There’s good research on this stuff. Believing you have no control is incredibly destructive, and that may be especially true when you face unique barriers.

Huh.

I'd like to address his point about Culture though. Vance make the point that culture is inherited, and that he had to be trained out of the culture of domestic violence. What that requires though, is a judgment of a given 'culture' and an acceptance of that judgement as valid by the people who need the change. With DV, it seems fairly straightforward, but there are plenty of behaviors/patterns of behavior that are less obviously pathological, or less obviously pathological to the people exhibiting them.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that there needs to be leadership. The poor whites that Vance describes need a leader, someone they can look to and say 'this person was one of us, and they have improved their life without sacrificing their values.' I can't help but draw parallels to people like Maajid Nawaz and Ayaan Hirsi Ali, people who want to preserve Islam in its various flavors by purging out the antisocial, dangerous radical elements through reformation. Their battle is religious rather than 'cultural' but it seems to me that the comparison is apt.

I also think that the point he makes about social mobility is telling. Single-parent households are not as able to raise healthy, upwardly mobile pro-social adults as more nuclear-style households are, and we have been working hard to craft a narrative that says otherwise. I made a point a long time ago about unwanted children, and I think it stands as morally defensible. When I find the link I'll add it to this post.