The Daddy Factor
Something you see a fair amount of in Sweden that’s pretty rare in the United States is men out on the streets walking around sans mom with babies in the middle of a weekday (see also this guy and this guy):
Sweden is one of the most feminism-influenced countries on earth. It has the world’s highest share of women in parliament (basically half) and what shows up in that kind of statistic is also visible on the streets. Sweden has both a high female labor force participation rate, and a total fertility rate that’s high by developed world standards. The way that happens seems to be in part that men do closer to their fair share of caregiving for children.
This kind of social phenomenon is reenforced by public policy. Sweden has a generous (albeit somewhat complicated) parental leave system that’s structured to encourage men to take part in it.
63 Responses to “The Daddy Factor”
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October 1st, 2009 at 2:32 pm
Is this feminism’s influence? I don’t know. My mom is from Norway, and always says that the women there have always worked. Mostly because until the past half century it has been brutal to live there and people have been poor.
Probably a bit of both, and maybe the fact women have always been in the workforce made people more accepting of feminism.
October 1st, 2009 at 2:36 pm
Stinkin’ hipsters is what they are.
October 1st, 2009 at 2:49 pm
How do you know these are the babies’ dads? Frankly, I think that male nannies would be a greater ’symbol’ of labor market equality.
October 1st, 2009 at 2:55 pm
Would be nice to have those kind of incentives in America, where we are supposedly “pro-family”. My wife and I did the Mr. Mom thing (and you get VERY tired of that joke), because giving up a teacher’s salary here is about equal to paying for daycare.
October 1st, 2009 at 2:56 pm
RE: Mostly because until the past half century it has been brutal to live there and people have been poor
This is actually an excellent point, one so intellectually and morally cogent I’m surprised to see it on this blog. The fact that, traditionally, life in Scandinavia has been brutal and poor is, I think, the reason why values like self-sacrifice, equality, sharing and service to the common good have such deep roots in Scandinavia. It isn’t due to modern Socialism, and it certainly isn’t due to Christianity, though I’m sure both these things helped. It is due to the fact that throughout history and prehistory, Scandinavia was an unforgiving place where individualism meant suicide and individuals were compelled to band together and look out for one another in order to survive. (Before the Sailerite horsef*ckers chime in, I’m talking about culture, not genetics).
Of course the flip side of this coin is that if hardship and adversity strengthen human solidarity and virtue, prosperity weakens it. Which I think has been borne out in the 20th century late-capitalist USA.
DTM, I’m not certain why you would think I think men who like to care for children is a bad, hipster thing. I don’t. Tolstoy said that the error of modern feminism was to try and make women more like men, while a true Christian feminism would try and make men more like women. He was right. Personally I like children a lot, and would be happy to take my own kids for strolls in the park (and enjoy doing this with my nephews and nieces at the present time). We would be a much better society if we tried to make our young men more interested in having and caring for children rather than whiling away their time in night clubs and fraternity parties.
October 1st, 2009 at 2:56 pm
Back when my son was a very little guy I pushed him up 5th Avenue in a stroller while my wife returned to a conference at NYU. He was becoming verbal by that time and knew some words, so he greeted every passerby with a wave and a big “Hi!” and everyone was friendly enough to give him a greeting back. Not long before we got back to our hotel at about 35th he collapsed into the deep limpbodied sleep of a toddler (he did so leaning forward over the stroller bar, so he looked a bit odd, and since I didn’t notice at first I pushed him along in that posture for several blocks. Then I heard people muttering “another damn symptom of the influence of feminism!” as they passed us by, and I corrected his posture.).
October 1st, 2009 at 2:59 pm
For those who would argue that such a program “stifles” growth or entrepreneurship, I give the follow counter-example: I have family friends that live in Stockholm that had their first child a few years ago. Not only are they technically not married (I forget what the Swedish “civil union” is called) and still receive the benefits, but in their case the father works for the Swedish version of NASA and the mother runs her own business, making it much more difficult for her to take the time off. Due to the policy, the father was able to take the bulk of the time, allowing their child to be well taken care of, but also allowing the mother to be an entrepreneur without sacrificing family, a situation you almost never find in the “capitalism-friendly” USA.
October 1st, 2009 at 2:59 pm
or, OR, is there just an abnormally high amount of very casual kidnapping in Sweden, the land of gigantic sweaters. ever think about that, huh?
October 1st, 2009 at 3:01 pm
There might be something to that. I’ve found that Massachusetts mill towns often have a large number of women in positions of power – and not “hipster,” “blow-in,” “feminist” types either, but townies.
Women get tough holding those families together in those three deckers, and everyone else gets used to the tough women.
October 1st, 2009 at 3:05 pm
Interestingly enough as I’ve said before, Swedish women as a group have the lowest tones of any women on earth. In other words, they sound androgynous. Which I don’t like.
The highest tone difference? Japan! But of course, women in Japan tend to affect a super-cute demeanor in public.
October 1st, 2009 at 3:12 pm
If your pictures are a true indicator, Swedish strollers are pretty lame. There’s been a pet theory that baby products have changed a lot in the past 10 years because as more dads became engaged in child-rearing, they created a demand for more “gearhead” type products.
Swedish baby carriages blow that theory out of the water.
October 1st, 2009 at 3:13 pm
It’s been this way since Viking times at least. Basically both sexes have always had to work hard. The far European north was never rich enough to afford the Mediterranean culture of secluded ornamental females & accompanying misogyny.
October 1st, 2009 at 3:14 pm
life in Scandinavia has been brutal and poor is, I think, the reason why values like self-sacrifice, equality, sharing and service to the common good have such deep roots in Scandinavia.
Then life in Somalia should be paradise on earth.
October 1st, 2009 at 3:15 pm
Actually, I believe Rwanda has the highest percentage of woman in parliament (a clear majority, in fact):
http://www.nowpublic.com/world/rwanda-makes-history-first-majority-female-parliament
October 1st, 2009 at 3:17 pm
“pretty rare in the United States”
Definitely not rare in my neighborhood, which is about 75% Mexican. Not sure why.
October 1st, 2009 at 3:18 pm
Slightly off-topic, but I’ve got another “Daddy-pushing-toddler-in-stroller” story. When my autistic son was about 3 years old, he came out to the garage while I was working on some project, and sat down in his jogging-type stroller. I thought, what the heck, it was a nice day, so I decided to take him for a ride around the block. As we went, it seemed like everyone was looking at my son. I thought surely they all must be admiring my handsome little boy, until about halfway around the block I looked around the sun hood to check on him. I discovered that no only was he not wearing any diaper or pants, his long shirt was pulled up and his boyhood was on full display. And not only was it fully visible, but he was playing with his stuff, as little boys are wont to do. That last half of the walk seemed to take forever as I fought a losing battle to keep him covered while I tried to push the stroller as quickly home as possible!
October 1st, 2009 at 3:18 pm
You actually see this a lot in Athens, Georgia.
October 1st, 2009 at 3:19 pm
“Not sure why” referring to “not rare.” Which you could infer, but one never know.
October 1st, 2009 at 3:20 pm
“Which you could infer,” should have been “which could could probably infer.”
So, starting from the top…ah, to hell with it.
October 1st, 2009 at 3:21 pm
“could could” should have been “could.”
October 1st, 2009 at 3:30 pm
Perhaps we’ll change that stop to Savannah, then.
October 1st, 2009 at 3:30 pm
Hector: Could you dig up a quote for this? It’s pretty profound.
“Tolstoy said that the error of modern feminism was to try and make women more like men, while a true Christian feminism would try and make men more like women.”
October 1st, 2009 at 3:36 pm
Hector,
I am mocking your terminology because the Swedes ARE liberal hipsters AND love their children AND believe in helping each other out, which shows your whole anti-liberal-hipsterism shtick is an incoherent and irrational excuse for you to indulge yourself in misplaced wrath.
October 1st, 2009 at 3:47 pm
Ha, misplaced wrath. You guys crack me up.
October 1st, 2009 at 3:51 pm
Don’t do that, I love his international hipster conspiracy thing. I like the idea that interest rates are controlled out of some bar in Williamsburg.
Maybe I’ve been missing something, but Sweden seems pretty prosperous, and doesn’t seem to have had too much hardship to deal with over the last 50 years or so.
October 1st, 2009 at 3:53 pm
DTM,
It’s fun to watch Hector try and his formidable intellect to try and justify his own irrational prejudices.
October 1st, 2009 at 3:54 pm
DTM,
It’s fun to watch Hector try and use his formidable intellect to justify his own irrational prejudices.
October 1st, 2009 at 3:54 pm
not to mention that swedish women are hot.
October 1st, 2009 at 3:58 pm
Between the neolithic and industrial revolutions wasn’t life pretty much everywhere brutal and poor (except for the highest classes?) I think you need a bit more than that to get egalitarianism.
October 1st, 2009 at 4:04 pm
Of course, the really interesting analysis would explain how that picture of a Swedish male hipster pushing a baby carriage was the logical outcome of the Swedes’ historical tradition of going viking.
October 1st, 2009 at 4:05 pm
Here in Quebec (as in Canada), we have paternity leave and a whole lot more! The Québec Parental Insurance Plan stipulates that financial benefits be paid to all eligible workers—salaried or self-employed—who take maternity leave, parental leave, paternity leave, or adoption leave, even by same-sex couples.
Basically, a man has a right, for himself, of a 5 week aid leave with 70% of its income. The woman has 18 weeks, at 70%. There is IN ADDITION up to 25 weeks that can be SHARED by both parents, however they see fit. The first seven weeks are a 70%, the remaining at 55%.
The And don’t get me started about subsidized kindergartens! How does 7$ a day sound to you?
October 1st, 2009 at 4:08 pm
Maybe I’ve been missing something, but Sweden seems pretty prosperous, and doesn’t seem to have had too much hardship to deal with over the last 50 years or so.
Interesting point, considering that a poster on another thread (who says he lives in Sweden) says that the Swedish right is trying to privatize much of the healthcare system, and is even holding up the U.S. system as a model. If that’s true, maybe prosperity does erode the cooperative spirit, at least in a portion of the population over time.
October 1st, 2009 at 4:13 pm
daveNYC,
Don’t worry: since resentment is the underlying cause of Hector’s wrath, I am pretty sure my mockery only feeds it.
In fact I almost feel bad about that, but life is too short to spend worrying about the mental health of the whackos you come across on the Internet.
October 1st, 2009 at 4:15 pm
Unintentional juxtaposition of the day award!
October 1st, 2009 at 4:22 pm
Look at the size of that stroller!
October 1st, 2009 at 4:36 pm
# Realist Says:
October 1st, 2009 at 3:58 pm
Between the neolithic and industrial revolutions wasn’t life pretty much everywhere brutal and poor (except for the highest classes?) I think you need a bit more than that to get egalitarianism.
No.
Poor by our standards. Not poor by scraping to get by because you live within sight of the arctic circle, so it is freezing cold for much of the year and significant agriculture is a fantasy standards.
You do recognize that some places are much, much easier to live than others, don’t you?
October 1st, 2009 at 4:56 pm
You do recognize that some places are much, much easier to live than others, don’t you?
No, I don’t think that as generally the case. Where agriculture is easier, population can grow to overcome any surplus and scarcity reappears. That said, I can imagine a slightly different dynamic. When labor is very valuable the cost of keeping women out of the workforce is higher. Thus where wealth is limited by labor rather than by land we might expect more egalitarian societies. Would need some numbers to determine if that is actually correct though.
October 1st, 2009 at 5:03 pm
Personally I like children a lot, and would be happy to take my own kids for strolls in the park (and enjoy doing this with my nephews and nieces at the present time).
This is, of course, an eight-year-olds conception of child-rearing, and very, very cute.
October 1st, 2009 at 5:22 pm
As a previous commenter pointed out, Rwanda has surpassed Sweden to become the first country in the world with a female majority in parliament – more than 56%. Half the Supreme Court and more than a third of the cabinet are women as well.
October 1st, 2009 at 5:36 pm
As a previous commenter pointed out, Rwanda has surpassed Sweden to become the first country in the world with a female majority in parliament – more than 56%. Half the Supreme Court and more than a third of the cabinet are women as well.
Well, there goes the proximity-to-the-Arctic-Circle theory.
October 1st, 2009 at 5:48 pm
Matt’s entire political philosophy is like the old joke about the economist shipwrecked on a desert island with a can of beans: “Assume we have a can opener …”
Matt’s philosophy of public policy for the U.S. is: “Assume we have 300,000,000 Swedes …”
October 1st, 2009 at 6:12 pm
[...] this Yglesias post, and comments, female participation in the labor force is influenced by government [...]
October 1st, 2009 at 7:14 pm
Re: It’s been this way since Viking times at least. Basically both sexes have always had to work hard. The far European north was never rich enough to afford the Mediterranean culture of secluded ornamental females & accompanying misogyny.
Penelope,
Exactly!
Arnold Evans,
I put it a little more pithily than Tolstoy did, but I think I reflected the gist of what he said. The comments were in his 1905 essay on Chekhove’s “The Darling”, excerpted in Bell and Offen, “Women, the Family and Freedom: The Debate in DOcuments”: Stanford University Press, 1983.
N.B.: I do _not_ agree with the lengths Tolstoy goes in his essay to discredit modern feminism, and I think there was much good in the feminist movement and that they were right to fight for things like women’s access to education, work opportunities equal to men, birth control and more sexual liberty. I also think they went too far and that Tolstoy was right that men could stand to learn a lot from the traditionally, stereotypically ‘feminine’ virtues. When St. Paul said, “Wives, obey your husbands” he was a product of his time, when women were considered naturally subordinate, and in our age we cannot and should not take that literally as an injunction specifically to women. But to adapt St. Paul to our age is _not_ to say that women need not learn the value of submission, but rather that men should learn it as well (and in equal measure).
Re: Between the neolithic and industrial revolutions wasn’t life pretty much everywhere brutal and poor (except for the highest classes?) I think you need a bit more than that to get egalitarianism.
Well, yes, Realist. Nevertheless, a wealthy and highly productive environment tends to promote the development of leisure classes and social stratification. Certainly there were other harsh environments which did _not_ develop social solidarity along the lines of Scandinavia, but in general I think that cultures which develop in relatively harsh environments tend to be more cooperative (think of the Inuit or the Japanese).
October 1st, 2009 at 7:47 pm
It is intuitively obvious why the most advanced social safety nets are in northern climates: without them the people die from exposure right in front of you. Likewise for why Canadians have a spirit of cooperation that eludes the US — when they got there, it was cooperate or die.
Hector’s winning this thread (especially by presciently giving the finger to Sailer), and jmo just looks like an idiot. Once one realizes that “hipster” functions for Hector as a cipher for “individualist shit that pisses me off”, then it all reads a little easier (and you know when to skip).
October 1st, 2009 at 8:33 pm
Sweden has, (and always has had), one of the world’s highest standards of living, if not THE highest. People are healthier, richer, more mentally fit than almost anywhere else in the world. They are obviously ahead of the rest of the world, as well, on mens’ and womens’ roles in society. And, just a side note, they have a form of socialized medicine. To protect this high standard of living, they don’t allow just anybody to immigrate into their fine country. Which may be the secret to many of the worlds’ nations with the best quality of life. Switzerland is another, with very similar governmental qualities.
October 1st, 2009 at 8:44 pm
How about we change our family courts/divorce and child custody laws to reflect Sweden’s? I bet you then men in America would at the very least have a stronger ‘incentive’ to copy Swedish men’s contributions in the family sphere…I bet Matt and many of the posters here (especially the feminist ones) would not be so keen on actually living equality in the courts rather than preaching it…
October 1st, 2009 at 8:50 pm
I think there was much good in the feminist movement and that they were right to fight for things like women’s access to education, work opportunities equal to men, birth control and more sexual liberty.
Who are you and what have you done with Hector?
October 1st, 2009 at 9:16 pm
[...] Family Values 2009 October 1 by Daniel well, it doesn’t seem to me that socialism destroys families. In fact, it seems that socialism provides a far better [...]
October 1st, 2009 at 9:19 pm
I was the primary caregiver for our first child once he reached three months. It was mainly driven by comparative salary as opposed to hipsterdom or generous social policies. The only downside was the incredulous interviewers who could not believe I had been raising my child for the last three years. I believe I would have gotten a better response had I told them I was on a secret government mission or in jail.
October 1st, 2009 at 9:39 pm
Lobstakilla,
I also think there was a number _bad_ things in the sexual revolution, although it was a good and necessary thing in its origin. As Joseph de Maistre said of revolutions in general, the sexual revolution began in the right and ended in the wrong.
That is to say- approving a long term college boyfriend and girl friend living together, perfectly OK with me. Approving p*rn magazines, abortions, and spring break hook ups, NOT ok with me.
October 1st, 2009 at 10:42 pm
Is this feminism’s influence? I don’t know. My mom is from Norway, and always says that the women there have always worked. Mostly because until the past half century it has been brutal to live there and people have been poor.
Eh . . . welcome to the world of the working class.
Roughly, I think you can have two cultural paths for relatively poor societies. If a society is tightly organized economically around a village or clan structure, then women can treated as little more than property–often less valued than other livestock. Or not. If the economy is organized around small family holdings or economic units, then women are working with men directly everyday and will tend to have more rights.
You have a similar effect when economic change, locally or after immigration, breaks up older social networks. For instance, consider a married couple from a sexually segregated village in Asia who come to the United States and the man and wife run a laundry together or both work for other employers and live in a gender-mixed apartment complex, sending their kids to gender-mixed schools.
In any event, the notion of women not working outside the home is purely European and American middle-class. In working class urban America and low-income rural American before World War II, women working outside the home was the norm, not the exception. The middle-class queen-of-the-house role model Betty Friedan revolted against was a 1950s conceit.
I was brought up in rural Minnesota as a baby-boomer and the local government, the school system, and most of the stores were staffed by women. I never had a problem with female authority figures.
It is due to the fact that throughout history and prehistory, Scandinavia was an unforgiving place where individualism meant suicide and individuals were compelled to band together and look out for one another in order to survive.
Or not. Jared Diamond’s account of life in Norse Greenland suggests that, at some level, life for Scandinavian males tended to be individualistic in ways that we would interpret as murderously psychotic. In any event, life is hard in places other than the sub-arctic, and there are ways climates can be “unforgiving” other then by low temperatures.
October 1st, 2009 at 11:23 pm
Re: Jared Diamond’s account of life in Norse Greenland suggests that, at some level, life for Scandinavian males tended to be individualistic in ways that we would interpret as murderously psychotic
Norse Greenland wasn’t ‘Scandinavia’. It was a Scandinavian settler state, in the same sense as the U.S. and Australia were British settler states. Frontier colonies sometimes attract an element of the mother country’s population with decidedly non-mainstream cultural values. In addition, Norse Greenland was a harsher environment then most of Scandinavia- agriculture has never, as far as I know, been successfuly practised there. I’m not an anthropologist so correct me if I’m wrong.
I think even Jared Diamond argues that the Greenland colonies failed because of the decisions of _the Greenland colonists_, not their mother culture in Norway.
October 1st, 2009 at 11:25 pm
Re: In any event, the notion of women not working outside the home is purely European and American middle-class. In working class urban America and low-income rural American before World War II, women working outside the home was the norm, not the exception. The middle-class queen-of-the-house role model Betty Friedan revolted against was a 1950s conceit
It’s true it was never the general norm, but it was a popular conceit among the _upper class_ for much longer then the 1950s. It was also a popular norm among the wealthy in Hindu and some Muslim cultures- not specifically limited to Europe.
October 2nd, 2009 at 1:26 am
There’s a fight among the social democrats as to whether parental leave should, by law, be split equally between both parents. Oh to have that argument in America.
(I forget what the Swedish “civil union” is called) Your partner in this relationship is your “Sambo.”
October 2nd, 2009 at 5:10 am
As the resident lurking archaeologist (who specialises in Scandinavian archaeology). to all of you, and hector in particular, NO NO NO NO BAD! STOP! SIT! NO.
You cannot cannot! generalise about thousands of years of social development based on what you see in the present day. Also, bringing Jared Diamond (a biologist) into a conversation about society is the Godwin’s law of archaeology. Hector, you lose the thread.
(a) southern sweden is very fertile agriculturally, has had a variety of societies with a variety of wealth levels and influence (c. 3800 BC material from the balkans was making its way there, c. 1800 BC Scandinavians were arguably in contact and working with mediterranean communities, c. 800 AD Scandinavians were hanging out in the middle east). People change, culture changes, the environment plays a role but if it were all environmental then what we see in scandinavia would be mirrored in russia… which it isn’t.
Now all of you fuck off and leave the facile and funny generalisations about Scandinavian prehistory to my students.
October 2nd, 2009 at 6:39 am
Re: Jared Diamond’s account of life in Norse Greenland suggests that, at some level, life for Scandinavian males tended to be individualistic in ways that we would interpret as murderously psychotic.
If you mean there was a lot of violence then goodness yes: the Vikings were the 10th century’s version of terrorists (though for profit not ideology). But they weren’t “lone wolves”: Vikings sacked and pillaged together. It wasn’t “me against the world” but “Me and my guys against the world”. In fact military comraderie also influences a society toward communalism and away from individualism, as witness the ethos in the US during the 1950s in the shadow of WWII and at a time when many men did a stint in the army after high school.
Re: People change, culture changes, the environment plays a role but if it were all environmental then what we see in scandinavia would be mirrored in russia
Here geography plays a role. Scandinavia is largely protected by its geography from outside invasion, whereas Russia was exposed to every steppe-land tribe that decided it needed more lebensraum. And even so there is a deep communalistic reflex in Russian culture as well: Communism in the 20th century tapped into some of that. But it’s mixed in with a deep xenophobia and the effects of multiple centuries of misrule and dysfunction.
October 2nd, 2009 at 7:21 am
Hector’s winning this thread
This claim is only plausible if you think there is any merit to the game, “let’s make up inaccurate generalizations about the distant past of countries and then draw sweeping conclusions about the origins of their contemporary practices that just happen to accord with all of our personal ideological predilections”. If you instead think that game is just typical pseudointellectual BS not worthy of a college junior, or for that matter a reasonably reflective teenager, then really you can only win by refusing to play the game at all.
Or, in other words, pretty much what EUexpat said.
October 2nd, 2009 at 9:07 am
RE: Also, bringing Jared Diamond (a biologist) into a conversation about society is the Godwin’s law of archaeology. Hector, you lose the thread.
I didn’t bring JD into this thread. But since I am, actually, a biologist-in-training (and one who works on plants to boot), I cheerfully acknowledge having no qualifications to opine on anthropology. It’s fun though. And I do think there is a lot that biologists can contribute (esp. those who study the evolution of animal behavior) to an understanding of culture. Though of course neither genetics nor the environment _determine_ our behavior and values, they do _influence_ it.
As JonF said, there was a very deep collectivist and cooperative spirit in Russian culture, too, namely the tradition of the peasant cooperative (the Mir). That is why the Socialist-Revolutionaries, in contrast to the Bolcheviks, believed Russia needed a particularly agrarian socialism which could build on the peasant communes and allow Russia to skip over capitalism. (Needless to say my own sympathies much more with the SR point of view and against the Bolshies). Again, of course, Russia was constantly invaded while Scandinavia wasn’t, as Jon points out.
If I have some time I’ll try to look up some papers about the conditions under which cooperation is more likely to evolve.
October 2nd, 2009 at 5:01 pm
FTFY, and just as unlikely.
October 2nd, 2009 at 6:19 pm
‘Personally I like children a lot, and would be happy to take my own kids for strolls in the park (and enjoy doing this with my nephews and nieces at the present time).
This is, of course, an eight-year-olds conception of child-rearing, and very, very cute.’
He might be shrewder than you think.
I never, ever, got as much attention from women as when I took my baby out for a walk or to the store. You’re not only going to get attention from attached MILFs, but also childless women with their biological alarm clocks going off.
Unfortunately, my kid is now a kindergartener, and his once-incredible chick magnet powers have waned. But I wish I’d known the honey-pot like effect small children have on women while I was still on the dating scene.
So taking his nephew and nieces out for a stroll is a clever move to make in terms of getting more women’s phone numbers than going clubbing.
Plus, as his siblings with kids are probably in perpetual exhaustion, the parents benefit too.
October 2nd, 2009 at 6:21 pm
‘Matt’s philosophy of public policy for the U.S. is: “Assume we have 300,000,000 Swedes …”’
Which mean we’d have 150,000,000 Swedish women.
I think I might like that hypothetical.
October 2nd, 2009 at 10:20 pm
It’s true it was never the general norm, but it was a popular conceit among the _upper class_ for much longer then the 1950s. It was also a popular norm among the wealthy in Hindu and some Muslim cultures- not specifically limited to Europe.
Duh . . . upper class women being little more than ornaments in their own mansions is an aspect of virtually every settled wealthy society that every existed . . . as is their playing important roles in politics and religious through social rather than formal influence.
I suggested to one of my history professors that it was a near universal habit among well-off middle-classes to imitate/adopt the social habits of the aristocracy. He countered by asking why they would to try imitate a social group they held in contempt. I pondered why such a smart man would make such a naive statement.
October 3rd, 2009 at 5:24 am
[...] The Daddy Factor (Matt Yglesias) [...]