Thesetwo postsover at Overcoming Bias got me thinking recently. He points out that single moms now account for 40% of new births, and posits that this means these women will no longer worry about which men can provide (because if they’re single moms, the men won’t help out either way). Rather, women will favor “sexy men” at the expense of everyone else.
Any thoughts on whether this is the case, and if so whether anything should or could be done about it? I don’t have any data but have two points to make:
Yes, some unmarried moms can still have a live-in male partner who fulfills much of the same function as a dad. However, not all do, so a rise in unmarried motherhood does mean a rise in unassisted motherhood.
As I said, I have no data, but there is this meta-datum: I agree with Robin that society is likely to underestimate the impact on this on men who cannot find wives (or are negatively impacted by the shrinking pool of women interested in marriage), both because women and children are considered more sympathetic than men, and because complaining men look weak and will not be given proportional attention.
So what you’re saying is that in the future I can expect insipid SatC with boys type shows and She’s Just Not That Into You type books and a world where the men all sit around bemoaning the lack of good women and crying over our commitment issues?
Well, let me ask you this. Do men favor “sexy women” at the expense of everyone else? Presumably, men have never cared about how much money women make; they’ve used other characterstics to determine who they want to mate with.
Should it be a scary sign of the times when women are in the same position that men have enjoyed for centuries? I see nothing wrong with essentially holding men to the same standards that women have been held to. “A sexy man” doesn’t just mean being good in the sack. It means someone who is attractive.
I don’t think his argument is just that a man’s sexual attractiveness is now relevant, which is what you seemed to be worked up about. It’s about the claim that monogamy is on the wane, as shown by the 40% statistic. Since some men and women now no longer have long-term contracts to raise children, this frees them both up to seek out additional partners, and this will increase sexual inequality among men. (Why not among women? Because women are currently more tolerant of infidelity than men are, and there is more of a stigma for a woman with multiple partners than for men.)
So his worry is not that sexy men now come out on top, but that coming out on top now means something very different than it used to, now that the one-to-one ratio that monogamy used to press for is now being weakened.
I predict an increase in confused, delinquent boys who were never taught how to be men because their single mothers felt it was more important to sleep around.
Yeah, I’m sure only the most successful, cosmopolitan women are having children out of wedlock in D.C. and Mississippi.
What do you think should be done about this? It seems like evolution at work. An “unsexy man” will always be at a disadantage when it comes to getting sex, and I don’t see how policy can be used to change this.
In this thread, it seems the rise in single-parent moms is being attributed to women’s sexual freedom, and I’m puzzled where this assumption is coming from. It could just as likely be attributed to a growing reluctance to marry by both men and women. Long-term co-habitation is taking the place of marriage for many couples. Women in these relationships are just as monogamous as they’d be if they were married.
I predict an increase in women not settling for a guy just because they got pregnant, thus freeing themselves up to either live happily single or find a *better *guy.
Oh wait, that’s already happened, and that’s what all the pissing and moaning is about.
You write that “a rise in unmarried motherhood does mean a rise in unassisted motherhood.” Why should we believe that to be the case? It seems plausible that the increase is equally due to an increase in the number of stable couples who choose not to marry (or who are not legally allowed to do so), or who have kids before marriage. Indeed, we don’t know what portion of the 40% of mothers are in stable non-marriage relationships, or even what fraction get married to the father or another man after the birth. And of course this all rests on the assumption that the children of unwed mothers, even those not fitting the above categories, receive less male attention in their upbringing. That is a dubious assumption.
I’d say we need to know a lot more about the numbers before pontificating about the social effects on the selection of men.
As for the complaints of men being ignored, surely you can see the way this looks. Unwed motherhood is tied to gender equality, among other factors. As women become more able to economically support themselves, the costs of having a child out of wedlock diminish. Bemoaning the fact that women can now support themselves sounds a bit like the whining of men who can no longer get relationships because of how much money they make. I don’t think those complaining men look weak, but they don’t look good.
Just a point, but your thread title says “unwed” but that’s not always the same as “single”. Just because a mother is unwed does not necessarily mean that she does not have a stable male partner. Is this lack of distinction what is skewing the data?
You sometimes see a similar problem cropping up in Japan where if the spouse is foreign then they don’t appear on the family registry because only Japanese people can be included as a parent in a family registry. So to the government, it often looks like the Japanese spouse is a single parent, and they get sent information about various government assistance they are eligible for as a single parent.
The problem is we have no way of knowing what percentage of women are actually taking advantage of that opportunity. Being a single woman with a child isn’t that big of a deal anymore, but it’s still a barrier against getting into a new relationship. It would be more useful to know what percentage of these unwed mothers are in stable relationships or end up getting married, what percentage are independently successful and play the field, and what percentage get knocked up and have to raise their child alone because the men stay away.
I don’t think that blog has enough information to say that we’re possibly seeing some new sexual paradigm. I suppose it could happen, but who knows.
Because like I said, the only way that this can not mean an increase in unassisted motherhood is if all of the increase is accounted for by stable cohabiting couples. It’s kind of like reading an article saying “Americans driving more miles” and saying “well that’s OK, because the hybrid market is increasing, so how do you know that it’s not just because more people drive hybrids?” No doubt some of the increase is due to that, but you’re claiming that every last new single mom is in such a relationship, which strikes me as a weak hypothesis.
It would be a weak hypothesis to suggest that 100% of the increase is attributable to mothers who have stable relationships. But I think the sexy man theory depends on a significant part of the increase being attributable to single motherhood, and that premise is missing.
And as I said, putting that aside, we’re still assuming that the children of single mothers receive less male attention in their upbringing. Perhaps the mothers most likely to not marry the father and end the relationship with him altogether are the same mothers who basically would have raised the child without the father regardless of marriage.
I don’t disagree with any of that. But your first post had a definite tone of “irresponsible women” and “any man is better than no man”, and I profoundly disagree with both of those theories.
Personally, I think the idea that women aren’t shackling themselves to men just on the basis of economic stability is a good thing. Why wouldn’t it be? I thought gold-diggers were looked down upon. If men aren’t sticking around to be good daddies when a baby comes along, I agree that that’s bad. But it is curious to me why that must be seen as the woman’s fault.
While I’m here, let’s replay MOIDALIZE first sentence of insight in this thread.
It’s sad to me that in the year 2009, we still haven’t figured out that fatherless children are a man’s problem as much, if not more, than a woman’s problem. Women are admonished to close their legs and be responsible with sex, but who is doing that for men? Even the OP is complaining that women exercising their choice to be with whom that want translates into less sex for some men, as if that’s a given that this is a Bad and Unfair Thing. Give me a break.
Perhaps this is the solution to the dilemma: let’s start telling boys to do what we used to (and still do) tell girls. Don’t put out unless she promises to marry you. Don’t degrade yourself by having sex with women who only want what’s in your pants. Stop sleeping around and you’re more likely to find someone who loves you for you.
There is a school of thought that says that no standard is better than any other, and so society has no business caring how men and women select their mates. I disagree with this - if only because both men and women are highly incentivized to do whatever the other sex finds attractive - but you are going to be criticized by the sexual laissez-faire types for this statement.
Nevertheless, as I said, Robin’s argument is mainly concerned with the rise of soft polygamy, not the change in female criteria. I would be almost as concerned if it was the super-rich, rather than the rakes, that had large numbers of uncommitted sexual partners.
EDIT: you with the face, the absence of fathers is a topic for another thread, but suffice it to say that your view is narrow-minded. There are plenty of other causes of this problem, such as the perverse incentives of welfare, and many of these causes were advocated for by feminists, not male playa’s.
