Welmer

While perusing the Google for illegitimacy stats, I came across an old Sailer article titled “Black Illegitimacy Declines” that was written for UPI back in 2003. Like a number of other bloggers, I have been thinking about the “canary in the coal mine” theory, which suggests that what happened to black society and the black family presages trends in white American society. While it was an informative and interesting article – in short, a typical Sailer piece – what really struck me was the recommendation offered by Henry Harpending, who is quoted in the article.

Harpending outlines the social ills that correlate with fatherlessness, such as more promiscuous daughters and delinquent sons, but the remedy he proposes is that women simply demand more from men. He also appears to blame men for not being there for their children, using “dad or cad” as the delimiter between those men who are and are not available as fathers. As usual, it is the man’s fault, and the only fault on the part of the mother was to be too indulgent, and not demand more from the man.

Sailer wisely refrains from commenting on this and allows Harpending to speak for himself. Harpending even goes so far as to blame daughters’ promiscuous behavior on absent fathers, entirely leaving out the possibility that the daughter learned from the mother, who is very likely not with her daughter’s father due to her own promiscuity. According to Harpending, “young women develop expectations about men from whether their father was a ‘dad or a cad.’” he further argues that “When young women fail to ask much of young men, this in turn leads to antisocial behavior in not just their children, but in the kids’ fathers as well.”

So, according to Henry Harpending, the real problem is that women are not demanding enough from men. In typical nerd fashion, he entirely misses the point. Women are, in fact, demanding more from men than ever before. They want bigger engagement rings, nicer cars, bigger houses, a better-looking man and a guy who acts like a tough “real man.” Women are demanding more of what their instincts tell them they want, and far, far less of what Harpending naïvely suggests they should. And, as usual, they are getting what they want.

For far too long we have been listening to clueless, sentimental old fools, who learned about romance from the simpering fantasies of Victorian fiction. It is time to take a hard look at the truth about human sexuality, which is stated in clear text in reams of classical scripts, but studiously ignored by the supposedly educated elites who prefer to allow chivalric myths, which are nothing more than relics of barbarism, to paint a veneer of innocence on the jaded face of reality.

Harpending’s excuse for the blight of fatherlessness is no more than so much blush on the cheeks of a streetwalker, and in its implications no less grotesque.