Is the Nuclear Family Dead?

When asking this question, people must understand that cultural institutions are responsive to economic and practical realities, just like the Marxists said. If something no longer makes economic sense, it is quickly retired and made obsolescent in the culture as well. There might be a 50 to 100 year drag on the cultural reformation, but inevitably it will take place.

Human sacrifice was widely practiced so long as people thought it increased rainfall and thus crop yields in their local communities. Once people realized the economy did not improve due to human sacrifice, the cultural tradition ended rather quickly as well. The same for slavery. So long as it made economic sense, people looked the other way. But when it was discovered slavery was less profitable than wage slavery, it was quickly dumped. Not just in the Confederacy, where a war was fought to end it. But worldwide, over a course of a century, including the peaceful retirement of field slavery in Brazil.

So long as something makes a profit, there will be an endless series of rationalizations given for its perpetuation. Once it stops making a profit, there will be fewer and fewer defenders of the cultural practice, until it is quietly phased out. It's obvious that people's moral scruples over slavery do not intrude into fields where it still makes economic sense -- like prostitution. Millions of slaves all over the world, many of them white, are being bought and sold as slaves and stripped of all freedoms by their handlers, and the police largely look the other way, and public outrage is always kept at a minimum. Occasionally these organized gangs will be arrested or some journalist expose will save a prostitute here or there, but it's obvious we could be more serious about ending slavery if we wanted to be. For instance, we could increase the penalty for human trafficking to the death penalty. We could devote more police resources to catching prostitutes and their pimps. We could deploy police on the streets where prostitutes attempt to solicit their business and lock them up, making it economically impossible for the business to be carried out. We could pass sanctions on well known hubs of human trafficking and boycott their entire nation's businesses until they cracked down on their slavers. If I were given complete dictatorial power and a mandate to end the enslavement of white prostitutes, I could do so within the year.

The reason these sorts of solutions aren't done, is too many people prefer the status quo. The government is paid bribes, or feels it's too costly to stop the gangs. The gangs profit, and the public, where as many as 30% of men hire a prostitute at some point in their lives, wants access to these women. Other women might support it as a financial backstop and a way to make money or avoid unemployment when times are rough. For the few innocent women told they were moving to a foreign country to become waitresses or some-such, then raped, drugged, and controlled for the next ten years in the most degrading lifestyle imaginable, no one could give a damn. The economics of prostitution are still too profitable to get morally outraged about the suffering of the innocents involved.

However, just you wait. Once 'robo-girl' has been invented, and men can satisfy their sexual desires freely without the use of a no doubt STD infected prostitute, the economics of prostitution will collapse. With the gangs making less money, they'll have less ability to bribe the police, and fewer women will be interested in selling themselves, since the money is so bad. All of a sudden, people will realize prostitution slavery is a crime against humanity and must be uprooted from the entire face of the earth, the women liberated and the gangs executed as a public example of barbarism's intolerability. Cynical? I don't think so. Too many such moral crusades occurred only after the economy already wanted to get rid of the institution, for me to think it would occur any differently this time.

This leads naturally into the bigger question, whence Marriage? Currently the west has a stratified model. Right now, the lower classes don't marry, or marry and then divorce regularly, in a constant fizz of mental drama. One can even guess they tend to enjoy the roller coaster of emotions, they indulge in it so often, with so many partners. For them, marriage means nothing, nor does the culture condemn them or even seek to alter their ways. For the upper class, however, marriage is still a permanent, for life promise that tends to succeed through thick and thin, giving a happy home for their children who are all of the same father. It's a rather strange double life that yields statistics like 'half of marriages end up in divorce.' What this really means, though, is something like this: '1/4 of upper class marriages end in divorce and 3/4 of lower class marriages end in divorce, to a grand total of 1/2 of marriages ending in divorce.'

What has caused this cultural split? Divorce was practically non-existent in any social class in the 1800's or before then. So what changed in the lower class? Are we to believe they suddenly became innately less moral than their ancestors? Nonsense. Everything happens for a reason.

Basically, marriage stopped making economic sense for the lower class. Single women with children are given lavish benefits, precisely because they are single mothers with children. You are required to not be married to receive these fat government pay checks. Whether it is direct welfare, or the earned income tax credit (which increases dramatically if you have children), or medicaid (free health care so long as you're a single mother with a child), or some sort of head start daycare program, it all adds up. One study just showed that in the UK, a single mother with a couple of children can make as much money working 16 hours a week, than a married couple with children working 116 hours a week. (http://centurean2.wordpress.com/2009/06/08/work-16-hours-a-week-get-487-what-am-i-they-work-116-hours-a-week-on-min-wage-to-get-the-same-who-are-they/)What kind of idiot would bother to marry in that case? When marriage stopped making economic sense, it was soon retired culturally in the lower classes as well. Behavior follows the money. Whatever airs people put on about morality, essentially all they care about is money, and they'll do what it takes to get it. Our most powerful God is our stomach, not that fussy guy with the 10 commandments. Our stomach divinely intervenes on our behavior every single day. God is a no-show no matter how long you pray for him.

It isn't just public benefits though. Even if all public benefits to unmarried mothers were cut (a salutary act to be sure), Marriage would still make little sense in today's world. Women are capable of making enough money for themselves and their children independent of any man's help. Since education is the largest single predictor of income, and women are better at passing through the education system, (most college goers are women, for instance, and women get higher grades throughout the school system.) women are now better situated to make money than men. The fact that they don't has more to do with their lifestyle choices than their opportunities. In fact, the entire economic system is biased against men, who have higher IQ's than women but perform poorly in the stifling atmosphere of makework-conformism-academia and thus always fail out. When given an actual problem and allowed to work on it in their own way, the men will always outperform their female counterparts, but this kind of merit based system was eliminated when IQ tests were banned for hiring practices and only education certificates allowed. A coup by women against men? Or by minorities against whites? Who can even tell the difference anymore, since they're always in on it together?

Given that women can make plenty of money on their own, why should they settle for any particular man just because he's a loyal provider anymore? Suppose a woman is comfortably wealthy, a teacher or a nurse or a middle manager or something. A man proposes to her who makes less money than her, saying he will always love and cherish her, and chip in with all he can to help pay for a house and home and kids. Whupdee do. Who wants to be loved and cherished by a loser? A girl only wants the love of a man far superior to herself, that's what thrills her and keeps her up at night, pulse racing. The love of ugly, poor, or stupid guys is a dime a dozen and will probably be reported as sexual harassment to the nearest cop. For such a woman, it would be far better to attempt to hook up with alpha males for one night stands or short relationships until she's pregnant with a 'real man's' child, then raise it up herself and pay for it out of her own pocket. Genetically speaking, it simply results in more impressive kids than any compromising can manage. It's a new type of polygamy, where the man doesn't even provide for all his 'wives.' They provide for themselves, and the man just goes on to the next willing besotted fangirl.

Of course, this is further complicated by the fact of child support. Since men have to pay child support whether they are married or not, women get no increased funding from being married to the father of their child, than not being married. It's all one to them if you live in the house or across the country, so long as the check appears on time. And if some rich man is foolish enough to marry a woman, she can make a handsome sum by divorcing him the first fight or moment of pique comes around, taking half of everything he owns with her. Divorce is more profitable than ever due to ancient outdated laws that assumed divorce was rare and child support rarely used as a replacement for fatherhood. The laws stay on the books due to bureaucratic momentum and no doubt feminist lobbying, and thus men more and more avoid marriage like the plague.

What's left of marriage among the lower classes can probably be seen as the tail end of a dying culture, some old holdouts who haven't realized time has passed them by. Maybe they are deeply religious, or were brought up properly by their parents, or truly love their spouse. Who knows, but like the institution of slavery, we can see even holdouts like Brazil giving in eventually. Their number is up. It would take an entirely different set of laws and economic realities before marriage was ever restored to the lower half of the population as a serious enterprise.

What's more curious then, is the fate of marriage among the upper class. Why do we see marriage succeeding here when it's so obviously disadvantageous among the lower class? Well, let's look at the reasons the lower class don't marry:

A) Welfare makes more money than married couples working -- This of course isn't true among the upper classes. They make far more money by working than going on welfare. Therefore all the public incentives to not marry do not apply to them, their salaries are too high. For them, marriage does not cost public benefits -- they wouldn't have qualified for them anyway.

B) A woman would do better to snag an alpha male for a short time than settle on a beta -- Of course this is rendered moot when the choice is 'an alpha male for a short time or an alpha male for life.' Women are quite happy to marry and settle down with a real prize of a man. A lifetime commitment from a genetically superior man full of wealth and prestige can't be beat, so why rock the boat by divorcing such a catch?

C) Child support and divorce provide lots of money -- But they don't need the money, they're rich already. Thus the side benefits of a father in the home, someone to share your happiness and sadness with, someone who can look after the kids and be there for you, all come to the fore. Yet again, rich people are 'priced out' of the benefits of child support. A woman who loses an alpha male's love and support is unlikely to be consoled by some lowly 1,000 dollar check in the mail or what have you.

The 'pull' factors of divorce are thus gone. Combine this with the 'push' factors that are lacking among the upper classes: There is unlikely to be any domestic violence among high IQ people, who can control their emotions. Likewise, there is unlikely to be any adultery. The partners will generally respect each other and their love will be more genuine, less lustful and more foresighted. They probably took a long time to get to know each other and haven't used lies to get into bed with their partner, and thus the foundation is more stable. All of these push factors that destabilize lower class relationships and make for great drama on the soap operas are thus missing.

Does this mean the upper class is totally immune to the breakup of the nuclear family? I don't think so. Obviously, divorce even for the upper class has soared since the 1800's. It's at an 'epidemic' level from the past's point of view, even though it looks rather spiffy compared to the lower classes of today. The problem is, even for the upper class, the same economic reality occurs: A woman can take of herself and her kids just fine now. If another man takes a woman's fancy, or her current husband somehow offends her, the woman is quite willing to pull the plug. Compare this to the past where a woman and her kids would simply die if left unsupported by her husband. The economic reality of the past kept marriages together, it really was a matter of life and death. Now, marriages are based on feelings, with no real drawback if they end. Sure, the woman might feel bad, but she will survive, and so will her kids. They'll grow up and reproduce themselves, so genetically there's no negative feedback for her decisions. My guess is anyone among the upper class with a bad personality, whether male or female, will eventually end up divorcing. People will have no patience for their partner and will not forgive their transgressions, because there's really no reason to do so anymore. Out of this maelstrom, only the most hardened granite core of married couples will survive. Rich people who get along fabulously with each other who believe in marriage and children as a noble goal -- will probably survive. Of course, if economic realities changed once more, for instance if a law were passed saying married couples had to pay 100,000 dollars extra in taxes each year, or people are obligated by law to switch spouses every five years -- you can bet the cultural tradition of monogamous nuclear families will come to an end. But for the people lucky enough to have a winning personality, a fat wallet and a prestigious profession, you can probably breathe a sigh of relief.

Birth rates should reflect this fallout similarly: The poor should have tons of kids because it actually makes them money for each kid they have, due to all the public benefits they start to qualify for. Their fertility is basically unlimited even if they are penniless, and all the children will survive to adulthood and have kids themselves. The middle class, however, will have severely choked birth rates. This is because they don't qualify for any public benefits, and they don't wish to slip into poverty or for their kids to slip into poverty. Due to a crushing tax burden, a complete lack of tax benefits, job insecurity due to increased cheap labor competition, and marital insecurity due to constant worry your wife will dump you for a better prospect, children will always sound like a dicey choice. Simply affording a decent home with a decent school (remember, school is the absolute determining factor for the future income of your kids), away from the lower class with their bad schools and crime, people must go into massive debt. The lower class is then subsidized by the 'community reinvestment act,' 'section 8 housing,' and assorted liberal schemes, which means the middle class must earn even more money and go even further into debt, to escape their neighborhood's 'enrichment.' Once people are that massively in debt, it is hard to have children. The student loans necessary to get through college, a complete waste of time and money and yet necessary to get a good job (since IQ tests are banned and apprenticeships are non-existent), the housing loans needed to escape the subsidized lower class, all add up to some horrendous interest payment that keeps you poor forever, no matter how high your income is (before taxes take most of it away from you before you see a dime.) Even doctors can be left with too little money to afford children in our brave new economy!

The upper class's birth rates should not suffer, however. Since they can support any number of children handsomely and tend to be the creditors, not the debtors, of the society, they can go through all the hoops of finding a 99% white neighborhood, paying for Yale certification, using tax lawyers to avoid almost any taxes on their mostly wealth, not income based fortunes, and still have high fertility. Interestingly, this doesn't seem to play out. Rich people apparently have so much fun being single they can't bother to burden themselves with children. The men tend to be more interested in work than family chores, and the women are either also more interested in work, or are addicted to status competitions like social gatherings, charity balls and who knows what. If they do have kids, they're probably adopted from Africa as a status upper, instead of naturally born from their plastic surgeon-induced bodies. Well, it's pretty obvious I hate the rich and why shouldn't I, since they're responsible for everything that is happening to this country and in fact the world? I hate them and I hate the phony morality they live by and force on the rest of us through economic incentives and laws. Bill Gates made a nifty program and helped develop the personal computer, which has transformed the world. But what does he do with his wealth? He lobbies for more H1-B Indian immigrants to come work for his companies for cheaper labor than his fellow whites. He donates billions to fight malaria in Africa, a country where 1/4 of the black males in South Africa admitted to being rapists, where the country's population is set to triple even though they cannot feed themselves with the population they already have. A continent of subhuman scum who are destroying the planet and raping and killing the last few whites who live there, before invading the Americas and Europe -- and there is Bill Gates offering them a helping hand. How can I not hate the rich? For every dime they make doing honest and useful work that really does improve the world, they do a dollar's worth of damage donating money to Africa, or the Democratic party campaign, or calling for more legal immigration. And it's not even a given they are doing honest, useful work. In fact, it's my deeply held suspicion that most of the business in this entire country is essentially fraudulent and phony. A subject for another time, though!

The result due to these differing birth rates is massive worldwide dysgenics. According to Lynn, (following a prestigious line of scientists worried about the issue all the way back to Darwin), dysgenics is occurring worldwide as stupid people continuously have more children than intelligent people. Not only this, but people with mental and physical illnesses are not being weeded out of the gene pool, even criminals tend to have more children than law-abiding people. Dysgenics is physically reducing the morality of our people, as well as our health and intelligence. The burden will not be bearable for much longer. As the economy continues to collapse, due to a lack of good people to support all the parasites, a societal collapse is predetermined. The cost of these senseless economic patterns that ruined the nuclear family and ruined middle class affordable family formation will come back to bite us in the drooling, violent, psychopathic and mentally retarded generations to come. Just imagine a giant sea of teenagers and 20-somethings with backwards baseball caps, tattoos, heroin-busted veins, and alcoholism in a sea of constantly changing sexual relationships and no job prospects, and there's our future --

Oh wait that's already our present -- Just read Theodore Dalrymple's 'Life at the Bottom.' Thanks, liberals. Thanks, conservatives who dodged the IQ issue. Thanks, capitalists who put all the middle class into debt. Thanks, women who wanted to 'break down the male patriarchy.' You all deserve a giant prize for the amazing future you've coordinated to achieve for the 21st century. A rope and a lamppost, perhaps color-coded to match the crime, for each and every one of you. :).

The solution is obvious, a series of economic and societal incentives that help out middle class birth rates, instead of lower class birth rates. A complete stripping of any incentive for the lower class to have children, if not an outright ban. A revisiting of any law that is helping to tear apart families, and the introduction of new laws that help to keep them together. A scientific endeavor to match qualified people to useful jobs, instead of the education industry which is a giant scam from top to bottom. The solution is always obvious, but before it can be implemented, drastic steps must be taken. So the question will always be -- how bad will it have to get, before the necessary fanaticism occurs within the necessary threshold of people? We'll find out soon, probably within the century. Things are going to get worse, and worse, and worse. If fanaticism is ever going to occur, the conditions for it could not be better. Let's all hope and pray.

And meanwhile, if it's at all possible, let's all marry and have children ourselves.