Tag Archives: Irresponsibility

News

New study: women economists more likely to support higher taxes and bigger government

1 Comment

From liberal USA Today.

Excerpt:

A lot depends on whether the economist is a man or a woman. A new study shows a large gender gap on economic policy among the nation’s professional economists, a divide similar — and in some cases bigger — than the gender divide found in the general public.

[…]Female economists tend to favor a bigger role for government while male economists have greater faith in business and the marketplace. Is the U.S. economy excessively regulated? Sixty-five percent of female economists said “no” — 24 percentage points higher than male economists.

[…]The genders are most divorced from each other on the question of equality for women. Male economists overwhelmingly think the wage gap between men and women is largely the result of individuals’ skills, experience and voluntary choices. Female economists overwhelmingly disagree by a margin of 4-to-1.

More findings:

  • Health insurance. Female economists thought employers should be required to provide health insurance for full-time workers: 40% in favor to 37% against, with the rest offering no opinion. By contrast, men were strongly against the idea: 21% in favor and 52% against.
  • Education. Females narrowly opposed taxpayer-funded vouchers that parents could use for tuition at a public or private school of their choice. Male economists love the idea: 61% to 14%.
  • Labor standards. Females believe 48% to 33% that trade policy should be linked to labor standards in foreign counties. Males disagreed: 60% to 23%.

According to a recent research paper, single women tend to vote for bigger government in order to have security.

Excerpt:

Giving women the right to vote significantly changed American politics from the very beginning. Despite claims to the contrary, the gender gap is not something that has arisen since the 1970s. Suffrage coincided with immediate increases in state government expenditures and revenue, and these effects continued growing as more women took advantage of the franchise. Similar changes occurred at the federal level as female suffrage led to more liberal voting records for the state’s U.S. House and Senate delegations. In the Senate, suffrage changed voting behavior by an amount equal to almost 20 percent of the difference between Republican and Democratic senators. Suffrage also coincided with changes in the probability that prohibition would be enacted and changes in divorce laws.

[…]More work remains to be done on why women vote so differently, but our initial work provides scant evidence that it is due to self-interest arising from their employment by government.The only evidence that we found indicated that the gender gap in part arises from women’s fear that they are being left to raise children on their own (Lott and Kenny 1997). If this result is true, the continued breakdown of the family and higher divorce rates imply growing political conflicts between the sexes. 19

A recent New York Times poll found that Obama led Romney by 29 points among single women, whereas Romney has a slight edge with married women.

I think one of the reasons why single women are so willing to look to big government as a substitute for a husband is because lately they seem to be struggling with 1) the ability to choose a good man by evaluating him rationally and objectively, and 2) the willingness to sacrifice and compromise in order to keep a good man. In my experience, single women today seem to be concerned that men might somehow place obligations on them that might limit their automomy with respect to the pursuit of happiness. That is why they often (but not always!) delay marriage and focus on their careers, and often vote for bigger government to provide them with a safety net. I think that women spend their 20s trying to drift into marriage by working on their careers and by having a good time with the wrong sort of men – men who don’t perform the traditional male roles. Single women vote for bigger government because deep down they know that the binge drinking and the hook-up sex are not likely to find a good man and produce a lasting marriage. But they just can’t stop themselves from having “fun” – big government is their safety net for their own choices with men.

I was having a conversation with a Christian woman on the weekend about Christian women and the men they choose to pursue.  She said that divorce was not something that she was worried about because she had undertaken a careful study of men and marriage and she knew how to choose the right man for the job. She said that she was very clear on what men are supposed to do in a marriage, and that she had confidence in her ability to assess men for those duties. Secondly, she said that she knew what her responsibilities were as a woman in a marriage towards a man, and that she had complete confidence in her ability to perform those duties, based on careful, study, planning and training.  I was impressed because she was taking responsibility to make good decisions and to perform her duties, and she had confidence that this would reduce and even eliminate the risk of divorce. But I doubt that she would say that she learned these things from the secular culture, and probably not even in the church.

News

Why do women have abortions? Are women responsible or are men to blame?

3 Comments

Dina said me this astonishing article from the UK Daily Mail.

Excerpt:

Her first abortion came when she was 17, following a bitterly regretted drunken encounter with a colleague at an office party. 

[…]Her bold decision to speak out about her abortions comes after it was revealed that the NHS spends more than £50  million a year on repeat terminations.

One third of the 189,000 abortions carried out in England and Wales in 2010 involved women who’d had at least one before. In some cases, a staggering seven abortions had previously been carried out on the same woman.

Abortion one:

The first one… was when she… got pregnant when she ended up in bed with a  22-year-old colleague called Brian.

‘Although I knew I could get pregnant, we didn’t use contraception. I just didn’t think it would happen to me…

[…]Michelle visited her GP and found out she was entitled to a free NHS abortion at her local hospital. 

Abortion two:

[S]he met John, 35, an Irish soldier stationed at barracks near her home, and they embarked on a three-week fling. It left her with another unplanned, and unwanted, pregnancy. 

[…]Michelle was once again granted an NHS abortion at nine weeks — this time at a private London clinic, in July 2000.

Abortion three:

Then, a year later, she met her current partner, Paul, at a local pub.

[…]Michelle says she was open about her abortions, and told Paul, 36 — who is an estates manager — that she didn’t want any more children.

[…][I]n July, Michelle was going through a rocky period with Paul when she discovered she was pregnant again.

She says: ‘At the time we were barely speaking, as we were both so stressed out. We hadn’t been intimate for months, but one night relations thawed and we had sex.

‘Until then, we’d been using condoms but this time we didn’t. Although I thought about getting the morning-after pill, I ended up leaving it to chance.’

[…]At nine weeks, Michelle was granted a third NHS abortion, at another London clinic.

Three taxpayer-funded abortions for three pregnancies brought on by this woman’s own free decisions.

In the UK, abortions, IVF and single motherhood are all taxpayer-funded. If women had to pay for their own abortions, their own IVF, their own out-of-wedlock births, then maybe they would not be making decisions like this woman has. When you pay people to do something, you mustn’t be surprised when they do that thing more. Lowering the cost of anything means that more people will buy it. And making it free is the worst of all. The first step to ending abortion is that society needs to understand that virtually every woman who has one is at least partly responsible for her own decision-making. The sooner we stop feeling compassion for women like this one, and start feeling compassion for unborn children and taxpayers, the sooner abortion will end. This woman is not a victim – she made these decisions and the consequences were absolutely devastating.

And many Christian leaders are part of the problem – they seem to really like blaming men for cases like the one above. Man-blaming Christian leaders have to do their part and stop blaming men for women’s irrational belief that recreational sex will be followed by an offer of marriage if the woman becomes pregnant. Men who have recreational sex don’t want marriage, and pregnancy doesn’t turn them into marriage-minded men. Men who have recreational sex want… recreational sex. Marriage is a heavy burden, and men who fool around are not going to “do the right thing”. Men who have recreational sex before marriage are not the sort of men who can be depended on to “do the right thing”. The sooner we start holding women accountable for their own decisions – and shaming them – the sooner abortion will stop.

UPDATE: This comment from straightright is worth reading if you are annoyed by the “poor me, I’m a victim” tone of the article.

Related posts

News

What causes women to become single mothers by choice? Are men to blame?

21 Comments

Dina sent me this revealing article from the UK Daily Mail. It answers the question “Where does fatherlessness come from?”.

Excerpt:

My marriage ended, without rancour or argument, 18 months after it had begun. There was no recrimination, just a realisation, as sharp as physical pain, that we would never — could never — agree on one fundamental point.

I wanted children; my husband Anthony did not. You may think we should have resolved this crucial issue long before we bought a house and vowed to spend the rest of our lives together, but love had a way of blinding us to the depth of our disagreement.

By “love” she means three things: 1) he was physically attractive, 2) she became sexually active with him after one month of meeting him, and 3) she moved in with him before he made a commitment to marriage and parenting. (As we shall see) As far as I can tell, she spent her late 20s to mid 30s with this guy – a guy she chose of her own free will. A guy who never indicated any interest in children, but who indicated plenty of interest in recreational sex.

More:

Today, I am 37 and a single mum to gorgeous three-month-old twin boys Charlie and William. They were conceived through IVF, using my eggs and sperm from an anonymous donor, and the love I feel for them is all-consuming.

[…]Anthony, a policeman, was easy and fun; we chatted comfortably together, and when we started dating I was impressed by his integrity. He had passionate views about fairness and loyalty. He was attractive, too — tall, dark hair, blue eyes — and I felt we could build a loving relationship together.

“Easy and fun” = no divisive truth claims, no moral judgments, no moral boundaries, no goals, no plans, no expectations, no obligations. Perfect! The modern feminist ideal.

More:

After a month or so, our physical relationship began, but we did not rush things. It was a couple of years before he moved into my flat in Crawley, West Sussex, and I expected we’d eventually marry and have kids.

Looking back, I suppose I should have heeded the warning signals. When I broached the subject of children, he stalled. His stock reply was: ‘We’ll have them later.’

So although he was non-committal, I loved him and assumed that his paternal instinct would kick in as he grew older. But the years passed and I was not reassured.

She thinks that a man who agrees to recreational sex after a month and then agrees to cohabitation after two years is the kind of man who is capable of making a lifelong commitment to be faithful to her and to raise children. That strikes me as equivalent to saying that a man whose favorite movie is Top Gun would also make a good airline pilot.

More:

And then I reached 30. My friends were marrying; settling into comfortable domesticity, preparing for parenthood, and Anthony and I were still in this limbo.

[…]Then my best friend announced she was pregnant and the joy I felt for her was tainted by Anthony’s absence of commitment to the idea of having children with me. So we had another discussion — this time, it was a passionate one. ‘It’s a deal-breaker,’ I said. ‘Much as I love you, if you don’t want children we can’t carry on.’

But, again, he assured me that it would all happen. I just had to bide my time.

So I waited until Anthony was 30, an age when I felt he was old enough to settle down. We loved each other whole-heartedly; we’d bought two successive homes together and the understanding was implicit: my future was bound up in his.

[…]I wanted so much to believe he would warm to the idea, but Anthony equivocated. He still wasn’t ready, he protested.

[…]But then Anthony demonstrated just how strong his aversion to babies was. We were visiting a friend who’d recently given birth and, when her baby cried, Anthony made his excuses and went home.

‘I just can’t stand the sound of that crying,’ he said testily when I confronted him later. ‘If we had a baby, I’d have to move out for the first six weeks.’

It wasn’t a propitious sign, but eventually he seemed to soften.

‘If we’re going to have children, we’ll have to get married first,’ he said the next time I raised the subject, and for once I agreed absolutely. We should get married; by making a public commitment to stay together for the rest of our lives, we would be taking the first step towards establishing a secure home for our future babies.

[…]After six months as man and wife, there had been no mention from Anthony of children. So one day, as we walked home from town, I broached the subject again.

‘We can’t afford to have children,’ he responded sharply and, rather than discuss the topic further, he marched off ahead of me.

[…]This was not the life I had planned for myself: for the first time I started to feel anger towards Anthony. I felt he had forced this situation onto me.

Have no fear, the government was there to give her taxpayer-funded IVF and single mother welfare payments, free day care, free public schools, and free health care. After all, none of this was her fault. It was all that beastly man’s fault. It’s nothing that can’t be solved by taking a little money from the other single men’s pockets, though. After all, if they have less money, that will make them even MORE likely to marry and conceive children. Anthony couldn’t afford to have children, so the solution to that is to tax all the other men so that they can’t afford to have children. Fatherless children impose enormous costs on society as well, most directly through increased crime. But who cares? As long as this woman gets what she wants, right?

And it goes on and on and on, with feminists completely ignorant about how they are causing their own messes with their support for wealth redistribution and their own irresponsible choices with men. He was attractive though. Very attractive. I’m sure her friends were all impressed and envious of her on the wedding day. After all, if a man has a square jaw and enjoys recreational sex, that is a clear sign he is ready for marriage and parenting. Right?