Tag Archives: Children

Why Are Children So Expensive?

I wrote this a few months back, but never got around to posting it. Scott’s post on wage stagnation reminded me to post it, because I discuss some of the same things here, while he ignored what I think is the most obvious cause of wage stagnation.

Someone posted on twitter, asking why kids became expensive. I answered mostly about the spiritual reasons: the unwillingness to sacrifice. And that’s true; kids are affordable, IF you’re willing to make the necessary sacrifices.

However, as Nick B Steves has said, ordinary virtue should not require heroic effort. You can have many kids if you’re willing to make extraordinary effort to do so, but any sane and healthy society should make it relatively easy to have many kids, ours does not. So,I’m going to show why kids are so expensive.

****

Wages

The first reason is wages. Inflation-wise wages have been stagnant since about the 70s. Despite massive increases in productivity, people are not making more real money.

Wages are determined by where the demand for labour and the supply of labour meet: how many jobs are there and how many people need jobs. This is elementary economics, but I’m going to make it clear here, because when it comes to discussing labour supply and demand, I notice people tend to make self-serving analyses as if basic economic principles change when it comes to labour, so I want to make it clear:

The more jobs that need to be filled, the higher the demand for labour, so this pushes wages up. If the jobs to be filled decreases, demand for labour decreases, which pushes wages down. If the size of the labour force increases, labour supply increases, which pushes wages down. If the size of the labour force decreases, labour supply decreases, pushing wages up.

Over the past 60 years or so, there have been multiple major trends both increasing the labour supply and decreasing labour demand.

The biggest trend is feminism. Feminism pushed women into the workforce which (more or less) doubled the labour force over a period a few decades. This pushed wages down hard.

The second major trend is immigration. Since the Immigration and Nationality Act was passed in 1965, opening immigration up, 59 million immigrants (as of 2015) have arrived in the US. The US population in 1965 was 194 million, in 2015, it was 321 million, for a total growth of 127 million. 46% of US population growth since 1965 has been from immigration.

That is a unnaturally massive growth in the labour supply, which has had a massive downward pressure on wages.

I will note here, that keeping wages low has been a near explicit part of the arguments for immigration. “Labour shortage” is synonymous with “wage shortage”; when employers argue that there are not enough workers, what is really being said, is they are not paying enough to attract workers. “Jobs Americans won’t do” is synonymous with “Jobs Americans won’t do unless paid more than currently offered”.

To make matters worse, the 1965 INA opened up immigration from third world countries, where wages were already naturally low. So labourers being imported into America would be willing to work for much below what an American would accept as reasonable, increasing the downward pressure on wages.

While these two trends where increasing labour supply, other trends were decreasing labour demand. Particularly off-shoring and mechanization.

Off-shoring moved industry from high-wage America to low-wage third-world countries, while mechanization has replaced human workers with machines. Both of these have had large depressive effects on labour demand, and therefore wages, particularly in non-service, low-skill occupations, which are the easiest jobs to both automate and move.

You can’t afford children, because you’re not getting paid decent wages because capital has systematically forced you into competition with poor third-world labour, imported labour, and your wife over jobs, forcing wages down.

****

Housing Costs

Housing costs are the single biggest expense (rivaled only by taxes) to your average person, and housing costs have exploded.

In 1960, the median house price was $58,000 (in 2000$). In 2000, the median house price was $119,600. In 2015, the median house price was $294,200 (in 2015$), which comes to $213,700 in 2000$.

In 55 years, housing prices have almost quadrupled, while wages have stagnated.

One of the major reasons is the increase in housing size. Since 1975, housing size has doubled. But that does not explain a quadrupling in housing costs. It would at best explain a doubling, but should be less than doubling because new marginal square footage should theoretically be cheaper due to the fixed costs in a home.

Another major drivers of house pricing includes increased demand from the fracturing of the family. In an intact nuclear family, two parents and their children share 1 house (possibly with a grandparent or two). In a divorced family, two parents and their children share 2 houses. An unmarried man and an unmarried woman have 2 houses (roommates amerloriate this to an extent). A single mother with children and her baby daddy have 2 houses. Etc. Throw on top of this the shift from multi-generational homes, and the fracturing of the family and the turn away from marraige has had a large, but, AFAIK, unmeasured effect on home prices (this would make a good study proposal for any economists out there).

Another major driver is immigration. 59 million people needing housing is a huge upward driver of housing demand and therefore housing prices.

A third major driver is schooling and safety. “Good schools” is a major driver of house prices and “safe neighbourhoods” because most parents, understandably, want their kids to get a good education and to be able to live without worry they’ll won’t become involved with or victims of drugs, gangs, and crime. Everybody is also aware that “good schools” and “safe neighbourhoods” are politically-correct codes words for schools and neighbourhoods without poor minorities who statistically make schools bad and neighbourhoods unsafe.

Because federal laws make discrimination in housing on any basis but price illegal, the only way to keep schools good and neighbourhoods safe is to discriminate on price. This puts a huge upward pressure on price, as people move to high price neighbourhoods to escape poor minorities (who may then follow them, because they too want good schools and safe neighbourhoods, forcing the process to repeat, escalating prices even higher).

Because of this, safe, affordable housing is functionally illegal in American cities and prices ever increase.

****

Two Income Trap and Child Care

The increased upward pressure on housing prices has the side effect of forcing more families into the two income trap, so they can afford a good house.

This has a variety of effects that increase costs, making children expensive.

Child care is the largest of these. As I’ve explained before, affordable child care is impossible, so child care will immediately eat up a significant portion the second income. Child care by itself, is a major factor of why children are so expensive.

A second income usually requires a second vehicle (more on this below), another major fixed expense. A stay-at-home parent has time to cook home made meals, mends clothes, and participate in other cost-saving activities; a dual income household will eat out more often, purchase more expensive pre-made food, have to replace clothes, etc.

The two income trap imposes a number of large extra costs on families and removes many cost-savings that an at-home parent allows.

****

Taxes

I was going to write about the increasing tax burden here, but I couldn’t find much much data on the overall US tax burden; most of it was just federal tax rates, and calculating overall tax burden for the average middle class person over time is much more effort than I’m willing to put in to a blog post.

But according to this 2012 NYT article, the overall tax burden has been declining somewhat, except for low-income people, who continue to pay minimal taxes.

So we’ll say increasing taxes probably aren’t particularly responsible for kids costing too much.

****

Vehicles

Among average people, vehicles are second largest major fixed expense after housing, and they have generally gotten more expensive over time, primarily as more families have moved to being two car households and gas has gotten more expensive.

This site compared a few classic cars and all have increased by half to almost doubling since 1965 (inflation-adjusted). But these are classics and so might no be applicable.

According to Wiki, the Chevrolet Impalla was the best-selling full-size car in 1965 and is still the best-selling today, so we’ll use this and assume other similar cars are competitively priced. In 1965, a 4-door V-8 sedan Impala was 2,779, which comes to $20,910.17 in 2015$. The base price of a new Impala in 2015 was $27,700. An increase of about a third.

But large families need more than five seats. The 1965 Impala 9-passenger station wagon was $3,073, $23,122.33 in 2015$, the 6-passenger was $22,347.32. You generally can’t buy station wagons today, because US regulations classified them as cars, making them uneconomic to produce under US fuel standards, which was a major regulatory backfire for environmentalists, as families switched to minivans and SUVs, which were much worse on fuel. The best-selling SUV in 2015 was the Ford Escape, which started at $24,000, but only can seat 5 passenger. The best-selling minivan, is the Dodge Grand Caravan, it seats 7 passengers, and started at $22,000. The Chevy Express was the cheapest 9+-passenger I found on a site, and it starts at $29,000 for the cargo version, so probably just a bit more for a passenger vehicle.

So, it looks like 3-4 child family vehicles are significantly more expensive to buy, as are larger 8+ child family vehicles, but, contrary to my expectations, the large 5-7 child families are about the same.

Except that the SUV’s and vans cost a lot more in fuel and as mentioned above, 2-income families now almost always need 2 vehicles.

Gasoline costs have increased: with the exception of the 1973 and 1979 oil crises (when prices hit $3/gallon, post-WW2 gas prices generally stayed between $1.50-$2/gallon (in 2015$). Since 2000, gas prices have ranged between $2.50-$3.80 per gallon. Since 2006, gas prices have generally been higher than the $3/gallon they were at the peak of the oil crises. During this time gasoline usage has also been increasing, likely largely due to increasing suburbanization.

Another hidden cost: older vehicles were generally easier to repair and maintain at home, but the increased inclusion of electronics in vehicles, makes it increasingly difficult to repair without very expensive specialized electronic equipment, necessitating an increasing reliance on professionals for maintenance and repair, adding significant cost.

So, the need for two vehicles due to the two income trap has increased the cost of vehicles significantly for your average family, while vehicles themselves have become moderately more expensive. The cost of gasoline has increased significantly while consumption has increased.

****

Food

Food is generally the fourth biggest cost to families after housing, taxes, and vehicles. The average American spends less on food, as a percentage of income, then they used to. Hoever, good expenditures have stopped declining and been flat over the last 15-20 years.

However, this is deceptive, if you look at average household size since 1960, it mirrors average household size relatively closely. The levelling off of food costs as income share matches the levelling off of household size. This suggests food costs have been mostly constant per person, but less kids means less spending on food.

In a time of major productivity gains and stagnant wages, food costs have not really shrunk.

A major cause of this is the increase in eating out. It costs more to eat pre-made food than it does to make your own food. The average American now spends about 43% of their food budget on eating out. As well, when eating in, they are more likely to buy expensive pre-made meals than making their own. All this increases food bills.

The primary cause of this increase in eating out and in eating pre-made foods, is the two-income trap. When one parent was at home, they had sufficient time and energy to create homemade food, saving money. When both parents work, food preparation time becomes a luxury often foregone due to a lack of time and motivation.

In addition, to eating out costing more, eating out itself has increased in cost.

In economics, there’s an informal purchasing power parity index known as the Big Mac Index, that can roughly how close inflation rates measure actualy close consumer price data.

In 1968, when it first came out, a Big Mac cost $0.49, $3.34 in 2015$. In 1986, the first year of the Big Mac Index, it cost $1.60, $3.46 in 2015$. In 2000, $2.51, or $3.45 in 2015$. In 2015, the most recent year the BMI measured, it cost $4.79.

The cost of a Big Mac stayed relatively even until sometime after 2000. Since then there has been a ~40% increase in the cost of a Big Mac beyond inflation. My anecdotal experience in Canada and basic market competitiveness theory, suggests that this growth is probably true across eating out on average.

So eating out, which is 40% of your food bill, is now 40% more expensive than it used to be.

I’ll also note here, that the rapid growth of Big Mac costs past inflation, suggests that inflation has been severely underestimated, in which case, everything I’ve posted is much worse than the numbers suggest. I’ve always been skeptical of CPI, but a 40% extra increase over 15 years in something as basic and omnipresent as a Big Mac heightens my doubts.

Food costs haven’t really increased, but they haven’t particularly decreased either.

****

Education

Saving for college is a major expense for many middle-class families. Lots of ink has already been spilled over this, so I’m not going to repeat much. College has been increasing in price much faster than wages. 8 times as much according to this article.

A lot of young people start off with a lot of college debt. The average student loan borrower has $37k in debt upon graduation. That’s a lot of money, the equivalent of a down payment on a house. Instead of buying a house and accumulating capital, they’re paying off usury.

And they’re not really getting anything of increased value for this debt. The money is being burned in cost disease and their job prospects are worse than those of college grads decades ago.

****

Consumer Debt

Now, one of the major destroyers of people is usury. The average millennial has $42,000 in debt, the plurality of which is credit card debt. The average American is $33,000 in debt. I’ve already written about usury (and inflation) before, but debt and debt payments are major

Usury takes advantage of the average person who is not mentally equipped to fully understand the implications of debt and compounding interest. It shackles them in debt bondage. The average American spends $280k over their lifetime just on interest. The average person with credit card debt pays $1.1k in interest each year.

Household debt has increase from 31% of income in 1951 to about 100% now (it was up to 120% during the housing boom). All this debt means increased interest payments to banks.

Usury is strangling the average household, particularly the young.

****

Communication Technology

This is a simple one, but the average American user spends $47/month on mobile phones and $132 on cable and internet. That’s almost ~$180/month. When I was growing up, cable was rare and internet and mobiles practically non-existent. And this is just monthly bills, not including the purchase of HD TV’s mobile phones, and computers. This is a huge added expense most families take on.

****

Personal Choice

Finally, personal choice is why you can’t afford children. This is what my tweets harped on. People can’t afford children, because they are unwilling to sacrifice for them.

People eat out instead of making meals at home (driven by the two-income trap). People buy larger houses than they should (driven by “safe schools” and the two-income trap). People by two cars (driven by the two-income trap) and new cars. People go into consumer debt. People take useless degrees. People buy luxuries.

There are major structural issues making children expensive, which I’ve outlined above, but on the individual level, you can probably afford children if you are willing to sacrifice. People have been raised and become accustomed to luxuries they can’t afford (hence the massive amount of consumer debt most have). This may be due to structural issues, but on an individual level you can probably afford kids if you sacrifice.

Don’t go into debt for a useless degree; take trades or get a useful degree. If one of the parents stays home and engages in traditional money-saving practices (such as home-cooking and coupon-clipping), the family can avoid buying a second vehicle and paying child care costs. This will require buying a smaller house, children may have to share rooms and you may have minimal private space. Luxuries in entertainment and food may need be cut back. Cable cut. Home internet forgone for mobile only, or vice versa. It may require moving to a lower cost county or state.

Your grandparents raised 6 kids in a small 3-bedroom house with no TV, 1 car, minimal entertainment or luxuries, home-cooked meals, and penny-pinching. You can too if you will it enough and are willing to sacrifice for it.

****

The reason you can’t afford children is because wages stagnated while costs increased across the board.

Wages have been destroyed by a rapidly expanding labour pool due to immigration and feminism. At the same time, housing costs skyrocketed due to the two-income trap, a quest for safe schools and neighbourhoods, rapidly and artificially expanding population, and family breakdown. The two-income trap necessitated two vehicles, which along with gas greatly increased transportation costs.

Education has trapped the young in debt, while general usury eats people alive and prevents them from accumulating capital.

Finally, you’ve been raised to be accommodated to a lifestyle and luxuries you can’t afford and which you finance with debt.

On a personal level, you can overcome this and have children by making major sacrifices. On a societal level, it is insane and unhealthy to require the average person to make inordinate sacrifices just to be able to afford children. Any decent and sane society will do what it can to make raising a family comfortably affordable to most people.

Our society has been designed to destroy your ability to have children without either being rich or taking on massive usurious debt and making inordinate sacrifices.

****

Post-Script: I am not blaming immigrants for immigration, minorities for integration, or women for feminism. All of these are structural issues basically forced upon an unwilling populace by government and capital. Immigrants, minorities, and women followed, as would be expected, the incentives given them, and I generally don’t fault people for following incentives unless it’s a heinous evil, which none of the individual actions taken under this incentive structure would be. In fact, minorities and women probably suffered the most under this regime. Immigrants generally benefited, but being foreigners had minimal hand in the original changes in the 1960s.

The ones at fault are government and capital who imposed a destructive economic incentive structure upon society so they could destroy wages and increase consumption to feed their greed and lust for power. They are the ones who caused this and the ones responsible for why you can’t afford children.

Make sure you aim the blame properly.

Sparing the Rod

Recently the Liberal Party of Canada have floated the idea of banning spanking, so I’m going to write a bit on spanking.

The anti-spanking crowd is superficially right in that most studies of spanking find that spanking correlates with  a number of negative traits, particularly increased aggression.

I’ve read many of these studies over time, and the primary problem with these studies is that they are always observational. Nobody sets up controlled, randomized studies of spanking (getting parental consent and cooperation would likely be prohibitively difficult). A superficial examination of the problem, ignores other more likely factors for increased aggression among those children who are spanked.

Another problem with most of these studies is that they look at physical punishment, and do not distinguish between spanking and abuse. Most “spanking” studies would lump together breaking your kids nose in a fit of rage and smacking our child’s bottom with your hand in a controlled manner after a ‘this hurts me more than this hurts you’ talk as both being corporal punishment. The studies would then find out that, very obviously, there were negative effects from “physical punishment” (ie. beating the shit out of your kid) which was then translated as spanking harms children. When the form of physical punishment is controlled for, controlled spanking ranges from harmless to beneficial.

Back to the primary problem, the correlational approach misses two related explanatory factors that I think would be more likely explanations than ‘lovingly-enacted disciplinary swats on the bottom permanently scar children’.

The first is that aggressive and impulsive kids get spanked more often and more harshly. Lots of these studies find that those children who are spanked more are more aggressive (and maybe even less cognitively able) and assume that they are aggressive because they are spanked. But wouldn’t the reverse causation be more likely. Wouldn’t you be more likely to physically discipline a more aggressive child? One study on the causation question found that it was both, aggressive kids were physically disciplined more and physically disciplined kids were more aggressive. They say early childhood spanking starts the cycle, but I can not access the study to check. (Note, the data for this study do not distinguish between forms of spanking).

The second is that those parents who engage in physical correction, particularly the more violent forms thereof, are likely those parents who are less self-controlled and more aggressive themselves. Aggression and self-control are largely heritable. It stands to reason that the kind of parents who physically discipline children are the kind of parents who would have more aggressive and more impulsive children.

I find it doubtful that moderate spanking is in itself harmful. I think it likely that aggressive children were born that way due to naturally aggressive parents who use aggressive parenting to control them. (Note: I am using aggressive as a continuum here, not a dichotomy).

Like many things though, the people controlling the discussion are liberal elites. The children of self-controlled puritans and Jews at Harvard and Yale likely don’t need physical discipline. These children are likely naturally non-aggressive, self-controlled, and intelligent, and need only minimal discipline. So banning spanking will work fine for them, it is a luxury they can indulge in.

On the other hand, when upper class sentiments meet the lower classes of naturally aggressive and impulsive Scots-Irish and blacks, a ban on spanking probably will not work out as planned. Time-outs and lectures probably won’t work as well at controlling, directing, and teaching morality to the aggressive, impulsive children of aggressive, high-time preference people.

I would hypothesize that applying cultural elite values on spanking to lower classes will be harmful to the lower classes. The parents probably know their children and their temperments better than disconnected elites and will be more apt to properly punishment their children. Forcing an unnatural ban on spanking on populations where spanking may be necessary could be counter-productive.

Of course, to say for certain some proper studies would need to be conducted and that is unlikely to happen.

Until then though, instead of assuming lower-class parents are abusive for their, to-us, violent methods of parenting, maybe we should consider that they know how to properly raise their own children. Maybe for those children with less natural self-controlled, the application of violence is necessary to teach lessons that more naturally self-controlled children would learn after a firm lecture.

****

One side note: I find it somewhat amusing that the sorts of people who are strongest against spanking are also the sorts of people that are happy to put their children on mind-altering drugs. I would think that latter would be more abusive than the former, n’est-ce pas?

Women are Achieving

The Guardian has an article on how boys are a mess (h/t: TRP), there’s nothing all that new there other than its the Guardian acknowledging the problem and its somewhat RP’d. But it has this little bit that comes up with all these articles:

“Men are opting out and women are opting in. Women are working harder at jobs, they’re working harder in school, and they are achieving – last year women had more of every single category of degree, even engineering. This is data from around the world. Now in many colleges there’s a big gap as boys are dropping out of school and college.”

Zimbardo estimates that there are, in Britain and the US, 5-10% more women than men at many colleges and universities. “So they’re going to have to have affirmative action for guys because obviously one reason you go to college is to find a guy.”

Everytime the crisis of boys/men comes to the fore, there’s always the section on how women are achieving. The triumphalism varies, this one tones it down quite a bit compared to, for example, this but there’s always this note of woman are doing better.

Except, are they?

Women are going to school more, getting more education, and outnumber men in the workforce. So, they are achieving more, at least for the mediocre positions, men still dominate the elite positions.

But are they really better off? What exactly are they achieving?

To most men, work is/has been something they had to do so to obtain a wife, then provide for the resulting family. Most men probably took pride in a job well done or in creating, but the purpose of going in to work was to earn to provide for his family. He could have gotten the pride of creation elsewhere, not to mention in today’s white-collar, paperwork world, satisfaction from creating something tangible is rapidly disappearing. Likewise, since the growth of mass post-secondary education, getting a degree for men has primarily been about avoiding a job doing physical labour, getting a better job to hopefully attract a prettier wife, and provide a more materially rich life for his family. The main purpose of post-secondary education was to get a family and provide for it, while making provision easier.

Men did this work, not for its intrinsic own sake, but for the extrinsic good of the family.

To repeat, as an aggregate woman are achieving more, but what are they achieving?

Women are now doing the work men did to support their families, without having families to support, barring (the usually poor) single mothers, who are not the kinds of women-in-the-workplace these articles are happily pointing to as signs of success. In fact, statistically speaking, these women are less likely to have families and when they do these families are smaller.

So, what are they achieving?

The only thing they seem to be achieving is more consumption and more money to be spent on the consumptive treadmill. Is that something we should be proud of? Is that kind of achievement really something we as a society should be pursuing and pushing our boys and girls to pursue?

The other question then becomes, are men really being left behind?

If a young man has no need to support a family, because he doesn’t have a wife, he might not get a wife, and when he does his wife will work and IF they have children, there will only be one, maybe two, why does he need to work?

Is he really falling behind if his part-time McD’s gig pays for his quarter of the bachelor pad’s rent, beer, and the new XBox?

Is a man really worse off spending his hours playing video games and chilling with his bros rather than spending them working hard to get a bigger (but still empty) house and a (nominally) better car?

Why is empty, high-work, high-stress consumerism somehow assumed to be better than empty, low-work, low-stress consumerism?

Either way it’s empty, but the latter is a lot easier and more enjoyable.

Maybe this ‘high achievement‘ is not some victory for women, maybe it’s simply that men know the score: Work sucks, but is (was) necessary to get a wife, regular sex, and a family. Now that men can get sex without a wife and aren’t getting a wife or family anyway, why work?

On the other hand, women seem to have been tricked into thinking that grinding away at a white-collar job is its own reward. They’re doing the shit men were forced to do and mostly disliked, while not even having the reward of a wife having supper ready for them when they get home.

Is it just the boys that are mess? Are the women really achieving?

Children and Hopelessness

Thus says the LORD:
“A voice is heard in Ramah, lamentation and bitter weeping.
Rachel is weeping for her children; she refuses to be comforted for her children,
because they are no more.”

Thus says the LORD:
“Keep your voice from weeping, and your eyes from tears,
for there is a reward for your work, declares the LORD,
and they shall come back from the land of the enemy.
There is hope for your future, declares the LORD,
and your children shall come back to their own country.
(Jeremiah 31:15-17 ESV)

Children are a sign of blessing and hope for the future. It is through children that men leave their legacy and by bringing forth children one shows hope that there is a future for your children. A society with hope for the future will usher forth many children.

On the other hand, failing to reproduce is a sign of despair. A society not reproducing itself has given up on itself. A society failing to reproduce is a society lost in hopelessness.

Our society has given up on itself.

They might not say it outside of private conversations or obliquely in public opinion polls, but everyone knows the West is dying. They despair for they know there is no hope for our civilization; winter is coming.

This is why they don’t reproduce, why we don’t reproduce.

We are stuck in the polar twilight, knowing the polar night is descending, but we do not wish to our children to have to endure the harsh, cold winter night. Instead, we enjoy the revelry of twilight, eating and drinking, for tomorrow we die.

****

The saddest part of this twilight is the state of the church.

Christians have been given the first blessing and first command, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”

We have been given a promise of a new life, yet we have given into the world’s despair.

This struck me recently at a church I occasionally visit. The priest was speaking on Psalm 137. During the sermon, he stated that ‘biblically, babies always mean hope‘.

This church is one of the few growing, young churches I know of. It’s congregation is composed of a couple hundred is mainly young adults. Despite the youth of the congregation, there are few young children. The church is perfectly poised to carry out the first command if only it would accept the first blessing. I still have some hope for it, but only some.

I talk with Christians. I asked my father if he had to do it over again, if he would get married or stay single.* He said he might marry but he wouldn’t have children in this age as our world is going to soon enter times of trouble.

I talk with other Christian men my age, some agree that children are a sign of hope, yet still are limiting the number of children they have. I talk with Christian women my age, children are a low priority for most. Their careers, teaching, music, writing, are more important to them at this point.

I talk with other Christians my age of the Kali Yuga, of our decline, none seem to actually reject the notion, some even embrace it. We talk of the dying church; everybody knows the church is dying, none dispute it. Yet, I talk of how the church could reinvigorate itself and retake our civilization if only Christians embraced the first blessing, yet there is always something more important.

I doubt any would say they despair, but the sinking nihilism of progressivism has taken hold.

The despair is not emotional, it is existential.

I despair for the church emotionally, yet there is existential hope.

The church has survived dark times before and can do so again.

Civilization has always re-arisen from the ashes.

****

Thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat their produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease. But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the LORD on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.
…
When seventy years are completed for Babylon, I will visit you, and I will fulfill to you my promise and bring you back to this place. For I know the plans I have for you, declares the LORD, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will hear you. You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart. I will be found by you, declares the LORD, and I will restore your fortunes and gather you from all the nations and all the places where I have driven you, declares the LORD, and I will bring you back to the place from which I sent you into exile.
(Jeremiah 29:4-7, 10-14 ESV)

This then is the reactionary project: show hope, have children.

Traditional communities in Idaho are okay, recreating gangs and tribes is excellent, but these are sideshows.

Winter is coming, the darkness descends. The collapse is inevitable. We need to write of the reasons for the decline and illuminate it as it occurs, so that future generations can learn from our mistakes, rebuild, and hopefully stave off a future decline.

We also need to reproduce so there is a future and raise our children right so they can look forward to a brighter future.

We need to have hope, endure, and out-wait the night.

****

Finally, you don’t have anything more important to do than reproduce.

Only a fraction of a percent of the population has something more useful to impart to the future than children. Unless, in this hyperbolic world, your work is regularly described as “ground-breaking”, “world-changing”, and/or “revolutionary”, it’s probably not anywhere near as important as another well-raised child or two would be.

Are you Norman Borlaug?

All the jobs, all the economic activity, everything we build is made for people. Without people they are worthless. Are teachers of any value if there’s no one to teach? Is writing of any value if there’s no one to read? Is a bridge of any value if there’s no one to drive over it?

We build things, we create, we save, so that future generations can benefit from them. All worthwhile economic activity is for future generations. What isn’t for the future is empty consumerism.

The choice for the vast majority of people is reproduction or consumerism. For the exceptional, such as the aforementioned Borlaug, important improvements for future generations.

If demographics is destiny; children are the weapons of ideological war.

Evangelicals often complain of how the US is no longer a Christian country. Well, they make up a quarter of the country; if every evangelical followed the first command, had five children, and trained them up in the way they should go, the US would be a Christian country within two generations. If evangelicals in their 20s and 30s were fruitful, they could all live to see the re-Christianization of the US. They would win the culture war within my lifetime.

Will anything you do: your career, finding yourself, your hobbies, etc. have more impact than that? Probably not. If you are a Christian and you aren’t a missionary, evangelist, or priest, your children are the most important thing you can do for the furtherance of the Kingdom.

If you think something you do is more important than reproduction, in all likelihood your priorities are wrong. You are probably thinking in selfish, narcissistic terms, where “important” is defined as what you think feels good for now rather than what’s good for the future.

Also, even if you think it feels good now, it probably won’t in the long run.

****

* I asked a number of my married friends this as well. The general response was; being married is different but not necessarily better, you gain some, but sacrifice some. Although none regretted it.

Drugged and Indoctrinated

I’ve written before that it’s all related. Little of what I write is a thought unto itself, which is why I try to consistently link back to my previous thoughts throughout my many blog posts.

I came across an article illustrating how its all related. Here is one Belinda Luscombe arguing why she needs to drug her kids even if ADHD doesn’t exist.

At this point, it sounds insane enough, but that is literally the title of the article: “It Doesn’t Matter if ADHD Doesn’t Exist, My Son Still Needs Drugs”

The article starts sane enough, she doesn’t want to drug her kid and Dr. Saul is arguing ADHD does not exist. Her son comes from a “bookish home” and had tutors, but is dyslexic. The son gets in trouble at school and has trouble reading and writing and the school tries to convince the parents to drug the son, but the parents resist. Not untypical.

But then you begin to see the pathological insanity of the system, but you have to look close.

One interesting wrinkle is here:

We may have stood our ground forever, except for the aforementioned “charming” part. Turns out our son was something of a pied piper. If he decided to wander off task, he took half the class with him. The nice folks at the nice school pointed out it wasn’t very fair to the other parents.

The kid is a natural born leader. The charismatic-type who people will naturally follow. Naturally, this is used against the child: He’s a natural leader, therefore it is all the more important to drug him.

But, in any case, what modern parent can approach the specter of a child who doesn’t learn with any equanimity? Even a not-very-attentive adult can see that the knowledge sector of the economy is the safest haven in downturns. The gap between those with college degrees and those without is ever widening. Not just in income, but also in life areas like successful marriages and health. The option for a kid who can’t sit and learn is not a slightly less lucrative career, it’s a much more miserable existence.

How much pathological modernism can be forced into a single paragraph? Understand the (barely) implicit script presented here:

The child must go through public schooling so he can get into college so he can get into an office job so he can survive the failing economy so he can be healthy and have a decent marriage.

First thing to note is the fear. She states “the cold hand of impending doom got us by the neck and squeezed.” The system is working quite well when it can instill actual dread in a parent when the public education system is failing him.

The second thing to note is that all these correlations she’s pointing to are probably genetic in origin. In other words, its not the education and college degree that makes someone healthy, marriageable, and successful, it is the person underneath, and given that he was such a naturally charismatic child, he probably would have done alright. So her fear is rather unfounded.

Third, look at the implicit assumption that college and an office job is the correct path. No consideration he could go into sales (which would seem an obvious path for a charismatic child), trades, or entrepreneurship. Nope college and an office job or bust.

Fourth, the implicit assumption that if a kid can’t learn in our public schools the child is wrong, not the schools.

She pretty much accepts that her child must be drilled complacency to be a good office drone or he will be a total failure at life. Pathological modernism.

Either he needs a class size of about six, with an incredibly adept and captivating teacher, or he needs a little help.
…
Could we get our kid through school another way? Maybe. Perhaps spend half the day in P.E. Or get him a governess instead of a classroom. Or find a teaching style that is different, somehow, more kinesthetic or less visual or uses blocks or therapy monkeys. But they’re all just maybes and he’s not our only kid and he’s not our only life challenge and his useful school years are slipping away. The meds work, are almost free of side effects and, far from being handed out willy-nilly, are a huge pain to get every month.

Notice what’s not on that list?

Home-schooling. She’d rather drug her kid than leave her job and reduce her families consumption. Either that or the thought of home-schooling enver even entered her head. I’m not sure which one would be more sad.

When I asked our now 16-year-old son if he liked taking his meds, he said “Sure. They help me concentrate.” And when I followed up with, “Would you rather be able to concentrate without them?” he gave me one of those specially-reserved-for-moronic-parents-looks and replied, nice and slow, so I’d get it. “Wouldn’t anybody?”

At least he’s happy.

She did get one thing right though: “But if we want to eradicate a chemical solution to what might be a behavioral disorder, we’ve got a whole economy and education system to reorganize.

It seems there might be something needing changing with a system that requires drugging 14% of our boys to work. I am shocked by this.

Of course, she then states “While you guys get on that, I’ve got to get my kid through school.

How cauterized does someone’s soul have to be to be to look to your kid, know the system is destroying him enough that he needs drugs to simply cope, and then say, meh, I’d rather drug him than change it or remove him from it?

****

So, in one article about a dozen paragraphs long we have: public education, ADHD and medical over-prescription, the tuition bubble, white collar uber alles, the declining economy, nontraditional sex roles, failing marriage, consumerism, and the economic fracturing of our society. All are linked together to force one young boy to drug himself, and like it, so he can continue the consumerist rat race in the future. It’s all related.

Why Traditional Sex Roles Benefit Women

I am what many call a “sexist”, and the misogynist label has been sent my way a few times before. The sexism accusations usually come when I say something anti-feminist or acknowledge an unpleasant reality (in RL they also sometimes come when I make an off-colour joke).

But I do not hate women, rather I have a generally benevolent, if cynical, attitude towards them, just as I do to society as a whole. While I don’t particularly care about most women (or most men for that matter), I do generally like to see people get the best in life rather than the worst (other than the occasional bout of schaedenfreude or natural justice for the deserving).

And that is why I’m a sexist, because I wish women the best and they have been conned. The forces of disorder have have so manipulated the dominant narrative that many women (and men) now engage in fundamentally self-destructive behaviour.

So, for the purposes of helping women, I am going to clearly lay out the long con that has been played against you by society, the forces of disorder, ideologues, and the well-meaning but unknowing. This post is going to tie a lot of what I’ve written previously together, so links will be many.

****

Dear woman, you are taught to be independent, to avoid “ruining your life” with early marriage or having children young, to go to university and have your own career, and to avoid home-making. You are taught to be economically self-sufficient, to not be “controlled by your man”

In other words, you are taught to make your own life miserable. The jackals are trying to destroy your happiness, your sense of belonging, and your future family so they can economically exploit you. This may seem outrageous to you, but before being outraged, please finish reading, and consider the information I present. I don’t expect to change your mind now, but if I plant a seed of an idea, maybe you will germinate before you wind up miserable, exploited, alone, and beyond the point of no return.

Before I begin, know this: women nowadays are profoundly unhappy. Their happiness has been steadily declining for the last 4 decades. A quarter of all women use some sort mental health medication, and a quarter of women age 45 or older uses antidepressants. Women use antidepressents 2.5 times more than men and antidepressant use is rising rapidly. Nearly a quarter of women will get a depressive illness in their lifetime.

Women, particularly older women, are literally drugging themselves to escape the horrors of their life.

If you’re young, the choices you make now will determine if you’re part of that 1 in 4 women who needs drugs in middle age simply to get through the day.

So listen to me, and it may help you may avoid this.

****

Now, like most women, you probably want to get married and have children, if not right now, then at some point in the future. I know there are a few outlier women who never want to get married and never want to have children. If you are one of those women, ignore this, none of this will matter to you at all. But if you’re not one of these women, here is a warning for you. This is the trap that has been set for you all your life.

We will start with university. University, at least the liberal arts program you are probably considering, has turned into little more than a resource extracting scam. If you go to college, there is a one-third chance you will drop out with nothing to show for it. If you do graduate you will owe $23k in debt or so (on average), which may not seem like much, but if you are in the one-half of college graduates who are under- or unemployed (ie. you won’t be using your degree), it will hurt. One-half of young people have a job (or no job) that doesn’t require their degree. Choose your degree wisely; avoid liberal arts programs.

As for going to college to become a better person, there is a high chance you will learn almost nothing.

College is a trap to suck money from you. There is only a 1 in 3 chance you will get a degree and a job that requires your degree. You will be stuck with thousands of dollars of student debt either way.

If you find a job, you will be unhappy, maybe not now but eventually. 70% of people are disengaged from their jobs, 40% of people actively dislike their jobs. 67% of mothers wish they didn’t have to work full-time; among married mothers this increases to 77%. The profile of an unhappy worker is a single, 42-year-old professional woman.

Anecdotal accounts of women leaving the workplace to spend time with your children, or wishing they could and being unable to, are legion. 43% of women leave their jobs when they have children. Leaving your child at child care is often painful for many women. Feeling guilty or missing your children while at work is common (don’t worry you’ll adjust, it won’t always be that bad). 2/3’s of parents regret spending too much time at work instead of with their children. Most working women have difficulties with work-life balance.

To many women working is a hindrance to happiness and family life, but surely the extra money is good for the children?

But there is little extra money.

Taxes will take a good 30% of your income. If you’re married, daycare will take about 10% of your household income, which means it will take up about 20% of what you earn (assuming you and your husband earn the same; if he earns more, it will take up a larger share of your earnings). If you’re a single mother it will take up 30-40% of your income.

So half of what you will earn is accounted before you even earn it.

If you’re like most people (which you are), you’ll spend part of that income on a larger home. In fact, 30% of your “extra” income will go to a bigger house (which you’ll barely see, working full-time).

So, for busting your hump, about 20% (probably less) of what you earn will actually go to disposable income or improving your quality of life. That’s not the extra expenses of working: transportation, work clothes, lunches, coffee, etc. That $20 you earn will is more like $4 in the end.

But maybe missing your children and having only $4/hour in disposable income will be worth it because you will be doing exciting things at work?

Don’t count on it. Here’s a chart of the most common jobs women work:

All these jobs, with the exception of accountants and, possibly, managers (depending on what type of manager), can be divided into 6 categories: secretarial, food services, retail, nursing/personal care, housekeeping, and child-raising.

What do you notice about these six categories? With the exception of retail work, they are all things a housewife would be doing anyway.

So, instead of taking care of your family’s schedule, you will take care of your boss’s. Instead of feeding your family, you will feed other families. Instead of caring for your children and your parents, you’ll care of other people’s parents and children. Instead of cleaning your own house, you’ll clean someone else’s. Instead of raising your own child, you’ll raise someone else’s. Or you may be working in retail, which everyone hates.

It is highly likely that at your job you will be doing exactly what you would have done staying home, except you’ll be serving strangers rather than the husband and children you love.

So, in all likelihood you will be working a job you don’t care about or even actively hate, wishing you could work less. You will be missing your children as they are raised by other people so that you can care for other people’s families, all so that you can make a couple bucks an hour in disposable income to spend on consumerist crap and pills to make the depression go away. In addition, you will go into large amounts of debt for this privilege.

Does that sound like a good deal to you, dear woman?

Does that sound like the good life to you?

****

It probably doesn’t. So, what can you do about it?

First, you have to get a husband. If you do not have a husband you will be forced to work that miserable job or starve (or go on welfare). Remember above, single mothers spend 30-40% of their income on child care. Add on 30% of your income for housing and 30% for taxes, and you will have only 10% of income left for everything else (although, your tax burden will likely be lower than average and government handouts will stretch that 10% a bit further). Even so, you will not have the option to avoid working like a dog at a job you hate.

You’re best chance to get a husband is now. The younger you are, the larger your pool of men to choose from and the more willing they will be to sacrifice to get and keep you. Read this post from OKCupid and truly understand that graph. After age 26 your choices in the marriage pool will start to decline rapidly. The longer you wait, the more likely you are to be stuck with an undesirable man and the less likely you will be to find a man who wants you to stay home with your children.

Marry young.

Second, if you want children you have to be able to have children. Study this graph carefully:

If you wait until your 30s you have about a 1/10 chance of being infertile and it rises rapidly after that. I will repeat: if you do not start having children in your 20s there is a 8-15% chance you will never have children. If you wait until your 40s to have children you are as likely to be infertile as you are to conceive.

If you want children, especially if you want more than one, and you don’t want to run the risk of never having children, make sure to start in your 20s. This means marrying in your early-mid 20s.

Marry young.

(As alternative to marrying young, you could sleep around and party, but there’s a strong chance you’ll regret it anyways and there’s always the chance you’ll wait too long and end up miserable and lonely.)

Third is keeping your husband. If you lose your husband, you will lose your chance to stay at home, you will be forced into working, not to mention the unhappiness, poverty, and damage to children that usually accompanies divorce. I have previously analyzed which factors in a woman lead to divorce. I will share them here as things to avoid.

To keep a husband: don’t have sexual partners before marriage, wait until your 20s to marry (but after age 20 the effects of age are minimal), don’t get pregnant until you and your partner are married, get a degree (although, this is probably just a proxy for being intelligent and diligent enough to get a degree), be devout if you are religious, and make less than your future husband.

So, if you want to raise a family and avoid the trap of working a job you dislike, while serving other peoples families and missing your own family, all for almost no actual benefit, marry young, marry a man who wants traditional sex roles, don’t have premarital sex, and go to church.

Make the right choices now, so you don’t have to pop Zoloft throughout your later years out of regret for making the wrong choices.

You, along with many other men and women, have been swindled. Don’t let yourself be swindled further. Don’t engage in feminist self-annihilation.

If the information and advice I have presented here have caused you to consider marrying early, I have a little bit of advice here on how to find and/or make a good husband.

****

This one’s been sitting half done for months now. In celebration of Traditional Sex Roles Week, I’ve decided to finish it. Women, it’s in your own interest to get #BackToTheKitchen.

Goldie Blox

Aaron linked to this ad for toys called Goldie Blox.

Unlike Aaron, I’m not quite so dismissive. I like the commercial, but I’ve always had a fondness for Rube Goldberg machines.

I also think the toys are a theoretically good idea. While most women don’t like math and won’t go into non-biology STEM, a few do and will. Why not make toys for those atypical girls?

My sisters had pastel-coloured Legos and they played war with them with my brother and me as we used our primary-coloured blocks. There’s nothing necessarily wrong with girl versions of boys’ toys.

On the other hand, there is something wrong with these toys.

THere is an interesting incongruity between the toys themselves and the purported feminist message. Whatever Goldie Blox’ intentions and advertisements and despite all the hype the toys are getting from the feminist-types, when you actually observe the toys you can’t help but notice the makers don’t really buy the message they’re selling.

Pastel Tinkertoys

These toys are essentially Tinkertoys and Tinkertoys have always been fairly gender-neutral, which makes them an odd target to feminize. Rather than being a leap forward for gender-neutral toys or equalism, these Goldie Blox are actually gendering toys and promoting inequality.

What idiot made Tinkertoys plastic and colourful?

The toy makers are banking on the fact that girls don’t want to play with gender-neutral Tinkertoys, but would instead prefer these gendered, feminine-themed Goldie Blox. That seems to be putting little girls even further into the gender box rather than moving them out of it.

Second, despite their anti-pink attitude, the colours of the toy are simply changed to other feminine colours, particularly a golden-yellow and a pastel purple. There’s not the primary colours of Legos and browns of (old, real) Tinkertoys. I don’t see how changing the gendered pink to gendered pastels is a particular “leap-forward” for getting girls out of the “pink ghetto”. Merely painting the ghetto a different colour is not going to change anything.

Third, look at the toys themselves. Tinkertoys are just Tinkertoys, they have no themes, while Lego’s are occasionally without theme but usually something boyishly cool like rockets, planes, or pirates. The Goldie Blox sets available are a parade float and a girly ribbon “spinning machine”.

Parade Floats – The Height of Imagination

The joy of Tinkertoys was simply building whatever came to your mind at the time. The imagination and the ability to build was the lure. Even with Legos sets, how many kids actually concentrated on the sets themselves, rather than tearing them apart as soon as they were built to build something else or play war?

These toys have been dumbed down. Look at how few pieces you get and how limited they are. And a parade float, really? You makes toys that can be used to build anything the imagination can conceive and a parade float is the best you can come up with? Is that the best you think young girls can aspire to?

I’ll see your parade float and raise you a rocket-ship.

How much of an “improvement” for gender neutrality in toys or for getting girls out of of the pink ghetto is it for little girls to simply be building girly things?

How much engineering/building skills and imagination will such simple, limited sets instill in young girls?

Finally, look at the sets, what do you see?

That bear has some swag.

Cute little animals. There’s a dolphin in a tutu, a bear in a pastel suit, and a cute little doggy with big floppy ears.

What do you see in Tinkertoys? Nothing but blocks and sticks (or plastic in the new and crappy form; that annoys more more than it should. At least I’m not the only one).

What do you see in Legos? Articulated figures capable of action (with guns and swords).

The girl-oriented engineering product is not enough of a draw in itself; it needs something cute, something personal to draw the little girls in. To increase the narrative and personalization, each even comes with it’s own storybook.

Every machine needs a back-story.

How much do you want to bet that most little girls who receive this toy will spend more time playing house or tea with the little animal figures rather than building, destroying, and re-building weird contraptions?

Here we can see the complete intellectual bankruptcy of the whole ‘girls and boys are equal meme’ displayed in one little children’s toy.

Even the equalists who specifically created a feminist-vaunted engineering toy to get girls into engineering know that most little girls don’t want to build and destroy for the sake of building and destroying like little boys do. They know full well they can’t just market Tinkertoys to girl straight-up; they know they can’t simply tell girls build this and make a profit.

So, to convince most girls to give an engineering toy a try they have to regender a gender-neutral toy, make the toys as girly as possible (while avoiding the dreaded pink), dumb the toy down while destroy the creativity of the toy, and introduce cute little animal figures in tutus simply to make them palatable to little girls.

I’m an evil supporter of the patriarchy and I would be hard-pressed to think up a toy that is more patronizing to little girls than this.

If you want pastels and dollies for your daughter buy some My Little Pony toys; there’s nothing wrong or inferior with young girls liking pink, pastels, and relationally-based toys.

But if you want an engineering toy by some Tinkertoys or Legos.

Uncountable hours of fun.

Avoid this drek; it’s insulting. “Hey little girl, you can’t handle 65 pieces of Tinkertoys ($16.40), so here’s 35 pieces to build a parade float ($20) because that’s all we expect you to be able to imagine and create. The boys will go over their and play with their underwater base.”

When even the gender-warriors implicitly state their cause is lost whenever it comes to something that actually effects reality, you know there’s something flawed with their ideology.

****

I must say though, I do admire the business acumen of the creator. What an idea:

I’ll take a classic toy, make it worse, colour it in pastels, attach some feminist ideology to it, and sell less of it at a higher price, then have the feminist press rave about my awesome new toy providing scads of free publicity.

That’s a pretty good business plan.

Keep the State out of Women’s Bodies… Except When Convenient

One major theme in this year’s presidential election was that of the “war on women”.

The complaint was and  essentially that the state shouldn’t get involved in women’s reproductive choices.

I agree.

With the exception of abortion, where a child’s life is involved, the state should leave women alone and let them make their own reproductive choices. They should be free to do as they will and live with the consequences.

But, feminists lie. They do not want the state to let them make their own reproductive choices. They want the state to force them (and others) to only accept certain reproductive choices.

Feminists want privilege and choice, not freedom.

****

Here’s a good example of the hypocrisy of the modern women espousing the creed of keep your hands off my body.

a woman in a country where politicians who actually believe that the female body has special powers to discern between evil sperm and loving sperm have been elected to create and vote on legislation that limits women’s control over their own health care.
…
“Perhaps remove the focus from that one point and think instead about the free abortions and contraceptives that will be given to all females of reproductive age… Or about the Muslims, Christian scientists, and Amish ( among others) that are exempt from obamacare due to religious beliefs….”

She goes on and on, hitting every talking point FoxNews and its ilk have drummed into her head, including the legitimacy (there’s that word again) of Obama’s citizenship and his ties to socialism. It was all a bunch of moronic nonsense, but what stood out to me the most was her first line: “Perhaps remove the focus from that one point” — that “one point” being a woman’s right to control her own health care choice, as if that point weren’t worthy of our focus!! This was a woman saying this! A woman who was fed the bullshit and ate it up with a spoon, just like the GOP wanted.

By “limiting a women’s control over their own health care” she obviously means don’t want others to  pay for it, even if it goes against their religious principles.

She says she wants the state out of her body, but she’s very clearly inviting the state into her body by having the state pay for her health care.

Her next complaint is about how crime effects women: a valid point, but ignores how it also effects men and children. It’s not part of this topic, so we’ll mostly ignore it.

I didn’t get any paid maternity leave when my baby was born. I work for myself, so I wasn’t expecting any, of course. But here in America, even if I had been working for someone else, that person or that company would not have been required by law to give me even a day of paid maternity leave. Not even an hour. My job would have been held for a few weeks, but that’s it.

I started a new moms’ group when I was pregnant and most of us all had babies within a few weeks of each other. Some of the women took extended maternity leave — six whole months — so they could stay home with their babies until they started, you know, sleeping for more than three hours at a stretch. They weren’t paid for that leave, and they worried as their savings dwindled what they’d do if there were an emergency and they missed more work.

Here she demands that the state pay for and legislate her reproduction. She’s demanding her workplace interfere with her body. She’s begging the state and corporations to involve themselves in her reproductive choices.”When they did go back, they had to deal not only with juggling motherhood and their careers, but also with navigating the office politics surrounding working mothers. One woman, a producer at a major network news station, worried about being overlooked for assignments that would require her to travel now that she was a single mother of an infant. She worried about being overlooked for promotions and raises now that her “focus was split.” “I don’t want to be mommy-tracked,” she lamented, as she plotted ways to ensure topnotch child care for her daughter should her commitment to work be “tested” with a last-minute assignment that would take her out of town with just hours to prepare.”

Here she’s lamenting that the employer is not becoming involved these women’s reproductive choices.

How dare those corporations stay out of women’s private lives!

Many of my new mom friends who returned to work months after giving birth continued breastfeeding, which brought the new challenge of pumping at the office (or, “in the field,” in the case of my producer and journalist friends). They told me stories about the “designated areas” for them to pump, which are required by law. One woman, a clinical psychologist, pumped in a supply closet with a broken lock on the door. She kept one hand on her pump and one hand holding the door shut in case anyone wondered why the light was on and barged in on her without knocking. Finally, she put a sign on the door, but it was gone the next day and she had to make a new one. That one came down the next day, too.

Not content with the state and workplace involving themselves in her reproductive choices, she desperately wants the state and employers to further interfere in women’s breast-feeding decisions.

She notes that the state interferes in her breastfeeding decisions, but the tone of lament clearly indicates that the state is not interfering enough.

How dare they let women be free to make their own breastfeeding decisions!

Our rights are at risk — our basic rights — not to mention the fact that many of us are afraid, on a daily damn basis, of being attacked — legitimately attacked — simply because we are women.

This election year, vote to keep your rights. Vote for the people who are going to fight to protect you. And fight to keep the morons and the assholes and the douchebags out of power and out of our bodies.

She ends with a hypocritical statement about keeping people out of women’s bodies. How fitting when she spent the article arguing that other should involve themselves in women’s bodies and that this involvement was the basic right of the female.

One final observation, somewhere in the middle of her article she says:

I need a chaperone because some crazy douchebags think my body is public property. Hmm, I wonder wherever in the world they got that idea.

My suggestion: if you don’t want your body being viewed as public property, don’t act like it is by having the public pay for its upkeep.

****

This was just one example I’m using for illustrative purposes that I happened to come across while thinking about this post. I could find numerous others, but the point is made: No matter what the issue, most modern women want the state in their bodies. They beg for it, they vote for it.

They will selectively say they don’t on certain issues. They will dissemble about what the “state in their bodies” means. They will flat out lie, saying they don’t. But when it comes down to it:

The modern women fervently desires state interference in her reproductive choices.

It’s a  broad-brush generality, NAWALT, I know, but most modern women who would say something like “keep your rosaries out of my ovaries,” “my body, my choice,” “keep the state out of our bodies,” or whatever, truly want the state interfering in their bodies.

They want the state to pay for their contraception.

They demand the state pay for their abortions and reproductive health care decisions.

They demand the state educate children on sexuality, contraception, and reproduction.

They demand the employer subsidizes their reproductive choices.

They demand the employer and state make their breast-feeding choices for them.

They demand their employer make their personal work-life balance for them.

They demand the state dictate their private marriage contracts (and then demand that the state dictate homosexuals’ private relationship contracts).

The modern women demands that the state and society involves itself intimately in her personal, sexual, and reproductive choices… but only when its convenient for her.

She demands privilege without responsibility. She demands society cater to her every whim, without her having

She detests others’ freedom, but argues for it for herself when it suits her.

She demands you pay for her every whim, but denies you any say.

She is tyrannical, irresponsible, and greedy.

****

To women reading this: either the state and society are involved in your body and your reproductive choices or they aren’t. You can’t have it both ways.

You can not demand that the state not regulate contraception, then demand that the state (or other organizations under the compulsion of the state) pay for your contraception.

You can not demand leave itself out of women’s abortion decisions, then demand that the state pay for abortion providers such as planned parenthood.

You can not demand that public schools stay out of dictating women’s sexual choices, then demand they engage in mandatory sexual education.

You can not demand that the public not comment on your reproductive choices, then demand that they pay for the maintenance of your children.

You can not demand the public refuse to comment on your sexual choices, then force the public to subsidize your sexual lifestyle and health care needs.

You can not demand that your employer not dictate your personal life to you, then demand your employer subsidize your maternity leave and fund your personal choices.

You can not demand that the church remove itself from your reproductive choices, then demand that the church pay for your reproductive choices.

It is an either-or proposition.

Either the state has the right to interfere in your sexuality and reproductive choices or it does not. Either the public has the right to interfere with your sexuality or it does not. Either your employer can interfere in your personal life, or it can not.

You are either free or you are not.

Make the choice.

If you choose to invite others into your sexual, reproductive, and personal lives, do not hypocritically complain when they do.

****

In conclusion, the modern women, however much she may protest otherwise, desperately desires that others involve themselves in her reproductive and sexual choices, but only when it is convenient to her.

So, next time a modern women says the state should stay out of her uterus, ask her opinion on mandatory maternity leave. Point out the contradiction. Point out her hypocrisy.

Baby Rabies and a Traditional Wife

I’ve talked of finding a good wife and mother before and the blessings of having many children. One of the things I talked about was finding a women who wanted children and as good with children.

The simple fact is that if you are to be a patriarch, finding a wife who wants a full quiver is essential.

Despite the grinding, remorseless slog that is online dating, I still have a couple profiles, and invest a minimal amount of time in them (about once or twice a week I login, check who’s new within my parameters, and send a short message or two if anyone’s interesting).

Like most men, I do most of the primary messaging, but I do get a small amount of messages (about one every month or two) from women who I did not contact beforehand. The women who send me unsolicited messages always came in one of two categories:

  1. She is overweight/unattractive and reeking of desperation. Often women in this group don’t even seem to have read my profile. (Hint: If a guy says he is looking for a Christian wife and wants lots of children, he will not respond positively to messages from an atheist who doesn’t want marriage or children. Exception: She is offering very easy sex, in which case he might be tempted into entertaining thoughts of carnal sin).
  2. She is in her late-20s or early-30s (ie. older than me) and her profile shows her as being very interested in having children.

After initially trying to be polite by replying to these, I’ve since stopped replying to both groups after a bad experience where some polite responses to a girl I was not interested in broke down into receiving lengthy hysterical messages outlining how awesome she thought she was, along with an extended detailing of her life story after I declined her advances.

Anyhow, moving away from my digressions, the second group is what I am going to write about today.

Before I dipped my toe into the manosphere, I wondered about these women. They often seemed as desperate as the overweight women, but there didn’t seem to be any reason for it. They were fairly physically unattractive for their age and didn’t seem to have anything in their profiles that would obviously disqualify them from finding a decent man. Yet, here they were, hitting on a much younger guy, with an obvious tinge of desperation in their profiles and messages (even in my blue-pill days I was cognizant enough to know women generally preferred older men and vice versa).

I wondered why, if they were so family-oriented and wanted children so very much, they were unmarried in their late-20s or early-30s when there wasn’t any reason they shouldn’t have been able to find a decent husband much earlier.

Reading the manosphere, I’ve since realized that these women are suffering from what is often derogatorily referred to as “baby rabies”. They have lived it up in their 20s, are now hitting the wall and realizing their fertility is waning, and are desperate to get a bun in the oven before it’s too late.

(I will continue to use the term baby rabies, despite it’s moderately derogatory nature, as I can not remember another simple term for this phenomenon while writing this post).

****

So, these women suffering baby rabies are loudly proclaiming how family-oriented they are and it is very apparent how much they desire to have children.

For the MTGOW or PUA, the obvious response to the desperation of these past-their-prime women is either ignore it or take advantage of it, respectively, but how should the patriarch-to-be* respond this kind of women, when her stated goals so closely align with his own?

The same as the MGTOW’s: ignore them.

There is a fundamental difference between a traditional women looking to raise a large family and a women in the grip of baby rabies.

A traditional women will plan her life around her desire to have children; raising and maintaining a family will have always been a priority for her. She will have prepared herself for this goal and learned the virtues necessary to meet this goal.

On the other hand, a women in the grip of baby rabies has not made raising a family a priority. She is merely responding to an emotional impetus pushed on her by her changing hormones and has not prepared herself for the demanding task of raising children.

There is a fundamental difference between a women whose goal is to be a wife and mother and a women who is experiencing baby rabies.

Do not mistake the two.

****

The question then becomes, how does a young man distinguish the two?

The most obvious and easiest to observe answer is age.

A women in her late-teens/early-20s who is desiring a husband and large family is very unlikely to be in the baby rabies stage; assuming she meets the other requirements you should have for the mother of your future children.

On the other hand, a women in her 30’s(or older) has very obviously not made raising a family a priority, otherwise she would already be married and raising children. If you want to be a patriarch, do not marry a women this old, whatever her potential virtues, she does not have the same goals as you.

****

Now, you may have noticed I didn’t include women aged 25-29. That’s because these women are not so cut and dry.

They aren’t as obviously in the throes of baby rabies as older women, but at that age, you wonder why, if a family is of such a priority to them, they have waited until past their prime fertility to get serious about marriage.

I would say to generally avoid them, but would not categorically reject a woman in that age range as I would those in one in her 30s. If they have enough other virtues and their reason for not getting married earlier is not silly, they may be worth considering.

But be cautious, use your judgment.

****

Now, some may raise objections to my eliminating women in their 30s out of hand and advising against women in their late 20s, but the patriarch is looking for a particular type of women, one for whom marriage and children are a high priority.

A women who waits until her late-20s or 30s to pursue marriage has amply demonstrated that marriage and children are not a high priority for her.

What of her education and career?

A bachelors can be achieved by the age of 21, so that’s not really an excuse.

Even if it was, a women who pursues an education and career above a marriage and family, self-evidently puts the former as a higher priority.

That’s fine, it’s her choice, but it does mean that she is not a good candidate for a patriarch looking for wife whose highest priority is family.

But what if she didn’t have the opportunity to marry?
What if she couldn’t find a good man?

She did have opportunity; she didn’t take it. She did find a good man, she rejected him.

Women have a lot of options of the marriage market when they are young; most men would be surprised (and jealous) of how many they do have. Even a woman with below average marriage market value will have far more opportunities to pursue marriage handed to her with minimal effort than even the highest value men will get through huge outlays of effort.

You average women will have met a large number of decent guys throughout her late-teens or early-20s. If she has not married one of them that shows that she either:

  1. Puts a low priority on marriage and children, in which case she is not what a patriarch is looking for.
  2. Had some flaws that were strong enough that no other decent man  pursue he and propose to her, in which case sound judgment would warn any other man to avoid her.
  3. Has far too unrealistic standards of her husband. Anybody who marries her will not be able to live up to them (that includes you, you’re not special), setting the stage for a bad marriage.
  4. She has been open to many suitors and either dated a large number of them or simply had one or two long-term relationships that went nowhere. She didn’t end up marrying them because, for whatever reason, none of the men she dated were of sufficient quality for marriage. In this case, she has shown that she has a history of poor choices regarding the type of men she has allowed into her life. These poor choices shows that she has poor judgment in men, which likely means poor judgment in other areas of life. Poor judgment is not something any patriarch should want to attach themselves to. (Either that or see #3;they were of sufficient quality, she just had unrealistic standards).

A women who is still single by her late-20s is simply not the kind of women any patriarch should be looking to marry. She may be a good women, but she is not the type of women a patriarch should choose.

****

Even if we assume that, somehow, her failure to be married and raising children already are not due to her own choices, there are other considerations that are simply unavoidable at that age.

There is, of course, the biological fact that a women in her 30s is rapidly losing her fertility and there likely won’t be enough time to raise a large family before infertility and/or a high risk of mutation strikes. Even for a women in her late 20s: if you take the time to court her (say a year), then have a child every two years, you’re approaching her 40s by the time you get to child five, which is a bit late to be having children. The amount of children you will be able to have will be limited.

As well, simply living independently for a decade or so following high school/college is itself a problem. By that time, a women will have adapted to her situation as an independent, single adult with little responsibility. Re-adapting back to the interdependence of a marriage will likely present a challenge for her (and her husband). In addition, adapting to the responsibility of a child (let alone many children) at that age following so many years of a lack of responsibility may prove problematic.

****

What of men in their 30s; should young women looking for a patriarch avoid them? It’s kind of sexist to have a double standards.

First, I am writing for young men, not for women and am focusing on what young men should concentrate on. Women have their own things to look for, which I might write about at another time, but this post is not aimed at them.

Second, it’s not a double standard, it’s two different standards. Men and women have different priorities for potential mates. Stop trying to force women’s priorities on men.

Third, a man has not likely had the same opportunities as a women for marriage. As the pursuers in the marriage market place, men do not have the same overwhelming array of options handed to tham from which to choose that women do. They have to work very hard simply to have a small fraction of the options open to your average young woman. (Take heart young man, the situation reverses itself sometime in your 30s). He may have pursued many women who he thought might make good potential wives, without being overly picky, and been shot down by all.

As well, his fertility will last him well into middle/old age, so that worry is off the table.

That being said, there are a couple problems a young women might face with a man in his 30s (or older). He may be approaching the age where his children may be at higher risk of mutation. Also, he has likely gotten used to living independently, just as women have, and will face the same problems settling down.

****

Age by itself is not a perfect guide. For a younger women, rather than being a traditional women wanting to be a patriarch’s helpmeet, she may simply be a gold-digger or someone who believes raising children and being dependent is easier than working. I’m not going to get into that at this time, but will give you this link (which I’ve already used thrice above; read it is essential to this post) once again.

Other things you can look for two distinguish between the two:

  1. Desperation: A traditional women will be looking for a husband, but in a calm, sensible manner. A women with baby rabies will have a tinge of desperation to her.
  2. Singular Focus: Is she focusing on the marriage, you, and children more or less equally, or does her primary focus seem to be having children, while marriage and her potential partner seem secondary?
  3. Particularity: Related to that, does she want your children (or at least a good man’s children) or does she not seem to very selective about who fathers her children?
  4. Preparedness: Has she prepared herself to be a good wife and mother (see previous link) or does she seem to just be acting impulsively?
  5. Timing: Has she always wanted to be a mother, or is this something that just recently appeared for no good reason?
  6. Number: Does she want just one designer baby to fulfill her itch or is she looking to raise a whole family?

That’s probably not a complete list; I’m sure others will have things I missed in the comments. The thing is to recognize that there are potential pitfalls and that just because she says she’s family-oriented and wants children does not necessarily make it so. Use your judgment and consider things rationally to come to the choice that fits your life goals.

****

Just to head off some objections I’m sure will come up.

Aren’t you being judgmental?

Why, yes I am. Thank you for noticing.

Anybody who is not extremely judgmental in choosing the person to whom they are swearing a solemn oath before God, the state, and their family to spend the rest of their lives with is a fool. Anybody who is not even more extremely judgmental in choosing the woman who will be the mother of their his children is an abject fool.

This goes for women as well. If you aren’t extremely judgmental about the kind of man you consider marrying and fathering your children, you are a fool.

This is not to say young men and women should make a large list of stupid superficial requirements for potential mates. Use your reason. Judge on the important things: loyalty, reliability, judgment, shared values, work ethic, shared morality, religion, family attitudes, sexual attractiveness, etc., while being forgiving on the superficial/small things.

This is probably the most important earthly decision you will make in your life. Do not be too compromising.

Aren’t you being unfair about *******? What of *******? Isn’t ******* an exception?

Life’s unfair. Get used to it.

Also, NAWALT, I know.

I am giving young men some rules of thumb to help them make the best decision they can. It is up to them to apply them using their own discretion and judgment.

Rather than whining about how others are unfair and judgmental and how you deserve something just because, look at your own choices and try to change them so you are best able to achieve your goals.

If having a family is important to you, make choices that reflect their importance.

You’re an asshole.

Probably, but that’s irrelevant.

****

Despite my prior dismissal of exceptions, I will note one.

There is the rare exception of the early widow. A women who married (or was engaged) young and was a loyal, loving wife (or fiance), but whose husband (or husband-to-be) died tragically early, is a special circumstance. A widow will likely come with some extra emotional needs (and possibly previous children), but if you are willing and able to comfort and emotionally support her (and raise her children), she could make an excellent wife for the young future patriarch (assuming she meets the other basic requirements you should have).

A faithful widow would also probably make an ideal marriage candidate for an older widower or man who’s been cheated on and/or abandoned by his wife. All things being equal, she would likely would be a much better potential wife (and mother) than either a divorcee or a women who has put off marriage to much later in her life.

Consider it. Think of the example of Ruth and Boaz.

****

* All of the above advice is written particularly for young men in their 20s/early-30s looking to become patriarchs, but anyone else looking to marry should take heed.

****

This post inspired by (h/t: M3):

Lightning Round – 2012/10/03

The science of the rationalization hamster.

Dalrock takes the enemies of marriage in the church to task.

Penis size and science.
The important point: am I bigger than average for my country?
Answer: yes. Boo-yah!

Wow. A good look into the mind of the unhappy modern feminist if you can stomach the entitlement, pointlessness, and poor writing quality. It reads like she just vomited her stream of consciousness on the page.
Wouldn’t she make the best wife?
Aurini administers the truth pills.

A leftist swallows a red pill.
He just needs to swallow some more.

The manosphere is growing. I’ve noticed a lot of new blogs popping up since my relatively new blog started.

Bill is encouraged.
I offer more encouragement.
So do Matt and Aurini.
Bill responds.

Better to have guts than brains.
Related: Sometimes you have to ignore the big picture.

Taking away the rights of women is affirmative action for betas.
A response. The game has been rigged, but most men don’t deserve marriage.
Related: Men today are soft.

Up the Alpha.
Related: The Perfect Man.

She’ll be happier if she does the housework.

The heart is deceitful above all things.

Sheltering your children may leave them as prey.

There is hope for the future.

What love is.

How to end up with a frigid cow of a wife.

Some science: concealed ovulation.

Some freedom pills are dolled out to those who wish to partake.
Related: Remember when dissent was patriotic.
Related: This guy does.

What’s wrong with the Koch brothers?

Maybe libertarians are aspies.

Former Obama Administrator for the NYT: We need death panels.
No kidding. You mean someone has to decide how to ration health care or costs will become unsustainable? Really? Are the people at the NYT retarded? Or am I insulting retards? We all told them this would happen. Idiots.

Calling this guy a jackass is an insult to jackasses.

Hmmm…

Female economists are more likely to support government intervention. Surprising.

What this election is about.

The tribe of liberty needs to stand united.

Why leftists are ugly.

Which colour-coded tribe do you support?
Related: A funny video.

There are probably some lessons to learn here.
There have to be lessons here somewhere. (Irony).

All that spending sure helped those kids. Glad our tax dollars were well spent.
Related: You could buy two houses in Detroit instead.
Related: “the youngest children among U.S. kindergartners (those born in August) were 40% more likely to be diagnosed with ADHD and twice as likely to take ADHD medications as the oldest kindergartners studied (those born in September)”
Related: One guy realizes the damage he did much too late.

Resurrect the Kalmar Union.

(H/T: Instapundit, SDA, the Captain)