Tag Archives: Children

Not Much Time Left

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My return to work date is less than 2 weeks away, and I’m not sure how that happened. Two months sounds like a lot, but indeed, it is not at all when it comes to transitioning to life with a baby. Even at this point, I have not reached a comfortable or familiar pattern. I am constantly torn between wanting to do nothing and everything. After being on two courses of antibiotics, I’m really trying to take it easy, but it’s hard to know how. The more I do, the more overwhelmed I become, but the less I do, the more anxious I become about not doing anything. 

I fluctuate inexplicably between wanting some time to myself without a baby attached to my body for hours a day, and literally not wanting to go downstairs to play piano because I don’t want to be too far from Little V. It makes no fucking sense. Sometimes I crave social interaction, but then the problems and timing associated with feeding, pumping, and changing make me never want to leave the house. Or the bed, for that matter.

Another difficult thing I’ve had to grapple with is how many fuckups there are because I simply know nothing and am completely unprepared. Every time we think we’ve figured something out, it stops working after a couple of days (which apparently is an expected phenomenon). Every time I think I’ve taken all reasonable measures in furtherance of a mess-free feeding or pumping session, some minor disaster occurs and I end up covered in milk, or with a new batch of laundry to do. Every time I make what I believe to be a productive effort to bathe her, trim her nails, or clean up, it seems the effort is undone within a day (crazy how quickly those razor sharp nails grow – they are not kind when she decides to give my nipple a squeeze).

I started elimination communication training with great zeal, but after a week or so, it’s feeling like too much effort for too little gain. I also wonder whether I’m training her or she’s training me. I’ve tried to pay attention to her cues before she goes pee and poo, and don’t feel I’ve made much progress. Apparently, we are both failing at training each other. I know it’s borderline ridiculous to have such expectations at 6 weeks anyway, but I read Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother at an (in?)opportune time, which has inspired me, but also created a nagging voice in the back of my head telling me not to be lazy about being a parent, especially when I am not working. If I let things slide now, just how indolent will I be when I go back to work in 2 weeks?

As I finished the paragraph above, Little V gave some grunting cues indicating she wanted to poo. I figured I’d finish just the last two sentences, but in the 2 minutes it took me to do so, she had pooped and I missed the opportunity for potty training. Tiger mom would be tsking me.

Husband and I discussed working from home one day a week, but at 2 weeks out from my return to work date, I have not raised this with my boss yet. I’m going to have to bring this up within the next couple of days and I’m not real keen on having this conversation, mostly because I’m quite sure how to approach it. Instead, I’ve asked the office to throw me some work so I can get back into the swing of things, and prove by my actions that I’m fairly efficient and reliable when working from home.

The good part is I am indeed reliable and efficient. The bad part is then I don’t feel I am making the most of maternity leave. Rather than starting the day slowly, listening to some music, reading to Little V, blogging, and practicing a little elimination communication, I set up my laptop work station, put her in a rocker, and plow away at research and memos while peeking on her every once in a while. I’ve tried to type one-handed while feeding her, but that was excruciatingly inefficient.

I have no idea how I am going to return to work in a functional manner, given the current circumstances. I’m sure this is no news to veteran moms, but our morning routine is an unexpectedly time-consuming process alone. Feeding and pumping takes about an hour, and even though I can get myself ready in 15 minutes, I figure even if I skip breakfast, I still have to wake up at an ungodly hour to be able to take her to daycare and arrive at work on time. And I might add that when it comes to babies, she seems relatively easy: she sleeps through noise, she sleeps in long stretches at night, and she does not cry much.

I am constantly wondering how this will all work out logistically. I feel pained at the idea of sending her to daycare already, even though I have an ideal situation when it comes to daycare – she will be taken care of by family. Given my highly fortunate and favorable circumstances, I question how any other mother, perhaps with fussier babies, no family nearby, ever make it out alive.

It Was Coming Right At Me!

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Cops have been in the news for murdering innocent people, raping women, beating their wives, and killing dogs. Most recently, goats have been the target of law enforcement. Because you know, heroes in blue certainly can’t be expected to behave like normal fucking human beings and deal with animals in a non-violent manner. Barking dog? Shoot it. Hissing cat? Shoot it. Don’t know what to do with stray kittens? Shoot them. Somehow, mailmen, door-to-door sales people, and girl scouts can navigate the dangers of domesticated pets without resorting to deadly force, but cops can’t seem to fucking figure it out.

A Portland farmer was upset because an asshole cop killed his goat, which had inadvertently escaped through a hole in his fence. The farmer came upon the cop and his poor goat, who was bleeding and gasping for breath. The cop was not embarrassed to actually state, “‘Yeah, it was either me or the goat” because he was intimidated by the goat’s size. Maybe if you can’t fucking handle a goddamn goat, you should not be allowed to have a gun or be a fucking police officer. The owner of the $1,200 goat from New Zealand who sounds like he smokes a lot of weed responded, “Man, there are 7-year-old kids that deal with these goats. Infants that deal with these.”

There you have it. People deemed America’s heroes are more cowardly than children and infants.

In other news, a more recalcitrant goat attempted to headbutt police officers who were encroaching on his marijuana patch, but was (surprisingly) not harmed during the drug bust.

Never Fuck Men Who Are Anti-Abortion

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The Brisbane Times reports a Catholic school teacher threatened  to send an email to the staff and parents of the school at which he worked with a colleague if the colleague went through with a planned abortion. He has been charged with 3 counts of rape for threatening to release explicit videos and mar the reputation of a colleague if she refused to continue in a relationship and have sex with him. The man, who remains anonymous (but shouldn’t – the media should let us know who this vile mother fucker is) pleaded not guilty and claimed he took these measures as a “last resort” to prevent the woman from “murdering” his child.

And this is why women should never, ever, ever have sex with men who are anti-abortion.

Men who are against abortion think of women as less than human, because they value clumps of unconscious cells over the mind, desires, preferences, and bodily integrity of full-grown human women. These are the types of men who would sooner sentence 9-year-olds and 11 year-olds to a lifetime of depression, anxiety, and irreparable health consequences than permit her to abort a fetus created out of rape.

Most people do not value the preferences and needs of plants, snails, chickens, or goats, all constituting one form of biological life or another, over the lives and happiness of other people. Essentially then, men of this ilk who have sex with women are comparable to men who engage in bestiality. They have sex with creatures they perceive to be subhuman, over whom they believe they have intellectual and physical dominion, because it is more comfortable and convenient for their insecure egos. To these men, women are human-like, but are primarily vessels for propagation of a man’s DNA. Therefore, when faced with a situation in which the subhuman creature does not yield and succumb to this caveman’s expectations or desires, these primitive men may resort to threats, extortion, and/or violence to get their way in the name of “morality.”

It’s not that these men respect “life” in general. These same men are not using extortion, violence, and laws to prevent people from killing goats or pigs for food, or hunting bears and elephants for sport, all of which have more mental capacity and consciousness than many early stage fetuses. They are not bombing in vitro fertilization clinics to protest the countless fertilized eggs idly sitting around, or even being destroyed in medical laboratories.

Rather, the highly selective concern for “life” is limited to clumps of cells that reside in women’s bodies, and their insistence on using violence, force, and threats in furtherance of propagation of that “life” is limited to coercing women into spreading genes. Disingenuously, the only time such a clump of cells matters, is when the burden, inconvenience, or threat to life and limb must be borne by a human woman. This convenient concern for otherwise indistinguishable cells is without any ostensible or reasonable basis compared to concern for the lives of lions, tigers, baboons, or zygotes in petri dishes, and can only be explained by misogyny.

These men believe that just as a pig or cow on a farm has no inherent right to determine the terms or circumstances of reproduction, neither do women. It is the farmer who has the right to decide whether and when to increase the size of his stock for the good of the herd, and it is men and/or society who have the right to tell women whether and when to reproduce for the collective good of the (human) farm.

Certainly, if one does choose to have sex with such a base man of this mentality, resulting in pregnancy, abortions can be procured in secret, but why even accord such a disgusting person the privilege to begin with? There is no reason on earth to ever fuck someone who first and foremost, does not even recognize a woman’s fundamental humanity and right to self-determination.

Thus, unless one is completely comfortable with fucking a man who fucks donkeys and sheep, one should be just as uneasy as fucking a man who is against abortion. Because to that kind of man, you are the donkey.

Thoughts on Ignorance as a Cause of Post-Partum Depression

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I am not a psychiatrist, a medical specialist, or even a scientist, but I have a sneaking suspicion that post-partum depression, while obviously a complex condition, is rooted at least in part in one phenomenon: distorted expectations from lack of sufficient and accurate information.

Likely owing to society’s desire to increase the population of humans, and general squeamishness and avoidance of gross subjects, most women are exposed to only a very topical and rosy view of pregnancy, birth, and motherhood throughout their lives leading up to the decision to reproduce. Everyone’s heard of “pregnancy glow.” On the other hand, things like pregnancy constipation, pregnancy constant flatulence, pregnancy insomnia, pregnancy leaking of urine, and pregnancy leaking of amniotic fluid are less frequently mentioned, if at all. After labor, everyone knows about the “bundle of joy,” but probably not the bundle of shit on the delivery table.

Unless a woman happens to keep company with a horde of brutally honest women who don’t mind sharing things like a desire to literally die during childbirth because of the horrible pain (thanks mom!); how badly their vaginas tore, got infected, then tore again; among other horrifying stories not fit for dinner conversation, a woman may find herself pregnant and learning these very real possibilities for the first time. Society wants you to think of the glow, not the farting, leaking, pain, tearing, and shitting, because if women carefully considered all these downsides, some undoubtedly would have second thoughts. It is true the more women know and contemplate the implications of these realities, the more careful they are going to be about their decision to reproduce, but this should not be a bad thing.

Again, I’m not a medical professional, but I speculate jumping into pregnancy imagining the glow and the rewards of motherhood, then being subsequently ambushed by a slew of physical ailments, followed by serious physical compromise or injury during labor, topped off with the reality of becoming responsible for a squirming, screaming, crying, shitting bundle of mess all while suffering sleep deprivation and possible problems with breastfeeding, is an easy recipe for depression.

This is exactly why all women should seek out all the relevant information, both positive and negative before deciding to have children. Having worked in the field of healthcare law for many years, I know the detailed and precise description of risks and complications, both common and rare, discussed with women before they have so much as an appendix removal, brow lift, or boob job. For almost all surgeries, no matter how minor, physicians will review risks, benefits, and alternatives, providing an overview of common complications, expected outcomes, and even some remote risks, such as death. They are required to do this for every procedure, even life-saving surgeries most people in their right mind would never refuse. The basic rationale behind this practice is that people should know what they are getting into, and that includes not only common and expected risks and outcomes, but at least an idea of remote and unlikely complications as well.

Yet, as it relates to reproduction, a completely elective choice in this day and age, women hear merely about “pregnancy glow,” “bundle of joy,” and perhaps vague references to fatigue and morning sickness before committing to something of significant medical, physical, and emotional impact not only for the next 9 months, but indeed, possibly for the next 18 years. With this in mind, it’s actually amazing more women do not suffer post-partum depression.

Of course, while society has a tendency to give women inaccurate impressions, women need to take responsibility for their own decisions. I doubt many women look into the full panoply of risks, complications, and outcomes associated with pregnancy, labor, and the post-partum period in great detail before deciding to become pregnant; I know I didn’t, and I am actually someone who really took my sweet time deciding to have children at all. I had cataloged in the back of my mind a collection of horror stories from honest women over the years, and went into this with an understanding of a lot of worst case scenarios, because that’s my personality. I figured if I could accept the possibility of these worst case scenarios, then I would not have any regrets, but as far as being actually informed, this is totally not sufficient, and I met with plenty of surprises upon finding myself pregnant.

As with most things in life, preparation is key, and I surmise the more women know, the more they can do to prepare emotionally and physically, and the less shock and disappointment they will experience, which in turn would reduce the likelihood of post-partum depression.

Is Your Daughter Going to Be a Slut? Take this Quiz To Find Out!

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Desperate to know whether your little princess has a future as a ho-bag or slut in store for her? Take this simple quiz to find out. Keep track of your score for each question. At the end, give yourself 5 points for each “yes” answer, and 0 points for each “no” answer.

  1. Did your wife eat enough kale while pregnant?
  2. Did your wife consume too much sugar while pregnant?
  3. On a scale of 1-10, how good looking are you?
  4. On a scale of 1-10, how hot is your wife?
  5. Is your wife a hoochie?

Just kidding. This is not a real quiz. And the answer for anyone taking it is, “Who fucking cares?”

Men in their late twenties and thirties everywhere who slutted it up in their youth and find themselves expecting, or father to, a young daughter have this bizarre concern their precious princess is going to grow up to be a loose woman. I do not know where this fear comes from, as it takes two people to have sex, and if these men enjoyed slutting it up so much in their youth, they should view slutty women as a boon and source of great joy to men everywhere, not something to be feared. I love drinking beer, traveling, and eating. Therefore, I would not have any irrational fear of raising a son who becomes a lover of beer, traveling, or eating. See how that works?

Oh, wait. Sex is different. Women aren’t supposed to enjoy sex, so all those slooties these men slept with in their youth were defective, broken, or immoral. This mentality strains logic to the breaking point, yet is shockingly common. Men somehow want to constantly fuck different people, but cannot bear the idea the women on the receiving end might do the same and enjoy it. Why? I don’t know. Maybe because they are rapists at heart. I think it entirely fair to characterize it as such, if these men truly enjoy going around feeling like they’ve conquered a bunch of unwilling, unhappy, and begrudging participants, who obviously cannot possibly be moral, normal, or healthy individuals if they actually want the sex. There is no way around this logic. Every time a guy fucks a woman, hopefully, that woman is consenting to it and enjoying it. If a guy has consensual sex, there is presumably a woman on the other end who wanted to have it with him. This isn’t fucking rocket science.

Or maybe the real fear is just that – these men come to a realization that they were predating upon women they believed to be emotionally unbalanced, weak, not in the right mind, and/or semi-retarded, and fear their daughters may face similar predators. In that event, the men with these concerns should reflect upon their lifetime of asshole behavior, rather than project their fears into a sick need to obsess over their daughters’ sexuality. Additionally, maybe the focus should be on raising a happy, well-balanced, non-retarded daughter instead of fretting over the number of dicks that might go inside her vagina. The order of priorities could not possibly be more absurd here.

Even in 2017, some men are unable to grasp the concept that individual women own their own sexuality; men – whether husbands, boyfriends, fathers, or brothers – do not. A woman is like, a human being and stuff. Women have sexual desires just like the other 50 percent of humanity. Men fail to understand they sound like total neanderthals when they talk about using guns to threaten their daughter’s boyfriends. They do realize this is the acceptable, westernized version of certain fundamentalist Muslims who treat their daughters and wives like property and guard their sexuality with head-to-toe covering, right?

Making violent threats of murder no less, against innocent young boys trying to date your daughter is not funny. It is not cute or merely being “overprotective.” It is fucking disturbed and psychotic. I have a nice brother, about 5 1/2 years younger than me, who is a good person, and whom I love. I was probably a gun-hating liberal in his early days of high school, but if I learned some deranged dad of some princess threatened him with a gun, I would have been on Google searching the fastest way to get my own fucking gun to threaten to blow that dad’s head off myself. If you think threatening to stone or beat women to protect their chastity is lunacy, you should find violent threats against innocent, young, male suitors for the purpose of protecting your daughter’s virginity equally insane.

It is literally the same concept. Male relatives who think they have a right to use violence to enforce their female family members’ chastity – whether against the woman herself, or against perceived violators of that chastity – do so because they feel entitled to control female sexuality, “purity,” and ultimately, reproduction. They likely can articulate no reasonable explanations as to why they feel compelled to control sexuality or reproduction, but it’s certainly traced back to the base and patriarchal construct that emphasizes the need for women to be virgins. This is 2017, people. Your daughter is not a piece of property; she owns herself, and by extension, she also owns her personality, her desires, her actions, and her sexuality. There are few things in existence in the United States in 2017 that are more embarrassingly unprogressive and backwards than this.

And please don’t insult anyone’s intelligence by arguing the “biology” card. While there are obvious biological differences between men and women, these are far too minor to justify society’s drastically disparate treatment of men versus women’s sexuality. Further, even assuming your bullshit biological “argument” is correct, biology does not dictate morality. Biology explains why children are more likely to be murdered by their stepfathers than biological fathers, but this says absolutely nothing about the morality of murdering stepchildren. Stepfathers don’t want to waste resources on children who do not pass on their genetic material, and are more likely to kill unrelated children. But even though biology explains this phenomenon, the explanation is nevertheless irrelevant to the ethics involving murdering children. Similarly, whether biology explains how women behave sexually is irrelevant to the ethics or morality of telling women how they should behave sexually.

If you want to dwell on biology, arguably, men invented this patriarchal idea that women love being virgins, hate sex, and only want it with one person because evolutionarily speaking, men want to pass on their own DNA (and no one else’s), and therefore wanted to guarantee they did not spend energy and resources being cuckolded and raising a child who biologically belonged to another man. But again, irrespective of what accurate or inaccurate biological explanations may exist, this is entirely irrelevant to ethics and morality. Also, newsflash: paternity tests were invented in the 1960’s, and there is no longer any excuse for a creepy obsession with seeking unmarred virgins under the guise of wanting to preserve your DNA. You can always find out with an extremely high degree of accuracy whether a woman is carrying your DNA or not. See e.g. Various episodes of Maury and Jerry Springer. It seems the classy, educated gentlemen featured on those shows are capable of grasping the benefits of a paternity test. Men who haven’t caught onto this nifty invention are a good 60 years behind the times. Let me emphasize that part about being “backwards” once more.

Then, there’s the crowd favoring the “emotional problem” argument alongside the “biology” argument. This group couches the thinly-veiled criticism of women who love sex in falsely sympathetic terms, in that they pretend they only shun or dislike sluts because they claim it is evidence of some kind of emotional or mental illness in women. Again, I fail to see how a man who loves having sex is normal, but a woman in the same situation is mentally or emotionally ill; regardless, this sentiment is nonsense for other reasons. Don’t think you can bullshit me with this kind of false concern about the emotional well-being of women, because I know the men pulling this lame excuse aren’t also irrationally and inexplicably concerned about their female fetus or 4-year old princess becoming an alcoholic, drug abuser, manic-depressive, narcissist, sociopath, or psychopath, which are equally if not more common, and much more serious and destructive emotional problems. Read: “I don’t care if my daughter is a half-retarded heroin junkie sociopath – just please don’t let it be the case that she loves sex!”

I thought I was slightly neurotic because I daydream of animal costumes for my fetus (cat ears! leopard print!) and have detailed mental debates on which classical instrument she should play (piano if we choose a traditional lifestyle, violin or cello if we decide to live a nomadic one), but I’m pretty sure being scared of how many dicks will one day see her vagina encompasses a crazy of epic proportions.

My parents basically never had any discussions about sex with me, and left that task up to public schooling and my friends. However, I recall one time in high school, when my friend joked in front of my mother that her mother thought she was a big whore. My mother raised her eyebrows and said something to the effect of, “Don’t worry about being a whore. Just don’t get AIDS and don’t get pregnant.” I probably laughed hysterically at the time, but in retrospect, this is practical and reasonable advice for a 15 year-old girl.

My husband and I are concerned about whether our future daughter will be intelligent, healthy, and happy. We do not give two donkey shits about whether one day many years down the road she might have sex with more men than the acceptable number set by society. If you do, your priorities might be in the wrong place.

Thoughts on an Article I read Pertaining to the Economics of Marriage and Divorce

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I recently read The Economics of Marriage and Divorce on FEE.org, which raised some interesting points. The article starts out in an informative manner, and is rightly critical of state meddling, regulation, and intervention in the private matters of marriage and divorce. However, the article goes on to say,

Another turning point was no-fault divorce, which was first introduced in California in 1969 and has spread to almost every state. In no-fault divorce, a spouse does not need to prove wrongdoing but can merely claim incompatibility. It is sometimes called unilateral divorce because one party can request it; the other cannot refuse. Moreover, marital conduct cannot be used as a factor in determining the division of property. The arrangement is set by law, not by the parties involved.

The writer cites to skyrocketing divorce rates as a result of No-Fault Divorce policies, and goes as far to quote a Men’s Rights Activist who laments, “You can be forcibly separated from your children, your home, and your property, also through literally ‘no fault’ of your own. Failure to cooperate with the divorce opens the innocent spouse to criminal penalties. No-fault divorce made divorce far more destructive by allowing the state to undertake court proceedings against innocent people, confiscate everything they have, and incarcerate them without trial.”

I don’t think “No-Fault Divorce” should have required a law to begin with, as no one should be forced by the long dick of the law to stay in an unhappy or even abusive relationship, but the reality is the law wants to have an opinion on just about everything, and this particular regulation (really, it seems to be the negation of a prior regulation – Fault Divorce law) happens to be one that is in accordance with the principles of liberty. Consider the alternative. If one spouse wants to leave, should the other truly have the right to refuse and to enforce that refusal? One may not want to lose their spouse and face terrible financial consequences, which are exacerbated by government laws, but the answer should not be to force people with government laws to continue to be legally bound together against their will.

I will never forget when my high school English teacher from sophomore year casually related a story of her marriage to her first husband, who was regularly physically abusive. She literally had to show up at court with bruises on her body, with a witness in tow (a friend), and both of them had to testify to the horrors of her husband’s beatings for her to be able to legally obtain a divorce. There are numerous abhorrent aspects of family law, but No-Fault Divorce’s abandonment of antiquated ideas of people as slaves or property is not one of them. Do we really want to return to the days of Fault Divorce? Is this author really a feminist?

Strangely, this article describes in great detail how financially destructive and downright devastating divorce can be – then proceeds to nonsensically argue the current legal state of marriage is such that marriages are insufficient contracts because they essentially are agreements that “can be unilaterally broken without consequences”  …Say what?

Admittedly, one person initiating a divorce and dragging the other unwilling party through unwanted consequences is lamentable. The fact the consequences can be so severe, expensive, and dire, is largely the fault of other government policies, as the writer rightly points out, but the answer is not to require someone to prove “fault” – e.g. adultery, cruelty, abandonment, mental illness, and criminal conviction – or be forced to remain in a marriage. Indeed, for an article coming from FEE.org, I have to point out it is the very antithesis of libertarianism to advocate a person be forced to remain in a marriage unless they prove certain elements of fault, just because some number of years ago they made vague promises to be “patient” and “kind” and to be together “forever.”

While there are a great many things wrong with family and divorce law, this Men’s Rights Activist (predictably) and this author (who claims to be a feminist) blatantly turn logic on its head by suggesting that not forcing someone to stay in an undesirable marriage is in fact “forcibly” separating family, home, and property. This makes absolutely no sense, unless operating on the assumption people are objects, or a means to an end, and that a spouse is legally entitled to the labor and utility of the spouse attempting to dissolve the marriage.

The author concludes, “No-fault divorce removed all vestige of marriage as a contract between two people” and proposes the following:

The simple and proper solution is to return to marriage as a civil contract. It does not need to be a complicated agreement. It could and probably would evolve in the same manner as wills have—that is, a variety of standard ones can be purchased inexpensively in bookstores or online. Close down the family court systems that regulate divorce and which provide lawyers with inflated incomes. Allow the breach of a marriage to be arbitrated in a manner spelled out in the contract itself.

While I can get on board with the idea of privatization of matters that are none of the government’s goddamn business, it is absolutely not the case that No-Fault Divorce is to blame for the failure of marriage as contract. If marriage is to be treated as a contract, it must abide by the principles of contracts, and most marriages do not, and historically have not, at least in the modern era with which I am familiar. The hopelessly vague, undefined, and nondescript marriage vows 99.99 percent of couples currently exchange in the course of wedding ceremonies would never hold up as a valid contract in any court of law (private or state-run).

Additionally, to the contrary, it’s unlikely marriage in and of itself could ever be an uncomplicated agreement. There are undoubtedly some clear indicators of wrongdoing, such as repeated cheating or violence, but for the most part, marriage is a complex relationship of constant negotiation and re-negotiation based on mutual, rather vague, promises of people to do their best to stay together. Sometimes even cheating or violence may be forgiven, but sometimes a more minor offense might be the straw that breaks the camel’s back after years of emotional neglect or abandonment. Regardless, it’s not the place of the law to dictate what constitutes “fault” and force parties to remain together in the absence of proof of that fault.

Surely, some terms of marriage commonly used are unambiguous; promises to be faithful are widely understood. Few people are going to get away with, “Oh shit, you mean sleeping with your sister/brother violates my promise to be faithful?” On the other hand, spouses often promise to “honor” or “respect” one another. They assent to bible passages in the course of their vows to be “patient” and “kind” to each other. But what does this actually mean?

Anyone who has ever read any contract will notice the first several pages of any contract contain recitals and definitions setting forth the mutual understanding of relevant context and certain terms. Well, what in the fuck does “honor” or “respect” mean to each individual? Are you dishonoring your husband if you only do the laundry every month when he wants you to do it every week? Is your husband disrespecting you if he plays too many video games after you’ve asked him to cut down? What does “patience” and “kindness” entail? How patient do you have to be after your husband forgets to clean up the dog poop day after day, month after month? How kind do you have to be if your wife kicks the family cat? Some women promise in vows to “follow” their husband, the god-ordained “leader” in marriage; does that apply when the husband goes on a murder-suicide rampage? How are these terms defined, and how are the respective actions to be implemented?

To my knowledge, few, if any marriage vows bother to define or clarify the meaning or expectations associated with these terms. If a husband regularly enjoys taking a giant shit on the living room floor, is this “dishonor” or “disrespect” constituting breach of contract? And if so, to what remedies is the wife entitled? In that case, would a proponent of Fault Divorce agree the husband committed fault? Or is that insufficient “fault” such that the wife is still without reason to “unilaterally” breach the contract? If a spouse threatens to cheat or file for divorce, but has not actually done it, does it count as anticipatory breach, so that the other is immediately entitled to remedies? Or given the duration and gravity of the relationship contemplated, are such matters considered minor breaches for which the breaching party is entitled to a chance to cure the defect?

Things get even more complicated. Contracts are rightfully dissolved when there is a frustration of purpose. If Alana contracts with Beth to supply widgets for building robots, but Alana’s robot factory gets crushed by an asteroid, there is a frustration of purpose, and the contract can be terminated. As applied to marriage, most people enter into marriage to mutually provide and receive security and happiness. What happens when one person feels financially and emotionally insecure and miserable? This is certainly frustration of purpose for at least one, and possibly both parties, but more importantly, who is the breaching party? Is it the person who failed to take reasonable measures to provide security and happiness to the other? Or is it the person who is insecure and miserable because he/she is simply a difficult person? We don’t know because none of these things are agreed upon in advance of 99.99 percent of marriages. 

Imagine the many pages of definitions one would have to append to a contract to be able to define what circumstances constitute “security” or “happiness” for each individual involved. Perhaps one might want to include a clause indicating that if a party substantially complies with certain acts in furtherance of promoting security and happiness, the duty/responsibility is considered fulfilled and the other spouse’s lack of subjective feelings of security and happiness is not grounds for breach. Or perhaps the parties might decide that in fact, the individual subjective valuation of these elements is key (or would that then be an illusory contract?)

Even if we were to force a contract analysis on marriage vows, which do not remotely fit the definite requirements of contract formation, what’s to say the flood of divorces are actually “unilateral”? Maybe the spouse who filed for divorce on No-Fault grounds in fact felt dishonored, disrespected, unloved, and not at all “cherished” for the last 15 years, and thereby finally decided to seek divorce as a remedy for the 15 years of continual breach by the spouse who is unwilling to divorce. This attempt to conflate marriage promises with enforceable legal agreements is laughable and downright wrong.

If definite terms of a marital relationship were in fact achievable, one could begin to make some good faith arguments as to who was breached the contract and the damages owed accordingly, but in the absence of these definitions, marriages that dissolve today and result in nasty legal consequences do not come to such ends because someone “unilaterally” breached a clear-cut, valid, and mutually agreed upon contract “without consequences” or because of No-Fault Divorce. Rather, they dissolve in a messy way because an adequate, comprehensible, and enforceable contract as to rights, responsibilities, and property division was not created to begin with.

Many, many, many people do not make clear agreements when they get married (or any agreement at all), and then become entangled in the government clusterfuck of divorce law when shit hits the fan. Of course, even for couples that do make clear agreements (e.g. in the form of a prenuptial or marital agreement), the government (at least in California) can unfortunately override their agreements to an extent, e.g. agreements to not pursue spousal support or child support. But according to this source, only 5 percent of divorces involve couples who had a prenuptial agreement, so these people are in the vast minority.

What is far more practicable and realistic is for the finances associated with marriage, rather than marriage itself, to be subject to contract principles, but free from some of the egregiously unjust and burdensome laws currently in existence. It is much easier to formulate how to split a house, a 401K account, or how to divide other family assets, than to decide who is at “fault” for the degradation of happiness, security, fulfillment, and meaning in a marriage. When entering into a marriage (however each individual may subjectively define that relationship), it is a good practice to decide in writing or otherwise how to split assets, property, income, and how to handle other matters in the event of dissolution.

Certainly, as acknowledged above, because of bad laws and state meddling, even if people do come to definite agreements, they can face expensive lawyers and unfortunate consequences. However, as it currently stands, while legal fees and hurdles can be a barrier, the majority of people do not bother to attempt to make specific agreements because they simply do not want to. According to the Huffington Post, it is a minority of people who think a prenup is a good idea (44 percent), and even of people who have been divorced, only 15 percent wish they had one in the first place (here). Just take casual poll of people you know, and it becomes clear it’s not just that it can be cost-prohibitive to hire attorneys; a large proportion of people avoid definite, binding financial agreements in the context of marriage simply because they believe it unromantic, morbid, pessimistic, and just a plain bad idea, and this has absolutely nothing to do with No-Fault Divorce, nor is it solely the fault of government.

Books for Children: Reviewing the Moral Lessons of the Giving Tree

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I’m going to a baby shower tomorrow, and I actually remember what I bought off the registry. Typically, when I browse a baby registry to decide what to buy, my head starts swimming at the unfamiliar, and admittedly boring, products: bottle warmers, bottle brushes, diapers, nipple cream, butt cream, baby shampoo, drying racks, other products I could not even begin to explain if I tried, etc. This has not changed since I became pregnant. I can feel my eyes glaze over as I scroll through these items, and I vaguely dread the day I will have to make a list of my own. How do you know what you really need? This shit is hard!

Except, for the baby shower I’m attending tomorrow, there were some items that got me excited: Books. There were many fantastic ones listed, and I ended up getting The Giving Tree, Where the Sidewalk Ends, and Where the Wild Things Are. Aside from these books, I also bought one other thing. A mat or seat or tray or something that might go in a car possibly. I have forgotten already. But that is of less importance.

Seeing children’s books had me contemplating what messages these books actually convey. While I love both The Giving Tree and Where The Sidewalk Ends by Shel Silverstein, the contents of these books differ drastically. Where The Sidewalk Ends is a collection of short, fun poems that serve as a lovely introduction to poetry for children. My own father, who writes poetry, bought me this book when I was 7 years old.

The Giving Tree is where things get a bit more complicated. It’s wonderful in terms of illustration and story telling, but I do have reservations about the message it imparts at times. I remember being 15 years old and loitering at a bookstore with my best friend (one of our favorite pastimes), when I came across this book after not having thought about it in years. She told me she loved it and that it always made her sob. “Really?” I asked incredulously, because I literally had never cried from reading a book, much less a children’s story. She must have thought me equally strange, because she looked at me like I was the weird one for being skeptical of anyone crying at this book.

“I don’t believe you,” I insisted, and I opened the book and started reading aloud to her in the middle of the bookstore. Sure enough, to my genuine surprise, by the end, she was in tears and her face was red and puffy.

“Dude, fuuuuuck you,” she said. I looked around the bookstore awkwardly and felt pretty bad.

The Giving Tree is compelling because it is a tale of unconditional love and giving on the part of a tree, over the lifetime of a boy who eventually becomes a man. The boy/man takes everything the tree has to offer, until the tree has been stripped of her fruit, her branches, and her trunk, and she has nothing else left to give. Her love is apparently unrequited, because he never gives her anything in return. Seriously, he is sort of an asshole. I don’t think the book so much as depicts him watering her or providing fertilizer or anything.

When he is old and decrepit, she is nevertheless happy to see him, but laments she no longer has anything left to give. He states he does not need much at this point, and simply wants a place to sit and rest, to which she cheerily offers the only part of her left – the stump of her trunk that remains.

The ostensible moral of this tale is one of giving love without keeping tabs, which no one can deny is a positive way to go about life. Yet, something about the story never sits quite right with me, perhaps because the cynical part of me thinks this story glorifies suffering, martyrdom, and maybe even victimhood.

We are moved to tears until our hearts ache when we read stories or watch movies about unrequited, unconditional love, whether on the part of a lover or a parent, but the way it plays out in the real world is sometimes painful and ugly. Healthy relationships cannot endure an insistence on rigidly or constantly keeping score, but I would never want my child to be on the giving end of such a one-sided relationship. It’s not a recipe for a happy or healthy relationship of any sort. Letting someone constantly take without reciprocation at some point becomes a form of emotional abuse, doesn’t it?

Of course, this does not remotely mean I won’t buy this book for my child. In fact, I probably will, because it is stories like this that make life a bit more colorful. But as far as moral lessons go, it does leave one something to think about…

 

Helicopter Parenting, Entitlement Culture, and the Police State

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A few weeks ago, these signs started showing up everywhere in my neighborhood:

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This is in addition to the cones, flags, and other portable signs that appear frequently cautioning drivers of children about, whether there are actually children about or not. For the record, many a time, I have driven by signs and flags demanding “SLOW!” speeds when there was no child in sight. Roads are no longer recognized as primarily serving the purpose of automobile passage; they are now considered by modern, entitled suburbanites to be playgrounds catering to the whims of their children and their particular leisure needs, to supplement the many existing parks, playgrounds, and natural reserves nearby.

One can imagine the idiocy (and eyesore) if everyone took this approach with signs, but for different classes of people who needed special protection – “Drive Like Your Grandparents Live Here” – “Drive Like Your Blind Brother Lives Here” – “Drive Like Your Cats Live Here” – “Drive Like Your Father Who Suffers From Dementia Lives Here” – or ultimately, better yet, don’t drive at all, because that of course would be the surest way to prevent pedestrians from being injured.

The unsightly red plastic signs lining the blocks of the neighborhood were not enough. Within a couple of weeks, these started showing up:

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Undoubtedly, next, police officers will be stationed at every block to harass motorists who dare go over 10 miles an hour, in the event that some parent might fail to monitor their child, who might then run unexpectedly in the road, might get hit, and might get hurt. When suburbanites reach the level of insanity such that they believe motorists should bend over backwards for errant, unsupervised children, and essentially be forced to drive around speed counters, ugly signs, and cones, as if navigating obstacle courses were a natural matter of daily driving, there is something seriously wrong.

There is in fact no speeding problem in this neighborhood. To my knowledge, there has not been a single instance of a child being injured, much less killed, by a speeding vehicle. Yet, neighbors glare as drivers “speed” by at a mere 15 or 20 miles an hour, even when children are nowhere close to crossing the road, and are playing safely in their yards.

For the record, there is no problem with children playing in the streets. The problem is the idea that children have no obligation to watch for cars as cars do for children, and the attitude that children should be free to roam in whatever dangerous situations they wish, while motorists who should rightly have access to streets are viewed as unilaterally responsible for their safety. This kind of approach may be a grave annoyance to drivers, but it can be deadly for children.

There was a time when parents believed the safety of their children was almost exclusively their responsibility, and that of their children (depending on their age). Now, for whatever reason, people feel they have the right to foist the responsibility for the safety of their children on complete strangers, whom they expect to be inconvenienced, or shamed, for doing nothing more than making use of roads to drive to their homes.

These attitudes are not only irritating for those inconvenienced; it seems self-evident that such coddling would not be conducive to raising independent, self-sufficient, or responsible children. Even worse, people of this philosophy refuse to limit their ill-conceived child-rearing coddling to their own lives, and insist that everyone participate, or meet strong-armed enforcement.

Thus, it is not surprising that the United States is increasingly a police state, in which peoples’ lives are ever the more regulated and controlled, all in the name of “safety.” Parents are not infrequently subject to violent punishment for deviation from stringent laws prescribing “security” and “order.” If you want to be a nanny-state sanctioned helicopter parent whose children will be forever be dependent and incompetent, you are free to do so and will find that society encourages your methods. However, if you would like your children to exercise some independence or self-reliance, or alternatively, you for other reasons fall short of the stringent dictates of the state’s child-rearing policies, you should surely fear for your fate.

Recently, Debra Harrell of North Augusta, South Carolina was jailed after she left her nine-year-old daughter at a park for several hours. Ms. Harrell is an employee of McDonald’s. For most of the summer, her daughter played on a laptop at McDonald’s while her mother worked (making use of free wi-fi offered by the fast food chain). When the laptop was unfortunately stolen from their home, her daughter asked to play at the park while her mother worked instead. Ms. Harrell provided her daughter with a cell phone, and allowed her to play at a park. On the third day of this short-lived arrangement, adults who had seen her daughter alone at the park called the police. Ms. Harrell was arrested (more here).

Not so long ago, another father from Pennsylvania, Govindaraj Narayanasamy, similarly faced legal consequences when he was charged with child endangerment for leaving his 6 and 9-year-old children at a local park while he went to Walmart and LA Fitness. He returned between 90-120 minutes later, but a woman had noticed the children by themselves and called the police (more here).

Of course, not all parents who are punished by the state are glowing examples of responsible parenthood. In June of this year, Eileen DiNino, a Pennsylvania mother of seven, died in jail while serving a two-day sentence for her children’s truancy from school. She had incurred substantial fines for her children’s absences from school, and served the sentence as a result. Her children may have had a wayward mother before, but now they have no mother at all (more here). Such stories are not uncommon. Another mother in California, Lorraine Cuevas, was sentenced to 180 days in jail for similar violations in 2012.

In another instance in 2012, a mother from Arkansas was charged with a misdemeanor count of endangering the welfare of a minor, after she made her child walk 4.5 miles to school as punishment.

In another egregious incident in 2012, William Reddie of northern Michigan found himself in trouble with the police and Child Protective Services over an allegation that the scent of marijuana was detected at his home. Police alerted CPS, and Mr. Reddie became agitated when CPS attempted to take his son (more here). This escalated into police shooting and killing Mr. Reddie. It should be apparent to sensible people that a father who smokes marijuana is better than a dead father, and a mother who tolerates truancies is better than a dead mother; but sensible people can be few and far between these days.

No matter how minor of the offense of the parent, the general public seems comfortable with police intervention, jail, and violence as the “solution.” Ironically, when police abuse, beat, taser, throw flashbang grenades at babies, and/or kill children, they are viewed as heroes, and in those circumstances, the blame still falls on parents who were not in compliance with state regulations and various nonsensical draconian measures.

Everywhere in the U.S., people are embracing the idea that children have no obligation to learn how to navigate dangers, and that the responsibility for their safety falls not solely on their parents, but on total strangers, and that anyone not in compliance with nanny-state parenting styles should have to answer to the police, through violent mechanisms of arrest and/or criminal charges.

This seems particularly absurd in the United States, where violent crime has been on the decline for five years; total crime has been on the decline since 1990, and violence experienced by children has also declined.

You Can Put a Fence Around Your House, But Not Mine: Property Rights as the Basis for Open Borders

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The recent wave of immigrant children coming across U.S. borders from Guatemala, Honduras, and Mexico has created a great deal of concern for the White House and the American public. While the influx of children presents some unique immigration issues, the immigration debate is not new.

Some are inexplicably unmoved by the plight of desperate children crossing artificial borders in search of a better life, and perhaps, American relatives. But putting emotion aside, the immigration problem is rooted in a fundamental misunderstanding by Americans, and indeed, most parts of the world, of private property. As the United States becomes increasingly less free, Americans find themselves barred from, or even jailed for exercising dominion over their own bodies and their private property. It is in this context that the issue of immigration must be analyzed.

Police have the right to stop and frisk anyone they deem to have triggered a “reasonable suspicion” of criminal activity. Resisting will most certainly result in arrest, if not a violent beating. The news is littered with examples of police sexually assaulting people – sometimes boldly, on camera – such is the extent to which the government believes it owns and is entitled to trespass upon the body of individuals. The TSA constantly subjects hordes of American travelers to either being groped by TSA agents, or alternatively, being viewed naked on a full body scanner. It is no secret that TSA agents have targeted attractive women for the privilege of going through these full body scanners (also see here).

The United States continues to have some of the most stringent alcohol laws in the world, and maintains the highest incarceration rate in the world, due largely in part to the insane and overreaching war on drugs (i.e. war on adults making decisions to ingest substances into their bodies). Police regularly steal property from victims who have been convicted of no crime, through the mechanism of civil asset forfeiture, and use the property and/or cash stolen to pad their own paychecks.

These results are not surprising in a society that encourages the forfeiture of the dominion over one’s own body and property to the whim of the government. At the most basic level, almost all Americans support taxation of some form, which is a forcible extraction of wealth from someone who has labored for it. All of these heinous violations occurred because people believe the rights to exercise control over one’s labor, body, and property, can be delegated to a collective of faceless politicians and the unwashed masses, regardless of what the individual desires. This belief is what drives people to support a system that forces them, through taxation, to fund the violations set forth above.

The problem with a collective analysis, and the belief that one has a right to force others to toil and pay for the things to which they feel entitled, is that others can certainly do the same. For instance, if one can acquire a simple majority and obtain the right to force their neighbors to pay for their health insurance, daycare, or food, then predictably, others can acquire a simple majority and obtain the right to force their neighbors to pay for prisons, wars, and police tanks to menace formerly idyllic streets.

Immigration law is yet another way the U.S. government has decreed that Americans do not have the right to do with their property and bodies as they please. The border between Mexico and the United States is a massive and expensive project that has drained unwilling taxpayers of countless dollars and resources earned through the labor from their bodies. It is by definition the case that a substantial portion of taxpayers are unwilling, because if taxes were voluntary, there would be no legal penalties or consequences for evasion thereof, and because people would voluntarily fund the building of such a border if they were truly agreeable and believed it to be in their best interests.

Behind every undocumented, or “illegal” immigrant in the United States, is an exercise in freedom and private property that anti-immigration Americans largely refuse to acknowledge. Undocumented immigrants do not come to the United States because they feel like needlessly imperiling their lives; they come because there are American citizens who want them here. Even as Americans decry floods of immigrants, there are countless corresponding Americans who rent homes to them, sell products to them, do business with them, and sustain their livelihood through mutually beneficial exchanges – whether they want to admit it or not.

If stores and business so desired, they could report all customers whom they suspected  to be undocumented immigrants to the INS; they almost never do. If businesses so desire, they have the ability to verify employee immigration statuses with systems like E-Verify; some businesses incur the expenses to do so, but many do not. If a landlord sees fit, he or she can require immigration status verification before renting to an undocumented immigrant; most landlords choose not to do this. Other Americans employ or hire undocumented immigrants for a variety of other tasks because they benefit from the more affordable services, with no regard as to immigration status. For almost every undocumented immigrant in the United States, there are multitudes of corresponding Americans who engaged in mutually beneficial transactions with this individual.

From a private property perspective, many Americans are in practice welcoming these “illegal” immigrants – by selling things to them, doing business with them, renting them homes, and even befriending them. These Americans have every right to rent their properties, operate their businesses, engage in hiring practices, and associate with people as they see fit.

As for the naysayers (arguably, racists) – those Americans similarly should be able to control their bodies and property as they see fit. They should be free to decline jobs, homes, or business opportunities to undocumented individuals. They may experience a drop in profit or popularity, but such is the concept of freedom; it embodies both the right to control one’s own property, but also entails bearing the consequences thereof. If they want to build walls, barriers, or electric fences of any kind, they are free to do so – only on their property, and at their own expense.

The often-raised complaint of undocumented immigrants abusing social services only bolsters this argument. Social services only exist because American citizens have voted (undocumented immigrants cannot vote) to institute a systemic theft and resulting accumulation of loot, which voters are then eager to fight over. In such a system, it is not hard to understand why voters would not want additional competitors flooding over the borders to divvy up the spoils, but this is hardly a justification for continuing to trample on property rights and freedom of both immigrants and American citizens who should be free to engage in mutual exchange.

If you’re afraid of undocumented immigrants, you can be the first to hang a “whites citizens only” sign in the windows of your home or business. Feel free to build an electric fence around your yard, or pay exorbitant fees for background check systems so you can discriminate against undocumented people to your heart’s content; you have every right. You do not, however, have the right to forcibly keep undocumented immigrants out of other peoples’ business or homes, or force others to pay for your paranoid nationalism.