Well, now we are reading that maybe abortion did matter in the midterms. Actually, I’d say that modern polling is all over the place. Probably because pollsters are finding it real difficult to get people to answer the phone.
My take? Whatever women say or believe, when the chips are down they expect to be protected. And abortion, to many women, is a form of protection. So when it comes to the privacy of the polling booth…
Yes. “Women expect to be protected.”
And the basic reason is obvious. When a woman is in late-stage pregnancy, she is vulnerable. When a woman is in childbirth she needs to be attended by people that know how to deal with birthing problems. When she has small children she needs someone to bring in the groceries. Etc.
In fact, women need to be protected. They really do.
In my view, if you look at most cultural artifacts, from marriage to inheritance, it is all about protecting women. And the reason is simple. If you don’t protect women, you are not going to get kids on the ground, and if you don’t get kids on the ground, bye bye your family, your kindred, your clan, your tribe, your nation, your human life on Earth.
On the other hand, “Men know they are expendable.”
That’s why you can have a couple of world wars in half a century, with millions of soldiers killed, and no problem, life goes on.
Now, a significant characteristic of the modern era is the emergence of women into the public square. That’s middle-class women, of course. Sociologist Georg Simmel wrote that these women would transform the public square to suit “a more feminine sensibility.”
First of all, let us emphasize we are talking about middle-class women. Upper-class women had previously been influential in the ruling-class public square by managing marriages and the social gatherings of the elite. Go read a couple of 19th century novels if you are not sure of this.
The defining thing about the middle class, especially the educated middle class, is that the men have “careers.” So, as middle-class women came out into the public square, they wanted careers too. Because.
The other thing about middle-class men is that they get to get out in the world unsupervised and sink or swim by their solo efforts. So middle-class women wanted to get out in the world too, unsupervised.
If women get out into the world and get educations and careers it means that they spend their 20s getting the career going. So they can’t get married and settle down and have babies. Not yet.
In the mid-19th century a middle-class girl did not have relationships; she did not have a career. And she did not wait till 30 to get married and have babies.
Today, a middle-class girl gets an advanced degree; she spends her 20s getting a career going, and she has “relationships” before getting married and having babies. And, as a backup, she relies on abortion to prevent a too-early baby.
Now, the young women of my acquaintance typically spend their 20s getting educated and starting a career. And at 30 they get married,, and start having babies in their 30s. But, it seems to me, they do not have “relationships.” They pair up with a guy early on — maybe even a guy from high school — and live together while completing education and getting on with a career. Then they get married.
The career, it seems to me, tends not to be a rough tough career in crazy tech startups, but a career as a salaried employee in an established institution: corporate, government, or non-profit.
Did she have an abortion during this process? None of your business.
And really, this sort of life trajectory works pretty well, for young women in the educated middle class.
Whatabout young women in the uneducated middle class? Good question. Anybody know?
Whatabout young women in the lower class? Good question. Anybody know?
But if you have read Charles Murray’s Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010 you know that life is pretty good for the upper 25 percent, with great careers and merger marriages, not so good for the middle 50 percent, and in the bottom 25 percent or so the men don’t work much and the women don’t marry much.
It seems to me that the women in the educated middle class are fairly content with the way things are. But whatabout the women in the uneducated middle class? I wonder what they would like the world to be like if they had their druthers. And whatabout the lower class women?
Of course, we should interject here the basic notion of Edward Banfield in The Unheavenly City. There are present-oriented people, he writes, and there are future-oriented people. I wonder what he means by that. Ahem.
The more present-oriented a person is, the more they live "moment to moment," lack impulse control, and are prone to "improvidence and irresponsibility."
the more future-oriented a person is, the more upper class they are; the more present-oriented, the more lower class.
Just sayin’.
Let us say that the more present-oriented a person is, the more they need “guard rails” to keep them on the straight and narrow and out of the ditch.
Notice that in our modern society, the life of the educated middle class is pretty well confined within guard rails. But the rules of the road for the eduated middle class don’t really translate for the ordinary middle class. And it is not surprising that the lives of the lower class tend to be rather chaotic.
In fact, let us just say that there are no guard rails for people in the lower class.
May I just interject here and say that our liberal friends that make all the rules around here have no clue about all this?
Let’s talk about sex. I believe that men are up for tupping just about everything that moves, but that women expect to love the one lover forever. The whole point of human society is to put obstacles in the way of men tupping everything in sight, and to help women keep their sex partner forever and have lots of bouncing babies and live happily ever after.
I think that the current culture that expects women to “put out” like Blanche in A Streetcar Named Desire, that expects women of all classes to earn money outside the home, that expects women to put off marriage and children for a decade, is a monstrous and unjust society. It works OK for women in the educated middle class, but not OK for the rest of women in our society.
I think that the sooner we fix this the better for all mankind. And womankind.