Ultimate Trust

     Yes, America has a trust problem. That’s hardly news. But the extent of the thing needs to be probed more deeply than it has been by typical social commentators.

     This morning on X / Twitter, the estimable Black Dumpling asks a question whose quiet horror can never be exceeded:

The Lindsay Clancy saga has opened up a new question within me... one I've never really wanted to ask myself but now I am forced to.

Can women be trusted with children?

I know you think I'm just taking the piss here, but I'm not asking for the shock value. I'm doing the math… pic.twitter.com/El4ArxSa3R

— BLACK DUMPLING™ (@BlackDumpling) August 13, 2026

     You know why she’s asked that. You’ve read about the motherly massacres of minor kids. There’ve been a fair number of them, these past few years. The Lindsay Clancy case is only the most recent.

     Is it possible that in today’s hyper-stressful milieu, we can’t trust women with the care and protection of their own children? The pressures on American women today do exceed those of previous eras. Has the dominant pattern of this era, which combines motherhood with wage labor, brought us too close to the edge of what women can bear? Granted that the Lindsay Clancys and the Susan Smiths are nowhere near being representative of American mothers, are such cases telling us something we need to know?

     There’s a rush to judgment in such cases. It splits along a definite if invisible line: exculpative sympathy for the woman on one side; demonization on the other. But little thought goes to the forces that loom behind the decision to bear children in our time.

     Say what you please about women’s liberation, the have-it-all messaging, and whatnot: women are still expected to become mothers. It’s always been that way. Yet we know that some women are unsuited to motherhood, just as some men are unsuited to fatherhood. Women already occupied with wage labor, when pressed to bear and nurture children, face a large burden that not every woman can bear. And that is the prevalent pattern in America today.

     If you’re concerned with plummeting First World fertility rates, the first place to look for the causes is that burden.

     I could go on at length about this. It touches many other aspects of contemporary American life. Hans G. Schantz delineated a few of them:

     “Now couples need to have two careers to support a typical modern lifestyle. We can’t tax the labor in a home-cooked meal. We can tax the labor in takeout food, or the higher cost of a microwave dinner. The economic potential of both halves of the adult population now largely flows into the government where it can serve noble ends instead of petty private interests....

     “The Earth can’t accommodate many more people at a reasonable standard of living. We’re running out of resources. We have to manage and control our population. That’s the real motive behind the women’s movement. Once a women’s studies program convinces a gal she’s a victim of patriarchal oppression, how likely is it she’s going to overcome her indoctrination to be able to bond long enough with a guy to have a big family? If she does get careless with a guy, she’ll probably just have an abortion....

     “All those Career-Oriented Gals are too busy seeking social approval and status at the office to be out starting families and raising kids. They’re encouraged to have fun, be free spirits., and experiment with any man who catches their fancy....And by the time all those COGs are in their thirties and ready to try to settle down and have kids, they’re past their prime. Their fertility peaks in their twenties. It’s all downhill from there....

     “In another generation, we’ll have implemented our own version of China’s One-Child-Per-Couple policy without the nasty forced abortions and other hard repressive policies which people hate. What’s more, there’ll be fewer couples because so many young people will just be hedonistically screwing each other instead of settling down and making families. Makes me wish I were young again, like you, to take full advantage of it. The net effect is we’ll enter the great contraction and begin shrinking our population to more controllable levels....

     Yes: the above is couched in conspiratorial / social engineering terms. That was Hans’s intent in writing his series. And I’m not going to pooh-pooh it. The evidence is consistent with that thesis. But whether or not there is / was conscious intent behind the socioeconomic changes that brought us here, the gravity of the situation cannot be denied.

     It would be salutary for a real pro-woman-as-woman movement to arise. One which:

• Promotes the critical importance of motherhood;
• Recognizes that motherhood is a function that women alone can fulfill;
• Discourages women from accepting duties that conflict with motherhood;
• Discourages husbands from expecting their wives to accept any such duties;
• Reasserts the primacy of the family as the foundation of a stable and healthy society.

     For motherhood is what women are designed for. If there are exceptions, they must be treated as such. They must not be promoted as ideals for women to strive toward.

     We didn’t ask questions like Black Dumpling’s before women entered the workplace. It’s terrifying that it deserves sober consideration today.