Will Someone PLEASE think of the CHILDREN!!??

“Will Someone Please Think About The Children!!!?” [Shriek, cry, whimper…]

Because god knows no one else is, right? I ask you this, dear reader: Is it just me or are we obsessed with ‘the children’ in this nation? At the cost of so much else –virtually all other stratum of society- we whine and cajole and legislate and spend, spend, spend to ‘protect’ our children (while ignoring our eldery). One would think, at first blush, that we are a nation who adore and treasure, as some in public office would put it, “Our Most Valuable Natural Resource”. Aww, that’s touching. Just think of the little apple-cheeked urchins with their dewy eyes and drool-coated chins glistening softly in the rosy hues of dawn’s first light. Coochy coochy coo!

Blecch!

First of all, that’s a crock. Anyone who believes that our government or our social culture is all about protecting and nurturing the health and the futures of our children needs smelling salts and a brain scan. Take a moment to review the ways we protect out children:

· Near-cataclysmic environmental future (our children’s future, and their children’s future, remember) being wrought by global warming and an all-encompassing poisoning of the earth.

· Growing crime rate due in large part to a failing school system (see below) and an widening gap between rich and poor, leaving well over 95% of our children in the latter category: Less money, unsafe neighborhoods, diminishing prospects of any education beyond 7^th or 8^th grade plus bottom-rung health care to boot!

· More foreign wars mean a higher likelihood that your son or daughter will be sent off to die or be mangled in a rich man’s staged slaughter fest.

· Shocking decline in the budget for our nation’s schools, including a reduction in number of teachers and materials, cutting of brain-enriching courses like art and music, and the forging of a overwhelming motivation for young people to drop out of high school altogether (because of a useless and stultifying school environment that falls well short of any genuine education). The function of the high schools is changing into little more than a place to keep kids busy until they’re old enough to work low-paying manufacturing and service industry jobs, providing nothing but the rudimentary education to do so.

· Complete disregard for the safety our children vis-à-vis gun laws. Read my last post, you’ll find some stomach-churning statistics (not invented by me, sorry NRA shit-wits) about the growing gun crime rates among children, teens and young adults. How many school shootings, featuring firearms and combat weaponry wielded by kids, have you heard of just in the last ten years or so?

· Automobile-dependent infrastructures not only contribute to the global warming and our air-poisoning crisis, but increase the chances that your child will be injured or killed in a car accident.

· Fatty foods and cigarettes, among other vices, are regularly marketed towards kids while parents and politicians alike turn a blind eye. Add this to 2/3 or more of our teenagers driving to get everywhere (again, a car-dominated infrastructure) and we’ve got a serious obesity crisis already manifest.

I could go on, but let’s keep this post moving. Here’s an exercise for you to do which will illustrate my point: While watching TV this week, keep count the number of commercials that clearly use children as a tool to pander their message. While sex is a more popular advertising tool, ‘the child’ is in a dead heat with Fear for second place (they’re the ones right between the bikini-girl infested beer ads and the Army recruitment commercials). Try to do this exercise during prime time if possible while watching shows that are ‘family-friendly’. Children are used to sell everything from cell phones to steel-belted radials…low-fat butter, minivans and SUVs, household alarm systems and Wal-Mart’s low-low prices.

Meanwhile what is overlooked is that we’re in effect doing nothing for our children. The quality of parenting, if the recent crop of kids is anything to judge by, is on a terrible slide and shows little sign of improvement. This is not to say that there aren’t millions of wonderful parents out there, and millions more who may not be the best but continue to try their best. The problems are deeper than that. We are fed lies and misinformation to worry about the wrong things:

Safe cars / Safe books / Be afraid of anyone who looks or sounds different than you / Safe political thoughts and cartoons free of the corrupting influence of those evil gays! Meanwhile our children are left completely adrift to develop the traits so necessary to a strong-minded and healthy human being. The ability to judge and decide situations for themselves, to have their eyes opened to the joys and real terrors of the world (which are not Arabs in masks) instead of so much being hidden from them until spoon-fed in a tightly controlled trickle of lukewarm middling. The chance to play music, learn another language, meet other kinds of people and receive an education that is both stimulating and challenging. Where are these things? The ability for parents to more effectively raise their children healthily and keep them active, challenged and even-tempered?

You’re on your own, parents. In this country we just like to look at kids, enjoy their cuteness, and feel righteous about them. Marcie thinks she’s the greatest person in the world because she got knocked up. Watch out everyone! Marcie’s coming through, propelling her stroller like a weapon and you better damn well get out of the way, you non-child-having scumbag!

Have you noticed this? That so many people with children think those of us who have none of our own and have no plans to “get pregnant” in the near future are somehow less worthwhile human beings. As though simply inseminating a fertile egg were the noblest act of which a person is capable. This thinly veiled disdain emanates like a vapor from a large percentage of child-ridden couples, many of whom had children for every reason except any genuine desire to bring up an honest, caring human being who’s going to make a contribution to this world (besides spitting out yet more babies). For instance:

· Children make the ideal accessory.

· Children will, in theory, be there to take care of you when you get old (even though you’ve probably already made plans to catapult your own parents into a home at the first opportunity). No guarantees, however.

· Your children will succeed everywhere that you have failed.

· Grandkids are fun.

· Tax breaks, tax breaks, tax breaks.

· You get to feel that at least you managed to create something lasting with your life, as everything else you've ever done will become dust once you have died.

· 24-7 feeling of self-righteous pride (I’ve have a child…what have YOU done?)

I mean, just bring to mind any time you’ve been in a moving crowd…airport, shopping mall, grocery store…how many times have you been nearly run over by some woman with a stroller the size of a Volkswagen whose mind is on everything except the ten feet of reality around her? She probably drives that way too, cell phone sandwiched between ear and shoulder, one hand on the wheel and the other cleaning up Gerber Strained Peach-flavored spittle from the leather seats of the 13 mpg Suburban while alternating between her conversation and sudden exasperated pleas towards the shrieking poop factory in the $275.00 child restraining device in the backseat…towards which at least 65% of her attention is turned while maintaining 70 miles per hour weaving back and forth between lanes. But don’t you DARE reproach her for it, heavens no! “What the hell do you know? Do you have kids? Didn’t think so, Buster! When you have kids and you experience how difficult it is to deal with them, then come complain to me.”

I’m sorry Ma’am. I didn’t realize your child was more important than my life. You're right, even though it’s your child, it should be more important to me than I am to myself. How silly of me!

Maybe they’re jealous, ya know? They’re jealous because those of us without children still possess our own lives, we can still do what we want. We haven’t handed over at least the next 18 years of our lives to someone else who will take as much as you have to give. Many all-too-fertile couples are probably thinking, deep within their subconscious, hidden beneath countless membranes of rationalization and denial…

“Why the hell did I have kids? No one was pointing a gun at my head…I didn’t have to do this!”

And then the panic starts, and the bile rises…until, depending on the inner strength of the afflicted person, at last the denial trumps once again and a flood of shallow, empty reasons, usually pawned off other parents or television shows or fundamentalist religious ideologies, comes to their aid like a soothing balm.

“No, it’s not me that made the mistake. I got to witness the miracle of childbirth*, it’s those poor confused souls without children who are really suffering!”

Followed by a condescending, sympathetic grin. Yea, I’m suffering all right. Sleeping soundly, spending my money on what I choose instead of diapers and formula and college funds and medical expenses and more food and more clothes and more crap, more and more crap…this sucks. Woo boy, this is awful.

*No one ever talks about the miracle of afterbirth, however...

Thing is, I actually have nothing against kids, once I get past my slight-taste-of-vomit reaction to their gag-inducing smell, shrill noises and saucer-eyed stupidity. After all, I was once drooling and stupid and pooping my pants (and it wasn’t college). That’s just kids, that’s how they start. I’m told that when it’s your kid, it’s much easier to see past all the hideousness, and I’m willing to believe that, to a point. I can hardly believe that the stench of sudden pools of lime-green fecal matter to clean up is ever a pleasant thing, but I think I get the gist of it. My problem is not the kids themselves, it’s what the parents turn into; it’s the society that treats those of us who dare to choose life for ourselves as outcasts, as second-tier citizens. It’s as though our race were dying out and we needed to keep churning out more babies. To hell with the ugly fact that overpopulation is far ahead of every other major world crisis in the race to make our planet uninhabitable.

But let’s keep turning out tire commercials whose message, without the least bit of subtlety, is that it’s not nearly as important if you kill someone unless that someone is a child. What are we saying? Are our lives forfeit after we turn 18? Or 25? Are we worth nothing more than growing up to become baby-factories? At least our tires will protect the children, because that’s what it’s all about isn’t it? Protecting the children?

Surely I know, as an adult, that if a 7500 lb SUV runs over me (because their tires weren’t good enough), I’m much more likely to survive it than my child is, right. Or do I matter?

But I haven't forgotten that if parents actually try to raise a child in a responsible and encouraging manner, to love and cherish that child and yet let him or her be who they want to be, and not try to mold them into a little version of themselves, then it can be a 'miracle', or at least as close as a godless bastard like me can envision.

If you're gonna be a parent, be a wonderful parent. You can make a brilliant addition to the world thereby, I truly believe that.

Otherwise, don't bother.

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