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and i was media, well, suffering the best and most reliable network on the go media call, decades of dedication decades of deliverae and decades ahead. >> media, along these television companies for "c-span2", as a public service. >> my name is sally if senior fellow here in aei in a feeling that many of you are already saying that this is rob henderson the trajectory of his life but only go through the broad outlines and he my colleagues naomi riley who was child welfare expert here in aei will fill in the wisdom for that outline.h although extracted this from a very challenging of bringing in hish mother struggled with addiction and she was deported back to south korea when he was three years old printed and he never saw her again. he said next four years and ten

different foster homes in los angeles and 87 years old even adopted it settled into her lower class home in california and stable and he had a dad first time in the stability unfortunately was shattered to usually with her parents divorced. and after that, wasas a series f poor performance in school, evangelization with friends who were unfortunately often the same positioning was an coming from unstable families predict on the weed fights and alcohol. but rob is a reader and impose curious entering his senior year in high school, his reading to admin in the air force himself, encourage rob to enlist. the teacher confidential and according to rob, he had, the discovered or maybe did not even

want to pretty so is in the air force, for eight years and enrolled at age 17, the g.i. bill he went into yale to study psychiatry and psychology. they studied psychology. and he made me many social observations there and inspired his against her tagline which is luxury belief. you talk more about that with naomi but basically i particularly recommended captors ten and 11 which are his observations of life in an ivy league university printed everybody if they're not enough books, just come upte and let me know afterwards make it work some more anyway he graduated yelp in 2018. and in 28 years old, and then he went on to cambridge and studied psychology worry just got his phd in la's 33 years old and he

is looking back he writes in his book, until the 17 years old, nearly everything in my life is propelling a me to like this one of america's law school or busboys in the young many failed to mature to do 40s go live of the economic margins become absentee fathers for phil to form stable families of their own. and how does he divert from that path and when the indispensable insights that he gleaned from the combination of hardship and temperament. let's what we are here to hear more about and again thank you so much for coming. >> welcome everyone itself on on or justew time want to start to back media put you on the couch and as you about your earliest memory so particularly y thinking about yr time in foster care. what you think was going wrong

in those families some of the early families that you are in and how to this were looking back, would you make of that dysfunction. >> well, so my birth mother and i know she was just in a position to care for me due to her addiction. never met my father. in writing the book they receive is very thick document full of information social workers and forensic psychologist people involved in my case when i was in the system in los angeles and you know in these reports, the indicate that some officers and others is my mother worse his father because you know i'm not in a position to care for him and she did not even know who he was rated she claimed that his name is robert which is why my

first name. and some of the woman well last year at 223 and me in a different ancestry test on my whole life not knowing this myself hispanic to my father side is basically all i know about the part of my family. and then later the foster system, you know there is a lot was overburdened overstep and la recently read that la might be the worst of it foster system in the country. simply because there is surplus of children who need homes very few families who are able or willing to take it that men and so, this was in the '90s and so you know anything please get worse. ... ed. a lot of this is due to the opioid crisis and drugs and the effects of that. so in the nineties at least, you know, i still remember some of

these homes having 8 to 10 kids living in them. some of these homes i remember there would be two bunk beds in a bedroom. and so there'd be four kids each room rooms or two kids on the top and two kids in the bottom. and you know, when you have that many kids around and the constant sort of turnover where kids would constantly, constantly be and going, you know, foster parents just they don't supply adequate care even in the best of circumstances when you have ten kids, you can't necessarily, you know supply as much care as each kid needs. but then in that sort of continue instability and and turnover rate, it's it's basically impossible. and so yeah, i just remember a lot of squalor, a lot of i just remember a lot of the squalor, a lot of uncertainty, just like grime and dirt. it was really, really unpleasant. the agreement seems to be as long as the kids are not being actively abused, missed harmed or mistreated, the social

workers the people involved will look the other way because is better for a kid be living in those circumstances and sleeping on the street. which is probably true the system is just severely broken. i document sums expenses in the book. what's so a lot of people go through this kind of foster care experience, tend to think things might have been better had they stayed with her biological family. i was your mother been deported neverto made a point of trying o seek out relatives in any way. why was that? the other kids who were constantly going back and forth between their biological families and the foster families. you have that that desire to go seek out your biological family?

i know in the book once i became old enough about to be a question that i could seriously contemplate. very quickly arrived at the conclusion both parents clearly did not want any other life. what would i want to seek them out and form a connection i write about my adoptive family and the foster system. a lot of difficulties in imperfection and mistakes and catastrophes. but they chose me. i'd still feel connected them. and as a result of that i feel like that is my familyal. all the blunders in every thing a write about in the book i feel connected to them. even if i were to meet my birth parents i don't think i would feel connected in that same way. just to go back to the point

about the dysfunction of the foster system, there is never any possibility of me being reunited with my family of origin from my mother left the country. knowing who my father was for this extended daily member of thee u.s. at least to the knowledge of the social workers involved in my case. and yet i still spent just shy of five years in the system living in l.a. with seven different foster homes. in los angeles. essentially the reason i ended up in the adoption system in the first place was to become at some point i was going to be a psychiatrist. this doctor lichter my report and recognize this kid is not going to be reunited with this y of origin. he f recommended as soon as possible someone should have recognized thisec earlier but someone recognize it was three years old and immediately put me in adoption system.

incentives in a holding pattern going to different homes all the time. until someone finally took the time and carefullyan read my report. i have basically got lost in this bureaucratic system and it's happened to a lot of kids. look after your adopted this is the first time you had this real father figure in your life. could you describe what was different about that? throughout the book you make a lot of the fact that when you got to gayle the kids there come from two-parent families. for a few years of your life you had stable two-parent family. talk a little bit about the family and particular about the relationship you had with your father? >> i was adopted just before my eighth birthday. i remember being very, just full of joy.

having a family. one isam still not final foster home my adoptive parents came to visit me, the henderson family the person who became a adopted mother mrs. henderson. she said you're comfortable with that you can just call me mom. that's how it recognized something was different about this family. i was going to be in a permanent placement. so for a little over a year i had a stable family. northern california by adoptive father was a truck driver. my adoptive mother was a social worker.' she'd had some other jobs too but that's a job she settled on when i was adopted. they paid the bills,, they made ends meet, we had a family, their family dinners as a kind of family i would see on tv or in the movies a moment that i

had an adoptive sister who was there daughter. then they divorced. about a year later after the adoption. my adoptive father was angry at my adoptive mother for leaving him. he retaliated by cutting off contact with me. this was really his -- it was hard for me. never knowing my birth father and that all of the foster homes, and then including my adopted father. i was nine years old by this point. so my mother got full custody of me. we settled in this gloomy duplex innd town for was working full-time during a best to make the ends meet.

her attention was taken up byd those task as a latchkey kids and got into trouble and mischief with my friends for a lot of other kids in the neighborhood. this iss interesting, the other scholar since i've learned thehe research on the c changing deterioration also adopted in the late '90s. got this into what's happening in working-class lower middle-class areas in areas in the country. i had other friends growing up in this town. we were raised by single mom by a dadfriend raised went raised by his grandmother because his family were on drugs for this is common picture with the families look like these the friends i went. they also parents who were destructive, busy, neglectful. with vandalism, drug abuse. i drank tequila when i was nine, smoking weed and cigarettes.

then on to harder drugs later. this not an uncommon path for a young boy under the circumstances. >> so, throughout this period you're in school there seems to be good years and bad years. there are years were your love of reading your desire to succeed to push you along for there are years were youp give p and vow there is no way you can win at this. could you describe the role schooling played in this. we were leading these two parallel lives. whatever was going on at home and whatever was going on at school. in the book you make the point a lot of people focus on education as the thing that is going to say particular struggling kids from lower classes.

who say you don't think that's necessarily going to happen. what role do you think education can play in helping kids like you? >> i am thankful for the direction of my life with the theacademic successes i have ha. but, i don't think it's the end all be all. my think about my friends growing up i was more than once to college after eight years in the military and figuring out how to redirect by life trajectory. i had friends that never went. i think back to how those years in the kind of students we were there academically inclined. i did had to friends and went to

prison. i did one friend shot to death. but they have been raised in different environments, different values different norms they would not have been incarcerate maybe they were g nt about to college for theld probably would not of been incarcerated. maybe not so much we can do to raise the ceiling as far as potential for things a lot we can do to rate the floor as far as how down these kids drop. my own explosive debris about noontime there was i was on the home my grades would improve. problem with that thought had a learning disability because my grades are so poorr. it's ridiculous to think of a boy being relocated in schools every few months is notot doing well. the next step is to attach a label new line conditions

academic performance increase a lot. and then divorce might academic drops. responsive.by the time to gradh school and two-point to gpa. as the bottom third of my class i was not in a position to apply for college at that point from this help everyone? one of the strongest predictors of academicmi achievement is coming from two-parent family. i'm saluting a focus on if we want kids to excel and do wellin school. on what we can do to improve it

probably improvements that can be made. they work great but they weren't bad the teachers were okay. the issue for me what's going on in the family and home at the friends seam for the friends and i too. i think there was an economist roughly 25000 kids in the country from lower to middle income homes who could qualify for admission into an iv or iv plus college. i read this i thought that's probablyld right always good toe able to go but they're being overlooked for bruce reasons or obstacles in their path. that's only 25000 kids was minds of kids in this country who again they would not qualify for admission to very expensive prestigious university. they can still find ways to

improve our warm loving childhood. even if we get every single one of those kids to get fancy degrees would not make up for those life experiences. who have had to choose upward mobility does not make up for. it's not worth the trade. having a more conventional upbringing is more valuable than success and achievement we focus on in society. the reason we focus on those is that is what passionate people who said educational policy tend to be college graduates were really good at school they don't thank you so much about the

fortunate family that they have. i've met rich people who have attempted to envision what it would be like to be full port you not have money. i've never met anyone who imagine what we like to grow up without your family. you don't think abouten it. when you don't have that college is not a priority for those kids. someday you're going to go to harvard but it would go be excited about that. wish my mom was not on drugs. i feel safer at home there is an adult somewhere out there who cared about me. thism really interested in point you're making about raising the floor instead of the ceiling. what if you could talk a little bit more about the leader and maybe this is a point you make a

lot about the elite bubble they assume college education is the best thing for everyone. but something was going to fix all of the kids problems. could you talk more about this idea of raising the floor? what would that look like? maybe it's just about family stability are there other things we could be doing to improve the floor for a lot of kids to twist the dial make sure families can stay together and provide take care of their kids. the messaging we receive in pop

culture and all these things. the could play a role in cultivating and promoting stable family structure. inan open marriage is a think those could be fun of past times for you if you are a well resourced, upper middle-class and cognitively atypicaln. pers. but for most people children at two-parent families way to go if you want tocc maximize that kid succeeding or not catastrophically failing. a lot of cultural messaging plays well here. if you are a person in upper

middle-class neighborhood in your parents are married and all of your neighbors are married your friends, their parents are married and that's the water you're swimming in. you turn on the tv or open a magazine or listen to music the pop culture showing images of novel relationship arrangements and infidelities of the models in front of you for what a healthy relationship looks like. even if you're good and other stuff from outside sources for if you're a kid in a poor and ar working class family who are raised by an unmarried parent, don't know your mother or father all your friends are in similar circumstances. everywhere you turn in your personal life you've never see what a functional healthy marriage looks like. open marriage of this, that, on the other. you're not getting good information anywhere to have a committed monogamous

relationship. it's no surprise for those committed to select the guard rails to spiral out of control. >> will talk about drugs. you always have thehe situation, the reason why it went into foster care in the first place. after you were in the military for a while you confronted these problems. your journey where you see our culture and drugs? what your concerns are in terms of the cultural attitudes. everywhere you turn in a major city teenager, it's natural.

it's not as bad as alcohol. people are creating these it's much stronger than it used to be for even 15 or 20 years ago. all of these different ways to take drug now and weed. again it can be fun for you if most of your life is stable and predictable and secure and so on. when you have access to drugs you don't have stability in place and don't have good role models around your your life can quickly spiral out of control. when i was a kid it was like what we were nine, pretty easy to get cigarettes later we will get cold medicine. later alford introduced a lot you could only buy a certain amount of dexter methodist and

different kinds of medicatione over-the-counter. because people were abusing it. but it was hard anytime you want to get something you had to overcome obstacles to get the drugs. but, if all drugs were legal all the time i could imagine my friends and i 15 or 16 years old very quickly like sentinel it probably is around now in the mid- 2000 if it was around and freely available probably not all of us would have made it today. so i think it drugs, legalizing hard drugs i would classify as a luxury a belief. severe issues and overdoses into andpeople dying in the streets . it sounds good on paper. it does not pass the commonsense

test of your legal is hard drugs things will necessarily improve. so i think it's a real mistake. even weed. i thought about this. young people tell me their height 24/7. in the aggregate it would be more if you have a hundred people on the highway one of them is drunk it's very dangerous. and 30 of them are stones that may be equally dangerous to have one very drunk person. that's where we are at now a lot of people stone 24/7 on weed. at the individual level they don't pose the same threat to someone who is drunk. in the aggregate you have 30 people versus the one i could be posing equal dangerous. >> for those in the odds are not familiar tell us what child luxury belief is maybe talk a

little bit about what happened when he got to yale. cox arrived at yale at a weird time in 2015. after eight years in the military was discharged in august and then in october i saw about halloween as it was known. i was just mystified by it. this idea i don't want to go ino the entires specifics. that was the birth of cancel culture. i wasn't quite the birth of awoken us. but the birth of what people call it woke you started to spill out of the universities. got national media attention of students and get these professors fired for sensually defending freedom of expression.

opinion about family, class, or about sex work. almost all of their views were at odds with what i would hear from people i knew back home or from people i knew when i was enlisted. disproportionate number of themo heldld the strange views. i started these ideas of luxury belief for status inflicting cost in the lower classes. they can give the appearance of sophistication and expense of education and job, and social and cultural capitol.

but once those beliefs are implemented into policy or spread throughout the culture gradually can have downstream effects for everyone else. i coined the term of luxury electricgleason 2019. we need to defend the police. and then what that actually meant. these maneuvers but that was implemented into policy. and in the culture at large the suspicion towards law enforcement. a lot ofho people were killed. homicide rateses increase betwen 20 and 22. this get folded into these aggregate statistics. in late 2022 at open article from the wall street journal and it would sayay you're over your homicide is increased x% that's really 2020 bring these were snapshots. over the last year or so law

enforcement has filled out. there's a tech executive killed in san francisco. he was identified by name in the media there is an article written about him for the couple journalist a few months ago they were killed when in philadelphia, when it new york city identified by name and had articles written about this i'm reading this and if you are, the way i interpreted how these cases were treated if you are just a peasant and you die you are just a statistic. if you are a member of the aristocracy you could identified by name you get whole piece about you. even if you're at luxury police catch up with you you're still honored and treated in a special way with this high regard a member of this upper segment of society was killed they get treated very differently. a core feature of a luxury belief visits shelter from the consequences of his or her belief. sometimes it does catch up. it's treated differently when it's done.

>> there's a review of the book in the "washington post." i thought it contained a misunderstanding of what a luxury belief was. what if you could respond to it. he argues the radicalism of his peers was actually hypocrisy born from self-interest the privilege undergraduate want the lesse fortunate to be addictedr be single parents so that they can get ahead and become even wealthier by comparison. is that what you meant? (i mean, i'm not that cynical. i would not say everyone. it would not surprise me if one of 5% of e the students and graduates of elite universities maybe they would not think quite whitein those terms. but they would think it's good to gain every advantage possible. there are losers in society that

would be okay. it's not that extreme but i think a lot of the luxury beliefs are supported because people want to feel at the heart is in the right place for the wentzville moral for the want to feel good doing to be justifying to themselves why these views are appropriate and people are good at finding ways to do the intellectual acrobatics to make themselves support ideas that make them feel good. but there is a duplicity there i want people to focus on which is there is a study aright in the book, only 10% of children born to college educated parents are raised out of wedlock. but that when you ask people with college degrees is important for children to be raised by two parents, 75% of them say no. there is a mismatch between what edgy peakth educated people say versus what they do.

it is the same move defend the police. you can see there's a survey in 2020 the highest income americans of most supportive people but then you look at where they live. very safe zip codes. during the unrest in 2020 a lot of them are hiring private security or off-duty police officers for the own personal safety. they like having people around who can protect them. but for everyone else who rely on police it's an attitude. i was that yeses i'm not quite that cynical. with the caveat attached, the way may be sheet herself. >> we skipped over i really want to t get back to the time in the military initially given a short tripip as long as you occupy

better off i wonder if you could talk about those years to form the person that you are today. >> essentially if you just walk to all young men some think 85% of the crime, especially violent crime and then if you look at recidivism rates across time by the late 20s most people think same extent. i learned a lot during those years. sometimes they read this chapters of the book my teenage years are couple stories about me and my friends during that time. and sove different doing and reading here what you've told me. peoplele change anyway. i'm in my 30s now everyone is

different between 1717 -- 25. i was under age i had to have my adoptive mom i was still legally a child and left as soon as i could but i was 17 when he graduated got out when i was 25. that was like a long eight years. i am listed for four and when i was 21 and the reason why i reenlisted as they offered to station me that was a fun adventure. i'm still not auteurur enough to find my way in the world without structure i still needed it. i needed all eight of those years to finally learn how to be as self-sufficient and functional adult i was not

equipped with those attributes during my upbringing. and so i learned discipline, camaraderie, how organizations function. teamwork, how to be a good supervisor so later on achieved promotions. but one distinction i made in the book was between motivation versus discipline. a lot of people say they want to accomplish something they have to feel motivated they do not want to do something because they lack the motivation. one thing i learned when i was enlisted his motivation is not thatat important. what's important is self-discipline. very few people are motivated to do things it doesn't come naturally to most people. often what separates successful from unsuccessful people

maturing it anyway. think about this with jim urgings you don't go to the gym are not motivated to go but the self-discipline as you do it anyway pretty string enough of those together large tasks and projects can become accomplished. you've become a different person as a result of that. that was something i learned to. that military is like you have to do all the things you hate all of the time. waking up early, make the bed, every aspect of your life is tedious and monotonous it. i glossed over a lot of them of the book. gave a description kind of ofli what it is like. if i got day today you'll be bored to tears.le here's kind of what i think it looks like were going to move on because you will lose interest. that was important for me. every step of that. i carryof that later in college and high school and never wanted to study and i didn't because i dndid not have the motivation.

in college i did not want to study by that point a cultivated self-discipline to do the things even though i didn't want too. >> i'm going to have one more question. when opened up to audience a audiencesstart thinking about yr questions. at least two other memoirs has been compared to. one of them is westover's whether you i seem to have some similarities. and hugely popular. there p definitely seems to them or hunger for people who understand what's going on and lower classes. kind of what are the things they are observing now about the world around them that can help them succeed.on when is to get thoughts on thest other offers and what you think

we are all kind of looking for in books. people expect me too read everything now appear to read both of them the segment of society a lot of people don't have any familiarity with. especially highly educated people. for more sort of affluent or upper class backgrounds. to lift people up.

they seem to be doing very well. in poverty or squalor their abstract. for people in these other communities what can we do? jude children people's lives. what did not want to be the preventative work started in this very difficult situation. achieving some kind of success. i also want to focus on what is the outcome for a young guy in particular i tell the story of

my friends were there life ended up. you cannot necessarily replicate what i e did for every single person. that is not going to work. there are ways we can think about how to ensure young people young guys are not going off to college maybe they're not interested academically inclined on how we can improve the early life circumstances. even if they do end up as adults making mistakes and self-defeating behaviors of the very least it could cut up at her b upbringing. towards the end of the book. something like even if childhood stability is zero effect on a person's outcomes, likelihood of incarceration, graduation rates, future earnings and so on

cultivating and ensuring a kid reason the safestti circumstancs is still worth trying to promote because it's good in itself. if i show you an infinite insight some days kid is going to grow up to be a violent criminal. it doesn't matter how the kid is raised right now if theho answer is yes we should be thinking more about what happens before age 18 rather than what happens after. >> thank you perer allied were going to give sally a couple questions. never going to got to the audience. >> a lot of time for questions. beat the odds i can't imagine what those odds were one annex i do not know. at the poignant reminder of how many kids don't make it out. i just got your phd you're still trying to figure out the next steps are.g if you can contemplate what might be in the future what you think you could do as an

individual what might you be able to do feel some sense i should not put words in your mouth. i assume you have trying to help the new generations. >> as individuals it's tough want to transform the entire system we have boxed down in statistics. snapshot aggregate survey data. at the individual level there's a lot you can do to make a difference in people's lives. since i got out of the air force went to yale tutoring kids from the local community to very rundown blue-collar town people of a difficult upbringing i would tutor kids in their literacy skills. i would volunteer to help veterans get into college.

there are things you can do with the individual level with volunteer work and so on and now i'm doing toxic foster organizations and boys and girls club's and trying to communicate the story. it's a possibility stories can help to crystallize for kids is a path upward. alsoha to remind people maybe tt path is not the best one we could think about just the immediate moments. how to think about more resources for foster care trying to support families to the kids are not taken from them and that as well. lexi could also be a drug counselor honestly. part of your referential work is everything you are saying about how you emerged. you use the word low grade

depression, your impulsivity, itreally what you do in recover. pay ready for questions. questions? let's wait for the microphone please. wendy goldman wrote about the destroyed family life in the wake of the russian civil war. the difficult effort to establish social services to ensure children were not ferrell and running around murdering and stealing. the aftermath of that was a fierce social conservatism is him of comrade stalin. i wonder if past political movements were in parts the authoritarianism was a reaction toil the destroyed family livesf the prior generation.

>> i am inclined to say yes or maybe? there isn't really interesting studys . there is a psychologist or the researcher. he was an author on this paper on t populism. one of the conclusions he draws, he collected data from the u.s. and european countries as well looking at support for populism and found there is this an correlation with populism and socioeconomic status. he also included other measures like interest in dominus, and status in those kind of things that's inversely correlated with populism.s one of his conclusions he draws draws is people who are interested inf popular solutions of having a strong man leader. they feel their own values are not reflected in the culture but

they typically want to elect someone to implement their preferences into society but they themselves are not that interested in seeking those positions themselves they are opposed to populism are interested in it obtaining power and status in dominance. they don't they give a strong man occupying that seat because they themselves would like to be in the leadership role. but, i was reading on paper think a lot of people feel that maybe they have certain values they do not hold luxury belief they have a conventional model or middle-of-the-road use some common sense perspective. but then they look around their communities andnd see is not at all reflected back at them. they see deteriorating families, drug use and people making poor decisions. at the disproportionate arc committingf crimes. that majority of poor people don't commit crimes the people

are disproportionately poor people forget that. most poor people don't like like crimehey don't but they are the onene suffering the most from it. and find some data in the book people in the bottom income category in the u.s. are far morere likely every single kindf crime. so ifty that is your community d somean strongmen appear in sam going to clean things up for you, impose your values and implement your preferences i could see how that can be very appealing to themselves or not are notthat interested in gettig involved in politics or seeking leadershipe positions. they outsource that to this figure had to do it for them. that sounds similar to what you have been describing. >> over here? >> thank you for your interesting insights. i was wondering if you could , the last of her men

who are not that well educated which in my view the impacts here. to fulfill the role that we think about. i myself it sounds -- i think about the jobs of fathers around may have. lower clerical jobs. i used to hold that view my confidencere i read the two part privilege melissa kearney really good book just came out a few months ago. and she reports some research their fracking booms.

men with low education were able to obtain high-paying jobs. and then thehe researchers and monitored whether it increased and whether these men became more appealing partnerser in the answer is no. marriage rates didid not increa. they did not become more appealing partners. maybe jobs are necessary but not sufficient. thirtys be a cultural piece to these men do need jobs to make them appealing. there also must be a champions marriage, val arises the two parent family for kids. more and more we are drifting away from that. now, even if you do get people high-payings jobs and so forth

this been wrecked in the culture for so long. that money alone does not mitigate the issue. it's absolutely riveting. you will read it quickly will build a put it down. the phd in psychology from cambridge. seek an academic b career. you project yourself five or 10 years in the future what you want to be doing? the here p psychologists the vat

majority of people with psychology like social psychology they don't do much in the way of treating mental health. spent a lot of time reading in grad school. bring social revolutionary. i settled about my first year grad school i knew i was not going to be an academic i had seen too much, just the direction of academia was really alarming. i describe in detail what happened at yale. and then one of the reasons i wanted to go abroad as i thought

like maybe this was an american thing. u.s. universities maybe i will get out of here did not have time for this nonsense. we have plenty of time for it. they like it too. it's probably five years behind maybe 10 years behind the u.s. in terms of how bad it is. it is still pervasive. early career researchers have their careers jettisoned at cambridge. a lot of it happened behind the scenes. but i'll tell you now every public academic cancellation you see there are at least five others you don't hear about. most people who want to beat researchers and scholars are not seeking the limelight. they want to keep their heads down and think hope the thing blows over and they could find another position somewhere else.

it's dead set against an academic career. university of austin this new fledgling university they approacheded me. i have an affiliation there. sub stack to move myg writing, that's been paying the bills. so we will see. as far as academic job goes i'm still unimpressed with the legacy institution. >> in the back right here? >> you have described the concept of luxury beliefs it's a cost upon the lower classes and social benefits of the upper classes. itth increasingly seems somethig like ar transgender -ism the upper class is very glad to have

that as well. these things are not just things the n support are not actually practicing them. how does that alter your view of luxury beliefs? >> so generally luxury believe they can inflict cost but the price is lower. they are in a better position to withstand the damage and the cost that would be inflicted. i'm trying to think about the transgender case in particular. even something like a medically they would have the resources to reverse it if they decided that later on that it was in error. someone who does not have much of the way of resources they decide to undergo some kind of

medical operation or some kind of treatments. and then later they decided maybe this was not a choice for them. they may not be in a position to afford to reverse that choice. things like drug legalization is another example. if you are a well off a person decide to do a lot of hard drugs, if you are like a rock star who promotes and glorifies drug use and you yourself live that life start you are a millionaire and you can afford doctors and a rehab and therapists in all of those things available to you as a result of your own choices. a lot of the kids listen to you but they do the same thing and they model the behavior they are promoting. they do notcc have the same accs to treatment and scared and so forth. >> in the back over there?

>> i really appreciate the talk blue-collar background who is now in academia. the knowledge work. it's very foreign to meet my family runs a small business. it's a product. i struggle the product of knowledge work. he tutored in the past in higher education a lot of it is

self-motivated might phd happy self driven. phd program i think it was 2028. i had enrolled at 21 or 22 or that usual age right after college i don't if it would've worked out as well it is worth that have succeeded i spoke to professors is gathering lots of advice. whether it was in the military, or college or now i'm doing this independent thing on sub stack.

what are things they wish they had known in those kinds of things. one thing i wish i would have known the first year regardless of how prepared you think you are the first year is going to be full of first of doubt. matter how you're spending your time are going to feel like it is wrong somehow. is this really what it should be doing what am i supposed to be progressing toward one of my supposed to have the first paper written there's a lot of uncertainty that first year. someone sat me down spending time getting advice from different sources and people who were slightly ahead of you and whatever you are interested in. >> and whatever you are interested in. >> my question has to do with attachment. you lost your moment three, did not have a dad and were in foster care until seven.

itim sounds like you would not have had a primary caregiver in that. and according to attachment theory that would have been a really difficult thing to overcome. i am wondering if you thought about this and how you did overcome that. i'm reading a book right now about harry harlow and his work and later with human infants at attachment theory. the difficulty of leaving my mom in the first place. a lot of research and paid to the kind of maternal impulse to care for a child and that sort of attachment. ine fathers too. the way the parent fields

towards a newborn, towards a small child. there's less research on the other side of the of how attached the child feels to their parents. how deeply that connection is felt it's really hard for me too leave my mom. and the first foster homes the first two homes they lived in was really upsetting that i had to leave them. the body adapts and fight about the coping response of just being a blunted and later disconnecting from all emotion and feelings. it was like a conscious deliberate plan thing it's the body reacts in this almost instinctive way were shut down does not feel negative emotions repress a consequence i shut down from feeling positive emotions. took a lot of work to overcome. i could feel it, i could feel it

sometimesik but it was sort of submerged and i had to work really hard to access those feelings later. it takes a lot of work and adulthood to overcome, even more so a lot of focus paid to economic deprivation. but not as much on childhood instability. it's actually instability that predicts rather than deprivation. once i think the instability piece needs to be more salient. have you put any thought into

how deviancy and the notions of abnormal families and norms have such culturalst power? it rests on the idea the elites have a strong pull on the rest of society think how that plays in why people are attracted to the sorts of things. >> white the elites are attracted. but everyone else too. if it is true these poor ideas it is fun. especially when you arere young. with drug, sex, relationships.

that feeling there's no boundaries and no limits or transgressingg them. can be very thrilling. i comes very difficult to walk itto back even if people want to because they're custom to have that freedom and level of excitement or ability to indulge. it did seemed like at least the upper middle class they did bounce back. the divorce rate in for college educated people in the 1970s no-fault divorce was implemented for college educated people and marriage rates drop but by the 80s they were covered. essentially returned to where they were in the early 1960s.

and so it doesn't seemed like a lease for people who are well resourced and educated and so on maybe weis should not continue doing this. there better and worse ways to raise families the lower classes lack resources, lack education have a different cognitive personality profile they indulge and enjoy the lack of restraint. even if they recognized it's not enough for this is a point i made in the book. knowledge alone is not enough to make good choices. everyone knows that vegetables are good for you. most will order the phrase not the side salad.

everyone knows smoking is bad for you. i used to smoke. every t single time the doctor gave me this mini lecture. i know it's bad. you don't have to tell me every timed i buy a pack it's right there that it's bad for you but do i care? no.. it's so useful to have it and reinforce repute have the doctor give you that lecture every time you buy a pack there's a warning label. in the aggregate does overtime having the shame around smoking it did have an effect on people's behavior over time. now the number of american smokes is drop by half since the 1980s.

>> ...

>> having been 17 to 25 i agree . but how do you feel about having a more institutionalized system like bringing back the draft or national service? >> so the countries that have national service, at least the ones that i am familiar with they are in countries that are actually under sort of ongoing threat . so like israel for example, they have national service but it's necessary for national security . south korea as well, a country on the border with an insane dictator so they have national service . i don't know if you could re-create the support and conditions and interest in a country like the us where we are not bordering . maybe if canada went crazy and decided

to, then we could . but as of now i don't know if it could work in the same way . maybe something than other than military service, if there was some other kind of national service, core or something along thoselines that it could be helpful . one thing the military does very well is you get introduced to people from our cross section of society, from different parts of the country geographically, across class lines, race and in the city . you learn about people from different backgrounds so i guess in principle i'm not opposed to something like a national service but i don't know in terms of practicality, in terms of political support much there would be . >> i think we're going totake a last question . >> leis this working?

the washington post did an article that says this isn't a policy book but do you have any policy recommendations, what should the government do to fix its fatherlessness for not having to parents or anything ilike that? >>. >> every third commercial it was like an anti-smoking campaign . there were billboards everywhere you turned . the culture and society at large were reminding you this was a bad thing to do and then signs would say x number of f people die each year from secondhand smoke, all this stuff and i wonder if there could be some kind of public awareness for families . it doesn't necessarily have to focus on the negative . like, if a kid is raised by a

single-parent home that they are morelikely to go to prison, that would upset people but you can have the reverse, if the kid is raised by two parents , their this percent morelikely to graduate from high school and college and to h enter the middle class .es a lot of people are familiar with the success sequence . i saw this survey which found that the vast majority of both democrats and republicans support teachers instructing students on the success sequence . something like 70% of democrats and republicans so this is not a partisan thing . people across the political e aisle think it's important to teach kids the success sequence and if you do these three things you can avoid poverty . graduate high school, obtain a full-time job and get married before you have kids and something like 98% of

people who follow the these three steps do not live in poverty . that's bipartisan, there's bipartisan agreement on this or voters. in the elite there is a major mismatch of republican elites, democratic elites are more skeptical of it but for more regular people everyone agrees on this so you can find ways to promote that. >> we encourage you all to read rob's book. it is great if you definitely will not want to put it down so join me in thanking rob for coming today and read the book. [applause] >> if you're enjoying book tv sign up for our newsletter using the qr code on the screen to receive a schedule of upcoming programs, book festivals and more . book tv every sunday on c-span2 or online anytime at booktv.org . total television for serious readers.

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