Kids. Whaddaya gonna do with them?
That’s probably been voiced in a lot of households, especially at the rambunctious ages of 2 or 3, often during the teenage years, and sometimes as offspring are launched — or fail to launch — into adulthood.
The household of former President Donald Trump may also have heard that lament.
Like when Donald Trump Jr., after graduating from college, decided he wanted to go do his own thing and have a good time.
Dad refused to support him financially.
Don Jr. described that time of his life on his “Triggered” podcast with guest Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene as they discussed Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and her background as a bartender.
The younger Trump tended bar, too.
“I did it myself,” he declared. “I moved to Colorado after I graduated from the Wharton School of Finance to get some stuff out of my system.”
“That was an amazing conversation with my father, by the way,” Trump said, laughing.
“Oh, it was brutal,” he continued, recalling his father’s reaction: “You went to Wharton. When are you starting to work?”
“I was cut off,” the younger Trump said. “The only thing that they didn’t cut off — ‘cause they forgot — was my gas card. So I had a car and a gas card, and so I’m the guy that lived off gas station sushi for like a year.”
While Trump’s reference to his younger days was a sidebar in his conversation with Greene, it was an insight into the senior Trump’s role as a father.
Three marriages may not qualify the former president as a model of good family values, but refusing to finance his son’s desire to goof off reflects well on his instincts as a father.
That is how it should be done. After all, who says we get to just take off and go play?
We need to find God’s purpose in our lives and fulfill it. If we’re unsure of what that is, we need to step back and take our place in whatever way we can to make a meaningful contribution to our community.
Separate from past issues among the Trumps is a current crisis among men in the prime ages for being in the workforce — 25 to 54 — who are not taking jobs.
Nicholas Eberstadt wrote a book about six years ago entitled “Men Without Work,” which he commented on in an article that appeared in the New York Post.
Currently, there are 7 million men aged 25 to 54 who are neither working nor looking for work, according to Eberstadt. The rate of men working is less than it was in 1940 when, at the tail end of the Depression, the unemployment rate was 15 percent.
Eberstadt blames overly generous pandemic checks from the federal government as part of the problem, but changes in working patterns can be traced back to the mid-1960s.
Since 1965, the number of men leaving the workforce has steadily increased, he said. Academics and policy-makers cite globalism, a reduced need for unskilled labor, and advances in technology as reasons why.
But that still doesn’t explain why so many men are refusing to work, especially since “major sectors of the economy are now wide open to applicants without any great skills, apart from the ‘skills’ of showing up to work regularly, on time and drug-free,” according to Eberstadt.
So what are working-aged men doing? They are “checked out from civil society; largely disengaged from family care and housework; sitting in front of screens as if they were a full-time job — habits increasing the risk of falling victim to ‘deaths of despair,’” Eberstadt wrote.
Another explanation for idle men is encapsulated by writer George Gilder.
Put simply, Gilder says men are motivated by their sex drive. Prior to the sexual revolution, they channeled that drive into productivity in order to win women — and provide for the resulting children.
Since the 1960s, advanced birth control methods and feminism have given men sexual access to women with no obligation for productivity. So why work?
The elder Trump wisely saw the dead end his son was heading toward and would have no part of it.
Kids. Whaddaya gonna do with them?
The Donald knew.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
