this is a good post, in my opinion. as much as shame has a social function, it applies to the ones doing the shaming more than the shamed. if a group of people want to reinforce the supposed intrinsic goodness of their behavior, they shame someone else and then justify their shaming by saying they are performing a public good. such people should be exposed as shameful and shameless.

This is ridculous. Lack of marriage in poor communities (black or otherwise) is not the cause of poverty. Nor is marriage its cure. We can help individual parents and their children without regard to their marital status which is frankly, none of our business. Many people have good reasons for not marrying even if they do have kids.

This whole "we need to shame people to get them to do what is good for them" is a very old conservative position based on their total and entire ignorance of history and society. "Shame" has never been the primary form of social control, certainly not when it relates to sex and procreation. When conservative orthodoxy was merely doxy the churchs religious rules *were* the laws and they included a whole bastion of punishments that had nothing to do with mere shame or shunning: fines, torture, expulsion,forced marriage, forced sexual intercourse (or trials to prove potency), forced divorce/annulment, etc...etc...etc... were the tools the church/state actually used to gain compliance from individuals over matters having to do with sex, procreation and inheritance.

If you aren't going to reinstutute that kind of power to Rod's particular church (and I for one don't want any Staretz telling me who I can and can't marry) shame is really going to end up trying to do a whole lot of work that it simply can't do. And its actual function, of course, in wingnut speak is simply to be the way right wingers and religious nuts try to take the high ground over everyone else. Sure, A. Serwer, you are a perfectly nice guy and a good father but Rod still gets to pretend he's a better human being because he makes the rules. You know who else is probably a better human being than you? Newt (thrice married, twice divorced, sex addict) Gingerich! Because Newt pays lip service to the importance of being a wealthy white guy who is serially monogamous and publicly married.

aimai

Many people avoid marriage because of the traumatic experience of their own parents' marriage. A couple may stay married, but the experience for the children within it may be hellish. I speak from experience and realize that I remain unmarried not from a conscious decision, but from a deeply internalized force-field of dread that has persisted from the past. My parents were among many people who simply did not have the psychological health and skills to make a relationship work. I do not see how shaming them would have helped. They were in fact destroyed by the shame-filled, old-fashioned styles of child-rearing and gender-relations from their own families.

Why does this always have to be an either/or argument? Why can't we encourage marriage and call it a good thing while at the same time agreeing that there are times when marriage is not possible or preferable, and give our compassion and support to those whose children have only one parent in the home? And can't we see the difference between single parents who struggle alone to raise their kids compared to two-parent homes where the parents raise their children together in love but without marriage? Regardless, the most important element in any scenario is love--is it present, or not? If it is, the family make-up doesn't matter. If it isn't, all the marriage contracts and traditional family accoutrement in the world won't make it worth saving.

"How do you see people--men in particular--act when they're ashamed? You rarely see them do something like get married or get a fantastic job; usually they're going to hurt or exploit someone, make them feel as low as they do"

What extensive research into social science is the above comment based on?

On the subject of shame, do I really need to point out that whether you hated Bill Clinton or hated George W. Bush, a lot of the behavior people hated about those guys and their administrations was produced by a complete lack of shame?

Mike

One way to encourage marriage is to make it pay off. Real tax breaks to cover the real expenses of raising a family. . Required counseling and education (in high school, as part of a real class on the real issues of parenting?) (for all pre-parental couples?).

We need to act as if having children is a much more serious choice than driving a car or getting married, because it is. Getting married is important, but only in the context of the whole family structure

I don't think the purpose of shame is to change the behavior of the individual(s) being shamed so much as it is to create a negative example that would affect others' behavior. IOW, shaming an unmarried couple isn't meant to force them into marriage, but to threaten others who might have also chosen cohabiting with similar shame, and therefore make marriage a more appealing-- or less unappealing, I guess-- prospect for them.

It's a bad habit among liberals IMO to assume that conservatives want to eliminate the behaviors they loudly decry as undesirable; I've never met a conservative who honestly thought they could end whatever they considered 'sinful,' but they very much wanted the sinners to suffer harsh enough consequences to deter others. Conservatism requires punishment more than universal compliance, when you think about it.

How do you see people--men in particular--act when they're ashamed? You rarely see them do something like get married or get a fantastic job

To be fair, they sometimes respond by writing posts arguing that--as they actually wanted some people tortured back the day, and they're good people--torture and support for torture, while shameful, isn't that shameful.

"Marriage is better than cohabitation" is one of those eternal truths, much like "homeownership is better than renting".

One significant effect of increasing social pressure to get married is an uptick in divorces of people who should never have gotten married in the first place.

Why should people care about marriage? All I'm hearing is 'thats what you do, what you're supposed to do'. I'm not hearing how it's actually helpful, or how it's really a good idea.

Why bother getting married? If you're married, you end up responsible for children that you didn't actually sire, under some pretty lame and outdated legal doctrine. You end up going through a messy and expensive divorce better than half the time. Your partner starts taking you for granted. Women don't generally get a sweet deal out of marriage either, so it's hardly like it only hurts men.

Other than some wise old man on a mountain saying it has to be done, why bother?

"Other than some wise old man on a mountain saying it has to be done, why bother?"

Despite what Randians and libertarians want to believe, the family has always been the building block of civilization. Marriage is the instrument that creates, defines and perpetuates family. And if the U.S. really is entering a long period of economic trouble, the value and importance of the family may soon become much clear to a whole lot of people.

Mike

Does anyone really believe that Rod Dreher and Ross Douthat would be satisfied with mere shaming?

If so, read Douthat's "Grand New Party." In it, he says he would prefer that federal law provide generous subsidies to married parents - and deny it unmarried or single parents.

That is what he and his ilk want. Shaming itself is not sufficient. It's simply necessary to push shaming - or plain old hatred, really - to achieve the desired end, which is the use of government power to reward the good and punish the evil.

Have Dreher and Douthat extended their mighty rods of stigmatization to McArdle? IIRC, she's living in sin. Or does she get a bye because she's obviously paler and thus purer than those families who name their children Ta-Nehisi and Kenyatta?

It would be perfectly simple to amend our laws to make sure that children are well provided for financially--we could just have means testing for parenthood, regardless of marital status. Permanent contracts with respect to children. Forced contraception for all unmarried males and females and forced contraception for married couples over a contracted for, manageable number of children. See how easy that would be?

aimai

I think you misunderstand how shame works. Yes, if someone is already basically dysfunctional, their inability to act positively in response to societal norms will lead to frustration. But if, say, I have a lawn and a lawn mower, I am not going to respond to my neighbors' neat lawns by beating my wife, I'll respond by mowing. As long as the shame is aimed at something attainable, it works. Try telling your fellow American Prospect employees that you buy your clothes at Wal Mart and you'll learn real quick how social pressures can drive you to do the right thing.

I had no idea it was as easy to stop being a single parent as it is to start mowing your lawn.

Shame may be the wrong word. Many of us are motivated by shared expectations. In my family, it was simply expected that you married the woman who bore your children.

You have to love how religious conservatives, who just love to bellyache about saving the children from whatever the social bogyman of the moment is (usually that's gays), just never seem to think about kids at all really. What in God's name does Dreher suppose will happened to kids whose parent's, single or otherwise, are the object of shame. What does he think the impact on a kid's life, on their emotional well being, will be when they see their parents constantly treated like objects of scorn? Did it never occur to him when he started thumping his pulpit that those kids are going to internalize that shame themselves?

No. Of course not. Never crossed his mind. For all his bellyaching about doing what is best for children, he doesn't care one whit about them. Just about making sure that everyone else hates the liberals as much as he does. That's all this is about. The kids are only so much collateral damage in his culture war.

I'm torn. It really depends. Some gentle types, like my brother, will wilt if subjected to shame for a prolonged period. It has a long-lasting pernicious effect. Yet not everyone is gentle.

Back in the day, my dad's company fired him for cheating on my mother-- having an affair which caused workplace disruption - effectively shaming him into a move to another part of the state. It hurt us financially long-term, but frankly, I'm glad they did it. He was such an asshole that someone had to speak to him in a language he understood. ($$$ pride/shame)

Perhaps conservatives are the types that need shaming themselves and don't respond to less harsh measures.

"How do you see people--men in particular--act when they're ashamed?"

But it's not about getting people who did something shameful to reform, right? It's about keeping people from doing the shameful thing in the first place.

Does this work? Sure, to a certain extent it does. It's not a cure-all, but it's a powerful thing. For instance, the thing keeping people from telling racial jokes in public is not some law against it, but the notion that it will identify the teller as boorish.

Re: "Shame provokes response in the form of impulse, not long term planning": If the author has never in his academic or professional career thought to himself something like "Gee, I had better re-write that presentation; I would be embarrassed to submit something that poorly prepared" then I suppose we can understand his utter oblivion to the deterrent power of the prospect of shame.

So I presume that you think the anti-cigarette lobbying (which is nothing if not shame inducing) is a bad thing? And you also believe it's had no positive impact?

Yep, James, you hit the nail on the head. The left regularly argues it is horrific and ineffective to shame someone over their sexual behavior, yet lefties have no problem shaming folks about their behavior in pretty much any other area of their lives, from proper environmental conduct to racial "sensitivity" (however that is defined that particular week) to where you buy your groceries.

As for the argument over whether marriage is a good thing, the evidence is clear that children are better off being raised by their mother and father in a stable, committed relationship. Statistics show that cohabitation is inherently less stable and more prone to breakup than marriages. Furthermore, since living together and sharing financial resources is more efficient than living separately, married couples tend to be wealthier and have nicer homes than people who divorce or move from partner to partner. On top of that, married people tend to be happier and more emotionally secure. So given the undeniable benefits of marriage for both adults and children, using shame as a tool to promote it as a social norm seems entirely reasonable.

Serwer states the modern male response to shame is to do "what they can do to rectify their sense of self-worth." This is an inversion of the social norms of the last several centuries of western civilization, wherein the goal of those exposed to the shame of their social peers was to redeem themselves in the opinion of those same peers that had shamed them.

Such ego-centric response to societal norms is ridiculous and deserves opprobrium from one and all.

Um, how has abortion not come up in this conversation?

If Dreher and the conservative movement were successful in stigmatizing unwed child bearing; abortion would become much more common place. In fact, the regularity of unwed child bearing is actually a success of the conservative movement's war on abortion.

somebody,

Given that Dreher and other conservatives oppose the legalization of abortion, this is a red herring. It is similar to the argument made above that shaming people into marriage will only lead to higher divorce rates. Conservatives opposed the liberalization of divorce laws and the advent of "no-fault" divorces. Make divorces harder to get, and maybe people work harder on their marriages rather than heading for the exits at the first sign of trouble.

If shame isn't all that much of a motivator for change, how come liberals are always whining about racism, sexism, homophobia, and warmongering?

The question isn't whether shame can produce a change in behavior. The question is whether the new behavior is better than the old.

Conservatives believe that if they express enough hatred toward a single mother, then she will find a man to marry. Given how good conservatives are at hatred, I suspect they are correct.

But is a marriage made from a fear of conservative hatred is as healthy as a marriage made from love?

For conservatives, a marriage is a marriage is a marriage, and so they cannot distinguish between the two: first calf is no less golden than the second.

Liberals can, and do. A marriage made from a fear of conservative hatred is inferior to one made from love. Thus their aversion to the use of conservative hatred to produce a marriage.

Drew,

That was one of the lamest comments I have yet read. Again, the onus is on you to show why liberal shame -- hatred, as you called it -- on "your" issues is righteous while conservative shame is not.

Has it occurred to this man that it is the prospect of feeling shame that steers us to behave in a manner that will not shame us? Sometimes we fail--we are all sinners--but society is well served by the notion of shame so long as there are those who at least try to avoid it.

Mr. Serwer would be well served to acquaint himself with a few Japanese or Chinese.

Did I dent your golden calf, Ben?

In any case, no, the onus is not on me. I don't believe that liberal shame is necessarily more righteous than conservative shame.

I do, however, believe that the onus is on you to show how your hatred will make for a better society. I don't see how your hatred of single mothers will improve society, nor do I see how marriages prompted by a desire to avoid your hatred, rather than a desire to care for one's spouse, will improve society.

Like I said, I know that you think a marriage is a marriage is a marriage, but those of us in the real world realize that not every marriage is as beneficial to society as every other. Some - like those you would wish to create - we would be better off without.

When liberals try to shame people into better behavior, they're quite properly reminded that nobody likes a sanctimonious prig.

How many minds does PETA really change by telling meat eaters that they are murderers? (PETA's not liberal, but it's a great example of ineffective social shaming by non-social conservatives.)

Shame is a basic human emotion. It's something some people are bound to feel when they realize that they've fallen short of some internal or external standard.

Let's not define shaming so loosely as to include any strategy for changing behavior that might result in someone feeling ashamed. Because then praising good behavior or articulating social expectations or suggesting constructive alternatives to undesirable behaviors would all count as shaming because they're reinforcing a standard that someone might fail to meet.

It's almost impossible to criticize anyone or anything without arousing some feelings of shame in some people.

A sign that says "please clean up after your dog" isn't social shaming--even if people who don't do so are more likely to feel ashamed of themselves when they fall short of a clearly stated expectation. Shaming is taking pictures of people who don't clean up after their dogs and posting them on the internet.

I'd define shaming as the deliberate application social pressure to humiliate people as punishment.

It's absurd to think that deliberately stigmatizing single parents is going to deter anyone from becoming a single parent in the future, or help those who are already single parents do a better job of raising their kids.

The evidence from public health suggests that shame is antithetical to constructive change.

For example, people who are ashamed of their sexuality are less likely to practice safer sex.

It's no coincidence that the successful public health push for condom use in the early days of the AIDS epidemic was explicitly tied to gay rights and sex positivity.

Abstinence-only sex "ed" for schoolkids is doubly pernicious because it relies on shame-based messages.

We know that abstinence only education programs don't discourage kids from having sex.

What's worse is that kids emerge from these programs not only uninformed or misinformed, but also with an extra measure of shame and self-loathing that will get in the way of future frank and productive discussions about sex and health with their doctors,their sexual partners, and eventually their own kids.

It's bad enough that kids don't learn how to use condoms. It's even worse that they learn that you don't want to be the kind of "dirty" "unlovable" person who keep condoms around with the expectation of actually using them.

I think that you're missing the point of shame. It's not so much the individual that's being shamed whose behavior is (hopefully) being modified. Rather it is the behavior of those who see the person being shamed. Being placed in the stocks (to go pretty far back and avoid some more current examples) causes shame and embarrassment to the man or the woman in the stocks yes, but the net benefit is to the society as a whole when, because of the negative example being set, other men and women change their future behavior to avoid finding themselves in the same predicament.