Best of luck to your young Yale reader! my perception is there’s a significant distrust of different cultural and educational backgrounds.
I recall leading the Princeton Evangelical Fellowship’s global mission team years ago and still being rejected by Samaritan’s Purse 3 yrs in a row for their global internship. the cohorts were mostly Wheaton and Liberty undergrads.
that was one experience that encouraged me to branch out to other cross-cultural, secular, and/or scientific opportunities. I ended up away from American Evangelicalism and more into Christian settings that valued my background and contributions, but I still appreciate many Evangelical sensibilities I internalized!
This isn't so much about masculinity in a social sense, but more in a behavioral and biological sense. It's been documented repeatedly that testosterone levels in men are slowly dropping over time (here's one example study, but there are countless more where this finding has been replicated https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7063751/). This impact is age independent, and not just about obesity either although lifestyle factors like obesity, inactivity, poor sleep undoubtedly play roles. Various endocrine disrupting chemicals, ubiquitous in modern daily life, likely also play a role (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S001502822301926X for a super quick review).
Masculinity is a combination of the social and the biological. Despite the statistical significance of these trends, it's unclear whether the changes observed so far are sufficient to cause observable behavioral significance in aggregate. For the record, I believe most of the problems facing masculinity today are cultural and social, not biological. But the trend is nonetheless worrisome.
I'm not sure why there should anxiety over working from home with children (unless maybe this is ginned up by CEOs who hate employees working from home). For untold centuries work life and home life were not separate; only with the industrial revolution did that become significant, and not general until most population became urban not rural.
When I was growing up (the 70s) very few people worked at home, but there were still boundaries between the Adult Sphere and the Child Sphere-- though with overlap of course. If my parents had friends over and were enjoying adult time it was clear that I was not to interrupt that except in an emergency. Otherwise I would be told to go play somewhere and let the adults be. Why did we lose that separation? Sometime after I became an adult I was visiting friends who had children-- and the kids kept interrupting us for no serious reason-- and the parents indulged them which left me quite startled. Maybe working from home can help restore the salutary boundaries between childhood and adulthood.
Fathers working from home at times should be a positive thing like you say.
Mothers need to be mindful though, it is very hard for a child to not be the top priority of their mother if she is physically present. Historically, "women's work" was often what could be put down to attend to a child and then return to the task. Today, routines probably help. Things like, get the children feeling loved and settled or directed and then close the door. Children need to feel secure and fathers should help mothers do this rather than assume it's all the same.
I'm going to push back on this because for centuries women worked alongside their husbands whether in the fields (the majority of people farmed or tended livestock) or else in home-based businesses. It was only noblewomen who did not labor-- and they often passed their children off to servants, sometimes not even living full time under the same roof.
And as a one-time "Free range" kid I think kids beyond a certain tender age should be told to go off and play-- maybe bring back the old "Come home when I call or the street lights come on". I think we'd have more independent kids, maybe they'd leave home sooner than age 30 , and maybe marriages would be less stressed with more adult space in them. I do not think the post-80s practice of parents haunting their children whenever they are home together is healthy for anyone. An important part of child-rearing is preparing them to be independent and self-sufficient (insofar as any of us can be).
I am thinking of interruptions as the historical factor of what was women's work or not. Women were prioritized for tasks that let them meet their children's needs even if the children did not get much time. Being in the fields, collecting eggs from hens, and most famously weaving are all things were being interrupted doesn't ruin the work.
Harried mothers today need to be honest about what periods of time interruption is okay or not, and to plan to buffer some attention at other times so that firmness is not felt as neglect.
I don't know what to say about Evangelicals and governance. Mike Pence is a remarkable example of what you seem to think we aren't able to be or do.
His AAF (Advancing American Freedom) think tank, (his only because of the intellectual leadership he is providing) has completely hollowed out Trump's sycophantic Heritage Foundation.
His principled defense of the constitution on 6 January may have saved the republic from ruin. It certainly culminated a world-class run at delicately balancing principle as Trump's Vice-president. If the Republican voters are not impressed with Pence, it's not because Pence is not impressive.
Pence, like Ben Sasse, has a problem with voters, not because the don't offer a principled, evangelical, vision of governance. It's because the Republican voters like the rather unprincipled, reactionary and undisciplined approach of a Catholic like JD Vance. And Republican voters, by and large, share the religious scruples of Donald J Trump, which are as flexible as their own.
The problem that Pence, and a lot of other sincere Christian politicians, have with the voters, isn't that they're too principled; rather, it's that they come across as weak. Pence's 2015 capitulation on the Indiana RFRA is an example. By contrast, Vance and Trump come across as strong, even if their principles are somewhat questionable (perhaps very questionable in the case of Trump).
Aaron has written a lot on marriage, and one of the good points he makes is that a Christian man, in order to be marriageable, needs to be attractive as well as virtuous. Similarly, a political candidate, in order to be appealing, needs to come across as strong as well as principled.
Politics is the art of the possible. The unique provisions of the Indiana RFRA bill that Pence signed where private lawsuits between citizens were possible created such a firestorm of opposition, it left Indiana Republicans no choice but to backtrack and try and fix it. Poorly constructed legislation worthy of Nebraska's unicameral.
It was not lost on Trump how Pence extracted himself successfully from the RFRA mess. It was political skill.
The way some absolutists carry on about the Indiana RFRA you'd think Pence vetoed it. Instead he supervised the tweaking of the bill so as to fix a deeply contentious part of it and then signed it into law. This is precisely how politics is supposed to work, though such sensible leadership has been in short supply for a while now.
Re: t's because the Republican voters like the rather unprincipled, reactionary and undisciplined approach of a Catholic like JD Vance.
If Vance is unprincipled and reactionary I don't think it's because he's a Catholic. That church has its own political and social precepts which Vance seems rather detached from.
Fair enough about Vance and Roman Catholicism. The lack of Evangelical elite in politics is not because we don't produce them, it's the elite don't connect with voters. The voters don't understand or appreciate their scruples.
Best of luck to your young Yale reader! my perception is there’s a significant distrust of different cultural and educational backgrounds.
I recall leading the Princeton Evangelical Fellowship’s global mission team years ago and still being rejected by Samaritan’s Purse 3 yrs in a row for their global internship. the cohorts were mostly Wheaton and Liberty undergrads.
that was one experience that encouraged me to branch out to other cross-cultural, secular, and/or scientific opportunities. I ended up away from American Evangelicalism and more into Christian settings that valued my background and contributions, but I still appreciate many Evangelical sensibilities I internalized!
This isn't so much about masculinity in a social sense, but more in a behavioral and biological sense. It's been documented repeatedly that testosterone levels in men are slowly dropping over time (here's one example study, but there are countless more where this finding has been replicated https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7063751/). This impact is age independent, and not just about obesity either although lifestyle factors like obesity, inactivity, poor sleep undoubtedly play roles. Various endocrine disrupting chemicals, ubiquitous in modern daily life, likely also play a role (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S001502822301926X for a super quick review).
Masculinity is a combination of the social and the biological. Despite the statistical significance of these trends, it's unclear whether the changes observed so far are sufficient to cause observable behavioral significance in aggregate. For the record, I believe most of the problems facing masculinity today are cultural and social, not biological. But the trend is nonetheless worrisome.
I'm not sure why there should anxiety over working from home with children (unless maybe this is ginned up by CEOs who hate employees working from home). For untold centuries work life and home life were not separate; only with the industrial revolution did that become significant, and not general until most population became urban not rural.
When I was growing up (the 70s) very few people worked at home, but there were still boundaries between the Adult Sphere and the Child Sphere-- though with overlap of course. If my parents had friends over and were enjoying adult time it was clear that I was not to interrupt that except in an emergency. Otherwise I would be told to go play somewhere and let the adults be. Why did we lose that separation? Sometime after I became an adult I was visiting friends who had children-- and the kids kept interrupting us for no serious reason-- and the parents indulged them which left me quite startled. Maybe working from home can help restore the salutary boundaries between childhood and adulthood.
Fathers working from home at times should be a positive thing like you say.
Mothers need to be mindful though, it is very hard for a child to not be the top priority of their mother if she is physically present. Historically, "women's work" was often what could be put down to attend to a child and then return to the task. Today, routines probably help. Things like, get the children feeling loved and settled or directed and then close the door. Children need to feel secure and fathers should help mothers do this rather than assume it's all the same.
I'm going to push back on this because for centuries women worked alongside their husbands whether in the fields (the majority of people farmed or tended livestock) or else in home-based businesses. It was only noblewomen who did not labor-- and they often passed their children off to servants, sometimes not even living full time under the same roof.
And as a one-time "Free range" kid I think kids beyond a certain tender age should be told to go off and play-- maybe bring back the old "Come home when I call or the street lights come on". I think we'd have more independent kids, maybe they'd leave home sooner than age 30 , and maybe marriages would be less stressed with more adult space in them. I do not think the post-80s practice of parents haunting their children whenever they are home together is healthy for anyone. An important part of child-rearing is preparing them to be independent and self-sufficient (insofar as any of us can be).
I am thinking of interruptions as the historical factor of what was women's work or not. Women were prioritized for tasks that let them meet their children's needs even if the children did not get much time. Being in the fields, collecting eggs from hens, and most famously weaving are all things were being interrupted doesn't ruin the work.
Harried mothers today need to be honest about what periods of time interruption is okay or not, and to plan to buffer some attention at other times so that firmness is not felt as neglect.
Just want to give credit: this is an especially good roundup. Dense with insights.
Thanks!
I don't know what to say about Evangelicals and governance. Mike Pence is a remarkable example of what you seem to think we aren't able to be or do.
His AAF (Advancing American Freedom) think tank, (his only because of the intellectual leadership he is providing) has completely hollowed out Trump's sycophantic Heritage Foundation.
His principled defense of the constitution on 6 January may have saved the republic from ruin. It certainly culminated a world-class run at delicately balancing principle as Trump's Vice-president. If the Republican voters are not impressed with Pence, it's not because Pence is not impressive.
Pence, like Ben Sasse, has a problem with voters, not because the don't offer a principled, evangelical, vision of governance. It's because the Republican voters like the rather unprincipled, reactionary and undisciplined approach of a Catholic like JD Vance. And Republican voters, by and large, share the religious scruples of Donald J Trump, which are as flexible as their own.
The problem that Pence, and a lot of other sincere Christian politicians, have with the voters, isn't that they're too principled; rather, it's that they come across as weak. Pence's 2015 capitulation on the Indiana RFRA is an example. By contrast, Vance and Trump come across as strong, even if their principles are somewhat questionable (perhaps very questionable in the case of Trump).
Aaron has written a lot on marriage, and one of the good points he makes is that a Christian man, in order to be marriageable, needs to be attractive as well as virtuous. Similarly, a political candidate, in order to be appealing, needs to come across as strong as well as principled.
Politics is the art of the possible. The unique provisions of the Indiana RFRA bill that Pence signed where private lawsuits between citizens were possible created such a firestorm of opposition, it left Indiana Republicans no choice but to backtrack and try and fix it. Poorly constructed legislation worthy of Nebraska's unicameral.
It was not lost on Trump how Pence extracted himself successfully from the RFRA mess. It was political skill.
The way some absolutists carry on about the Indiana RFRA you'd think Pence vetoed it. Instead he supervised the tweaking of the bill so as to fix a deeply contentious part of it and then signed it into law. This is precisely how politics is supposed to work, though such sensible leadership has been in short supply for a while now.
Re: t's because the Republican voters like the rather unprincipled, reactionary and undisciplined approach of a Catholic like JD Vance.
If Vance is unprincipled and reactionary I don't think it's because he's a Catholic. That church has its own political and social precepts which Vance seems rather detached from.
Fair enough about Vance and Roman Catholicism. The lack of Evangelical elite in politics is not because we don't produce them, it's the elite don't connect with voters. The voters don't understand or appreciate their scruples.