How the media avoids the truth

2018-07-05-NYT-americans-are-having-fewer-babies-they-told-us-why

Americans Are Having Fewer Babies. They Told Us Why.
Women have more options, for one. But a new poll also shows that financial insecurity is altering a generation’s choices.
By Claire Cain Miller
New York Times, 2018-07-05

From the article:

The survey, one of the most comprehensive explorations of the reasons that adults are having fewer children, tells a story that is partly about greater gender equality. Women have more agency over their lives, and many feel that motherhood has become more of a choice.

But it’s also a story of economic insecurity. Young people have record student debt, many graduated in a recession and many can’t afford homes — all as parenthood has become more expensive. Women in particular pay an earnings penalty for having children.

“We want to invest more in each child to give them the best opportunities to compete in an increasingly unequal environment,” said Philip Cohen, a sociologist at the University of Maryland who studies families and has written about fertility.

At the same time, he said, “There is no getting around the fact that the relationship between gender equality and fertility is very strong: There are no high-fertility countries that are gender equal.”

As a 70-something reactionary white male, I have a view on why all that is.

In so many ways, the period since 1960 or so has been dominated by waves of propaganda spread by the American media,
selling American women on how wonderful feminism is,
and how they are failures if they choose to prioritize child-rearing and family over that ultra-wonderful prospect, a career.

How well has selling American women on the importance of their career succeeded?
Well, I can give one personal example.
When I asked ah English professor, who at the time happened to be my wife,
why she was demanding a divorce,
she did not cite a list of my failures to be a good husband,
which in many respects I was not.
Rather, she tried very hard to avoid answering the question.
But I persisted with the question, and finally she did give not one but two reasons:
"You are limiting my growth." and "You are cramping my style."

The fact is that women were and are sold on the importance of "growth",
which is defined for them in terms of financial, career, and influence success.
Are those that not the themes the media, and the cultural scene, are pushing?
And, not to kick those who have enabled me to have this blog,
is it not true that Silicon Valley seems very enamored of political correctness, to include voicing support for feminism?
Take the example of Sheryl Sandberg.

And then there are the American institutions.
What was more all-American and wholesome than the Girl Scouts?
However, reading the boxes of today's Girl Scout cookies, they are now selling feminism to their charges.

In an instance of nostalgia, let me recall the rather different values of my high school in the early 1960s.
At Ferguson High School (yes, THAT Ferguson), boys, including yours truly, were required to take a semester of shop.
Girls were required to take a semester of home economics.
Roles were clear.
Was that really so bad?
I think not.
I wish we could go back to those days.
Was “Kinder, Küche, Kirche” really so bad?

---

In my opinion, it is a grave error not to consider the economics of feminism.
First, society, somehow, has to pay for the care of the children of working women.
No doubt the cost is divided between the woman herself, or her family, and society at large.
Still, this is a burden on the economy.

Second, what happens when all those childless women become old?
They won't have a family to support them.
Voila, the cost of caring for the elderly gets dumped on society at large.

Feminist control of the media

2013-05-16-Politico-Summers-Baskell-Samuelsohn-sexual-assault-scandal-becomes-a-pentagon-test

Sexual assault scandal becomes a Pentagon test
By: Juana Summers and Stephanie Gaskell and Darren Samuelsohn
Politico, 2013-05-16

A burgeoning sex-abuse scandal in the military
is emerging as a true test of whether the Pentagon can
change its culture,
stamp out a rampant ill and
drag itself into the modern age.

...

[The article continues in that vein,
with quotes from feminist senators and the Service Women's Action Network.
There seems little or no attempt to obtain a balanced view on the issue.
The view: the military is wrong, wrong, wrong.]

2013-08-14-NYT-germany-fights-population-drop

Germany Fights Population Drop
By SUZANNE DALEY and NICHOLAS KULISH
New York Times, 2013-08-14

[The comments and emphasis are (obviously) added.]

...

Large families began to go out of fashion
in what was then West Germany in the 1970s,
when the country prospered
[Wait a minute.
The 1970s were also when feminism began making
strong inroads among Western women,
feminism which encouraged women to believe that a career was as important,
and (many feminists suggested) even more important than children.
And many women took that advice, evidently not worried about the race suicide
that would follow if that advice was followed consistently.
To blame the falling birthrate on German prosperity and not on feminism
seems to me like a blatant, obvious attempt to mislead,
part of the general pattern of seeing
only the supposedly good things that feminism brings,
but none of the problems it brings,
e.g., the way it harms children
and loads social costs on nations that adopt it
that render them uncompetitive with nations
that have less "enlightened" social policies.]
and the fertility rate began dropping to about 1.4 children per woman
and then pretty much stayed there,
far below the rate of 2.1 children that keeps a population stable.
Other countries followed, but not all.
There is a band of fertility in Europe,
stretching from France to Britain and the Scandinavian countries,
helped along by immigrants and social services that support working women.

Raising fertility levels in Germany has not proved easy.
Critics say the country has accomplished very little
in throwing money at families
in a system of benefits and tax breaks
that includes allowances for children and stay-at-home mothers,
and a tax break for married couples.

Demographers say that a far better investment
would be to support women juggling motherhood and careers
by expanding day care and after-school programs.
They say recent data show that growth in fertility
is more likely to come from them.

“If you look closely at the numbers,
what you see is the higher the gender equality,
the higher the birthrate,”

said Reiner Klingholz of the Berlin Institute for Population and Development.

...

[Wait a minute.

In the first place,
that contradicts the just prior observation in this very article
that the fertility rate in Germany dropped in the 1970s,
just when feminism became popular throughout the West.
In other words,
pre-1970 Germany combined higher fertility with lower gender equality.

In the second place,
in areas of the world where the birthrate is considered unsustainably high,
such as sub-Saharan Africa in general and in particular, say Nigeria,
or much of the Muslim world,
the reason is given as a lack of gender equality.
On the other hand, when the birthrate is considered unsustainably low,
for example, among the non-Hispanic white population of Europe and the U.S.,
the reason is again given as a lack of gender equality.
See the pattern here?
Whatever the problem is, the answer is always: More gender equality!
While the "authorities" spouting such obvious propaganda
carefully avert looking at how feminism has caused
the declining birthrate among non-Hispanic white women.

Let me try to answer a valid objection feminists might make
to part of my argument above.
Feminists have said that
the problem in the less-developed parts of the world is
the lack of educational opportunities for women,
while the problem in the more-developed regions is
the lack of support for working women with families.
Both problems fall under the general agenda of “gender equality”,
but they surely are different issues.
So my equating of the two problems really was a bit of a cheap shot,
sort of a late-night comics approach to issues.
But the rest of my counter-argument I believe still is valid.
In particular,
the economic load on nations that feminists impose
with their agenda of demanding that
the government or employers pay for the work wives once did for their families
in the areas of care for their children and care for their older relatives.
The problem is that once general society pays for
all the extra child care workers and elderly care workers,
not to mention the expanded health care that women seem to want more than men
(has anyone noticed a poll on gender issues on ObamaCare?),
there is less money to pay the workers who actually produce
the goods that women, and everyone else, wants—
the various things that we all buy in stores or on-line.
So there is more pressure to find people who will make those goods for less,
i.e., the pressure to off-shore jobs.
And we know the problems that is causing to the economy and the social fabric,
not to mention the fact that the trade deficit cannot be sustained forever,
which will cause unknown but devastating problems to America in the future.

I suggest that the argument that feminism is a direct cause
of many of the nations current social and financial problems
is a valid one.]

Media hyping of Afghan women issues

A signal issue of "elite" media has been
its hyping of issues relevant to the treatment of women in Afghanistan.
Precisely why this is so utterly important to Americans is unclear to me,
though it certainly is clear to the panmujons of American journalism.
American women never seem to go apeshit over what is happening to their sisters in Afghanistan
(as opposed to, say, such paragons of female happiness as the Congo).
(My opinion on why they so prioritize this issue
is the desire of some
to keep American and conservative Islam at loggerheads,
for the benefit of Israel.)

The New York Times and the Washington Post in particular
never cease to bring to the top of the American agenda
the condition of women in Afghanistan.
Here is an example:

2012-02-17-NYT-Rubin-in-baad-afghan-girls-are-penalized-for-elders-crimes

For Punishment of Elder’s Misdeeds, Afghan Girl Pays the Price
By ALISSA J. RUBIN
New York Times, 2012-02-17

[It should be noted that this article appeared above the fold on the front page of the A section,
occupying three of the six columns,
together with a large photograph spanning four of the six,
all in all taking up about half of the space dedicated to news content above the fold.
Talk about hype!]