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The march of Kamala’s brides Miserable young women are the Democrats' foot-soldiers

The successor to Julia and Linda. (Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)

The successor to Julia and Linda. (Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)


August 14, 2024   10 mins

In a recent appearance before the National Association of Black Journalists, Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump caused a furore by questioning the racial “identity” of Democrat Kamala Harris. “Is she Indian or is she black?” Trump wondered. “I respect either one, but she obviously doesn’t, because she was Indian all the way, and then all of a sudden she made a turn, and she became a black person.”

Lost in the days of press attacks that followed was the fact that both Trump and his critics were stuck in an outdated American electoral calculus of identity politics grounded in race. In fact, the key to a Harris win in November won’t be the support of black Americans or Indian Americans or even “brown Americans” — though she has identified at various points in her political life as all three. Rather, Harris is a flesh-and-blood avatar of a much more numerous, powerful, and radically dissatisfied demographic: never-married and childless American women between the ages of 20 and 45.

Aside from mass immigration, the most striking demographic development of the past decade is the large cohort of American women who have embraced the helping hand of the state in place of the increasingly suspect protections of fathers, brothers, boyfriends and husbands. In doing so, they have become the Democratic Party’s most enthusiastic and decisive constituency. According to a recent Pew survey, these Brides Of The State (BOTS) support Democrats over Republicans by a whopping 72-24%, providing the Party with its entire advantage in both national and most state elections. Married American women, by contrast, support Republicans by 50-45, which more or less matches the pro-Republican margin in every other age and gender demographic. Without the overwhelming support of BOTS for the Democrats, in other words, America would be a solid-majority Republican country in which Trump would win a likely electoral landslide.

The Democratic Party’s political engineers first sensed the centrality of BOTS to the Party’s power base during Barack Obama’s re-election campaign in 2012. The Obama campaign then duly rolled out a storybook ad called “the Life of Julia”, which explained how Obama’s policies, from Head Start to Obamacare to contraception coverage to Medicare reform, would care for Julia from graduation through motherhood and finally to the grave without her needing to form a human relationship with anyone outside the government.

A snapshot of Obama’s ‘Julia’ campaign

Julia’s life was defined by her interactions with the state, with each step of her life tied to a particular government programme. She is able to pursue her chosen career as a web designer because, at age 27, “her health insurance is required to cover birth control and preventive care, letting Julia focus on her work rather than worry about her health”. At age 31, Julia changes her mind about birth control and “decides to have a child” — a decision that apparently involves no partner aside from the state. The resulting progeny, Zachary, attends a Race to the Top Federally-funded public school — which allows Julia to start her own business. At age 67, Julia retires with the financial support of Social Security and Medicare, and spends her partner-less golden years volunteering in a community garden.

While the Julia campaign was a subject of some mockery in 2012, the Obama campaign was in fact ahead of the curve. When Joe Biden was elected in 2020, he made the fictional “Linda” the avatar of his “Build Back Better” campaign. More blue-collar than Julia, in keeping with Biden’s lunch-pail Democrat persona, Linda earned $40,000 annually working at a manufacturing facility in Peoria, Illinois — an income that was a little more than $10,000 short of the city’s median salary. However, Linda had no need for a second income in her home, thanks to the government — which gave her $3,600 annually in the form of a Build Back Better tax credit. Her son, Leo, who like Zachary appears to have been fathered by an anonymous bureaucratic sperm donor, began universal pre-K by age three and enjoyed a free educational ride subsidised by the state — all of which enabled Linda to keep working and Zachary to obtain a “good-paying, union job as a wind turbine technician”. The saga wistfully concludes by describing how, later in life, Linda needs home and hearing care. But fortunately, help is at hand: “Thanks to President Biden’s plan,” it adds, “Linda can access affordable health care through Medicare, and Leo is able to afford at-home elder care for his mom.”

Biden’s ‘Linda’ is more blue-collar than ‘Julia’

Kamala Harris can fairly be seen as the flesh-and-blood electoral successor to Julia and Linda. Childless, she remained unmarried throughout her professional career until a decade ago, when, aged 49, she tied the knot with a lawyer named Doug Emhoff while preparing her run for the US Senate.

Both Harris’s demographic profile and electoral appeal are, therefore, arguably quite different from the last woman that the Democratic Party nominated to take on Trump. For all those who derided Bill and Hillary Clinton’s marriage as a business deal, it was hard to question the reality that Hillary Clinton was a classic Seventies feminist who was entirely serious about the idea of having it all: she stayed married to her law-school sweetheart through very public ups and downs for nearly a half-century while raising a child and enjoying a notable public career. By contrast, Harris first attracted public notice as the mistress of flamboyant San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown, a married man more than twice her age who rewarded her with an expensive car and public office — a relationship which in turn became a stepping-stone to other public jobs. Julia and Linda, take note.

Harris’s life and career are, therefore, clearly representative of a demographic shift that is remaking the Democratic Party and American society as a whole. An astonishing 22% of women aged 40 or higher in America have never been married, which is the highest percentage since data was collected in 1900. The rise in these numbers is both recent and startling. Throughout the Sixties, Seventies and Eighties, the percentage of American women who remained unmarried by age 40, as Harris was, had remained constant at around 6%. The percentage of black women who have never married by 40 is markedly higher, hovering at 46%. The overwhelming majority of these women vote for Democrats.

The ballot box is hardly the only place that this new demographic is making its unique preferences felt. BOTS have demanded and received not only the female-targeted government grants, educational and jobs programmes, and social safety nets that benefited Julia and Linda and their singular progeny, but also a much broader set of social engineering measures that are fundamentally reshaping American mores. Since the Nineties, young American women have been positioned as the primary beneficiaries of neo-Victorian speech and conduct codes that have fundamentally transformed the behaviour of men and women everywhere from classrooms to workplaces to bars.

BOTS are also the primary beneficiaries of government affirmative action programmes in education and hiring. In fact, in the roughly 60 years since Civil Rights programmes to reduce racial and gender discrimination were introduced in higher education, women have surpassed men in earning four-year degrees, while black and Latino students remain underrepresented.

But have these efforts made BOTS happy? The answer, according to young women, is no. In fact, the demographic that has been the most highly socialised into core progressive values and would seem to benefit most directly from bureaucratic intervention in their lives is also the most miserable group in America. A startling 56% of liberal American women aged 18-29 have been diagnosed with a mental-health condition (the percentage for conservative women is 21%).

What is even more striking is that the enormous happiness gap between liberal BOTS and their conservative peers has only existed for the past decade or so. Analysing an NIH dataset of high school seniors, the researchers Catherine Gimbrone, Lisa Bates, Seth Prins, and Katherine Keyes found that, prior to 2012, when the Obama campaign rolled out Julia, there was no meaningful difference between male or female or liberal and conservative high-school students in internalising symptoms (depressive affect). “We hypothesise that increasing exposure to politicised events has contributed to these trends in adolescent internalising symptoms, and that effects may be differential by political beliefs and sociodemographic characteristics,” the researchers concluded. Noting that liberal female adolescents were by far the most depressed, they suggested that the new ideological lenses through which adolescents were viewing the political climate were affecting their mental well-being.

When the Gimbone study came out, New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg rejected that view. “Barack Obama was re-elected in 2012. In 2013, the Supreme Court extended gay marriage rights,” she wrote, concluding: “It was hard to draw a direct link between that period’s political events and teenage depression, which in 2012 started an increase that has continued, unabated, until today.” The real culprit, Goldberg suggested, was social media and iPhones. Yet she didn’t explain why social media would have such disparate effects on young women and young men, or why its effects would differ according to political viewpoints.

By blaming technology, Goldberg was clearly avoiding the implication that the victory of liberal ideas itself was helping to make young women miserable — a point made by the feminist writer Jill Filipovic: “Just about everything researchers understand about resilience and mental well-being suggests that people who feel like they are the chief architects of their own life
 are vastly better off than people whose default position is victimisation, hurt, and a sense that life simply happens to them and they have no control over their response.”

If Filipovic’s point is persuasive, the Democratic Party’s message for the past decade has been exactly the opposite. Instead of promoting the goal of mental health in young women, and using unbiased research to determine what in fact makes women happy, progressives have instead been bent on implementing a set of evermore-intrusive top-down social policies that substitute state intervention and protection for the fellowship of human partners of whatever gender.

From the Party’s point of view, at least, the unhappiness and depression of younger, never-married women, which produces outcomes like never getting married or having children, may be less of a bug than a feature: that BOTS are both unhappy and dependent is what makes them a uniquely valuable energy source for the party. Conversely, adopting policies and encouraging social attitudes and outlooks that make women happier and less depressed and anxious would in fact negate the Party’s most significant electoral advantage, and thereby undermine its power — depriving the Party of its most loyal voters and foot-soldiers.

“That BOTS are both unhappy and dependent is what makes them a uniquely valuable energy source for the party.”

Paradoxically, then, the Party’s interest is in telling young women that they are miserable and alone without providing solutions that promote personal happiness, and then transmuting the resultant depression and anxiety into anger, which it then utilises as political fuel for empathy-based social justice campaigns from Ferguson to Gaza. This strategy, whether cunning or simply ad hoc, hardly benefits women, though — either individually or as a class. Instead, it undermines their sense of personal agency, while denying them the tools that any human needs to make themselves happy. That humans find happiness and satisfaction in community is as true for women as it is for men, if not more so. Yet only 35% of American liberals report being a member of a church or place of worship, and 37% of American liberals are currently married — a social arrangement that has been shown to have broad benefits for the mental and physical health of both adults and children at all stages of life (56% of conservatives are married). The idea that the state can make up this apparent happiness gap with Build Back Better grants and assertions of false consciousness on the part of conservative women is a chimera.

These numbers are also likely to get worse. According to Gallup, nearly 40% of young liberal women now identify as LGBTQ — a startling rise in a demographic that was presumed to be relatively constant across most societies over time, regardless of what people told pollsters. Partly as a result, fertility rates in the US, which had long hovered around replacement level (2.1 lifetime births per woman), have plummeted since 2008, to a new European-style low of 1.61. However, this sudden demographic sea-change does not appear to be the result of Americans not wanting to have children. Last year, the share of Americans who said that having three or more kids is the ideal hit its highest point since 1971, at 45%. In the simplest sense, young American women want what their mothers had — but have no idea how to get it.

Why is that? While one might blame everything from the internet to plastics in the water to the exploitation of female misery by the Democratic Party (even if some real share of that misery is caused by anti-family conservative social policy), a more concrete answer may be the impact of not having fathers, particularly on young girls. Here, too, Kamala Harris’s biography — she was raised largely by her mother, who moved her to Montreal from California, where her father still bitterly complains about being separated from his daughters — maps directly onto the larger social turmoil.

When Americans do have children, they now do so out of wedlock more often than ever before in American history, with 69% of black children being born outside of marriage, 52% of Hispanics (up from 34% in 1990), and 28% of whites (up from 15% in 1990). What this means in practice is that an increasingly large percentage of American children are now growing up without regular contact with their fathers — thanks in some large part to the persistence of the “tender years” doctrine that gives mothers custody of young children.

The numbers here, too, are startling. In 1960, 89% of minor children lived with their fathers. The number in today’s America is 73%, with nearly half of African American fathers — like Kamala’s father Donald Harris, an economics professor at Stanford — living apart from their children. There is a plethora of studies that show that children from fatherless homes are more likely to be poor, become involved in drug and alcohol abuse, drop out of school, and suffer from health and emotional problems, with boys more likely to become involved in crime and girls more likely to suffer from anxiety and depression.

One under-appreciated reason why increasing numbers of young American women are confused and miserable, and failing to make choices that promote happiness later in life, may therefore be that increasing numbers of American children grow up without regular contact with their fathers. And contrary to popular stereotypes, the effects of paternal absence, especially in early childhood, are particularly negative for young girls. “In both self-reported and parent-reported data, we found a three-way interaction of gender, age, and parental divorce, indicating that with increasing age, parental divorce became more strongly associated with depressive symptoms among girls, but not boys,” one Dutch study has found. “These results suggest that girls with divorced parents are at particularly high risk to develop depressive symptoms during adolescence.” Subsequent studies have further localised the negative effects on girls to paternal absence in early childhood.

If governments want to stem the tide of misery among young women, which is affecting everything from voting to birth rates, they may wish to do more to keep fathers around — both inside marriages and also in cases of divorce. On the other hand, the Democrats might not win as many elections.


David Samuels is a writer who lives in upstate New York.


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Arthur King
Arthur King
3 months ago

The Lefts religion is rage.

Graham Cunningham
Graham Cunningham
3 months ago
Reply to  Arthur King

Yes….plus self-pity. So perhaps Tears of Rage (to borrow a song title)?

Francisco Menezes
Francisco Menezes
3 months ago

You will have to add a dollop of resentment to get a truly tasty Leftie.

Michael McElwee
Michael McElwee
3 months ago

Best piece on Unherd in some time.

Ernesto Candelabra
Ernesto Candelabra
3 months ago

Exactly what I was going to say. This article hits the spot. I often consider unsubscribing because of the clickbait headlines then an article like this comes along which is as good if not better than you can find anywhere else.

Jeremy Bray
Jeremy Bray
3 months ago

Agreed, a perceptive piece of analysis with much more meat on it than most articles.

Graham Cunningham
Graham Cunningham
3 months ago

I agree….it is a well written analysis, weaving together several of our current ‘Progressive’ discontents….. including its prizing of victimhood, ‘therapy culture’ androgyny and misandry. But on a more positve note: “recently (in a certain kind of feminist journalism) I keep coming across warm-hearted acknowledgements that Masculinity and Femininity are complementary polarities in any sane conception of The Good Life. An acknowledgement that the relationship between a man and a woman has the potential to be the finest fruit that life has to offer. And that when things go wrong, they are often better understood as resulting from a kind of Faustian tango between the sexes than as a simple case of one sex always doing wrong by the other. All just timeless truths and plain common sense you might say – and Yes perhaps these timeless truths have ever obtained in the kitchens and bedrooms of our Western society. But they are ones that have been conspicuous by their absence in the groves of academe and in the fourth estate in recent decades….” https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/shall-we-dance

Graham Cunningham
Graham Cunningham
3 months ago

Very much agree

William Shaw
William Shaw
3 months ago

I find it ironic that feminism has been better for men than women.

Probably not how it was intended.

Peter Johnson
Peter Johnson
3 months ago
Reply to  William Shaw

If you look at the university professor feminists who have driven the movement it is no surprise at all. They are not typical women – they are often gay – universally hate men – hate traditional institutions – and usually also subscribe to the various other pathological ideologies found in the humanities. What is interesting is how many women believe their schtick and have been indoctrinated with their anti-life ideologies.

El Uro
El Uro
3 months ago

Useless women who will destroy society.
.
PS. “Leo is able to afford at-home elder care for his mom” – Who’s sure Leo will do it?
.
PPS. Igor Shafarevich in his book The Socialist Phenomenon identifies three persistent abolition themes in socialism: the abolition of private property, the abolition of the family, and the abolition of religion (mainly but not exclusively Christianity).He concluded that the success of socialism in destroying these three foundations of human society would inevitably lead to the extinction of humanity as a biological species.

Brett H
Brett H
3 months ago
Reply to  El Uro

In fact it’s socialism that will destroy society and this is how it’s done.

El Uro
El Uro
3 months ago
Reply to  Brett H

I’m afraid you didn’t pay attention. His book is named “The Socialist Phenomenon“, it’s about Socialism.

Brett H
Brett H
3 months ago
Reply to  El Uro

I was referring to the line “Useless women who will destroy society.” So I probably should have made it a bit clearer.

El Uro
El Uro
3 months ago
Reply to  Brett H

Thank you! Mea culpa

Martin M
Martin M
3 months ago
Reply to  El Uro

I don’t think anybody is trying to abolish “the family” and “religion”, but a lot of people are realising that the latter has nothing to offer in the 21st century, and that there are ways to live your life other than embracing the former.

Lancashire Lad
Lancashire Lad
3 months ago
Reply to  Martin M

Regarding the latter, it’s such a waste to live one’s life in a state of self-inflicted psychological trickery* (which is what religion is) whilst your honesty with regard the former is refreshing.

*Cue the downvotes from those who can’t bear to read that, or fail to appreciate how beautiful life is without it.

Martin M
Martin M
3 months ago
Reply to  Lancashire Lad

Life is what you make it. I know people who derive lots of support from religion and their families (both nuclear and extended), but my point is that there are other ways to live a life.

Lancashire Lad
Lancashire Lad
3 months ago
Reply to  Martin M

I appreciate that, though it’s precisely the “support” that makes religion so invidious. I’m sure their religion provides “support” for those who’d look to kill in the name of their particular brand. It really is all just psychological bolstering, which humanity would be better off without now

We can do good work and help others entirely independently of it.

Jae
Jae
3 months ago
Reply to  Lancashire Lad

Where is your evidence for that? You make sweeping statements without evidence. Please back up your assumptions.

Martin M
Martin M
3 months ago
Reply to  Lancashire Lad

I agree completely. Religion is a crutch.

Francisco Menezes
Francisco Menezes
3 months ago
Reply to  Lancashire Lad

Are you referring to Christianity or Islam, or both?

Lancashire Lad
Lancashire Lad
3 months ago

All forms of religious belief.

Campbell P
Campbell P
3 months ago
Reply to  Lancashire Lad

Mao, Stalin, Pol Pot – case against you proved. Interestingly, Christianity in the UK is growing fast, especially now among teens, 20s and 30 year olds.

Lancashire Lad
Lancashire Lad
3 months ago
Reply to  Campbell P

Nonsense. Those ideologies are just as iniquitous.

Case dismissed, and a very poor response if i might say so.

Martin M
Martin M
3 months ago
Reply to  Campbell P

No it’s not. Britain (or at least England and Wales) is now no longer a majority Christian nation.

Jae
Jae
3 months ago
Reply to  Lancashire Lad

How is it a “Waste”? If you make a statement like that please back it up. Particularly in light of the fact that people of faith are shown to be happier, more prosperous and generally more fulfilled.

Lancashire Lad
Lancashire Lad
3 months ago
Reply to  Jae

Are they really? I mean really?

I’m sure children with a comfort blanket feel a bit happier, and i wouldn’t deprive them of one; but seriously, don’t you think it’s time we grew up as a species?

Adults hanging on to their comfort blanket really isn’t anything to shout about.

Philip Hanna
Philip Hanna
3 months ago
Reply to  Lancashire Lad

I do find interesting the parallels between the state’s security blanket, mentioned in this article, and religion’s security blanket. Both offer support, no doubt with an eye on gathering another follower to boost the cause.

Jae
Jae
3 months ago
Reply to  Martin M

So please tell us how well that’s working for us? I’m curious to know how we’re better off?

Martin M
Martin M
3 months ago
Reply to  Jae

I can’t speak for anyone else, but I’m having a fabulous life. As we say in Australia, I wouldn’t be dead for quids.

Michael Askew
Michael Askew
3 months ago
Reply to  Martin M

You are probably correct about the prime movers not setting out to abolish the family and religion (apart from BLM that is). However, by creating perverse incentives in the name of compassion (“the state will provide you with an income and accommodation if you are a single mother”), undesirable outcomes ensue, as the article points out. If people want to find a basis other than faith and family for their lives, best to check that the chosen path genuinely does lead to human flourishing.

Martin M
Martin M
3 months ago
Reply to  Michael Askew

So, your preference would be “the State will let you be homeless and starve if you are a single mother”?

Philip Hanna
Philip Hanna
3 months ago
Reply to  El Uro

Haha, that is an unusual level of dooming even for UnHerd commenters.

El Uro
El Uro
3 months ago
Reply to  Philip Hanna

Please reread Universe 25. I’m pretty sure these women’s behavior is driven by population-level biology. It never bodes well for the species.

Mick Mannion
Mick Mannion
3 months ago
Reply to  El Uro

thanks for the suggestion…

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
3 months ago

So a bunch of unhappy women with daddy issues turn the state into their father? And we’re all just supposed to go along with it?

Geoff W
Geoff W
3 months ago
Reply to  UnHerd Reader

They can vote for whomever they want, as can the racist morons who make up some of Trump’s constituency.

Brett H
Brett H
3 months ago
Reply to  Geoff W

Truly amazing, and a bit disturbing, that a comment presses your TDS so easily.

Jae
Jae
3 months ago
Reply to  Geoff W

How narrow minded and bigoted, not to mention boring, everyone is tired of your Trump Derangement. Tell us, who are all these “Racist” people again? How are they racist? If you can’t back up your bigotry then please stop insulting millions of decent people.

Geoff W
Geoff W
3 months ago
Reply to  Jae

As to the millions, I said that some of them were racist morons. That’s observable from media interviews with some of them, and deducible from Trump’s rhetoric, e.g. about rapists, murderers and vermin.
As I don’t post here very often, and hadn’t for about a week and a half because I’d been ill, and not all my comments are about Trump anyway, I doubt that “everyone” is “tired” of my “Trump Derangement” (which incidentally is another cliche favoured by the intellectually lazy). But even if they were, while I pay my subscription and observe the rules I’ll post whatever I like, just as you can.

Clare Knight
Clare Knight
3 months ago
Reply to  Geoff W

Well said.

Mark Rinkel
Mark Rinkel
3 months ago
Reply to  Geoff W

Racist morons abound if you allow for a consistent application of the definition. You might be able to argue the left/progressive/democratic camp is built on a racist foundation.

Andrzej Wasniewski
Andrzej Wasniewski
3 months ago
Reply to  Geoff W

Overstatement at best. For example Ibram X. Kendi is a racist moron and he does not support Trump.

Russell Hamilton
Russell Hamilton
3 months ago
Reply to  UnHerd Reader

Some more data would be good because my hunch is that most of the unmarried liberal women the author refers to would come from the middle-classes and up?? And I’ve read that it is those classes that have the least family breakdown. If that’s the case the fatherless theory doesn’t add up.

Jae
Jae
3 months ago

Can you give us the source for where you read that please, I’d be interested in knowing that information about the middle classes? A link would be good. Thanks.

Russell Hamilton
Russell Hamilton
3 months ago
Reply to  Jae

I suspect it was from reading (or more likely watching) Rob Henderson, for example: “Most personal to me is the luxury belief that family is unimportant or that children are equally likely to thrive in all family structures. In 1960, the percentage of American children living with both biological parents was identical for affluent and working-class families — 95 per cent. By 2005, 85 per cent of affluent families were still intact, but for working-class families the figure had plummeted to 30 per cent. The Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam said at a 2017 Senate hearing: “Rich kids and poor kids now grow up in separate Americas 
 Growing up with two parents is now unusual in the working class, while two-parent families are normal and becoming more common among the upper middle class.”

https://archive.is/blDyB#selection-3111.0-3111.717

Cathy Carron
Cathy Carron
3 months ago

I don’t have the exact figures overall on this. But I do know that when my two girls started at a tony private school on NYC, someone commented to me that by 8th grade half the parents would be divorced. And it turned out to be true; a few of the ‘divorced’ didn’t actually divorce but they weren’t exactly happy either.

Mark Passey
Mark Passey
3 months ago

The mentioned Gimbone study found that depression risk was “highest overall for female liberal adolescents with low parental education.” This might align with the fatherless theory.

Samir Iker
Samir Iker
3 months ago

Probably the other way round – not fatherless but rather fathers who were too nice, paid for everything, treated her like a princess…..
And she ends up being an ungrateful princess who looks down upon that father, and all decent men like him….

Jeff Cunningham
Jeff Cunningham
3 months ago
Reply to  UnHerd Reader

I thought the metaphor was nuns – brides of God.

Michael Cavanaugh
Michael Cavanaugh
3 months ago

Or is it Brides of the Islamic State? (Cf Wikipedia article on the subject.)

Geoff W
Geoff W
3 months ago

Brides of Christ, I think.

Duane M
Duane M
3 months ago
Reply to  UnHerd Reader

My read of the article is that it makes a coherent, reasonable argument, with some outside sources to buttress the argument that American culture sets a toxic level of individuality as the main goal for adulthood. It is a provocative argument, and that is the sort of essay I enjoy finding at UnHerd.

Jim C
Jim C
3 months ago
Reply to  Duane M

I’m not sure dependence on the State can be characterised as “a toxic level of individuality”

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
3 months ago
Reply to  Jim C

But that’s exactly the issue. The “invisible hand” of the state, supporting and providing the individuals needs, allows people to live isolated, atomized lives, pretending like they have all this independence and individual agency. Modern women have no problem relying on corporations and the state, but just don’t want to rely on a man.

Jim C
Jim C
3 months ago
Reply to  UnHerd Reader

It is a good piece, but how is support for Gazans any more a part of an “empathy-based social justice campaign” than support for Israel?

Martin M
Martin M
3 months ago

I can’t speak for women (given that I am a man), but as far as I can see, some people just aren’t suited to marriage and children (me included). I have been married a couple of times, but I came to the realisation that it isn’t my thing. Life is so much better now.

El Uro
El Uro
3 months ago
Reply to  Martin M

Sorry in advance. Are you sure this isn’t just an attempt to shirk responsibility?

Martin M
Martin M
3 months ago
Reply to  El Uro

No, it is an attempt to have a good time pretty much all the time. So far, it has worked perfectly (and I am about to turn 62, so I am having an excellent run).

Rob N
Rob N
3 months ago
Reply to  Martin M

That you want to have a fun life means not having children etc sounds so shallow.

Still more space for my children so maybe a good thing.

Martin M
Martin M
3 months ago
Reply to  Rob N

Sure, have as many kids as you like. I’m cool with it. Somebody’s got to, after all. I always had a (semi serious) deal with my oldest friend, to the effect that he could have my share of kids. That’s how it worked out too. He had four. I had none.

Jae
Jae
3 months ago
Reply to  Martin M

Good for you that you’re finding happiness, long may it continue. But your way of life is not a prescription for everyone or we’re doomed.

Martin M
Martin M
3 months ago
Reply to  Jae

I never said it was for everyone. I don’t have the right to judge anybody’s life other than my own.

Betsy Arehart
Betsy Arehart
3 months ago
Reply to  Martin M

The philosophy of the age. Have a good time pretty much all the time.

Martin M
Martin M
3 months ago
Reply to  Betsy Arehart

I share it with Viv Savage of Spinal Tap.

Jonathan Andrews
Jonathan Andrews
3 months ago
Reply to  El Uro

People are entitled to make their own choices except they have a duty towards their children.
For whatever reason, children are not being cared for by both their parents in too many cases.

Rob N
Rob N
3 months ago
Reply to  Martin M

You can’t speak for men either. You can only speak for yourself (and those who have chosen you as their representative).

Martin M
Martin M
3 months ago
Reply to  Rob N

From reading this article, and the other one today about women freezing their eggs, I suspect I am not the only man to hold the views I do.

Allison Barrows
Allison Barrows
3 months ago
Reply to  Martin M

Marriage isn’t a hobby. It’s a serious commitment to the person you love and a covenant between yourselves and God.
I hope the women you married found men who took the institution more seriously than you, and that life is better for them, too.

Martin M
Martin M
3 months ago

It is not my place to say whether their lives were “better”. Only they can speak to that. However, I should point out that there wasn’t any “God” aspect to either of my marriages. Other than the legal formalities, the only “ritual” observed was visiting the grave of Jim Morrison in the following days.

Martin M
Martin M
3 months ago
Reply to  Martin M

I should point out that I don’t ascribe any religious function to the late Mr Morrison. It’s just that visiting his grave is a cool thing to do if you have a free afternoon in Paris.

Jim Veenbaas
Jim Veenbaas
3 months ago

So I guess they are a bunch of cat ladies.

Cathy Carron
Cathy Carron
3 months ago
Reply to  Jim Veenbaas

JDVance definitely hit a nerve. The chorus of ‘meows’ in response was deafening.

Martin M
Martin M
3 months ago
Reply to  Cathy Carron

Yeah! If the guy had an ounce of charisma, he could be President!

Max Price
Max Price
3 months ago

The biggest underlying factors for depression (significant psychiatric issues aside) are ingratitude and having a victim mentality. Feminism has done a grave disservice to generations of women.

Walter Marvell
Walter Marvell
3 months ago
Reply to  Max Price

Yes. But victimhood also is – along with greviance and entitlement – the bitter fruit of the crushing human rights and progressive credo/ideology adopted by the Blairite State in the 90s. This is wreaking havoc on women men all; feminism is not the problem.

Duane M
Duane M
3 months ago
Reply to  Walter Marvell

I agree that the victim attitude is damaging men as well as women. And I also am coming to see that it is a feminine perspective.
The ultimate cause, however, appears to be the rise of industrial capitalism in the 19th century, which required a large number of urban factory workers. I think that did enormous damage to traditional extended family culture. People were made appendages to the machinery, as shown (with comedy) in Charlie Chaplin’s “Modern Times”.
And I believe that modern feminism, which is also a 19th century phenomenon, arose as a reaction to the dehumanizing social damage caused by the industrialization of society.

Walter Marvell
Walter Marvell
3 months ago
Reply to  Duane M

True. But remember too that getting women out of home and into the workforce has been a key tenet of Communism and Socialism for well over a century. The Bolsheviks were into free love, easy divorce and equality in the workplace. Our post 80s society seemed to be creating a ‘Have It All World’ for women. But no one is talking about the twin Mega Crises that have impacted us especially post 2008. First, our society has allowed property to be unaffordable to all bar the wealthy – and almost every family needs two incomes to survive. And then with young children, comes Crisis Two. We do not have adequate child care!! But the feminsation of the public sector and especially NHS (80/90%) still accelerates – even when their own trade unions declare that health work is so arduous it is systemically ‘anti women’. Guess what is at the root of the WFH phenomenon in our post Lock crashed economy and public sector?? Guess why a 24/7 Weekend Hospital service will never happen? This is a car crash for working women and an identity/rights obsessed Labour will pretend the problem simply does not exist and shove Rosy to the Rivets. Feminism in 2024 has to confront these awful new realities if it is to be relevant.

Simon Templar
Simon Templar
3 months ago
Reply to  Duane M

So I think you are saying we would all be happier without cars, phones, TVs, computers, kitchen appliances, and electricity generally?

laurence scaduto
laurence scaduto
3 months ago
Reply to  Simon Templar

That’s a big leap.
The unionized workforce of the 50s, 60s and seventies would have provided all of that and comfortable, secure single earner life-styles.
It was Thatcher and Reagan who put an end to that.

philip kern
philip kern
3 months ago

Women’s portion of earnings almost exactly mirrors the federal tax burden. Problably more than a coincidence.

Martin M
Martin M
3 months ago
Reply to  Walter Marvell

So, to sum up, you blame Tony Blair for the current state of the USA?

Grace Darling
Grace Darling
3 months ago
Reply to  Max Price

I agree that younger women have been poorly served by messaging, but Feminism isn’t all to blame. Not being dependent on men for security and purpose is good. Failing to value the importance of decent men and fathers in general, relationships, partnerships, children etc is not.

Peter Johnson
Peter Johnson
3 months ago
Reply to  Grace Darling

I think a lot of feminism was trying to make women more like men. Promiscuity, childlessness, deferred marriage, focus on careers – the negative aspects of this are all harder on women than men.

Kirk Susong
Kirk Susong
3 months ago
Reply to  Grace Darling

“Not being dependent on men for security and purpose is good.”
Can’t say that I agree with that. Wives should be dependent on husbands, just as husbands should be dependent on wives. Mutual interdependence – which sometimes in poetic circles travels under the name ‘love’ – is the keystone to the long, fruitful, mutually-edifying marriage that most people consider a central feature of a life well lived.

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
3 months ago

Wow sexist much? I guess men not hanging around for their partner and children have nothing to do with this increasing demographic?

Jonathan Andrews
Jonathan Andrews
3 months ago
Reply to  UnHerd Reader

Of course those men who desert their children should be held responsible. What’s unclear is why they are doing this. Some really don’t care and regard sex as fun without responsibility. Are there others? Men surprised by a pregnancy but keen to be part of their child’s life but denied the opportunity?

Brett H
Brett H
3 months ago
Reply to  UnHerd Reader

Sexist? How, where?

Brett H
Brett H
3 months ago
Reply to  Brett H

How do you get a down vote for asking a question?

Brett H
Brett H
3 months ago
Reply to  Brett H

There you go, again, Amazing.

Philip Hanna
Philip Hanna
3 months ago
Reply to  Brett H

Why are you worried about how your comments are perceived/voted on?

Brett H
Brett H
3 months ago
Reply to  Philip Hanna

Why do you think I’m worried?
I find it interesting that someone down votes when nothing’s been said. What’s the down vote for?

Martin M
Martin M
3 months ago
Reply to  Brett H

Well, a lot of them are because you took issue with the first one.

Brett H
Brett H
3 months ago
Reply to  Martin M

No, I asked a question. Sometimes a question is just a question. I was interested to see where the sexism was in the article because I couldn’t see it.

R.I. Loquitur
R.I. Loquitur
3 months ago
Reply to  UnHerd Reader

Women having sex and children outside of marriage is likely the real culprit. Why buy the cow if you get the milk for free?

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
3 months ago
Reply to  UnHerd Reader

Do you really think that men leaving their families has become more prevalent over the years?
Or has it become more prevalent for women to have children without men? Among other developments.

Tyler Durden
Tyler Durden
3 months ago

Mary Harrington’s research matches up nicely with this fascinating piece. The idea of the US (and US feminism) leading the transhuman transformation of Western life (and for 60 years now) should be given more pertinence in political discourse today.

Archibald Tennyson
Archibald Tennyson
3 months ago

A sobering read. It’s only a matter of time before strong men put a stop to this madness. 
Humans live in patriarchies. That is, men are always the ones who are the ultimate enforcers and guarantors of rights. We are currently living in an illusory state where women’s position is being underwritten by acquiescent men. 
When enough men get sick of this arrangement, as they will when society continues to unravel, feminism will come to an end. And it will be in the best interests of everyone: men, women, and children.

Martin M
Martin M
3 months ago

And that will happen how exactly? By physical violence on the part of the men?

El Uro
El Uro
3 months ago
Reply to  Martin M

Violence is a part of life in a baboon troop. It is as necessary as grooming.
You are very naive if you think that a human troop is much different from a baboon troop, no less naive than these nice lonely ladies who poison our life.

Martin M
Martin M
3 months ago
Reply to  El Uro

Speak for yourself. They are not poisoning my life.

Jeff Cunningham
Jeff Cunningham
3 months ago

Looks to me like radical Muslims are already sick of it. It probably wont be an uprising of modern feminized Ritalin-soaked men.

Lancashire Lad
Lancashire Lad
3 months ago

How very Christian of you.

Archibald Tennyson
Archibald Tennyson
3 months ago
Reply to  Lancashire Lad

Are you aware of St. Paul’s teachings on marriage? They’re not California progressivism, I can tell you that for free.

Martin M
Martin M
3 months ago

I am not familiar with those, but St. Martin M’s teachings on marriage are to the effect of “Be very careful. Marriage is not for everybody”.

Archibald Tennyson
Archibald Tennyson
3 months ago
Reply to  Martin M

You’re right. The other path is monasticism. Did you opt for that one?

Martin M
Martin M
3 months ago

I gave marriage a couple of goes, found it wasn’t for me, and I now live alone. Not sure about monasticism though. That term implies a level of religiosity that is not present in my life.

Danny D
Danny D
3 months ago

Thomas Sowell mentions the issue of broken families especially among African Americans. According to him this began to increase massively with the new government programmes in the wake of the civil rights movement in the 70s, which made it possible for women to bring up a child by herself, without the need for a father with an income. There used to be a system where men supported their wife and kids, being involved in the family itself. Now men have been cut off from family life and are forced to support mothers and children indirectly through taxes without getting anything in return. They got cucked by the government. All of that of course kills the need for personal responsibility in a society as well.

Jeremy Bray
Jeremy Bray
3 months ago
Reply to  Danny D

As you say this is an issue Thomas Sowell picked up on in respect of the black population a long time ago and that it was bleeding into the white population but governments of all political stripe have done little to address.

Jim Haggerty
Jim Haggerty
3 months ago
Reply to  Danny D

And Daniel Patrick Moynihan before him but that has been memory holed for a long time

Elaine Giedrys-Leeper
Elaine Giedrys-Leeper
3 months ago
Reply to  Danny D

Did Thomas Sowell (or anyone else) ever ask WHY African American fathers exited the family scene in the 70s ?
I am genuinely curious.

Lisa Darling
Lisa Darling
3 months ago

Elaine, I am no expert, but I believe that the welfare state provided (still provides?) more money to unwed or single mothers than the women might receive if they were part of an intact two-parent family. It’s my understanding that there was a financial incentive to being a single mom. That can’t be the one-size-fits-all answer to your question, but it was likely a part of it.

Phil Mitchell
Phil Mitchell
3 months ago

Sowell–and Moynihan–argued that they were replaced by the government.

Andrea Rudenko
Andrea Rudenko
3 months ago

Yes, that was exactly it. Under these new welfare programs, single women were paid money for each child they had, thus incentivizing them to have more children, also making them unable to work. So the single mother had welfare benefits for herself and each child. This led to a whole generation of people raised entirely on welfare, which, in turn, led to more generations of people subsisting on welfare, which continues today. In political terms, it should be obvious that people relying on welfare will vote for the party that provides it.

Tom Condray
Tom Condray
3 months ago

The key remains that mothers lose some, or all, of their welfare benefits when a father lives in the home. Consequently, many men are technically homeless, as they move from household to household, siring more fatherless children.

Jim C
Jim C
3 months ago

Because Black women received rather less money from being married than White or Hispanic women – ie, Black men earned less than White and Hispanic men – the inducement to head a fatherless household was greater.

philip kern
philip kern
3 months ago
Reply to  Jim C

The fact that what you wrote is deeply troubling at so many levels doesn’t make it less true.

Aidan A
Aidan A
3 months ago

All I can say is thanks for nothing feminists of the last few decades.

Rita X Stafford
Rita X Stafford
3 months ago

This is one of the most thought provoking pieces I’ve read in a long while. The erasure of women, a theme made more pronounced by the trans movement, is to my mind a feature of this article as well. The idea that we now have a proliferation of BOTS is pitiful and unnerving. This iteration started long ago with LBJs Great Society which made ousting husbands and fathers from their own families an economic incentive for women. I know it’s hard to believe, especially on an intellectual platform such as this, but it is still is possible for a man and a woman to experience a Great Love for one another along with the challenges and conflict inherent in all human relationships, and to experience the beauty of biologically bringing children into the world. Along with the Dialectical Materialists, the LGBTQ etc etc agenda has for nearly 50 years been a powerful misogynistic force that despises this spiritual dimension of human love.

Brett H
Brett H
3 months ago

If someone was trying to destroy the family then destroying women would be a good beginning. As for children; people without children have no investment in education, except as a tool for Capitalism. I’m not against Capitalism but we’re not work units. Their are many things that childless people have no interest in or care for. Public health; private insurance is their choice, the rest get what’s left. The cost of living for childless people; not a problem. These games have consequences.

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
3 months ago

Im sorry but this piece comes across as glib and mean even with a touch of cruelty. As someone who has moved politically in the last few years ( from socialist to centrist/conservative ) and started a family, this comes across as callous towards those who maybe havent been as lucky. I do feel.lucky to be able to have a family – the economy is screwed – i wouldnt want my single friends ( male or female) to read this. Its grossly reductive of our human lives and the choices we make. A little kindness goes a long way

Konstantinos Stavropoulos
Konstantinos Stavropoulos
3 months ago
Reply to  UnHerd Reader

You have a valid point but I think you overestimate somewhat the negative feelings of a reader who may be single..!

I found this article a little one-sided as I tried to describe in a comment. My point is that conservatives are supporting the well-fair state by endorsing unlimited increasing of wealth of certain individuals and special interest groups..!

Jae
Jae
3 months ago

Have you looked at the Left and Democrats lately? They’re the party of the elites and the wealthy. They’re the party of “Special interest groups”. I think you should update your thinking.

Brett H
Brett H
3 months ago

“conservatives are supporting the well-fair state by endorsing unlimited increasing of wealth of certain individuals and special interest groups”
I don’t understand this. How does an increase in wealth support social welfare?

Konstantinos Stavropoulos
Konstantinos Stavropoulos
3 months ago
Reply to  Brett H

Unlimited increasing of profit via a constant lowering of production cost is killing small people’s salaries. No space for a family. The progressive then come to offer the solution that we experience..! Immigrants with minimum salary and a benefit-state for both immigrants and citizens of the west..! We barely survive.. they harvest..!

Ex middle class and lower middle class people are divided into progressive and conservative, according to various reasons that have to do with personal background and experiences, a more traditional or a modern philosophy on life, plus.. deeper psychological reasons. While the ruling elites of both mainstream political forces are gathering more and more of the wealth, obstructing a fairer distribution..!

I want the conservatives to win..! Only because progressives are near to lunatic and there is no better choice on the sight..!

Brett H
Brett H
3 months ago

That’s a good point, I misunderstood your comment about where the wealth went.

Konstantinos Stavropoulos
Konstantinos Stavropoulos
3 months ago
Reply to  Brett H

Thank you..! It was not sharp-clear obviously..!

Steven Zimmer
Steven Zimmer
3 months ago
Reply to  UnHerd Reader

I agree with your comment. The statistics in the article are reductive and misleading as they may mask a myriad of reasons as to why women may be single or unhappy. It is remarkable that except for the sole woman respondent…most are men! I am particularly incensed about the comment that Harris’s career was launched by an affair with Willie Brown. The inuendo implied by this is disgusting really. I guess the author really wants a President who’s moral turpitude is legendary and who is already a convicted woman abuser, a corporate cheat, a convicted felon, 6 times bankrupt, and a man who has ~90 indictments against him. While the author does not explicitly promote Trump, he surely falls into the category of white males who do. Intellectual snobbery mixed with misogyny…what a toxic brew!

Philip Hanna
Philip Hanna
3 months ago
Reply to  Steven Zimmer

I do feel like she is very unfairly being shamed there. I find it hard to believe that she put in literally zero work and just slept around and suddenly found herself in the VP chair. But that is the narrative that I hear in most of these articles. Not to mention that many men have surely done despicable things to advance their political careers.

JOHN B
JOHN B
3 months ago
Reply to  UnHerd Reader

Too much kindness can also blind people from their situation and rob them of the opportunity to do something about it.

John Galt
John Galt
3 months ago
Reply to  UnHerd Reader

The poor state we are in is the result of the disintegration of the family, to propose that we should seek to continue in the same course that has led us to this sorry state is akin to the alcoholic that believes that one more beer will cure his troubles.

There will be people who will not be happy with any situation, but to claim that therefore the entire project should be scrapped because some people don’t want a family or relationships is to condemn all of humanity to please those that wish to reject the fact that connection and belonging are the most vital elements of happiness and well being.

Konstantinos Stavropoulos
Konstantinos Stavropoulos
3 months ago

A thorough article but seems to neglect the conservatives’ contribution to the current state of women’s (and men’s) behavior. The established societal process of the maximalisation of profit describes an ideal that has been flourishing among conservatives for long. Ever increasing profit and productivity, may lead to unprecedented prosperity and “progress”. The thing is that this is also ever consuming of resources and of everything “slowing” back the speed of “progress”..! Living a natural life is very “unproductive” in such a universe. Women, very naturally are following the trend of this “progressive” method to destructive “prosperity”. This fallacy is an ancient sin of humankind that today gets magnified indeed to a fearful extreme. The conservatives have yet to propose an actual slowing down of that process. Meanwhile the progressives are being the “pioneers” harvesting the “overproduce” of our self-denial..! Until the day that either the progressives or the conservatives, or even better someone else, take the lead to a progress that makes sense and at the same time conserves what needs to be preserved, we will keep sliding towards chaos.

El Uro
El Uro
3 months ago

Until that day that either progressives or conservatives, or even better someone else, takes the lead to a progress that makes sense and points towards conserving what needs to be preserved, we will keep sliding towards chaos.
.
Who will decide what is a progress that makes sense and points towards conserving what needs to be preserved. Until now, everyone who has proposed solutions, from Greta Thunberg to Pol Pot, has only caused sane people to be stunned.

Konstantinos Stavropoulos
Konstantinos Stavropoulos
3 months ago
Reply to  El Uro

I never said that the left is doing the job. I am trying to say that conservatives aren’t either and that they are much into hard core business that maximize profit and that’s against women and is destructive to families.!

That is why there is a shift to harder line right-wing parties. The progressives are at the moment terrible, but had the conservatives really supported women and family things would have been deferent..!

Brett H
Brett H
3 months ago

What way would you have liked to see Conservatives support women and family?

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
3 months ago

Do you really think that working women are to be attributed to conservatives? Did conservatives want women to work?

Konstantinos Stavropoulos
Konstantinos Stavropoulos
3 months ago
Reply to  UnHerd Reader

Not the small people who may be conservative. The big money conservatives profit more when a family needs two salaries to make a living…!

Conservatives are still preferable, but they are not delivering..! If they really supported women and families they would still be in power in the UK..!

Last week, when asked about affordable housing, Trump said he’ll bring the energy price down to make house maintenance cheeper. That may lower house prices a little but is it really a big step to support young people to make a step into creating a family..? Not to my opinion..!

Philip Stott
Philip Stott
3 months ago

A very long way to explain what we all know: progressives believe they are making the world a better place, while actually making it worse.

B M
B M
3 months ago

Zachary and Leo are 100% voting for Trump.

Ralph Faris
Ralph Faris
3 months ago
Reply to  B M

Is that supposed to be an argument, a simple assertion, or your way of avoiding having to explain your objections to the carefully offered explanation by the author of the miserable brides? Suppose I flippantly declare that BM is voting for the twit the Democrats switched into the role for which she’s hardly qualified, except she’s a miserable bride? Does that do it for you?

JOHN B
JOHN B
3 months ago

Ironically, it is aspects of the sexual revolution, specifically that men are not culturally required to commit, which has landed women in this very difficult spot, and voting for the democrats because they are at least not mean about the situation is the best solution until republicans realise (as they should have long ago) that if anyone is to blame for decline of the family its men.

R.I. Loquitur
R.I. Loquitur
3 months ago
Reply to  JOHN B

Of course its men, men who like to have casual sex without the responsibility of taking care of the children they sire. The normalization of premarital sex and abortions serves that purpose nicely. Before the sexual revolution both premarital sex and abortions–and fatherless homes–were rare. Men convincing women to have commitment-free sex created this environment where a whole class of women became sort of throw away sex toys. Is it any surprise that they’ve become depressed, angry cat ladies?

Alex Lekas
Alex Lekas
3 months ago
Reply to  R.I. Loquitur

Who are these men having casual sex with? Women. Women with agency and far more choices than their mothers and grandmothers had. They took advantage of those choices, often created by schools in a zero-sum atmosphere that led to a vast cohort of aimless men, meaning these adult women have a much shallower mating pool from which to draw.

R.I. Loquitur
R.I. Loquitur
3 months ago
Reply to  Alex Lekas

Yeah, women who now are depressed, unmarried and living with their cats. And voting Democrat.

JOHN B
JOHN B
3 months ago
Reply to  Alex Lekas

In my experience which is not statistically insignificant, women have casual sex in the hope that it will lead somewhere – and men tend to take advantage of that. This is also the view of many people (including women) who I know and with whom I have addressed topic with. I accept that men who did not get the opportunity to have casual sex might be inclined to disagree.

Martin M
Martin M
3 months ago
Reply to  JOHN B

What is the old adage? “Women use sex to get love, and men use love to get sex”?

Brett H
Brett H
3 months ago
Reply to  R.I. Loquitur

“Of course its men, men who like to have casual sex without the responsibility of taking care of the children they sire.”
Do you think this is the case across all socio/economic groups?

R.I. Loquitur
R.I. Loquitur
3 months ago
Reply to  Brett H

Men are men.

Brett H
Brett H
3 months ago
Reply to  R.I. Loquitur

But obviously women can chose to avoid getting pregnant. If there’s a reason they can’t then they’re a vulnerable section of society. So who might they be?

JOHN B
JOHN B
3 months ago
Reply to  R.I. Loquitur

Very much this, although men who are not at least moderately marriable will tend not to agree. Alphas would tend to agree but fill their boots anyway.

Alex Lekas
Alex Lekas
3 months ago
Reply to  JOHN B

When govt policy provides an economic incentive for having children WITHOUT fathers in the home, please explain how the decline is men’s fault.
When the education system engages in moronic gender politics by elevating girls, at the expense of boys, please explain how men are to blame.
Perhaps you have missed that women have agency and it began with the pill, which empowered them to be as promiscuous as men. Add to that the normalization of abortion plus a tremendous expansion of economic opportunities that allow women to be financially self-sufficient, and blaming men reads more like self-hatred than analysis.

JOHN B
JOHN B
3 months ago
Reply to  Alex Lekas

I think this is a loser man perspective and I do not mean that the man who holds the view is a loser but that the view will tend to make him a loser because he does not understand women at all.
That said, I do accept that the culture of narcissism which fully embedded in Wester Civ has made women and men worse, but for biological reasons women’s window to be selfish/narcissistic, if she wants to have children, (and the vast majority of women do) is far shorter.

Miss Fit
Miss Fit
3 months ago
Reply to  Alex Lekas

And why would women prefer to have children WITHOUT fathers in the home ? You seem to imply that for women to want to raise children with a man, they have to have no other choice, seems like it’s the less desirable choice in a range of options… Why ?

Francisco Menezes
Francisco Menezes
3 months ago

An electoral base consisting of barren harpies (dixit Peterson) on the verge of a nervous breakdown? That is very cynical, and the last sentence of this article contains the key. It is all about power, even if it means condemning half of the population to a miserable life. And strangely enough, many women are happy to go along with this scheme.

Alex Lekas
Alex Lekas
3 months ago

It brings to mind the saying about burning a place down in order to rule over the ashes.

Allison Barrows
Allison Barrows
3 months ago

Conservatives are pro-family, as the author himself points out again and again, so what are the “myseries caused by anti-family social policies” he cites without example? He contradicts the entire article with this one line.

Chris Van Schoor
Chris Van Schoor
3 months ago

I saw that too. Must be a typo?

Jae
Jae
3 months ago

Agreed. He became a less reliable source because he fell into the trap of appeasement with that statement.

Daniel Lee
Daniel Lee
3 months ago

“…the resultant depression and anxiety into anger, which it then utilizes as political fuel for empathy-based social justice campaigns from Ferguson to Gaza.”
Hard not to notice that these women’s empathy only runs one direction. It never extends to understanding or tolerating any political disagreement.

Alex Lekas
Alex Lekas
3 months ago

Rather, Harris is a flesh-and-blood avatar of a much more numerous, powerful, and radically dissatisfied demographic: never-married and childless American women between the ages of 20 and 45.
That sounds very much like the cat ladies to whom JD Vance referred, except that Harris is married to a guy who had children in a previous marriage before boffing the nanny. Harris, meanwhile, was famously the side-chick of a political benefactor. That does not exactly scream “hear me roar” as the old-school feminists used to say.
Yes, that demographic IS dissatisfied, with scores of TikTok videos to prove it. These women benefited from the idiotic zero-sum game of gender politics that elevated girls but did so at the expense of boys. As a result, these women are professionally successful but personally empty, because a large portion of their potential mating pool was rendered impotent for the sake of a political score.

Philip Hanna
Philip Hanna
3 months ago
Reply to  Alex Lekas

Don’t forget that as a man, it’s awfully hard to date some of these women. I’m a previously married 41 year old man, and it’s so hard to have even a light conversation about social issues, politics, anything like that, without feeling like you are being grilled or looked down upon because you don’t 100000% support every liberal policy or LGBTQ issue or whatever. Obviously, these topics aren’t usually part of a first date or anything, but after a few weeks, I sometimes feel like I’m being secretly interviewed to see if I’m a horrible trumper or whatever.
I don’t have a problem with anyone who has an alternate viewpoint (unless it’s straight up obvious bigotry or hate), and I don’t personally care much if a woman who I am attracted to has some different opinions or views. In fact, I often prefer to hear those views because sometimes I even learn something. But I don’t find that to be the case with many single women these days, sadly.

Martin M
Martin M
3 months ago
Reply to  Philip Hanna

I can’t help feeling you’re mixing with the wrong crowd.

Campbell P
Campbell P
3 months ago

The terrifying results of absent fathers; the list is endless. In my experience in SE London, this was prevalent and the primary cause of teenage crime and mental illness.

Jae
Jae
3 months ago

It’s interesting that commenters on here who say society doesn’t need religion, it’s a “Waste” as one put it, are oblivious to the premise of the article. When a vacuum is created it must be filled.

We removed all meaningful motivation in life for young women, finding a loving partner and getting married, having children, being in an intact family and enjoying exploring a spiritual life and it got replaced with the Democratic Party. That’s the point of the article. What a paltry swap.

Women are extremely gullible, we have a tendency not to believe in our value to society. Some of us allow a political party to tell us what our value is instead.

Norfolk Sceptic
Norfolk Sceptic
3 months ago
Reply to  Jae

I don’t think, individually, women are gullible: it’s that they are more prone to being influenced by groupthink. Sometimes working together is beneficial, other times, not.

And when there are political or marketing behavioral nudges, the results can be surprising, and difficult to remedy.

Cathy Carron
Cathy Carron
3 months ago

Females also test higher on the neuroticism scale, which only gets exacerbated by social media. Maybe there’s a reason why men won’t commit?

Philip Hanna
Philip Hanna
3 months ago
Reply to  Cathy Carron

Yeah, as a single 41 y/o, I can definitely relate to this. I hate painting all women of a group a certain way, of course, but there is definitely an increase of neurotic “if you aren’t with me, you are against me” mentality in women over the last decade or so. As if having an alternate viewpoint makes you Satan or something.

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
3 months ago

This is a superb assessment of a phenomenon that’s highly visible in the large US city where I live. Young women are replacing men in their lives with the company of other women and (sadly) an obsession with their dogs, which they speak to and shower with affection in ways that previous generations reserved for their boyfriends and husbands.

Brett H
Brett H
3 months ago
Reply to  UnHerd Reader

It does occur to me though, that women find no security in men these days and they can’t plan a future with them. How many women are childless because their boyfriend/husband doesn’t want kids? It’s like that saying”I wanted to have a child, not marry one.”

Dave Canuck
Dave Canuck
3 months ago
Reply to  UnHerd Reader

I like the obsession with dogs part, I see that where I live as well. And it’s mostly well off people, probably women with carreers. The problem with carreers is that aspect of life takes over, and by the time they are 40 well it’s too late for kids. Welcome to the world of educated career women, who now are in the majority in universities. Not good for having families for sure. I suspect this is not going to change, the age of the carreer man and woman at home is over for good, for better or worse. Everyone has become too independent, it’s the material world now, a product of wealth as well. Maybe the modern world has become too complicated.

Martin M
Martin M
3 months ago
Reply to  UnHerd Reader

I bet the dogs are more appreciative than the boyfriends and husbands ever were.

Brett H
Brett H
3 months ago
Reply to  Martin M

Why do you think some people refer to men as “dogs”?

Sue B
Sue B
3 months ago

I regret to say that Kamala will win in a landslide. Her key constituents described here will vote in huge numbers. As a female baby boomer I shake my head that women who think they don’t want children or marriage, distrust their sexual identity, and are so afraid of their reproductive capabilities that they must feel such affinity with Kamala. Women are chumps.

Dave Canuck
Dave Canuck
3 months ago
Reply to  Sue B

Boomers have alot to do with the society that exists today, they created most of the mess everyone is in, the generations below need to live with the consequences.

Zeph Smith
Zeph Smith
3 months ago
Reply to  Dave Canuck

I always find it amusing that people think that a given “generation” controls society, even if they never comprised more than a third of the voters, and they were extremely internally divided rather than monolithic. Blaming all the ills of society on right handed people would be much more logical, because every election we have ever had has been absolutely controlled by them. As I see it, this is a way of deliberately misunderstanding democratic power so as to position oneself as a victim.
Individuals of all cohorts had their tiny piece in producing the outcomes we have today. The groupings like by arbitrary birth date ranges are more deceptive than illuminating.
Another amusing reframing is when some younger folks feel that any dysfunction or challenges they have are “not their fault”, because they were raised by older generations and inherited a world they did not make. In other words, humans used to have agency and they abused it, but we don’t have agency so it’s not our fault. But those older folks were also raised by their elders and did not create the world they inherited either. Either we all have agency, or none of us do and we are all automatons. It doesn’t work to try to escape one’s own responsibility by pushing it onto others.

Brett H
Brett H
3 months ago
Reply to  Dave Canuck

It reaches a point where trying to work things out with someone is not going to happen. Your opinion regarding the boomers displays total ignorance and stupidity. If you thought things through you’d see how stupid your statement is. But you obviously haven’t and then, typically, you feel confident enough to say it out aloud.
First if all: if you’re going to hold the boomers responsible for things today then you have to include the positives as well.
Second: the real boomers were born between 1945-1955. The second cohort, 1955-1965, is some irrelevant add-on. They can’t possibly be included in what the boomers are, which is the sudden optimism of the ten years after the war ended and the consequent birth rate. The last boomer retired around 2020. Obviously they haven’t been the driving force for a long time. Let’s say their powerful influence, ended around 2000 when the following generation began to gain momentum and influence. Surely the following generations have been around long enough to influence things. Mark Zuckerberg is 40. Larry Page is 51. How’s that going?
Third: it’s really ignorant to generalise about a generation. Do you really think they’re all Conservatives, that they all had money, jobs, or homes. Do you actually believe that state housing only came about recently? Presumably you know that in England they had rationing well after the war finished, that many children were malnourished. And obviously you’d know that many became surgeons and made breakthroughs in surgical procedures, like heart surgery, treatment for leukaemia in children.
It’s a long list of what came out of that generation and I’m pretty sure you’ve benefited from it.

Martin M
Martin M
3 months ago
Reply to  Dave Canuck

Speaking as a (very late – 1962) Boomer, I am not bothered at all. In 20 years’ time, I will be dead. Someone else can sort the world out, and when they do, they can make it just how they like it.

Laura Creighton
Laura Creighton
3 months ago
Reply to  Martin M

It’s only revisionist history that makes you a Boomer. Douglas Coupland, who wrote Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture which greatly popularised the term Generation X, (which he may have invented, as well, authorities disagree) about himself, and his generation — was born in 1961.

Vanessa Gress
Vanessa Gress
3 months ago

I’m in this demographic, but I don’t have a mental illness and haven’t had government help. I was also raised by a wonderful dad. I hate being talked about like this. I’m happy with my life and I hope others are too. We’re not ruining the country, we just want to live in peace. I don’t like Kamala or the democrats but being framed as a mentally ill bitter loser makes me dislike the republicans as well.

Brett H
Brett H
3 months ago
Reply to  Vanessa Gress

It’s interesting how politics, the shallow nature of it and the cheap tricks they play, will suddenly put the spotlight on particular members of society, for their own political, short term gain, that did not ask for it and must now answer to it. It’s shameful and destructive.

Dave Canuck
Dave Canuck
3 months ago
Reply to  Vanessa Gress

Lots of gross exaggeration in this article, obviously anti female and anti younger generations, with a right political agenda to boot. It’s a shame how Republicans fuel the generational divide, after all it’s often their children and grandchildren they shit on, they will do whatever it takes to win. If people were diagnosed with anxiety and depression problems in the 1960s in the same fashion as they are today, they would probably find the same proportion of people with those problems, many used to drown themselves in alcohol , there was rampant child abuse and spousal abuse in those days, mostly hidden out of site, and often masked by religious hypocrisy.

A J
A J
3 months ago
Reply to  Dave Canuck

Don’t forget “mother’s little helpers”, stimulants dished out like smarties to the crushingly bored US housewives of the 1960s.

Brett H
Brett H
3 months ago
Reply to  A J

So what explains the number of women on anti-depressants these days. A total reversal of circumstances and still high use if anti-depressants.

Zeph Smith
Zeph Smith
3 months ago
Reply to  Dave Canuck

> “If people were diagnosed with anxiety and depression problems in the 1960s in the same fashion as they are today, they would probably find the same proportion of people with those problems, many used to drown themselves in alcohol , there was rampant child abuse and spousal abuse in those days, mostly hidden out of site, and often masked by religious hypocrisy.”
I have considered that hypothesis from time to time for years. Certainly all of those things existed in the 1960’s and exist today, but have the proportions remained the same or changed? In part because of the hiding, it’s really hard to tell – leaving an easy canvas upon which to project our imaginings, if we are not careful. And for many, that’s the end of it – they are very happy imagining whatever makes them most comfortable about the past and present, and seeking truth which might disrupt that comfort is not a positive.
But how can we seek some truth, or at least evidence, if we ARE interested? As you say, we can speculate that things like diagnosed mental illness might not be accurately reflected in those stats because of different standards and practices today.
But there are other more reliable statistics which have also been gathered across that time period. That’s a big subject, too big to take up in depth now, but we could skim a bit of it.
One probe would be to look at K12 education then and now, and see what has changed. For example, how do long term teachers view today’s pupils and those from their earlier years?
Go to youtube and search for “why I quit teaching” or similar prompts. Besides the videos, read some of the comments to see which experiences are widely echoed and which are not. It’s pretty discouraging, and there are LOTS of people reporting on it. The national teacher shortage is not coming from nowhere. The problems began before the pandemic lockdowns and continue after it, though things went downhill even faster during it. It looks like generation Alpha may be a huge problem, again on average, with exceptions. Partly academic, but I’m actually more concerned about their social attitudes and abilities.
Go to the National Educational Assessment web pages and look up the schools in your area. How many of the students are performing “at grade level”? How many are dropping out before graduation – entering a job market with very subpar skills in many cases?
Look at the stats for two parent families versus one parent. Even if some percentage of two parent families were dysfunctional, with alcoholism and various other ills, even including those in the mix, children from two parent families statistically do much better on average, it’s not even close.
Of course there are exceptions (I know this very well from my own life, raised by a single mom after escaping from an abusive father, but I have a great life with a great mate today), but on the whole the pattern is clear that one parent families produce more kids with a lot more problems, usually for life. I don’t say that to stigmatize those kids (or myself), I sympathize. But for society, I think encouraging healthy two parent families is likely very functional.
And two parent families are decreasing, as certain societal dysfunctions which appear to be correlated are increasing. Can we write that off as a coincidence?
Overall, after weighing that question for years and looking in many places, I really do believe that we are an increasingly psychologically unhealthy and dysfunctional society, even compared to the acknowledged imperfections of the 60s as you reference. The increasing problems cannot be wished away by assuming that changing diagnostic standards can explain all or most of it; they cannot.
We can’t bury our heads in the sand and recite the problems of the past, while ignoring that we seem to be heading in the wrong direction in so many ways – things are not getting better on most fronts. Having humane and caring values is good in my opinion – so long as they are balanced by not losing touch with the real world; good intentions unanchored to reality can cause bad outcomes.

Dave Canuck
Dave Canuck
3 months ago
Reply to  Zeph Smith

Lots of good points there, I am no expert in the education field, our society has many intertwined problems for sure, life was simpler in the old days, I honestly believe that the complexity of modern life including the accelerating need to adapt to change and new technology is overwhelming alot of people. Change was more gradual in the 20th century, in addition to the endless distractions (social media, video games, video streaming, smart phones, etc) that young people are faced with is creating huge problems. What’s good for Google, Netflix, Facebook etc is not necessarily good for society. Alot of anxiety is caused by trying to keep up with all this stuff, I suspect the mind can only take so much stimulus.

Samir Iker
Samir Iker
3 months ago
Reply to  Vanessa Gress

“I hate being talked about like this. ”
They are not talking about *YOU*
They are talking about your average demographic.

Warren Trees
Warren Trees
3 months ago
Reply to  Vanessa Gress

I don’t believe the author, or anyone, refers to 100% of a category when making generalizations. When women refer to men as pigs, do they refer to every last man that has ever lived? Of course not.

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
3 months ago

I hardly know where to start.:
—Leo got free education, because it’s been free since the 19th Century. That’s why it’s called public education.
—all couples get a child tax deduction.
—“Linda needs home and hearing care” and Leo can afford at-home elder elder care for his mom.” My mother got 24-hour at home care for two weeks. The bill was $6000. We were stunned. Leo’s mother got Medicare because all American workers pay into it.
—Now: Willie Brown. He was no saint when it comes to women. But he had been estranged from his wife for a decade when he dated Harris. He celebrated his 50th anniversary with his wife (they were friends), and he hadn’t lived with her for over 25 years.
—Only 8 percent of Democrats are progressive. A significant majority are moderates.
—The decline of church attendance is also a conservative problem. The lack of any social ties is often cited for deaths of despair.
—Divorces are higher in conservatives states.

John Galt
John Galt
3 months ago
Reply to  UnHerd Reader

I’ll just respond to this one right here

> Willie Brown. He was no saint when it comes to women. But he had been estranged from his wife for a decade when he dated Harris. He celebrated his 50th anniversary with his wife (they were friends), and he hadn’t lived with her for over 25 years.

If Kamela had been around just 6 months earlier it seems to me like she would’ve been a loud and resonant voice in “me too”.

Of course back in my day we just called women who traded sex for power, money and position what they were. Whores.

And before anyone comes after me the same thing goes for men, I think we should bring back the old Bible punishment for adultery of stoning.

Martin M
Martin M
3 months ago
Reply to  John Galt

I am certainly open to getting stoned after committing adultery.

Rita X Stafford
Rita X Stafford
3 months ago
Reply to  UnHerd Reader

I hear you, dear UnHerd reader, but I’m not sure these factoids diminish the astuteness of David Samuels’ article, which seems to have struck deep chords in many, including me.

Georgivs Novicianvs
Georgivs Novicianvs
3 months ago

The Left’s “solutions” that they offer to women are like alcohol and drugs: they give you a momentary relief, resonate with your feelings, give you an illusion of strength and happiness, but ultimate add to your problems rather that resolve those, and leave you helpless with a hangover and addiction.

Phil Mitchell
Phil Mitchell
3 months ago

I am curious to see how this will play out in the next couple of generations. The BOTS are not having children–obviously. So their numbers should proportionally decrease since it is the conservatives who are having the kids. Won’t this change the electoral composition?

Champagne Socialist
Champagne Socialist
3 months ago
Reply to  Phil Mitchell

You assume that the children of conservatives will also be conservative.
They won’t.

Ex Nihilo
Ex Nihilo
3 months ago

The educational systems will use its thousands of hours of access to those children to turn their little brains to progressive mush, which will be reinforced by social media platforms’ selective amplification of progressive posts and by media, through entertainment and the celebrities that purvey it, mimetically sealing the deal. Then, after they have been rendered incapable of autonomy, the therapeutic-industrial complex with swathe them in psychobabble and drugs to assuage their angst and ensure they never question the orthodoxy that crippled them.

Champagne Socialist
Champagne Socialist
3 months ago
Reply to  Ex Nihilo

In other words, they get an education and realize that their folks are bigoted morons and they should be ignored. They go on to lead happy and productive lives while pops freaks out every night over whatever garbage Fox News feeds him that day.
There – fixed it for you!

Ex Nihilo
Ex Nihilo
3 months ago

And the word being screamed from the rooftops these days is how UNHAPPY and UNPRODUCTIVE young people now are. Every metric applied to young people recently demonstrates them to be less happy, more apt to commit suicide, more risk averse, less sexually active, and less hopeful. What cave do you live in?

carl taylor
carl taylor
3 months ago

This is the first time – ostensibly – you have been right about anything, but you’re underlying reasoning is still wrong. Ex Nihilo hit the nail on the head.

Sreemoy Talukdar
Sreemoy Talukdar
3 months ago

Fabulous, fabulous piece. As an Indian sitting in India, I ought not to worry about what’s plaguing American society. But I am compelled to, because American soft power, its cultural mores, impact cultures around the world.

Martin M
Martin M
3 months ago

Is anything plaguing Indian society?

Martin Rossol
Martin Rossol
3 months ago

I’ve said it before, and am pleased to see this author “do it”: provide references or site your sources. David Samuels has done a very nice job of providing links to many of the sources he sites to support his thesis. THANK YOU, David!!

Ex Nihilo
Ex Nihilo
3 months ago

Excellent article. Unfortunately, it won’t penetrate the thick walls of the hardened silo where all those sad and unfulfilled women reside in mutually-reinforcing certainty.

H W
H W
3 months ago

BTOS is the goal of a policy direction that is not discussed called DEFAMILIALIZATION. It is sponsored by the right – corporations seeking corporate welfare and more profit from larger labour supply and increased commodification of service production, and the left – anti-family ideologues and public sector unions seeking to expand.
Sociologist and tax-funded lobbyist, Dr Paul Kershaw, is Canada’s lead promoter of this neo-lib/con ideology. He defines defamilialization in the alarmingly titled paper ‘The Just Commodification of Women’: “[T]he degree to which individuals can uphold a socially acceptable standard of living independently of family relationships,
.[It is] “an analytic theme 
regarding citizens’, and especially women’s, ‘capacity to form and maintain an autonomous household’ apart from male adult family members and spouses
 [In the] “concept’s more transformative intent â€Š.lone mothers are a bellwether group.”

Champagne Socialist
Champagne Socialist
3 months ago

After reading this utter nonsense on has to assume that David Samuels has very little interaction with any real women other than when his mom brings his coco pops down to the basement while he’s bingeing Joe Rogan.
Of course, the mugs who comment here think this is deep insight because they are equally ill informed.

jane hickman
jane hickman
3 months ago

What an extraordinary array of male commentators, scrutinising this bizarre and clearly isolated tribe known as “women” with the intensity of late Victorian anthropologists. Samuels fails to acknowledge the known differences in maturation processes in girls, and the withering impact of the “male gaze”, both contributing to heavier impact that social media have on girls. Nor does he seem at all aware of the number of women deeply frustrated, isolated and finally despairing at the hopelessness of finding a male partner who has a similar interest in a deeper relationship and eventually raising a family. And the commentariat on display here does no better, by and large. Please, guys, look at your own part in all this before you start blaming women.

Stu N
Stu N
3 months ago
Reply to  jane hickman

Grow a pair.

jane hickman
jane hickman
3 months ago
Reply to  Stu N

What a man! Quod erat demonstrandum

Brett H
Brett H
3 months ago
Reply to  jane hickman

The hopelessness of finding a 
 deeper relationship.
Maybe it’s always been that way. For a long time marriage was something you entered into once you began a relationship. Children followed. Once begun you didn’t back out. Eventually women realised they had not found a decent relationship at all. If divorce had been more acceptable, and women could make go of it in their own, then the true picture might have been clearer. Once begun the women endured what they’d entered into, The number of men they could have deeper relationship with may have been as small then as it is today. What we see now us the true relationship between men and women. That’s not to say all, but big enough to warrant attention.

Paul Thompson
Paul Thompson
3 months ago
Reply to  jane hickman

Justification for the fact that your 4 cats keep you warm at night alone in your bed. A partnership with a normal male requires compromise, not compatibility. That’s the main problem today. Women are unreasonable in their requirements.

Richard Ross
Richard Ross
3 months ago

Common sense overload. Not used to this in my diet.

Christopher Chantrill
Christopher Chantrill
3 months ago

The problem, I’d say, is that if you are a Democratic politician, the system is working. The more you chase men out of the game the more that women look to the state to protect them.

Bernard Brothman
Bernard Brothman
3 months ago

Perhaps some of you may also read “Hysterics for Hamas” by Heather MacDonald in City Journal earlier this year. Here in the US, note the large percentage of female protestors, garbed in keffiyehs to hide their identity – for safety. Although if one of them put on a sarape that would be cultural appropriation, a real no-no.

Peter Walton
Peter Walton
3 months ago

Very entertaining – confirming what many men suspect when working with modern young idealistic women. Toxic culture in the office and the men no longer speak to them in case they get hit with a sexual harassment case. Unfortunate.

Bernard Brothman
Bernard Brothman
3 months ago
Reply to  Peter Walton

Some men will no longer mentor women or meet with them alone in the office for fear that saying the wrong thing, and what is wrong depends on the recipient, or simply creating an opportunity for a career derailing investigation.

Bored Writer
Bored Writer
3 months ago

Excellent article.

Sayantani G
Sayantani G
3 months ago

I find this a very interesting article. In much of India we are currently incensed at the cheek and temerity of a hard Left regime in Bengal, presided over by the type of woman Samuels describes, to destroy evidence on the brutal gang rape of a female doctor.
The Left is not necessarily a paragon of holding up women’s rights and choices – one wonders what is the type of attitude the kind of female person portrayed here holds towards women who make different choices.

Bernard Brothman
Bernard Brothman
3 months ago

In today’s Wall Street Journal, the editorial “How the Biden-Harris Economy Left Most Americans Behind,” showed that the largest increase (8.8%) in jobs took place in Healthcare and Social Assistance, as per the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics from January 2020 through July 2024. 75% of the employees in these roles are women. Government grew by 2.4%, which also employee are higher percentage of women than men. We job growth in majority male Information of 3.4% and Manufacturing,1.3%. Generally speaking, Healthcare and Social Assistance and Government are funded by taxes in the other sectors of the economy which are not growing as fast. If you are employed in Healthcare and Social Assistance or Government, which party are you most likely to vote for?

martin cole
martin cole
3 months ago

So the solution is The Hand Maids Tale I suppose .Make women happy again! Yay!

Melissa Martin
Melissa Martin
3 months ago

That BOTS are voting to destroy female sport, shelters & prisons is profoundly depressing. They are essentially selling the truly disadvantaged women out for material gain. Women beware women, indeed.

Faith Ham
Faith Ham
3 months ago

Excellent piece! Democrats’ message to the country: you’ll take this misery we’ve given you and you’ll like it. This explains why the stated theme of Harris’s campaign is joy?

Cheryl Benard
Cheryl Benard
3 months ago

I would go further actually. Her demographic also includes the desperate young Happy Hour cocktail circuit women, everyone who wants a handout and thinks they deserve it, the lazy, and as she proudly acknowledges, the “brats” who think their bad behavior and low morals make them chic. We are in trouble.