From "The Success Narratives of Liberal Life Leave Little Room for Having Children" (NYT).
The essay — by Anastasia Berg and Rachel Wiseman, authors of “What Are Children For?: On Ambivalence and Choice” — has to end with hope for progressives. They're given this admonition:
[P]rogressives must not let partisan loyalties stop them from thinking about the ways in which having children does or does not express their values, and what shape they really want their lives to take. Children are too important to allow them to fall victim to the culture wars.
How do you read that and not jump back to that line I put in boldface above: "Gender equality and female empowerment demand that women’s self-advancement not be sacrificed on the altar of motherhood." Of course, children are extremely important, but — watch out — it will be too late if you release one into your life and it doesn't "express [your] values" or fit the "shape [you] really want [your life] to take." You will have "sacrificed" your "self-advancement... on the altar of motherhood."
How do you get out of that bind without drinking the “phony, intrusive,” right-wing toxin? I thought of the answer: You fall in love....
I rushed to search the essay for the word "love." It's not there. Maybe it's "essentially reactionary."
पोस्ट्स
९८ टिप्पण्या:
Are people so stupid they take this crap seriously?
It reminds me of michelle Goldberg blathering on and on about the joys of feminism and being single and the getting married and having kids. If you'd listened to her, you were a fool.
So, children as accessories.
It's not a new thing, I know, but... dang.
The good part, I suppose, is that those who actually do have children will almost all realize that children don't need to be, and indeed aren't, an expression of their parents' values - they are of unimaginable value in their own right.
The bad part, I suppose, is that for a lot of people (my husband, now an exemplary and much-beloved father, was one), you don't or can't know that until you actually have a child.
I tend to agree more with Scott Adams’ emerging thesis:
Feminism has made men and women so unattractive to one another that hetero marriage and family are dying out. My first requirement for a female partner throughout my life has been that she rejects feminism.
This dynamic is also the reason for the gay obsession. As gay men in SF and NYC used to tell me when they wanted to pop my cherry: “You can have as much sex whenever you want it with men. With women, they’re always putting on the brakes.”
Gender equality where a front hole "=" top hole "=" black whore h/t NAACP and all are ruled through penis envy. #HateLovesAbortion and other wicked, final, progressive solutions.
No value appears to be given to motherhood as a form of self advancement. Most mothers I know find incredible rewards in raising their children. The article represents just another way in which the left have architected the artificial world in which they live.
>"Gender equality and female empowerment demand that women’s self-advancement not be sacrificed on the altar of motherhood."<
"It's not nice to fool Mother Nature"
How do you get out of that bind without drinking the phony, intrusive, right-wing toxin? I thought of the answer: You fall in love....
The problem is that love is about giving power over to another person. You can't love without trust, without making that other person a part of your life in a way that gives them some control over the decisions which you make: what jobs you take, what hobbies you pursue, what friendships you cultivate, where you live, etc. That's still an anathema to modern girl-boss feminism, which has sold women a lie about having it all.
Men, womem, and our Posterity are from Earth. Feminists are from Venus. Masculinists are from Mars. Social progressives are from Uranus. #WarOfTheWorlds
"The Success Narratives of Liberal Life Leave Little Room for Having Children"
Aren't those success narratives--careerism, hedonism, abortionism, anything-goes--the ideological handmaidens to neoliberalism? Have progressives, and particularly progressive women, fooled themselves into a false consciousness that serves The Man and The System?
Problem is a lot of progressive mothers don't understand motherhood.
They think it is all about themselves.
Jamie said...
So, children as accessories.
It's not a new thing, I know, but... dang.
Bingo.
"I thought of the answer: You fall in love."
This is the great feminist fear. That despite all of her protestations and her absolute certainty in the sisterhood's cause she could - mostly without planning it - suddenly find herself emotionally and physically vulnerable with a man she unexpectedly takes pleasure in making happy. It is the definition of the destruction of her agency...that such a thing could happen without it being planned in minute detail and in accordance with feminist catechism. That it could possibly happen to her with a hyper-masculine man is even more insulting.
Making a man happy!?! Allowing yourself to be loved by those icky boys? Perish the thought!
Sad. Then again, if crazy libs stop having kids, maybe we’ll have less crazy libs in ‘Merica…
The confusion arises here only because some folks naively assume that feminists truly believe that "Children are too important to allow them to fall victim to the culture wars"
Feminists believe no such thing.
You will have "sacrificed" you "self-advancement... on the altar of motherhood."
I think that should be your.
Comrade, let's be honest. You and I both know that love is simply a form of false consciousness.
Some goals are larger and more important than human measures can express.
Join us! Put your shoulder to the wheel! Liberation from the patriarchy! Or else.
[P]rogressives must not let partisan loyalties stop them from thinking
Batman: (SLAP!) The POINT of Progressivism is to let partisan loyalties keep you from thinking!
Our culture has turned everything into a pursuit of personal satisfaction. True satisfaction comes from sacrificing yourself for the benefit or someone else. That is the true conservative ideal, the progressive ideal is to sacrifice everything else in an effort to be your true self. Children to who you dedicate your self to are an enrichment, not a detriment. I've had/have 6 and started a bit late, and would never go back to my pre-child life.
TickTock said...
No value appears to be given to motherhood as a form of self advancement. Most mothers I know find incredible rewards in raising their children. The article represents just another way in which the left have architected the artificial world in which they live.
The feminist movement at it's core has trained women to think "me me me."
Nursing is a useful career that tends female.
All of the other female dominated professions: DEI advocate, NGO administrator, college/secondary administrator, government/corporate bureaucrat, Human Resources etc. are really just make work garbage that society would be better off without.
Female jobs require air conditioning or less than 40 hour work weeks. Most of these jobs don't do much.
But women can do one thing that society absolutely needs to continue in a healthy way and guess what feminism discourages.
Feminism was designed and implemented by a small number of high status men who wanted to go back to a harem style mating regime in society.
As the old cliche goes, "The future belongs to those that have babies." The minimum TFR (total fertility rate) needed to maintain bare population stability is 2.1. In the US TFR is 1.6 and dropping.
Progressivism is a death cult.
Children are too important to allow them to fall victim to the culture wars.
IMHO children have been the primary victim of the neverending culture wars.
Most women find true fulfillment when they are helping and thinking about people other than themselves. Usually their children.
If you delay having children so you can have casual sex for 10-20 years while pursuing a career telling other people what to do in some HR style job the usual outcome is an empty house with cats.
Feminism is specifically antagonistic to this because it was designed by greedy evil men for greedy evil men.
You fall in love....
Problem is, there just aren't enough landscapers to around.
You don't just "fall in love". You consciously, semiconsciously, or unconsciously "make yourself lovable". A successful relationship is more complicated than a heart transplant. There are thousands of personal identity tendons, ligaments and nerves that have to be ready to somehow entwine.
The worship of self breeds a rejection reflex, as the potential other can only be seen as an imperfect mirror of the sovereign self.
Children are too important to allow them to fall victim to the culture wars.
Of diversity (e.g. racism, sexism), "burdens" Planned, transgender spectrum (e.g. homosexual) grooming, and Levine's Dreams of Herr Mengele. #HateLovesAbortion
Blackbeard said...
As the old cliche goes, "The future belongs to those that have babies." The minimum TFR (total fertility rate) needed to maintain bare population stability is 2.1. In the US TFR is 1.6 and dropping.
Progressivism is a death cult.
It is more than just birthrate.
Just as important is how many stable 2 parent households do you have.
"IMHO children have been the primary victim of the neverending culture wars."
Not collateral damage...the target. I don't think people understand the real jealousy some feel that they either can't or don't deserve to have children, or that they see others that have them being happy or fulfilled. As with an iceberg, most of the causal reason for what we see is the psychological pathology below the surface, not the presentation.
Then, as it so often does, the target becomes the thing they see you loving, not yourself. They want happy fathers and mothers to be unhappy when they see their children transform from healthy, happy, and well-balanced to depressed wrecks with a tattooed skull and 10 facial piercings when they come back for Christmas their freshman year.
It is all sour grapes, and it's the children who pay.
Hey! I think I may have stumbled onto the true reason they've opened the border.
Progressives reproduce by converting non-progressives' children in the schools. That is the battle that non-progressives must win to save this country.
"Hate has no place here." Apparently love has no place in those places either.
"... ethical imperative." There are no "imperatives" for moral relativists.
The most shocking thing a teenage girl can say nowadays is, "My dream to get married, have lots of kids, stay at home to raise them right and love and support my husband."
Another evil mind trick and deception the Left has played on young women is the false and absurd notion that they shouldn't bring children into the world because of CAGW and the bleak prospects for the future. There is no hope. (Cue the pastor in "The Big Chill" who said at Kevin Costner's funeral: "What happened to hope?)
I'll never forget being at the Texas Book Festival in Austin when a beautiful (and I mean beautiful) female redheaded undergrad asked the detestable liar Samatha Power (Obama's UN amb.) if it was okay to have children in light of upcoming horrible events.
Power danced around and gave her permission, but I was really pissed. This so-called elite scared this young woman into possibly not engaging in the most rewarding aspect of life: having children.
This exchange is on Book TV. (I asked the first question and called her a liar to her face.)
I saw the same stunt by NASA's James Hanson (global warming pioneer) at Creighton. Another female undergrad thought the planet was going to burn up. But he told her it wasn't going to burn up right away. Or some such nonsense.
When you are young, inexperienced and impressionable, it is easy to fall for the deceptions and lies of the Left. After all, 97% of "scientists" agree on CAGW and the elites are always pushing that there is a crisis about something.
Of all the things to hate the Left for, I think this is the one that makes me the angriest.
@Dave Begley
The sky must always be falling, Dave. They can't control you unless the sky is always falling, and that evidence for the sky falling is always just around the corner, but for some mystical reason, never happens.
1960s – Oil gone in 10 years
1970s – Another ice age in 10 years
1980s – Acid rain will destroy all crops in 10 years
1990s – The ozone layer will be gone in 10 years
2000s – Ice caps will be gone in 10 years
2010s – We’ll all be dead in 10 years
None of this happened, but all resulted in more control.
My first thought is that the world might be better off if progressives didn't breed. But Yancey Ward points out that progressives can still indoctrinate children in the public school systems--and in fact they do just that.
@Dave Begley
The sky must always be falling, Dave. They can't control you unless the sky is always falling, and that evidence for the sky falling is always just around the corner, but for some mystical reason, never happens.
1960s – Oil gone in 10 years
1970s – Another ice age in 10 years
1980s – Acid rain will destroy all crops in 10 years
1990s – The ozone layer will be gone in 10 years
2000s – Ice caps will be gone in 10 years
2010s – We’ll all be dead in 10 years
None of this happened, but all resulted in more control.
I sacrificed my career on the altar of fatherhood, supporting my wife through her med school and residency, leaving me with career gaps during each child's youth as I became the primary caregiver at home for the kids. It wasn't much of a sacrifice, caring for our infants instead of going into a soul-sucking workplace every day, and I don't regret it at all. My wife regrets not being home with the babies, though she has had a very successful career.
RSM:
Thanks and you absolutely correct.
The astounding thing is that the Left's record for predicting doom has been wrong in every single instance. Why would anyone believe the Left is correct today?
If any coach or CEO has a losing record, they usually get fired after 3-5 years.
Liberalism is a socially conservative pastime: keep womem affordable, available, reusable, and taxable, which necessarily requires shifting responsibility and sequestering the "burden" of evidence to sustain political, economic, gender, and climate progress.
That said, men and women acknowledge evolutionary imperatives, moral mandates, and realize that life is not so short... to reconcile.
“Are people so stupid they take this crap seriously?”
Very much so. My daughter was married maybe 3 years ago, and she, her Best Woman, as well as all of her bridesmaids, have doctorate degrees of some sort or another. She is due momentarily for her 1st. Best Woman, a DDS, had her first 2 years ago, and is expecting her 2nd around the same time. It’s a race. Daughter is due a couple days earlier, but since it is her first, the odds are considered even. They are hoping for a girl for her bestie, so they can also be besties. Interestingly, most kept their maiden names, having gotten their doctorate degrees (and published, if PhDs) before they got married.
They are in their early to mid 30s, having their first kid. I remember my daughter’s mother commenting (a bit over 30 years ago), when she had our daughter how much easier it was for the young women having their first kid a decade or so younger. It wiped her out. Not just the birth, but the next month or two. Contrast that with my partner, who got pregnant on her wedding night, at 21, and was back teaching dance within a week of having her second kid. A picture of her with her mother and sisters, the day after her 2nd kid showed that she already had her figure back.
Of course, there is another problem. So many young women these days are overweight. And the older they get, the worse it gets. We have a potential granddaughter-in-law, just legal to drink, who is putting on 5-10 lbs a year. She was cute when that grandson’s older brother started dating her in early HS. Not anymore. Two issues. First, obesity makes getting pregnant and carrying to term harder, and it also (naturally) makes catching and marrying a guy harder (naturally, because males have evolved to prefer thinner mates for just those reasons).
They used a lot of words to say: "How to celebrate being a rotten mother"
Just as important is how many stable 2 parent households do you have.
With a mother and father, our Posterity is conceived and flourishes.
We need to ask Harrison Butker his opinion. Something about Heaven on Earth when a husband loves his wife and she respects her husband gives life to their children they raise together. But who believes in that anymore?
Incidentally the Son turned 50 today and grandkids are 10, 14, and 16. Success for him is paying for cars/SUVs for teen drivers and Summer Camp tuition now followed soon by college tuition. And his children are more than worth it. The girls confessed they are Swifties. That’s a good sign.
Oldest girl wants to go to UGA, which is close by, but the son wants her to go to Clemson where the campus looks safer.
Please liberals, I beg you, don't have children.
The world will be a far better place.
This is great news: anything that lowers the number of undedicated people having children is a win for children.
That’s a dry hole.
My middlest son called yesterday. My daughter recently had twins, bringing us to 9 grandchildren. Now he and his wife will be bringing us to 10. Our youngest isn't yet married.
Our family is doing it's part to ensure national and cultural survival.
Gender equality is a fantasy. Women can bear children, men can't. Survival of humanity requires that enough women have enough children for us to keep going.
And unlike other animals, our young require years of care before they can survive on their own. All kinds of communal care have been tried since the dawn of recorded history. And it seems the best results always come from a mother sticking around to care for her own. funny that lesson has yet to be absorbed by the intelligentsia.
Another fact that some fail to learn. A woman's fertility doesn't drop in a straight line slope. If a woman doesn't have a first child by 27, each year after her chances of having one naturally drop like a rock. But if she's had one or two by then, her body stays prepped for more. My wife was 41 when #5 was born. My Mennonite neighbor is up to a dozen- so she was about 40 for the last one. Who may not be the last one...
Living in a small rural town I know that since we moved here the #1 and #2 HS graduate each year has been from an intact family with mother and father each on marriage #1 with mother being a full time housewife and mother. Seems a formula for success.
Can some women have successful high powered careers and successful well adjusted children? Some can, yes. How does that work? Well, they hire nannies to take care of their kids- preferably childless women to substitute for themselves...
And another fact- anyone who thinks that a full time housewife and mother isn't an empowered woman is deluding themselves. She's ruling the roost and making decisions that affect the future of society. And bringing up children who will do the same and bring her grandchildren,
Or, she could be like "17 Celebrity [sic] Who Support Their Transgender and Nonbinary Kids" and bring up children who will never bring her grandchildren and be a drain on medical resources for their ultimately shorter unhappy lives. https://www.advocate.com/family/celebrities-with-transgender-kids#rebelltitem1
Seems AWFLs have a lot more of those children then us economic middle and lower class people do.
"The problem is that love is about giving power over to another person. You can't love without trust, without making that other person a part of your life in a way that gives them some control over the decisions which you make: what jobs you take, what hobbies you pursue, what friendships you cultivate, where you live, etc. That's still an anathema to modern girl-boss feminism, which has sold women a lie about having it all. "
This.
Addendum: Love is hard work and brings pain as I have my selfishness stripped from me.
So "self-advancement" is limited to your job? What a pathetic view of life.
Upon graduation, one of my daughter's roommates received a job offer from a very prestigious firm that included freezing and storing a number of her eggs. Apparently, the thinking is she works 70 to 80 hour weeks for 15 or so years, advancing, advancing, advancing, until she reaches her desired level of success. She can then start a family by taking her "young" eggs out of cryo-storage. Is this the way to have self-advancement and motherhood?
I'm Going to Speak SLOWLY.. So that EVEN Lefties can keep up..
THE FUTURE BELONGS TO THOSE WHO SHOW UP
But, it's No Use.. Lefties are TOO STUPID..
WAIT UNTIL YOU'RE OVER THIRTY TO BEGIN THINKING ABOUT CHILDREN!!
If you DO have children.. CASTRATE THE BOYS, and STERILIZE THE GIRLS!!!
Encourage Homosexuality! Encourage ABORTIONS!! PLAN UNPARENTHOOD!!!
THE FUTURE BELONGS TO THOSE WHO SHOW UP
"Something about Heaven on Earth when a husband loves his wife and she respects her husband gives life to their children they raise together. But who believes in that anymore?"
I believe that. I am thankful to God I found my wife. I was a double blank with a drinking problem and PTSD, who had just ended his military career and started a new and stressful one, but still felt I was heading in the wrong direction. I know a great deal about this because I feel I was one of those people who didn't deserve a family. Specifically, I was worried about my own capabilities to be a husband and father because of my baggage, and because of what you see in the military with other men's families and the dysfunction, and trauma, and repeated deployments can cause. Those who are former servicemen know what I'm talking about...
I never thought I deserved to have "heaven on earth", but my wife proved me wrong. In more ways than one she rescued me and helped me learn to love life again. So many of these people don't know what they're missing if they would just take off their armor, even if just for a bit.
"O brave new world, That has such people in it!"
It's probably best such women don't have children. We have enough brain-dead, liberal failures of society to deal with.
Do progs have any fun or any joy at all? Downers
Is there a difference in the birth rates between Democrats and Republicans? Not my perception. I know mostly Democrats. They marry and start families. Never once heard any discuss having children as a political question. There is definitely a fertility crisis. Starting early seems better. Oldest of 6, my mother had me at 23. But those days are not coming back, red state or blue. It takes a certain optimism to take the plunge that quickly, which Eisenhower's America somehow had, and neither Trump's nor Biden's America seems to have it.
"Hey! I think I may have stumbled onto the true reason they've opened the border."
The Open Border is part of the plan. Anti-white racism is part of the plan. Castrating your children is part of the plan. Drag shows for kids is part of the plan. It's all part of the plan. Telling you there is no such plan is ... part of the plan.
Readering reminds us..
that, to lefties; ALL that matters is their "perception"..
Not Facts
Not Data
just:
Not my perception.. Most of the people that Readering knows (according to Readering) are democrats,
so, THAT MEANS, that Readering has a PERFECT AND COMPLETE PERCEPTION of reality..
according to Readering.. Who ASSURES US, that he claims to be intelligent
"The Cat's in the Cradle and the Silver Spoon,
Little Boy Blue and the Man in the Moon"
was a warning about putting career too far ahead of your family.
Gilbar which data based comment here are you focused on?
It is also interesting how liberals so often make their life style choices into "ethical imperatives." I suppose that is comforting when things go wrong.
Democrats 2024 = the celibate Shakers of 200 years ago. The Shakers went extinct, but we have a nice furniture style that still bears their name.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shakers
Leftist utopians are never able to learn and adapt.
Would it be wrong to thank God for abortion because no sane person wants these women to have children?
"Sad. Then again, if crazy libs stop having kids, maybe we’ll have less crazy libs in ‘Merica"
Well, crazy libs of a particular sort.
Readering isn't wrong. I know lots of Trump-crazed progs who couldn't think critically about political issues if their lives depended on it. Yet, in the real world, their lives are indistinguishable from the conservatives I know. Some of them have unusually large families.
Althouse likes to offer weird and niche perspectives from laughably compromised sources. They usually aren't taken seriously by the commentariat. This is one of those perspectives.
Are today's Western feminists the most selfish humans on earth? Time will tell. One can hope that the rest of humanity finds it's way back to sex and having babies, while the most progressive of the women stay on the sidelines complimenting themselves on the fun times they are having with themselves and their food issues.
And, anecdotally but overwhelmingly, the people I know who chose not to have children made that decision without any kind of ideological consideration.
Men will continue to be attracted to women half their age, and women will continue to be attracted to mewing, spewing infants. I guess we don't always act on those impulses, but those impulses are there. Me, I never much saw the attraction in mewing, spewing infants, but women are crazy about them. Some women like them better than cats. I suppose that's what keeps the human race an ongoing concern.
"Gender equality and female empowerment demand that women’s self-advancement not be sacrificed on the altar of motherhood"
So you can't achieve "self-advancement" by having kids and raising them to be good people?
"Gender equality and female empowerment" require women to be exactly like men?
That's a really special thought process they've got going there? "Men's way is the only way!!11!! Women!!!"
There's a poignant scene in "Margin Call" where Demi Moore (who's just been fired) and Stanley Tucci (who was fired by Demi Moore the previous day) are sitting in well-compensated isolation in a corporate rubber room while the financial apocalypse is going on. Moore asks Tucci if he has kids, to which he nods and says uh-huh. There's a look of pain in her face. She gave up all that to climb the corporate ladder, which has now collapsed under her. Now she has nothing.
“Readering isn't wrong. I know lots of Trump-crazed progs who couldn't think critically about political issues if their lives depended on it. Yet, in the real world, their lives are indistinguishable from the conservatives I know. Some of them have unusually large families.
And, anecdotally but overwhelmingly, the people I know who chose not to have children made that decision without any kind of ideological consideration.“
It’s almost as if the majority of Trumpist commenters don’t know any liberals personally and have a strange understanding of real life everyday liberals. Are their worlds so small? Are their neighborhoods, families, co workers, all Trumpists?
Inga:
It’s almost as if the majority of Trumpist commenters don’t know any liberals personally and have a strange understanding of real life everyday liberals. Are their worlds so small?
Inga projecting again.
In the long run, this problem is self-correcting. People who oppose motherhood (and act on their beliefs) will vanish from the gene pool. People who value motherhood will replenish the gene pool.
Having spent most of my adult life among 50/50 Democrats/Republicans, almost all white or Asian, my observation is this- the people with large families (more than 1 child) are either Republicans or I can't determine their politics from conversation. The ones without families are either just starting out or are vociferously progressive regardless of age. Take from that what you will.
And the census data does support my view- there are relatively more children (under age 18) in red states vs blue states even though the blue states have lower median ages for the most part. I bet a more granular examination will reveal the same thing intrastate. This shouldn't really surprise people- Republicans are more likely to be married.
RideSpaceMountain said...
...Those who are former servicemen know what I'm talking about...
Oh, yes we do. 21 years USN active duty, first 3 children got to experience the moving around a lot and having to fit in a make new friends. #4 was born after my retirement ceremony but before the actual date. #5 4 years after retirement. The two youngest went through the same school system from K-12. The difference between the oldest 3 and the younger 2? Hardly anything. But staying in one place to live didn't mean no travelling. Closest family to either of us was a few hundred miles. So lots of trips out of state while growing up.
In my time on active duty I saw a lot of dysfunctional marriages, and- a lot of strong marriages. And if you're Navy you're familiar with the two biggest causes of divorce. Sea duty, with it's long separations. Followed by shore duty, when they discover they can't actually live together...
The key is finding the right partner. And I can't give any advice on how to that. It doesn't happen randomly, but seems to happen differently for everyone.
The thing is, here in ruralville, I see many dysfunctional marriages, without the stress excuses military members have. Many of them, however, have the same root cause as many failed military marriages- the grass is always greener syndrome. Why stay committed to Person A when Person B seems so much more desirable? Often followed years, sometimes months, later with another truism- if they cheat with you, they'll cheat on you. You both have to commit to sticking with your choice to make it work.
Yukon Cornelius:
Is this the way to have self-advancement and motherhood?
Seems they don't want to tell young women the stats. For freezing, 51% success rate. For IVF, 3.9-50%.
One of the saddest vids I've seen is a woman, late 30's, being told her frozen eggs were not longer viable. The wail of pain made me wince.
American middle- and upper-middle-class white progressive women: The richest, freest, best-educated women in human history, and also somehow the unhappiest.
" The richest, freest, best-educated women in human history, and also somehow the unhappiest."
Someone commented over at Astral Codex Ten many months ago that it isn't 1/3 of American women that are on SSRIs, it's probably closer to half. Half. 50% - and maybe even more - of American women and girls of any ethnicity are miserable. Let that sink in.
@Gospace
I was an Army officer and did my 20 and got the hell out. I had wanted out earlier than that when I knew I wasn't going to make Colonel. I found my wife and married her just before retirement. I was a very late bloomer. I had never been married before, just a never-ending carousel of girlfriends that for one reason or another couldn't work out like that. Had I known that my life could work out the way it has with my wife and infant sons I never would've waited so long. I probably would've gotten out sooner and saved myself another decade of aggravation.
I truly believe that we will achieve complete separation of reproduction from individual men and women. Once artificial wombs are a thing - it's all over. Babies will be farmed, and couples will go baby shopping for the exact type of child they want when they are ready.
Had I known that my life could work out the way it has with my wife and infant sons I never would've waited so long. I probably would've gotten out sooner and saved myself another decade of aggravation.
My former Bernie Bro daughter had her first child at age 39. She told me that being a mother changed her whole life. She is now 43 and is thinking of having another child. My mother had me at age 40 and my sister at age 43. The Depression was the reason for the late birth but my daughter's leftism was probably related to her late decision. I suspect her politics have changed as well. She was always open to reason.
gilbar said...
"I'm Going to Speak SLOWLY.. So that EVEN Lefties can keep up..
THE FUTURE BELONGS TO THOSE WHO SHOW UP
But, it's No Use.. Lefties are TOO STUPID..
WAIT UNTIL YOU'RE OVER THIRTY TO BEGIN THINKING ABOUT CHILDREN!!
If you DO have children.. CASTRATE THE BOYS, and STERILIZE THE GIRLS!!!
Encourage Homosexuality! Encourage ABORTIONS!! PLAN UNPARENTHOOD!!!
THE FUTURE BELONGS TO THOSE WHO SHOW UP"
Shorter version: it's all about controlling the population of the deplorables, as it has been since Margaret Sanger laid the groundwork for Planned Parenthood. And yes, I know, she was against abortion, but she was a negative eugenicist for sure.
“I thought of the answer: You fall in love....I rushed to search the essay for the word "love." It's not there. Maybe it's "essentially reactionary."”
“The reason you haven’t felt love, is because it doesn’t exist. What you call love was invented by guys like me, to sell nylons. You’re born alone and you die alone and this world just drops a bunch of rules on top of you to make you forget those facts. But I never forget. I’m living like there’s no tomorrow, because there isn’t one.”
—Don Draper
Gave up her looks for the company books...
There'll always be some Venezuelans around to rent.
>"Gender equality and female empowerment demand that women’s self-advancement not be sacrificed on the altar of motherhood."<
But it appears it does require that motherhood be sacrificed on the altar of self-advancement.
"[P]rogressives must not let partisan loyalties stop them from thinking about the ways in which having children does or does not express their values" This is completely backwards, having kids should not be about you and your values, but them and their inherent value. But it is a variation on one of my regular complaints/warnings that treating kids as commodities is evil.
who-knew said...
>"Gender equality and female empowerment demand that women’s self-advancement not be sacrificed on the altar of motherhood."<
But it appears it does require that motherhood be sacrificed on the altar of self-advancement.
More than that, it requires that "motherhood" be defined as the opposite of "self-advancement".
Which is quite the special mindset, IMO
Are their worlds so small? Are their neighborhoods, families, co workers, all Trumpists?
I can guarantee I know, interact and socialize with more leftists than you do conservatives. By a lot.
"The adventure in your life will be found in responsibility"
~Jordan Peterson
I contend there is no greater responsibility than raising children.
"You think I am brave because I carry a gun. Your fathers are much braver because they carry responsibility... for you, your brothers, your sisters and your mothers.
This responsibility is like a big rock that weighs a ton. It bends and it twists them until finally it buries them under the ground.
Nobody says they have to do it. They do it because they love you and they want to.
I have never had this kind of courage."
~Bernardo, Magnificent Seven
I have this theory that the country can be divided into three demographic regimes based on the number of children a woman has had. Having or not having children is such a definite commitment to a kind of life that I think it is a better marker of real beliefs than alleged race or creed.
And my point is that the divisions among today's voters are not the same as they will be in the next generation in terms of numbers. In today's case, those women voters who had one or fewer children outnumber those who had three or more children. In the middle, those women who had two children are peeling off in toward the regimes on each side of them. shifting at the moment toward the three or more side.
But the majority of the NEXT generation of voters is coming from Demographic Regime 3. So the actual direction of the vote is toward the issues and politicians supported by those who had three or more children.
Regime 1
where the woman has zero (15%) children or one child (19%). 34% of voters
Progs; Favorite Party: Antifa, then Dems of Obama; Favorite cause: Gaza encampments (formerly masking)
Regime 2
where the woman has had two children 35% of voters
Liberals; Favorite Party: Dems of FDR/ Republicans; favorite cause: Free speech
Regime 3
where the woman has had three or more children (32% of voters [19% three or more; 13% four or more]
Conservatives; Favorite Party: Republicans of Trump; Favorite cause: Schools/ Streets/ Groceries
The mathematics about the next generation coming from Regime 3 is based on the fact that Regime 3 includes women with 4 or more children. These end up outnumbering the children born to women with two or fewer children. (see below)
Regime 1 19 children
Regime 2 80 children
Regime 3 19x3 57
+ 13x4 52
----------
107 children
from
https://www.bgsu.edu/ncfmr/resources/data/family-profiles/guzzo-schweizer-number-children-women-40-44-1980-2018-fp-20-04.html
[These Bowling Green figures do not add in those with more than four children and so are slightly different from Census figures I have used before. However, they are up to date, accessible and make the point.]
I worry that discouraging people from having kids and raising them within a population will, over the course of several generations, reduce the size of that population. Combine that with other population groups that encourage having children and the demographics of a region can drastically change just by the one group out breeding the other group.
My other paranoid "fantasy" is that controlling the cultural education of "undesirable" population groups could be seen as a long term way of removing that particular group from having any political power.
I look around and ask myself, who is benefiting from what is going on in this country?
Interestingly, most kept their maiden names, having gotten their doctorate degrees (and published, if PhDs) before they got married.
@Bruce Hayden, that's easily explained by the fact that they have published and are therefore known by their maiden names. My wife took my name, but she hadn't completed her doctorate yet and her only publication was something like fifth author in an obscure seven or eight author paper published in Physical Review C. My older son's wife has a doctorate and is well-published, but she was married to my son before she submitted her first paper.
What women often don't grasp is how much childbirth, especially if by Caesarean, will take out of them. If she's reasonably fit and gives birth in her twenties, she can recover fairly quickly. If she's in her middle to late thirties, it's harder.
And kids are demanding. Really, really demanding. A woman in her twenties can cope with nights of wrecked sleep. In her late thirties, not so well.
“ @Bruce Hayden, that's easily explained by the fact that they have published and are therefore known by their maiden names. My wife took my name, but she hadn't completed her doctorate yet and her only publication was something like fifth author in an obscure seven or eight author paper published in Physical Review C. My older son's wife has a doctorate and is well-published, but she was married to my son before she submitted her first paper.”
Daughter’s PhD dissertation was a combination of 3-4 papers (with her as 1st author), and her advisor and some of his research group as additional authors. And they reciprocated so by the time the smoke cleared, she was listed as an author on 8-10 papers. Yes, quite the scam, but why not? It’s win, win, win. It cuts the complexity of writing a dissertation into manageable pieces, while giving everyone involved several publications.
Followed by shore duty, when they discover they can't actually live together...
An officer, used to giving orders, comes home to a wife who's been in sole charge for months. I actually can't remember any divorces among my dad's contemporaries ('50-'80), but his best friend separated (from an alcoholic heiress) after almost 30 years. It seemed like the kids born early in their careers had more serious problems, but maybe we just heard about them as cautionary tales.
My non-com step-brother had ~15 years in when his wife demanded he get out, pension be damned--and live on the same street as her relatives. Divorce followed a few years later, probably because he'd married a girl just like my step-monster.
The Althouse community is the most interesting place on the Internet.
Dave Begley said...
"The Althouse community is the most interesting place on the Internet."
The voices in my head agree.
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