Sunday, July 18, 2010

"We Don't Need No Piece of Paper From The City Hall"

Raoul Moate's brother (by a different father) speaks. Nature, nurture, or what ? He's a tax officer with a Masters degree.

The brothers had different fathers, but neither was told who they were. Raoul made it very clear ('I haven't got a Dad' - LT), in his last stand in Rothbury, that this was something he cared a great deal about, and, even though Angus understands that the 70s were different, that there was far more stigma about babies born out of wedlock, his fury at the situation arrives almost on the same breath.

"I feel very strongly that a child has a right to know who his father is. I don't think a selfish woman has a right to have a baby as her own plaything. I think there are massive indications there for somebody's identity in adult life. We weren't given the opportunity, for what I believe to be very selfish reasons." He has since discovered who his own father is, though he has no intention of contacting him; apparently, after all the publicity, someone has turned up claiming to be Raoul's. "I think it's a crying shame he's only turned up now Raoul's dead. It's a bit late in the day."



On Nature vs Nurture, I'm a more-or-less rather than either/or type, as in so many other things. In Steven Pinker's the Blank Slate, he posits a rough guide to how your kids will turn out, given 3 approximately* equal factors - with (I think) upbringing being the least of the three - depressing information for well-meaning daddy :

a) natural inheritance (genes)
b) upbringing
c) post-adolescence peer group

If the third be true, it may be that yet another Sixties liberal myth (albeit one still being pumped out by our educators) is exploded - although there is a difference between childhood and adolescence, maybe being kept away from the rough boys then makes you less likely to hang with them later. Many times I've listened to or read of some successful figure describing his childhood and taking an affectionate but condescending pop at parents who wouldn't let them hang out with the rough boys down the road. Maybe that parental decision is why they're on Desert Island Discs.

When the academic Moat brother was doing politics at Nottingham, the other had discovered the society of the gym and its steroid subculture.

I don't think Raoul's background (more here) fits by any means the classic underclass scenario. But, as study after study shows, fatherless children, even after controlling for the lower income of single parents, do worse on pretty much every measure of human achievement.

As A.H. Halsey puts it in his foreword to "Families Without Fatherhood":

“The children of parents who do not follow the traditional norm (i.e. taking on personal, active and long-term responsibility for the social upbringing of the children they generate) are thereby disadvantaged in many major aspects of their chances of living a successful life. On the evidence available such children tend to die earlier, to have more mental illness, to do less well at school, to exist at a lower level of nutrition, comfort and conviviality, to suffer more unemployment, to be more prone to deviance and crime, and finally to repeat the cycle of unstable parenting from which they themselves have suffered.”

There's nothing we can do about it, though. As Sunny so perceptively pointed out a month or so back, people who have children and don't get married wouldn't be any more likely to stay together if they DID marry each other. His conclusion is that people who don't marry are just the kind of people with low commitment to the relationship, who are more likely to split (aka desert the kids), married or not !




* I think those three factors stand provided the upbringing is not 'extreme' - in which bets may be off. Obviously an infancy or childhood of torture or abuse will have a hefty effect - as will, say, being brought up in a closed religious community, or selected for the Janissaries (in both these instances your peer-group gets chosen for you as well, securing two out of three factors).

13 comments:

Anonymous said...

Any reasonable person would agree that a) and b) shape a person in concert, (with c) at least partly determined by a) & b)). The degree of importance must vary from person to person.

Our left/liberal elitists are not reasonable however. They still adhere to b) as the only factor. I met a women recently who was at uni in the '70s, probably about your age Laban. We were talking about the whole nurture/nature debate, she told me that to voice any belief in heredity at all (in that '70s HE milieu) was to be denounced as a nazi. People informed by that thinking are firmly in charge at every level as far as I can see.

Furthermore they have the cheek to attack those who forward any nature argument as genetic determinists - that ones character is wholly a genetic product. Yet, in reality very few, if any, believe that.

The debate isnt about the degree to which a) & b) and maybe c) shape one. The debate is poisoned, its between those who argue for a), b) & c) vs those who cling like zealots to b) all the while denouncing the former as unreasonable.

Bastards.

Anonymous said...

1. There's no such thing as a fatherless child (unless you count JC?)

2. Study after study may show that some/many children of single parent families may "do worse on pretty much every measure of human achievement." but your wording implies that ALL do. This is simply not true.

Anonymous said...

Prior to the 60s revolution, the working class was where the morality and ethics of the country were most firmly anchored and sustained. The upper class, and upper middle class, were, on the whole, much less devoted to sexual fidelity, family unity, hard work, financial prudence, cleanliness, sobriety, honesty, and scholarship.

Syphyllis, drunkenness, and indebtedness to every tradesman in town, were more easily maintained by those at the top of the social pecking order. They dodged social disgrace by sending their pregnant daughters abroad until the birth, so their indiscretions would remain secret. They would employ a man for 50 years, then throw him out of his tied cottage, and when he died, they would send an empty carriage to his funeral.

The working class morality had evolved through many generations of hardship. The fellowship of neighbours was a lifeline in harsh times. Industrious conduct increased your chances of keeping your children fed and clothed. If you kept chickens and grew vegetables, you could pay for a Doctor's visit in eggs and fresh produce. If you were thrifty, ultimately there would be money for weddings, and for your funeral. If you instilled a love of scholarship, your children might better themselves. And if you were clean, and your house was clean, you would be safer from vermin and disease.

With the triumph of World War II under their belts, and the progress enshrined in the NHS, the National Insurance system, and the Grammar Schools, the boomers were all set to reap the harvest that previous generations had sown, and lay down the next store of investment for future generations yet unborn.

But instead, we listened to the siren song of the new lefties. Who were, by and large, the offspring of the toffs who had never worked, or paid their bills. Looking back, the onslaught against morality, family, education, stability, and responsibility, was aimed squarely against the working class. And it still is. Nothing was left standing. Even the old neighbourhoods where generations had lived in mutual support, were demolished, and their tenants dispersed to brutal tower blocks.

Successive waves of immigration, just at the time when manufacturing industry was dying out, have proved ruinous for working class folk.

The sexual revolution has despoiled our daughters, and rendered our sons superfluous. They don't have plans anymore. They have no aspirations.

And now, just at the point when our youngsters most need a rigorous academic education, or a craft training, to compete in an adverse employment market, what have they done? They wrecked the integrity of primary, secondary, and tertiary education, and persuaded our kids to spend £20K on worthless pieces of paper. They don't want your kid becoming a doctor, or an engineer. They want him to go back to the Meadowwell Estate with a degree in the Social Stigmatisation of Plastic Inflatable Women.

Meanwhile, they are buying internships for their kids, at investment banks.

dash said...

It's possible that the more feckless, stimulus-driven people who tend to become single and absenteee parents also pass on the genes causing that impulsiveness to their children.

Mr Grumpy said...

Fine post up to this point...

'There's nothing we can do about it, though. As Sunny so perceptively pointed out a month or so back, people who have children and don't get married wouldn't be any more likely to stay together if they DID marry each other.'

Methinks you're reading too much Sunny. Once upon a time everyone married and, once married, stayed together.

One of my grandfathers grew up with parents who, at some stage, divided the house between them, each taking one floor. Thereafter communication was kept to the unavoidable minumum. Sub-optimal for them, of course, but my grandfather avoided the disadvantages of a single-parent upbringing and went on to enjoy a notably successful career.

Liberal myth no. 1: 'You can't turn the clock back'. Ask the Taliban. We may not want to, but fatalism is a cop-out.

Mark said...

Anon 8.05- well said.

'Syphyllis, drunkenness, and indebtedness to every tradesman in town, were more easily maintained by those at the top of the social pecking order. They dodged social disgrace by sending their pregnant daughters abroad until the birth, so their indiscretions would remain secret. They would employ a man for 50 years, then throw him out of his tied cottage, and when he died, they would send an empty carriage to his funeral.'

As Anon suggests here, the idle rich and the idle poor have more in common than each group would care to admit; the former simply fritter away inherited wealth, while the latter just suck at the public's teat- and are often assisted by the advocacy of middle class Graun types keen to repudiate the bourgeois respectability into which they were born.

Joni Mitchell's lyrics said...

We don't need no piece of paper from the city hall...

Born with the moon in Cancer
Choose her a name she will answer to...
So you sign all the papers in the family name
you're sad and you're sorry but you're not ashamed...


You really can't give love in this condition
Still you know how you need it

They open and close you
Then they talk like they know you
They don't know you
They're friends and they're foes too
Trouble child
Breaking like the waves at Malibu

So why does it come as such a shock
To know you really have no one
Only a river of changing faces
Looking for an ocean
They trickle through your leaky plans
Another dream over the dam
And you're lying in some room
Feeling like your right to be human
Is going over too
Well some are going to knock you
And some'll try to clock you

You know it's really hard
To talk sense to you
Trouble child
Breaking like the waves at Malibu...


My analyst told me
That I was right out of my head
The way he described it
He said I'd be better dead than alive
I didn't listen to his jive
I knew all along
That he was all wrong
And I knew that he thought
I was crazy but I'm not
Oh no...

Martin Robb said...

Interesting post, but the quote from Halsey is highly contentious.

Research certainly shows that active, involved parenting is good for children and improves their later life chances. But this is not the same as endorsing the 'traditional' family or saying that 'families needs fathers' (which is where Halsey ends up).

Lesbian parents, single mothers with good family support, can have happy, successful children too. There's a growing tendency to simplistically blame 'father absence' for complex social ills - and Moat, the self-absorbed faux-victim, was parroting this discourse in his dying words.

I know you've already commented on my post on this, but others might appreciate the link:

http://martinrobb.wordpress.com/2010/07/12/moat-and-masculinity/

dearieme said...

Happily, the "the rough boys down the road" were rather scared of me.

Anonymous said...

Lesbian parents, single mothers with good family support, can have happy, successful children too.

Lesbian parents - As far as I'm concerned, there's none so selfish as those prepared to ignore biology in order to feather their own nest, so to speak. The idea of two women (or two men for that matter) raising a child on their own makes me gag...

Single mothers WGFS - the exception rather than the rule, and the few that have retained some semblance of 'an extended family' must surely be diminishing as serial singlemotherhood replicates itself through the generations.

Reason suggests that, whilst we must tolerate sodomites, single mothers and Islamists, we are under absolutely no obligation to approve of them. The Left have have legislated for approbation under the guise of liberalism and christened it 'tolerance'.

dash said...

Lesbian parents often do have children that turn out successfully when measured in terms of educational outcome, staying out of trouble with the police and so on.

Might it not be because lesbians often employ a distinctly cold-eyed eugenic approach when selecting sperm donors - i.e. the donors must be fit, healthy, intelligent?

Laban said...

"Trouble Child" is one of Ms Mitchell's finest works. She's still a dreadful role model, though a great artist.

Joni Mitchells' lyrics said...

"Trouble Child" is one of Ms Mitchell's finest works. She's still a dreadful role model, though a great artist.

I can agree with that.

I think it kind of striking how quickly and easily one is able to crib together from Joni's lyrics (and Court and Spark and Blue are the only albums I am familiar with) a narrative related to Raoul Moat.

I think this demonstrates her extraordinary range and substance and what a truly great artist she is/was.

Joni Mitchell was able to see so much and articulate it so well, and yet strangely, this spokeswoman for the baby boomers seemed to not connect the dots.

Why?

Me me me?