Yes kids are loud and sticky. They are also time consumptive. No they are not expensive.

As for the propaganda angle, it is very real. Mainly with misinformation. The most common misinformation is that you will be having kids later. I.e. when you are 50 or 60. Biology just doesn't work that way. And the better educated a woman is the more likely she is to be misinformed about that. The second most common lie is that women can have it all, and all at the same time too. Life doesn't work that way either. People have to make choices and some things get given up. How expensive kids are is also part of that bad propaganda.

"I don’t relate to children all that well. You can’t bum a cigar off them and they rarely pick up a check." ~ Nathan Lane (as Jonathan Pinoni in "Encore! Encore!")

How can we miss 'em when…

I love my children, always have, always will. But I didn’t actually like them til they were well past twelve.

One of the most selfish things people can do is have children they do not truly want. I applaud anyone who has the maturity to avoid doing so.

Two things no one should ever be shamed into doing: marriage and children.

Naïfs and waifs hate elegance and all the sinful pleasures of adulthood — complexity, sex, conversation and tailoring. Real children long to grow up, and for good reason — so they can drink, smoke, gossip, avoid jury duty and deplete the ozone layer. Childhood is not a utopia but a holding pen; the good stuff comes later, when you're ready, when you've earned it. Children look abysmal in evening clothes and are problematic in theaters, restaurants and concert halls; as a rule, children are useless after 4:00 p.m.

Rudnick, Paul. "Presumed Innocence." Spy Oct. 1990: 67-71.

Pick your poison.

One of the most selfish things people can do is have children they do not truly want. I applaud anyone who has the maturity to avoid doing so.

Two things no one should ever be shamed into doing: marriage and children.

Trust at November 18, 2020 6:42 AM

Marriage is easy enough to reverse. And about half do so for various reasons including people who were “quite sure” this is what they wanted when they went into it.

Complex subject on parenthood though. I personally think the worst thing a person can do is not take good care of their children regardless of whatever their initial motives were for having them.

People can *really really* want something, for all the wrong reasons. It is the unfortunate story of the human race. So this as a standard for parenthood frankly seems trite and useless. It is the women’s magazine version of female empowerment.

A scene in Indiana Jones between Ford & Connery—

Indy: We didn’t talk. We never talked.

HENRY: And do I detect a rebuke?

Indy: A regret. It was just the two of us, Dad. It was a lonely way to grow up. For you, too. If you had been an ordinary, average father like the other guys’ dads, you’d have understood that.

HENRY: Actually, I was a wonderful father.

Indy: When?

HENRY: Did I ever tell you to eat up? Go to bed? Wash your ears? Do your homework? No. I respected your privacy and I taught you self-reliance.

Indy: What you taught me was that I was less important to you than people who had been dead for five hundred years in another country. And I learned it so well that we’ve hardly spoken for twenty years.

HENRY: You left just when you were becoming interesting.

Appreciate how LA Times Festival of books gives an award for "first novel." You could be 302 when you wrote it, and you'd still be in the running if it's your first and it's good.
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Not quite sure what you were complaining about, in that thread. But it seems to me the award could go both ways. For example, Gone With the Wind won the Pulitzer Prize (a fact that shocked a retired librarian, when I told her). Nowadays, obviously, it never would win - and even if the racism could somehow be removed, I wouldn't be surprised if the runners-up were STILL better, given that the story boils down to not much more than "whether I love you more than you love me," which, as a movie critic once said (about a different movie) "is a subject beneath our contempt."

It was also Margaret Mitchell's first and only novel.

The point is, back then, many people would likely have been outraged had it NOT won the Pulitzer, but if my above guess is correct, even if every one of the runners-up had been written by a teenager, one of them should have won.

So anyway, I don't see the problem with an award given only to first-time teen novelists. Given that so many teens can barely read and write in the first place, any incentive helps, right?
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Yes kids are loud and sticky. They are also time consumptive. No they are not expensive.
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If you mean that parents should be smart enough to say to their whiny kids, every time, "if you want something, earn it," I absolutely agree. Amy Dacyczyn, Navy wife, mother of six, and author of The Complete Tightwad Gazette, said that that tactic cut her kids' consumerism rate by 90%, and she added: "if it's not important enough to them to work for it, why should I?"

Otherwise, I would say try telling "no they are not expensive" to those who can barely support themselves, or who can barely afford to live in a safe, relatively unpolluted neighborhood and wouldn't dream of raising a kid in a worse neighborhood. In the same vein, I can't afford a car of ANY kind, so yes, it would be expensive.
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And the better educated a woman is the more likely she is to be misinformed about that.
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Not exactly. What if she's a medical professional? Or if she simply cares about being well-informed about inconvenient truths? Unlike, say, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who was a doctor and politician, but also believed in fairies and spiritualism?

(Granted, he was grief-stricken over losing his son in WWI, but so were many other parents of his time.)

Crid, sounds to me as though Paul Rudnick ripped off Fran Lebowitz, though not verbatim.

(See chapter 1 in Metropolitan Life, plus chapter 1 in Social Studies.)

Thank you for the critique of the ugliness often found in the self-styled "Child-Free" communities, where they routinely refer to children as "crotch-droppings" and mothers as "Moos." I dipped a toe in these websites about 10 years ago and could not get the point through that there's a huge difference between not wanting children and not enjoying their company (of course that's completely fine), and the relentless labeling of children and parents with dehumanizing and animalistic terms.

For instance, none of them could pinpoint the age when a young person can lose the label "crotch-dropping" and just be referred to as a human being.

I do see what I think is a sad trend, especially among college-educated women, who have decided not to ever have children. I think the decline in the number of people who seek a life-long marriage has something to do with it, and that the lower marriage rate is being driven by male choices, not female ones.

"If you mean that parents should be smart enough to say to their whiny kids, every time, "if you want something, earn it," I absolutely agree." ~Lenona

It goes beyond that Lenona. There is a huge industry setup to sell things to new parents. There are all the special kids foods that are more expensive and actually worse for your kids than just feeding them what you eat. You can also spend a bundle on the various baby-Einstein type products. They don't actually do anything but you can sure spend a lot. And yes you can spend a lot on an older child if you want to.

As for your "to those who can barely support themselves ...", well fuck Lenona! Yes there are poor people. Gee, there are also mentally retarded ones. And cripples too. Thankfully most of us aren't that unfortunate. If you want to base things off of 0.00001% of the population I don't know what to do with you.

If you thought you were just talking about the bottom 20% income quintile I've got news for you. They have kids just fine. While being 20% of the population they actually have over 25% of the kids. Poor people afford kids just fine.

"Not exactly. ..." ~Lenona

No Lenona. My statement was accurate. First off most people aren't medical professionals. Even among them there is a depressing number who are ridiculously ignorant about reproductive realities.

Oddly enough for my generation less well educated women are better informed about reproductive biology. A strange situation but still how things are.

Poor people afford kids just fine.
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But they generally can't manage to send their kids to college, even if the kids get good grades. That would have been fine, a century ago. In a high-tech world, no, it's not. Plus, again, most people would say there are no real benefits to raising kids in a crime-plagued neighborhood - or one that is "safe" just because it's heavily populated by the Mob. The fact that many poor people do that anyway does not bode well for our future.

And poor women are not necessarily less prone to wishful thinking - or superstition. They simply have fewer reasons to postpone motherhood, so they have babies earlier than middle-class women - and often under bad circumstances, but again, they use wishful thinking to justify that.

Plus, again, most people would say there are no real benefits to raising kids in a crime-plagued neighborhood.... ~ Lenona at November 18, 2020 9:35 AM

IDK, I kinda like the idea of having little diversionary targets running around distracting the people trying to kill me. Plus, once the kid learns to shoot, he can provide cover fire.

I have seen lots of women say they did not want kids and then in their mid-thirties change their minds and either be unable to have them or have to go to a fertility clinic. As someone above said: not how biology works (the real world sure is inconvenient sometimes).
I object to people who do not like kids having them because they complete the suburban home look or because they are lonely. Have them if you want them.
I never paid much attention to small children but when I had mine I had the best (and exhausting) time. I still look back on those years with fondness. When they start learning to walk or repeat words you say, it is so great. When they are 4 and ask "dad, where does money come from" even better.

And then there are those who have the sense to guess, at least, that when they think they're changing their minds, it's really just hormones talking. This can be true whether one has already had children or not. Canadian cartoonist Lynn Johnston, who had already had two children, said she felt that urge around age 40. I don't remember exactly why she decided against it, but she did - and instead, she channeled that "urge" into a new fictional baby named April, in the comic strip "For Better or for Worse."

But still, this is one reason why doctors typically refuse to sterilize women or men under 30. (It's not clear whether they're REALLY that strict with their male patients - after all, many - most? - men who get vasectomies only do so after getting married, and even then, not right away, so chances are most of those men wouldn't be under 30 anyway.)

Lenona:
And poor women are not necessarily less prone to wishful thinking - or superstition. They simply have fewer reasons to postpone motherhood, so they have babies earlier than middle-class women - and often under bad circumstances, but again, they use (wishful thinking) taxpayer money to justify that.

Fixed it for you...

"But they generally can't manage to send their kids to college ..." ~Lenona

Why does everyone have to go to college? If you can't you should be forbidden from having kids? Must we all be above average?

Lenona your requirements aren't reasonable. Your definition of 'affordable' isn't sane.

CC, I'm with you. There are people who shouldn't have kids. And there are people who should have kids but have them in irresponsible ways. But none of that invalidates that most people do want to have kids.

"I have seen lots of women say they did not want kids and then in their mid-thirties change their minds and either be unable to have them or have to go to a fertility clinic."

When I decided not to have kids (I've had an aversion to having them since *i* was a child) in my mid-20s, I asked myself, "What if I hit my late-30s and really want them? With an all-consuming want and regret?" So I made a plan of what I'd do instead. That plan was to be there for the kids in my life (nieces, nephews, friends' kids).

I'm sitting here at 37, still not wanting kids. Husband and I are there for the kids in our life (regular overnights with my nieces and nephews, volunteering to watch friends' kids to give their parents a break). And that just reinforces the fact that I. Do. Not. Want. Kids.

But I also realize my mid-20s plan was ignorant. I imagine it would be hell actually wanting the kids and being around other peoples' kids all the time. Luckily, I'm always so relieved to give the kids back to their parents.

Conan the Grammarian at November 18, 2020 9:46 AM
This comment, was bitter, cynical, and nearly bloodthirsty.

⭐⭐⭐⭐! Would read again, and recommend for all ages. Two thumbs way up!

Good for you Sofar. The plan may have been flawed, but at least you tried. Thankfully you knew yourself well enough to take appropriate action. Imagine if you did have kids and resented them.

> But they generally can't manage
> to send their kids to college, even
> if the kids get good grades. That
> would have been fine, a century ago.
> In a high-tech world,
> no, it's not.

You might be going the wrong direction there. I'd bet every kid who seriously aspires to work in high-tech, or carries the skills such that he/she ought to so aspire, will do well enough in almost any school to get degrees and references. Summa cum laude from even a community college could give an employer the idea that a graduate is used to competitive hard work, yet might still be a bargain… And in every realm of life, nothing is more attractive than hidden value. And if there's no money in the family and no agreeable loans from bankers, the Friar's Club is often ready to back a local kid who shows promise.

And if the kid is truly going to Silicon Valley — or to its now-virtualized Zoom pitch meetings with venture capital — nobody gives a fuck about the friends you made in college anyway. They just want brains and enthusiasm.

> Must we all be above average?

Apparently not.

"I can resist anything but temptation."
— My friend Terry, 1987

Kids, who wants them? I've known quite a few people that would say they didn't want them and they would be horrible parents. Then they had them...and they weren't terrible parents. I'm one of those people and so was my sister. She hated all kids and didn't want any...then she became pregnant at 48. Yes, 48. She's a great mother and will readily tell you that she felt the same as Amy. Her name also happens to be Aimee. She would have been fulfilled as a vet without her daughter. She feels doubly fulfilled because she has a child. Adults take what has been given and do the best they can.

Crid, you may have a point, though I don't understand the bit about the Friar's Club, and looking it up didn't really help.

It may interest people to know that it was said, about Isaac Newton, that had his father survived (he died before Newton was born), Newton very likely would never have even learned to read and write.

Why? Because his father was a farmer who reportedly couldn't even sign his own name; sons were typically expected to follow in their fathers' footsteps; and while his widowed mother married a wealthy reverend and then, when the reverend died, used the money to send the preteen Newton to grammar school (where he learned Latin and Greek) even SHE yanked him out when he was 16, to work on the farm, which he hated. Thankfully, by then, his talents were obvious to the headmaster, who talked her into letting Newton come back, graduate, and even go to college.

No, we don't all have to go to college. But it's not just unfair to hurt your kids' opportunities, it makes it less likely that they'll be able to support YOU in your old age. My point is, if you can't afford to move out of your cheap, bad neighborhood and thus can't even provide a public elementary school for your kid that has truly good teachers and a reasonably safe environment (or a good homeschool), it's time to reconsider having kids.

The same goes for any adult who's very short on patience or affectionate hugs or affectionate words. Kids NEED all those things. Just because it used to be common/fashionable (from roughly 1920 to 1950, thanks to psychologist John B. Watson) for parents to be cold and aloof doesn't mean that was right. It also wasn't right for parents to send sons to college but not daughters - or to use "lack of money" as an excuse for that. Just as it isn't right to keep girls out of high school or elementary school, whether for religious or financial reasons - and that still happens all over the world.

> the bit about the Friar's Club

Many communities and most corporations are ready to help people get degrees, either for goodwill or tax breaks.