... or How Young Women Make Their Way in a World of Wimps and Barbarians.

Terrence Moore's essays on the state of young people from his perspective are an indication that the major contributors to the character-building and morale-building of young people is seriously flawed. You may have been raised in a generation where parents (note the plural) were primarily responsible for the way their children learned what being a responsible and accountable adult was all about; through examples of character, politeness, fairness, and a moral life modeled by the parents to the children. Or, you might have been in a dysfunctional family, as most of us were in some way or another, where what the parents modeled to us wasn't something we wanted to continue as adults ourselves.

I see that the backlash in the sixties with permissive parenting was an incorrect reaction to (overboard) corrective parenting in the fifties and began the slide toward parents who couldn't be the best example for the children. Moore relates in his essays that the schools also had a hand in the moral shaping of children, and I see that schools have been in serious decline as they are hamstrung by Federal and state regulations and new teaching methods that "evens" out the educational process to avoid stressing one or any sub-group of children. Being sure there is "self-esteem" in every child cancelled sports programs that provided competitive outcomes, playground games were stopped where a child was called "out," and positive push for marginal students sometimes created graduates without the ability to read on a twelfth-grade level. Thankfully, some state programs such as the MCAS in Massachusetts and the State Exams in New York are checking the ability of the schools to produce educated children; though they are not without criticism.

Moore's article on the girls in this generation have had to make serious compromises because of the extremes of boys and men, called "Wimps and Barbarians" in the previous article. To be sure, young women have had opportunities to grow in areas and occupations that were unheard of fifty years ago. As Moore states,

In the new gender-blind world promising careers open to talents, young women have found unprecedented opportunities in science, medicine, academia, letters, and the law. Title IX has ensured that no stone is left unturned in allowing women to wrestle, play lacrosse, or bass fish competitively. But today, many young women are suffering from the aftermath of the sexual revolution and the extreme demands of the radical feminist agenda. These movements have made it far more difficult for them to find honorable men to love them.

In this world view, honorable men are in short supply, and many young women face dating with "anxiety, hopelessness, disappointment?even dread. " The men they meet, immature still as an adult, disappoint and provide slim chances of finding real love. Sociologists write that girls are born with an innate dream of Prince Charming, coming to rescue the Princess and living happily ever after. This dream begins to erode in dysfunctional families, where true happiness does not exist, and worse, divorce exacerbates a view of an honorable man in their eyes; someone whose qualities and character is something they wish to have in a husband someday. It is not surprising to me then that some women marry men that are themselves a picture of the wrong man she assembled in her dreams from her experiences growing up. But for the rest of the women who stubbornly stick to the dream, they realize that it is compromise that they must make to find Mr. Right, or at least, Mr. Right Now. Moore expresses this as:

But looking for Mr. Right Now has taken an enormous toll on their lives and emotions. The decision to look, or settle, for Mr. Right Now might be described as Heather's Compromise. Heather, today's young woman, is tempted continually to compromise her ultimate happiness for the momentary attention of an undependable young male on his terms. Young women respond to this temptation in roughly three ways. According to their different responses, we might call them party-girls, perennial girlfriends, and romantics: the first have lots of sex with lots of men; the second become continually "involved" in relationships; and the last are those women who hold out for something better.

The article, from the Claremont Review of Books, is worth a read. For myself, it is troubling to discover that the next generation of young men and women will be ruling this country someday. We've already seen examples of barbarians in public office; witness Jesse Ventura. And examples of party girls abound in the public eye, and the media is only too happy to bring them to you, as if they are supporting their life style. For the women who don't fit into the party girl or perennial girlfriend model, the romantics might hold the most depressing view. As Dawn found when she received an email from a married friend with a link to the Moore article wrote, "...Still, I couldn't help releasing a silent sigh (worse than an audible sigh, because it's repressed) when I read the first line of his e-mail:

The URL is for an interesting article that does a nice job of nailing why single women are doomed."

Moore closes his article on the paradox that exists for young women who must compromise or wait. Sometimes, as women find out, the man they marry doesn't turn out to be the husband she thought. Moore relates this story from one of his classes:

Once while teaching the topic of chivalry in a Western Civilization class in college, I put the question to a "barbarian" student: If women refused to be around you if you cursed in front of them, stared at their chests, and in general acted in a lewd and drunken manner at parties, would you clean up your act? His answer was straightforward. "Yeah, of course. Who wouldn't?" Should romantic women across the nation make their preferences known by their great power of refusal, and should increasing numbers of perennial girlfriends come over into the camp of the romantics, young women would regain their natural capacity of commanding men. As surely as day follows night, young men would have to reform their character in short order.

This has been an amazing series, and one that I hope we all can learn from. It is possible to raise boys with that middle ground, and girls will not have to draw themselves to extremes to date and marry. Will this reduce the divorce rate? Perhaps partially, but more important to that is the concept of selflessness, which pictures the "undying love" of the romantic. The extremes of the young men and young women are a selfish existence that cannot survive a marriage without change. I can only hope for the future of our children.

À bientôt!

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