Academia’s Clown Quarter, I mean:

The meaning of the term “marriage fundamentalism,” a term used repeatedly, isn’t made entirely clear, and its allegedly racist and life-crushing particulars are, inevitably, “hidden,” “invisible,” and conveniently vague – despite the loudly announced use of “an intersectional lens.” But it seems to mean something like the tendency of many adults to see marriage as of mutual benefit and an optimal way to raise children.

However, our stipulator of pronouns and lecturer in Critical Praxis in Education prefers a more dismissive formulation:

Well, statistically, and by almost any measure, it is superior. Hence, presumably, the espousal.

Stripped of contrivance, I’m assuming this is a roundabout admission that, on average, people who find marriage an alien concept and much too demanding, and who opt instead for transient partners, fatherless children, and unstable relationship trash fires, tend to do less well in life, along with their offspring. And quite possibly, in turn, their offspring too.

Though I’m not sure why the response should be to blame those who get their shit together, marry, and raise children more successfully. As if their competence in this matter, or good fortune or whatever, were somehow lamentable, and racist, and a basis for indignation. And from the child’s point of view, other, more credible candidates for resentment may come to mind.

A conclusion that is simply untrue. With the benefits of stable two-parent families – an exclusively “white” phenomenon, according to Professor Letiecq – actually extending to all racial groups:

The author of the study quoted above, Brad Wilcox, can be seen being interviewed here. An interview in which he points out,

Buy hey, let’s not let the numbers get in the way of our radical posturing. Instead, let’s offer the young and credulous really perverse advice, and bitch about marriage as merely an act of complicity in “white supremacy.”

And yes, we’ve been down this path before.

Update, via the comments – which you’re reading, of course:

Regarding this,

EmC replies, tersely,

Well, if little Don’t-Know-Who-My-Dad-Is is starting fires at school and looks destined for a life of delinquency and crime, this is not obviously the fault of the happily married Mr and Mrs Jefferson and their two non-fire-starting children. And no amount of chest-puffing about “heteropatriarchy,” “unequal power relations” and “white supremacy” seems likely to alter that fact.

A child in an unstable home and consequently on an unhappy trajectory may have things to grumble about, in between the brawling and disruption, and starting fires in the toilets. But those grumbles have little to do with other people’s parents making better choices. The grumbling, it seems to me, should probably be directed closer to home.

FredTheFourth adds,

That’s this argument here, for those who may have missed it. I recommend reading the linked post in full – there’s much to chew on, and much of it mirrors the assumptions aired by Professor Letiecq.