Tex is having a historically low ebb in her trust of pollsters, so perhaps this is an artifact of bad methodology. Still...
All of these things are immoral according to traditional Christian theology. What I find interesting is that (with one exception within the margin of error) majorities of men agree that these traditionally-immoral behaviors are moral only where far larger majorities of women say they are moral. When minorities of men want to say that these traditionally-immoral behaviors are moral, women are less likely than men to agree.
I wonder if this means that the traditional authority on this issue has been sustained in spite of the changing attitudes. What our ancestors used to refer to as 'the civilizing influence of the fairer sex' seems to be intact, perhaps: but it turns out it can be a de-civilizing influence too, where women decide to abandon traditional moral standards for whatever reason.
There is enough year-to-year volatility around a point to disregard differences of 5 points or maybe 10, in any one year, I think. The general numbers are more meaningful.
ReplyDeleteI find all of these numbers distressing, frankly.
It is an interesting pattern. What I mostly see is that the women are more unified in their opinion, so whether they resist or embrace a change, they do it en masse.
ReplyDeleteThe unwed childbirth numbers are interesting, too. Some decades back, I believe this issue used to be framed in terms of "living so loosely as to conceive a child in dangerously unsupported circumstances and therefore exposing oneself to deserved public opprobrium." Now it's more like "carrying on as well as could be expected when some guy dropped the ball on his responsibilities, which was so inevitable I didn't give serious thought to trying to choose a better guy." Not a good sign.
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ReplyDeleteThere are some people--a considerable number of such people--who are fundamentally less concerned with the *content* of beliefs than with ensuring that all the members of the herd line up in the same direction, whatever that direction might be.
ReplyDeleteI recently ran across the memoir of a woman who became a senior executive of a technology company, in the early 1970s. Her mother was appalled, had been horrified by her decision to pursue a serious career in the first place, and when the daughter was appointed a Senior Vice President, her mother's reaction was to denounce her for her "betrayal."
I feel quite sure that if the mother had been born 30 years later, and had developed the same personality structure....then she would be equally enraged by a daughter who did *not* pursue a career, but chose instead to stay home as a full-time wife and mother.
I've been reading (proofing) a history of Lady Jane Grey, the unfortunate 17-year-old who was crowned Queen of England for 9 days between Edward VI and Bloody Mary, largely a pawn in intrigues between pro- and anti-Reformation or pro- and anti-French forces. Somehow, among all the things that were going wrong at that time, a number of people got the idea that the number one moral quandary was Transubstantiation: that was where the battle lines should be drawn, and a true believer should be willing to go to the fires (or send others to the fires) in order to ensure 100% unanimity of views. A bewildering time, too, as you might be threatened with the flames for professing the same belief or its exact opposite within a space of a very few years. Better to whipsaw the populace that way, and bring the whole concept of religious consensus or obedience into disrepute, than to tolerate anything less than unanimity. And yet from today's vantage-point, almost the entire quarrel boiled down to one guy who would sacrifice his real children for the different ones he thought he was entitled to, couldn't keep it in his pants, and was prepared to subvert his church and murder two wives to indulge his whims. He could have done with a little conformity to conventional morality, just not the particular sort that was in violent fashion at the time.
ReplyDeleteAVI is correct; the variations displayed for "affairs" aren't significant. The numbers are consistent with being constant. The _trends_ for "baby outside of marriage" and "divorce" are, though. And the implications of the numbers are pretty ugly.
ReplyDeleteMen: "anything that gets me free cheap easy sex is a-ok"
ReplyDeleteWomen: "I wanna be free without consequences"
Both are equally degrading to humanity, and even kind of espouse the same general attitude, not sure how this got framed as "women are dragging down men".
So, the poll suggests that majorities of men agree on immoral behavior being moral (almost) only where even-stronger majorities of women do. When women don't agree that immoral behavior is moral, a minority of men may still say it is moral, but not a majority of men.
ReplyDeleteTex's read is that women tend to decide en masse, in which case there may not be a causal effect at all. If she is right, women are just (for whatever reason) more likely to agree with other women than men are with other men. Where women hold to traditional moral standards, they hold in a bigger percent; where they have elected to dispose of moral standards, they elect it largely together.
I wonder if it isn't the case that the old (and quite traditional, in Western societies) role of 'being a civilizing influence' isn't still in play. Where women have abandoned a standard, en masse, it allows a majority of men to follow them. Where women hold to a standard (en masse), only a minority of men will buck that standard.
So it's not an argument that women are dragging men down: sometimes, where they continue to support an old standard, female leadership is what is keeping men from falling down. It's just an argument that perhaps we should take female leadership on these questions seriously. If you want society to hold to a standard (in majority, at least), you need to convince women (in majority) to hold to it. If women are the 'civilizing influence' our ancestors often spoke of them as being, they're setting the bar for everyone. Sometimes that's good, and sometimes that's bad, depending on what the majority of women decide to support.