Recessions test social capital. If social bonds are strong, nations can be surprisingly resilient. If they are weak, things are terrible. The U.S. endured the Great Depression reasonably well because family bonds and social trust were high. Russia, on the other hand, was decimated by the post-Soviet economic turmoil because social trust was nonexistent.
This recession has exposed America’s social weak spots. For decades, men have adapted poorly to the shifting demands of the service economy. Now they are paying the price. For decades, the working-class social fabric has been fraying. Now the working class is in danger of descending into underclass-style dysfunction. For decades, young people have been living in a loose, under-institutionalized world. Now they are moving back home in droves.
The economic response to the crisis is everywhere debated, but the social response is unformed. First, we need to redefine masculinity, creating an image that encourages teenage boys to stay in school and older men to pursue service jobs. Evangelical churches have done a lot to show how manly men can still be nurturing. Obviously, more needs to be done, and schools need to be more boy-friendly.
Ah, David Brooks at his typical best. A shame he didn’t try to find a correlation between Big Government Nanny-state intrusion and increasing social dysfunction and disruption. David, go look at Europe where the governments keep heaping goodies on the people to tamp down rampant dysfunction and disruption (like handing out sedatives in the nursing home). See how well it’s working in Greece?
Brooks, as usual, avoids pandering to the biases of the left or the right, and offers a cogent look at the real world that the majority of us actually live in.
[blockquote]First, we need to redefine masculinity[/blockquote] I think this is already in progress. The MSM and Madison Avenue portray men as beer drinking boys, male sports groupies with low intelligence who are tolerated by intelligent, tolerant grown up women. This model replaced the previous knuckle dragging misogynists who victimized women and kept them barefoot and pregnant. At age sixty five, I can still remember how important a good man is in the fabric of society and do not need David Brooks to help me to redefine masculinity.
Dcn Dale beat me to the punch. The author lost me at “redefine masculinity”. We have had quite enough of that already and look how well it has turned out. No, we need to return to what worked in the past. Doing more of the same, just harder, is insane. What we are doing doesn’t work. What we did in the past worked, albeit with problems. In the effort to fix the problems, they destroyed the only thing that was working. Now, everyone is unhappy. Men are unhappy. Women are unhappy. Children are unhappy. Families are broken. Trust is broken.
Let’s return to the 1930’s – 1950’s, without the racism and without the overt sexual harrassment, and let men be men again. Just about every segment of society will be better off if we do. Stop male bashing affirmative action. Stop the no-fault divorces, end joint property, end palimony, and restore the role of men in society. End NAFTA and GATT and bring back manufacturing jobs to the US.
Of course, we won’t do any of that. Our society is insane and getting worse. The best hope for this economic meltdown is that it will become a societal “reset” button to our cultural PC that is currently suffering the “blue screen of death”.
Return to the 1930’s-1950″s without racism and without overt sexual harrassment? There you go again, reappraising! If one really wanted to turn back the clock, one would have to end the routine employment of women and birthcontrol. But then we’d be Saudi Arabia, wouldn’t we.
One should end birth control. (The alternative is known as “abstinence”. Natural family planning is about 93% effective (BCP are 98% and condoms 92%) but does require self discipline on the part of two people who love each other enough to discipline themselves.
Women (like minorities) should be able to work if the wish. Women have always worked, even in the 1930s. That is how they got through the Depression, when the men lost their jobs.
Just a question as a point of conversation…are most women happy in the current economic situation where most families require two income earners just to get by? What happened to wages for everyone after women entered the work force en mass in WW II; did they go up or did they go down (in real inflation adjusted dollars) and what would happen to wages if women en mass left the work force to be homemakers? I am all in favor of women working if they choose to, I just ponder things like the impact on wages and unemployment…the impact on families…crime rates…teen pregnancy…literacy…etc. What has been the real cost to society of women leaving the traditional (big paint brush here) role as homemaker and entering the non-traditional roles they now occupy?
Again, this is not criticism or judgement…just conversation to see what others think.