Social Change in the West: Children, Families, and More

[Will_V]

However, in the Western world, sex has been much more effectively divorced from reproduction. Many people do not even want to reproduce at all. Instead, sex becomes more of a purely hedonistic affair, and the fact is if you don't need her for reproduction, and you do want to maximize your pleasure, an experienced older woman is going to be a more desirable option than a younger one.

I'm curious to know if you think the reason a lot of people don't want to reproduce these days is out of self-centredness (i.e. I just want to enjoy myself), or low self-worth, or both? Or is it something else?

My theory is that the basis is mostly pathological lack of self-worth. The women I've met/know who have said they aren't interested in having babies are almost invariably unhappy and fixated on some social ill or other (which, in my opinion, very often follows from having low self-esteem). And talking to them it's not hard to get them agreeing or at least visibly reacting to concepts around the idea of babies and family, so it seems like something they've overridden rather than part of their nature.

Similarly, I think guys who are not interested in reproducing are also quite unhappy and consequently have a very insular and perhaps pathologically disfunctional perspective, a victim mindset that produces violent disavowal of everything about and around reproduction and family. So I wonder if this is basically a sort of 'self-judgement' from within (nature's way of steering the unfit away from reproduction perhaps?).

The other perspective is that wealth and general wellbeing predispose people toward not having kids, which is no doubt true in a relative sense (focusing on a few high-quality ones rather than spamming), but doesn't make sense at all at the extreme end i.e. not interested in reproducing. Considering that nature's highest imperative is reproduction, the idea that being happy and satisfied tends toward not reproducing seems utterly illogical.

I know that this is slightly off-topic, but I've come to notice that older women in my relatives and social circles are really lost when it comes to what to do about their reproductive capability, they'll usually be either depressive or mildly anxious, and keenly interested in pets or, if they'll have kids, they talk about adopting but (obviously denial) it's not because they couldn't give birth it's because the kids they want to adopt need them. Extrapolating from my admittedly small sample size, this seems like it is at epidemic proportions.

I wonder if the thing of older women and younger guys might also be on the rise in response to this problem, as a sort of 'adoption' scenario where these older women get to 'take care' of these guys and in return get banged.

Anyway, again it's a bit offtopic but maybe some ideas there, I think an article would be great, especially more of a theoretical one that weaves together a lot of indirect related factors. For me personally, these type of articles of yours are always the best

 

[Chase]

@Will_V,

I'm curious to know if you think the reason a lot of people don't want to reproduce these days is out of self-centredness (i.e. I just want to enjoy myself), or low self-worth, or both? Or is it something else?

My theory is that the basis is mostly pathological lack of self-worth. The women I've met/know who have said they aren't interested in having babies are almost invariably unhappy and fixated on some social ill or other (which, in my opinion, very often follows from having low self-esteem). And talking to them it's not hard to get them agreeing or at least visibly reacting to concepts around the idea of babies and family, so it seems like something they've overridden rather than part of their nature.

Similarly, I think guys who are not interested in reproducing are also quite unhappy and consequently have a very insular and perhaps pathologically disfunctional perspective, a victim mindset that produces violent disavowal of everything about and around reproduction and family. So I wonder if this is basically a sort of 'self-judgement' from within (nature's way of steering the unfit away from reproduction perhaps?).

The other perspective is that wealth and general wellbeing predispose people toward not having kids, which is no doubt true in a relative sense (focusing on a few high-quality ones rather than spamming), but doesn't make sense at all at the extreme end i.e. not interested in reproducing. Considering that nature's highest imperative is reproduction, the idea that being happy and satisfied tends toward not reproducing seems utterly illogical.

I know that this is slightly off-topic, but I've come to notice that older women in my relatives and social circles are really lost when it comes to what to do about their reproductive capability, they'll usually be either depressive or mildly anxious, and keenly interested in pets or, if they'll have kids, they talk about adopting but (obviously denial) it's not because they couldn't give birth it's because the kids they want to adopt need them. Extrapolating from my admittedly small sample size, this seems like it is at epidemic proportions.

I wonder if the thing of older women and younger guys might also be on the rise in response to this problem, as a sort of 'adoption' scenario where these older women get to 'take care' of these guys and in return get banged.

Anyway, again it's a bit offtopic but maybe some ideas there, I think an article would be great, especially more of a theoretical one that weaves together a lot of indirect related factors. For me personally, these type of articles of yours are always the best

Those are all interesting thoughts.

There's probably a self-worth factor in there. I think the biggest trigger for it is economics.

If you read enough history, you see this problem repeatedly in advanced societies. The people stop reproducing, and the leaders do all sorts of things to try to ramp up reproduction again, usually to no avail. Even offering huge tax incentives rarely works.

Mainstream society in general is heavily socialized against families. All kinds of alternative lifestyles and alternative sexualities are lauded. TV and magazines talk about how great it is to be free and not deal with the burden of children. Climate change people talk about children being morally bad, because they are bad for the environment; anti-natalists talk about children being bad because in their opinion being a life is net suffering, so creating life is net morally bad... not as many people are directly aware of anti-natalism, but it is a common sentiment you hear from people who don't want children: "I don't know how I'd feel about bringing a child into the world."

I've had some conversations with friends about this, and the conclusion we've come to is that people will reproduce heavily even in poor economic situations that are stable (thus the explosive fecundity of Africa, or in our own societies of yesteryear), and they will reproduce heavily in economic situations that are improving. However, as the economy shrinks, people curtail their reproduction.

Here's a fascinating graph:

(from here)

Even among the people who do reproduce, they're having far fewer children.

Looking at that graph, it doesn't actually seem like the number of childless women is growing. According to this 2018 Pew study, women have actually started reproducing more, albeit at a more advanced age.

Of course, that's just compared to recent decades. Here's what it looks like going back a bit farther:

(so childlessness has doubled since the 1970s. I can't find clear statistics on what it was like earlier than that)

Anyway, there's a whole Wikipedia article on the theories behind demographic transition here:

Demographic transition - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

But personally, it seems to me the factors are:

• In extreme poverty, mothers produce many children because children are a crapshoot. Most will probably remain in extreme poverty. But perhaps one will strike it lucky, find his way to wealth and success, and share that with the family, or at least increase the family's odds of passing on its genes in a more stable position
  
  
• In agriculture societies, mothers produce many children because children are useful. A 2-year-old can gather eggs from the chicken coop, for instance. I had a girlfriend who grew up a poor farmer in an agricultural society (but later went on to be a banker with a master's degree) and as a small child her family used to have her move the family bull from pasture to pasture. Pretty dangerous, and the bull charged her and knocked her over once, but farmers need children to help with all the tasks on the family farm.
  
  
• In an early industrial society, children can still work, e.g., in textile factories, sweatshops, etc. So families still produce more of them
  
  
• Yet in more advanced societies, child labor becomes outlawed, and there is less and less children can actually do to help the family, and instead children shift over to having to study for longer and longer periods of time before they are able to start offsetting the cost of their care, rearing, and schooling. So people shift over to having fewer and fewer children, and investing more heavily in the rearing and education of the few they do have

Then when you have situations where there is economic decline, or chaos, or uncertainty, you have people self-selecting out of the gene pool by voluntarily not reproducing. Of the folks I know who've gone this route, they've pretty much all had things like:

• Depression and anhedonia in one friend's case
  
  
• Bipolar disorder in the case of someone else I knew
  
  
• One friend who got a vasectomy claimed he "wasn't good-looking enough to pass on my genes", but later after it became clear his sister also wasn't going to reproduce, and his parents would have no grandchildren, and he'd started living outside the West, he began saying he thought he'd been influenced by Western anti-family propaganda and started toying with the idea of reversing his vasectomy (hasn't made his mind up on that, but it's something he's been weighing)

If you skim the "childfree" Reddit board, it's clear these people are really, really angry. Half the board at any given time is just rants:

Childfree • r/childfree

**Discussion topics and links of interest to childfree individuals. ["Childfree" refers to those who do not have and do not ever want children...

old.reddit.com

They use demeaning terminology to talk about people who have children ("breeders" -- imagine if "breeders" had derogatory terms for them... I don't even know what that would be and don't want to bother speculating on something, but imagine how pissed off they'd be).

Then after all the angry ranting and labeling they talk about how happy they are to not have to deal with a little snot-nosed kid.

So there does seem to me to be some vein of cynicism / self-loathing among some of the permanently childless. But some of them I also think are genuinely just people who are totally full-on into hedonism, and others are simply ordinary people who have no real reproductive drive.

There's an interesting thought piece here on how human courtship previously may not have needed to select for a strong reproductive drive -- basically that historically, even if you didn't want to have babies, especially if you were a woman, you were probably going to have them anyway:

Evolution of the 'childfree' culture

In the middle of the last century, Pulitzer Prize winning American author Phyllis McGinley (1956) wrote: “Women are the fulfilled sex....

www.musingsone.com

The end result being that women without a reproductive drive ended up passing on the genes predisposing them to not need to / want to reproduce, because they simply didn't really have the option not to.

If you look at that childfree Reddit board, it is mostly women, venting and angry over not being accepted as non-reproductive females, offended that they aren't being valued for their unique personalities and contributions to Fortune 500 companies' HR departments.

All that said, again, this is a normal historical process you see, where in advanced nations, once the economy has stopped rocketing upward and begun to stagnate, then backslide, the reproduction rate stalls, then falls. Many people fail to produce issue, and those who do have only 1 or 2 children. It seems to me you either need economic progress, or you need a civilization in which children are either lottery tickets or they are very quickly able to start paying their way (i.e., by helping at the family farm, or in a sweatshop) for high birth rates and low childlessness rates.

Two other items I've discussed with friends:

• There is a lack of space in cities, which makes having and rearing children much more difficult. Imagine a couple just scraping by with their corporate jobs, living in a tiny studio in the big city, spending all their money on rent, hoping to move up in their careers, but of course a company is a pyramid shape, and for every worker who moves up, many more will be stuck down below. At what point will this couple feel like they can have children? Ever?
  
  
• There is a lack of family support in cities. Following the Grandmother Hypothesis, the reason human females evolved menopause was so that older women could shift their focus over from rearing their own children to helping their children raise their grandchildren. Everyone in cities (for the most part) is isolated, atomized, and alone. There is none of this family support there. Grandparents are far away, and often busy with their own lives, many still working to pay the rent, or otherwise engaged. Contrast that to the countryside, or even suburbs, where grandparents can be much more actively involved, as can other members of the family, and the pace of life is slower

All this seems to feed into it.

If I had to sum up/simplify:

1. In advanced societies, children aren't able to immediately contribute (like the 2-year-old collecting eggs on the family farm) and the odds of them striking it big (i.e., "lottery ticket children") are a lot lower than the odds they can claw their way up to a halfway decent midrange station in life with enough parental investment. So people who have children shift over to having few children whom they invest a lot into
   
   
2. In feminist societies, women are liberated from social pressures and social norms, which leads to women without a strong reproductive drive being able to choose not to reproduce a whole lot more. Some of these women may eventually end up with a guy who cajoles them into producing 1 or 2 children, but many can totally resist this; others may even self-sterilize. All this leads to a depression of the birthrate and an increase in childless women and couples
   
   
3. With economic constriction, reduced space for families, and atomization / the collapse of familial support networks, people are much more on their own, with far less support for raising children, and may simply decide it is just too hard to even do in the first place. This is theoretically more likely in people with a lot of baggage, personality disorders, or other issues, who are a.) too busy dealing with their own stuff, and b.) possibly making an internal calculus like that proposed for suicides (i.e., "it's better off for my kin if I do not reproduce, thereby freeing up resources for my better adapted kin to reproduce instead")
   
   
4. Some men, like some women, have zero reproductive drive, and obviously it is also easier than ever for them to eschew marriage and/or children in societies that are atomized, where there is no family around to pressure them into marriage and society largely won't notice or care if they fail to reproduce
   
   
5. There's also of course all the media propaganda... glorification of how refreshing and burden-free it is to be childless; glorification of various non-reproductive relationships (gay, transsexual, FWB for busy career people who "have no time for relationships", etc.); portraying of reproduction as morally irresponsible ("carbon footprint"; "can't bring a child into a world like this"; etc.). But I actually think this is the smallest element, if perhaps also the most visible, simply because it is everywhere. Obviously, media propaganda is very powerful, but in my estimation the biggest effect it has is in giving those who are already leaning this direction an excuse (i.e., just parrot what you heard on the tube). I don't think it is changing many made-up minds, and I'm skeptical how many on-the-fence people it can convince long-term. You can definitely push someone this direction or that short-term with propaganda. Can you get that person to stick to it for 20 or 30 years, and make permanent decisions (like self-sterilization) he wouldn't otherwise have made without it? In some people, sure, but in the vast majority... I'm skeptical.

But those are my thoughts!

Chase

 

[Will_V]

@Will_V,



Those are all interesting thoughts.

There's probably a self-worth factor in there. I think the biggest trigger for it is economics.

If you read enough history, you see this problem repeatedly in advanced societies. The people stop reproducing, and the leaders do all sorts of things to try to ramp up reproduction again, usually to no avail. Even offering huge tax incentives rarely works.

Mainstream society in general is heavily socialized against families. All kinds of alternative lifestyles and alternative sexualities are lauded. TV and magazines talk about how great it is to be free and not deal with the burden of children. Climate change people talk about children being morally bad, because they are bad for the environment; anti-natalists talk about children being bad because in their opinion being a life is net suffering, so creating life is net morally bad... not as many people are directly aware of anti-natalism, but it is a common sentiment you hear from people who don't want children: "I don't know how I'd feel about bringing a child into the world."

I've had some conversations with friends about this, and the conclusion we've come to is that people will reproduce heavily even in poor economic situations that are stable (thus the explosive fecundity of Africa, or in our own societies of yesteryear), and they will reproduce heavily in economic situations that are improving. However, as the economy shrinks, people curtail their reproduction.

Here's a fascinating graph:

(from here)

Even among the people who do reproduce, they're having far fewer children.

Looking at that graph, it doesn't actually seem like the number of childless women is growing. According to this 2018 Pew study, women have actually started reproducing more, albeit at a more advanced age.

Of course, that's just compared to recent decades. Here's what it looks like going back a bit farther:

(so childlessness has doubled since the 1970s. I can't find clear statistics on what it was like earlier than that)

Anyway, there's a whole Wikipedia article on the theories behind demographic transition here:

Demographic transition - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

But personally, it seems to me the factors are:

• In extreme poverty, mothers produce many children because children are a crapshoot. Most will probably remain in extreme poverty. But perhaps one will strike it lucky, find his way to wealth and success, and share that with the family, or at least increase the family's odds of passing on its genes in a more stable position
  
  
• In agriculture societies, mothers produce many children because children are useful. A 2-year-old can gather eggs from the chicken coop, for instance. I had a girlfriend who grew up a poor farmer in an agricultural society (but later went on to be a banker with a master's degree) and as a small child her family used to have her move the family bull from pasture to pasture. Pretty dangerous, and the bull charged her and knocked her over once, but farmers need children to help with all the tasks on the family farm.
  
  
• In an early industrial society, children can still work, e.g., in textile factories, sweatshops, etc. So families still produce more of them
  
  
• Yet in more advanced societies, child labor becomes outlawed, and there is less and less children can actually do to help the family, and instead children shift over to having to study for longer and longer periods of time before they are able to start offsetting the cost of their care, rearing, and schooling. So people shift over to having fewer and fewer children, and investing more heavily in the rearing and education of the few they do have

Then when you have situations where there is economic decline, or chaos, or uncertainty, you have people self-selecting out of the gene pool by voluntarily not reproducing. Of the folks I know who've gone this route, they've pretty much all had things like:

• Depression and anhedonia in one friend's case
  
  
• Bipolar disorder in the case of someone else I knew
  
  
• One friend who got a vasectomy claimed he "wasn't good-looking enough to pass on my genes", but later after it became clear his sister also wasn't going to reproduce, and his parents would have no grandchildren, and he'd started living outside the West, he began saying he thought he'd been influenced by Western anti-family propaganda and started toying with the idea of reversing his vasectomy (hasn't made his mind up on that, but it's something he's been weighing)

If you skim the "childfree" Reddit board, it's clear these people are really, really angry. Half the board at any given time is just rants:

Childfree • r/childfree

**Discussion topics and links of interest to childfree individuals. ["Childfree" refers to those who do not have and do not ever want children...

old.reddit.com

They use demeaning terminology to talk about people who have children ("breeders" -- imagine if "breeders" had derogatory terms for them... I don't even know what that would be and don't want to bother speculating on something, but imagine how pissed off they'd be).

Then after all the angry ranting and labeling they talk about how happy they are to not have to deal with a little snot-nosed kid.

So there does seem to me to be some vein of cynicism / self-loathing among some of the permanently childless. But some of them I also think are genuinely just people who are totally full-on into hedonism, and others are simply ordinary people who have no real reproductive drive.

There's an interesting thought piece here on how human courtship previously may not have needed to select for a strong reproductive drive -- basically that historically, even if you didn't want to have babies, especially if you were a woman, you were probably going to have them anyway:

Evolution of the 'childfree' culture

In the middle of the last century, Pulitzer Prize winning American author Phyllis McGinley (1956) wrote: “Women are the fulfilled sex....

www.musingsone.com

The end result being that women without a reproductive drive ended up passing on the genes predisposing them to not need to / want to reproduce, because they simply didn't really have the option not to.

If you look at that childfree Reddit board, it is mostly women, venting and angry over not being accepted as non-reproductive females, offended that they aren't being valued for their unique personalities and contributions to Fortune 500 companies' HR departments.

All that said, again, this is a normal historical process you see, where in advanced nations, once the economy has stopped rocketing upward and begun to stagnate, then backslide, the reproduction rate stalls, then falls. Many people fail to produce issue, and those who do have only 1 or 2 children. It seems to me you either need economic progress, or you need a civilization in which children are either lottery tickets or they are very quickly able to start paying their way (i.e., by helping at the family farm, or in a sweatshop) for high birth rates and low childlessness rates.

Two other items I've discussed with friends:

• There is a lack of space in cities, which makes having and rearing children much more difficult. Imagine a couple just scraping by with their corporate jobs, living in a tiny studio in the big city, spending all their money on rent, hoping to move up in their careers, but of course a company is a pyramid shape, and for every worker who moves up, many more will be stuck down below. At what point will this couple feel like they can have children? Ever?
  
  
• There is a lack of family support in cities. Following the Grandmother Hypothesis, the reason human females evolved menopause was so that older women could shift their focus over from rearing their own children to helping their children raise their grandchildren. Everyone in cities (for the most part) is isolated, atomized, and alone. There is none of this family support there. Grandparents are far away, and often busy with their own lives, many still working to pay the rent, or otherwise engaged. Contrast that to the countryside, or even suburbs, where grandparents can be much more actively involved, as can other members of the family, and the pace of life is slower

All this seems to feed into it.

If I had to sum up/simplify:

1. In advanced societies, children aren't able to immediately contribute (like the 2-year-old collecting eggs on the family farm) and the odds of them striking it big (i.e., "lottery ticket children") are a lot lower than the odds they can claw their way up to a halfway decent midrange station in life with enough parental investment. So people who have children shift over to having few children whom they invest a lot into
   
   
2. In feminist societies, women are liberated from social pressures and social norms, which leads to women without a strong reproductive drive being able to choose not to reproduce a whole lot more. Some of these women may eventually end up with a guy who cajoles them into producing 1 or 2 children, but many can totally resist this; others may even self-sterilize. All this leads to a depression of the birthrate and an increase in childless women and couples
   
   
3. With economic constriction, reduced space for families, and atomization / the collapse of familial support networks, people are much more on their own, with far less support for raising children, and may simply decide it is just too hard to even do in the first place. This is theoretically more likely in people with a lot of baggage, personality disorders, or other issues, who are a.) too busy dealing with their own stuff, and b.) possibly making an internal calculus like that proposed for suicides (i.e., "it's better off for my kin if I do not reproduce, thereby freeing up resources for my better adapted kin to reproduce instead")
   
   
4. Some men, like some women, have zero reproductive drive, and obviously it is also easier than ever for them to eschew marriage and/or children in societies that are atomized, where there is no family around to pressure them into marriage and society largely won't notice or care if they fail to reproduce
   
   
5. There's also of course all the media propaganda... glorification of how refreshing and burden-free it is to be childless; glorification of various non-reproductive relationships (gay, transsexual, FWB for busy career people who "have no time for relationships", etc.); portraying of reproduction as morally irresponsible ("carbon footprint"; "can't bring a child into a world like this"; etc.). But I actually think this is the smallest element, if perhaps also the most visible, simply because it is everywhere. Obviously, media propaganda is very powerful, but in my estimation the biggest effect it has is in giving those who are already leaning this direction an excuse (i.e., just parrot what you heard on the tube). I don't think it is changing many made-up minds, and I'm skeptical how many on-the-fence people it can convince long-term. You can definitely push someone this direction or that short-term with propaganda. Can you get that person to stick to it for 20 or 30 years, and make permanent decisions (like self-sterilization) he wouldn't otherwise have made without it? In some people, sure, but in the vast majority... I'm skeptical.

But those are my thoughts!

Chase

Thanks for the detailed response! And as always, plenty of eye opening facts in there.

Very interesting that more women are reproducing later in life these days, I wonder if it has to do with the panic of realizing the lay of the land shortly beforehand, or whether they are having more divorces/short term relationships and wanting to tie down each man with some of his own genes, or what.

I'm also intrigued by the idea that many women have low reproductive drives, but never had a choice in times past. If this is merely a lack of natural pressure to weed this out, it's still dangerous in my opinion because of how quickly that choice has shifted. I consider this type of thing - where nature develops people along particular lines (using their environment) and then civilization comes along and puts people in a completely different, unfamiliar environment over a very short span of time - to be probably the most fundamental problem that civilization faces in the long term.

I definitely understand the concept of having fewer babies in wealthy societies, due to the lower risks they face and the higher investment required to lift them to the top of such a society. The graph you showed about the number of children in a woman's household over time seems to reflect that very clearly.

It doesn't seem to me however that this has much to do with what bridges the gap between people who want few children, and people who want none at all. And some of your other points have given me an interesting idea: perhaps the pyramidal, competitive structure of advanced modern societies produces a substitute internal mental model for people when calculating their own reproductive 'quality'. In which case you might see people who are physically capable of reproducing, and who could fairly consistently find a reproductive partner, and who have the means to create and support a family, but who cannot fit themselves inside the mental model of what constitutes reasonable 'reproductive quality'.

What you said about your friend who got a vasectomy is interesting because he basically self-selected in one direction or the other based on the environment he was in - nothing particularly changed about himself. The modus operandi of a male in poorer societies, from my perspective, is much more of a 'scrapper', someone who does not expect anything except an everyday challenge, yet (often) accepts this challenge at a very basic masculine level. Whereas western societies are more subtly judgemental and confusing, and have much more powerful social constructs to regulate people's sense of self worth. Perhaps part of the reason your friend had a shift in perspective is because he realized more about his 'primordial' role as a male - one where your lot is simply to fight until nature decides it's over.

To extend a bit on this theory about substitute mental models, the lack of space you mentioned in modern cities, and related aspects of city design, may produce a sense of pressure that could lower someone's estimation of their self-worth and reproductive quality even when they are relatively wealthy and well to do. For example, the relationship between the architecture of the cities they live in and people's self-image seems to have been well studied in the 50s and 60s, where architecture was intentionally designed to make people feel like cogs in a machine rather than to celebrate the fundamental aspects of human nature (I watched a lot of Sir Roger Scruton's stuff, which I think is extremely fascinating and interesting). There is also the aspect of 'personal space' (or lack thereof!) in modern cities, and the effect on psychology. So even when people are not actually at risk, they could still feel the same pressure as an animal at the bottom of the food chain.

So the point is that if modern societies somehow replace people's natural internal models of self-worth with something artificial, and generally frustrate many of the natural instincts and subconscious indicators of wellbeing that people have, we could be looking at a civilization where someone's internal sense of reproductive quality is quite divorced from what might be considered normal indications of wellbeing, such as living in a safe place, having a good amount of money, and even being able to find reproductive partners. Which is a very unstable situation due to the psychological confusion and dissonance this could bring.

Thanks for your insights!

 

[Regal Tiger]

@Will_V and @Chase

I'm one of those "never gonna have children" people. So just one more person's thoughts to add to the conversation.

But honestly, I've decided I will never have children in the United States or Western World. Like Chase mentioned, the west is just to anti-family and especially anti-father/man that there's no point to it.

I'll have a family for like... 5 years, max and then it'll all get ripped away from me.


To be honest, I've already got abandonment issues and grew up in a single mother household where I essentially had to raise myself.

When I was younger the idea of children kind of disgusted me. I wasn't angry, like the people on that board are, but there was definitely a lot of depression surrounding the idea of children and a family.

Like, I wasn't ever going to be good enough. Especially as a father. Like, how am I supposed to raise a kid if I never knew a good male role model growing up?


Once getting into and actually gaining some skill in pickup/self-improvement I no longer have those depression like thoughts. Instead, I do have anger about the western world in general now for different reasons. But I think I would like a kid because I have a weird feeling it'll be like how I was supposed to be as a kid and we'd get into all kinds of mischief together.

Kind of like a partner in crime lol. So in a way, I'd get to experience the childhood I'd always wanted but never had through it? Not sure... But not in an extreme way like some of those beauty pageant crazies. Just think I'd be a pretty good dad in general nowadays.



So to sum-up, I agree with the ideas that anger and depression play a big role in men, at least not wanting to have children. And of the few women who are in the "never going to have children camp" all but one of them are definitely a part of the feminist cause (so 3/4, not a lot that I've known really well). The one that isn't was an older girl who got her tubes tied. She was very much a free wheeling and dealin' pleasure to the max type person lol.

And there's a bit of that in me as well, I want to maximize my own pleasure while I can. Even when I do get out of the U.S. and decide to have a family it won't be until I'm late thirties. Just a personal belief that I've come to agree with, that men should not have children before the age of 35.
--> this very well could be influenced by the fact that I've felt trapped for most of my life and haven't had a chance to live. Even now I don't feel like I've had a chance to have a life (for reasons that some people will remember).



Anyways, just thought I'd throw in my 2cents as someone who has been in that camp.

 

[Chase]

@Rakkum,

I probably shouldn't be going on about that sort of thing.

That's one of those things there's not really a good way to teach, because it's way too easy for guys to mess it up and really do some damage to the girl. I've taught it to some advanced students, but until a guy is at a certain level it's not really responsible to have him go around doing this with girls.


@Will_V,

Yeah, that seems plausible.

Western society making more people feel ineligible to reproduce I suspect is a real trend. My friend changed his mind once out of the West. You can even see in this thread, Regal Tiger talking about not wanting kids in the U.S.... but maybe once he's out. I think there's a certain amount of recognition among men at this point that power is a lot less in your corner as a husband/father in the West right now, but outside the West a man is freer to engage in these pursuits without being as roped down, corralled, and controlled.

There's another aspect of living outside your society, in that even if your new host society is also subtle or judgmental or what have you, it is not your society; you are an exception to its mores; and you are comparatively a whole lot freer. You're a stranger in a strange land, just passing through.

I've heard a lot of guys who learned Japanese talk about how they didn't realize until after they'd lived in Japan for years how racist the locals were against them, and how much of this stuff people were doing was really passive-aggressive or subtly controlling... it just went right over their heads and they were floating around in heaven, joyous at how nice and polite everyone was. If you're not from there, a lot of the subtle stuff you won't even pick up on unless you really try to go native.


@Regal Tiger,

I can't blame you, you've had some hard knocks.

The single mother background can really disadvantage guys. And then the whole accusation thing. The stuff with your sister... it's been a rough ride.

With your background, I'd expect once you start globe-trotting that'll be an "I'm out and I'm not looking back" sort of deal for you. It'll do you a lot of good, I think.

Yeah, kids are cool. It's definitely a different phase of life. I saw an interesting quote recently, that went something like, "We didn't realize as children, but while our parents were watching us grow up, we were watching them grow up too." Most people still feel like kids when their first kids come along.

And there's a bit of that in me as well, I want to maximize my own pleasure while I can. Even when I do get out of the U.S. and decide to have a family it won't be until I'm late thirties. Just a personal belief that I've come to agree with, that men should not have children before the age of 35.

You shouldn't do it until you're ready, no.

You're a man; you've got the skill to get women on your own reliably; and I assume you're a guy who'll be able to get 20-something women up to and beyond your 40s if need be.

You also probably want to have your career fairly established. It's no fun scrambling to try to get your money flowing with a woman and baby who are totally dependent on you, meanwhile you're living out of a shoebox.

The other thing is, once you start traveling, you are going to find a lot of very wonderful women in your travels, most likely. You'll do well to explore a few different locales before you start thinking about wifing up one of the locals, assuming you go that route.

--> this very well could be influenced by the fact that I've felt trapped for most of my life and haven't had a chance to live. Even now I don't feel like I've had a chance to have a life (for reasons that some people will remember).

Oh yeah.

Well, it's coming up.

Meanwhile: do what you can to get your financial situation ready, so you can hit the road and start your life of adventure.

It's always good to cultivate multiple options. Get a freelancing career running; get an English teaching certificate as a backup; see if you can get some kind of online business going; and sock away whatever savings you can. Gives yourself more runway to experiment.


@Vision,

That's a great post.

Those comments on that video are wild. There are 60-year-old women with LTRs in their early 30s or mid-20s. There's a 69 y/o who was dating a 29 y/o.

Chase

 

[Will_V]

@Will_V and @Chase

I'm one of those "never gonna have children" people. So just one more person's thoughts to add to the conversation.

But honestly, I've decided I will never have children in the United States or Western World. Like Chase mentioned, the west is just to anti-family and especially anti-father/man that there's no point to it.

I'll have a family for like... 5 years, max and then it'll all get ripped away from me.


To be honest, I've already got abandonment issues and grew up in a single mother household where I essentially had to raise myself.

When I was younger the idea of children kind of disgusted me. I wasn't angry, like the people on that board are, but there was definitely a lot of depression surrounding the idea of children and a family.

Like, I wasn't ever going to be good enough. Especially as a father. Like, how am I supposed to raise a kid if I never knew a good male role model growing up?


Once getting into and actually gaining some skill in pickup/self-improvement I no longer have those depression like thoughts. Instead, I do have anger about the western world in general now for different reasons. But I think I would like a kid because I have a weird feeling it'll be like how I was supposed to be as a kid and we'd get into all kinds of mischief together.

Kind of like a partner in crime lol. So in a way, I'd get to experience the childhood I'd always wanted but never had through it? Not sure... But not in an extreme way like some of those beauty pageant crazies. Just think I'd be a pretty good dad in general nowadays.



So to sum-up, I agree with the ideas that anger and depression play a big role in men, at least not wanting to have children. And of the few women who are in the "never going to have children camp" all but one of them are definitely a part of the feminist cause (so 3/4, not a lot that I've known really well). The one that isn't was an older girl who got her tubes tied. She was very much a free wheeling and dealin' pleasure to the max type person lol.

And there's a bit of that in me as well, I want to maximize my own pleasure while I can. Even when I do get out of the U.S. and decide to have a family it won't be until I'm late thirties. Just a personal belief that I've come to agree with, that men should not have children before the age of 35.
--> this very well could be influenced by the fact that I've felt trapped for most of my life and haven't had a chance to live. Even now I don't feel like I've had a chance to have a life (for reasons that some people will remember).



Anyways, just thought I'd throw in my 2cents as someone who has been in that camp.

Yeah I think a lot of guys are able to relate to this feeling of confusion around the idea of starting a family and having kids when they're growing up in the 'matrix'. I know that until I opened my eyes to the way society worked against men and strongly knit families, the idea of starting one some day seemed like just a burden and a risk, you have this feeling of pressure but no real choices in what to do. I'm not sure if I ever decided against it, but I think I had the feeling I'd stumble into it one day and more than likely it wouldn't go all that great.

At this point in my life, after reflecting on it a lot, I think the problem is the dissociation of responsibility and authority. Responsibility without authority, which is a man's modern family role, is a chain around your neck, but when you have authority .. then you have the opportunity to create something really meaningful, with a purpose and rationale, and something that is a reflection of all that you value about yourself.

But the places where it's possible to do that are relatively few and far between. I think there are two main options: Either you go somewhere that has the culture you want and take it as-is, or you go somewhere where money gives you all the options you need, and create your own little kingdom in there. I think it's ideal to have a bit of both.

So at this point, I'm pretty certain I will do it, but only because doing it my way actually appeals to me over the idea of just doing my own thing into old age.

As far as the age thing goes, men and women mature at completely different rates, and go on completely different reproductive paths over their lifespan. The idea that a man would marry young seems to me to be only for the unambitious and those following the garden path - a man who wants to really establish himself has to take many years of dedication to do it. So I think 35 is a normal age to marry, and even later is probably better. That's how my father did it anyway, he was twice my mothers age when they got together, and it was the first marriage for both of them (semi-divorced later but that's a whole other story). I don't know when I'm going to do it but so far I imagine it will be around the age of forty.

 

[Chase]

Yeah I think a lot of guys are able to relate to this feeling of confusion around the idea of starting a family and having kids when they're growing up in the 'matrix'. I know that until I opened my eyes to the way society worked against men and strongly knit families, the idea of starting one some day seemed like just a burden and a risk, you have this feeling of pressure but no real choices in what to do. I'm not sure if I ever decided against it, but I think I had the feeling I'd stumble into it one day and more than likely it wouldn't go all that great.

At this point in my life, after reflecting on it a lot, I think the problem is the dissociation of responsibility and authority. Responsibility without authority, which is a man's modern family role, is a chain around your neck, but when you have authority .. then you have the opportunity to create something really meaningful, with a purpose and rationale, and something that is a reflection of all that you value about yourself.

This is fantastic analysis, @Will_V.

Agree with your solutions.

The underlying key being of course that a man must find a way to establish unassailable authority for himself if he wants a legitimate patriarch role.

There are ways to do this in the West, but it veers into talking about asset protection, which is necessary to remove the ability of women to turn to the state to strip a man of assets (and, thus, provider authority). Women are a lot less likely to do that when they'll end up being losers if they do, rather than winners.

I talked about much of this here, previously:

10 Steps to Not Get Raped in Your Divorce

When a marriage crumbles, men fast learn the system is stacked against them. But divorce rape is not inevitable; you can beat the system. Tom and Beth loved each other. They married with nothing but the purest intentions of love and commitment. Divorce was the farthest thing from either of their...

www.girlschase.com

A lot of guys don't want to talk or think about that, because they're fully in the "all you need is love" paradigm, and considering that their sweet little lady might ever go to war with them for their assets is a dark thought they'd rather not entertain.

So they just bumble along in nervous hope and uncertainty, and do the clumsy sitcom man-of-the-house thing, and then if the day comes when their little lady does turn the power of the state on them they're shocked and bitter and retreat to the manosphere in wounded horror.

You can't really blame the men for this. Nor can you blame the women. Most people are going through their lives only semi-consciously, simply responding to the incentives in the environment around them. When you arrive at a society where to lead a normal, happy, productive life you basically need to be fully conscious and in-control of yourself, your environment, and your decisions, or else just hope you get lucky, you have arrived at a society that is simply too complex for most normal people to navigate successfully on a consistent basis, and is going to lead to a lot of broken lives and people.

Chase

 

[Will_V]

This is fantastic analysis, @Will_V.

Agree with your solutions.

The underlying key being of course that a man must find a way to establish unassailable authority for himself if he wants a legitimate patriarch role.

There are ways to do this in the West, but it veers into talking about asset protection, which is necessary to remove the ability of women to turn to the state to strip a man of assets (and, thus, provider authority). Women are a lot less likely to do that when they'll end up being losers if they do, rather than winners.

I talked about much of this here, previously:

10 Steps to Not Get Raped in Your Divorce

When a marriage crumbles, men fast learn the system is stacked against them. But divorce rape is not inevitable; you can beat the system. Tom and Beth loved each other. They married with nothing but the purest intentions of love and commitment. Divorce was the farthest thing from either of their...

www.girlschase.com

A lot of guys don't want to talk or think about that, because they're fully in the "all you need is love" paradigm, and considering that their sweet little lady might ever go to war with them for their assets is a dark thought they'd rather not entertain.

So they just bumble along in nervous hope and uncertainty, and do the clumsy sitcom man-of-the-house thing, and then if the day comes when their little lady does turn the power of the state on them they're shocked and bitter and retreat to the manosphere in wounded horror.

You can't really blame the men for this. Nor can you blame the women. Most people are going through their lives only semi-consciously, simply responding to the incentives in the environment around them. When you arrive at a society where to lead a normal, happy, productive life you basically need to be fully conscious and in-control of yourself, your environment, and your decisions, or else just hope you get lucky, you have arrived at a society that is simply too complex for most normal people to navigate successfully on a consistent basis, and is going to lead to a lot of broken lives and people.

Chase

Yes I think people tend to avoid responsibility by instinct, and if the enmity (or even the acceptance of the tyranny) of society is added on top of that, it is too much to bear. It is much more preferable to just toe the line, believe that we live in a lucky and well-meaning world, and hope things go well. Or retreat from responsibilities altogether.

That said, I think there is a danger in becoming too idealistic and going off somewhere to create your own self-contained world for your family to live in, and I believe it's disfunctional for any individual to be too independent from a community of some kind. Not only does a fully grown man not get to utilize his full array of capabilities, some of which can only be realized through a community, but also his woman does not have reinforcing social feedback (which I believe is to an extent necessary for her to feel happy, women being nature's little barometers), and also I believe his children are at risk of not fully developing as well. Added to which, what the man needs to be for the woman and children, and vice versa, can reach intolerable proportions.

I have seen the effects of this first hand, and I could probably write a book about it. In short, it's my conclusion that nature does not forgive those who attempt to isolate themselves too much from the tests and pressures that are, at least in part, created through the competitions and complexities of social life. I can't remember where I read it, but there was some kind of scientific research that concluded that when someone develops inside a community below a certain size (maybe 50-100) there were long term developmental problems, and I don't doubt it.

The problem is that western societies are degenerating so fast, and are so conformist, that even the idea of constructing a small community of people with a unique set of strongly held values within it is difficult. And whenever family is involved, the society gets exponentially more hostile. I plan to take a good look around some other countries (particularly certain areas of Europe) and see if there is a better foundation to build on.

I have read your article on avoiding divorce rape several times over the last couple of years. And I credit that and many of your articles on relationship management with helping me build a solid concept not only of what my options are these days, but also how to have the right perception of women, and how to react to things she does, so that I can lead her properly according to her nature, preempting her weaknesses and curbing her wayward tendencies without creating resentment or too much combativeness or requiring excessive overt dominance. I think this is extremely valuable anywhere, especially if someone wants to have a good chance at a relationship inside of a society that isn't going to support them.

 

[Chase]

@Will_V,

All fascinating stuff.

Yes I think people tend to avoid responsibility by instinct, and if the enmity (or even the acceptance of the tyranny) of society is added on top of that, it is too much to bear. It is much more preferable to just toe the line, believe that we live in a lucky and well-meaning world, and hope things go well. Or retreat from responsibilities altogether.

Yes.

Most societies create all sorts of rituals and privileges around responsibility to push men to take it up.

There are of course always men who are especially driven to adopt responsibility. But to get the average man to do it often requires some prompting, pushing, lionizing, and rewards.

What you have in the West at this point is, increasingly, all the costs of responsibility (i.e., you get the blame if things go wrong; you're the first guy in the line of fire; you have to shoulder the risk and uncertainty and all the stress that goes along with that; etc.), with fewer and fewer rituals around it, lionization, or rewards.

Not such an attractive deal.

That said, I think there is a danger in becoming too idealistic and going off somewhere to create your own self-contained world for your family to live in, and I believe it's disfunctional for any individual to be too independent from a community of some kind. Not only does a fully grown man not get to utilize his full array of capabilities, some of which can only be realized through a community, but also his woman does not have reinforcing social feedback (which I believe is to an extent necessary for her to feel happy, women being nature's little barometers), and also I believe his children are at risk of not fully developing as well. Added to which, what the man needs to be for the woman and children, and vice versa, can reach intolerable proportions.

I have seen the effects of this first hand, and I could probably write a book about it. In short, it's my conclusion that nature does not forgive those who attempt to isolate themselves too much from the tests and pressures that are, at least in part, created through the competitions and complexities of social life. I can't remember where I read it, but there was some kind of scientific research that concluded that when someone develops inside a community below a certain size (maybe 50-100) there were long term developmental problems, and I don't doubt it.

The problem is that western societies are degenerating so fast, and are so conformist, that even the idea of constructing a small community of people with a unique set of strongly held values within it is difficult. And whenever family is involved, the society gets exponentially more hostile. I plan to take a good look around some other countries (particularly certain areas of Europe) and see if there is a better foundation to build on.

Full agreement.

I've seen guys talk about wanting to go live in the woods or what have you. Any kids you raise in the woods are necessarily not going to be nearly as well adapted to society as children raised in that society.

There's also the issue of "in some sort of social collapse scenario, are you really safe out in the woods?" That seems to be what al the prepper types think. "I'll just build a log cabin and learn to hunt and fish and grow my own potatoes and no one will ever bother me."

If you read about genuine social collapse scenarios though, what you end up with is vast lawlessness outside the populated areas, and pillagers moving about taking what they want from isolated homesteads. You can read about what frontier life was like in the U.S. less than 200 years ago. Here's one woman's biography.

After arriving at Columbia on the Brazos in February 1836, Sarah, her children, and George were met by John Hibbins. As they reached Rock Creek, six miles from a site known as Sweet Home and only fifteen miles from the Hibbinses' home, thirteen Comanches attacked the party, killed Hibbins and George Creath, and captured Sarah and her children. Some accounts state that John Hibbins's mother was killed in this attack.​

​

...​

​

As the Comanches made their second camp with the captives, the little baby began crying, and one of the Comanches smashed its head against a nearby tree as Sarah looked on in horror.​

​

...​

​

Sarah slipped out of the camp, although her escape meant leaving her son behind. She traveled in the river and brush and eventually happened upon a herd of cattle and followed them home to seek help. Her journey of only ten miles had taken her twenty-four hours. Using information given by Sarah, Capt. John J. Tumlinson, Jr., successfully led a group of Texas Rangers in a raid against the Indians and rescued the boy.​

Or watch 1956's The Searchers. That gives a reasonably accurate (based on several historical figures) picture of what it's like to live outside society during a period of relative lawlessness.

You read about Rome during its long decline. The people in the cities had it pretty hard, with all the civil war back and forths, invasions, shakedowns of the populaces, in some cases cities razed to the ground and everyone in them killed, etc. But those living outside the cities had it pretty darn hard too. They were the first ones to get raided when a raiding party came in. Small, isolated individuals are much easier targets than fortified cities with armies/militias. The countryside ended up largely cleared out after a while, simply because it was so unsafe.

The absolute best option, if you're in a "escape a declining civilization" state of mind, is not "retreat to the countryside, you'll be safe there" but "pick somewhere else that is on the upswing, rather than the downswing, and resettle and build a base in the community there."

Of course, it's not clear "full decline" is what's in store for America. The United States is in a worse spot than it's been in in any of our lifetimes, what with all the social turmoil, broken social contracts, economic depression buoyed by incessant money printing, and so on, but it's also been a country where people have been talking about its inevitable demise for centuries. They were talking about it in the 18th Century. There is a weird string of fatalism Americans have toward their country, and have, pretty much since its inception. That'd be an interesting thing to analyze in its own right.

Back to the main point -- I don't envy anyone trying to raise children in the 2020s Anglosphere. That seems like another area where you'll need to be fully conscious and totally tuned in and on top of it all to pull it off in a way that isn't more than a roll of the dice.

I have read your article on avoiding divorce rape several times over the last couple of years. And I credit that and many of your articles on relationship management with helping me build a solid concept not only of what my options are these days, but also how to have the right perception of women, and how to react to things she does, so that I can lead her properly according to her nature, preempting her weaknesses and curbing her wayward tendencies without creating resentment or too much combativeness or requiring excessive overt dominance. I think this is extremely valuable anywhere, especially if someone wants to have a good chance at a relationship inside of a society that isn't going to support them.

Happy to hear that.

For a lot of this stuff, just having the right mindset about how to approach these issues with women, relationships, power dynamics, etc., can be enough to put a lot more of the weight in your corner, yeah.

I would also say: while Western society is rather fractured, there are still people having families, and a lot of those people do not agree with all the stuff you will find pouring out of Twitter, the MSM, the corporations, and universities and public schools. There are still islands of sanity within the West you can find. The mission there has to be finding those islands, and gaining admittance to them (unfortunately a lot of them are in very expensive areas; but not all)... then keeping your finger on the pulse of the place so you can get out quick if your island of sanity starts losing that sanity.

Chase

 

[Will_V]

@Will_V,

All fascinating stuff.



Yes.

Most societies create all sorts of rituals and privileges around responsibility to push men to take it up.

There are of course always men who are especially driven to adopt responsibility. But to get the average man to do it often requires some prompting, pushing, lionizing, and rewards.

What you have in the West at this point is, increasingly, all the costs of responsibility (i.e., you get the blame if things go wrong; you're the first guy in the line of fire; you have to shoulder the risk and uncertainty and all the stress that goes along with that; etc.), with fewer and fewer rituals around it, lionization, or rewards.

Not such an attractive deal.

Yeah, it seems like more and more these days, responsibility is a guilt trip for certain people, and something nonexistent for others.

I happen to agree with JPs specific line that responsibility is pretty much synonymous with meaning, for men. But I think it is something that ideally 'happens' to a man as he goes about his life, something he accepts as it is thrust upon him, rather than something he pursues. There are certain things in life that I think ought to be created by the mechanisms of society and the dynamics of the world when someone is moving along the right path, rather than offered to an individual like some kind of product at a shop, to be bought for the right price so that it can provide some kind of utility. Who can put a price on meaning, and what is it's utility? I don't think anyone should have to sit there and try to calculate it, or even try to figure out if they desire it or not.

Full agreement.

I've seen guys talk about wanting to go live in the woods or what have you. Any kids you raise in the woods are necessarily not going to be nearly as well adapted to society as children raised in that society.

There's also the issue of "in some sort of social collapse scenario, are you really safe out in the woods?" That seems to be what al the prepper types think. "I'll just build a log cabin and learn to hunt and fish and grow my own potatoes and no one will ever bother me."

If you read about genuine social collapse scenarios though, what you end up with is vast lawlessness outside the populated areas, and pillagers moving about taking what they want from isolated homesteads. You can read about what frontier life was like in the U.S. less than 200 years ago. Here's one woman's biography.

After arriving at Columbia on the Brazos in February 1836, Sarah, her children, and George were met by John Hibbins. As they reached Rock Creek, six miles from a site known as Sweet Home and only fifteen miles from the Hibbinses' home, thirteen Comanches attacked the party, killed Hibbins and George Creath, and captured Sarah and her children. Some accounts state that John Hibbins's mother was killed in this attack.​

​

...​

​

As the Comanches made their second camp with the captives, the little baby began crying, and one of the Comanches smashed its head against a nearby tree as Sarah looked on in horror.​

​

...​

​

Sarah slipped out of the camp, although her escape meant leaving her son behind. She traveled in the river and brush and eventually happened upon a herd of cattle and followed them home to seek help. Her journey of only ten miles had taken her twenty-four hours. Using information given by Sarah, Capt. John J. Tumlinson, Jr., successfully led a group of Texas Rangers in a raid against the Indians and rescued the boy.​

Or watch 1956's The Searchers. That gives a reasonably accurate (based on several historical figures) picture of what it's like to live outside society during a period of relative lawlessness.

You read about Rome during its long decline. The people in the cities had it pretty hard, with all the civil war back and forths, invasions, shakedowns of the populaces, in some cases cities razed to the ground and everyone in them killed, etc. But those living outside the cities had it pretty darn hard too. They were the first ones to get raided when a raiding party came in. Small, isolated individuals are much easier targets than fortified cities with armies/militias. The countryside ended up largely cleared out after a while, simply because it was so unsafe.

The absolute best option, if you're in a "escape a declining civilization" state of mind, is not "retreat to the countryside, you'll be safe there" but "pick somewhere else that is on the upswing, rather than the downswing, and resettle and build a base in the community there."

Yeah I agree completely. A lot of people don't realize that if the current society falls apart, the only thing that will offer them any kind of chance at survival is another 'society' (gang/mob) that is much more rigid, hierarchical, and brutal, and offers virtually no freedom or pretty much anything except the opportunity to keep living a while longer. All these preppers would probably do well to spend some time learning how to deal with human nature and a bit less on their bunker.

Of course, it's not clear "full decline" is what's in store for America. The United States is in a worse spot than it's been in in any of our lifetimes, what with all the social turmoil, broken social contracts, economic depression buoyed by incessant money printing, and so on, but it's also been a country where people have been talking about its inevitable demise for centuries. They were talking about it in the 18th Century. There is a weird string of fatalism Americans have toward their country, and have, pretty much since its inception. That'd be an interesting thing to analyze in its own right.

I'm not certain about it. The way that the rapid advancement of technology has sort of filled the cracks in the world in modern times makes things much more difficult to predict.

Also, with the internet and the way information flows relatively freely, the people within a country are not so deeply anchored to their society, and that society may not ever become as rigid and brittle as it might have done in past times.

I do think there are big problems on the horizon though, especially in terms of the way society might transform if or when globalization really arrives. Because there are a lot of quite unnatural social experiments going on these days, and the parts of society that are still operating according to what one might call 'natural processes' - by which I mean deeply functional, naturally developed social and cultural 'rules' - are fast disappearing. I think there is a risk that at some point we might lose sight of the path behind us, and then not have a good framework for where to go next.

Back to the main point -- I don't envy anyone trying to raise children in the 2020s Anglosphere. That seems like another area where you'll need to be fully conscious and totally tuned in and on top of it all to pull it off in a way that isn't more than a roll of the dice.

Happy to hear that.

For a lot of this stuff, just having the right mindset about how to approach these issues with women, relationships, power dynamics, etc., can be enough to put a lot more of the weight in your corner, yeah.

I would also say: while Western society is rather fractured, there are still people having families, and a lot of those people do not agree with all the stuff you will find pouring out of Twitter, the MSM, the corporations, and universities and public schools. There are still islands of sanity within the West you can find. The mission there has to be finding those islands, and gaining admittance to them (unfortunately a lot of them are in very expensive areas; but not all)... then keeping your finger on the pulse of the place so you can get out quick if your island of sanity starts losing that sanity.

Chase

Personally, I don't think I would have too much trouble maintaining a good relationship with a woman in any Western society, as long as I was able to make a good choice, start off on the right foot, and keep things on the right track. I think a lot of women are smart enough to understand these days the potential pitfalls of dating in middle age onward, and that even the praise of womenfolk in general is not enough to soothe the aches of loneliness and despair.

I also believe that a man has a lot more to fear from his own ineptitude than he does from any kind of social interference when it comes to keeping a woman around. Looking around, many men are completely useless from a woman's perspective, veering from selfish laziness to desperate 'simping' without any apparent self control or clear idea of who they are. That might not be entirely their fault, with the complete lack of masculine initiation these days, but it's still within their direct control and not very complicated to fix to a decent result.

But the problem, for me, is children, and particularly education. Not just the risks of 'modern' education, but also - what is the alternative? You mentioned raising a family in the woods - well, even the idea of homeschooling kids these days is outlawed almost everywhere. The possibility that someone could properly homeschool and socialize children simultaneously is already a very difficult problem, considering that not only is the government and the law hostile to it but the majority of 'normal' people as well. I have seen the long term effects first hand, it seems depression and emotional problems, as well as a general inability to reconcile themselves to any place in the world, or operate in fast-paced, competitive social environments, is a likely result.

It's not an insurmountable problem though. I think money and very good social connections helps - to access the right 'islands' as you say that offer a fairly complete framework - but still the chances of keeping bad education completely out of the mix, I think, are very low. At the rate that the education system is degenerating, in 10-20 years who knows what would constitute an 'above-average' quality?

But again, there are always people toward the top of society who are very aware of these things, who operate in the realm of functionality and results, and have no interest in or need to toe the line with anyone. I think it's worth aiming in that direction, because there are certain parts of society that are always above the general milieu.

And who knows, maybe western societies will change tack at some point. Personally though, I think any community that is really worth living in and being part of in the near future will not happen without a hell of a lot of conscious intention.

 

[MuST0BtA1NSkR1Lla]

Depends on where you are from.

At the moment maternity leave isn’t a guarantee in the United States yet it was for our fathers and our grand fathers. With things being at ALL TIME high prices as well as WAGES being stagnant nobody wants to have kids.

Just have to have enough patience to watch the rest of the boomers die and I’m pretty sure we will start to see normalcy.

Don’t forget that all the suddenly men are starting to go for the kill. Elliot Rodger, That guy in Toronto, etc...etc.... Reckless suicide, Divorce lawsuits. Add the soon to be gigantic covid crash.

My wager is that after all this covid stuff there will be an uptick in school shootings.

 

[Chrone]

Back to the main point -- I don't envy anyone trying to raise children in the 2020s Anglosphere. That seems like another area where you'll need to be fully conscious and totally tuned in and on top of it all to pull it off in a way that isn't more than a roll of the dice.

Regarding raising children - would it be a good idea to actively teach your children seduction? On the one hand I kind of see it as my responsibility to teach them this very useful skill (especially if it's a boy), on the other hand I can see it leading to relationship problems with the mother of the children. I've talked a bit of game in a fling with one girl I was dating and it wasn't very good for the harmony of the relationship like you talked about in this article:

Why Not to Talk About Game with Women

Lots of guys talk about game with girls. But how does this affect your relationships with them? And is it worthwhile to do? I’ve noticed a difference over the years between my natural friends and my pick up artist friends. Well, more than one difference, but this one is the topic of this...

www.girlschase.com

 

[Chase]

@Chrone,

would it be a good idea to actively teach your children seduction?

In a society like ours, where children are cast out into the world among strangers and expected to land on their feet somehow, yes, you need to teach them this stuff.

The boys need to know how to approach, court, screen, seduce, and maintain relationships. The girls need to know how to attract, test, recognize the things boys are doing, and screen, and they need to know how to keep the guy chasing and get him to commit once in the relationship.

on the other hand I can see it leading to relationship problems with the mother of the children. I've talked a bit of game in a fling with one girl I was dating and it wasn't very good for the harmony of the relationship like you talked about in this article:

I would never call it 'seduction' when teaching it to children, at least not front-and-center that way. I would present it to the mother as just "the boys need to know how to meet girls and start and maintain relationships, and the girls need to know how to attract the right kinds of boys and not get played and get men to commit." Any sane mother is going to want that for her children. I have actually had women tell me if they had sons with me they'd want me to train them how to meet girls, because "you're pretty knowledgeable about dating" (I don't tell women my line of work).

I guess if you had an issue with some kind of super-feminist mother, you might be in for some fights. But the approach there should just be telling her, "Look: for our daughters, don't you want them to know how to get the right men, and get those men to commit? Okay good. And for our sons... don't you also want them to be able to NOT be incels, and instead select the right women and bring those women into their lives?"

Once maternal instincts kick in, women behave very differently toward their sons than they do men in general. They can be against playboys in general, while simultaneously wanting their sons to be sexually and romantically successful.

As for the actual you-her relationship... there is a big difference IME from "talking about game" as if this is some thing you have studied or are an expert in, versus treating it the way naturals do. I switched over to treating it like naturals in my own life years ago and have had zero problems since. Women will recognize that you are very good with girls, but you just shrug it off like well, whatever, and they don't get bothered by it.

I have even had girlfriends suggest I start a business teaching men how to date (lol). My response is always just a shrug and a, "Yeah, who knows, maybe," and they will tell me they think I could be pretty successful at it. But I never acknowledge it so it never becomes an issue.

Just don't make it a big "hey I have this skill set and I studied it for years and studied with teachers and know all these techniques" thing and you will generally not get the relationship strain that comes with it.

Instead you are just some guy who is a big flirt and who happens to do well with women. No strain.

Chase

 

[Will_V]

@Chrone The way I think it should be presented is "this is how men and women work, watch and learn son" type of thing.

I was lucky enough to have a father who was good with women (though completely loyal to my mother) and he would sometimes start talking to us about women in a way that my mother put up a superficial objection to (but didn't actually oppose).

For example, he would often say things like "everything important for women happens in the bedroom" amongst many other sayings, some of which were fairly ordinary and others more controversial. My mother would huff about it a bit, but from an early age I understood that her reaction to it was superficial, and that she really agreed with a lot of it, if not all.

I'm still figuring this out but I don't believe it's necessary (or even good) for a father to get too involved in teaching his son to be this or that when it comes to women or ambition. It's far more useful for him to plant some fundamental truths and concepts through constant repetition, and then let his son develop through experience.

I believe that a father provides a son with discipline, and a mother provides him with ambition (libidinal energy, if you like). You often see guys from single mother households, especially when they are provided a lot of attention, become rebellious, driven, self-sufficient, and ruthlessly practical (though often somewhat disfunctional) whereas when a man follows his father too much, his diligence and discipline is often not matched by an equal drive to win or conquer - he is too much of a rule-follower and too comfortable with the approval of his father to seek out his own kind of satisfaction.

Because of this, I actually believe it's better for a man to be away from his family for extended periods of time, to allow the seeds he has planted in his sons' minds to grow unfettered by his shadow, and to teach them from an early age to accept responsibility, authority and risk.

 

[Rain]

Then when you have situations where there is economic decline, or chaos, or uncertainty, you have people self-selecting out of the gene pool by voluntarily not reproducing.

Have you reproduced and/or do you plan to? You're in America?

I would never call it 'seduction' when teaching it to children, at least not front-and-center that way. I would present it to the mother as just "the boys need to know how to meet girls and start and maintain relationships, and the girls need to know how to attract the right kinds of boys and not get played and get men to commit." Any sane mother is going to want that for her children. I have actually had women tell me if they had sons with me they'd want me to train them how to meet girls, because "you're pretty knowledgeable about dating" (I don't tell women my line of work).

I guess if you had an issue with some kind of super-feminist mother, you might be in for some fights. But the approach there should just be telling her, "Look: for our daughters, don't you want them to know how to get the right men, and get those men to commit? Okay good. And for our sons... don't you also want them to be able to NOT be incels, and instead select the right women and bring those women into their lives?"

I get confused reading this. Doesn't this site teach things like, be careful passing commitment points, and also as women try and domesticate their man, that can lose interest in him? Don't fall in love, don't commit too soon. Women don't want to get played in your paragraph above, but men here are taught to get sex first, commitment later, otherwise they[the men] might get played.

Like you're teaching women x, and telling guys no , don't do x, do y. So what happens? If you taught BOTH men and women, and those men and women met each other, no one commits because men are told to avoid that, right? And a woman won't sleep with a man, because women are taught to get commitment as you just said above, so nothing would happen if both genders followed you advice tailored to each gender? If you taught both genders, gender tailored advice, then in a very basic, general form, no one would get together.

Would you teach the women to get a good 'provider' but find an Alpha guy as a one nighter, that way she gets the Alpha seed, and the provider raises the kids and gives security, is that the best mating strategy for a woman?

 

[Vision]

A lot of boys don't care about learning this stuff at all, or they're embarrassed that you're telling it to them. I tried to teach my nephew some things and he'd listen but he didn't want to approach, he didn't want things to be the way I talked about them, etc. I'm guessing that's pretty common when kids are blue pilled in their shit schools.

I get confused reading this. Doesn't this site teach things like, be careful passing commitment points, and also as women try and domesticate their man, that can lose interest in him? Don't fall in love, don't commit too soon. Women don't want to get played in your paragraph above, but men here are taught to get sex first, commitment later, otherwise they[the men] might get played.

Like you're teaching women x, and telling guys no , don't do x, do y. So what happens? If you taught BOTH men and women, and those men and women met each other, no one commits because men are told to avoid that, right? And a woman won't sleep with a man, because women are taught to get commitment as you just said above, so nothing would happen if both genders followed you advice tailored to each gender? If you taught both genders, gender tailored advice, then in a very basic, general form, no one would get together.

I don't know what all is taught here but I will say that there's a power struggle that needs to be gotten over. Some guys prefer commitment... you need to decide for yourself. If you talk to professional PUAs, many of them avoid commitment because it's their job to have high lay counts so that they have credibility.

But being a PUA for a long time is a waste of most guy's lives... it's a very specific kind of man who wants to be a player forever. Research studies on the subject have generally found that the overwhelming majority of guys want to find a woman that will ultimately lead to settling down and potentially having kids.

Most guys don't have the desire or the time to go doing approaches and seduction for a good portion of their lives. They'd rather be doing other things.

After you've plowed a certain amount of vaginas, it's kind of like, "wtf am I even doing anymore?" If you're a sex addict or someone who gets the majority of their excitement from fresh vagina, you may stay in it longer. Most PUAs that I know give up the life and settle down as soon as they find a really great girl.

Sometimes, what guys are doing is in direct conflict with their goals of finding a good girl to settle down with because of the PUA tactics that they're using. Sometimes it helps a lot, depending on what they're learning and what they're doing.

If a woman is looking for commitment (which a lot of women aren't, initially, especially in the "hookup culture" that we live in now), it is in her best interest to not sleep with you unless you're committed first. Many relationships start out as hookups but it's far more difficult for a woman to get to commitment if she hooks up first... lots of guys will lie their way into bed with her and so she has to be smart.

If women all collectively decided tomorrow that they weren't going to fuck you without you committing to them, men would get in line and start proposing commitments to women. Many of them would be lying just to get into her pants but that's a different story altogether.

It's in a woman's best interest to protect herself and make sure that YOU are the kind of man she wants in a real relationship and that you are serious about getting into a relationship, if that's what she wants. If you try to bang her fast and then decide she's not worth it, she just screened you out.

Would you teach the women to get a good 'provider' but find an Alpha guy as a one nighter, that way she gets the Alpha seed, and the provider raises the kids and gives security, is that the best mating strategy for a woman?

Some women do that naturally (I think a lot less than a lot of dating advice people would suggest) but I wouldn't teach a woman that... if she gets caught doing that, it could potentially ruin her entire life. It also opens her up to a pattern of cheating, lying, and using men... which isn't a good thing to teach women if they want to be in a healthy relationship.

 

[Chase]

@Will_V,

That's a great anecdote from your upbringing / your father.

I agree with you, the father can't really be overly involved in the upbringing. Being away sometimes, and returning others, I think is also good.

He should be a presence, but more as a rock / there to aid / provide insights/guidance/discipline, not an out-and-out coach or tutor or supervisor.

The way I envision training a son is similar to how your father trained you. Drop some pearls here and there. Maybe take him out for an approach demonstration once when he's 16. Tell him he's not allowed to tell his Mom what he sees me do, then let him go watch me approach, then send him in to and give him feedback.

A single experience like that on a single day in his teenage years is going to stick in his brain forever. Even if he never becomes a cold approacher, just knowing that path is open to him is going to make everything else easier. And he'll always have it as a backup if it ever starts feeling hard to meet the girls he wants.

You can't live a child's life for him. All you can do it give him some things to think about, show him a few things every now and then, and let him go through the journey on his own, coming back to you occasionally when he needs you.


@Rain,

Have you reproduced and/or do you plan to?

Sure, I love the idea of knocking beautiful women up. What could be more satisfying?

I like to tell women I'd like to have 10 kids. Then I tell them it's really more like 10,000 kids, but I'm trying to be realistic and not get my head too far into the clouds. (then when they say, "... but you couldn't have 10,000 kids with one woman!" I smile and say "I know")

As for whether I have... well, prefer not to answer.

You're in America?

I grew up there, lived in cities on the East Coast, then on the West Coast, and traveled all throughout on both business and pleasure.

Then felt like I'd done what I needed to in the States.

I've been on-travel since. Nice thing about this line of work; you can run it from anywhere.

I get confused reading this. Doesn't this site teach things like, be careful passing commitment points, and also as women try and domesticate their man, that can lose interest in him? Don't fall in love, don't commit too soon. Women don't want to get played in your paragraph above, but men here are taught to get sex first, commitment later, otherwise they[the men] might get played.

Like you're teaching women x, and telling guys no , don't do x, do y. So what happens? If you taught BOTH men and women, and those men and women met each other, no one commits because men are told to avoid that, right? And a woman won't sleep with a man, because women are taught to get commitment as you just said above, so nothing would happen if both genders followed you advice tailored to each gender? If you taught both genders, gender tailored advice, then in a very basic, general form, no one would get together.

Ah.

And so you realize the concept of the Red Queen.

People learning mating strategies to try to outfox their competitors and fly past the screens of their prospective mates, tipping the advantage into their corners. But as one side learns a set of strategies, another develops its own strategies to counter it. The arms race never ends.

But yes, that's right.

You train sons on how to seduce; meanwhile, you train daughters on how to detect and defeat seduction attempts.

This is the yin and yang of things.

Would you teach the women to get a good 'provider' but find an Alpha guy as a one nighter, that way she gets the Alpha seed, and the provider raises the kids and gives security, is that the best mating strategy for a woman?

No. That's a suboptimal strategy. That strategy's for women who can't net commitment from the top tier men.

That top tier guy knocking up somebody's wife has his own wife to go home to. Or he will at some point. As @Vision notes, it's a rare man who just remains the bachelor forever. Usually those guys have some trauma or issue that blocks them from moving beyond the bachelor stage.

If you're going to train a woman on dating, train her to get the best guy she can get... then get him to stick around and commit.

I don't think you need training on "get a rich loser to commit to you, then have sex with a young hunk and let him impregnate you." One, I have moral issues with that. But two, if a woman's going to do that, she's going to do it... she doesn't need any training on it (I guess someone could encourage her... but I don't know why you'd want to do that. If she's going that route she already has friends encouraging her to go ahead and do it anyway).

Any daughter of mine is going to be learning, "If he's not the kind of guy you want to stay faithful to, he's also not the kind of guy you want to be stuck with."

Chase

 

[Skills]

I never wanted kids and I dated women with kids and no kids... the women like me that chose not to reproduce are equally or more happy that the ones that reproduce... I am the happiest dude ever, and it takes very little to make me happy, I wish it was not the case... 0 interest in kids

 

[trashKENNUT]

Usually those guys have some trauma or issue that blocks them from moving beyond the bachelor stage.

I never wanted kids and I dated women with kids and no kids... the women like me that chose not to reproduce are equally or more happy that the ones that reproduce... I am the happiest dude ever, and it takes very little to make me happy, I wish it was not the case... 0 interest in kids

*Sidenote*

That gap between authority and the buyer/Penis Envy/man and women is neo and agent smith.

You have on one hand, moving beyond the bachelor stage which is a real thing. But then it's not exactly getting married and all the other horse shit.

Asia is experiencing the opposite in terms of sex revolution per se.

Where Westerners need marriage (structure) because it's too crazy, while Asians, are the biggest sluts in town, while the evil pervert Asian males keep the society running. Because they supposed to.

This is the battle of today, and now onwards.

And it will spill into all of our lifes. Life is interconnected yet not interconn. Pretty amazing. We all are seeing this in fucking real time.

"The arms race never ends".

Damn right....

z@c+