I was in the car this afternoon and heard an ad for US Senate Candidate Tom Leppert. What struck me was this part:
Raised by a single mom and self-made in the Texas tradition, Tom Leppert is a man I’ve come to know and respect.
I certainly don’t fault the man for being raised without a father in the home, but in this case he seems to be bragging about it. Skip to 36 seconds to hear it in the ad:
While this isn’t the biggest deal in the world, it strikes me as very strange that this is what he asked local sports star Troy Aikman to tell Texas voters, especially since this is still the Republican primary race. It doesn’t say if his parents divorced, his mother got pregnant out of wedlock, or if his mother was a widow [Edit: See note at bottom of post. His mother was in fact a widow]. I suspect if the latter is the case and he used the specific term widow he would have lost points with the sadly quite large unwed mother voting block.
Perhaps that is the point. The ad above isn’t the only time his mother’s singleness is offered as a point of pride. With just a bit of searching I found a similar reference in the biography posted by Pastors for Tom Leppert (emphasis mine):
Raised by a single mother, Tom worked his way through college, earning a degree from Claremont McKenna College and an MBA from Harvard Business School. He later served under Ronald Reagan as a White House fellow in both the Treasury Department and in the White House.
Tom’s faith plays a vital role in his life, and that faith has formed the framework for all of his decisions in both public and private life. Tom and his family are members of First Baptist Church and Park Cities Baptist Church.
At one point in time I’m fairly certain politicians in bible belt Texas were proud if they were raised by married parents. But that was some time ago, certainly pre Stanton/Driscoll/Courageous.
Now amongst religious conservatives the assumption is that men are causing women to have children out of wedlock by not being good enough to marry. Mark Driscoll has gone on record twice (here and here) making this case, and Glenn Stanton has made this case in two of his books. I’ve already written about Stanton making this case in his book on raising children. More recently I stumbled onto Stanton making the same case is in his book on marriage, The Ring Makes All The Difference:
Having interviewed many young adult women over the past decade, I have talked with more than a few who had babies out of wedlock. These are not just young teens or early twentysomething women who got pregnant by accident. Many are women in their later twenties, thirties, and even early forties who got pregnant intentionally because they found their biological clocks ticking faster than their wedding bells were ringing.
As one successful professional woman living in Seattle, Washington-working as a professor of literature at a noted university–explained to me, she always wanted to get married and have children in the traditional way, but a husband never materialized.
A successful professional woman in Seattle who couldn’t find a husband? That sounds familiar. Isn’t that where Pastor Driscoll’s church is located? Could it be they both are talking about the same woman? I have no way of knowing, but seriously what are the odds? Did Pastor Driscoll forget to mention that the aging career gal in his church was a baby mama when he scolded men for not manning up and marrying her?
Back to Stanton’s book. He shares some stats on the profound increase in unwed births, and then closes the section with:
This dramatic growth of unmarried childbearing among adult women is largely due to women choosing to have babies with men who are good enough as live-in partners–good enough, they sense, to be baby-daddies, but not good enough to be marriage material. You probably have friends who are there–or have been there.
Now skip to 1:13 below to hear the same Glenn Stanton, Director for Family Formation Studies at Focus on the Family, call single mothers heroic:
Edit: Per the statesman.com Leppert’s father passed away when he was young.
His father died when Leppert was young, and his mother raised him on a secretary’s salary.
That is a strange turn of events Dalrock. I wonder how hard it would be to find out what the reason for the lack of a Father in Leppert’s up bringing was. Any track record on how he votes? That might offer some insight.
As for the women in Seatlle, they are probably different if I had to guess. What are the chances a Professor of Literature (especially a female one) isn’t an empty headed hardcore feminist and radical leftist? However bad Driscoll is on much of this sort of stuff i’d wager that by the lights of a university humanities department female he is an example of crazy ultra right wing religious nut bag who is secretly plotting to bomb abortion clinics. Maybe i’m wrong but i’d wager a couple of dollars on it.
It is depressing that Driscoll and groups like focus on the family have fallen so far and squandered what God gave them for a mess of feminist pottage.
Jason
And women wonder why some men get vasectomies nowadays. Seriously, let’s just burn down all the churches and start from scratch.
The worst part about all this bull shit is this is not going to result in more masculine men, it will result in more feminine men/ manginas/ nice guys who worship and pedestalize women.
The makeup of today’s youngest voter cohort was determined by actions two decades ago.
NY Times, 1994:
“According to the (census) bureau, 6.3 million children, or 27 percent of children under the age of 18, lived in 1993 with a single parent who had never married, up from 3.7 million in 1983.)
The out-of-wedlock birth rate was around 33 percent in 1994.
A kid born in 1994 will be a first-time voter this year.
Hi Bwana,
I can understand your frustration with todays western feminized churches. The longer I live and the more 20th Century history I learn the more I convinced that God’s purpose for the west through the 20th and into the 21st Century is to serve as an object lesson to the folly of turning our backs on Him and where this inevitably leads. Unfortunately it seems we are still in the middle of the lesson.
Jason
In cases like this, it’s being used politically both to (1) paint the guy as having “overcome adversity” (everyone loves that one, look at how Bill Clinton played that card) and (2) more subtly appeal to women, particularly the largeish number of women who have had kids outside marriage by effectively saying “see, he understands you and can relate to you”. Women are the key politically, really, because the men’s vote outside of racial identity voters goes pretty reliably to whomever the GOP is running. The key battle is over the women, and in that group the key part of it that is in play are the mothers (single women are very reliably democrat). So expect all manner of appeals to be made to mothers, including single mothers, given how many of them there are, and how important they are to “swing” an election one way or another.
I went trolling on the Youtube comments.
His mother was a widow. It is extremely unfortunate that widowhood is now conflated with unwed motherhood under any circumstance.
I think being raised by a single mother and having come out good from it is something to brag about. Not the single mother part in itself, but the fact that he overcame the significant disadvantage in life of not living with his father in a nuclear family and still became successful is something that I would not begrudge someone having a little pride in.
@A Lady,
Funny, if any sort of single mother should qualify as “Stanton’s Heroes” is it single mothers who are there are a result of being widowed. Assuming they didn’t get the role by killing their spouse anyway. It is depressing that widows are lumped in with all the fools that deliberately choose single motherhood. Especially as the damage a kid gets from losing their father to death appears to be completely different (and often much much less) than the damage inflicted from a divorce.
Jason
I changed my trolling.
This is only because the Driscolls, Stantons, Dobsons, and others of the world make this connection that we are making it. Deliberate singlehood. Case in point is how Driscoll will bring up single mothers in conjunction with 1 Timothy 5:9-15, without making a distinction of the true widows versus the single mothers who are single because they were just not haaaaaaapy.
Husbands materialize now and here I was thinking star trek was fiction. I love the expression, ‘it just never happened’ , like it’s the universe’s job to manifest situations for people, I wanted an Aston Martin db9 but it just didn’t materialize…..
It’s a sick twisted logic when a man is good enough for making babies but not good enough for marriage.
Johnycomelately: “”It’s a sick twisted logic when a man is good enough for making babies but not good enough for marriage.””
In a similar vein their are other men who are good enough to be providers but not good enough for baby making.
Scientists, engineers, computer programmers, and other nerds.
They get to be celibate and soaked for taxes by the welfare state.
Its the best of both worlds for them, they get the DNA from the knuckledragger thugs with 2-digit IQs, and the support from the 80% of men they rejected.
Jason said,
“What are the chances a Professor of Literature (especially a female one) isn’t an empty headed hardcore feminist and radical leftist?”
Apparently, at Seattle University, a self-proclaimed Jesuit university, slim to none. At best. Read the Biographies of the female faculty here; http://www.seattleu.edu/artsci/english/directory.aspx
In this one example, not counting the female ‘Lecturers’, if you examine the female professors who hold the position of ‘assistant professor’ or above, all except one were explicit about their interests in ‘Womyn’s issues’ of one sort or another. The one exception(maybe) was interested in Film Studies, and Russian Lit. and from what I saw in grad school, that’s about the right ratio. Usually, out of all of the female professors I encountered, usually one or two were normal everyday gals, the rest were serious Lefty ideologues with all of the nuttiness you’d expect.
@A Lady
Yes. This is a deeply troubling trend.
Concerning the heroic moms I wonder how many grandparents are busting their proverbial backs to make this illusion possible.
Today at work I talked to a 67 year old collegue and enquired why he was still working in such a physically demanding job (50 hour weeks). Well apparently his daughter married a junky (now divorced) and is now utterly broke and lives with him while his wife (who has one eye due to a brain tumor) takes care of the children while the daughter saves for a deposit on a unit.
At the current rate he needs to work to 72 so the daughter can be financially viable.
Troy is classic alpha. Try reading his wiki entry and keep a straight face. He married late to a publicist (such a girly job) and is now separated (of course). I suspect he’s not lonely, though.
That aside, the media scrum over Troy Aikman’s ‘fatherlessness’ has me bothered. Where is the evidence? Open source searches finds (relatively) little about Troy’s parents, Kenneth M and Charlyn. One source here:
http://www.geni.com/people/Kenneth-Aikman/6000000014264257017
… suggests Kenneth was divorced from Charlyn 12 years ago, when Troy would have been 34, and subsequently remarried another woman. What isn’t that easy to confirm is whether he is dead, and if so, when. Anyone able to clarify the facts?
Jason — The longer I live and the more 20th Century history I learn the more I convinced that God’s purpose for the west through the 20th and into the 21st Century is to serve as an object lesson to the folly of turning our backs on Him and where this inevitably leads.
no question about it — and there is plenty of authentic comfort in seeing that purpose
specifically, the folly and wickedness of feminism (Eden, the Sequel) and of idolatry, politics and sec-humanism in America/the West is being allowed fully to play out (Obama etc) and dominate the nations, largely unhindered — so that its utter failure (already obvious to some) will be a witness against itself, undeniable to future generations as a sick and hubric disaster
sometimes no warning suffices and the child must get its way to permanently understand what you properly call folly
Ooops. Ignore what I just wrote. Got the protagonists mixed up. Thought it was Troy Aikman claiming the high moral ground. My bad.
Too much work going on . . . .
Now I’m just actively avoiding work.
I didn’t know that American conservatives were so broad-minded:
“Leppert is a homosexual who supported the gay community in Dallas while serving as mayor. He attended two gay pride parades to show his support. With his recent entry into the campaign for Texas senator, he has distanced himself from the gay community in order to win support of conservative republican voters.”
and must show the requisite memberships . . . . . .
“Tom and his family are members of First Baptist Church and Park Cities Baptist Church.”
“Tom and his wife Laura live in Dallas.” …. presumably at separate addresses . . .
“They have been married for 25 years.” … but just sleep with other people? Hmmm.
I must admit, being in another time zone is like playing on the swings after the bell has rung.
But … must … focus …. on … work ….
The use of the term Single Mother implies that she has been abandoned by a man. That his mother was a widow just does not have the same effect – unless it can be linked to war. That politicians need to appeal to women in this way reveals to me that Democracy is ultimately unsustainable or at least that women are simply not fit to be granted suffrage. Our politicians are every bit as bad.
Johnnycomeslately gets it absolutely right at 11.oo. For the Lit Prof to be happy to be impregnated but not to marry her child’s father is simply selfishishness – and she is considerably more duplicitous than my former next door neighbour (two children by different fathers) who told me that she had always wanted children but not a husband – though she was more than happy to use my free baby-sitting services. I had had to tell her that if she left her children (aged 4 and 2) alone again to go dancing I would feel compelled to draw the matter to the attention of the state – heroic single mother indeed. Hence my services.
Imagine it had been I, with two children saying to an unmarried single female neighbour – perhaps someone who wanted a husband and family – that I had always wanted children but never wanted a wife/had not found the right woman (having used a surrogate for my offspring). Everyone would feel I was callous and cold and selfish. These women need to be called out on this.
My maternal aunt was widowed on her daughter’s first birthday (August 2nd 1944). She never remarried but lived with her parents. I would feel extremely angry should anyone describe her as an heroic single mum. She was a (war) widow – not a slut – who never forgave the Germans.
This is O/T, but might be of interest. I was reading the April 2012 issue of Wired, and I came across this, on p. 118:
” Of course, like any site that thrives on pseudonymity, Reddit attracts its share of the sick and the deluded. There’s a subreddit, MensRights, ‘for people who believe that men are currently being disadvantaged by society’…”
Because the women listening process information in tiny little emotional tweeks, and sort it good or bad quickly, the mere mention of the word “single mom” will earn many female votes. I suspect you could try one one of those old fashioned subliminal experiments, show some images and have the word “single mom” either shown for milliseconds, or have it just less then audible, played repeatedly, and see how the women, and some men react to the ad. Face it, single mom is a hero, a sympathy grab, an empathy generator, a shameless play on shallow emotionalism.
I want to add my agreement that the notion that “single mom” is a better way to say widow is sickening
Women are enthusiastic supports of democracy. As a wealth redistribution system, it works to replace the quaint notion of dependency on male authority figures like husbands or fathers, and old customs of being accountable to family members.
Now, women can have options. Good, steady jobs in HR, media or academia, get a man and have those kiddies when they’re good and ready. Divorce him, get cash and prizes. Whee!
However, thanks to central banking and fiat currencies, the derivatives overhang is multiple times world GDP, most western banks are technically involvent and credit creation has yet to show in velocity of money figures because the lenders are unwilling to permit increased borrowing. Think, credit crunch on steriods. Many times over.
Eventually, the whole system stops and we have no money to redistribute anymore. But in the meantime, men as the most productive wealth producing members of society should expect to endure increased targeting by governments and tax authorities everywhere.
Stanton says: “This dramatic growth of unmarried childbearing among adult women is largely due to women choosing to have babies with men who are good enough as live-in partners–good enough, they sense, to be baby-daddies, but not good enough to be marriage material.”
Okrahead says: When a woman is having babies with a live-in partner she ain’t marriage material herself. Duh. Maybe Stanton should quit praising sluts if he wants to change the culture. What’s a young Christian man supposed to do? Move in with the slut AND the shack-up baby daddy?
I think the salient point about Leppert using his ‘fatherless’ status as a point of pride gets lost in the details here. I’ve read Leppert’s story in many instances and in many different forms so many times now it’s become a cliché.
Distill it down and the “self-made men” so proud of their achievements, actually owe their pride and success to an “heroic single mother” who incredibly fulfilled the masculine teaching role of an absent father. Short form message: “I’m the living proof that women make just as good, if not better, fathers than today’s failing men.” What better endorsement could the feminine imperative have than a male ambassador who is the result of women better fulfilling the masculine training role to prove men and traditional masculinity is obsolete?
The easy association is that this femocracy approved, female-raised ‘man’ will act more in the interests of feminine primacy, thus endearing him to women voters. The more difficult association is that Leppert himself probably sincerely believes in the righteousness of the feminine imperative, yet will never understand how he’s the perfectly conditioned pawn for exactly the influence that’s eroded traditional, positive masculinity.
I have no idea why more men aren’t lining up for this.
Nope, no idea at all.
While I think your comments on Stanton are spot on I think a boy raised by a single mother in the traditional sense (that is “widow” as is this case) has always been celebrated because they have to leave boyhood faster. That is, they are strong leaders who have an experience edge on others their age.
In fact the talk about confusing single mothers and widows is a bit strange in my mind (see: “A Lady”‘s unwed mother comment). Single mother, without any shaming language, is _supposed_ to mean a widow or an abandoned woman. When it means that and not “lose woman” then it is deserving of a certain amount of pity and possibly financial help while the woman tries to attract a second mate (and ongoing community support for the man who has acted as a _true_ white knight).
So in the case of the ad I don’t see anything directly wrong outside of the confusion of single mother with ho that is an effect of general societal trends.
Now the politician in question may over-correct for his father’s loss because he saw the struggle his mother faced. But as she faced that struggle through no fault of her own his over-enthusiasm (which I don’t know about since I know nothing about him) could be seen as justified.
For me, the disappointing thing is that he did not say “I was raised by a widowed mother.” A Lady is quite correct in noting that “It is extremely unfortunate that widowhood is now conflated with unwed motherhood under any circumstance.” There is a word of difference between widowhood and single motherhood by choice. I can understand someone taking pride in his mother’s taking on the daunting task of raising a family single-handedly after losing her husband through death. Such women are worthy of admiration. The woman who knocks herself up by visiting a sperm bank because she selfishly desires a child as a “pet” or something is worthy only of our scorn. Putting both in the same category makes no sense.
GKC, this is the new mythology of the feminine imperative. While the widow (victim of circumstance presumably) is an honorable meme, the feminine matrix conflates that with “heroic single-mother” and rides it to it’s own purpose. The feminine matrix will eagerly claim the male success stories of single motherhood as proof of its point, but disown wholesale the failures and criminals that far outnumber the success, and use their stories as further proof of men’s obsolescence in not adhering to feminine primacy.
@GKC
More accurately what is is supposed to do is lump in women who were true victims of tragedy with those who made poor and/or gravely immoral choices which caused great harm to their children, including those who kicked the married father out for no reason and those who as Mr. Stanton and Pastor Driscoll delightfully explain decided to make babies out of wedlock because they didn’t care for their options for marriage. By removing the linguistic distinction between widows and unwed mothers, the ability to clearly acknowledge in thought and therefore judge the very real distinction is being removed as well. It is an overt effort to remove the possibility of discernment, not unlike the effort to stamp out the word slut. This is without a question in my mind not an unintended side effect. Certainly by volume the term is used overwhelmingly to refer to never married mothers and divorcées (frivolous and otherwise) who ejected the father from the home. In this sense, I don’t see how he is using the term other than as it is intended, and that is my concern. Have you honestly not witnessed all of this where you live?
The problem for the users of the term is the reality of what the word is used for eventually overpowers the nice-soundingness of the word. Instead of the say 5% of widows providing moral cover for the 95% who are divorcées and never marrieds, the 95% the term is used for is what the term ultimately comes to mean.
@An Observer
While a google search finds the quote you referenced in the wiki page for him, it doesn’t appear to be there any more. Even a word search on “gay” comes back negative. I’m guessing this was challenged. It sounds like he has at the very least muddied the waters. From the Dallas Voice:
Edit: I should add that from what I have seen he is trailing badly in the Republican primary. I wasn’t aware of the controversy stemming from his actions as Dallas mayor, but I think his past history of donning a medallion on a rainbow ribbon at a local gay pride parade has very likely hurt him with conservatives.
We’re being trolled. Perhaps this senate candidate believes his own horseshit; maybe not. But the reason he’s mentioning this single-mother-as-hero meme is that it buys votes. It’s as simple as that! It’s a positioning statement targeted to the female electorate. As Dalrock points out, his choice of the words “single mother” rather than the more accurate description of “widowed mother” ought to make this clear.
As for whether Leppert truly believes in the single-mother-as-hero meme, one can’t say. I don’t think the ad or other details shared here reveal Leppert’s true stance. Rather, Leppert’s use of the ad and the I-was-raised-by-a-single-mother statement actually reveals more about us as a constituency than it does about Leppert per se. It’s a sad commentary.
He can always go run for mayor of Houston, they like the current gay mayor, why not a male gay mayor
Imagine the huge difference in meaning had he simply said “raised with no father”
The votes gained, those lost, the perceptions differing……oh the words we choose
I agree with GKChesterton and Free Northerner. Equating widows and sluts aside, it seems like he’s taking pride in the fact that his childhood was worse. It’d be like him bragging that he was an orphan. He’s bragging about the fact that his success in life comes purely from his own character and ability to overcome adversity. He is bragging about the fact that he had less advantage that your average kid raised in a nuclear family. So being raised by a single mother is a good thing about him because it’s a bad thing in general.
At least that’s my take. And I agree that it’d be better if he said that he was raised by a widow. I just don’t think that he’s putting single mothers on a pedestal simply by being proud of his childhood.
Booch
I have the same claim, not widow, but single mom, and many here likely do. I can claim poverty, welfare, foodstamps the whole single mom experience was there to savor, and I managed the whole bootsrap thingy and I relate completely to one of the reasonable dynamics that can make one mention it.
I dont know that he openly strategized that the terminology would speak to any demographic beyond what you mention, maybe it makes men respect the man who achieves despite the issue.
Having said that, he left it hand out there and a staff of strategy wonks left it hang, likely considered should they say widow or single mom, fatherless or single mom, and I will not be convinced that the quasi subliminal impact of the single mom term was ignored. I think you could impact most shallow thinking Americans with the term single mom on things even unrelated.
“Eat at Joes, Single Moms do”
Yes the mom is heralded as a hero too which helps the candidate. Bill Clinton’s mom was obviously problematic, trailer trash type (have license to say it, grew up in a 12×60 behind a tavern myself) Clinton’s mom appealed to red neck feminists, a very odd and unique brand of so called Strong Woman. This demographic is a tricky one, as a block those counties can trend republican despite the entitlement heavy populations, but the red neck feminists are usually a multiple of the weight of the husband, and will simply beat the snot out of him to git’m to vote right…
@Rollo
In most cases, men raised by women *will* fall into that trap. I was raised by my grandmother and other female relatives, although fortunately they were of the older generation (Silents) and recognized that I NEEDED male influences, and worked as hard as they could to make sure I had male uncles, coaches, and clergy helping to guide me.
Even with those advantages, I still am keenly aware of how masculine-handicapped I was because of my upbringing, and how much hard work it has been to reclaim my masculinity. In all honesty, my personal experience makes it less likely, not more, that I would vote for a female-raised man. Most men can’t, or won’t, do the work necessary to undo the damage (and too many don’t even recognize that there *is* damage).
On further reflection: from a log cabin to the white house is touted (is it not) as well within the bounds of possibility; and isn’t Leppert basically saying the same thing. Without in any way wishing to insult your system, I would think that any aspiring politician who tried that tack here, would be regarded as some sort of Fraud – former P.M. John Major could have, but largely overlooked his humble past so as to appear the same as his political colleagues who had come through Eton and Oxford. The trick here is to ooze inherited class but nevertheless to have the common touch (e.g. Boris Johnson).
Opus, well, we overlap on Johnson, he’d fly here very high and very well, but he’d be described differently by Americans, sort of Oxford-Folksy, or Eton Red Neck, or some such, and Americans can imagine that, we cannot imagine a Harvard Folksy though…I suspect the same in the reverse may be true for your group, trying to make elitism quaint may fail.
Speaking of single parents, it looks like Mr. Hessler of Florida is definitely going to be one.
His wife, Stacey Hessler, who ran away last year to join “Occupy Wall Street” might be going to jail.
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/manhattan/ows_mom_snubs_plea_RhAFJHhVaCOrkB3ekR22dO
Here’s a snippet:
Occupy Wall Street protester and runaway mom Stacey Hessler, 39, arrested in November for resisting arrest and disorderly conduct, yesterday refused an offer to have her charges dismissed and will instead face a trial.
Hessler had originally planned to accept the judge’s offer of an adjournment contemplating dismissal, which erases the charge if the defendant stays out of trouble for six months, but later changed her mind, her attorney said.
The Long Island native yesterday wore sandals, carried a bag that said “99 Percent” and had the letters “OWS” sewn onto her blue skirt. Outside, she held up a cardboard sign that said, “A woman’s place is in the revolution.”
Exactly. It’s a vote-getting scheme. Candidates do all kinds of statistical/demographic research to determine how to appeal to voters. They know everything Dalrock knows about the current marriage/sexual marketplace. They know full well that most of Stanton’s Heroes are single by choice. They know all about frivolous divorce. These are not mysteries to them.
They just don’t give a damn.
It’s about getting votes, not speaking the truth. They know that single motherhood is becoming the norm, not the exception, and that it is overwhelmingly the norm by the choice of the woman. As such, they want to get votes by appearing to affirm women in their choices. They’re turning hamster food into votes.
@empathologicalism
Two countries separated by a common language – and past.
After putting up my message I was thinking of John Prescott, former Ship’s steward who has made some T.V. programmes about class and is desparate to be seen as middle-class, which even though he was Deputy P.M. he just isn’t. He at least is smart enough to see he isn’t; but remains puzzled by this. Had he pushed his humble origins as a reason to support him, he would have appeared as absurd to his opponents as to his supporters (who would think that he now saw himself as better than them). His nickname (‘two jags’) is a put-down. Clearly this would not be the case in the States where to be the owner of Two Jaguar motor-cars and to have advanced from being a Merchant Seaman via Trade union official to the second highest political post in the land would be seen as a cause of some pride. We only mock it. In England you cannot hide what you are and neither can you change what you are through hard work or good fortune. Thatcher remains a shop-keepers daughter. Class has nothing to do with wealth or position. Loss of wealth does not affect it either. This is not the case in the States, however, is it?