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This story, Proving Daniel Amneus Right, really saddens me and angers me! I as a black male cannot seem to stand the way the mother mistreats the father in this situation...the reason why there's not any strong black families is because the society that we live in doesn't teach males how to be parents, but how to be responsible workhorses instead!
This whole thing about only the male's behavior being looked at[e.g., infidelity, domestic violence, drugs etc.] is pretty biased only out to demonize the male and keep him from being the father and or the loving male that he wants to be, not what the mother wants him to be. In the article, it does not state anything about the mother's misbehavior. In most situations, the mother does not give the father the chance to change; it always has to be 'one strike and you're out'!
My advice to the males [blacks especially] reading this: Please, don't let any mother, wife, or sister dictate, control, or annihilate your fatherhood!
Regards,
Emmanuel Matteer
Emanslave@aol.com
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by Anonymous User on Sunday February 25, @10:28PM EST (#2)
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The article did have an undertone of being anti-male and of course the interviewees¡¯ comments came off that way. I was somewhat offended by the title of the piece ¡°Few Good Men¡± and the underlying assumption that it was the poor men who were so horribly at fault for being poor marriage material.
Overall, though, I didn¡¯t think it was so horribly anti-male so much as it was interesting. There are unattractive, irresponsible males out there just as there are irresponsible, bad women. The kinds of males available to these women who have little romantic market value just mirror the women themselves, only their irresponsibility manifests itself differently. Whereas the boyfriend took the money the mother gave him for Pampers and spent it on booze, these women squandered their lives away by having children they could not afford.
The author raised the issue of why these women had kids in the first place but didn¡¯t deal with it at all in the piece. The irony of all of these women¡¯s complaints against the men is that they need to look in the mirror. They were all completely irresponsible for having children they could not afford while unmarried and especially while unskilled and uneducated¡ªwhile they were not economically self-sufficient. Once there was a pregnancy, the fathers had no real choice in the matter, but the mothers could have sought out an abortion. (I don¡¯t think adoption is as responsible of an option since there are thousands of kids already waiting to be adopted, especially minority children.) On the surface, these women are thus 100% responsible for their predicament. I have almost no sympathy for them.
What I found entertaining was that these women were blaming the men in their lives for being irresponsible when they were too thickheaded to look in the mirror and realize that they themselves were far from being paragons of responsibility. Also entertaining was that they wanted men with steady jobs, some with college degrees. Surprise! Why do any of these women think they have enough romantic market value to attract these kinds of men when they themselves don¡¯t have steady jobs or college degrees? Also, by having someone else¡¯s children, these women, in fact, chased away the kinds of men they claim they are looking for¡ªthey are completely undesirable to the kinds of men they are seeking! Their actual romantic market value is reflected in the kinds of men that are interested in them.
The research did a great job of validating the age-old stereotype that women are very concerned about a man¡¯s income and regard that as a huge criterion for attractiveness. Even amongst middle to upper middle class self sufficient women without children, this is a big issue.
(I¡¯d like to see as in depth a story about how well educated professional women have a hard time finding appropriate men. I laugh my ass off when I read or hear reports about it. There are tons of decent, fairly intelligent college-educated men out there, but few who meet these women¡¯s income and education standards. I presume that many of the professional men who do meet those standards are probably so used to dating down (having had a rough time sexually attracting women in high school and as undergrads) that they are quite satisfied with women who have mere bachelor¡¯s degrees and have thus removed themselves from the market for these professional women. Arguably, education and income status isn¡¯t as important to men in general, either.
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by Anonymous User on Sunday February 25, @10:54PM EST (#3)
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Hey guys, be certain you follow up the study by reading the books,it'll open your eyes like never before.Since the main reason I posted that study is that it proves amneus' writings were spot on.
Adam
PS Emmanuel, you more than most should read the books asap.
Thanks guys!
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I haven't been able to get to The Garbage Generation since the story was posted yesterday - it looks like their site is down. Does anyone know if a mirror site is up?
Scott
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by Anonymous User on Monday February 26, @09:40AM EST (#5)
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Damn,I'll have a look around.
Adam
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I did find this article hateful. Not violently, vehemently hateful, but casually, dismissively hateful. The authors use a word here, an expression there, and judicious editing to display their utter contempt for men. Or, if you wish, despite their best efforts to hide their utter contempt for men it managed to leak through anyway.
The women that were interviewed for the most part hated men, which probably didn't help the researchers' impartiality any. The picture that emerged, despite the researchers' caveats to the contrary, was one of cold, calculating, mercernary woman. Even as the paper painted men as shiftless, untrustworthy, occasionally violent, and useless, it also painted the women as having keen mental calculators, keeping track of the relative worth of their men and whether they were assets or liabilities. This despite the researchers' tripping all over themselves to assure us that it wasn't true.
This is where the unintentional humour crept in. The show starts with a caveat: "Mothers aren't completely cold and calculating when they weigh the costs and benefits of keeping a man around." It then goes on to detail, time after time, exactly the opposite.
"No low-income single mother we have spoken to has allowed a nonpaying male partner to sponge off her welfare or paycheck for any substantial length of time simply because neither welfare nor low-wage employment pay enough to make this an affordable option." Note the use of the word "sponge" here... that was the researcher talking, not an interviewee. Get the feeling there's a little bit of bias here?
"Deferring or avoiding marriage allows mothers to substitute an economically productive male for an unproductive one, should the need arise." Not cold and calculating? Hey look, folks! Men are replaceable parts! Yours wears out? Just toss him in the trash and go look for a shiny new one!
"Indeed, marriage often had a kind of sacred significance in the communities we studied, a marker of respectability. However, marriage signals respectability for low-skilled mothers only if accompanied by financial stability and some measure of upward mobility. As one young African-American mother declared, "I'm not marrying nobody until they can move me into my own apartment or my own house." Marriage to an economically unproductive or erratically employed man, on the other hand, makes the mother a "fool" in the eyes of her friends and neighbors." OK, so they're not just after money. How comforting. Oh, but wait: he has to supply a house or an apartment. I guess it is just about money after all.
"I want a big wedding. I want to be set—out of school, have a career, and then go from there. . . . Yeah, my friends that have children, my one girlfriend, she's engaged, but they're not getting married . . . until they have some money put aside. My other girlfriend, she wants to get a house first and be ready with that and then decide." Don't expect much, do they? Earlier in the article, the author pointed out that all these women wanted were good men who were employed, attentive to their families, non-violent, and responsible. Now, later in the article, he has to supply an apartment, a big wedding, and some status.
"A young man who may have been completely acceptable six months prior [to the baby arriving] is suddenly viewed as "no good" by his girlfriend, even when his behavior may not have changed in any way." So her needs change with the situation—fair enough, but rather than thinking about this beforehand, she simply expects him to increase production (of money) to suit the new situation. Charming.
The article ends with a transparent attempt to discount Amneus' theories: "I also find virtually no support for the welfare disincentives argument, since very few mothers say that they have avoided marriage or remarriage to maintain eligibility for welfare, even when asked directly." This is an old researchers' trick: interpret your opponent's theory in the narrowest possible sense, then disprove it. In other words, don't bother digging below the surface. If your theory isn't proven by surface appearences then dig deeper; if your opponent's theory is disproven by surface appearences then stop there.
At the end, I don't think that these women are particularly evil. They are poor, and they don't have much money to support themselves and their children. Supporting an entire family complete with husband is impractical, and more than anything else these women are coldly practical. They treat men as disposable objects, as means to attain comfort and status. If you think about it in light of this article, men have really been the romantics over time. Men have worked hard to support children and women, whereas when the going gets tough these women look around to see who is expendable. The joke comes in as the researchers bend over backward to convince us that their subjects are still nice, romantic girls under the tough exterior. It didn't work. I didn't blame these women for their approach to men, but then neither do I romanticize them.
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