In my spare time (yea right) I like to peruse old newspapers from the early 1900s and 1800s. It's something everyone here should do because it provides a glimpse into a forgotten world; well...forgotten for most. A world where RP knowledge was so ubiquitous and near universally accepted that it didn't even need a name and no one batted an eye.

I've collected a few articles by one of the shitlordyist shitlords that ever shitlorded - Paul "keep'em barefoot, pregnant, and in the kitchen" Popenoe. Be warned though, when you see what men once were and what we are today, you can't help but get pissed the fuck off. I read his stuff and I'm like FUCK. It's easy to get angry at our forefathers for bending the knee to feminism but it's important to know about the men that saw what was coming and tried to stop it. Paul is one such man.

-July 5, 1934 - These Modern Eves

Dr. Paul Popenoe, director of the Los Angeles Institute of Family Relations, spoke on marriage last week before the American Home Economics Association in this city.He said very few men visited his Institute in search of wives, but the husband-hunting women were numerous.

Then he said, in regard to marriage failures: "The superior education of wives is a frequent cause of breaks. No matter how successful the husband may be financially, the wife has, in general, a superiority complex towards him."

Thus again, science verified old folk ideas. The dominating female continues to nab her man and then "henpeck" him. And the only avoidance for the male of the species to follow his grandfather's advice about women - either marry them young and dumb, or else don't marry at all.

-August 3, 1949 - Keep Sons Posted, Fathers Advised

A father should take his son to the office, shop, or factory rather than to the movies or a baseball game, according to the director of the American Institute of Family Relations. Dr. Paul Popenoe, Los Angeles, told summer students at the University of Cincinnati that it is important for a boy to know what a man's world is like and to feel that he understand it.

The smallfry in long pants, the family expert believes, should look forward to being a part of the adult world with a full share of his responsibilities. "The importance of a father is not sufficiently recognized in a great deal of current discussion of family life," he said.

Dr. Popenoe said father can set a good example by being more demonstrative and affectionate with their wives in the presence of the children. He also called for more married men in the nation's school system, whereby younger boys would get a more masculine outlook on family life.

Dr. Popenoe decried the fact that many persons in charge of children are women and frequently unmarried women who have no family patterns to give them.

-May 26, 1939 - Soulmate idea in love scorned

Girls who wait for their prince Charming to appear are likely to be disappointed, according to Dr. Paul Popenoe, director of the Las Angeles Institute of Family Relations.

The dream that somewhere there is a "special soulmate" waiting for everyone is just so much "childish bunk" Dr. Popenoe declared here.

"There are nearly 30,000,000 marriages in the United States and each year a million more are added to that number," he said. "Unfortunately, nearly 200,000 of the million married couples in the present year may end in divorce court, and others, though not breaking up the marriage, will be miserable in it."

Dr. Popenoe said the reason for the high divorce rate is that the couples "don't try".

"They intend to get, not to give," he said. "It's up to the other fellow to do all the work"

"Before marriage, they made some effort to please each other. Now they are married, they think it is time to 'settle down.' If you want to 'settle down' after marriage, don't trouble to rent a home; just move into the graveyard."

"Too often," the marriage regulations expert continued, "the husband begins to consider himself a star boarder rather than a lover, and the wife gets careless about her appearance and disposition."

The trouble is, he said, that the home, the church, and the school in the past have paid little attention to eduication for marriage. It's an encouraging fact, he said, that school are adding courses concerning family relations as a fast as teachers can be trained to give such courses.

-June 9, 1960 - Criticism Helps, Nagging Harms

Mr. G. in his letter complains: "My wife needs a good deal of instruction from me, but no matter how necessary it is, she always accuses me of criticizing her unfairly. It seems to me she just goes out of her way after that to do the opposite of what I tell her. Is that just because she's a woman, Dr. Popenoe?"

Many women do react that way to criticism, Mr. von G., as do many men. But maybe your "instructions" are not really as necessary as you think they are. And, if they are necessary, it's evident that your technique isn't all it ought to be!

Try the approach of a high-powered executive out to get proper action from a subordinate. There's a great deal of help for family life to be found in the current writings on personnel in industry! In their book, "The Executive Interview," Benjamin Balinsky and Ruth Burger give some useful guides to sound criticism, that every one of male or female, could apply to advantage:

-Keep it impersonal. It's a situation that you want to correct, not a personality. That's the greatest mistake most of us make. We start with: "The trouble with you is..." and we start a fight!

-Stick to the fact - don't exaggerate.

-Don't criticize unless you add a cleat-cut remedy at the same time. The remedy is much more important than the complaint.

-Choose your time and location carefully. It is not a good idea to criticize immediately, but to wait until a calm period and then take up the question in a courteous but businesslike way.

-Don't try to be funny. People sometimes pretend that this will take the sting out of criticism. A woman who takes things personally is more likely to believe you are being sarcastic.

-Tie up loose ends. Settle the matter with agreement all around, if its at all possible. To do this you'll have to listen attentively to what the other says, and agree with as much of it as you can.

Beyond all this Mr. von G., the truth is that many of us, women as well as men, are merely naggars; more exactly, it's not by nature but through a cultivated disposition which can therefore be eradicated.

-1934 - College girls make the worst wives?

This is a full page article so I'll only include a snippet.

At the start, Dr. Popenoe was carful to point out that he is not disparaging the college girl nor calling her a matrimonial failure. The college girl, like the college boy, has passed through a weeding out process, so that she is almost inevitably the mental and usually the physical superior of the average of her sex. It would be strange indeed if such a superior class could no succeed at least as well as their duller sisters in almost any enterprise, including matrimony. And many of such college girls as actually do get married make a good showing.

"But," Dr. Popenoe points out, "that is in spite of their college education and not because of it. It is because college women represent a selected group. They come for the most part from successful homes. They have good family backgrounds, parents who were successful husbands and wives. They are girls who would make successful wives and mothers if they never had stepped foot into a hall of so-called higher learning and in many cases their college education actually detracts from their natural endowment as good home-makers."

"The point of my contention, which is based on first-hand observation and study of thousands of cases, is that the college girl gets nothing out of her education that helps her in marriage and frequently emerges with her degree professed of attributes and viewpoints that constitute a definite barrier to married happiness and burden her with problems that her less highly educated sisters do not have"

...

"Some college girls fail to marry because of over valuation of a liberal culture. A girl in this class has been led to think that it is so valuable and omnipotent that any man ought to be tickled to death to marry her just to get this second-hand culture."

"But the average husband is not interested in having the warmed over remains of a course in philosophy or English literature served up to him"

"The girl graduate of this class is not a competent home-maker because she has had no training for that job. She is not an emotionally satisfying object of love, to be guarded and adored, because she has been over-intellectualized. All she has to offer her husband is femaleness and she has no monopoly on that."

So here's to you Paul - thank you for being a man among men.