What women want is simple; hearth and home, a modest but consistent social position with its income, in short a nest to safely raise her children and a benevolent protector. Where does it say that? The Book of Mormon? Well, it might, but more remarkably these are the assertions of that reliably Liberal outlet, Politico. What “women” are these? Of course this is a specifically electoral look at the fairer, but still pretty unfair, sex. They say both Republicans and Democrats have missed the boat but it is the Democrats who made the bigger splash because they traditionally claim the “women’s vote” by some margin. Occasionally it is not much, but they do rely on it. There is division even here though. While claiming “women” at large, the Democrats have not done well with “married women”. They have made this up however with wildly positive ratings among single women, single mothers, black women, latinas and, with some obvious overlap, poor women. That should surprise no one as it should surprise no one that this “study” flogged so prominently by allegedly neutral Politico powerfully over-samples, gee, exactly those subsets.

While that kind of underhanded manipulation makes this piece almost useless as an electoral guide (and hilariously misleading to its intended audience: elected Democrats) there is yet much revealed here. One might wonder, just what year was this poll taken? Statistically, the respondents were calling out from the days of Donna Reed and Father Knows Best. Only father has skipped town. Once that occurs the foremost imperative is what? To replace him. These women are fish who believe they need their bicycles despite some fifty years now…. fifty years, of the Cosmo/Steinem Industrial Complex extolling the “liberation” of women from the drudgery of, um, motherhood and domestic indentures. So a compromise has been struck leaving the father role unfilled in the home, while his worldly duties are performed by government in some form.

The fathers also have bought into this. Any number of children by any number (or sort) of women are not considered to adhere morally to the gentleman. The question is always reduced to a fiscal one: is he paying? If he is paying then his duties are discharged. He may want visitation. He may well not. In any event no one may politely object on moral, spiritual or biological grounds. Once this state of affairs was considered the blackest mark and heaviest burden of the underclass. Now it is the norm from the heights of Hollywood down to the depths of Washington. We might wonder how we got here but we know. We know.

Like every other crushing malady we are suffering this devastation results from a vicious cycle of good intentions. There is no doubt that bastardy, as it once was quaintly known, was a terrible condition even in our own forward-looking nation. We know this from its rarity among those who could do something about it. Certainly the old silver screen days were not as chaste and upright as they looked but the deceptions of adoption and parentage always unraveled by Perry Mason demonstrate that this was a Big Deal in a way it is not to us. Much of the reason for today’s apathetic outlook to baby-mommas and numberless half-cousins comes from the old New Deal era desire to relieve the conditions of the poor. It was thought that divorce or just abandonment was a cultural drag that could be treated much like a physical illness, which it is not, while declining to mention that it might be a moral illness, which it is. The result? Cash payments and other more cunningly structured supports famously have made fatherhood not only redundant to huge numbers of families but an actual fiscal draw. “Benefits” cumulatively amount to more, perhaps much more, than a laboring man can hope to provide. The gentleman is not worth more dead than alive, that would imply some healthy life insurance. No, he is worth more gone than present with all the insult this implies. While this has been true in the underclass for many years it has slowly become the norm up to our highest society only the man’s accountant replaces the government in doling out the checks. The benefit to the man is the same in the ghetto as it is in the suburbs: freedom. He may indulge promiscuity or less hedonistic habits like fishing and golf but he is satisfying the eternal desire of the Mountain Man, to be let alone, free of the all-night fulltime woman and her brats even if they are, some of them, his.

And the women get free of the men. There is more appeal here than we would like to admit. It may be nice to have a man about the house but that gets old, too. This sentiment is a common one to any consumer of news on this subject. For many a young high school student, single motherhood with its government entitlements, is something like a career path. The father is incidental, one is as good as the next, right? In any case, there is little sentimental misunderstanding. After all, if our sophomore with a swelling belly looks around, what does she see? If we are talking about the black community she almost never…. nearly NEVER sees a mom and dad raising their kids together. If we are talking about our nation at large, still she will rarely see it. Freaks like this are an astonishment. Well, they are religious types. Hmm, she got so fat, what choice has she got? Oh, there is some crazy stuff going on behind THOSE closed doors!

Fatherlessness is the norm. Voluntary fatherhood is for chumps and maybe chumpettes. This has come upon us over decades and there can be no doubt, can there? that the conscious replacement of fathers with government assistance has predictably facilitated it. It’s the nature of man (male man) to tomcat and rove and that’s a fact. What is also a fact is that once, if the produce of his catting and the object of his catting were not looked after BY HIM, their estate was poor if they lived at all. Modern practices meant to relieve this sad fact have lowered the costs and inextricably increased the supply of bastards who are demographically almost certain to leave more.

If this is the problem, is further expansion of government into the front room and bedroom the solution? This is what our girls above are pitching: you can replace the daddy with Uncle Sugar and everyone is better for the bargain. Coincidentally, Democrats reap the rewards. However depraved, that is where we are and yes, it seems, women do crave “security”, express this through their votes (whether they are on the dole themselves or not) and seem to control elections in large measure with their numbers and strategic placement. There is one other problem though. For these programs as well as for all others, the money just isn’t there. Michael Moore says that Oprah Winfrey has it and we should go get it, but it just isn’t true. You could flat confiscate all the money earned in this country more than $150k and it still will not be enough to cover current outlays and even if it were, seizing it in this fashion would destroy employment at a rate never seen outside of war or meteor impact. So the New Dad is, surprise! same as the Old Dad. Sure he’s got a svelt appeal, cool boots and some really nice rims but everything he has is in his pockets. He has income but boy, does he have outgo! He’s got baby mommas from sea to shining sea as well as g-mas and das, overdue accounts at the Rent-A-Center and six mortgages on two houses. The ladies have participated in their first, structural abandonment willingly enough because of their back-up guy. The back-up guy will also abandon them even if he doesn’t want to and there is no back-up to the back-up.

The solution here is the same as the solution to everything else. Discipline. The ladies must ask more of the gentleman. You might be surprised that you get it. Gentlemen, you may be surprised that there is more than toil in supporting your offspring but if you don’t find it so, maybe you will be more careful about what springs off from you. But none of this is going to happen without a return of that old task-mistress Reality who has been bought off by New Dealers and Great Society salesman until now. She carries with her danger, deprivation, exposure, humiliation, hunger, labor, filth and cruel despite. Only overcoming these will repair our crumbling hearts and homes and provide that thing that all these gubmint programs always promise but never deliver. Self-esteem they call it. Really it is self respect.

 

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