can work around that objection. I truly believe there is one, and we need to implore Him for His help. But if that is your objection, see if you can’t get around that to go with all of the other truths that I’m’ about to speak.

All human beings, male and female, were created in the image of God. They were created for a purpose male and female. Each—each has a divine nature and a destiny. Gender is an essential characteristic of that eternal identity and its purpose. You were born a male or a female for a reason. And there are only two genders. God commanded, at the beginning, to multiply and replenish the earth. And that still should be our goal. It still is in effect. And procreation, and the powers that it takes to procreate should only happen between a man and a woman who are lawfully wedded as husband and wife. 

The beginning of The Proclamation on the Family

[sigh] Have I gone too far now?

Which means that, because that is a sacred power, to procreate, and it should be happening between a man and woman lawfully wedded as husband and wife, it means that that life that you create is divinely appointed. And thus all life is sacred, and abortion is murder. 

Husband and wife together have a responsibility to love and care for each other and their children. Parents together have a sacred duty to rear their children in love and righteousness, to provide for the physical and spiritual needs, and to teach them to love and serve one another; to observe the commandments of God and to be law-abiding citizens wherever they live. That is the responsibility of mothers and fathers, and they will be held accountable if they fail to discharge those obligations.

The family is sacred. It is the basic, fundamental building block. Thus, a marriage between a man and a woman is essential to, not only God’s plan, but to the universe.

Children are entitled to be born within the bounds of matrimony, to be reared by a father and a mother who honor their marital vows with complete fidelity. And happiness in family life is found most likely in the followings of the Judeo-Christian values and principles.

Successful marriages are established and maintained on principles of faith, prayer, repentance, forgiveness, respect, love, compassion, work, and wholesome recreation. 

from The Proclamation on the Family

As a dad, I am responsible to provide the necessities of life and protection of my family. My wife is primarily responsible for the nurture of our children. But we help each other on both of those things as equal partners. Now, that doesn’t mean that there aren’t special cases. Of course there is. And extended families should lend support when needed.

But the disintegration of the family—the destruction of the family—will bring upon us as individuals, our communities, and our entire world calamities beyond your imagination. That’s why I believe: family first. You must stand up for these principles first.

 

The warning near the end of 
The Proclamation on the Family

 

A lot has changed in our world in the relatively brief 26 years since that proclamation was written. But every word of it is still true. And we do face calamities in our world, in our communities, when these words are abrogated. 

Sometimes I use big, less familiar, possibly abstract words too.
But I try to do that when it's the right word for meaning.

Conversely, many of the ills in the world would be relieved if we valued family so much that a critical mass of intact functional families civilized our savage world.

I stand for the family. When necessary, I declare opposition to the government in order to stand for the family. I hope at least some of us can avoid the calamities.

Civilization Values, Part VIII: Marriage

This is the final part in the series on the values requisite for civilization. For the first seven parts, here are the links.

·         Part I: Life

·         Part II: Truth

·         Part III: Property Ownership

·         Part IV: God and Freedom of Religion

·         Part V: Civilizing Religion

·         Part VI: Repenting as a Civilization

·         Part VII: FamilyPerpetuates Civilization 

If we start with the values of honoring God, life, truth, and property ownership, family is how we teach and pass along those values. So we need to value family as well. The term “family values” has been tossed around for several decades, but for our purposes we need a more specific definition of what it means to value family. What is family?

As we’ve said, family is the basic unit of civilization. An individual is a unit even smaller, but it isn’t a unit of civilization—because society by definition requires at least two people to associate with one another. And civilization is a particular—good—kind of society. The fundamental relationship leading to civilization and its perpetuation, then, is family. We talked in Part VII about how well family does that.

Today we’ll talk about the relationship that founds a family.

This is not to say that individuals, unmarried people, grandparents helping raise children, foster care situations, and various other-than-the-ideal family structures don’t contribute. If the individuals in these other situations lead intentionally civilized lives, they do contribute to civilization. But the essential relationship—because it means a mother and a father raising their children to be civilized for the next generation—is a married man and woman. And what is essential for this relationship is complete fidelity and permanence.

There’s huge societal upheaval today trying to declare that other relationships are as deserving. But if any other relationship is designed not to produce children, does not require complete fidelity, and is not permanent, it does not offer society what marriage provides.

The section on marriage and fidelity in the Spherical Model website article “Family Is the Basic Unit of Civilization” is long. There’s a large section on why sex outside of marriage is always uncivilized. If there’s something our current society needs to learn, it is that. So here’s a portion of that.

______________

Sex Outside of Marriage Is Always Wrong

This is such a simple concept, and so many problems would be settled if people would believe it. It’s an essential of civilization. Every time a society attempts to “progress” or “evolve” beyond the old-fashioned notion of virtue, it slides into decay. Every time. This decay happens so frequently and is currently so widespread that the need for virtue must not still be self-evident. So we might as well spell out the reasons.

Human Children Take Time and Consistency to Bring to Adulthood

image from here

Human children grow slowly. It takes close upon two decades to get them from birth to functioning on their own, capable of supporting themselves, reproducing, and raising a civilized next generation. It requires consistency and care from someone with a stake in the child’s success. It takes a pair of parents, providing both male and female role models and ways of nurturing.

The best (really, the only) way to plan for children to be raised by the same two (one male, one female) parents throughout their growing up life is for those two parents to be permanently bonded to each other. To be married. (See Why Marriage Matters.[i]) Marriage isn’t as ephemeral as just a declaration of love between two lovers; it is a commitment to each other and to the entire society that they will stay together for life. This commitment establishes a family, the most basic unit of civilization. There isn’t any way to break up a family that doesn’t harm civilization. Therefore, there isn’t any possible way for sex outside of marriage to be acceptable behavior without harming civilization. Without the attitude of its sacredness, it is impossible to maintain virtue (chastity). And without virtue, families are always harmed.

Look, for instance, at what happens when two young people, believing they are in love, give in to sex. They have just admitted to each other that they value their own desires over the needs of the society they live in. They are both lessened for that selfishness. But what if they recognize that, though what they did was wrong, they could marry and move on? Yes, they could alter their course—what religious societies call repentance, change their thoughts and actions for the future. And if it is true that they love each other, they could go forward making a happy home, with very little harm to society. So, while society wouldn’t condone the mistake, it can easily forgive.

What if the couple decides not to marry? What if they realize they were just young and foolish, and gave in to selfish desires? They could stop, and go their separate ways. Again, it would be possible to repent—change their thoughts and actions for the future—without society being very much degraded for their temporary lapse. Because society never approved. Nor did they require society to grant approval. They realigned themselves with civilization’s requirements following their lapse.

What if a pregnancy resulted from their foolish episode? If they have any hope that they actually can love each other, then they can marry quickly, because forming a family in which to raise their offspring is the highest priority (a much higher priority than the honor of a big wedding celebrated by all their friends). Even if they’re too young to know how to establish and maintain a healthy family, the society around them—their parents, their church, their friends, counselors—can give them guidance and assistance as they finish maturing. It makes the beginning of their family more difficult than a more reasoned, more mature decision, but with effort and help they can succeed in sustaining, rather than degrading, civilization. So, again, while society doesn’t condone the sex outside of marriage, it can forgive without being decayed.

If the couple find themselves in the very sad situation of being pregnant while also realizing they are incompatible, then, again, the highest priority is the need for a family for the child. There can be no civilized focus other than that child whom their behavior brought to life. A child needs, and is entitled to, a loving two-parent family. The two young people should do everything within their power to make sure the child gets this entitlement. This is a much greater concern than whether they themselves love the child and want to be near him/her.

[Note: I am not advocating here that some distant government entity step in and make these difficult decisions and insist that the child be adopted out. I am advising that, for the sake of society, the child’s welfare must be of greater importance than what the foolish accidental parents may want. There should be pressure from society—again, from their family, their church, their friends and mentors—to help these young people see society’s need for them to value the child. Societal pressure and expectation, even shame, coming from a truly civilized society, is much more likely to bring about the best choices following mistakes than rigidly written laws could do. But laws should make it possible for society to be supported in the pressure.]

Let’s assume that, if these two people are at all susceptible to civilizing influence, then they want for their child what every child is entitled to. If they themselves cannot provide the child’s family, then adoption is the most likely way to provide it. The least that can be expected from the young mother is to bring the child to term and then give the baby to a loving two-parent family, being willing to grieve at her own loss of the child because the child gains so much. That’s a lot to expect of an immature young woman, but civilization requires that it be expected.

The young man absolutely should be held accountable. (This has historically been a major failing of many attempts at civilization.) Society should decide how. My personal belief is that, if marrying the young mother was not what he could do, then he should, for the next 18 years at least, provide support, possibly a trust for the child’s college or other needs, taken out of everything he earns until that child is an adult. This should be done even though the adopting family is expected to be able to provide; it is necessary for the sake of civilization that the young man be held responsible. And the young biological father should have no expectation of visitation; he gave up that right by giving up the opportunity to be the father in a marriage with the mother. Sexual indiscretion does not entitle a male to being honored as a father; he has to actually be one, in partnership with the mother, to earn that. Individual communities may find other solutions, but civilization requires that the father be held accountable for his actions.

Adoption should never be seen as the mother not loving the child enough. It should be seen as the positive, probable, expected course for such a situation—without prolonged stigma to the mother, and certainly without stigma to the child. As long as both biological parents provide for the child’s needs, society can forgive without civilization being decayed.

Adoption family, image from here

I believe that, in a truly civilized society, there will never be insufficient families willing to adopt. Children are too highly valued, and fertility problems come up frequently in nature. [Note: Undervaluing children and celebrating or causing infertility to avoid inconveniencing adults who choose to be sexually active without forming a family are two signs of a decaying society. The documentary Demographic Winter is a good source.[ii]] But, hypothetically, if the young mother were unable to place her baby in an adopting family, she could, if her parents stepped in to assist, raise the child at home. This is, self-evidently, less valuable to civilization. There’s a child without both parents, and the mother’s choices caused that to happen. So her folly can never be condoned. But it can be forgiven, because civilization, no matter how far advanced, is made up of imperfect human beings. The way society sees the situation is what affects whether society is decayed by it. And if this type of situation were rare (which it would tend to be if there were serious stigma against it), then society could absorb the difficulty for the individual child. While maintaining that adoption should be the usual choice, I believe civilized society can allow the young mother to get her own answer through prayer about whether she should keep her child.

There’s more. I’ve written more about this issue than just about any other. Refer to “Defense of Marriage Collection,” from July 2013. http://sphericalmodel.blogspot.com/2013/07/defense-of-marriage-collection.html  I’ve now written six more years of posts. Many of these appear to relate to LGBT issues, but to me this is always about defending real marriage in an effort to build civilization and repair its decay. Here are a few additional posts I believe are worth checking out:

·         Family Proclaiming, April 9, 2015

·         Millennia of Marriage, May 7, 2015

·         Another Nail, February 20, 2017

·         Surprise at Old News, August 10, 2017

·         Family Isn’t Extinct, October 12, 2017

·         Normalizing Has Already Gone Too Far, August 2, 2018

·         Stop Throwing Out the Baby, May 23, 2019

That’s it for this series on civilization values. In summary, civilization requires that we value God, life, family, truth, and property ownership—which, coincidentally, summarizes the Ten Commandments. It’s been good guidance for a very long time, and it works every time it’s tried. Simple, not easy, but worth trying from the family level on up.

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[i] Why Marriage Matters: Twenty-one Conclusions from the Social Sciences, © 2002 Institute for American Values.

[ii] Demographic Winter, video available at www.demographicwinter.com. See also the follow-up, Demographic Bomb.

Old Wisdom

There is age-old wisdom, and there is sometimes wisdom in age. When things have been known—or at least accepted—to be best for society, we ought to have some respect for that.

Among the age-old wisdom is that family is the basic unity of society. In order to have a strong society—civilization—you need strong families—consisting of a married man and woman. So marriage is important. And having children, and raising them in the safety provided by married parents is also important.

I heard these old notions reaffirmed in a couple of different places this past week.

It was our semi-annual worldwide conference for my Church—The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Among the many speakers was Dallin H. Oaks, always one of my favorites. He was President of Brigham Young University when I attended there. Briefly after that he served on the Utah Supreme Court, before being called as an apostle for our Church. He is now in the First Presidency, and is the senior apostle next to President Russell M. Nelson, who was called as an apostle at the same time as President Oaks.

President Dallin H. Oaks
screen shot from here

President Oaks, with his background in law, lays out information in a very orderly and direct way. That’s his style, and I appreciate that about him. He spoke twice at the weekend conference: Saturday morning, and the Saturday evening Women’s session. Both times he mentioned that truth about marriage.

Quoting from "The Family: A Proclamation to the World,” he said,

We affirm the Lord’s teachings that “gender is an essential characteristic of individual premortal, mortal, and eternal identity and purpose” and that “marriage between man and woman is essential to His eternal plan.”

He commented on the pressure against this stand:

[S]ome are troubled by some of our Church’s positions on marriage and children. Our knowledge of God’s revealed plan of salvation requires us to oppose current social and legal pressures to retreat from traditional marriage and to make changes that confuse or alter gender or homogenize the differences between men and women. We know that the relationships, identities, and functions of men and women are essential to accomplish God’s great plan.

Talking about the importance of children, he said,

[W]e also have a distinct perspective on children. We look on the bearing and nurturing of children as part of God’s plan, and a joyful and sacred duty of those given the power to participate in it. In our view, the ultimate treasures on earth and in heaven are our children and our posterity. Therefore, we much teach and contend for principles and practices that provide the best conditions for the development and happiness of children—all children.

People are upset sometimes when the Church—and other churches—step into the political arena, taking a stand on particular issues. But this is why. These things affect us deeply. Near the end of this address, he was talking about the adversary, Satan’s efforts against what we know is good:

[Satan] seeks to confuse gender, to distort marriage, and to discourage childbearing—especially by parents who will raise children in truth.

I’ve written, multiple times, on each of these issues.

·         Gender confusion: here, here, and here.

·         Defending traditional marriage: the large collection here, but also a three-art series ending here, and also here.

·         Rates of reproduction: here  a three-part series ending here, and also here.

In the General Conference Women’s session, Saturday evening, President Oaks further mentioned these cultural pressures, along with some troubling statistics:

Children are our most precious gift from God—our eternal increase. Yet we live in a time when many women wish to have no part in the bearing and nurturing of children. Many young adults delay marriage until temporal needs are satisfied. The average age of our Church members’ marriages has increased by more than two years, and the number of births to Church members is falling. The United States and some other nations face a future of too few children maturing into adults to support the number of retiring adults.[1] Over 40 percent of births in the United States are to unwed mothers. Those children are vulnerable. Each of these trends works against our Father’s divine plan of salvation.

The solution to the deterioration of valuing family is not to give in to cultural pressure; it is to adhere to the wisdom we know from historical evidence and from the happiness that comes from living in a way that leads away from the chaos, including listening to the wise words we hear from our Eternal Father, in scripture and in words of the prophets.

Along these lines, during a very long (2 ¾ hours) interview of Jordan Peterson by Dr. Oz, Peterson was responding to a question about where he lands on the political spectrum, which is a challenge for someone who isn’t a political thinker, but a thinker in the fuller sense. He’s a traditionalist, temperamentally (which is a much fuller conversation with Dr. Peterson), but also creative. So he doesn’t fit easily into prearranged boxes:

It’s not like I don’t think that the dispossessed deserve a political voice. Now, that’s why I was interested in socialist politics when I was a kid, and I understand perfectly well that hierarchies dispossess, and that something has to be done about that. But I also think that we mess with fundamental social structures at our great peril.

Dr. Jordan Peterson (right) talks with Dr. Oz
screen shot from here

What does he think we’ve been messing with to our detriment? The same things Dallin Oaks has mentioned, mainly marriage.

So, here’s a social scientist/clinical psychologist’s view on throwing out the tried and true:

I think we’ve destabilized marriage very badly, and that that’s not been good for people, especially not good for children. But I don’t think it’s been good for adult men and women either.

And I certainly, as a social scientist—one of the things you learn, if you’re a social scientist, and you’re well educated and informed, is that, if you take a complex system—let’s imagine that you have a complex system, and you have a hypothesis about how to intervene so that it will improve. OK, so what will you learn? You’ll learn, once you implement the intervention, that you didn’t understand the system, and that your stupid intervention did a bunch of things you didn’t expect it to, many of which ran counter to your original intent. And you will inevitably learn that.

So, I learned that via a whole series of very wise mentors who insisted, to everyone they talked to who was interested in public policy, for example, that when they put in place a well-meaning public policy initiative, that they put aside a substantial proportion of the budget to evaluate the outcome of the initiative. Because the probability that the initiative would produce the results desired was virtually zero.

That sounds an awful lot like our Spherical Model saying, particularly about government interference:

Whenever government attempts something beyond the proper role of government (protection of life, liberty, and property), it causes unintended consequences—usually exactly opposite to the stated goals of the interference.

So Jordan Peterson tilts conservative on that basis. But another clue is that he’s not looking at the world in disgust that we haven’t fixed everything yet; he’s in awe that things work as well as they do:

I don’t expect systems to work perfectly. If they’re not degenerating into absolute tyranny, I tend to think they’re doing quite well. Because, if you look worldwide, and you look at the entire course of human history, degeneration into abject tyranny is the norm.

And so, if you see systems like our system, say, in the democratic Western world, that are struggling by, not too badly, you should be in awe of those structures, because they’re so difficult to produce and so unlikely.

What is the so-called liberal approach (sometimes called “leftist” but actually southern hemisphere tyrannical approach)? Interfere. Badly.

You take a system that’s working not too badly. “Well, I’m going to radically improve it.” It’s like, “No. You’re not.” You’re not going to radically improve it. You might be able to improve it incrementally, if you devoted a large part of your entire life to it, and you were very humble about your methods and your ambition.

But if you think that some careless tweak of this complex system, as the consequence of the illogical presuppositions you learn in three weeks in your social justice class at university, and that’s going to produce a radical improvement? It’s like, you can’t even begin to fathom the depths of your ignorance.

 Dr. Oz asks him what specifically does he think has derailed marriage. He speculates that some of it is the changing roles from women becoming more autonomous—mainly from technological advances surrounding hygiene and birth control. Many of these changes are for the good, for women certainly, but also society, because we are able to benefit more from the genius of women. But the changing roles are still very new, anthropologically speaking, so there’s going to be some stress there as men and women renegotiate.

Dr. Jordan Peterson
screen shot from here

He totally disagrees with the assertion that women were previously oppressed by men; mostly men and women worked together to struggle out of poverty and oppression any way they could, which, without those technological advances logically placed women mostly at hearth and home.

Anyway, what has done the most harm to marriage?

The other thing that’s happened, as far as I’m concerned, is that we got a little too careless about liberalizing the divorce laws and changing the structure of marriage in general. I don’t think that that was good for people, especially not for children. Because, the evidence that children do better in intact two-parent families is overwhelming. No credible social scientist that I know of disputes that.

That’s what I have seen in the data[2] as well. And if that weren’t affirming enough, he goes on to say what we know about the family:

It might be because the minimal viable social structure is actually the minimal nuclear family: two people. One isn’t enough. Two is barely enough. But it’s a minimum.

Especially—I think the reason for that is, this is how I look at it: Everybody has lots of flaws, and tilts toward insanity in at least one direction. And so, partly what you want to do is, you want to link up with someone over the long run, because they’re— They might be sane where you’re not, and vice versa.

So, if you have a partner, and you put yourself together—and this is also how marriage works symbolically, by the way; it’s the reunion of the original man, before the separation into man and woman. You put yourself together. You have one person who’s basically sane….

Because, if [children] have parents, if they have a parental unit, let’s say, that’s communicating, and that’s straightening each other out, then the child can adapt to that unit as a microcosm of broader society. And so, if the child can figure out how to get along with the parents, in the best possible sense, then they’re also simultaneously figuring out how to get along with everyone else.

And I think, if you go below that pairing, things fragment in a way that can’t be easily rectified.

Maybe it's time we turned back to the old wisdom. Because the only way to rectify the situation now requires rebuilding: more people living the tried and true way that leads to civilization; and speaking truth, loud and clear enough that those who’ve been persuaded by those trying to meddle with what has worked for millennia will hesitate—and think again.

________________________________________________

[1] This footnote was included in the print version of Pres. Oaks' talk: See Sara Berg, “Nation’s Latest Challenge: Too Few Children,” AMA Wire, June 18, 2018, wire.ama-assn.org.
[2] For a collection of data, see “Why Marriage Matters: Twenty-One Conclusions from the Social Sciences,” 2002, Institute for American Values.

Upward Mobility

Here at the Spherical Model, we talk about the interrelationships of the political, economic, and social spheres. Freedom affects prosperity, and both are significantly affected by the civilization level of the people.

I came across a long piece by Megan McCardle for Bloomberg News (I’m estimating 25-30 pages, but online it’s a bit uncertain) about the state of Utah, where I grew up. And the interrelationships are evident.

Let’s start with some descriptions. The story begins with the population: 192,672. That’s the city proper. But that’s not really accurate. That puts it in the range of the Tri-Cities in Washington State (Kennewick, Richland, and Pasco together), which has a small town feel, and not even a 4-year college. The Salt Lake metropolitan area is actually well over a million. And if you extend the area north to Ogden and south to Provo, you’re up to nearly 2.5 million. It’s not as big as, say, Houston, but it’s significant in population size.

Salt Lake City, view from airplane, May 2014

Salt Lake City and surrounding areas have a high percentage of Mormons, since the valley was settled by Mormons after they had been driven from five previous homes by mobs burning and looting their property and killing them. (The Governor of Missouri had signed an extermination order, which made murdering Mormons legal.) So, it’s no wonder they wanted a place of their own, away from threats, where they could settle permanently.

Going back there, when daughter Social Sphere went to college, she commented, “I’ve never seen so many blonds.” I hadn’t noticed it growing up, but she was right. It’s a little startling after Texas. A lot of the Utah population comes from the northeastern US, plus many from England and Scandinavia (my heritage). So blonds are common.

But there are other notable demographics as well. Hispanics are around 22%. Then there are sizable populations of Pacific Islanders, and Asians (Nepal, Myanmar, Sri Lanka), and Bosnians.

There are only about 2.7% blacks. There has never been a migration of blacks to Utah. There has also never been slavery, and blacks (and women) had the vote all along, before statehood in the 1890s (statehood took away the women’s right to vote for a couple of decades). McArdle asserts that institutional racism is the reason blacks stay away—I have to say that’s an incorrect assessment of the people, and of the Mormons. But I’ll save that debate for another day.

Anyway, some of the comparisons between Utah and other places are like apples and oranges just because there isn’t an underlying racism issue. And another overriding question is, can the things that are working be transferred elsewhere, or is it because of the Mormons?

Upward Mobility

Upward mobility—the American Dream—is more likely in Utah than in the rest of the US. The main impetus of the article is to explore why there is this upward mobility gap:

A child born in the bottom quintile of incomes in Charlotte [North Carolina] has only a 4 percent chance of making it into the top quintile. A child in Salt Lake City, on the other hand, has more than a 10.8 percent chance—achingly close to the 11.7 percent found in Denmark and well on the way to the 20 percent chance you would expect in a perfectly just world.

Government Spending

Government spending isn’t the reason. Utah’s government seems to commit very limited funds for both fighting poverty and for education. “Utah is dead last in per-pupil education spending.” It’s not last in educational outcomes, however. For K-12 schools, it ranks 22nd, but in higher education it ranks 2^nd. For overall education it ranks 9^th.

They have a surprising solution for homelessness that seems to be working, called “Housing First.” It turns out, if you just outright pay for housing for the homeless, before dealing with the cause of that individual’s homelessness, it’s cheaper and more effective than the crisis-led practice of dealing with them once they show up in emergency rooms.

As McArdle summarizes:

That’s the thing about the government here. It is not big, but it’s also not … bad. The state’s compassionate conservatism goes hand-in-hand with an unusually functional bureaucracy.

Volunteer Help

Besides actually cheerful, helpful government workers, the biggest factor seems to be community involvement, with an army of volunteers.

The volunteering starts in the church wards, where bishops keep a close eye on what’s going on in the congregation, and tap members as needed to help each other. If you’re out of work, they may reach out to small business people to find out who’s hiring. If your marriage is in trouble, they’ll find a couple who went through a hard time themselves to offer advice.

Besides the very local, very personal volunteering, there’s also larger, more institutional helping. Welfare Square is visited by governments all over the country and the world, to see how it’s done, and to see what they can replicate. It’s not just a food pantry; it’s a production facility—actually a network of production facilities: bakeries, dairies, canneries, farms, orchards, and more.

Here in Houston we have a peanut butter cannery producing for Church welfare storehouses in Utah and all over. It’s run by volunteer labor. Additionally, the cannery is used by the Houston Food Bank to produce about 400,000 jars a year for local food pantries. The only jars actually sold are to Mormons buying a case or so for their personal family pantries. All the rest is donated to the poor.

LDS Peanut Butter Factory in Houston

Help from the Church is intended to be temporary. And recipients are expected to do volunteer work in exchange for the help, whenever physically possible. Usually help will be to tide a household over for a matter of a few months, all the while helping them find gainful employment, or head toward the training or education they need. There’s no life-long welfare help in the Church.

McArdle contrasts that with government programs:

This combination of financial help and the occasional verbal kick in the pants is something close to what the ideal of government help used to be. Social workers used to make individual judgments about what sort of help their clients needed or deserved. But such judgments always have an inherently subjective and arbitrary quality, which courts began to frown on in the middle of the 20th century, in part because they offered considerable discretion for racial discrimination.

Turning government welfare into an automatic entitlement based on simple rules undoubtedly made it fairer, and kept people from slipping through the cracks. But making it harder to remove benefits from people who stopped trying also made it easier for people to make understandable short-term decisions which turned into long-term dependence, leaving a significant number of people disconnected from work and mired in multi-generational poverty.

One of the factors in upward mobility is what BYU research David Sims calls “middle classness that’s so broad it’s almost infectious.” He means that young people are exposed to social differences beyond how they were raised. Moving up looks possible. And belief leads to efforts to succeed.

Lots of Marriage, Not Much Alcohol

Mormons contribute some additional social benefits. Mormons don’t drink alcohol, so poverty-related outcomes of alcohol addiction are a much smaller problem in Utah.

Also, Mormons are more likely to be married. We’ve talked about the formula for avoiding poverty in America at the Spherical Model from time to time. That comes up again here:

Economists Isabel Sawhill and Ron Haskins famously estimated that we could reduce poverty by 71 percent if the poor did just four things: finished high school, worked full time, got married and had no more than two children — and the number of children was the least important factor in that calculation.

Salt Lake Temple,
photo from the Conference Center
in the rain, January 2012, by Social Sphere

Marriage avoids poverty not only for the couple as individuals, but also for the children in the next generation. Marriage builds social capital. In areas of the US where it looks like upward mobility is racially caused, “once they controlled for the family structure of the community, that effect disappeared. Marriage seems to have more of a correlation with mobility than race does.”

And not just the families of married parents benefit; neighborhoods benefit:

If you live in a neighborhood full of single mothers who had a hard time finishing school, that’s probably the future you’ll expect for yourself and your own kids. If you live in a neighborhood full of thriving two-parent families, that’s probably the future you’ll envision, even if your own father disappeared when you were 2. Marriage matters at the individual level, but it also matters at the community level, because the community can strongly shape individual behavior.

That sounds just like something we’d come up with here at the Spherical Model. Families are the basic unit of civilization. You need a critical mass of families with intact married parents in order to get out of savagery and into civilization.

Results

So, here’s what you need, if you want Utah’s results of exiting poverty. You need married parents raising families with stability and caring. You need a volunteer force to care for the less fortunate. You need people willing to care for one another, rather than leaving that to government. And you need minimal government bureaucracy that, where necessary, is done with care and efficiency.

You might get that where there’s not a handy supply of Mormons. I’m even hopeful that it is possible. That’s what the Spherical Model shows. But if you need social capital to get underway, it sure is handy to start with a Mormon population.

The Having-It-All Myth

In today’s post, the data is from my observation, from which I’m extrapolating an opinion. More often I prefer data from broader and deeper sources, from which drawing conclusions is more or less inescapable. Data I use about the family as the basic unit of society, and the importance of mothers and fathers in raising children, comes to mind.

While I think my opinions today will also be accurate, they’re more my impressions than conclusions of social science.

Recently I attended a dinner with a number of colleagues of my husband, people who are expert in their field. They range in age from mid-thirties to mid-fifties (Mr. Spherical Model is at the upper age range, and also among the most experienced in the specialized field). Around thirty people attended. I think there was one other spouse besides me. I counted five men; the rest were women.

After accounting for various factors, I decided to assume the field as a whole is about 25% male and 75% female.  When Mr. Spherical Model was in graduate school, women were well represented, but men still accounted for at least half of his class. So there has been movement in the past several decades. It is an education field, and women are well represented (a heavy majority) in other areas of education. So this shift isn’t surprising.

Among the group of thirty or so, most of the men were married; one or two others had children, but not all. Most of the women were not married. In fact, from what I think I observed, most had never been married. The very nice lady seated next to me had been married for a couple of years, but had lived with her husband for seventeen years. No children. And I’m guessing the time of opportunity has passed.

I was an anomaly in their world. I had been acquainted with their field from before I met Mr. Spherical Model; I was an educational technical writer for people in his professional specialty. In fact, he went to the graduate school recommended by my boss. So I’m more familiar with the field than these colleagues knew. But they were so unfamiliar with my lifestyle that they couldn’t find questions beyond how many kids and grandkids. I don’t mean to say they were rude or exclusionary. I’m simply saying that my world was unfamiliar to them, although they probably imagined that they totally knew what it was about.

From those I know in this professional field, some have wanted to marry. They liked the idea. But it just never happened. When they were young, in their twenties, they were in school, then graduate school, with maybe a stint in elementary or secondary education in between. And then they were focused on the first job and getting a career underway. Sometimes travel was involved. And long hours.

They believe they would have been open to the right relationship, if it had come along at the right time. In their thirties they tried several failed relationships, and may have tried various dating services. But now, in their forties, family isn’t likely to happen. So career is their life. Plus a few outside interests. (Several considered themselves wine aficionados. Some knew the best restaurants in the most traveled cities.)

I also observed—not judging, just curious—that very few of the women wore makeup. They do their hair, often colored and stylishly cut. They may do their nails. But not their faces. Their clothes were what you’d expect at a business casual event. I think they have gotten to a point in their lives that looking good enough is important, but beyond that, they would just rather not fuss. So, no makeup.

I’m not joining them in that. I don’t know if it has to do with the invisibility of going through my career years as a stay-at-home mom, or if it’s a quirk of my personality. But, even though I don’t wear a lot of makeup (I skip foundation and eye shadow), when I don’t wear makeup I get asked if I’m ill. Or I’m not noticed at all. I’ll be introspectively thinking about this detail.

Back at the office where Mr. Spherical Model works, among people in his field as well as other assignments, several more women are married. But divorce is common. And one or two children is about the limit. If a woman gets to her early thirties without marriage, chances are she’ll miss out on family.

This is much less likely to be true of men, who often marry in their twenties or early thirties, and have a rich and full family life in addition to their career.

So, the question is, is it because society is sexist and intrinsically unfair? That’s what feminism would say. But that’s not what I’m seeing.

I’m seeing more women with opportunities than men. Women get paid as much in this field as men do, for the same work. Women are as likely, maybe more so, to get into consulting and be their own boss. The business treats them at least equally well. But women don’t easily multitask when it comes to career and family.

When I look more broadly at society, that seems like it can’t be true. More women work than not. Most women eventually have children. There’s huge financial pressure for women to work. And there’s huge societal pressure for women to assert their feminist rights by working. Family becomes incidental. But I think I’m observing that women in successful careers are more likely to be unmarried than men are. (I’m thinking of Condoleeza Rice, for example. Carly Fiorina is a high-caliber businesswoman and married, but didn’t have children of her own.)

I saw this Rodin sculpture a couple of weeks ago,
Premiere Impression d'Amour,
or First Impression of Love,
at the Smithsonian Gallery of Art.
My photos were inadequate; this one found here.

To a woman who becomes a mother, a child is not an incidental nice thing to have, like a pet, or maybe a recreational boat. A child become a raison d’être. She doesn’t work for her personal fulfillment anymore; she may work because she must, but she’s focused on that child. And she might wish to be home with that little one. This means she might choose a less demanding career, or just a predictably limited job, or maybe part-time work.

She doesn’t have a “wife” at home, to see to the cooking, cleaning, grocery shopping, laundry, and family scheduling. She can’t just come home and spend a good hour or two with the child before bedtime. She has to do it all. And doing it all is exhausting.

Are there situations with stay-at-home dads with career moms? Yes. They’re functional in their own way. They’re certainly not immoral or wrong for the child. But they’re rare. One of the main reasons is physiological. Having a baby is a physical strain. A woman might decide ahead of time that she’ll be one of those strong women, who exercise all the way up to the final couple of weeks of pregnancy, believing that will give her energy to work right up until the end.

But she might not know that her pregnancy will include a whole lot of nausea, with accompanying exhaustion, and an overwhelming desire to just put her feet up and rest, and not think—no matter how disciplined and energetic she was before. And she might not have the physical ability to go through pregnancy as if it’s no more than a slight inconvenience. She might not have planned on how much this baby would become an overwhelming love and focus, with career seeming less vital.

Women are the ones who have babies. And breastfeed them, because their bodies are made to do those miraculous things.

If a life is centered on a woman’s career, it can’t also be focused on family. Focus is singular—the one point at which everything is clear.

I’m not saying that no woman can have a successful career and be married and raise children. That happens. I’m saying it’s a lot harder to do, for very natural reasons, than the feminist movement would lead you to believe. It has been a lie, that women can “have it all.”

You can do some things. You can possibly do some things really well. You might do several things somewhat well—which is the reality for most women, out of necessity. But you are not likely to do it all well, and enjoy it, all at the same time.

If you decide to focus on career all the way through your twenties, because, once you’re established, you can always add in family later, you are very likely to remain focused on career through your thirties, and then your forties. Careers build. There doesn’t seem to come a time when you can set it on the back burner and work less hard. You won’t have available time. And you won’t have available men to choose from, because they’ve gotten married while you were busy.

A woman who chooses a career can do good in the world, and can be self-sufficient. If that is her greatest desire, she should be free to choose such a life. But if a woman chooses to focus on her family, even as a stay-at-home mom if she can, she contributes to perpetuating civilization, and she does it because of love beyond what she previously knew she was capable of.

As C. S. Lewis says, "The homemaker has the ultimate career. All other careers exist for one purpose only....and that is to support this ultimate career."

Image found here

This past weekend during the LDS Church’s semi-annual general conference, one of our apostles, Elder Jeffrey R. Holland, spoke about motherhood as a metaphor for the love of Jesus Christ. He said, “No love in mortality comes closer to approximating the pure love of Jesus Christ than the love a devoted mother has for her child.”

Elder Holland also said, “God bless you. You are doing better than you think you are.”

If we are to restore and sustain civilization, it will be because women choose to be mothers—good, nurturing mothers—who combine with good fathers to civilize the children they love.