This is a good description of what is happening today. It can never work.
“Synthesizing a moral code out of whole cloth” is not a bad thing to do. It is, more or less, what we are doing here at this website. Admittedly, I am basically taking old forms verbatim. But, that is because, on inspecting them, I can find little that needs to be changed, and also, no convincing alternatives. We could debate whether these old forms are viable or sustainable in an age of contraception and social media. But, still there are no convincing alternatives.
This is best done by older people — basically, parents — over Age 40. They have the experience, the memories of past “moral codes,” the insight, and also the time to do this. I myself have spent — let’s say — the past eight or ten years, doing this. Young people don’t have the time. It might take them eight or ten years. But, then they are 28 or 30, and discover that they did everything wrong. They also discover that it is very hard to come back from doing everything wrong for ten years.
Here’s pornstar and single mom Lana Rhoades, apparently having some second thoughts.
Meanwhile, for those girls who do actually wait, things aren’t going so well for them either.
Helen Roy, our example TradBabe subcategory BigBrain, and also new mother, said recently that she was able to avoid all this because she “got lucky” and was “young and retarded.”
So, it will basically come down to parents. This pattern of parents abandoning their children to “figure it out for themselves” won’t work, and can never work. Parents will not only have to express certain principles, but also do most of the work, as parents did in the past. Parents will have to establish contexts where their sons and daughters can make connections with the sorts of young men and women that they would like to have as sons-and-daughters-in-law.
When girls reached age 16, they were “debuted into society.” Basically, they were officially available for marriage. This was celebrated in a “debutante ball.”
Do you think that sixteen year old girls organized and paid for this? They did not. It was all done by parents. But, there was more to it than just a party. Girls and boys both had to be trained how to dance, and wear nice clothes. They often attended dance classes for years, boys and girls both. And who did that, and paid for all that? Parents did.
Cornerstone 