I tend to see many fraught social and policy issues somewhat differently than nearly all of my friends, because I am, virtually alone among them, the son of a single mother and I grew up with mostly just sad and somewhat traumatic memories of my dad, whom I never saw past age ten when he made a half-hearted kidnapping attempt of my siste…
I tend to see many fraught social and policy issues somewhat differently than nearly all of my friends, because I am, virtually alone among them, the son of a single mother and I grew up with mostly just sad and somewhat traumatic memories of my dad, whom I never saw past age ten when he made a half-hearted kidnapping attempt of my sister and me, in the midst of a custody battle he was not prepared or qualified to actually win, but which he (understandably) couldn’t let go.
Because my mother prioritized us going to a good school district, we both had much less than nearly every other family there, and we had exposure to plenty of kids who were almost incapable of causing serious trouble and were being prepared to apply to top colleges. This was 30-40 years ago, so college prep wasn’t quite the cutthroat mania it is now. But I truly didn’t know any other kids who didn’t have a dad. I didn’t even know of more than a couple kids whose parents had divorced but it was barely noticeable (each parent having somehow seamlessly found a more suitable spouse and quickly restored a functioning and financially comfortable two-parent unit).
My point is, my mom was a great if of course imperfect single mom. She could have hardly loved us or cared about us more. She put us ahead of any later-life career ambitions let alone dating, which having been so burned once, clearly scared her. But expecting her to play two complementary parental roles while eventually also working full time, was not fair or reasonable. So we got the “mom” role. And basically nothing of the dad role.
She was a truly good-hearted, take-people-as-they-come, empathetic liberal. But she was also clearly personally demoralized and defeated. She didn’t have a good grasp of the role of agency and incentives in her own life and didn’t know how to teach it to us. We had no other family other than her very elderly parents and she had few friends. But was surrounded by comfortable to affluent two-parent families showing off where they vacationed and their idealized family lives. So I also saw a lot of the personal misery, bitterness, self-pity, and resignation. It took me a really long time to realize in my own life - and see clearly in policymaking - that endless handouts (however paltry) detached from any goals or requirements often didn’t do the recipient any favors. After an upbringing that’d already been chaotic and unstable and full of real trauma (though of a degree less-awful than experienced by many) it was especially important we be taught to see the relationship between consistent effort - perseverance - and results. That even if it wasn’t 1:1 and foolproof, the positive results bore out over time. We were instead afraid of an unpredictable world in which basics we’d counted on as little kids could go badly wrong or disappear. We didn’t know how to invest in ourselves in an often capricious world.
All of the people I know who came from those stable, at worst comfortable two-parent families and upbringings like theirs?
I can’t say a word about the value of having two parents or come close to suggesting that 70% of kids being born to single moms is really not helping. Not without being accused of victim-blaming, with the particular implication I am piling on already historically abused and still currently oppressed and marginalized black moms trying to do their best. It doesn’t matter that I’m referring to Appalachian single moms and families, too (a region in which two of my grandparents grew up as the kids of sharecroppers and ended their schooling with third and fourth grade educations) and to the burdens and challenges of single parenting, in general, especially in environments in which there are few role models and few stable and relatable two-parent partnerships. These friends quickly begin to get angry. It really is as if low-income, single-parent black families (never mind the rest) are to them a class of sacred victims. To even suggest different priorities and choices are possible and worth aspiring to, at the individual, family, and community levels is add intolerably cruel (and clueless!) insult to injury. Everything these families and communities are doing is (as long as they are black) the best they could possibly be doing and to expect otherwise is not only mean but something approaching a Republican talking point. I’m using “dog whistles” and trafficking in cruel and politically cynical GOP tropes which rely on stereotyping and rhetorically bludgeoning - even today - world history’s greatest victims.
What’s the solution? Probably, to them, something like Build Back Better, on steroids, just as a start. Throw money at it.
We’re all Democrats, btw. These friends (and I’ve lost some in large part due to not going along with all the expected lines about Republicans and racism being to blame for every last individual or community malady) basically act like implementing the entirety of the DNC platform at once is the best solution we can hope for. They indulge in a bizarre anachronistic navel-gazing about the evils of slavery as the somehow never sufficiently acknowledged problem of American life, as if it were the dominant current social question.
I’ve tried saying things like: do you think I believe that everyone can and must stay married? Do you think I blame my mom? No, I’m saying from firsthand experience that growing up without a dad isn’t easy for anyone. Parenting alone isn’t easy for anyone. Whatever we can do to value and encourage stable family formation so that kids have that balance, that yin and yang of compassion and discipline, is simply a way of valuing and respecting all of our fellow citizens enough to say: what’s good for us is good for all of us. Of course I think same sex couples count, too. The quality of the people and their character matters far more than whether each parent models some antiquated very gendered Ozzie and Harriett role. But if teaching incentives and personal responsibility, and the value of delaying gratification to plan and reach more meaningful, long-term goals is good for middle class suburban families, Asian, Latino, black, white, why can’t it be good for kids growing up in depressed rural or urban areas, whatever their race? Do the latter kids need some additional resources and support? Quite likely, yes. But it has to be effective, community-based resources and support that helps teach and reward good habits. I suppose a more positive tack is to introduce friends with this mindset to the work Robert Woodson has been doing.
Personally, I feel fortunate my own mother’s priorities and sacrifices led me a physically safe school district (the humiliations of occasional bullying aside) and one where my classmates were prepared and motivated and mostly excited to learn. It hurt feeling so much less than. Having financial worries and struggles others didn’t have. It hurt having no idea what to say when kids and adults asked me what my dad did. I was angry and confused enough. If I’d been exposed to a different neighborhood and peer group and hadn’t had a positive role model or outlet to help direct me, I could’ve gotten in serious trouble. So I get the impulse not to pile on people in hard circumstances. But what actually works? What actually helps? If we aren’t focused on that, we’re reduced to a sincere but useless sympathy which at its worst excuses or even panders to behavior and attitudes we know are destructive. Those aren’t attitudes these friends would ever inculcate in their kids. It’s not victim-blaming to want clearly more disadvantaged kids to be able to benefit from good models and habits, too.
Well said. There's some important parallels here to my own experience. There's an article I want to write about growing up and escaping an impoverished and potentially violent lifestyle. The idea is to stay positive, sincere and thoughtful, rather than blame middle class liberals of being out of touch. Easier said than done.
Really enjoyed this. What actually helps and what is merely window dressing?
What are the actual problems and what are the long term solutions?
One can have vast sympathy and understanding about chaotic home lives but in terms of education, the basics such as literacy and numeracy give the most solid foundation and the best chance to stop the cycle of poverty and allow people to reach their full potential. The UN is very clear that human rights are underpinned by literacy. There is a literacy crisis in the US in a way that there is not in other G20 countries.
I tend to see many fraught social and policy issues somewhat differently than nearly all of my friends, because I am, virtually alone among them, the son of a single mother and I grew up with mostly just sad and somewhat traumatic memories of my dad, whom I never saw past age ten when he made a half-hearted kidnapping attempt of my sister and me, in the midst of a custody battle he was not prepared or qualified to actually win, but which he (understandably) couldn’t let go.
Because my mother prioritized us going to a good school district, we both had much less than nearly every other family there, and we had exposure to plenty of kids who were almost incapable of causing serious trouble and were being prepared to apply to top colleges. This was 30-40 years ago, so college prep wasn’t quite the cutthroat mania it is now. But I truly didn’t know any other kids who didn’t have a dad. I didn’t even know of more than a couple kids whose parents had divorced but it was barely noticeable (each parent having somehow seamlessly found a more suitable spouse and quickly restored a functioning and financially comfortable two-parent unit).
My point is, my mom was a great if of course imperfect single mom. She could have hardly loved us or cared about us more. She put us ahead of any later-life career ambitions let alone dating, which having been so burned once, clearly scared her. But expecting her to play two complementary parental roles while eventually also working full time, was not fair or reasonable. So we got the “mom” role. And basically nothing of the dad role.
She was a truly good-hearted, take-people-as-they-come, empathetic liberal. But she was also clearly personally demoralized and defeated. She didn’t have a good grasp of the role of agency and incentives in her own life and didn’t know how to teach it to us. We had no other family other than her very elderly parents and she had few friends. But was surrounded by comfortable to affluent two-parent families showing off where they vacationed and their idealized family lives. So I also saw a lot of the personal misery, bitterness, self-pity, and resignation. It took me a really long time to realize in my own life - and see clearly in policymaking - that endless handouts (however paltry) detached from any goals or requirements often didn’t do the recipient any favors. After an upbringing that’d already been chaotic and unstable and full of real trauma (though of a degree less-awful than experienced by many) it was especially important we be taught to see the relationship between consistent effort - perseverance - and results. That even if it wasn’t 1:1 and foolproof, the positive results bore out over time. We were instead afraid of an unpredictable world in which basics we’d counted on as little kids could go badly wrong or disappear. We didn’t know how to invest in ourselves in an often capricious world.
All of the people I know who came from those stable, at worst comfortable two-parent families and upbringings like theirs?
I can’t say a word about the value of having two parents or come close to suggesting that 70% of kids being born to single moms is really not helping. Not without being accused of victim-blaming, with the particular implication I am piling on already historically abused and still currently oppressed and marginalized black moms trying to do their best. It doesn’t matter that I’m referring to Appalachian single moms and families, too (a region in which two of my grandparents grew up as the kids of sharecroppers and ended their schooling with third and fourth grade educations) and to the burdens and challenges of single parenting, in general, especially in environments in which there are few role models and few stable and relatable two-parent partnerships. These friends quickly begin to get angry. It really is as if low-income, single-parent black families (never mind the rest) are to them a class of sacred victims. To even suggest different priorities and choices are possible and worth aspiring to, at the individual, family, and community levels is add intolerably cruel (and clueless!) insult to injury. Everything these families and communities are doing is (as long as they are black) the best they could possibly be doing and to expect otherwise is not only mean but something approaching a Republican talking point. I’m using “dog whistles” and trafficking in cruel and politically cynical GOP tropes which rely on stereotyping and rhetorically bludgeoning - even today - world history’s greatest victims.
What’s the solution? Probably, to them, something like Build Back Better, on steroids, just as a start. Throw money at it.
We’re all Democrats, btw. These friends (and I’ve lost some in large part due to not going along with all the expected lines about Republicans and racism being to blame for every last individual or community malady) basically act like implementing the entirety of the DNC platform at once is the best solution we can hope for. They indulge in a bizarre anachronistic navel-gazing about the evils of slavery as the somehow never sufficiently acknowledged problem of American life, as if it were the dominant current social question.
I’ve tried saying things like: do you think I believe that everyone can and must stay married? Do you think I blame my mom? No, I’m saying from firsthand experience that growing up without a dad isn’t easy for anyone. Parenting alone isn’t easy for anyone. Whatever we can do to value and encourage stable family formation so that kids have that balance, that yin and yang of compassion and discipline, is simply a way of valuing and respecting all of our fellow citizens enough to say: what’s good for us is good for all of us. Of course I think same sex couples count, too. The quality of the people and their character matters far more than whether each parent models some antiquated very gendered Ozzie and Harriett role. But if teaching incentives and personal responsibility, and the value of delaying gratification to plan and reach more meaningful, long-term goals is good for middle class suburban families, Asian, Latino, black, white, why can’t it be good for kids growing up in depressed rural or urban areas, whatever their race? Do the latter kids need some additional resources and support? Quite likely, yes. But it has to be effective, community-based resources and support that helps teach and reward good habits. I suppose a more positive tack is to introduce friends with this mindset to the work Robert Woodson has been doing.
Personally, I feel fortunate my own mother’s priorities and sacrifices led me a physically safe school district (the humiliations of occasional bullying aside) and one where my classmates were prepared and motivated and mostly excited to learn. It hurt feeling so much less than. Having financial worries and struggles others didn’t have. It hurt having no idea what to say when kids and adults asked me what my dad did. I was angry and confused enough. If I’d been exposed to a different neighborhood and peer group and hadn’t had a positive role model or outlet to help direct me, I could’ve gotten in serious trouble. So I get the impulse not to pile on people in hard circumstances. But what actually works? What actually helps? If we aren’t focused on that, we’re reduced to a sincere but useless sympathy which at its worst excuses or even panders to behavior and attitudes we know are destructive. Those aren’t attitudes these friends would ever inculcate in their kids. It’s not victim-blaming to want clearly more disadvantaged kids to be able to benefit from good models and habits, too.
Well said. There's some important parallels here to my own experience. There's an article I want to write about growing up and escaping an impoverished and potentially violent lifestyle. The idea is to stay positive, sincere and thoughtful, rather than blame middle class liberals of being out of touch. Easier said than done.
Beautifully put. Thank you for this. I hope everyone here takes the time to read this. Twice.
Really enjoyed this. What actually helps and what is merely window dressing?
What are the actual problems and what are the long term solutions?
One can have vast sympathy and understanding about chaotic home lives but in terms of education, the basics such as literacy and numeracy give the most solid foundation and the best chance to stop the cycle of poverty and allow people to reach their full potential. The UN is very clear that human rights are underpinned by literacy. There is a literacy crisis in the US in a way that there is not in other G20 countries.
Robert Woodson is doing so much good work.
Thank You. *Very* good thinking and writing.