"I never heard the reverse, that a boy was 'girl crazy.'"
April 8, 2023 11:05 AM Subscribe
How Rural America Steals Girls' Futures (Monica Potts for The Atlantic, adapted from her upcoming book The Forgotten Girls)
Wow. This is so sad, and so different from my suburban NJ teen years.
posted by billsaysthis at 12:04 PM on April 8, 2023 [6 favorites]
posted by billsaysthis at 12:04 PM on April 8, 2023 [6 favorites]
I recently read an article about the decline in U.S. lifespan: it is shockingly concentrated in the years before 40. It's not even (or not primarily) the much-discussed middle-age "deaths of despair," it's kids getting shot or ODing.
posted by praemunire at 12:17 PM on April 8, 2023 [12 favorites]
posted by praemunire at 12:17 PM on April 8, 2023 [12 favorites]
Growing up in the ’90s in Clinton, Arkansas, all that my best friend, Darci Brawner, and I dreamed about was getting out...Boys and sex would only stop us, catch us, or so my mother had warned.
The town my wife grew up in was Canadian and mid-sized, but she was similarly-focused on getting out of there from a young age and as such she told me she basically didn't date at all in high school because she feared getting stuck there as an unintended consequence of doing so.
posted by The Card Cheat at 12:45 PM on April 8, 2023 [34 favorites]
The town my wife grew up in was Canadian and mid-sized, but she was similarly-focused on getting out of there from a young age and as such she told me she basically didn't date at all in high school because she feared getting stuck there as an unintended consequence of doing so.
posted by The Card Cheat at 12:45 PM on April 8, 2023 [34 favorites]
Grew up in small-town CT in the 1980s and my own attitude was the same as Mrs. Card Cheat's. (Albeit reinforced by some Catholicism.)
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 1:03 PM on April 8, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 1:03 PM on April 8, 2023 [4 favorites]
If you are wondering, like I was, why the article is talking about Clinton, Arkansas, but the photos are captioned Troy, New York, it's because the photos are by Brenda Ann Kennellay and are from the book Upstate Girls: Unravelling Collar City, which suggests that these attitudes are not restricted to red states (as many of the commentators have already said.)
posted by dannyboybell at 1:09 PM on April 8, 2023 [31 favorites]
posted by dannyboybell at 1:09 PM on April 8, 2023 [31 favorites]
It's not even (or not primarily) the much-discussed middle-age "deaths of despair," it's kids getting shot or ODing.
Or women dying during pregnancy, childbirth or after. The US has very high rates of maternal deaths, and it's going to get worse as the Republicans get their way regarding maternal health care.
posted by mumimor at 1:27 PM on April 8, 2023 [40 favorites]
Or women dying during pregnancy, childbirth or after. The US has very high rates of maternal deaths, and it's going to get worse as the Republicans get their way regarding maternal health care.
posted by mumimor at 1:27 PM on April 8, 2023 [40 favorites]
praemunire: I expect it’s the same paywalled article linked here, but this twitter thread does explain a fair bit of it. Short version: It’s US youth who are dying faster than those in our peer countries. Not infants—5 year olds who don’t live to become 40 year olds. The graphs alone are worth the thread.
John Burn-Murdoch on US life expectancy
posted by clauclauclaudia at 1:48 PM on April 8, 2023 [20 favorites]
John Burn-Murdoch on US life expectancy
posted by clauclauclaudia at 1:48 PM on April 8, 2023 [20 favorites]
But once someone stumbles, Clinton and rural places like it don't do much to stop the fall.
Teegeeack, that excellent sentence summarizes both the article and the awful problem. For many teens there's no second chance. You either make zero mistakes, or you're doomed.
posted by mono blanco at 2:02 PM on April 8, 2023 [30 favorites]
Teegeeack, that excellent sentence summarizes both the article and the awful problem. For many teens there's no second chance. You either make zero mistakes, or you're doomed.
posted by mono blanco at 2:02 PM on April 8, 2023 [30 favorites]
Teenage pregnancy was probably the thing I was terrified most of when I was in high school. Even when I did go on to have sex as a teen, I was adamant about condoms. But obviously condoms aren't a 100% so my internal freakouts didn't abate. One of my good friends in high school got pregnant at 17; her ultra-strict Catholic parents kicked her out and we took her in briefly. (Listen, the shitty part I didn't think of then because you know, being SEVENTEEN and all, the guy who knocked her up was in his 30s, they married, divorced, but from what I can see on IG, she's doing amazing in her life. I can't believe I didn't grok that dudes in their 30s were not that weird at that age. I mean, yes it was gross but I didn't understand then about power dynamics until I made own my mistake of dating someone 16 years older than me when I was barely in my 20s.)
My heart breaks for all those girls in those photos, in the linked article, and all of them out there tonight just wanting to be loved but mistaking sex for that emotion.
posted by Kitteh at 2:30 PM on April 8, 2023 [23 favorites]
My heart breaks for all those girls in those photos, in the linked article, and all of them out there tonight just wanting to be loved but mistaking sex for that emotion.
posted by Kitteh at 2:30 PM on April 8, 2023 [23 favorites]
Losing too many girls is death for small communities unless outsiders come in to replace them.
And if outsiders bring their mates with them, as they might be likely to do as part of couples looking for cheaper housing and more traditional places to raise a family, local boys will have to leave as well or risk ending up as disaffected incels.
posted by jamjam at 2:34 PM on April 8, 2023 [1 favorite]
And if outsiders bring their mates with them, as they might be likely to do as part of couples looking for cheaper housing and more traditional places to raise a family, local boys will have to leave as well or risk ending up as disaffected incels.
posted by jamjam at 2:34 PM on April 8, 2023 [1 favorite]
I feel like we're in a weird space in our culture. It's like, there's this mythical "small town" wonderfulness from a supposed past, and there's the reality that life in a bigger urban area is more convenient. But there's also the need for all that support structure for a big city to exist, and we have the choice of utterly alienating factory farming or a more human supply chain. But we've hollowed out all the things that make living within that more human/humane supply chain worthwhile and everyone is evacuating to the cities, and so things just start to close down. Shut down. There used to be several restaurants and a bowling alley and maybe other social outlets here but all the young people moved away and those things closed and now the young people want to move away even more. Meanwhile, how does that acreage of land continue to feed the city?
We need to either put serious cultural and monetary resources into making places that support our cities worth living in, or we need to just accede entirely to removing humans from all that other stuff entirely. Trying to make this in-between work is just ruining people's lives in so many ways.
posted by hippybear at 3:14 PM on April 8, 2023 [17 favorites]
We need to either put serious cultural and monetary resources into making places that support our cities worth living in, or we need to just accede entirely to removing humans from all that other stuff entirely. Trying to make this in-between work is just ruining people's lives in so many ways.
posted by hippybear at 3:14 PM on April 8, 2023 [17 favorites]
(Also, "boy crazy" is, as best as I can tell, derived from "girl crazy" which was the title of a musical in 1930 made into several films across the years.)
posted by hippybear at 3:15 PM on April 8, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by hippybear at 3:15 PM on April 8, 2023 [4 favorites]
Meanwhile, how does that acreage of land continue to feed the city?
The mechanization of agriculture is really the controlling factor; you don’t need anywhere near as many people these days, so the local communities lack critical mass. My family has a friend that lives in SE Wisconsin — in that area the population peaked in like 1880 and has been steadily dropping ever since. Down the road from her is the scant remnants of a town that more or less evaporated in the 1920s; just some foundations in the weeds and a couple tangles of baling wire.
One guy owns like 60% of the county, and until he got too old he more or less farmed it by himself, aside from occasional contract labor at peak times with certain crops. Due to the varied terrain (it wasn’t glaciated the last ice age) different fields grow at different rates so he never really had too much to handle at any one time.
posted by aramaic at 3:47 PM on April 8, 2023 [10 favorites]
The mechanization of agriculture is really the controlling factor; you don’t need anywhere near as many people these days, so the local communities lack critical mass. My family has a friend that lives in SE Wisconsin — in that area the population peaked in like 1880 and has been steadily dropping ever since. Down the road from her is the scant remnants of a town that more or less evaporated in the 1920s; just some foundations in the weeds and a couple tangles of baling wire.
One guy owns like 60% of the county, and until he got too old he more or less farmed it by himself, aside from occasional contract labor at peak times with certain crops. Due to the varied terrain (it wasn’t glaciated the last ice age) different fields grow at different rates so he never really had too much to handle at any one time.
posted by aramaic at 3:47 PM on April 8, 2023 [10 favorites]
white women who did not graduate from high school were dying about five years younger than such women had a generation before—at about 73 years instead of 78This fails to describe the real horror. Women are not quietly dying of old age at 73 instead of 78. A large enough group of them are dying under 40 to drag the whole average down by 5 years.
When you decide that everything bad that happens to someone is their fault, it’s very easy to not do anything to help. And when you decide that the gender that needs more support gets even less, this is the outcome.
posted by krisjohn at 4:43 PM on April 8, 2023 [53 favorites]
I had so many friends who were trapped like this. The first pregnant person I knew was in 6th grade, and there were one or two every year after that. One friend kept calling me for rides long after she had dropped out of high school because I was the person she knew would come pick her up, take her somewhere safe, and not ask questions or give her a hard time. We lived in a pretty diverse area of small farm/mill towns immediately outside of Charlotte that were becoming more suburban throughout my childhood (they are now painfully suburban), and so I guess we had more mixing of poverty and opportunities and privilege than in lots of places. Some of the worst stories were children of wealthier families who thought they were immune/immortal until they weren't. There wasn't always good predicting who got out and who got sucked in.
posted by hydropsyche at 5:05 PM on April 8, 2023 [8 favorites]
posted by hydropsyche at 5:05 PM on April 8, 2023 [8 favorites]
I grew up in rural Indiana, and this resonated really hard with me. I was one of the good girls (but I wasn’t a saint), but I still feel incredibly lucky that I made it out. I’m 46, and I was still in my 30s when I saw the first grandmother from my high school class mentioned on Facebook.
posted by web-goddess at 5:12 PM on April 8, 2023 [22 favorites]
posted by web-goddess at 5:12 PM on April 8, 2023 [22 favorites]
Now that I’m reflecting - I never see any of the guys mentioning that they’re grandfathers…
posted by web-goddess at 5:13 PM on April 8, 2023 [30 favorites]
posted by web-goddess at 5:13 PM on April 8, 2023 [30 favorites]
More years of American lives were erased by drugs, guns & road deaths in 2021 alone than from Covid during the whole pandemic.
Holy shit. That John BM twitter thread is excellent (and terrible).
posted by Reasonably Everything Happens at 5:24 PM on April 8, 2023 [13 favorites]
Holy shit. That John BM twitter thread is excellent (and terrible).
posted by Reasonably Everything Happens at 5:24 PM on April 8, 2023 [13 favorites]
But once someone stumbles, Clinton and rural places like it don't do much to stop the fall.
Oh, yeah. I spent part of my childhood in small-town rural Wisconsin, and while I didn't have a real happy time there as a general rule, at least I got out when I was thirteen. About a decade later, I caught up with the fates of some of those kids via a reunion with one of the few friends that I had there at my sister's wedding, and there was a surprising amount of crime and death for such a small class. Part of my Wisconsin experience included spending a year in a foster family, and my foster mother tutored a thirteen-year-old pregnant girl who ended up losing the baby due to umbilical cord strangulation at birth. And I'm sure it's worse now, with the number of rural hospitals shuttering their obstetric units.
posted by Halloween Jack at 6:13 PM on April 8, 2023 [7 favorites]
Oh, yeah. I spent part of my childhood in small-town rural Wisconsin, and while I didn't have a real happy time there as a general rule, at least I got out when I was thirteen. About a decade later, I caught up with the fates of some of those kids via a reunion with one of the few friends that I had there at my sister's wedding, and there was a surprising amount of crime and death for such a small class. Part of my Wisconsin experience included spending a year in a foster family, and my foster mother tutored a thirteen-year-old pregnant girl who ended up losing the baby due to umbilical cord strangulation at birth. And I'm sure it's worse now, with the number of rural hospitals shuttering their obstetric units.
posted by Halloween Jack at 6:13 PM on April 8, 2023 [7 favorites]
Addiction treatment being fobbed off onto evangelical cults doesn't help either.
posted by brujita at 6:21 PM on April 8, 2023 [22 favorites]
posted by brujita at 6:21 PM on April 8, 2023 [22 favorites]
I'm from rural Indiana and this resonated with me as well. I had multiple friends or aquintances have kids before graduating high school or immediately after. Most of them seem to be doing better now that we're in our mid 30s and they're mostly in more stable relationships with their kids grown/nearly grown but... what a hard young adulthood, and lots of opportunities that they'll never get back.
Even though I was quite socially liberal by college, I think I was in my late 20s before I really started to think of sex as something that could just be... fun. Not necessarily this really fraught thing that carried Consequences.
posted by geegollygosh at 6:32 PM on April 8, 2023 [6 favorites]
Even though I was quite socially liberal by college, I think I was in my late 20s before I really started to think of sex as something that could just be... fun. Not necessarily this really fraught thing that carried Consequences.
posted by geegollygosh at 6:32 PM on April 8, 2023 [6 favorites]
That's absolutely horrifying.
Accurate sex education in school;
and access to contraception;
and access to abortion
would go a long way to helping these girls and these women.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 6:32 PM on April 8, 2023 [11 favorites]
Accurate sex education in school;
and access to contraception;
and access to abortion
would go a long way to helping these girls and these women.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 6:32 PM on April 8, 2023 [11 favorites]
Now that I’m reflecting - I never see any of the guys mentioning that they’re grandfathers…
My wife’s cousin, in way-eastern Long Island which, despite its ostensible proximity to NYC, is the fucking boonies, just married a 40-something man who is a grandfather. This is not entirely uncommon out there.
I have cousins who moved to semi-rural Tennessee when we were kids, and this article may as well be a diary of their teenage years. There is so little concern for the lives of girls, generally, in so much of the world, and it absolutely robs them of opportunity.
posted by uncleozzy at 6:36 PM on April 8, 2023 [1 favorite]
My wife’s cousin, in way-eastern Long Island which, despite its ostensible proximity to NYC, is the fucking boonies, just married a 40-something man who is a grandfather. This is not entirely uncommon out there.
I have cousins who moved to semi-rural Tennessee when we were kids, and this article may as well be a diary of their teenage years. There is so little concern for the lives of girls, generally, in so much of the world, and it absolutely robs them of opportunity.
posted by uncleozzy at 6:36 PM on April 8, 2023 [1 favorite]
Growing up in Montana, I heard about plenty of girl-crazy guys, but being the daughter of a former Marine sniper, I didn’t really worry very much. My dad taught me how to shoot and I had a rifle rack in my pick-up.
posted by Ideefixe at 6:57 PM on April 8, 2023 [5 favorites]
posted by Ideefixe at 6:57 PM on April 8, 2023 [5 favorites]
1972. There was no way that Kath and I were going to keep our hands off of each other. No. Way. We went to see the absolutely no-nonsense, smiling, happy nurse at Planned Parenthood, who wouldn't dream that Kath and I would be so foolish as to even try to be together and not touch one another. In fact it was perfectly clear that she was glad for us, her no-nonsense smile made it into her eyes as she gave Kathy pills, and gave both of us literature, with pictures and stuff, and a big honkin' sack full of festively colorful condoms.
Multiple Choice:
A) I happily give Planned Parenthood money, and have done so for over 45 years.
B) I'm a brain-dead mope.
posted by dancestoblue at 7:05 PM on April 8, 2023 [37 favorites]
Multiple Choice:
A) I happily give Planned Parenthood money, and have done so for over 45 years.
B) I'm a brain-dead mope.
posted by dancestoblue at 7:05 PM on April 8, 2023 [37 favorites]
Addendum: We were not rural, white-bread suburban Chicago. Planned Parenthood was in the next town over but I had a car so no problem.
The 1970s I grew up in totally distrusted what we'd been told by pretty much anyone, having had JFK killed by a magic bullet and Vietnam and then Watergate Nixon jive, having been told that drugs would make us have children with one eye, etc and etc.
I did trust Ann Landers and best I know was never misled by her.
posted by dancestoblue at 7:22 PM on April 8, 2023 [6 favorites]
The 1970s I grew up in totally distrusted what we'd been told by pretty much anyone, having had JFK killed by a magic bullet and Vietnam and then Watergate Nixon jive, having been told that drugs would make us have children with one eye, etc and etc.
I did trust Ann Landers and best I know was never misled by her.
posted by dancestoblue at 7:22 PM on April 8, 2023 [6 favorites]
I lived in a few small towns. It’s not only girls having sex with peers, there is an absolutely incredible level of incest. When my family left San Francisco, I am pretty sure I knew one incest victim. I probably knew of 5 or 6 in the high school I went to. Fathers, uncles being the usual perps. Everyone sort of knew the victims. It was awful. At least one victim got pregnant and she was not sure if her father or her boyfriend caused the pregnancy. She left home with her boyfriend and there was some gun play. This was NOT inHillbilly country. Rural California.
posted by Katjusa Roquette at 9:10 PM on April 8, 2023 [13 favorites]
posted by Katjusa Roquette at 9:10 PM on April 8, 2023 [13 favorites]
More years of American lives were erased by drugs, guns & road deaths in 2021 alone than from Covid during the whole pandemic.
Holy shit. That John BM twitter thread is excellent (and terrible).
posted by Reasonably Everything Happens at 5:24 PM
Unfortunately, I've seen those same statistics simply used to justify Covid not being a problem, as opposed to showing the staggering size of those other problems.
My parents were well educated but wanted us kids to have a sort of small town wholesome life. Fortunately their careers and drive for class ascension prevented doing more than floating around the outskirts of it, because the wholesome part is mostly a nostalgic lens.
It's almost like because cities were so demonized (for racist reasons) that the small town was given an unearned reputation simply for being the opposite in size.
I'm thankful I had easy and near unlimited access to some great libraries and Plan B.
posted by jellywerker at 4:59 AM on April 9, 2023 [10 favorites]
Holy shit. That John BM twitter thread is excellent (and terrible).
posted by Reasonably Everything Happens at 5:24 PM
Unfortunately, I've seen those same statistics simply used to justify Covid not being a problem, as opposed to showing the staggering size of those other problems.
My parents were well educated but wanted us kids to have a sort of small town wholesome life. Fortunately their careers and drive for class ascension prevented doing more than floating around the outskirts of it, because the wholesome part is mostly a nostalgic lens.
It's almost like because cities were so demonized (for racist reasons) that the small town was given an unearned reputation simply for being the opposite in size.
I'm thankful I had easy and near unlimited access to some great libraries and Plan B.
posted by jellywerker at 4:59 AM on April 9, 2023 [10 favorites]
My friends and I attended the wedding of our pregnant friend, LouAnn, in small-town Indiana. We were all 15 and 16 and no one thought it was weird at all that these children were getting married. None of the adults in my life pulled me aside and said, "This is NUTS, here's how to protect yourself, here's how to terminate a pregnancy." LouAnn and I were in the same math class and I remember the day she didn't come to school because she was in labor.
She didn't come back to school after she had the baby.
posted by cooker girl at 7:08 AM on April 9, 2023 [8 favorites]
She didn't come back to school after she had the baby.
posted by cooker girl at 7:08 AM on April 9, 2023 [8 favorites]
Having grown up and lived entirely in cities, I have never in my life understood the privilege/deference given to small-town life as idyllic and somehow More American than city life. I mean, I know a lot of it is just straight-up racism, but every single story I've ever heard about small-town life is a lot like this article: everyone who can leave GTFOs, because the people are small-minded, shitty gossips who appear to delight in cruelty and suffering. All the girls get basically SAed into teen or early 20s pregnancy, and then by 35 they've managed to divorce their assaulter, and the damn cycle starts all over again.
This article shows the effects of like six generations of evolution in action now, as ever since WWI these places have steadily lost anyone with ambition, drive or talent. And yet our political system hilariously overrepresents them, so everyone has to pretend small-town white people actually have something to contribute to our economy and society, and they just... don't, other than maybe as cautionary tales.
posted by outgrown_hobnail at 7:28 AM on April 9, 2023 [20 favorites]
This article shows the effects of like six generations of evolution in action now, as ever since WWI these places have steadily lost anyone with ambition, drive or talent. And yet our political system hilariously overrepresents them, so everyone has to pretend small-town white people actually have something to contribute to our economy and society, and they just... don't, other than maybe as cautionary tales.
posted by outgrown_hobnail at 7:28 AM on April 9, 2023 [20 favorites]
(There can be quite a difference between rural small towns or small cities and their neighbouring small towns that no longer have an economic base, versus those that do. Growing up in a college town can be a very different experience than those described here, for example. Or folks in coastal towns that previously had a history of economic activity that took residents farther afield and has them interacting with different people from around the world who are old enough to have actually experienced that period in the town’s history can be quite open-minded. Economic isolation often leads to or at least goes hand-in-hand with social isolation, however. And social isolation can lead to quite harmful levels of insularity.)
posted by eviemath at 8:33 AM on April 9, 2023 [18 favorites]
posted by eviemath at 8:33 AM on April 9, 2023 [18 favorites]
Describing the social effects as a product of “six generations of evolution” is inaccurate and counterproductive, in addition to flirting dangerously close to the sort of biological determinist explanations for poverty that lead to unacceptable policies like eugenics. The misogyny and black-and-white good kid/bad kid, virgin/whore, genius/talentless type dichotomies described in the link are a result of both cultural and religious influences and social and economic policy choices made by state and federal governments.
posted by eviemath at 8:39 AM on April 9, 2023 [33 favorites]
posted by eviemath at 8:39 AM on April 9, 2023 [33 favorites]
That’s not to say that our political systems aren’t skewed in negative and unrepresentative ways that concentrate power in lower population states and regions. But it’s not the folks described in the article that are holding that political power within the rural small towns and regions. It’s folks who are wealthy enough to also spend time in cities regularly, and who have access to better educational opportunities (eg. sending their kids to private boarding schools).
posted by eviemath at 8:43 AM on April 9, 2023 [12 favorites]
posted by eviemath at 8:43 AM on April 9, 2023 [12 favorites]
eviemath: thank you for your comment. As a Deep Southerner, it pains me to hear other people on the left take out their well-deserved anger on Republican upper-middle-class landed gentry with vicious jabs about hillbillies and incest that came right out of the eugenic movement of the early 20th century. Small towns have serious problems, and there's no perceived political reward in fixing them. Right-wingers are too busy reaping the rewards of grievances they invented, and anyone to the left is gerrymandered out of the game.
posted by Countess Elena at 10:21 AM on April 9, 2023 [23 favorites]
posted by Countess Elena at 10:21 AM on April 9, 2023 [23 favorites]
Red Dirt Girl is a song that's haunted me since the first time I heard it, and it was definitely playing in the back of my mind as I read the article.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 11:23 AM on April 9, 2023 [7 favorites]
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 11:23 AM on April 9, 2023 [7 favorites]
Yeah, evolution is a terrible term for the situation, but definitely there's a generational spiral — one that's born of the sort of "institutional knowledge" that leaves and the ideology that remains present in communities. The people who manage to avoid the many pitfalls of rural adolescence, or get together the tools to climb out of those holes once they fall in? They move away, taking their experiences with them. The people who stay around aren't in a position to help their own children either avoid trouble or recover from it, and they view the cycle of repeated crashes and partial recoveries until some crash actually kills you as just the way things are, because it's the way things are for everybody they know. That attitude only calcifies further as more and more generations back have been without any real hope.
posted by jackbishop at 11:42 AM on April 9, 2023 [11 favorites]
posted by jackbishop at 11:42 AM on April 9, 2023 [11 favorites]
"actually have something to contribute to our economy and society, and they just... don't, other than maybe as cautionary tales"
This is a kind of awful thing to say about other human beings who are in distress.
posted by eponym at 1:43 PM on April 9, 2023 [40 favorites]
This is a kind of awful thing to say about other human beings who are in distress.
posted by eponym at 1:43 PM on April 9, 2023 [40 favorites]
I appreciate your position eviemath, and mostly agree, but what those small towns usually do contribute is all the resources and inputs at the bottom of the manufacturing chain.
Those towns are mostly where your food, construction materials, pre-refined ore inputs, energy, and more come from. Sure the processing and profits are usually centered elsewhere, as well as the fact that many of them are hanging on past their utility (turns out a sense of place is a pretty strong part of many people's identity) but they're not useless, and a lot of them have only been sidelined in the past 50-100 years, which is not a long time in the grand scheme of things.
posted by jellywerker at 3:00 PM on April 9, 2023 [3 favorites]
Those towns are mostly where your food, construction materials, pre-refined ore inputs, energy, and more come from. Sure the processing and profits are usually centered elsewhere, as well as the fact that many of them are hanging on past their utility (turns out a sense of place is a pretty strong part of many people's identity) but they're not useless, and a lot of them have only been sidelined in the past 50-100 years, which is not a long time in the grand scheme of things.
posted by jellywerker at 3:00 PM on April 9, 2023 [3 favorites]
Yeah, maybe the issue isn't that they have nothing to contribute, but that systemic issues rob them of their potential. Or even more radically, maybe someone's value as a human being shouldn't be based on their "contribution."
We certainly do need to talk about why the realities and the fiction of small town life are so different. We certainly don't need to ignore that the politics of small town white people have a disproportionate and often harmful influence, or that their politics are the source of many of their own damn problems.
But we do not need more people in cities ignorantly writing off the entire rural population as worthless. That's another sort of fiction.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 3:07 PM on April 9, 2023 [29 favorites]
We certainly do need to talk about why the realities and the fiction of small town life are so different. We certainly don't need to ignore that the politics of small town white people have a disproportionate and often harmful influence, or that their politics are the source of many of their own damn problems.
But we do not need more people in cities ignorantly writing off the entire rural population as worthless. That's another sort of fiction.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 3:07 PM on April 9, 2023 [29 favorites]
We certainly do need to talk about why the realities and the fiction of small town life are so different.
Oh, that's simple.
A lot of the classic-Americana books written in the early 20th Century and offered to children to read were about kids growing up in the late 19th Century, written BY people who'd grown up in the late 19th Century and were looking back on their childhoods with rose-colored glasses and rhapsodizing about how "life was simpler" and more wholesome and cares were few.
But many of those authors, and most of their readers, misunderstood WHY life was simpler then - life for those kids was simpler because they were KIDS. They may have helped Pa with the farm chores, but they didn't have the additional fretting about whether the crops they harvested would sell for enough to pay off another year of debt on the land. They weren't hearing about the unrest going on anywhere else in the world, and they weren't caring anyway because they were kids. Their biggest concern was whether Nellie Olson was going to tattle on them after church or whether Buster was going to try to steal their Grandpa's pocket watch if they brought it to show around in class. There very well may have been some kids who had it much rougher, but the other grownups knew you weren't supposed to talk about that in front of the kids, so they didn't know.
Hell, even today early childhood can give you a rosy view of the world. My hometown was a snoozefest for me as a teenager, with very little to do if I didn't want to go hang out with the kids who drank - but it was one HELL of a fantastic place to be a little kid; there were two whole libraries, and we got to go to field trips to farms and once I even got to hold a baby piglet, and sometimes the puppetry students at the nearby university would come to give us shows. It wasn't until I got older and started becoming aware of life's larger woes and starting to notice other people's plights that I recognized the warts. But if I ignored that, I could write as sunny and happy a depiction of small town life if I wanted, focusing on my childhood perspective.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 3:26 PM on April 9, 2023 [16 favorites]
Oh, that's simple.
A lot of the classic-Americana books written in the early 20th Century and offered to children to read were about kids growing up in the late 19th Century, written BY people who'd grown up in the late 19th Century and were looking back on their childhoods with rose-colored glasses and rhapsodizing about how "life was simpler" and more wholesome and cares were few.
But many of those authors, and most of their readers, misunderstood WHY life was simpler then - life for those kids was simpler because they were KIDS. They may have helped Pa with the farm chores, but they didn't have the additional fretting about whether the crops they harvested would sell for enough to pay off another year of debt on the land. They weren't hearing about the unrest going on anywhere else in the world, and they weren't caring anyway because they were kids. Their biggest concern was whether Nellie Olson was going to tattle on them after church or whether Buster was going to try to steal their Grandpa's pocket watch if they brought it to show around in class. There very well may have been some kids who had it much rougher, but the other grownups knew you weren't supposed to talk about that in front of the kids, so they didn't know.
Hell, even today early childhood can give you a rosy view of the world. My hometown was a snoozefest for me as a teenager, with very little to do if I didn't want to go hang out with the kids who drank - but it was one HELL of a fantastic place to be a little kid; there were two whole libraries, and we got to go to field trips to farms and once I even got to hold a baby piglet, and sometimes the puppetry students at the nearby university would come to give us shows. It wasn't until I got older and started becoming aware of life's larger woes and starting to notice other people's plights that I recognized the warts. But if I ignored that, I could write as sunny and happy a depiction of small town life if I wanted, focusing on my childhood perspective.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 3:26 PM on April 9, 2023 [16 favorites]
but many of them have only been sidelined in the past 50-100 years
More on the 50-70 end in most of the examples I can think of, but yeah, that is the time scale on which both the economic and social changes I discussed have occurred. Which is why sometimes when you talk to the really old folks, they have a more cosmopolitan outlook on life, if the town in question used to be more bustling and if their own attitudes haven’t shifted too much over the years of cultural change. Sometimes of course you would need to dig into local history to know that there was a time when the culture within a small rural town was more progressive. And also there are some regions that have always been economically marginal or marginalized, with most residents focused on basic subsistence and survival due to little participation in a broader economy (with not even much by way of resource extraction), and the places where life has always been as described in the linked article since colonization tend to coincide with these economically marginalized regions, on the whole (modulo specific religious influences in some cases), from what I’ve seen.
posted by eviemath at 4:31 PM on April 9, 2023 [1 favorite]
More on the 50-70 end in most of the examples I can think of, but yeah, that is the time scale on which both the economic and social changes I discussed have occurred. Which is why sometimes when you talk to the really old folks, they have a more cosmopolitan outlook on life, if the town in question used to be more bustling and if their own attitudes haven’t shifted too much over the years of cultural change. Sometimes of course you would need to dig into local history to know that there was a time when the culture within a small rural town was more progressive. And also there are some regions that have always been economically marginal or marginalized, with most residents focused on basic subsistence and survival due to little participation in a broader economy (with not even much by way of resource extraction), and the places where life has always been as described in the linked article since colonization tend to coincide with these economically marginalized regions, on the whole (modulo specific religious influences in some cases), from what I’ve seen.
posted by eviemath at 4:31 PM on April 9, 2023 [1 favorite]
One of the many issues I had with the civil engineering firm I just left was its absolute devotion to doing projects for small communities whose residents were ultimately being done a disservice by continuing to be propped up by funding from the state and federal government.
I think I’ve told the story here but I once ran a sewer line including pump station and a dozen taps for a trailer park in a small town for an amount of money that would have bought those dozen families houses in nearby Charlotte or Greenville. Instead they got to continue living in shitty trailers just without the leaky septic tanks.
There’s simply no reason for some places to be.
posted by The Monster at the End of this Thread at 7:29 PM on April 9, 2023 [9 favorites]
I think I’ve told the story here but I once ran a sewer line including pump station and a dozen taps for a trailer park in a small town for an amount of money that would have bought those dozen families houses in nearby Charlotte or Greenville. Instead they got to continue living in shitty trailers just without the leaky septic tanks.
There’s simply no reason for some places to be.
posted by The Monster at the End of this Thread at 7:29 PM on April 9, 2023 [9 favorites]
One of the things that I love about Stephen King's work is that a fair amount of it, especially in the earlier years, is devoted to a pretty unsentimental view of small towns and their problems and liabilities. (So is some of Lovecraft's work, although it's tainted by his racism and weakness for eugenics.) One of the main points of 'Salem's Lot is that Barlow, the Draculaesque vampire who sets up shop in town, doesn't have to do a lot to literally kill the town because it's dying already.
posted by Halloween Jack at 8:51 PM on April 9, 2023 [11 favorites]
posted by Halloween Jack at 8:51 PM on April 9, 2023 [11 favorites]
There’s simply no reason for some places to be.
Some people want to stay where they are, damn the consequences. Often it's the older folks who have lived there all their lives and don't want their social connections upended, but not always. Centralia, PA was a good example. There were people who refused to leave Picher, OK despite generous buyout offers who only left after a tornado leveled the town.
What I'm saying is that the lack of an economic reason to continue existing isn't the same as the lack of any reason to continue existing. Not that that argument really applies to places like the one in TFA, anyway. It's close enough to places with jobs that people choose to settle there and commute and in doing so help the "parent" city in some ways and hurt it in others.
posted by wierdo at 9:28 PM on April 9, 2023 [9 favorites]
Some people want to stay where they are, damn the consequences. Often it's the older folks who have lived there all their lives and don't want their social connections upended, but not always. Centralia, PA was a good example. There were people who refused to leave Picher, OK despite generous buyout offers who only left after a tornado leveled the town.
What I'm saying is that the lack of an economic reason to continue existing isn't the same as the lack of any reason to continue existing. Not that that argument really applies to places like the one in TFA, anyway. It's close enough to places with jobs that people choose to settle there and commute and in doing so help the "parent" city in some ways and hurt it in others.
posted by wierdo at 9:28 PM on April 9, 2023 [9 favorites]
My parents, who were from NYC, decided to retire in a shitty little town when I was about to start 7th grade. They thought it would be a good environment for me to be a teenager in. I escaped being a teenage mother, but just barely. There was (and still is) nothing for kids to do in the town except alcohol, drugs, and sex. This is apparently by design - a few years ago, the town built a movie theater/bowling alley “for the teens”, and located it outside of the actual town, in a location where kids too young to drive can’t access it, and those that do drive spend their time drag racing on the road that leads there instead. The bowling alley has a rule that any kids under 18 who do make it out there are booted out at 8:00 PM, so they don’t bother to go there at all.
I escaped at 17, shortly after graduating high school. And I made damn sure my daughter grew up in a big city with plenty of things to do. It worked out well.
posted by MexicanYenta at 3:27 AM on April 10, 2023 [11 favorites]
I escaped at 17, shortly after graduating high school. And I made damn sure my daughter grew up in a big city with plenty of things to do. It worked out well.
posted by MexicanYenta at 3:27 AM on April 10, 2023 [11 favorites]
MexicanYenta: You're reminded me of something that proves that this may not just apply to teenagers.
I went to college at NYU. We had one or two frats, but they never did very well; they were modest, and they had very few huge parties of the kind I'd always seen frats doing in movies. And after a couple years at NYU it hit me - in a smaller town, if you were a college student, the frat party was often the only thing to do, but here in New York, why would you want to go to a frat party when places like CBGB's or Limelight were only a 10-minute walk from campus?
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 3:38 AM on April 10, 2023 [11 favorites]
I went to college at NYU. We had one or two frats, but they never did very well; they were modest, and they had very few huge parties of the kind I'd always seen frats doing in movies. And after a couple years at NYU it hit me - in a smaller town, if you were a college student, the frat party was often the only thing to do, but here in New York, why would you want to go to a frat party when places like CBGB's or Limelight were only a 10-minute walk from campus?
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 3:38 AM on April 10, 2023 [11 favorites]
Being a poor person in a city or suburb is pretty shitty too. At least in a rural area, you may own a piece of land that you can't get evicted from and you're able to supplement your food with gardening and hunting. Services that do exist (schools, primary care) are often better than the absolutely desolate offerings that urban poor people get because they're generally serving a more mixed-income community (and because rural services are less likely to be affected by systemic racism, of course).
But above all, people stay in these places because they have communities and networks and families and emotional connection to place just like every other human being on the planet does.
posted by geegollygosh at 3:44 AM on April 10, 2023 [20 favorites]
But above all, people stay in these places because they have communities and networks and families and emotional connection to place just like every other human being on the planet does.
posted by geegollygosh at 3:44 AM on April 10, 2023 [20 favorites]
I grew up in one of these small towns in the 1980s and among people my parents' age, the greatest joy they had was watching someone - usually a girl or young woman - try to make something of herself, and fail. Over the years there were multiple incidents of a "promising young woman" getting pregnant before graduating high school, and the among the thirty- and forty- somethings there was always a sadistic glee, a sort of pinch-faced pursed-lip, gimlet-eyed smirk when talking about this person, that "her life was ruined," or "guess she didn't want to go to college," "guess she wasn't so smart after all," etc. It was the satisfaction of the crabs at the bottom of the pot watching that one crab almost make it to the top before being pulled back down by the rest.
And it was even odds whether the father was a relative, someone of her parent's age, or a schoolmate. If the girl didn't choose [sic] to marry the father, it was further proof that she thought she was too good for her family, or something.
All this judgment came from a generation where, if a young woman became pregnant out of wedlock, she would "spend the summer visiting relatives," and come back hoping that she would find a suitor who "likes his women used."
Every couple of years I find myself in that same small town again, and you know what has changed? Nothing. Not a goddamned thing in forty years. Except now they have that internet thing.
The Squid Games has nothing on day-to-day life in a small Midwestern town.
posted by JohnFromGR at 4:47 AM on April 10, 2023 [19 favorites]
And it was even odds whether the father was a relative, someone of her parent's age, or a schoolmate. If the girl didn't choose [sic] to marry the father, it was further proof that she thought she was too good for her family, or something.
All this judgment came from a generation where, if a young woman became pregnant out of wedlock, she would "spend the summer visiting relatives," and come back hoping that she would find a suitor who "likes his women used."
Every couple of years I find myself in that same small town again, and you know what has changed? Nothing. Not a goddamned thing in forty years. Except now they have that internet thing.
The Squid Games has nothing on day-to-day life in a small Midwestern town.
posted by JohnFromGR at 4:47 AM on April 10, 2023 [19 favorites]
It is stunning to me that the term "hillbilly" used as a derisive insult is acceptable on Metafilter, especially given all the accumulating rules about what can and can't be said here anymore about nearly any other collective identity or social category.
Really check yourself on that one.
posted by spitbull at 4:48 AM on April 10, 2023 [18 favorites]
Really check yourself on that one.
posted by spitbull at 4:48 AM on April 10, 2023 [18 favorites]
There’s simply no reason for some places to be.
Can we not? This is a thing that gets said about poor communities everywhere. The fact that a community of people exists and wants to continue existing in a place is reason enough for that place to be.
posted by geegollygosh at 5:55 AM on April 10, 2023 [24 favorites]
Can we not? This is a thing that gets said about poor communities everywhere. The fact that a community of people exists and wants to continue existing in a place is reason enough for that place to be.
posted by geegollygosh at 5:55 AM on April 10, 2023 [24 favorites]
There's a paper to be written, if it hasn't been already, about the almost existential horror in American culture over teens having sex as being rooted in their economic futures. Even in this thread we talk about teen pregnancy as if it's a horror movie villain that ends lives and leaves bodies walking around, like cordyceps. There's a good reason for that -- the American economy and society conspires to make it seem true, make it seem as if there's no future for teen mothers.
A friend of mine at boarding school who got pregnant at 15 -- she was gone. Absolutely no suggestion about accommodations at the school or anything. We almost never spoke of her again. But on Facebook I've found that she seems to be a thriving person with a big cheerful son. I didn't friend her, not because I didn't care but because I felt terrible, like one of the many people who had failed her by acting as if she had died.
posted by Countess Elena at 5:56 AM on April 10, 2023 [14 favorites]
A friend of mine at boarding school who got pregnant at 15 -- she was gone. Absolutely no suggestion about accommodations at the school or anything. We almost never spoke of her again. But on Facebook I've found that she seems to be a thriving person with a big cheerful son. I didn't friend her, not because I didn't care but because I felt terrible, like one of the many people who had failed her by acting as if she had died.
posted by Countess Elena at 5:56 AM on April 10, 2023 [14 favorites]
Yeah, of the things I enjoyed and could afford to do as a teenager, running around in the woods was near the top of the list, and wouldn’t have been feasible in a city. The issues with certain small towns I’ve lived in have had more to do with local societal and religious attitudes than availability of a wider variety of forms of unaffordable culture and entertainment. Either the social/cultural insularity or the economical marginalization of some communities leads young people to not know about or be able to imagine possibilities for themselves, which impacts teenage behavior and decision-making in predictable ways (that you also see in cities, where, due to the high degree of economic as well as racial segregation in the US, kids such as in a summer program in NYC that I did a volunteer thing with at one point genuinely didn’t know of the existence of many careers, and had no way of accessing or really even knowing about many of the cultural opportunities that people tout as being a benefit of living in a city). Combining that with authoritarian attitudes that view any mistakes or experimentation or just different-ness as indicative of inherent bad moral character and that define entire human beings as failures for life while they are still kids further exacerbates the problem.
posted by eviemath at 6:51 AM on April 10, 2023 [8 favorites]
posted by eviemath at 6:51 AM on April 10, 2023 [8 favorites]
Cool, but we don’t have to subsidize it.
Also in my example, trailer park. They’re renters. It isn’t grandpappy’s homestead.
I grew up 30 minutes from the nearest town of 8,000 people. Mom worked at a store and dad was a prison guard. None of our neighbors farmed or did anything that necessitated living in the sticks. It was an arbitrary lifestyle choice that was heavily subsidized by others and relied on profligate waste of resources.
I wish we lived in a world that could afford everyone’s arbitrary antisocial lifestyle choices but we don’t, and I’m happy to have reduced my contribution to that.
posted by The Monster at the End of this Thread at 7:14 AM on April 10, 2023 [8 favorites]
Also in my example, trailer park. They’re renters. It isn’t grandpappy’s homestead.
I grew up 30 minutes from the nearest town of 8,000 people. Mom worked at a store and dad was a prison guard. None of our neighbors farmed or did anything that necessitated living in the sticks. It was an arbitrary lifestyle choice that was heavily subsidized by others and relied on profligate waste of resources.
I wish we lived in a world that could afford everyone’s arbitrary antisocial lifestyle choices but we don’t, and I’m happy to have reduced my contribution to that.
posted by The Monster at the End of this Thread at 7:14 AM on April 10, 2023 [8 favorites]
I escaped a small town in rural Missouri, many of my friends did not. It's pretty depressing to watch the decay happen in real time. What's even worse is to know that they are actively voting for people that will make the problem much much worse.
I graduated high school the same year as 9 women that were grandmothers before they turned 39...
posted by schyler523 at 7:22 AM on April 10, 2023 [1 favorite]
I graduated high school the same year as 9 women that were grandmothers before they turned 39...
posted by schyler523 at 7:22 AM on April 10, 2023 [1 favorite]
Hey represent the small town club! Yay! The first girl in my class had a baby at 13, first one married (different lady at 14) Mine also put the fun things far outside of town on privileged land owned by the local rich guy. A friend in marching band was married at 14, and didn't have a kid - I always thought that was super weird. 9 of the 13 girls I graduated with were married before graduating.
My prom had rules that people over 22 were unable to attend unless they were students, due to the age disparity of some boyfriends/girlfriends.
My sister (ultimately salutatorian of her class) once had to go to the principals' office due to some rumors and prove she was on her period and not pregnant. (shades of the current trans laws). She was 13 at the time. My parents were angry but didn't really have the cash to sue.
My theatre teacher said her deadbeat loser son couldn't date a girl (also ultimately salutatorian of her class) because she was Mexican (we lived close to the border). The town was like 50% white/hispanic.
We had at least one coach every other year who had to leave town due to inappropriate relationships with cheerleaders.
The deaths: my brother in law died from failed liver from alcoholism at 33. Another 15 girl was thrown from a car in a rollover (boyfriend on drugs) crash - with an open casket - the mortician didn't do a very good job. Yikes! My first ever funeral was an older cousin shot in a barfight. Everybody treated it the same way they treat school shootings now, so that was also weird to a 6 year old.
Heck yeah I worked hard to escape. Small towns are so fun.
posted by The_Vegetables at 8:25 AM on April 10, 2023 [9 favorites]
My prom had rules that people over 22 were unable to attend unless they were students, due to the age disparity of some boyfriends/girlfriends.
My sister (ultimately salutatorian of her class) once had to go to the principals' office due to some rumors and prove she was on her period and not pregnant. (shades of the current trans laws). She was 13 at the time. My parents were angry but didn't really have the cash to sue.
My theatre teacher said her deadbeat loser son couldn't date a girl (also ultimately salutatorian of her class) because she was Mexican (we lived close to the border). The town was like 50% white/hispanic.
We had at least one coach every other year who had to leave town due to inappropriate relationships with cheerleaders.
The deaths: my brother in law died from failed liver from alcoholism at 33. Another 15 girl was thrown from a car in a rollover (boyfriend on drugs) crash - with an open casket - the mortician didn't do a very good job. Yikes! My first ever funeral was an older cousin shot in a barfight. Everybody treated it the same way they treat school shootings now, so that was also weird to a 6 year old.
Heck yeah I worked hard to escape. Small towns are so fun.
posted by The_Vegetables at 8:25 AM on April 10, 2023 [9 favorites]
I grew up in a small town, but — crucially — not the small town my parents were from — so we had no family or local support and they could only be friends with people who had also moved to the town.
Some folks have a sentimental idea that because everyone in a small town knows each other, there’ll be bonds of affection and goodwill. Like in the big city a stranger might break into your car but not in a small town where they know you. In reality it is just as likely that someone will have grown up with you, know your family, and shared experiences with you, and they will deliberately pick you to victimize.
The structure of small towns makes it incredibly easy for people of bad will to gain political or social power, and completely piss on everyone. But there will still be people of good will there, and the best thing for them to encourage young people to do is leave and shake the dust from their feet.
posted by Hypatia at 8:44 AM on April 10, 2023 [14 favorites]
Some folks have a sentimental idea that because everyone in a small town knows each other, there’ll be bonds of affection and goodwill. Like in the big city a stranger might break into your car but not in a small town where they know you. In reality it is just as likely that someone will have grown up with you, know your family, and shared experiences with you, and they will deliberately pick you to victimize.
The structure of small towns makes it incredibly easy for people of bad will to gain political or social power, and completely piss on everyone. But there will still be people of good will there, and the best thing for them to encourage young people to do is leave and shake the dust from their feet.
posted by Hypatia at 8:44 AM on April 10, 2023 [14 favorites]
It's the same but very different in other countries. Think about the Italian villages where you can buy a home for €1. Services in rural areas are limited, though I can't imagine not having access to libraries and other cultural offers. Hospitals can be very far away, but obviously, healthcare is free. Everyone agrees to pay taxes for basic functions, and nearly everyone gets a living wage. (It's complicated, and not for this comment).
A long time ago, I thought of moving to our farm. There were several reasons, I felt burnt out, my eldest daughter excelled at a very expensive horse-riding sport, which would be more manageable at our own farm, and I wanted to get the garden up and running, maybe start a catering business.
Through the horse thing, we had plenty of friends, and it was one of those who asked what sports or academic interests the little one had. I said none, she was struggling with both school and social activities at the time. And they firmly said, stay in the city. Here [there], 100% of kids with no interest in sport or school get into trouble: drinking, drugs and crime. There is absolutely nothing else to do, and since high school is at least an hour away, they drop out at the first chance. So we stayed in the city. From a distance, I could see how my friend was right. We did have to give up the riding thing, though. We couldn't afford the next level when she reached it.
But... Only very few teenage girls got pregnant, and if they did, they got abortions. There was and is no sentimentality about it, and since then, the number of teen pregnancies has dwindled further still. That means almost everyone gets a basic education. And almost no-one dies during pregnancy, labor or from sepsis after delivery.
Also, you can't drive without an adult in the car till you are 18, and you need to take a fairly difficult test first. They have recently made the penalties for DUI and speeding a lot stricter, so that is getting less common too. (The car is confiscated regardless if it is your car, and your license is taken for several years).
And of course, no guns, at all.
If a young person is incarcerated, there will be school in the facility. Kids mostly go to special youth centers, so they don't get involved with older criminals.
I'm not shocked, because I'm used to it, but it always rattles me a bit when even MeFites declare how they don't want to pay for others. We don't see it that way. We pay taxes so we can feel safe, regardless of what happens in life. And the over-mortality of American women angers me just like the suppression of women everywhere else, while a lot of Americans just seem to accept it as a matter of fact. For instance, John Burn-Murdoch on US life expectancy didn't even mention it before I was too angry and stopped scrolling.
posted by mumimor at 9:32 AM on April 10, 2023 [15 favorites]
A long time ago, I thought of moving to our farm. There were several reasons, I felt burnt out, my eldest daughter excelled at a very expensive horse-riding sport, which would be more manageable at our own farm, and I wanted to get the garden up and running, maybe start a catering business.
Through the horse thing, we had plenty of friends, and it was one of those who asked what sports or academic interests the little one had. I said none, she was struggling with both school and social activities at the time. And they firmly said, stay in the city. Here [there], 100% of kids with no interest in sport or school get into trouble: drinking, drugs and crime. There is absolutely nothing else to do, and since high school is at least an hour away, they drop out at the first chance. So we stayed in the city. From a distance, I could see how my friend was right. We did have to give up the riding thing, though. We couldn't afford the next level when she reached it.
But... Only very few teenage girls got pregnant, and if they did, they got abortions. There was and is no sentimentality about it, and since then, the number of teen pregnancies has dwindled further still. That means almost everyone gets a basic education. And almost no-one dies during pregnancy, labor or from sepsis after delivery.
Also, you can't drive without an adult in the car till you are 18, and you need to take a fairly difficult test first. They have recently made the penalties for DUI and speeding a lot stricter, so that is getting less common too. (The car is confiscated regardless if it is your car, and your license is taken for several years).
And of course, no guns, at all.
If a young person is incarcerated, there will be school in the facility. Kids mostly go to special youth centers, so they don't get involved with older criminals.
I'm not shocked, because I'm used to it, but it always rattles me a bit when even MeFites declare how they don't want to pay for others. We don't see it that way. We pay taxes so we can feel safe, regardless of what happens in life. And the over-mortality of American women angers me just like the suppression of women everywhere else, while a lot of Americans just seem to accept it as a matter of fact. For instance, John Burn-Murdoch on US life expectancy didn't even mention it before I was too angry and stopped scrolling.
posted by mumimor at 9:32 AM on April 10, 2023 [15 favorites]
Cool, but we don’t have to subsidize it.
When you can simply replace “rural [white] small town” with “inner city”, or “Reservation”, or any formerly colonized country that has had its resources fully extracted, or that has gained its current negative aspects in significant part due to colonialism (see, eg. the history of white settlement in the Midwest as part of a policy to claim and hold land from Indigenous populations or other colonial empires and how that interacted with religious persecution in Europe at the time to help shape the current cultural and religious contexts of small Midwestern towns, or the roots of Haiti’s political and economic crises in the imposition of extractive and crippling debt to France at their country’s founding, or the colonial legacy of institutionalize homophobia in former British colonies), and end up sounding like a Reaganite or worse, maybe it’s time to do a bit of a re-think, hmm?
Likewise, when the features of small, rural towns that you choose to critique or blame apply equally to rural Black or Indigenous communities, or when the policies of rural depopulation that you advocate for would yet* again displace the descendants of people who were forcibly relocated to North America and enslaved, or Indigenous people who were forced off of their lands, your position is not nearly as progressive as you might like to believe. (*The Great Migration ultimately represents the failure of the US to follow through on the promises of Reconstruction.) (Rural depopulation policies in Canada have been hugely harmful to Indigenous communities, especially in the North, with forced or coerced centralization being an instrument of cultural genocide.)
Yes, our current economic system is unsustainable as well as highly inequitable. That’s a policy choice (or a slate of policy choices), and will not be solved by blaming individuals; just as the social harms that are a not uncommon experience in many rural small towns are a result of current and historical policy choices and other structural factors. And while we’re currently discussing predominantly white rural small towns, the arguments of “it’s too expensive to provide services to this community” or “we’re relocating you for your own good” or similar have most often been used to displace Black (or Indigenous) communities off of land that they own (and have some control and autonomy over) and into cities where they no longer own where they live, with insufficient compensation, in ways that have destroyed both support networks and small gains that communities were beginning to make in building inter generational wealth (which is largely based on property ownership in North America).
posted by eviemath at 9:40 AM on April 10, 2023 [17 favorites]
When you can simply replace “rural [white] small town” with “inner city”, or “Reservation”, or any formerly colonized country that has had its resources fully extracted, or that has gained its current negative aspects in significant part due to colonialism (see, eg. the history of white settlement in the Midwest as part of a policy to claim and hold land from Indigenous populations or other colonial empires and how that interacted with religious persecution in Europe at the time to help shape the current cultural and religious contexts of small Midwestern towns, or the roots of Haiti’s political and economic crises in the imposition of extractive and crippling debt to France at their country’s founding, or the colonial legacy of institutionalize homophobia in former British colonies), and end up sounding like a Reaganite or worse, maybe it’s time to do a bit of a re-think, hmm?
Likewise, when the features of small, rural towns that you choose to critique or blame apply equally to rural Black or Indigenous communities, or when the policies of rural depopulation that you advocate for would yet* again displace the descendants of people who were forcibly relocated to North America and enslaved, or Indigenous people who were forced off of their lands, your position is not nearly as progressive as you might like to believe. (*The Great Migration ultimately represents the failure of the US to follow through on the promises of Reconstruction.) (Rural depopulation policies in Canada have been hugely harmful to Indigenous communities, especially in the North, with forced or coerced centralization being an instrument of cultural genocide.)
Yes, our current economic system is unsustainable as well as highly inequitable. That’s a policy choice (or a slate of policy choices), and will not be solved by blaming individuals; just as the social harms that are a not uncommon experience in many rural small towns are a result of current and historical policy choices and other structural factors. And while we’re currently discussing predominantly white rural small towns, the arguments of “it’s too expensive to provide services to this community” or “we’re relocating you for your own good” or similar have most often been used to displace Black (or Indigenous) communities off of land that they own (and have some control and autonomy over) and into cities where they no longer own where they live, with insufficient compensation, in ways that have destroyed both support networks and small gains that communities were beginning to make in building inter generational wealth (which is largely based on property ownership in North America).
posted by eviemath at 9:40 AM on April 10, 2023 [17 favorites]
I don't understand any of the previous comment. Nobody is relocating rural white communities at any scale. If the job mentioned wasn't done, they wouldn't have required relocating, they would have had to pay for their own septic tanks. Also, communities have similarities, so of course plenty of things are equivocal amongst wealthy, poor, urban, rural, etc communities.
No one individually can ever be blamed for anything, small towners are just mindless automatons responding to inputs defined by structural factors. Even the ones in charge of making decisions in small towns.
posted by The_Vegetables at 9:52 AM on April 10, 2023 [4 favorites]
No one individually can ever be blamed for anything, small towners are just mindless automatons responding to inputs defined by structural factors. Even the ones in charge of making decisions in small towns.
posted by The_Vegetables at 9:52 AM on April 10, 2023 [4 favorites]
Nobody is relocating rural white communities at any scale. If the job mentioned wasn't done
The reply is not saying that this is actually happening, I see it as instead pointing out the flaws in the rhetoric of "just move to a less underpopulated area" as a response to the issues in TFA.
posted by Jarcat at 10:20 AM on April 10, 2023 [4 favorites]
The reply is not saying that this is actually happening, I see it as instead pointing out the flaws in the rhetoric of "just move to a less underpopulated area" as a response to the issues in TFA.
posted by Jarcat at 10:20 AM on April 10, 2023 [4 favorites]
Saying that certain places “have been colonized” covers a lot of disparate histories and impacts. Indigenous peoples forced onto marginal land, or black farmers denied the security of landowning, are not necessarily the same as white people who spent centuries with the idea that the coal will never run out, the cod can never go extinct, the natural gas is there to be burnt, wolves must be culled to create artificially inflated elk populations for recreational hunting, the soil is an inexhaustible resource, and that, in short, it should be the job of public policy to keep them in the extractive lifestyles to which they have become accustomed.
posted by Hypatia at 10:41 AM on April 10, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by Hypatia at 10:41 AM on April 10, 2023 [4 favorites]
The comment that I quoted from was specifically advocating for having rural depopulation policies put in place.
But also, such policies have indeed been applied at various points in various parts of the US. (And Canada, where I’m writing from, where the Harper government that preceded the current government was more explicit about it than is usual, but which shares a similar cultural idealization of (white) small town life with the US.) Consolidating many small schools into centralized large schools or spending less per pupil in smaller school districts are rural depopulation policies. (Though the fact that per pupil education spending in the US is highly variable by school district socioeconomic status also negatively impacts poor and racialized neighborhoods within major cities.) Under-funding rural health care options and disincentives (often financial, based on choices about medical billing/reimbursement structures) for health care professionals to work in rural communities are rural depopulation policies. Which businesses and where receive government support in the form of loans or tax breaks varies but has at times been a tool of rural depopulation policy. The fact that across most of the Midwestern US, formerly at least self-supporting small communities have been replaced by a vast industrial landscape (where the industry happens to be large scale/factory farming) is a result of decades of policy choices that have at least in effect been rural depopulation policy (this is a thing the Harper government in Canada was more explicit about). Economic policy choices that enable or reward resource extraction practices that leave local communities at the site of extraction impoverished and that lead to boom and bust cycles (think forestry, fishing, mining, including fracking/shale oil/tar sands) aren’t directly rural depopulation policy, but are instrumental in creating the conditions discussed in the fpp link.
posted by eviemath at 10:48 AM on April 10, 2023 [7 favorites]
But also, such policies have indeed been applied at various points in various parts of the US. (And Canada, where I’m writing from, where the Harper government that preceded the current government was more explicit about it than is usual, but which shares a similar cultural idealization of (white) small town life with the US.) Consolidating many small schools into centralized large schools or spending less per pupil in smaller school districts are rural depopulation policies. (Though the fact that per pupil education spending in the US is highly variable by school district socioeconomic status also negatively impacts poor and racialized neighborhoods within major cities.) Under-funding rural health care options and disincentives (often financial, based on choices about medical billing/reimbursement structures) for health care professionals to work in rural communities are rural depopulation policies. Which businesses and where receive government support in the form of loans or tax breaks varies but has at times been a tool of rural depopulation policy. The fact that across most of the Midwestern US, formerly at least self-supporting small communities have been replaced by a vast industrial landscape (where the industry happens to be large scale/factory farming) is a result of decades of policy choices that have at least in effect been rural depopulation policy (this is a thing the Harper government in Canada was more explicit about). Economic policy choices that enable or reward resource extraction practices that leave local communities at the site of extraction impoverished and that lead to boom and bust cycles (think forestry, fishing, mining, including fracking/shale oil/tar sands) aren’t directly rural depopulation policy, but are instrumental in creating the conditions discussed in the fpp link.
posted by eviemath at 10:48 AM on April 10, 2023 [7 favorites]
not necessarily the same as white people who spent centuries with the idea that the coal will never run out, the cod can never go extinct, the natural gas is there to be burnt, wolves must be culled to create artificially inflated elk populations for recreational hunting, the soil is an inexhaustible resource, and that, in short, it should be the job of public policy to keep them in the extractive lifestyles to which they have become accustomed.
It's a good thing people in cities and suburbs never use natural gas, eat seafood or profit off those industries. If they did, maybe we'd have to blame someone who has enough money not to live in a shitty rented trailer for our extractive anti-social lifestyles!
posted by geegollygosh at 11:06 AM on April 10, 2023 [11 favorites]
It's a good thing people in cities and suburbs never use natural gas, eat seafood or profit off those industries. If they did, maybe we'd have to blame someone who has enough money not to live in a shitty rented trailer for our extractive anti-social lifestyles!
posted by geegollygosh at 11:06 AM on April 10, 2023 [11 favorites]
It's a good thing people in cities never use natural gas, eat seafood or profit off those industries.
I left the country. I do not drive a hundred miles per day just to commute. My food—my actual food, not acres of soybeans—travels fewer miles to get to me because of distribution hubs. (But damn, why is the majority of my food grown in blue states? Is it my patriotic duty to eat more Fritos?) Nor will I spend my time tiling over wetlands, or releasing thousands of gallons of hog waste into local watersheds. I do not raise Asian pheasants to be released on farms and shot at leisure. Everyone I grew up with owned a house, it was the yeoman farmer, small-town ideal. And modern farmers and ranchers have a great deal of power in what they get local and state governments to let them do.
posted by Hypatia at 11:24 AM on April 10, 2023 [3 favorites]
I left the country. I do not drive a hundred miles per day just to commute. My food—my actual food, not acres of soybeans—travels fewer miles to get to me because of distribution hubs. (But damn, why is the majority of my food grown in blue states? Is it my patriotic duty to eat more Fritos?) Nor will I spend my time tiling over wetlands, or releasing thousands of gallons of hog waste into local watersheds. I do not raise Asian pheasants to be released on farms and shot at leisure. Everyone I grew up with owned a house, it was the yeoman farmer, small-town ideal. And modern farmers and ranchers have a great deal of power in what they get local and state governments to let them do.
posted by Hypatia at 11:24 AM on April 10, 2023 [3 favorites]
Any comment implying or stating that rural white lives don't matter is simply underscoring the fact that accusations of elitism by rural whites actually have a valid point. Let's not be those elitists, please.
posted by Beethoven's Sith at 11:56 AM on April 10, 2023 [14 favorites]
posted by Beethoven's Sith at 11:56 AM on April 10, 2023 [14 favorites]
Mod note: One comment deleted. Cross-site talk/comments will generally be removed.
posted by loup (staff) at 12:00 PM on April 10, 2023
posted by loup (staff) at 12:00 PM on April 10, 2023
[slowly backs away in Midwestern]
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 12:56 PM on April 10, 2023 [8 favorites]
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 12:56 PM on April 10, 2023 [8 favorites]
Yeah, this whole thread took a really ugly turn at some point and seems to be people arguing whether or not rural communities should be extinguished, when the article itself is about people living in rural communities. Whose fate is being debated. Like they aren't people.
I'm amazed the only action loup took was to delete one comment and not try to eliminate much of this thread as it stands.
posted by hippybear at 1:12 PM on April 10, 2023 [7 favorites]
I'm amazed the only action loup took was to delete one comment and not try to eliminate much of this thread as it stands.
posted by hippybear at 1:12 PM on April 10, 2023 [7 favorites]
also if you think your "actual" food has nothing whatsoever to do with those acres of soybeans i got an underwater soybean farm to sell ya
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 1:22 PM on April 10, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 1:22 PM on April 10, 2023 [3 favorites]
I'm amazed the only action loup took was to delete one comment
We can't have reddit links, but we can have people claiming the moral high ground by claiming they are 'subsidizing' other's existences by paying taxes.
posted by Jarcat at 1:35 PM on April 10, 2023 [2 favorites]
We can't have reddit links, but we can have people claiming the moral high ground by claiming they are 'subsidizing' other's existences by paying taxes.
posted by Jarcat at 1:35 PM on April 10, 2023 [2 favorites]
The comment that I quoted from was specifically advocating for having rural depopulation policies put in place.
You mean the one from the poster in the thread? No it was not. "Cool. But you don't have to subsize it" is not a 'rural depopulation' policy. It's a budget constraint policy, of which all people have to abide by. I mean, the real rural 'depopulation policy' is that stuff like that, highway expansions, stupid school expenditures (sports stuff) and not much else.
posted by The_Vegetables at 1:35 PM on April 10, 2023 [3 favorites]
You mean the one from the poster in the thread? No it was not. "Cool. But you don't have to subsize it" is not a 'rural depopulation' policy. It's a budget constraint policy, of which all people have to abide by. I mean, the real rural 'depopulation policy' is that stuff like that, highway expansions, stupid school expenditures (sports stuff) and not much else.
posted by The_Vegetables at 1:35 PM on April 10, 2023 [3 favorites]
I mean, how about medical care, local jobs, or actual educational improvements (and not sports stuff) instead if you want to spread subsidized dollars around?
posted by The_Vegetables at 1:38 PM on April 10, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by The_Vegetables at 1:38 PM on April 10, 2023 [2 favorites]
I left the country. I do not drive a hundred miles per day just to commute. My food—my actual food, not acres of soybeans—travels fewer miles to get to me because of distribution hubs.
Finally -- I guess this is a true midwestern back-away, in that it has three stages -- this is a HILARIOUS take to have in a thread about an article literally illustrating the barriers that prevent young girls from leaving the rural areas where they grew up.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 1:45 PM on April 10, 2023 [3 favorites]
Finally -- I guess this is a true midwestern back-away, in that it has three stages -- this is a HILARIOUS take to have in a thread about an article literally illustrating the barriers that prevent young girls from leaving the rural areas where they grew up.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 1:45 PM on April 10, 2023 [3 favorites]
We can't have reddit links, but we can have people claiming the moral high ground by claiming they are 'subsidizing' other's existences by paying taxes.
Your scare quotes are removing from any situation what is actually happening, which is that people pay taxes which are then given to others to help them from not dying.
I don't know there's any moral high ground to claim by doing this, but I'm not sure what your scare quotes are supposed to denote.
posted by hippybear at 1:52 PM on April 10, 2023
Your scare quotes are removing from any situation what is actually happening, which is that people pay taxes which are then given to others to help them from not dying.
I don't know there's any moral high ground to claim by doing this, but I'm not sure what your scare quotes are supposed to denote.
posted by hippybear at 1:52 PM on April 10, 2023
Sorry, Hippybear, I probably should have kept that comment to myself.
For what its worth, what I was trying to say (admittedly did a poor job of such) was that I think its unfortunate that we have a situation where a reddit link was deleted while others were left to stand, in this thread.
I work in health care in a rural part of California that has a high population of HIV+ patients, and it hits me wrong when I see people's value being reduced to economic value instead of humanity.
Apologies, and I'm stepping away from the thread now.
posted by Jarcat at 2:01 PM on April 10, 2023 [9 favorites]
For what its worth, what I was trying to say (admittedly did a poor job of such) was that I think its unfortunate that we have a situation where a reddit link was deleted while others were left to stand, in this thread.
I work in health care in a rural part of California that has a high population of HIV+ patients, and it hits me wrong when I see people's value being reduced to economic value instead of humanity.
Apologies, and I'm stepping away from the thread now.
posted by Jarcat at 2:01 PM on April 10, 2023 [9 favorites]
My daughter's 11 and this scares the shit out of me.
posted by kirkaracha at 2:03 PM on April 10, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by kirkaracha at 2:03 PM on April 10, 2023 [1 favorite]
I've seen this advice several places: keep a big mason jar full of condoms in your bathroom cupboard. Keep it full, so no-one can count if anyone takes some. It signals that you are cool with sex, that you encourage safe sex, and that the kids are OK. (Kids always rummage through all the cupboards when they are bored, in my experience).
Also, have sex-ed literature on your bookshelves. Block all the porn you can from all devices.
My mother took me to the doctor the week after my first period to get the Pill, but that was in every way not good. I don't do well with hormonal stuff, so after a month, I was in a deep depression. Also, I didn't feel ready at all, and felt she was almost forcing me to have sex (this would make sense if you knew my mum, it doesn't apply to all girls in the world).
If you can get abortion drugs, get them now. I wouldn't recommend using them without medical access, but the situation in the US right now is grim and it would be better than nothing in an emergency.
posted by mumimor at 2:23 PM on April 10, 2023 [5 favorites]
Also, have sex-ed literature on your bookshelves. Block all the porn you can from all devices.
My mother took me to the doctor the week after my first period to get the Pill, but that was in every way not good. I don't do well with hormonal stuff, so after a month, I was in a deep depression. Also, I didn't feel ready at all, and felt she was almost forcing me to have sex (this would make sense if you knew my mum, it doesn't apply to all girls in the world).
If you can get abortion drugs, get them now. I wouldn't recommend using them without medical access, but the situation in the US right now is grim and it would be better than nothing in an emergency.
posted by mumimor at 2:23 PM on April 10, 2023 [5 favorites]
Can we stop repeating these awful things, even if we're refuting them?
posted by hippybear at 3:09 PM on April 10, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by hippybear at 3:09 PM on April 10, 2023 [1 favorite]
I promise they’re saying far worse about the Big City.
posted by The Monster at the End of this Thread at 3:32 PM on April 10, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by The Monster at the End of this Thread at 3:32 PM on April 10, 2023 [4 favorites]
Can you walk and chew gum?
We are at a time where the whole world needs change, and infrastructure is central to that change. It isn't about who is worthy or not, and as I understand it, neither city life nor rural life is sustainable the way we are doing it now.
I don't no how to change the political and social sentiments in rural areas, but I think it has been proven that empowering women, though education, access to healthcare and job opportunities is the way to go for progress, regardless of where you are. Once upon a time it was thought that this was mainly a strategy for undeveloped nations. But it works everywhere.
posted by mumimor at 3:44 PM on April 10, 2023 [12 favorites]
We are at a time where the whole world needs change, and infrastructure is central to that change. It isn't about who is worthy or not, and as I understand it, neither city life nor rural life is sustainable the way we are doing it now.
I don't no how to change the political and social sentiments in rural areas, but I think it has been proven that empowering women, though education, access to healthcare and job opportunities is the way to go for progress, regardless of where you are. Once upon a time it was thought that this was mainly a strategy for undeveloped nations. But it works everywhere.
posted by mumimor at 3:44 PM on April 10, 2023 [12 favorites]
I want the current American small town "way of life" to end, in the same way I want any institution to end that absolutely undervalues or perhaps even negatively values the lives of girls and young women the way these places do. Any church, any institution, anything that so blatantly disrespects the inherent worth of girl or woman's life as anything other than eventual mother and (if she's lucky) wife. That's what these towns are doing aren't they?
The thread has devolved into an argument on the validity of existence of small, poor, rural towns across the country. Perhaps some of them should be bulldozed, others not. Some could be pulled out of their downward spirals into complete collapse with judicious application of tax monies, and others are just black holes. It's hard to judge such things.
But as a young woman who spent the worst years of her life on a Reservation (Jr. High and most of Highschool if you were wondering), I hate these places with a burning passion. I sat in my house and dared not go outside because I saw the stark black and white divide between girls who would never leave the Rez and girls who would. So I spent most of my time alone and miserable trapped in a house with a mentally ill mother. No one cares for the girls in these places. So that's what I think should end. If that means burning them all down, then fine, lets do that. It might be easier to do than actually making the people who live there and the people they've been electing to be in charge of housing/schooling/jobs really care.
But then again, the older I get the more I want Crone Island, or lets be honest Thymescria.
posted by sharp pointy objects at 3:47 PM on April 10, 2023 [16 favorites]
The thread has devolved into an argument on the validity of existence of small, poor, rural towns across the country. Perhaps some of them should be bulldozed, others not. Some could be pulled out of their downward spirals into complete collapse with judicious application of tax monies, and others are just black holes. It's hard to judge such things.
But as a young woman who spent the worst years of her life on a Reservation (Jr. High and most of Highschool if you were wondering), I hate these places with a burning passion. I sat in my house and dared not go outside because I saw the stark black and white divide between girls who would never leave the Rez and girls who would. So I spent most of my time alone and miserable trapped in a house with a mentally ill mother. No one cares for the girls in these places. So that's what I think should end. If that means burning them all down, then fine, lets do that. It might be easier to do than actually making the people who live there and the people they've been electing to be in charge of housing/schooling/jobs really care.
But then again, the older I get the more I want Crone Island, or lets be honest Thymescria.
posted by sharp pointy objects at 3:47 PM on April 10, 2023 [16 favorites]
Mod note: The whole depopulation derail needs to stop now, thanks! A comment and two replies to it have been deleted.
posted by travelingthyme (staff) at 6:33 PM on April 10, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by travelingthyme (staff) at 6:33 PM on April 10, 2023 [1 favorite]
Just gonna drop some recommended reading here: Raymond Williams, The Country and the City (1975). The tropes being trotted out in this thread have a history.
posted by spitbull at 4:08 AM on April 11, 2023 [1 favorite]
box, thank you for posting this. It was an informative read that got me reflecting on how strict my parents were when I was growing up. And my heart just sank at these parts:
My grandmother was married at twelve and pregnant at 13. After I found that out (I was well into my adulthood), I was just mind-boggled and grateful that I'd had an entire childhood without becoming a mother myself, that I had the choice of whether to have a child. And, when I think about (as Potts's article illustrates) how precarious a girl's future can be in a world where sexual activity can so easily end all her ambitions, I better understand and sympathize with how very very protective and restrictive my parents were in keeping me from dating, from unchaperoned contact with boys, and so on. I still wish things had been different, and I think most of the choices they were stopping me from making would not have led to irrevocable consequences, but I understand better where they were coming from.
And I appreciated the economical phrasing of:
In January of our senior year, Darci had a miscarriage, something she shared with me only years later in an interview. At the time, she told no one about it. But she had a doctor’s note saying she needed to rest. She kept using Wite-Out to extend the date on it in order to get out of school. She did this so many times that she missed too many days to graduate. Her teachers and the principal, perhaps having already written her off as a lost cause, never bothered to warn her that there was a hard-and-fast rule and that she was about to break it......This girl, struggling to get her needs met for closeness and autonomy and guidance and discovery and rest, just abandoned as someone "making her own choices," instead of lovingly and consistently supported.
She could never make Darci do anything she didn’t want to do. “Darci made her own choices,” she insisted. It troubled me that she so casually referred to teenage behavior as “choices,” when we had been only children, still learning and growing.
My grandmother was married at twelve and pregnant at 13. After I found that out (I was well into my adulthood), I was just mind-boggled and grateful that I'd had an entire childhood without becoming a mother myself, that I had the choice of whether to have a child. And, when I think about (as Potts's article illustrates) how precarious a girl's future can be in a world where sexual activity can so easily end all her ambitions, I better understand and sympathize with how very very protective and restrictive my parents were in keeping me from dating, from unchaperoned contact with boys, and so on. I still wish things had been different, and I think most of the choices they were stopping me from making would not have led to irrevocable consequences, but I understand better where they were coming from.
And I appreciated the economical phrasing of:
When I was little, I thought that when people were drunk they were drunk forever. Later, I learned that this is not true. Even later, I learned that sometimes it is.posted by brainwane at 4:50 AM on April 11, 2023 [14 favorites]
Thank you for the Potts article, box. As teen pregnancies plummeted, it's good to be reminded of where they persist in destructive ways.
posted by doctornemo at 6:54 AM on April 11, 2023
posted by doctornemo at 6:54 AM on April 11, 2023
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posted by genpfault at 11:16 AM on April 8, 2023 [12 favorites]