The irony of course is that this entire discussion is moot since I had a vasectomy 10 years ago. And while the reasons for having a vasectomy was many, the primary one was that I just could not plain support a child, let alone myself. And bringing a child into this world would not only ruin what pathetic finances I had in the past, but would just not be fair to the theoretical Clarey Spawn.
Of course times change and now at the age of 40 I could theoretically afford a child. I work from home, I have a (albeit small) house. And my source of employment is stable (self employment) guaranteeing the income to put food on the table and pay the mortgage. But though this situation is specific to myself the question everybody should be asking as it applies to millions more is
"40?"
Think about it for a second. Biology and nature says I've been ready to have a child for about the past 28 years. Society, tradition, and law says I should have been able to have a child since I was 18. But why, a full 28 years after I'm able to, and 22 years after society says I "should" have children, is it now that I actually COULD have children?
The answer is economics.
I've pointed it out before, but there is a disconnect between human biology and our current political-economic system. Specifically, today's political-economic structure does NOT allow people to breed when nature is telling them they should. I first was MANDATED to go to school till the age of 18. This was largely a pointless exercise in that nobody today will hire a high school graduate, let alone pay one an adequate salary to raise a family on. This then mandated I go to college for an additional 4 years. Of course, this dumped me into a labor market that would be ravaged by the Dotcom crash and I would limp along employment wise eeking out a meager living teaching dance and working security for the next five years. There was hope working in the banking industry, but this hope was quickly dashed as it was so hopelessly corrupt and dysfunctional (not to mention low paying) that the income security needed to raise a child was never there. Throw in the financial crisis, the housing crash, and the Obama economy, and it wasn't until this Earth made 40 orbits around the sun that I would be in a position to support another human being in this world.
Of course, as mentioned before, this discussion is merely academic. But the point I'm making is that our society, economy, educational system, labor market, government, and employers are making it increasingly difficult, if not impossible to PROPERLY raise a family (and by "properly" I mean the 1950's way, not the ghetto culture, Wyoming way where women spread their legs and ask the government to replace the daddy). And this is sad for it is other humans that is the most important thing in life, and it is usually your spouse and your children that are the most important humans.
Now I can sit here and pontificate arrogantly and cockily because I have no skin in the game. Not only can I "not" have children, I still to this day definitely do not WANT them. But, even with a vasectomy if I wanted to I could still HAVE children. It would require either a direct extraction of sperm from the testes or a reversal of my surgery. But the REAL reason I can take this position is that my sperm does not have an expiration date. My sperm can impregnate any woman from here until I'm dead, carrying on the "great Clarey genetic legacy" if I so chose to.
But the same cannot be said for women.
Naturally, we all know by now that women's eggs have an expiration date. Menopause hits by a certain age, and even then the eggs start to deteriorate in quality post 30-32 running the risk of birth defects etc. We don't need to hammer this point anymore, we are all aware of it. But while women are acutely aware of the tickity tock of their biological clock, what they are completely unaware of is the non-biological side of this formula that is also working against them. Namely the same economic, political, and sociological forces that made it impossible for me to have children until the age of 40. And while that number, 40, may mean nothing to men, it definitely means something to women.
After 40, frankly, forget it ladies. It's over. You're not having kids. And if you try, you're gambling not just with your theoretical child's life, but your own. But before you get all angry at me for being the messenger telling you biological truths, you need to look back and ask who and what made it so it was basically impossible for you to have children and raise a family in today's society.
First there was the same mandatory K-12 education I had to take. In all honesty the average education delivered by the K-12 system could be shrunk down easily to K-8, allowing us an addtional 4 years of youth to pursue a career that would support a family. But who do you think is at the core of stretching out this now-economically worthless education to last 13 years?
Republicans?
Tories?
Conservatives?
The Patriarchy?
No, it's your good socialist friends in the democrat and labor parties who need to
Then there's college. Remember, K-12 education has been so diluted, so dumbed down, NOBODY will hire you. So now you need to spend another 4, more likely 6 years of your youth getting MORE education.
Who predominantly controls acaedemia and benefits from you postponing your life another 4-6 years?
Leftists. You're now 24.
Of course, unlike the first "13 years" of your education, you get to pay an egregious price for your last 6 years of education - tuition. And with that comes an inordinate amount of student debt. Certainly you can't start having a family until you pay this off. But complicating this issue is that the economy hasn't been growing this slow since the Great Depression, making good paying jobs scarce, and your student loans a monkey on your back for at least 6 years.
But who told you you needed to go to college? Who pushed you to get a masters? And who told you to vote against those "evil" corporations, rich people, investors, and all those other entities that create those JOBS you'd need to pay off your student loans?
Hmmm...that would be leftists. Congratulations, you're now 30.
Now here things are a little different, for while at this age men are FINALLY allowed to start working off their student loans, start a real career, and maybe work up a down payment for a house, women are barraged with propaganda to do something else. Namely, what feminists have been telling them to do for their entire post-pubescent lives - live life, party, you go girl (TM), travel, climb that corporate ladder, have it all, etc., etc., etc.
And so do women starve themselves, live in basements, get out of debt, and start looking for a proper suitor to raise a family with?
Hell no!
NOW it's time to PAAAARTAAAY!!!!!
Let the flirtini's flow, the car payments commence, and the accumulation of shoes begin as you store it all in an overpriced downtown flat you can barely afford! You've EARNED IT GIRLFRIEND!
And so prompted by feminism (not to mention corporate interests of the likes of Vogue, Oprah, etc.) you party another 10 years.
But if I recall correctly aren't Oprah, Jezebel, feminism, and all those writers at all those snarkey cheeky lifestyle magazines are leftist? Congratulations, you're now 40 (but don't worry, you're a "cougar!")
And finally, how can we forget the final nail in your eggs' coffin driven in by feminism? The blatant, bald-faced lie that looks don't matter.
You were GORGEOUS just the way you were girl!
You are BODY POSITIVE!!!!
Big is beautiful!!!
And any man has mommy issues if he doesn't want to sleep with a human oil tanker.
He's also "shallow" and a "jerk."
Of course looks do matter, tremendously, to men. But alas, you wanted to believe sweet lies over harsh truth and lived a lie your entire life, making you not only too old to have children, but physically unable to attract a mate. So super-congratulations! You believed the (again, LEFTIST ideology of) feminism and have now not only ruined any chance of having a family, but attracting a mate as well.
I could go on, but the larger point I want all women to understand is that it is NOT
The "Patriarchy"
The Republican's "War on Women"
"Lad culture"
"Rape culture"
"White Males" or
"Evil Corporations"
who are ruining your lives.
It's the left.
It is the left who wants to enslave you at a school where you learn nothing till you're 18.
It is the left who mandates you into thinking you need a college education to have any worth in this society.
It is the left that tells you you are oppressed and need to be freed, replacing your family with a career.
It is the left that convinces you to ignore the biological programming and demands of the (necessary) half of humanity needed to bring and raise children in this world.
And it is the left that tells you you need to spend money on stupid crap to have fulfillment in life.
In reality, all they are doing is taking
your money,
your youth,
your vote,
your love,
your family, and
your life
just so they can stay in power and enrich themselves. And once they have sucked as much of your financial and life blood out of you, they will dump your ass into the real world. A world you are WOEFULLY unprepared for, and one you offer nothing of value to.
So please wake up and take the time to identify who your true enemies are. If not, enjoy your masters degree, cats, body-positive "slut walks," and articles about freezing your eggs.
_____________________________________________________
http://aaron-clarey.podomatic.com/
http://www.assholeconsulting.com
https://www.youtube.com/user/AaronClarey
https://twitter.com/aaron_clarey
http://www.amazon.com/Aaron-Clarey/e/B00J1ZC350/
My husband and I had this very conversation yesterday. While we had childeren young, and then even adopted (when I was 40) it was a constant financial "challenge".
ReplyDeleteYour analysis is summarized in this recent artwork :
ReplyDeletehttps://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/dc84b2c1cde3b7051995df184c6f91828186d06c717faa2eda0a9b5fcb3c2f2c.jpg
"In all honesty the average education delivered by the K-12 system could be shrunk down easily to K-8..."
ReplyDeleteHow about K-0? You are giving the government indoctrination camps far too much credit. Take a look at something called "unschooling".
Also, I think the left-right thing is just another distraction. Government schooling was at least as much a rightist invention as a leftist one. Invented in Prussia...
The real beneficiaries are the people in government, with the ruling class on top of them. Doesn't matter what political label attaches to them.
"In all honesty the average education delivered by the K-12 system could be shrunk down easily to K-8..."
ReplyDeleteHow about K-0? You are giving the government indoctrination camps far too much credit. Take a look at something called "unschooling".
Also, I think the left-right thing is just another distraction. Government schooling was at least as much a rightist invention as a leftist one. Invented in Prussia...
The real beneficiaries are the people in government, with the ruling class on top of them. Doesn't matter what political label attaches to them.
Every American our age or younger should be PISSED OFF because of this.
ReplyDeleteYes Captain, you would have made a fine father.
I share your anger (and your dislike for socialism). Two days after my son was born - when it was clear he was healthy - I had my vasectomy for the same reason: financial. My wife and I were both unemployed college students at the time, and it was hard to imagine affording two or more children down the road. In hindsight, we could have done it with ease as we avoided those costly mistakes you mention, like student loans.
I'll share this in my next tab-clearing post.
I dropped out of high school to go on the road as a rock musician .... I was 18 .... I never wanted kids for the same reasons, I never felt that I would be able to properly support a family, so I decided not to have one. Then I accidentally got a girl pregnant, but with her help of course .... she wanted a rock musician husband and this was her ploy. This happened back in 1968 so values were a tad more conservative back then and I agreed to marry to raise the boy. Then as my teen appeal waned, I needed to get a real job in the real world. Seven years later after limited financial success and a realization that I hated this women I married, but cared about the child, I wanted out ... then ... she suddenly ran off with the drummer from my part time week-end bar band in Northern Ontario.
ReplyDeleteShe was so into her new life and new boyfriend that she gave me a divorce and sole custody of the child. I promptly move out west and started a business .... by the time that happened I was ...... 40 ... yes that is correct. I was able to support a family after forty years of relative poverty, I had now arrived .... when the boy reached age 20 ... he moved down to the USA spent some time with his mother and for some unknown reason ... hasn't talked to me since ..... 28 years and counting .... I was right to not want kids ... they are ingrates.
It doesn't take money to raise a child. It takes a lot of faith--in God, in yourself, and in your spouse. A child needs much less than the government or entertainment media says. I know from the experience of my own family. My mother was one of 15 children, she loved her big family. She and my Dad raised 6 children, five born and one adopted. She wanted many more than that, but he'd been raised with only one sister and felt that 6 was a huge family. The only reason my husband and I don't have ten children is because we didn't meet and marry until we were 31 and 30. We had five children and three weeks after the fifth was born we celebrated our 10th wedding anniversary. If we'd begun ten years earlier we could have had another five children. A child needs loving parents, food, shelter and clothing. As any parent will tell you, toys are not a necessity, as children like to play with whatever is around them, pots and pans, boxes and egg cartons, spoons and plastic containers, etc. Books are easily gotten at the library; clothing is cheap at yard sales and thrift stores; as is furniture. Reading accounts of earlier colonist, and later pioneers helps to alleviate the fears that you won't have enough money to raise children. Most people throughout the world have done it on very little. It's all about what is important to you. If having children is important, you will find a way.
ReplyDeleteChoose not to believe the lies told about how much money it costs to raise a child. Choose to have a child because you have faith in how you can raise a competent, contributing human being and make the world a better place.
Related to this is the rampant conspicuous consumption that drives our society. In my humble opinion the Captain could do a post on the movie "they live", but dedicate it to Roddy Piper, RIP. That movie opened my eyes many years ago.
ReplyDeleteThis is quite an article. I can only quarrel with your grammar; your logic, and the facts you adduce to it, are solid. But if you were to have someone else read your stuff over for low-level errors before you post it, it would be better still.
ReplyDeleteI do believe education is important. However once you reach the point where they are teaching you crap like Shakespeare and poetry they might as well admit they have nothing left of value to teach you.
ReplyDeleteWhen I went to high school they had removed any sort of thing like autoshop or mechanical training of any kind. In my younger years though we had an unofficial class where you could go to during recess and lunch. They allowed us to use woodworking equipment and had pottery making also if that interested you. Grade 5 to grade 9.
So there I was 11 years old ripping 2x4's in half on a table saw after less than a minute of training. Anyone think they would let you do that these days? Those lessons to work with my hands are still valuable to this day.
Too much of what we learned at school was useless
How I'd handle it:
ReplyDeleteFirst, set graduation requirements for elementary school. Be able to read, write, and do arithmetic. And some basic geography, history, and civics, just in case they don't finish high school before reaching voting age. Nobody gets into high school without a primary certificate.
Second, get rid of middle school. Kids in that age group are thenceforth either enrolled in the 'Extended Primary' program which is simply some extra time to finish elementary school -- or they are enrolled in 'Junior High' which will simply be an early start on high school.
Third, add a vocational certificate and a couple semesters of home economics to all high school graduation requirements. Either you're not going to college and need a way to support yourself as an adult, or you're going to college and need a way to pay your school bills, and support yourself as an adult.
Get that all established, and I daresay there'd be a sharp upturn in the number of people able to start families at age 20.
Captain, we've got new sex dolls:
ReplyDeletewww.youtube.com/watch?v=MgDHxaC_VwU
Feminists will kill themselves if they hear about it.
See a urologist about having your vasectomy reversed. It can be done.
ReplyDeleteA capitalist can look to see where jobs are. If I became a plumber electrician or even a trucker. I could have had enough to own a small business by age 40. Also earn enough for a family. No degree required. I am a 37 year old RN and I have 3 kids and I started kids at age 30. Sorry your career path didn't work for you. God give s children and He provides for families.
ReplyDeleteIt's not as easy as it once was but it is possible. I have seen men own lawn care companies they started when 18 that out earn me. Part of capitalism is finding what others are not willing to do or can't do and doing it well.
The problem is the skills taught in school just don't pack much millage these days, whereas 50 years ago those skills, which we now take for granted, would have lead to many more opportunities. Stuff like History, art, algebra ..pretty much everything beyond basic reading and basic math is waste of time for 95% of students. Schools should be teaching how to create websites, how html works, how supply and demand works, how a budget works...things that aren't that complicated but very useful to know.
ReplyDelete"Now I can sit here and pontificate arrogantly and cockily because I have no skin in the game."
ReplyDeleteYou can get some skin in the game and have a faint idea if you would indeed make a great dad or not. Become a big brother and accompany a child that lacks a father.
This will give you a good idea.
"Too much of what we learned at school was useless"
ReplyDelete----------------------------------------------------------------
That situation might not be accidental.
Hi Captain,
ReplyDeleteThe politically incorrect science says that even sperm get worse in time. i think it logically right, since its being generated by a broken, older human body.
So, there is a risk of problem child when the sperm is by 40 year old men or older.
http://genetics.thetech.org/older-dads%E2%80%99-kids-higher-risk-genetic-disease
i don't know if this link can be trusted. but google old sperm link and there might be more verified publication.
but the logic is there. broken machine generate broken product.
Kids cost money. Yup. But not that much. They cost time, especially if you homeschooling which you should for the reasons you outline. But that is no reason not to have them.
ReplyDeleteYesterday the boys and I went for a hike up a hill to a lookout. Ran into a bear. Retreated in good order because we'd talked about it and researched it and my youngest, 11, clapped all the way down the hill just to be sure. Tonight he and I began The Crying of Lot 49 for bed time reading because Pynchon makes more sense when you're 11. (But weird as shit to read out loud.)
Having kids is not actually something you can do cost/benefit on. You either work it out or cower in the trailer and blame the socialists. If you're 40 and still cowering you probably would fail the Dad test. I had my last boy at 48...I can still outrun him if chased by bears.
I was just reading F. Roger Devlin's essay on Home Economics:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.thornwalker.com/ditch/devlin_home_ec_01.htm
Explains everything you need to know about why women are favoring careers over children. Hint: It starts with "F" and ends with "eminism". (Okay, it was also caused by technological changes as well. Stupid men, always trying to make humanity's lives better by inventing labor saving devices that priced their fellow men out of the labor market....)
If schools really were meant to prepare kids for the future, it would teach them practical skills related to mining, manufacture, farming and STEM. It would also devote a large amount of time to teaching women how to run a house properly, how to cook, how to budget, the biological realities of waiting to have children, etc.
But of course, schools aren't meant to help kids prepare for the future. They're indoctrination camps, meant to teach the kids how wunnerful Socialism is and to set the kiddies up for their adult lives as serfs, paying off college debts for degrees in Eskimo Mythology. How else are those school administrators going to afford their third summer homes and their expensive junkets in Honolulu?
I'm probably going to swear, Cappy.
ReplyDeleteSat down today with one of the medical students. Female: two thirds of them are. Lovely young woman: bright, keen, going to be a darn good doctor. I want her to succeed.
So I tell her to work her tail off for the four years needed to get her part I exam (two years MANDATED house officer then the two years specialist training you need to have enough patient time to pass) the go part time and get a life.
Because by then she will be over 30. And it makes me want to puke. In my day you could (keen young girl in med school) work part time from graduation, take time off an be a Mom... but that dies 18 years ago because for sprog I my medical wife (aged 37 by then) TOOK a year off and enjoyed in, but for spawn two (aged 39) she HAD to go back to work or she would lose her registration.
The irony is that the head of the medical council who drove these laws through... was a woman and a staunch feminist.
Young man and woman, unless you are a born geek (or scholar: I'm raising two of them) DO NOT GO TO COLLEGE. Get an apprenticeship, work for the Cappy, start a business, and fins someone when young healthy and have kids.
Because otherwise you won't be able to have more than two or so. Because if you don't by the time you find that man and decide to have kids your body will be not able to keep up with the kids. Because otherwise you will end up going to the gym (at 54) and training just to keep up with your teenage kids.
And because college is now dangerous for any male, and toxic to any female.
Oh darn. I won't be able to afford kids in my 20s.
ReplyDeleteWhat a shame because I'm so envious of all those parents out there who spend 40% of their paycheck on just diapers.
Yup. I'm really missing out.
I'm imagining what your "theoretical Clarey Spawn" would say ...
ReplyDelete"Aw Dad, I'm enjoying YOUR decline!" :-)
Stay frosty.
The high figures on the cost of raising children is based on the magic math used by feminists to justify high child support payments. Things like if an apartment costs $800 for a woman alone, and a two bedroom apartment costs $1000 a month, then $1000 divided by 2 means $500 a month to house a kid, when the true figure is $200, and his half is $100.
ReplyDeleteAnonymous age 73
Spot on.
ReplyDeleteMakes me so glad I "ruined my life" (a professor's words, not mine) by having a kid at 24, living in a beat-up 30-year-old singlewide trailer, sharing a car, and putting my husband through school.
THE REASON that I'm banging the NEXT school year's "education" into my kids and demanding that they learn a trade. THE REASON that I'm strongly encouraging the oldest (14 in a few weeks) to GET A JOB, get a crappy minimum-wage job, not even for the money but for all the things she WILL NEVER LEARN IN SCHOOL.
If I let society tell my how to raise these kids, they'd all be screwed. They might be screwed anyway, but at least if they are it will be their choice. They have been given good advice, made to practice it, and taught to live in another way.