Youth participation in soccer continues to decline, despite the best efforts of the cultural elite to promote it.
Over the past three years, the percentage of 6- to 12-year-olds playing soccer regularly has dropped nearly 14 percent, to 2.3 million players, according to a study by the Sports & Fitness Industry Association, which has analyzed youth athletic trends for 40 years. The number of children who touched a soccer ball even once during the year, in organized play or otherwise, also has fallen significantly.
In general, participation in youth sports nationwide has declined in the past decade, as children gravitate to electronic diversions and other distractions.
Yet in recent years, while soccer continued declining, baseball and basketball experienced upticks, buoyed by developmental programs begun by Major League Baseball and the National Basketball Association.
This not a surprise. Soccer never had strong appeal in America. Youth soccer leagues were suburban safe spaces for white kids. No one says it that way, but that is the reality of youth soccer in America. As a result, the soccer infrastructure is tied to the white suburbs, which means it requires lots of parents volunteering to make it work and lots of cash to hold it all together. Maintaining a segregated anything in modern America is expensive and complicated.
In fairness, all sports have seen a decline in youth participation. People like to blame video games and social media, but those are symptoms. Youth sports require a high degree of parental support and involvement. They also require infrastructure. That local ball field exists because the city, town or county makes it a priority. That happens when you have a society of strong families adhering to traditional roles. Get rid of the strong families and community, and the leagues go away too.
Most people struggle to understand long term trends, so it is not surprising that it is easy to peddle the idea that video games are the cause of this. Parents today see the decline and just assume it is a new thing. The fact is kids vegetating in front of a video screen is just another symptom of the same main cause. When most kids grew up in normal homes, there was a more organic structure to their lives, so they were less likely to indulge in whatever strikes the fancy of a child.
It is the hidden cost of putting women to work. Those mothers and grandmothers, staying home to raise their kids, provided an infrastructure to life. In stable, healthy societies, women maintain the social life of the community. When women are working ten hours a day at an office, that social work does not get done, so something else fills the void left by those working women. That has been the sewage of popular culture, along with state- provided stand-ins for the parents.
Traditional sex roles also work as a bulwark against mischief. Fifty years ago, even public schools in poor areas could expect plenty of mothers volunteering to help with various school projects. They would also be the main labor pool at the church and other voluntary community organizations. It is hard to corrupt these organizations when mothers and grandmothers, people with skin in the game, are there to make sure those organizations serve their interests.
The fact is, if you were looking to exterminate a people, by that I mean destroy their culture and identity, the first thing you would do is put the women to work. It is not an accident that invaders who kill off the men and marry the women almost always adapt to the culture they conquered. The culture of a people is their women. Men have a role, but primarily as the guardians of the engine of their culture. Women are the ovens that bake the bread. Take away the oven and there can be no bread.
By ripping women out of their homes and putting them to work like field slaves, modernity has destroyed the natural framework of society. The state has tried to fill the void, which is why per capita, inflation adjusted government spending has quadrupled as women moved from the home to the workplace. All that government supervision of children and maintenance of synthetic community organizations comes with a direct cost, which shows up in paychecks and the cost of goods.
On a more note. What the modern age has been is an elaborate strip-mining operation, where the social capital is monetized and carried away. Another example is what we see with Amazon destroying retail. The price of cheap stuff delivered to your office is the harvesting of the social value of local business. Instead of Johnny’s Appliance Warehouse sponsoring your kid’s baseball team, it is a government run program paid for by your property taxes.
Again, if the point is to kill a people, the first step is to put their women to work, turning them into economic units, like farm animals. From there, it is easy to strip out the rest of the social capital that maintains the culture. Before long you have a collection of people with no identity of their own, wholly dependent upon their masters. That is where we are headed as a society. It is also why fertility rates are falling in the West. Why would anyone bring a child into a life of pointless work and consumption?
You’ve never had kids of your own, I take it? Public schools are the number one source of leftist poz in the world today. The teachers are pooch screwing union slobs for the most part, many of whom are single women and elderly cat ladies. Years ago I made the mistake of going to a PTA meeting. I was the only guy there, the rest were women. The meeting was dominated by three cunned stunts that insisted that the school and public educators re-invent and reform themselves, from the ground up – solely for the benefit of their own children.… Read more »
Homeschooling is about to become a much larger option but obviously sacrifices will have to be made buy parents for that to happen . We cannot keep sending our children to these day prisons and expect them to learn anything
Sacrifices indeed. The material sacrifices required to be a more resilient family and community member have never been so trivial. Work less, contribute more, rise in your community. The communal is the political and begins at the personal.
The problem you so clearly detailed – is why I want to take “conservatives” who loudly object to cutting back the tax dollars that flow up to local, state and Federal government – and kick them right in the balls – again and again and again. I know multiple people who would self describe themselves as “conservative” who see no problem sending their kids off to the shit shows that are public schools – even though they recognize how bad they are, they insist that their kids won’t be affected. Then sometime in the child’s life – used to happen… Read more »
This is the same type of “conservative” that patronizes Disney and Starbucks. These people just want a liberalism that provides the cheap grace to their white guilt, but get “shocked, shocked” when leftists demand the tax hikes and their child is AA’d out of the state flagship. Suburbia is full of these people. Rural people have their own problems, as they love Wokemart.
@calsdad
It’s like beating your head against a brick wall though trying to get them to see the light… People these days have a hard time using their brain…
Public schools are child abuse. Period. End of story. Anyone sending kids to them clearly doesn’t care.
I recall, way back in the ’80s, there would be a news item every year about the economic value of a housewife. They’d break down laundry:$, child care: $$, housekeeping:$$, etc.
The point was always something like: “See how economically valuable the woman in the home is?” But now I see the whole thing as an outrage: imagine justifying the structure of the culture through accounting. Just one more step in the massive project of commoditizing absolutely every goddamn thing in our lives.
It’s the assumptions that get ya. They’re sneaky.
Exactly. The game our rulers play is to win the fight over the moral framing. Once the value of women was reduced to accounting, the game was over.
Old Cherokee saying: A people aren’t finish until their women’s hearts are on the ground.
In other words, we’re toast.
Those articles never mentioned the “economic value” of the husbands extraneous functions, yard work, auto maintenance and repair, financial planning, home maintenance, etc.
I keep giving my wife invoices for services rendered and all I get back is her inflated ones. I guess we will have to call it evern.
This goes all the way back to Engels: The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State. It’s Feminism’s ur-text. Engels says that Private Property and the State can only exist thanks to the bourgeois family, which can only exist thanks to the exploitation of the wife’s unpaid labor. It was published in 1884.
“On a more esoteric note, what the modern age has been is an elaborate strip mining operation, where the hidden capital is monetized and carried away.” One of the key draws for baseball, basketball, and football has always been the idea that kids could grow up and be a pro ball player. Or, emulate their heroes from the sports world. MLS never acquired that cache in this country, and it most likely never will. Even Hispanics in this country are more likely to be household names if they play baseball. But I think some of the issues in youth sports… Read more »
Pick-up games, in whatever sport, have an added benefit – teaching self-organization and mutual cooperation. My experience was similar to yours; you’d round up kids from around the town, of various quantity and age and ability, and if you really wanted to play, you had to cook up a host of ground rules fast to make the thing work, because it couldn’t unless everyone was having fun. Beat-up equipment, weird baselines and weirder bases (pieces of firewood, rings from a ‘jarts’ set, and the like); somehow you made it work – because you wanted to play, which we frequently did… Read more »
This is EXACTLY my experience. There was always a game going on you could join, you played until it got too dark to see or you got called home for dinner. We never had enough players so we made good use of the Invisible Runner. We negotiated the rules, haggled and enforced them, all without adults or uniforms. We learned how to solve problems and disputes. Now kids wait for the adults to organize and adjudicate. No wonder these whiners get to college and can’t cope, they’ve never had to.
“Ghost runner on third!”
Right field is out.
If the ball goes down the storm drain it’s a forfeit.
Ball hit over the shed is an OUT.
re: “Ghost runner on third!” That’s the kind of thing that reminds me that we don’t live in the same country as the one we grew up in.
It couldn’t last, that old weird America. Regression to the mean was delayed by our sheer dynamism and the vastness of the empty spaces. Feeling blue I re-read Thomas Wolfe’s ‘Of Time and the River’ a few months ago just to re-live the joy of being an American, a participant in a strange and empty land, but with a ‘library card’, if you see what I mean. Well, the emptiness won’t last; our enemies plan to pack 2-3 billion in here. Of course ‘global warming’ will have been long dropped as a concern by ‘those who care.’ Their gated compounds… Read more »
Who’s on First;)
In fairness to adults – some of my best friends are adults – they aren’t in league against the joy of childhood, they’re just over-pressured to replace normal affection with what our enemies designated years ago as “quality time”. If a kid’s moods and energy don’t coincide with the ‘quality time’ allotment, then out come the ADHD drugs, the therapists, and counselors, with written evaluations to follow you the rest of your life. From earliest antiquity to about 1995, it was understood that a normal 11-year-old boy is bored by schooling. Then it was revealed by the latest in science… Read more »
“designed by adults, for adults” – exactly. Brilliant observation!
If little johnny gets injured at the local park nowadays there are 20 lawyers talking the parents into suing everyone. Hence youth sports must be in organized leagues to lessen liabilities. Lawyers ruin everything they touch.
Great point. The modern parent can’t just let Johnny (or should we say, Devon, etc.) go off and have fun with his friends; that would – should Johnny/Devon hurt his foot or get a lump on his head – mean criminal negligence on the part of his parents, and quite possibly their professional, financial and social ruin. Z-man, a mystery man, has left footprints suggesting he’s a lawyer. Well, good for him – he makes more dough than many of us dirt people who hang out at his blog. The real question is not whether we should line up lawyers… Read more »
One lawyer in village – poor man. Two lawyers in same village – both rich.
Friend of friend has an 11 year old daughter who is “on track” to become a world-class swimmer (or is told so).
Since the girl is considered small for her age, she has been placed on a Human Growth Hormone regimen to optimize her height. Somehow, I wonder just who got this ball got rolling…. Gives me the creeps.
We endured two seasons of listening to the parents of my daughter’s best friend remind everybody that their child was ranked “third in the state” in cross country. My wife used to joke, “Wait till she gets her period and puts on 30 lbs.” My daughter and the other girl are no longer friends. We were at a track meet last spring. The girl, now three years older, had indeed gained 20-30 lbs and was visibly very slow. She tried to hand fight another runner trying to pass her. She lunged right trying to knock the other kid down, but… Read more »
I was just reading all the replies and recollecting on growing up on a street in S.E. PA in the 60s with tons of kids from big families, like 10 or 12 kids, and all the self organized baseball, football and variations on cops and robbers or capture the flag games we played. Lots of times the ages ranged from 6 through 18, boys and girls together, and we negotiated specific rules to minimize injury or level the field a bit. We learned how to deal with, and fear, the teens, when we were little guys. Maybe this is why… Read more »
My kids still are able to do those things but I know that’s not the reality for a lot of kids and it is a shame…
My Mom stopped working when she had kids and my Dad’s career was just getting off the ground when I was born. That meant was my parents had to be disciplined and careful with their money. We rarely ate out, I was probably 7 or 8 before my mother had her own car. Vacations usually meant visiting family.
I don’t see many young people with that kind of frugality and patience any more.
It’s not so much the impact on children that is the problem. It is the impact on community. The women socializing during the day, while their kids are at school or out playing, creates the conditions for social organization. Husband X comes home to learn they are playing cards with Family Y, because his wife became friends with Wife Y. Now you have two families glued together because of the wives. That social glue has value that cannot be replaced with the state.
I remember this so well back in about ’69 when I was starting Kindergarten and before. That was before Mom had given into the temptation to go work, and most of the Moms didn’t. There were Bridge groups and neighborhood get-togethers. All the Moms knew each other so all the families did. It was something out of freaking Father Knows Best and it was better. “The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.” — L. P. Hartley
This is something I try to explain to kids who have no historical perspective: I grew up in a different world, and it worked. Not only did it function just fine without computers and cellphones and the Consumer Product Safety Commission, it was in many ways better than today. The idea that the past could be better in any way at all blows their tiny unformed minds.
It is a common conceit of the historically uninformed that the present is always preferable and better in comparison to the past.
That social glue has value that cannot be replaced with the state.
Which is why they are working so hard to destroy it…They want a low trust society so there is no unity against their evil…They want it where you can’t trust your neighbor and everyone turns in everyone else to the state so they can get a pat on their head…
Had never thought of the problem that succinctly and in that way. Excellent imagery. I do think you hit on the heart of the matter with this notion of social glue and its development.
Women socializing, yes! I remember in the 60s mothers chatting over the backyard fences while hanging laundry. Every mother knew every child and looked after them in an unvoiced agreement. If Mrs. P from two or three houses away caught you doing something you weren’t supposed to do and admonished you it felt exactly like your own mother had caught you.
Nowadays a mom from three houses away may get told to mind their own business, if not told to **** off.
“…you it felt exactly like your own mother had caught you.”
Even worse: you knew your mother was going to find out, and you’d catch it again. And then dad would come home…
Exactly my experience. Any adult present had absolute authority to correct bad behavior. “What would your mother say if she knew you were doing that?” I knew if I screwed up, some adult would call my home and Mom would be thanking her for calling right about the time I was walking in the door. The most screwed-up kids were the ones whose parents bitched back with “nobody disciplines my kid but me” crap. What that really meant was that they didn’t discipline their kids and they felt stupid when others felt the need to so.
Let’s not forget, when a couple states that the woman has to work nowadays to make ends meet, what this really means is that the woman chooses to work so that the couple and their children can maintain a certain, elevated lifestyle. There are innumerable married couples with children in this country who are living a fruitful life with the mother staying home to care for the children. These couples just don’t have 2 new vehicles, or vacation every year in Disneyland, or eat out every Friday night, or buy the latest DVD’s for their children, etc. They pinch every… Read more »
That’s not true at all for certain income levels. The dentist’s spouse may not have to work, but plenty of other wage-slaves’ spouses do.
I would bet you more dentist’s spouses work than a much lower status profession like mechanic or HVAC dude. It’s not about money. It’s about almost a pathological need for status. Women judge other women as dimwits and handmadiens if they aren’t out there working.
I think some of the younger women are waking up to the fact that the working life is not all it’s cracked up to be and where we were taught to make fun of housewives in the past, I think we’re coming into a more sensible time of women preferring to stay home and raise kids, that is, 1) if there’s a father in the picture who’d support his family and 2) if they can swing it financially. I hope one day soon the majority of women view stay-at-home wives/mothers with envy and admiration, a privileged and important status worthy… Read more »
Also young people (HS) should be encouraged to consider jobs that pay well and allow flexible hours (nursing and dental hygienist come to mind as examples) so that parents don’t have to turn their kids over to the day-care establishment.
In many parts of the country, you need to make a certain income to avoid you and your children being exposed to vibrancy. Sad but true. And the retort “move to the sticks” ignores the fact that many of our friends and families live in Pozland, and they’re unwilling to move to a rural area.
My wife stays at home with the kids, btw
Yes, our fully monetized society is *not* family friendly. Especially with wages being as low as they are. Our standard of living has dropped a lot in the U.S. The young do not know what they’re missing. (Although they know how everything costs money they don’t have, and socialism is sounding better than living a life working low-paying jobs that barely supports one, nevermind a family. No savings, no retirement, just work for peanuts till you drop dead. The Latin American model.)
At a certain income level (certainly dentists) there’s the possibility for hiring “help” as well as flexible scheduling that allows both spouses time to pursue their careers. The clock-punchers don’t have that. Don’t get me wrong. If you can afford it staying home with tiny ones is best for them. I just don’t think pay-check-to-paycheck people should be demonized for not having the luxury of choices rich people enjoy.
There are studies now that provide strong support for the ideas in this post. One is on day care centers in Bologna, Italy; the study shows that replacing mothers with employees of a public (high quality) day care centers lowers the IQ of children. There is another study on day care centers in Tennessee, large randomized, controlled, that proves the same point. Both are getting flak, but they are high quality studies.
Weirdest question ever. In the medical profession we have reached some supposed nirvana where the number of female medical students exceeds the male. But many females end up not practicing medicine or take long segments of maternity leave. Society is investing a very limited number of medical school positions for less time as practicing physicians. This has led to the importation of potentially dangerous H1B visas and more recently during the late Obama admin, physicians who had completed neither medical school nor residency in the USA. Some were good, but there are terrible horror stories which I have directly experienced!… Read more »
I know many women who make more than their husbands (medicine & engineering) and I’ve never heard a single one complain about their husband’s wages. Maybe I just know nice people 🙂
As for the third-world doctors (usually “hospitalists”)? Well my mother had been confined to a wheelchair since I was a kid and was susceptible to UTIs. One landed her in the hospital. The Pakistani actually asked me why we wanted her treated as if we had this great opportunity to let her go into sepsis and be rid of her. (She was handicapped, not senile or in pain.)
There are some succes stories. I wouldn’t mind either! No, surgeons, every level of sensitivity.
My parents had similar experiences with Muslim doctors. They are to be avoided at all costs IMO.
HMO doctors in general are a very mixed bag in terms of competence which can be life changing if you aren’t your own advocate and for those who can’t be.
Those women would be the exception.
Amen. Examples of policies that are anti-white male and just anti-white in general.
Yep. Why not instead fund our own medical schools? American need jobs don’t we?
The same thing has been going on for decades within the legal profession. More and more females are attending law school, practicing law with large prestigious law firms, but then dividing into two groups: those that have children and stop practicing for a number of years and those that stick with it but don’t have children and have “fur babies” instead. And guess what, many of those women in large firms chasing partnership then quit to become federal and state judges using their law profession and political contacts. I cannot exaggerate how HUGE a factor that is in the changing… Read more »
“Youth sports require a high degree of parental support and involvement. ” Got asked to help coach grade school football again this year. Practice 3 times a week, walk-through on Saturday, games on Sunday. Some guys eat this shit up, but not me. I don’t want an part-time job (unpaid) where all the parents who won’t actually lift a finger still think they can gripe about how much playing time their kid is getting. BTW, their kid hates football, and just wants to be home playing video games. Soccer for kids is a pretty good ROI vs. football (equipment and… Read more »
A great piece. I have been saying this for years.
Women are designed by nature to look after the children, men and home. The Socialist loonies have deliberately destroyed the family unit to further their involvement in everyone’s lives.
Great post Zman. My mom was a stay at home mom til I was four, then circumstances required her to return to work. Even as a child, before I was politically aware, I thought the decline of the one income family was a catastrophe.
I thank my Mother for being a stay at home mom when I was a kid. As she’s gotten older, she’s become a crazy liberal, so now she’s defensive about having been a stay at home mom and is uncomfortable when I thank her for it. I love her, but it’s a sick thing to behold.
Mass immigration has something to do with that. I often go by the house where my grandmother was born. A lovely Victorian that now has 12 electrical meters outside and where the yard has been converted to a parking lot. (These condos start at $300K.) America was a better place when normal people could afford nice homes in cohesive communities.
If you really want to light up a feminist, try telling her that society is better off if women stay home and raise the kids.
Lol. Want to watch them go incandescent? Make a comment or two about the 19th Amendment. Sets their hair on fire, it does.
My husband of fifty years started ragging on me a couple of years ago re: Woman Suffrage: the worst legislative mistake of the 20th c., according to him; wants the immediate repeal of the 19th Amendment in time for its 100th anniversary in 2020, and so on). I can see his point, but men really screwed up in so many ways that it almost makes no difference at this point, as Hillary might opine. I kinda wish women would cool it and not act on urges such as wanting to “integrate” the Union Club or bring coeducation to the few… Read more »
Great post. And as much as I hate the feminism that made women want to abandon their families, let’s not forget how our hostile elites created the need for them to do so… Skyrocketing home prices, created by whites fleeing imported diversity & legally prohibited from self-segregating by other means. Imported cheap labor driving wages down for American workers. Free-Trade-lunacy-caused deindustrialization destroying high paying manufacturing jobs. Even the most fervent you-go-grrl careerist women hit a point after having a child when they realized that June Cleaver had it pretty good after all. But they usually discover that’s not an option… Read more »
Feminist claptrap was not without its influence. But women of my cohort lapped it up. They wanted financial independence from men.
I will add one other thing about soccer. In SoCal, AYSO was really big for a long time. It still is, but it is totally dominated by the Latino population. A good way for the average white dad to end up as a Pinata is to question the Mexican ref’s call against his kid’s Anglo team. I saw this happening as far back as the early 1980’s. Flash for ya’ folks: They hate us like the Dindus hate us. If you cannot move, then do what you can to protect your own tribe. Between they their takeover of the politics… Read more »
That is really hard hitting and right on target. It’s something like a “Bowling Alone” for the dissident right. The generalizing from youth soccer to civilizational decline is more organic than such moves usually are. The strip mining metaphor is pure gold. If I were in a woman bashing mood this morning, it would be easy to say, “See, it’s all their fault!” But the piece makes it clear that they’re victims as much as perpetrators. This one needs wide circulation.
Kevin Michael Grace made a good point last night on Luke Ford’s podcast. Ford brought up that most people will not identify as feminists now. Grace countered we are all feminists now, just look at the early objectives feminism had, they have all been implemented now. Even conservatives wouldn’t argue with them. It’s Feminism 2.0 with it’s even nuttier ideas that people are objecting to.
At any rate, I have two baseball games to attend tonight in my town.
Spot on! Most of today’s “conservatives” are the progressives of five or ten years ago. They basically accept 90 % of the feminist agenda, only rejecting the most outlandish 10 %. Yet, it is the whole of feminism that plummets the birthrates while disconnecting/disorienting society in exactly the manner that Z has described. Counter-intuitively, the wackiest ideas of feminism are actually the least dangerous — as they can’t attract sufficient support, even among a lot of women. The more mainstream tenets have become entrenched in our culture and are having a much more pernicious effect. But don’t expect your standard-issue… Read more »
The soundtrack to civilizational suicide, as sung by two barren women:
https://youtu.be/YCKpJkplwoU
This deserves more than just two up votes.
Agreed. Though I could not watch the whole thing but I got the gist
It gets even worse at the end.
As a boy growing up in the 1960s, the neighborhood kids and I would entertain ourselves outside, doing anything and everything to have fun which included our own makeshift sports. We could turn climbing a huge maple tree into a life or death game. Sometimes that meant somebody fell out of the tree and maybe broke something pr scraping all the skin off their legs or arms. But that’s why we had iodine and mecurochrome. Speaking of which, I just now realized that neither of my two (now adult) offspring have never climbed a tree. Can you imagine that? I… Read more »
Z: “When most kids grew up in normal homes…” You know you’re on a conservative site when the writer refers to normal homes without scare quotes.
After 9-11 everyone was eager to hear what Bernard Lewis thought about anything. He was the premiere orientalist in the world. Wrote: What Went Wrong? about the collapse of Muslim culture. In almost every interview he gave about the economic and cultural weakness of Muslim society he said that they were giving up close to 50% of their potential economic activity by not allowing women to work. I thought this a curious thing as most women of the west were not in the workforce during the decline of the Ottoman Empire and the slow slide downhill of Islam as a… Read more »
Lewis could never tell the truth without destroying his career. He could not come out and state “Islam is the problem” along with massive inbreeding that has resulted in places like Iraq and many others with people having a average IQ of 85.
Yeah he’s a Jew but even back then and speaking anything that was not PC/MC would be a career killer.
As if Conservative and Orthodox Judaism wish us well. Those terms don’t equate with the same things in Christianity or American politics, Ok? Know about the Talmud? And the Jews opened their city gate to the Turks in old Constaninople and fought with the Moors in the Muslim conquest of Spain.
Good example of how culture can be monetized, destroying the culture in the process.
Just because something is not paid for, does not mean that it cannot be monetized. However monetizing it will invariably destroy that very aspect.
Be it moms going to work or big chain stores, cannibalzing culture can be very “profitable”.
George and KAB ask if there is a solution. There is. Women who realize that salvaging the culture requires a large percentage of women staying home and raising kids must support this verbally and not worry about feminist blow back. When I talk with young professional women who are married and pregnant, I express my hope that they can stay home for as long as possible. I mention how my mother stayed home with us and how wonderful it was that she was always there. It is hard to appreciate how thoroughly brain washed women have been – they just… Read more »
Worked at the VA for a few yrs following military retirement. You see the impact of women in the workforce clearly there. This is the other end of the argument advanced in numerous earlier comments — the terrible damage done to community and families when women walked away from their household role. Govt institutions like the VA are almost entirely matriarchies now … especially in the administrative support areas — the bureaucracy. Certainly, men from facilities branch do still scuttle down the halls with their repair equipment, and the emergency management crew is mostly guys. But the bulk of the… Read more »
If I had to choose a single issue that has contributed most to all of the problems we face in the West it is the collapse of the family (and all the consequences that necessarily stem from that) following women leaving the home. I think though that there is a misconception that most women were eager to abandon the home and go to universities and work 10 hours a day. I grew up in the rural Midwest in the 70s and 80s. ALL of the girls I grew up were told the same thing: You will go to university and… Read more »
You have to have business rooted in the nation first . The Chamber of Commerce /Country Club Republicans can’t abide by the idea that people would live in one area all their life, work at a job and raise a family there These ^&$^^%^%* people are constantly trying to uproot people, lobby for subsidies so people can chase low wage jobs all to cut payroll costs . Those costs that in a regulated market they’ll get back anyway when people spend money The CCCCR people are worse than Progressives who at least mean well. Any nation that becomes mostly urban… Read more »
Was so happy when the two of my kids that played soccer finally quit. Want to see a bunch of pencil armed beta males from Scarsdale transformed into rabid sideline Chihuahuas? Have their 10 year old play travel soccer. But my kids would not have come out the way they did (particularly the two with LD) had my wife not quit work and stayed home full time.
Great work, Z. Now everyone spread this meme to the youth, and start taking back the culture.
I don’t have kids, probably never will (middle aged, no prospects) but if I did my default response to any request for any civic participation in any place I’ve ever lived would be no. There are a lot of reasons for this but on the whole this society has never done well by me and mine so I don’t owe it anything. Its also ideologically and ethically no longer recognizable, the break created by President Trump not withstanding . Its not mine. As far as schooling, if I had kids I would not let them near a public school any… Read more »
@AB
That helps me see where your coming from and why you comment a certain way on different subjects…
Things get different when you have children and a wife that’s for sure. I’m not past all hope on the family department and were that to change and were I to live in a place that wasn’t So Cal I could change my mind. I’m prone to undo pessimism and cynicism at times anyway. For comparison Where I live the only neighbor I know and can communicate with is an older black guy. I like him well enough but he and his are a very different tracks than I would even if I had kid Even when I lived in… Read more »
Get the hell out of the People’s Republic of California asap. Just gather up some essentials and drive east, dont look back. Forget those states you mention, they’ve already been Californicated. Go to unpretty places that dont appeal to Californians, and, in a word, are shitty, with harsh climates and aren’t in economic over drive – Louisiana, Wyoming, the Dakotas, Nebraska for example. That’s where the friendliest people are, who still have a sense of community. Location isnt everything, but its a start.
“Why would anyone bring a child into the world when life is just pointless work and consumption?” This is why, for the longest time, I thought Leftism was a scam dreamed up by professors and race pests to glom a steady paycheck. Marxism’s obvious consequence is nihilism: What’s the *point* of all this, if all it does is temporarily alleviate the pain of some naked apes who will be forgotten as soon as they’re in the ground? It’s not just evil, it’s **stupid.** In a lot of ways I still can’t believe it. Learning you’re a naive dumbass — is… Read more »
It’s interesting how this post dovetails exactly with a book recommended’on sailer’s blog, The Lost City, by Alan Ehrenhalt. It’s an examination of Chicago and environs in the 1950s, and how community and a sense’of belonging depended on authority in neighborhoods, schools, churches, families, government. Once you destroyed the authority, community disappeared. Question is, how to get back. I keep asking about concrete answers to our problems, when the solution may only become evident when culture swings, and people’s thinking changes. Blogs like sailer and this one are part of that. Tim
Long article on sociologist Wilson….tldr….the pill franged us up
https://www.nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/two-nations-revisited
Excellent article, well worth reading. Thanks for posting.
It may be apocryphal, but was told once that “corruption” in the old Daley wards was very different from the kleptocracy you see today. If a guy did work for the machine and needed a job, he was given a job driving a bus or picking up garbage. If there weren’t jobs available they might add another bus line or put another truck on a route. But you did real work and supporting your family was considered a given. Compare that to the welfare wasteland today. And it applied to the black as well as white neighborhoods. People didn’t cross… Read more »
Bravo, Zman. Just bravo.
https://youtu.be/xJWrnA-KcEk
A Day in the Life of 9 yo in 1964
Love this guy’s channel.
The problem is that strip mining civil society for profit is just so goddamn efficient. Turning everyone into a wage slave produces more money than building a quality complementary life. Centralization makes it more efficient still. Capitalism encourages that efficiency above all else.
No one is going to vote for a candidate who says “yes, it will shrink the economy and force you to work for no pay, but you’ll like it, I swear.”
……… is that why women vote for communism?
Comments like this is how I know the comments section is chock full of those fallen away liberals I keep hearing so much about. Centralization absolutely makes financial rape more efficient. Capitalism is not about centralization. You seem to be confusing communism/socialism – with capitalism. Women vote for communism because they like the promise of societal support – because it dovetails nicely with their biological instincts to be part of “society”. The resulting centralization – makes it easy to financially strip mine “society” by promising everybody is going to be “equal”. What they don’t tell you is: equally screwed. The… Read more »
Just because socialism is bad doesn’t mean that capitalism is good. Just take a look at the much lauded supermarkets of capitalism that Reagan wanted to show off; they are filled to the brim with choices and most of them are poison. Capitalism has evolved into a system to most efficiently serve vice. Capitalism was invented because feudalism began to collapse in England and a new system was needed. The centralized nation state and the absolute monarchy co-evolved with capitalism. Thus centralization is just as much endemic to capitalism as it is to socialism. Socialism just takes it further. Centralization,… Read more »
Yes, Capitalism/Communism and their compromise, Socialism, are philosophies of Matter. Fascism/National Socialism are philosophies of Man. Thus they are in conflict and always will be. And if the latter should rise again, the former will unite against them as before. All against Trump is the same principle, though in a less radical form.
All organization starts at the bottom. This is one of the consistent failings of socialists and communists – they think organization starts at the top. They don’t even understand how nature is organized – so how the hell could they ever understand how human beings organize themselves? I say capitalism starts at the bottom – because each human being has his or her own human capital. I have known people (men) in my past who would simply work like dogs – and were smart to boot. These people almost invariably become wealthy because they are PRODUCTIVE and smart about it.… Read more »
Words fail. Where does someone start with people like you? As if profit alone can run a society. As if Government made those Corporations take their jobs out of America. Or replace workers with robots like they are now. Just keep reading AYN RAND, a Jewess.
Again with the example of fallen away liberals I keep noticing in these pages. As per usual: didn’t even address what I detailed as capitalism. Instantly goes for the usual “corporations” talking points, mentions the other leftist bugaboo – of “Fascism and National Socialism” and somehow equates Communism with Capitalism. As far as I am concerned – all organization starts at the bottom – as it does in nature. So capitalism starts with each individual – and that individual’s human capital. As I already stated: those individuals built Western societies – and cultures. Which are largely based on the achievements… Read more »
I agree with your assessment on women & culture, and the degradation (collapse?) of culture as women are educated (or rather, conditioned) to choose workforce & materialism over family & community institutions. But we also have adult males (not men) who will not opt to work 2 to 3 jobs that would allow his wife to convert his house into a home or transition his children into well-adjusted adults. Most adult males I know are pleased that their woman is in the labor force … so they don’t have to work as hard. They’re also happy to outsource their children… Read more »
Didn’t take long for the “men are really to blame for how wahmen slouch off their role as mothers” post to appear. Men choosing to work 3 jobs is,’t going to fix the programming that women receive about keeping up with their social group in terms of Coach bags and Lexus SUV s, if anything, it will probably exacerbate the lifestyle many of them feel entitled to. If the wife/mother is inclined to make things work within the means available, it can be done even on a relatively low income(as I know quite intimately, supporting a family,of four on my… Read more »
I have seen both sides of the coin: women who live a champagne lifestyle while their husbands work themselves to death, and women who refuse to give up working – because they fear abandonment by their husbands – and the poverty that will follow because they never worked outside the home. The women living a champagne lifestyle thing – I have seen blow up a couple of marriages. The husband got sick and tired of working like a dog to support a woman who literally couldn’t (or wouldn’t) even give him a hot meal at the end of the day.… Read more »
This goes both ways. I’m a 50-something woman, 8/9 on the attractiveness scale, Ivy educated with a PhD, stay-at-home for 20 years while teaching part-time in universities … and I just found out that my husband has been having a long-term affair with his shrink. He’s had the time to squirrel away all our assets into hidden places and … yes, I’m screwed. At my age, a career is out of the question. I’m far too old for tenure. Books don’t make money. Honestly, I hear what you’re saying about how women undergird civil society … I share those beliefs.… Read more »
Picture, please. Women who objectively are a 7 at age 50 are magical things.
I’d say that depends on how you weigh the scale. If you’re going to compare a 50 year old woman to an 18 year old women – then you’re weighting the scale. And the same effect works on men too, so I don’t feel like I’m being unfair here towards just women. If however you restrict the population that is being rated to a similar age group – then I have seen women in their 50’s who are very attractive. In my opinion maybe even more so than some younger women – because of the rarity. Women in their 50’s… Read more »
It works both ways? Yes, about 30% of the time. Women bring over 70% of the divorces. Don’t let your own situation blind you to the objective situation. Anecdotal thinking is a feminine weakness.
I have seen the situation that you’re describing too, but – being a man – I do look at things from the man’s perspective. All I can say to you is: get a good lawyer. Not sure what state you are in , but here in MA the court system is heavily weighted towards sympathy towards women. So if you can make a good case you will likely get something out of the deal – IF you have a good lawyer. Also: do not think that a career is definitively out of the question. My best friend’s wife went back… Read more »
Well, as a man I’ve learned that if there’s a problem in my family to look for ever increasing concentric circles around ME. I’m just saying men need to grow a pair, and you chose to take it personally? So you’re saying the larger problem is women’s shopping habits, without mentioning 40-somethings addicted to porn & video games? Yep, I’ve raised a family of 8 on a meager income, primarily by giving my kids a homestead and meaningful work raising food, stacking firewood, and other life-giving work. My wife loves the nurturing role, and as a homeschool mom, is too… Read more »
You certainly got yourself worked up over someone pointing out the validity of Spengler’s Universal Law #11: At all times and in all places, the men and women of every culture deserve each other. Nowhere in my post did I say anything in regards to men choosing to live a meaningless life of hedonism, and I’m certainly not going to defend it any more than I would defend women choosing a life of meaningless hedonism. I’m alsoglad that you’ve figured out that NAWALT, the completely useless anecdotal response to anyone pointing out the way the current family law system is… Read more »
There’s certainly something to what you say. Men aren’t without culpability in this situation. That said, when tens of millions of American jobs have been exported to Asia and Latin America, and millions of Third Worlders have been imported to take the jobs that can’t be exported, it’s a lot more difficult for a man to earn what used to be called a family wage.
If we were to remove migrants and women from the U.S. workforce, our men would benefit greatly from upward pressure on wages. Better wages to take care of their women and children with, women at home focusing on raising quality people.
@Ursula
Yea but then they would be more independent and the women would be more dependent on them and not the government…They would also be more inclined to homeschool their kids with a stay at home mom which the gov. statist hate… Everything that makes men more manly and women more womanly the gov. will try to destroy…
It’s not a money thing. In my professional life, I only deal with middle class and above folks. Every single one could easily have the wifey at home on their generous salary. None of them do. Their wives are programmed from day one not to rely on a dude. It’s also very important for status competition to be working professionally as a chick, otherwise you are not keeping up with the Jones and are considered a hillbilly prole with bad manners. Many have a single kid or two but send them to daycare immediately to resume their worthless professional life.… Read more »
A critical feature of the old community-family ecosystem circa 1970 and before was the tacit understanding, the social contract if you will, that certain jobs were reserved for males providing for their families and that such jobs paid a wage sufficient to support a middle-class existence. This is not to say that no women worked. Then, as now, single mothers and women on their own had to support themselves. It is merely that such women largely gravitated to the traditionally female-heavy occupations. In 1970, it was still possible for a young man who’d just graduated from high school to secure… Read more »
Z: “That’s because the culture of a people is their women.” I used to jokingly tell the guys at the office about all the potlucks and holiday decorations, “You know, if it weren’t for the women around here, we wouldn’t do SHIT. We wouldn’t even know it’s Halloween, much less that it’s freakin Frank’s birthday.” Seriously, in an office full of guys the get-togethers amount to talking a bit of sports in the breakroom. Granted, potlucks are an awkward pain in the ass. But yeah, the office would be pretty arid without the girls.
The only reason you need an office culture is that our upper classes can’t understand that almost everything that needs to be done outside of a few jobs could be done in 20 hours We wouldn’t need an office culture if we were there a few hours a week, got things done in a timely and efficient manner and moved on The idea that we produce so much stuff that a frugal family could probably get by on one , 20 hour worker seems insane or cartoonish like the Jetsons but production wise its pretty true. That won’t change. It… Read more »
“The idea that we produce so much stuff that a frugal family could probably get by on one , 20 hour worker seems insane or cartoonish like the Jetsons but production wise its pretty true. ” Spot on. IMS Z stated we live in a “post consumer” society. There is no need to work 60-70 hours a week. Of course if you want the latest car, McMansion tract home and live in a horribly expensive urban center and send your kids to a private school. You better be pulling close to $200k a year. Hell, even making $150k in Silicon… Read more »
Been reading you Zman for almost 2 years now and I would arguably rate this post your most seminal work to date – this entry really gets to the root of Western Civilization’s cancerous degeneracy and concisely identifies the tumor’s location. You somehow manage to surgically dismantle the foundamental tenets of feminism and progressivism in one fell swoop – brilliant & bravo…cue the slow golf clap.
Just when I believe Z Man cannot possibly improve his game, he ups the ante yet again. Thanks to Z, I am beginning to experience some faith that correction for at least a segment of our society is actually possible.
All hail Z!
The phenomenon that you describe models as a cancer of society. It grows and gets worse over time, until the society ultimately dies and the cancer can die with it. Alternately, if the cancer has not progressed too far, it may be possible to eradicate it and restore some measure of health, but that means killing the cancer cells via strong medicine. When notified that they have cancer, most patients lapse into denial as the initial response. That is where we are now.
Off topic:
The tone-deaf nature of Conservatism Inc on full display here. Notice that you cannot find the word immigration mentioned at all. Nor any mention of the foreign capital inflating the real estate market.
https://thefederalist.com/2018/07/16/15-minimum-wage-hike-wreaking-havoc-new-york-citys-dining-sector/
Hallelujah!! Someone has the balls to call it like it is.
Brilliant and disturbing.
“Put the women to ‘work’ ” – nah. Put them back in the home/bed – the Lord’s ‘work’ bringing other very unique and special “Others” in to this “world”. May even mitigate that “negative TFR problem”. Hoo-wah.
“sewage of popular culture”!! Great line!.
That was a hard hitting essay, and not thing in it I could argue against.
“Another example is what we see with Amazon destroying retail.”
I’m curious why you are always on about Amazon and never mention Walmart. Walmart did it first and continues to do the same now.
Of course, one could then point at Sears as well.
Z’s got serious reading to do so he can supply us with oxygen tomorrow. And you’re asking him to bother with Amazon vs. Walmart vs Sears?
I remember about 12-15 years ago liberals HATED WalMart. Now nobody complains about them? Something change or liberals just find a new pinata?
Walmart increased wages so that they fall below the Welfare threshold and brought in a lot of organic and other healthy products that actually sell very well.
They moved from corporate parasite to big company at that point.
As someone who lives even farther out than those small communities with the local businesses supposedly being destroyed by Amazon/Walmart/Sears/Standard Oil/Whatever, I have a different perspective. Internet online order, whether it’s Amazon, Etsy, valleyvetsupply.com or the online sections of Walmart, Tractor Supply Co. or Rural King — is a Godsend. I have three grocery stores I can get to in less than a 20-minute drive. Only one has a decent selection. The Walmart is farther than that and I rarely go there unless I need something specific, because I’d rather get a half hour of my day back then drive… Read more »
This is a fantastic post!
But is there a solution?
Take your pick: World war. Famine. Epidemic.
Jesus, what a blackpill. Are there any solutions to these problems?
Time, time, hear the bells chime
Over the harbor and the city
Time, one more vodka and lime
To help speed that tiny tick, tick, tick
In a decade or two
Or three or four
A stirring on the wind
Can you hear the whistle blow?
Sounds like time the avenger
Superb
Z, you outdid yourself. Well done.
Are the public schools in rural areas and red states pozzed? Genuinely curious.
Probably. It takes a confident hick to stick to her traditions when tempted with the chance to up her status through progressive airs.
Yes. All the teachers are churned out of universities and schools of education on the same template. All the curricula are very similar nationwide, generated by a handful of education publishing companies.
I think GU1 meant are they fully pozzed. There’s different levels. The textbooks may be Leftist, but that doesn’t mean a school is enthusiastically pushing that agenda. Personally, I don’t want to know the answer to his question, since when I hear inklings of small town America being infiltrated it gets me seriously down.
It doesn’t matter if they’re “enthusiastically pushing it” if the kids are getting graded every day on spitting out the right answers:
“Colonialism was awful.”
“American history in a nutshell: Slavery, slavery, slavery! KKK! Jim Crow! Japanese internment!”
“Johnny has two dads! And it’s awesome!”
“Jane has a penis! And it’s awesome!”
“We don’t talk about Jesus here.”
“This is how you put on a condom.”
“Practice safe anal sex!”
@GU1
Not as bad as the blue states but any school getting federal funds has a little bit of it…We still homeschool though because we love our kids…
Two thoughts on soccer. 1. I agree with you – it’s a horrible sport – and I was really good at as a kid because my mother wouldn’t let me play football. The minute I got to college I signed up for the Rugby team. 2. Youth soccer is way too much of a commitment. Year-round travel and practice, tournaments and games hundreds of miles away, forgoing all other sports – all for a game nobody watches and the immigrant kids will still be better. Lacrosse is becoming the alternative spring sport for kids who aren’t good enough to make… Read more »
I don’t hate the sport of soccer. I hate American soccer fans. European and South American fans are just like normal fans in America. They love the teams their fathers loved. That’s normal. American soccer fans are gold plated phonies.
I played a ton of soccer as a kid. Loved it. It is a shit spectator sport.
I do like the tribal aspect here, I watch within a couple of yards where my great grandfather watched the team we support, Anfield Liverpool is a crucial part of the working class identity here.
Fair point. Goodison Park aswell has a very strong traditional fan base. I have a passing support for United as it’s the team my Dad followed, I’ve been to Old Trafford approx 20 times. For big European games and games against Liverpool, Chelsea, City the atmosphere is great, regular games can be pretty poor. In saying that the noise in Anfield for a big game is seriously inpressive. Despite trading hands frequently Liverpool still has a strong working class identity.
That’s the UK though.
Soccer is not a big part of the American sports scene even today. I played a tad when I was young but it was a nascent sport and I lived in Football country anyway
Beyond that we couldn’t afford it.
Frankly I think the Vikings got it right, boys were trained in wrestling and sword play starting at age eight and played ball games on their own time
they had a baseball and possibly football like game , competed but they were recreational activities not pro sports.
I don’t have kids – so talking to my work buddies about what they have to do with their kids is somewhat of a revelation. They talk about taking their ten year olds on “travel games” where they go to different STATES to play other teams. When I hear this my natural reaction is WTF. There were youth leagues when I was a kid (more than 30 years ago) – but you didn’t get in a bus and carry your ass on a 3 hour trip to another state with a bunch of 10 or 12 year olds. They didn’t… Read more »
It’s rabid and idiotic everywhere. Here in Michigan it’s hockey. Travel teams or not the parents or the pushiest of them organize tournaments out of state often. I have had some mothers come in my business and ask to sponsor her son in hockey. My incredulity must have been overwhelming as they leave rather promptly.
Here (New England) it’s hockey, baseball and lacrosse. Of course the states here are small, so travelling to ME or VT for a tourney isn’t so bad.
@ David_Wright Your experience with being asked to sponsor a child for hockey is probably a custom which filtered into Michigan from Canada, where such is very common and utterly-uncontroversial. Maybe you’ve heard the old quip about hockey and religion in Canada, “Hockey isn’t a religion in Canada, it’s more important than that.” They take the game very seriously indeed. It is something close to a national obsession. Hockey-playing kids with potential are often recruited by junior teams in another city or province, so Canadian families – especially grandparents, empty-nesters, couples without children, etc. – have an elaborate network setup… Read more »
Used to secretly root for the teams of Hispanic kids from the poorer towns around us in travel soccer. They played well and the parents were not rabid assholes.