Ask A Book Club Veteran

Dear Book Club Veteran,

I am a relative newcomer to my book club, but the others have been going strong for years.  I’m not about to rock the boat, but what do you do when nobody seems to want to spend much time actually talking about the book? I mean, we touch on it, but most of the time we’re sidetracked on a seemingly limitless range of topics. Any hints on how to tighten this up a bit?

Mandy S, Portland, OR

Dear Mandy,

This is a known phenomenon, and it’s called “book club.” In other words, par for the course. If members really wanted to knuckle down and focus on the book, they’d go to college. The reality is, people need an excuse to get together and this is one of them. As for your desire to keep things on track, just watch for opportunities to drag the book back into the discussion. For example, when someone is talking about her dog, you can say something like, “Did anybody else think it strange that all the dogs in this book are male?”

Dear Book Club Veteran,

I am thinking about starting a book club, and even have five or six members lined up. But I’ve never done this before. Can you suggest a few rules that have served you well in your years at this? I don’t want to be draconian but there are probably pitfalls you’ve learned the hard way…

Rhonda V, San Antonio, TX

Dear Rhonda,

My book club has just two rules, and we generally follow at least one of them. The first rule is: all the books we choose must be available in paperback. This obviously makes it cheaper for those buying it, and also increases the chances we can get it from the library, vs. newer releases that have like fifty people ahead of you on the hold list. The second rule is: nobody has to finish the book if they don’t like it, but we’re supposed to hang on for at least 70 pages. (Why 70? I can’t remember.) Once in a while I dislike a book so much I break this rule, as do others, but at least most of us try. (There’s also an unspoken rule that spoilers are totally allowed during our discussion, even if it’s a mystery novel and a member is only 20 pages from the end. I mean, that’s their problem for not finishing, right?) 

Dear Book Club Veteran,

Help! We had a guy join our book club about six months ago who totally dominates the discussion. He wasn’t so bad at first but now that he’s comfortable in the group, he acts like he’s like a professor or something. Nobody knows him well enough to confront him; ironically, the person who invited him has since quit (coincidentally or not). Is there some accepted protocol for kicking a member out?

Sarah V, Denver, CO

Dear Sarah,

I don’t know of any tactful way to ask a member to leave, and the question of who should tell him would be really tough. Plus, if you saw the guy around town afterward it would be super awkward. But I do know a workaround, which my mom’s book club resorted to: though it had been around for over 15 years, its founding members announced that the book club had run its course and would disband. This they did, or pretended to do; once the loudmouth was gone, they quietly reassembled (coordinating via clandestine emails) except for the one unwanted member. You could give that a try!

Dear Book Club Veteran,

How do you hold up a heavy hardback with those limp wrists of yours?

Clint B, Topeka, KS

Dear Clint,

Since you presumably know nothing about my wrists, I’m guessing you’re trying to be funny, insinuating that there’s something gay about a man being in a book club. Maybe you’re some kind of Manosphere cretin. If so, this isn’t the first time my masculinity has been impugned based on my book club. I was once playing poker with a bunch of men (as part of a fundraiser for my kids’ school) and was betting low and folding a lot, so I wouldn’t have to ante up a second time. Finally I got a great hand and bet big, and someone said, “He must have a good hand to bet that high.” Another said, “Maybe he’s just got balls.” A third said, “No, he’s in my wife’s book club, so I know he doesn’t have any balls.” The difference between what that guy said and what you wrote me is that he was actually funny.

I don’t know why book clubs tend to be female, other than the fact that many book clubs only allow women. Here’s an idea: as your first step in rehabilitating yourself, you should start an all-male book club … if you’re man enough to risk it.

Dear Book Club Veteran,

We’re all pretty busy people in my book club, so we only meet for an hour and a half. Of this short time, seems like we always spend at least half an hour picking the next book. The host selects five, and prints out synopses and reviews and such, and we pass them around and then vote on little slips of paper and it’s just so inefficient. Any suggestions on streamlining this?

Angie W, New York City

Dear Angie,

My book club used to pick our books that way, but then during COVID, perhaps because so much else in our lives was going digital, we switched to everybody submitting a suggestion and then voting on them via SurveyMonkey. This gives everyone time to peruse the options at their leisure, and nobody has to print anything out. The only issue is that it’s a lot of work for whoever gathers the suggestions and produces the survey, not to mention tabulating the results. Chances are you can’t all take turns running the survey because not everyone would have the patience or math chops to get it done. (I award three points if somebody votes for a book as his or her first choice; two points for second choice; one point for third. It’s simple arithmetic but requires  a very methodological approach.)

There are benefits to taking on the work, though, if somebody wants to a) be helpful, b) save money, and c) never have to read a book he or she really doesn’t like. How? Well, as the survey master you can game the system a bit. For one thing, you’ll be the first to know which book won, so if there aren’t many copies at the library you’re first in line. Second, you can vote last, and if there’s a book you really detest, you can figure out what other book has the best chance of beating it, and throw your first-choice vote at that one instead of your own. It’s worked so far: I’ve never had to read the amateurish sci-book about the young, misunderstood video gamer who gains extraordinary power, saves the world, and gets the girl.

Dear Book Club Veteran,

My book club isn’t doing it for me anymore. How do I gracefully resign? I don’t really want to lie; for example, I’m not going to claim I don’t have time because honestly I totally do. But I also don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings. Any ideas?

Megan A, Ventura, CA

Dear Megan,

I’ve only ever been in one book club (for something like 20 years now!) so I don’t have any experience resigning. One of our members was very candid when leaving, saying something like, “I’ve come to dread these meetings.” I thought that was a bit harsh—so I totally get your point. So here is one idea, that worked great for my wife. She was in a book club that hadn’t announced itself as being feminist-themed, but every single book the members chose were in this category. (She once asked me to buy the book for her, since I’d walk by a bookstore on the way home from work, and I couldn’t remember the author. So I asked the staff if they had Eight Bald Chicks. The bookseller hadn’t heard of it and asked, “Do you have any idea what it’s about?” I replied, “It’s probably some feminist thing.” At his he laughed and said, “Oh, you must mean 8 Ball Chicks!” Which turned out to be correct.)

Eventually my wife wanted out of the club but didn’t want to look unsympathetic to the cause. At the same time, since the club had never said they wanted to focus on feminist literature, she was free to choose any book when it was her turn. She chose Remembrance of Things Past by Proust, and wouldn’t back down when they protested its length. For this she was summarily kicked out of the club on the basis of it “being a poor fit” for her. Fair enough, and at least they made that judgment.

Dear Book Club Veteran,

My book club is mostly great but there’s this one member who’s always sneaking smut into our reading list. She’ll describe something as, say, a historical romance so we’ll go ahead with it, and then fifty pages in there’s this jump scare smutty bit and we’re all like whoa, enough! 

Alicia C, Los Angeles, CA

Dear Alicia,

Evidently you’re not getting anywhere letting this person be the judge of smuttiness; you’ll need to rely on a wider, crowdsourced reading community to help police this. Platforms like BookStagram and BookTok employ an informal rating system based on chili pepper emoticons (🌶️). Decide as a group whether two peppers (i.e., explicit scenes being relatively brief, infrequent, and not very graphic) or three (steamy, highly detailed) should be the cutoff. Leave it to the offending party to delve into all this, as one reader’s three could be another’s five and you don’t want to be guinea pigs.

Dear Book Club Veteran,

My book club’s members take turns hosting. Whenever I host, my husband wants to participate. I wish I could tell him it’s a women-only book club, but it’s not—we do have men. The fact is, I love my husband but get plenty of him every day without him being a part of book club, too. What can I do to, frankly, exclude him without making him feel, well, excluded?

Francine B, Boston, MA

Dear Francine,

That’s a real tough one, but I do have one idea based on my wife’s writing group meetings. They invite spouses to come—not to all of the meetings, but to some—and the spouses form a “splinter group” and watch a movie or go bowling together. With this arrangement your husband wouldn’t feel singled out, and it would keep him from sulking in his room and/or making little trips to the living room on one pretense or other. Talk to your club’s members and see if they like the idea!

Dear Book Club Veteran,

What do you do when your book club is meeting and the talk turns political? This happens occasionally in my club—especially around election time—and though we all basically agree on our politics, I find it really tedious nonetheless. It’s usually one or two troublemakers initially, but then the blathering catches fire and is hard to snuff out. Recommendations?

Mark T, Boulder, CO

Dear Mark,

I’m really sorry to hear that … political talk could ruin a book club (not to mention a friendship or a family, in this day and age). And you’re right, even when people have similar views, it’s still a drag, because it’s usually a stupid little game of one-upmanship. Besides, what point is there sitting around agreeing about something, particularly when it probably has nothing to do with books and reading? 

Once again, my book club hasn’t had this problem to any great degree (and when it has, quick-thinking members led the discussion in a gonzo direction that made sincere political discourse impossible). For your group and others caught in this situation, I recommend something a Berkeley area breakfast club implemented decades ago: a formal prohibition against talking about politics, punishable by a $2 fine (which could go toward refreshments or something). See if enough members support this idea to make it an official rule!

Dear Book Club Veteran,

One of our longtime members had a history of neglecting to read the book, but in the last year or two he has always seemed prepared—but his insights seem pretty simplistic and a little too pat. I strongly suspect he’s resorting to AI summaries just so he can (try to) sound smart. How can I “out” this person?

Kate R, Seattle, WA

Dear Kate,

I admire your fighting spirit … if you’re right about this guy, he needs to go down, hard! I think you can test your theory and expose his fraudulent ways at the same time through a two-step approach. First, respond to one of his insights by delving deeper and bringing something really arcane into the dialogue; for example, “I’m interested in what you said about Pnin being a spiritually complex character, revering life, memory, and beauty rather than any specific deity. But what would you  say about the ‘dazzling Greek-Catholic cross’ he wears when sunbathing?” If this kind of specificity doesn’t cause an incriminating level of visible discomfort, employ the second step: ask about something that categorically is not in the book to see if he fakes having noted it. For example, you could say, “Good point about Clarice’s anxiety. Do you think it was realistic, though, that she ended up fearing her neighbor was  a vampire?” If this member says anything other than, “Honestly, I have no recollection of that,” you can prove (at least to yourself, or publicly if you’re feeling feisty) that he’s an AI-synopsis-reading fraud!

Dear Book Club Veteran,

I don’t know how else to say it, but my book club is pretty nerdy … nobody ever suggests anything lighthearted or fun, it’s always serious stuff like a presidential biography, nonfiction like Guns, Germs, and Steel, or some socially responsible novel about wretched oppressed people. How can I inject something exciting and novel (no pun intended)?

Jill M, Omaha, NE

Dear Jill,

I’m going to reach out to another reader, Alicia in Los Angeles, to see if she’ll put you in touch with the member of her book club who is always sneaking smut into their reading list, disguised as mainstream literature. That person might just become your book club mentor!

A Book Club Veteran is a syndicated journalist whose advice column, “Ask a Book Club Veteran,” appears in over 0 blogs worldwide.

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From the Archives - Bits & Bobs Volume XXX

Introduction

This is the thirtieth installment in the “From the Archives – Bits & Bobs” series. (No, XXX does not mean it’s rated X … it’s more like PG-13, maybe R, we’ll see what makes it in. If this ends up being my most popular Bits & Bobs post, I’ll know why.)

Volume I of the series is here, Volume II is here, Volume III is here, Volume IV is here, Volume V is here, Volume VI is here, Volume VII is here, Volume XIII is here, Volume IX is here, Volume X is here, Volume XI is here, Volume XII is here, Volume XIII is here, Volume XIV is here, Volume XV is here, Volume XVI is here, Volume XVII is here, Volume XVIII is here, Volume XIX is here, Volume XX is here, Volume XXI is here, Volume XXII is here, Volume XXIII is here, Volume XXIV is here, Volume XXV is here, Volume XXVI is here, Volume XXVII is here, Volume XXVIII is here, and Volume XXIX is here. Are you thinking “pump up the volume?” (Didn’t think so.)

So what are albertnet Bits & Bobs? They’re generally passages from letters I wrote friends and family back in the days before email (or excerpts from emails, in the days after). If this sounds boring, bear in mind I’ve always wanted to be a writer so I tried pretty hard to be interesting. Also, these snippets are pretty candid, and in my youth I was socially clumsy and also tended to ride my bike at speeds some would consider dangerous … so read on because there’s always a chance you’ll enjoy some schadenfreude, righteous indignation, or relief that it wasn’t you.

The Bits & Bobs in this post are in chronological order. The different volumes are all over the place and can be read sequentially, simultaneously, serially, seriously, surreptitiously, scrupulously, sensitively, and/or sanctimoniously.

All of today’s dispatches were written when I was attending UC Berkeley.

September 17, 1990

Today I was out on my new Guerciotti, just having the time of my life riding. It was early evening, starting to get dim, when I barreled down Claremont Ave, this wide, smooth, slightly twisty road, something like a 9% grade. (The low bottom bracket of the bike makes it really stable—although I did hit a pedal yesterday at like 45 mph which was kind of scary.) Anyhow, I’m flying along and suddenly I slam into a pothole or something. There’s this incredibly loud noise and for a split second, I’m completely blinded. I still can’t figure this out; I really couldn’t see a damn thing. (My best theory is that both retinas detached from my eyeballs because of the impact, and then they reattached. Or maybe it was like a cartoon of some kind and my eyeballs spun around in their sockets.) Anyhow, when I can see again, I’m in the left lane and there are cars coming towards me. Not like right in my face, but approaching pretty fast because I’m doing 50 mph. (I noted this later, of course—it’s not like I was looking at my bike computer at the time.) Did I mention that both my wheels were basically caved in at this point, and my back one was a potato chip? It felt like somebody had removed my rear wheel and replaced it with a jackhammer. I actually didn’t have a chance to be scared; my mind was totally tied up trying to respond. All in a split second, I’m aware of several things: 1) My rear tire, and maybe my front, are absolutely guaranteed to explode at any moment; 2) The chances of crashing are so high that all I can really do is cut my speed and try to get back into my lane so that at least all I hit is the ground, instead of the unforgiving windshield of a ‘73 Plymouth Reliant; and 3) If I use my back brake, the rear wheel will definitely slide out from under me as soon as the tire blows, if not sooner. So, I slam on the front brake, which grabs on the caved-in section of the rim and lurches the bike around even more, but somehow I get my speed down to about thirty and get back into my lane just before my rear tire blows up, then the front.

From here on out it’s easy; I mean, hell, people bring bikes down from 30 mph after dual blowouts all the time, no problem. God, what a rush. Both wheels are completely totaled. The bent sections of rim look like beer cans that a party animal has flattened against his forehead. I couldn’t even roll the bike home; I had to carry it. I feel lucky to be alive, or at least lucky I’m not dead. But at the same time, I feel cursed that this freak thing happened at all. Half of me says I should go out for pizza to celebrate still being alive, while the other half says I should save my money for the new rims I have to buy now. One thing is certain: I’m not going to spend my evening studying. I’ve been through enough for one day.

September 23, 1990

It’s taking a while to make friends up here; as you know, for most of my life I’ve been pretty shy. In the last couple of years I’ve become a lot more outgoing, but because I was shy for so long, I don’t have nearly as much practice socializing as, say, you. At UCSB I had the benefit of being on the cycling team, where I had a leg up socially because I was a fast rider and people respected that. That should help me here, too, but the Berkeley team isn’t nearly so social and we won’t really get together much until the racing season starts in February. So I need a Plan B, and I have one: my strategy is to show up early to class, plop down next to any random person, and strike up a conversation. Now, the only way this could backfire is if I chat up some dude and he thinks I’m coming on to him. This could be awkward if he’s straight, and even more awkward if he’s gay. I figure I better not risk it. So I only chat up women, because if they get the wrong idea, that’s totally fine—women are really good at guiding would-be romance into mere friendship. I mean, it’s practically a cliché, right? Of course, there’s the remote possibility that this failsafe process will go astray and some woman will not only think I have romantic ambitions but she will, too. So just in case that happens, I only chat up really good looking women. I’m not on the make … just trying to gin up some friendships and I gotta start somewhere, right?

So, at the beginning of the semester I chatted up this gorgeous girl in one of my English classes, and again the next time the class met, and so on, and eventually I tossed the dice and invited her over for dinner. (I guess going for coffee would have been the more logical next step, being a bit more low-key, but I don’t drink coffee, and last time I went for coffee with a girl, I didn’t know what to order and got all flustered. I mean, I could have had hot chocolate but then I’d come off like a little kid, right? And tea is so fussy with the bag and the string and the little paper wrapper the bag came in, and the milk in the tiny pitcher, I mean, I don’t know, it all seems kind of twee. I don’t even remember what I did order that time, but I never had coffee with that girl again, which is a shame because she was fly.)

Damn, where was I? Oh, right, dinner. So I made H—, the girl from my English class, dinner at my apartment. My friend B— (who graduated from UCSB last summer and moved to Oakland with me) was there, at least for a bit before finding an excuse to bail, assuming I would want privacy, like this was some romantic thing. He subtly razzed me about this: when H— complimented our apartment and furnishings (most of them B—’s), particularly our couch and its pillows, Brett said, “Did you know these are throw pillows?” He didn’t actually wink at me as he said this, but it was obviously a subtle reference to “throw the ho’s,” a phrase in surprisingly widespread use by me and my Santa Barbara pals. We will say, for example, “Call me Hector. Hector Throw-da-Ho’s,” or we complain, “No meet da ho’s, no throw da ho’s,” or simply “No ho’s.” Of course we don’t mean ho as in actual whore; “ho” is just a handy synonym for woman, or perhaps for attractive woman, just like “freak.” And the “no throw da ho’s” lament is mostly true; most of us have nobody to throw most of the time.

Well, dinner went fine, and then H— and I randomly started watching “Akira,” a movie B— had rented, which was this Japanese animated thing that started off pretty well, with young attractive people zooming around on cool motorcycles, but at some point the main character has some kind of weird bodily mutation with his arms growing insanely and becoming like tentacles. I could tell H— was pretty freaked out so we shut that off and went up on the roof. It’s not that high up but had a great view of the Golden Gate and all that. Then it got a bit late and we went back to my apartment and the phone was ringing, which doesn’t happen that often, and it was H—’s roommate, calling to see if she was okay. I was surprised that a) her roommate would worry, and b) she was resourceful enough to find my phone number. Or was this a precaution? (“If I’m not home by 10, check on me, would you?”) So anyhow, I walked H— home even though it’s a pretty good neighborhood. It was a nice night and when we got to her place, she invited me in.

Well, this was unexpected. I figured I’d just see H— to the door, and then head on home. I don’t think I was even speculating about a friendly little peck on the cheek because this wasn’t really a date, not as far as I could tell. I mean, how do you tell? Was she inviting me in just to be nice? Or was this like in the movies and was supposed to lead to (dot dot dot)? Obviously I was over-thinking things, as usual. Anyhow, eventually it came to pass that I found myself sitting down in her apartment. I don’t remember what would have made me decide to sit down other than perhaps our conversation was ongoing and I didn’t feel like standing anymore. So now it didn’t look like my departure was imminent. So what was I supposed to do next?

It occurred to me that H— might be waiting for me to bust a move, and if I didn’t, she might take that as an insult. I sure didn’t want to insult her, and besides, she was super fly as I believe I mentioned already. The opportunity (even if it’s only a perceived opportunity) to bust a move with a fine betty doesn’t come along every day. A decision tree formed in my head: if I don’t bust a move and that hurts her feelings, that could jeopardize our friendship. But if she’s not waiting for me to bust a move and considers us just friends and then I do bust a move, that could also jeopardize the friendship, though honestly she must know she’s fly so how could she possibly blame me for wanting to bust a move? I figured, worst case, I bust a move when she’s not actually expecting—or wanting—it, in which case she’ll just turn her head suddenly to deflect the kiss, and I’ll immediately get the message, and then I can quickly blush and stammer out an apology, following which there’ll be no hard feelings, and then she and I can go on being friends. Right?

The scenario that I didn’t actually even consider, for some reason, was that she’d actually respond favorably and we’d suddenly be making out. Why didn’t this cross my mind? Who knows. Perhaps I’ve just been shut down by girls so many times, to auger in yet again seemed almost inevitable, scripted even. So imagine my surprise when I busted the most awkward move ever and it seemed to work. I said something totally inane, like “I like your sweater” and then I guess I must have reached for her, or maybe she read my mind and came forward, but next thing you know she’s sitting on my lap and we’re making out! Pretty thrilling stuff and she paused a moment to say something similarly inane like “I like your sweatshirt, too,” but mostly we’re just mashing faces. And then I become aware of this strange kind of rhythmic pulsing—not a sound exactly, but not exactly not. Kind of like a hydraulic rushing you might say. And I realize I’m hearing her pulse through her chest, which is proximate to my ear. This didn’t occur to me right away because the rhythm was pretty high for a heart rate. I mean, I wouldn’t expect a typical resting pulse rate (e.g., 60 or 70), since making out is kind of exciting, but we weren’t running stairs or anything either. Since my arm is around her, I can see my watch out of the corner of my eye, and what the hell, I decide to track the second hand and measure her pulse. Granted, in all the excitement I can’t vouch for the accuracy of my calculation, but it seems like her heart is going at about 130 beats per minute. Is she just super excited? Or maybe frightened? Or could she be having some kind of seizure?

After a few minutes our embrace subsides, as explicably as it had started, and we say goodnight and I head home. As I walk along up Alcatraz Avenue, I ponder the strangeness of recent events, this sort of hybrid between a romantic comedy and “Telltale Heart.” The song in my head (there’s always a song in my head) is “Walking On the Moon” by the Police. By the time I get home I just kind of shrug the whole thing off as just another of those strange things that happen to me.

I saw H— in class the next day, and afterward as we walked across Sproul Plaza chatting, H— seemed just a little off, perhaps a bit stiff, certainly not behaving like somebody who has just embarked on a sweet romantic adventure. Honestly, I’d have been a lot more surprised if she did seem all excited about the passionate turn our evening had taken, though I’m not sure why. I guess it’s because I wasn’t that excited either; I was feeling strangely ambivalent about it all, probably because my excursions into dating so often end badly, so why would this be any different? And thus it seemed, like I said earlier, almost scripted when she finally came out with it: “About last night. I like you and want to be friends, but I don’t want to be … well, I don’t want to get involved.” I didn’t need to ask “involved in what”—the answer was “it,” as in “it all.” Which was fine with me. From that day forward we were just friends. Which, as you might recall, is all I’d really been looking for anyway.

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Is It Wrong to Bring a Child Into This World? - Part II

Introduction

As I described in my last post, I am at the time of life when some of my friends have kids of child-rearing age, and once in a while I’ll hear one say, whether quoting their kids or expressing their own sentiment or both, “It just seems wrong to bring a child into this world.” Notwithstanding my complete respect for those who choose not to procreate, this notion riles me up.

I did some research to make sure the “just seems wrong” argument isn’t merely a fringe thing. And as I mentioned last week, it turns out that a large Pew survey found that a lot of people hold this view. In fact, 38% of respondents aged 18-49 cited “concerns about the state of the world, other than the environment” as a main reason they don’t want kids, and 26% cited “concerns about the environment.” My research also turned up, again and again, the “antinatalist” movement that holds that it’s always wrong, from an ethical perspective, to bring a child into the world, regardless of circumstance.

Last week, after providing some background on how overpopulation isn’t the bugaboo we all thought it was, I analyzed the environmental and ethical perspectives of the “is it wrong” question. In this post I will take on the “concerns about the state of the world” position, which is the one that vexes me the most.

Before we begin…

Yes, this post is a polemic, like last week’s. My ideal audience is anybody who googles “Is it wrong to bring a child into this world?” and believes, or at least suspects, that it is. But I’m not here to put down anyone who believes this, or is beginning to; after all, there’s no shortage of current events to be worried about. Meanwhile, I’m also at the age where some friends and family are starting to fantasize about grandchildren, and aren’t always subtle about pressuring their adult children to get going.

I am totally fine with those who, for personal reasons, just don’t want kids. And that’s a lot of them: it’s the number one reason given by respondents to the Pew poll, in the 18-49 age group, for opting out. Here are the top five:

1. Just don’t want to – 57%
2. Want to focus on other things – 44%
3. Concerns about the state of the world – 38%
4. Can’t afford to raise a child – 36%
5. Concerns about the environment – 26%

If a person is being challenged about not procreating and cites the first, second, or fourth reason, he or she is opening the door to a debate about his or her priorities, which could be unpleasant—I’ve witnessed and even fielded accusations of selfishness (before I had kids, obviously). This is truly offensive, and I can appreciate the temptation to advance a more principled position—and take the fight to the other person’s turf—by citing the state of the world. And I can imagine a parent of my generation hearing this concern from his or her grown-up offspring, and accepting the negative perspective without kicking the tires very hard. But what if that offspring is advancing the idea tentatively—and maybe even hoping, on some level, to hear it refuted?

What a shame it would be succumb to anxiety, and actually conclude it’s wrong in principle to procreate right now … especially when this position is pure nonsense. In this post I will argue that a) now is not a historically bad time to bring a child into the world, and b) barring a zombie apocalypse, Terminator-style AI takeover, or nuclear winter, it’s never a bad time to bring a child into the world.

Our world is not that bad

To begin with, rumors of the demise of freedom, democracy, human rights, safety, and economic opportunity are greatly exaggerated. How can I so smugly state this? Because they’ve always been exaggerated. As I’ve described before in these pages, humans have a built-in, evolutionarily encoded impulse to focus on the negative. Hans Rosling, a Swedish physician and statistician, examined this in his excellent book Factfulness: Ten Reasons We’re Wrong About the World—and Why Things Are Better Than You Think. This book explains why a vast range of people—including scientists, executives of multinational companies, journalists, medical researchers, attendees of the Davos World Economic Forum, and others—have historically done really poorly on a multiple-choice test about the state of the world. In fact, people do worse than if they guessed at random; as Rosling explains, they’re “systematically wrong.” Out of nearly 12,000 people tested in 14 countries in 2017, “every group of people … thinks the world is more frightening, more violent, and more hopeless—in short, more dramatic—than it really is.” I myself took this quiz, years ago, and got like a 3 out of 13. I hadn’t thought I was that ignorant or that negative, but that’s kind of how cognitive bias works. But wait—don’t leave! This doesn’t mean I’m an idiot who doesn’t deserve your attention: the average score across those 12,000 people was a mere 2.

This bias toward negativity is exacerbated, Rosling explains, by “selective reporting by journalists and activists”—which accentuates the negative to create a sense of urgency. (Read this, quick! Donate now!) Meanwhile, Rosling points out, people may feel that it’s heartless to acknowledge that the world is improving when there is still so much wrong with it. Fair enough, but it’s also heartless to be complicit with the rabble-rousing algorithms designed to make people as anxious as possible.

Not only is the world not that bad, but it’s almost certainly in better shape now than when you were born. “What?!” you may ask. “How can you assert that when you don’t even know me, so you don’t even know when I was born?” The answer is: because the world has been improving all along, so my assertion is true no matter how old you are.

To support this audacious claim, I’m going to compare 2026 to three historical snapshots: the birth years of my mother-in-law, of myself, of and my first child. Three sequential generations. You’re going to laugh at how much better things are for the kid lucky enough to be born today.

1932 — The year of my mother-in-law’s birth

I chose the birth year of my mother-in-law, rather than that of my own mom, because my mother-in-law is older—in fact, she’s among the oldest 1% of living humans globally, maybe even the oldest 0.5%, so she’s among albertnet’s most elderly potential readers. And here’s the America she was born into, broken down by some of the biggest concerns people have today about our world’s fitness for bringing up children:

• Economy: 1932 was arguably the single worst year of the Great Depression. There was 25% unemployment, and without any social safety net, unemployment generally led to immediate destitution. Over 9,000 American banks had failed.
• Geopolitics: In Germany, unemployment had hit 30% and economic desperation was fueling the rise of the Nazi party, by now the largest in Germany. Adolph Hitler would become chancellor within a year.
• Disease: There was no polio vaccine, no antibiotics, and no vaccine for measles, mumps, rubella, or chickenpox. Tuberculosis was still a leading killer. In the US, infant mortality was roughly 60 per 1,000 live births in 1932—compared to about 5.4 today.

Just imagine if my mother-in-law’s parents had contemplated the state of the world and were in a position to decide whether or not to have a baby. I mean, her dad had a job crushing rocks (to make gravel). Fate did me a huge favor there, as my mother-in-law went on to have a happy childhood and is still enjoying a long, satisfying adulthood after having four beautiful children, one of whom became my wife. If you were to ask my mother-in-law today if the circumstances of her birth put her in a deep existential hole she never managed to climb out of, she’d laugh in your face.

1969 — The year of my birth

I was the last of four boys born to my parents, and—birth control having been readily available—was not an accident. My mom and dad conceived me with full knowledge that their world was seriously messed up:

• Geopolitics: 1969 was the peak year of American troops in Vietnam, with over half a million deployed. The draft was in effect, meaning virtually every young man in the country faced the possibility of being sent to fight in a war with no clear end.
• Political dysfunction: The year before, 1968, had seen the assassination of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr.; police attacking anti-war protesters at the Democratic National Convention; and widespread urban riots. Nixon had just taken office under a cloud of suspicion that would culminate in Watergate. The previous year’s Tet Offensive had shattered public trust in the government’s honesty about the war.
• National safety: The Cold War was at a sustained peak. Both the US and the Soviet Union had enough nuclear warheads to destroy civilization multiple times over, and the doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction was widely bandied about.
• Economy: Inflation was famously bad in 1969, at 6.1%—a shocking and disheartening rate after two decades of price stability. The Federal Reserve responded by increasing interest rates sharply, which pushed America toward a long and stubborn recession. Americans had no idea they were on the cusp of one of the great bull markets in American history; they saw only inflation, a growing recession, an expensive war with no end in sight, and a deeply divided country.
• Crime: the murder rate was heading toward what would become the worst era of American violent crime in modern history, peaking at 10.4 per 100,000 in 1980—more than double today’s rate.
• Culture: Within a month of my birth, the TV show “Hee Haw” premiered. And my father actually watched it. These were dark times indeed.

2001 — The year of my first child’s birth

The year 2001, and those following it, were not halcyon days for America. And yet it never occurred to my wife and me not to have kids, based on then-current events. In fact, if you were to have asked us to explain our pro-procreation rationale as concisely as possible, we’d have gotten it down to a single word: “Duh.” And yet, here’s what was going on in our world:

• Terrorism: September 11, 2001—the deadliest terrorist attack in America’s history—killed nearly 3,000 people and triggered a governmental response that fundamentally changed America’s approach to security and surveillance. The anthrax letters that followed killed 5 and infected 17 others, raising fears of biological warfare on American soil. The sense that the homeland was no longer safe was entirely new and profoundly destabilizing psychologically.
• Economy: The dot-com bubble had burst in March of 2000, wiping out trillions in wealth, and by 2001 the US economy was in deep recession. This was worsened by 9/11, which caused the stock market to fall 7.1% on its first day of trading after the attacks.
• Political dysfunction: The country was bitterly divided over a presidential election decided by the Supreme Court, which halted a recount in Florida. The Court’s ruling was so unusual that it explicitly stated it should not be cited as precedent—an extraordinary statement to make. Suffice to say this decision struck a great many Americans as scandalous.
• Geopolitics: The US was on the verge of wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, but with no clear target or objective identified. The world suddenly felt dangerous in ways it hadn’t since the Cold War.

Granted, my first child was conceived before the attack on the World Trade Center. But did my wife and I regret for one moment bringing her into that world? Not at all. After all, we decided, with eyes wide open, to have another child two years later, even though by then unemployment had hit its peak and my own employer had gone bankrupt.

I hope I’ve compellingly suggested that every generation has been born into conditions that could, by the “concerns about the state of the world” logic, have argued for not procreating—and yet my mother-in-law, her daughter, your humble blogger, and my children are all glad we’re here. And since the dates of our respective births, so much about the world has improved. Here are some highlights:

• Today, infant mortality is eleven times lower than it was in the year of my mother-in-law’s birth. If that doesn’t make this a better time to have children, what does?
• Violent crime has fallen more than 50% since its early 1990s peak, and property crime has fallen almost the same amount, according to FBI statistics.
• Since the year of my first daughter’s birth, the economy has boomed; despite 9/11, two wars, the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, and a pandemic, the stock market in 2026 is worth roughly six times what it was in 2001. If we go back to 1969, parents afraid of market conditions would deprive a child of the opportunity to partake in 30-fold S&P 500 growth over the next 57 years (adjusted for inflation, with dividends reinvested).
• The world demonstrated an unprecedented capability to respond to a crisis, that being the COVID-19 pandemic. As aptly recounted here, an amazing collaboration took place between the biotech industry and various governments. Based on groundbreaking innovation and a largely unprecedented willingness to accelerate regulatory approval, a vaccine was developed in less than 12 months. This shattered the previous record, which was the mumps vaccine in the 1960s, which took about four years. A 2025 study published in JAMA Health Forum, a publication of the American Medical Association, estimates that the COVID-19 vaccines saved 2.5 million lives. I cannot imagine what would have happened had COVID hit back in 2001.

Still worried about politics?

If you’re still rejecting my assertions about the state of the world, perhaps your position is largely political. After all, politics is probably the most divisive force informing the national mood right now. So I’m going to tackle that, but don’t worry—I won’t take a side. (As described here, I think partisan bickering is pointless and not the purpose of albertnet.) Instead, let’s imagine a political change that I think we can all agree would be disastrous: what if we lost the right to free speech? And how about another: what if we fell under tyrannical Communist rule? Would I then concede that it’s wrong to bring a child into this world?

My answer is an emphatic “No.” Because if we decided, on the basis of Communist tyranny and the lack of free speech, that it was wrong to have children, we’d also be saying it’s been wrong for anyone in China to have had a baby in the last 77 years, or anyone in Russia for most of the last 109. We’d be saying it was wrong for my college roommate to have been given a chance at life: he was born into an authoritarian monarchy in Ethiopia, one of the poorest countries on earth; lived through a Communist revolution and one of the most brutal regimes in African history; was labeled an “enemy of the state” as a teenager who dared to speak out; escaped to America; and is now thriving and raising a family. Do you want to tell couples in less privileged countries than ours that it’s immoral for them to have kids?

Which brings me to my final point: the intrinsic absurdity of basing the decision of a lifetime on a snapshot in time.

A failure of perspective

Let’s do a quick thought exercise. Let’s suppose my wife and I had been thinking about starting a family a couple years earlier, in 1999, so we did an assessment then of the state of the world. The Dow had just closed above 10,000, and then 11,000, for the first time in history. The NASDAQ produced a mind-boggling 85.6% annual return. Unemployment hit its lowest level in 30 years. The federal government posted a $125 billion budget surplus — its second consecutive surplus after 30 years of deficits. Geopolitically, the Cold War had been over for a decade, the Soviet Union was gone, and democracy was spreading globally. It might have seemed like the perfect time to bring a child into the world—and yet within just a couple of years all this had collapsed. A child born in 1999 would be less than a year old when the NASDAQ began its catastrophic slide, losing three quarters of its value over the next couple of years. My kid would have been two years old on 9/11; three years old when WorldCom became the largest bankruptcy in American history after massive accounting fraud; and four years old when the US invaded Iraq and unemployment peaked at it post-recession high. So basing the decision to procreate on favorable conditions no more guarantees a happy life for your child than rough times portend a fraught one.

This is the folly of taking a snapshot in time and assuming it will set the tone of a person’s life for the next 70, 80, maybe 90 years. A child born today will live until roughly 2100 … who could possibly say what will happen between now and then? Think back to my mother-in-law’s life … she has lived through a crazy mixed bag of good and bad, from the Great Depression, World War II, the Cold War, Vietnam, Watergate, the 1970s stagflation, the AIDS epidemic, 9/11, the 2008 financial crisis, and COVID-19—but also the defeat of Axis imperialism, the creation of the polio vaccine, the Civil Rights act and Voting Rights act, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the eradication of smallpox (which had killed millions), the previously unimaginable access to information made possible by the Internet, the development of mRNA vaccines and unprecedented speed of the COVID vaccine, and the dramatic global decline in extreme poverty—more people lifted out of poverty in her lifetime than in all the rest of human history combined.

My takeaway? Looking at current events and deciding not to have kids is simply a failure of perspective. Basing an irreversible decision on what you read on your phone or hear on your podcast is not clear-headed risk assessment—it’s an anxiety response dressed up as moral reasoning. Again, I don’t blame you for feeling anxious. I just find it unsupportable to convert that anxiety into a judgment like “it’s wrong to bring a child into this world.”

A final note

I want to reiterate that I’m not trying to promote procreation—I am completely fine with “I choose not to,” and object merely to “no one should.” I am willing to work very hard to understand another’s perspective, so long as it’s not some froot-loopy moral judgment. Let me give you an example. I’ll confess I was somewhat flippant when my daughter announced she would never be a mother. I said something like, “It’s natural that at age 22 you’re not ready for parenting,” and intimated that her biological clock may one day cause her to change her mind. She seemed inordinately irritated by this response, I felt at first, but I finally understood her perspective when I read this passage in one of her college papers (for a philosophy class, on a non-procreation topic):

If I heard my parents talking about the messiness and inhuman effort of raising a child and I said I certainly wouldn’t go the same way they would laugh, and respond, “Just you wait till those hormones kick in.” It was as if they wished destruction upon me in the form of chemicals that would override reason and change my conception of self, that iron necessity to do what I did not want, justified because I’d become someone who desired it.

I call that “owning it.” She’s not afraid to answer the question for herself, not for the world. I think we can all respect that … right?

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Email me here. For a complete index of albertnet posts, click here.

Is It Wrong to Bring a Child Into This World?

Introduction

Throughout the world, the birthrate is falling. I’m not overmuch concerned about this, actually; we humans have had a good run, have obviously taken more than our share of our planet’s bounty and so on, and as a species I doubt we’ll be missed. But I am at the time of life when my friends have kids of child-rearing age, and here and there I’ll hear one of these friends say, whether quoting their kids or expressing their own sentiment or both, “It just seems wrong to bring a child into this world.” This gets my hackles up; in this post I explore why.

Just to make sure this sentiment is a thing, vs. me just happening to know an outsized number of nutjobs, I did a little research. Sure enough, a large (N=11,945) Pew survey conducted in 2023, when the US fertility rate reached a historic low, catalogs a variety of reason people aren’t procreating, and among these are two flavors of “it seems wrong,” including “concerns about the state of the world, other than the environment” (cited by 38% of respondents aged 18-49) and “concerns about the environment, including climate change” (26%). A third position, which didn’t figure in the Pew survey but I kept stumbling upon in my  research, is the idea that it’s ethically wrong to bring about a human life, period, since we can expect that human to undergo a lot of suffering during his or her lifetime. (This is similar to the “concerns about the state of the world,” except that it doesn’t account for the specific circumstances that person would face: this perspective is that it’s always wrong.)

I’m going to address these in order of how much they bother me.

But first, some demographic grounding…

You might wonder why I would challenge any resistance to the idea of procreation, given how overpopulation has for decades been cited as one of the greatest problems facing the world. I first encountered this notion in junior high when “ZPG,” zero population growth, was treated like the most noble of human endeavors. At that time, the bestselling book The Population Bomb, by Paul Ehrlich, was still being talked about, years after its publication. In fact, Ehrlich’s influence continued such that his ideas showed up again in my college Environmental Studies course. But oddly enough, Ehrlich’s predictions have not been materially borne out.

I still encounter people who believe overpopulation is a major global problem. They haven’t gotten the memo: the human population will peak during this century and then decline. This isn’t some hunch or non-validated claim your blogger is spouting; it’s widely accepted by demographers, and explained in this report by the United Nations. (The timing of this downturn is somewhat debated; the direction is not. For example, the UN predicts a peak population of 10.3 billion in the 2080s, whereas University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, publishing in The Lancet, projects a peak of 9.7 billion as early as 2064.)

Why is this? It’s due to the dramatic drop in fertility rates globally. The term “fertility” in this context doesn’t just mean our capability of reproducing (e.g., sperm count, other biological factors). It’s generally short for “total fertility rate” (TFR) and indicates the number of children a couple ends up having, based on all factors including their willingness to even try to conceive. The current TFR for the U.S. is 1.60 (i.e., on average each couple has 1.6 children). It’s widely considered that to maintain a country’s population requires a TFR of 2.1. (This is the accepted threshold because slightly more boys than girls are born, and not all children survive to reproductive age.) Worldwide, the TFR currently stands at 2.25, and it’s dropping fast, and has been for decades, since 1965—the same year the birth control pill came out, and the US Supreme Court struck down state laws banning contraception for married people. Check out this graph, from the excellent book Factfulness – Ten Reasons We’re Wrong About the World—and Why Things Are Better Than You Think by Hans Rosling et al:

So how come the world population isn’t declining yet, despite the low TFR? First of all, while one in four people already live in a country whose population has peaked, this sub-replacement-level TFR probably hasn’t been reached yet globally. (I say “probably” because there’s disagreement on this; some demographers believe it has.) The UN predicts the worldwide TFR won’t go below 2.1 until 2036. Even when it does, the population won’t decline right away, due to a concept that demographers call momentum. Jesús Fernández-Villaverde, an economist at the University of Pennsylvania, describes it thus, in an interview you can read here:

Momentum means the population will keep growing for 15 to 30 years after you fall below the replacement rate. Let me give a simple example. Imagine you have a spouse and only one kid. You are below replacement rate, but you are two. You have two parents, your spouse has two parents. You are not replacing yourselves, but your parents have not died yet. The fact that you have one kid still increases the population. The problem is when your parents die, [you] have not replaced them.

In case you’re curious, the population of the US has been projected by our Census Bureau to peak around 2080, based on experts’ best guess at the immigration rate. Their low-immigration model forecasts a peak in 2043, and without any immigration, we’d have peaked already, in 2024. 

So what happened to Ehrlich’s predictions of doom? Interestingly enough, his ideas weren’t actually accepted among serious demographers even when The Population Bomb was published. He kind of duped us! In fact, his book came out three years after the average number of babies per woman had already peaked and begun its long decline. He was diagnosing a crisis at the precise moment the underlying trend was already moving us in the opposite direction.

All of this is to say, declining to procreate based on the specter of overpopulation is an outdated notion that would be all too easy to dismiss. But the population backdrop is useful to bear in mind as we examine the three rationale I mentioned for believing it’s wrong to bring a child into this world.

The environmental perspective

When people cite the burden of humanity on the planet as a reason not to have kids, I have to concede they have a point. Certainly we humans have taken more than our share of resources and caused massive damage to the planet, including the loss of countless species. It’s easy to see how not procreating would help, but I will challenge this position anyway. First, it’s easy enough for us to deride the environmental consequences of humankind, but aren’t we also enjoying our lives and the gifts that fossil fuels bestow? How convenient that we can take the high road regarding breeding, since we didn’t choose to be here. I notice very few are volunteering to leave.

The idea of not procreating does seem like the most effective way to lower carbon emissions. Sure, I can (and usually do) bike instead of drive, but of course I still have a carbon footprint. (In fact, most of my rides are for recreation, not transportation; I eat more because I ride hard; and I shower and launder my bike clothing after every ride.) The only way to shrink my carbon footprint to zero would be, of course, to off myself, but I’m not willing to do that. Making a pledge not to produce offspring that carry forward our planet-ruining ways is obviously much easier (at least for people who, unlike me, aren’t parents yet). My research produced a number of celebrities expounding this merits of this noble sacrifice. Perhaps the most outspoken was Miley Cyrus who told Elle magazine, “We’re getting handed a piece-of-shit planet, and I refuse to hand that down to my child.” She vows not to procreate “until I feel like my kid would live on an earth with fish in the water.”

I think her sentiment is a good example of how this is more of a values-oriented idea than a true strategy, unless you’re willing to go all the way. There are certainly people who are, such as members of The Voluntary Human Extinction Movement (VHEMT) (pronounced “vehement”) whose motto is “May we live long and die out.” VHEMT’s founder, Les Knight, told the New York Times, “We [humans] came to be and then ran amok. And because we’re smart enough, we should know enough to end it.” David Benatar, a prominent moral philosopher at the University of Cape Town, speaking about the extinction of the human race, declares, “It would be better, all things being equal, if this happened sooner rather than later.” I am guessing that most people who trot out the environmental rationale for non-child-rearing aren’t this extreme.

I’m struck that the endgame of voluntary human extinction is rather similar to what happens if we do nothing about climate change: either way, we humans end up extinct. The difference is how much collateral damage we cause along the way. But the idea that we as individuals should sacrifice having kids in the service of environmental welfare doesn’t, for me, entirely hold up because a) if this perspective gained popularity, eventually the only people procreating would be climate change deniers, who don’t tend to devote themselves to clean energy and other pro-environment efforts, and b) based on wider trends, the fertility rate is dropping so fast already that our human impact on the planet is going to decline radically in the coming decades anyway. To showcase how radically, let’s look at some numbers, from this essay by Derek Thompson, a longtime writer for The Atlantic, in which he interviews Fernández-Villaverde, the economist at Penn I quoted earlier. Fernández-Villaverde explains:

Let’s suppose Thailand keeps its current fertility rate of 0.8 for 200 years. Thailand right now has 63 million people. At the end of 200 years, it will be around two million people [italics mine]. How do you wind down a society of 63 million people into two million? … It means you need to close 98% of the hospitals of the country. It means you need to close 98% of the schools of the country.

Just think of the diminishment of infrastructure worldwide. Fewer buildings, fewer cars, fewer drivers, fewer everything. We’re already seeing this in the US. My own kids’ schools in Albany, California used to strictly police their locals-only admission policy, but now accepts students from neighboring communities when space allows, due to declining enrollment. Similarly, Fernández-Villaverde mentions how his school district in Philadelphia is “closing a lot of primary schools because there are no kids.”

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a climate change denier or apologist, but it looks like a number of factors are lining up to give a bit of relief here. The International Energy Agency, the Paris-based intergovernmental energy agency of the world’s major developed economies, asserts in its World Energy Outlook 2024 report that CO2 emissions in advanced economies fell by 1.1% to 10.9 billion tons in 2024—a level last seen 50 years ago, even though the cumulative GDP of these countries is now three times as large. Granted, China’s per-capita emissions are rising sharply as its economy grows, but the IEA report forecasts that it too will decline in the second half of the century—and meanwhile, China’s fertility rate is just 1.0, so their population will crash almost as dramatically as Thailand’s.

To reiterate, fertility rates are dropping very quickly, worldwide, which will have a dramatic effect on the global population. This is a giant boulder gaining speed. To abstain from having kids—just to give that boulder a little extra push—strikes me more as a nice gesture than a moral imperative. And if we really care about climate change, might we not consider that some of our offspring may help try do something to solve the problem? Giving them the opportunity seems like a small risk, when our prospective kids’ effect on the rapidly declining world population looks like a rounding error.

The ethical perspective

Aside from the pragmatic idea of defending the planet from human onslaught, there is a philosophical, ethical movement called antinatalism that objects to procreation in principle. In a nutshell, it holds that just being alive entails suffering, and thus by bringing a person into the world, we are causing that person to suffer without their consent. It’s as though antinatalists heard teenagers complaining, “I didn’t ask to be born” and took it too much to heart. But actually, this idea isn’t new. Around 400 BC, Sophocles wrote, “Not to be born is, beyond all estimation, best; but when a man has seen the light of day, this is next best by far, that with utmost speed he should go back from where he came.” (I confess it’s hard for me to take this seriously; I’m envisioning a horrified human scrambling frantically to try to crawl back into his mother’s womb.)

In 1851, Arthur Schopenhauer wrote:

One should try to imagine that the act of procreation were neither a need, nor accompanied by sexual pleasure, but instead a matter of pure, rational reflection, could the human race even continue to exist? Would not everyone, on the contrary, have so much compassion for the coming generation that he would rather spare it the burden of existence, or at least refuse to take it upon himself to cold-bloodedly impose it on them?

I guess Schopenhauer would be surprised not only that humans do now have the choice, but that so far a majority of us have continued to procreate. Maybe we’re all enjoying our lives more than he did.

Among modern thinkers there doesn’t seem to be a deep bench of full-time philosophers espousing antinatalism; perhaps their most prominent figure is Benatar, the guy I quoted earlier saying “the sooner we go extinct the better.” He wrote a book twenty years ago called Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming into Existence, which might be the closest the modern movement has to a bible. The centerpiece of his antinatalism is known as “Benatar’s Asymmetry,” which (as described by Wikipedia) goes like this:

1. The presence  of pain is bad.

 2. The presence of pleasure is good. However:

3. The absence of pain is good, even if that good is not enjoyed by anyone.

4. The absence of pleasure is not bad unless there exists someone for whom this absence is a deprivation.

Thus, bringing a person into existence generates both good and bad experiences, such as pain and pleasure, whereas not coming into existence entails neither pain nor pleasure. The absence of pain is good, while the absence of pleasure is not bad. Therefore, the ethical choice is weighed in favor of non-procreation.

I have two fundamental problems with this logic. First, it assumes that pleasure and pain are like measurable building blocks of experience. They are absolutely not. Some people get more pleasure in life than others; some get more pain. But who could possibly calculate, on the whole, whether any particular person minds the disparity of his or her circumstance so much as to regret being alive? As operands in Benatar’s handy little grid, “pleasure” and “pain” work fine; in real life, they’re so messy as to be useless in any kind of experiential calculus.

My second issue with this Benatar’s Asymmetry is that it presupposes that all pain and suffering are in fact a net negative, whereas overcoming suffering can produce great satisfaction. Consider Eminem’s character in 8 Mile: most of the movie showcases his struggle, disappointment, and humiliation, until (don’t worry, no real spoilers here) it all comes right in the end. (If you haven’t seen that movie, go watch it right now and come back.) The triumph in the end is glorious. And now let’s consider Eminem’s actual life: he had a thoroughly miserable childhood, with a drug-addicted mother who suffered Munchausen Syndrome By Proxy, meaning she literally poisoned her child because she derived pleasure from the ministrations of medical staff. Imagine his satisfaction at not only surviving that, but going on to achieve worldwide stardom and excellence as a musical artist. Overcoming odds can be intensely gratifying. Listen to the triumph in Eminem’s voice in “Halie’s Song,” about the joy he gets from being a father: “ ‘Cause my baby knows that her daddy’s a soldier/ Nothin’ can take her from me.”

Perhaps the opportunity to gain strength and satisfaction from suffering can start to explain why people actually choose to endure pain—think of athletes. I myself have inflicted suffering on myself countless times (click here, or here, or here), just for the thrill of it. Naturally, there’s a difference between the suffering we willingly undertake and that which is thrust upon us, but I have experience there too, like when I broke my femur in a bike crash. Obviously if I could have chosen not to endure that, I’d gladly have passed—and yet, it did happen, and I did continue with the sport. It never occurred to me to quit. Why? Because on balance the pain is worth the pleasure. I’d just as soon decide where I fall on that pleasure/pain axis, vs. my parents having concluded on my behalf, ahead of time, that my life just wouldn’t be worth the suffering.

Another central argument Benatar makes is what he calls the “misanthropic argument,” which Wikipedia describes thus:

According to this argument, humans are a deeply flawed and destructive species that is responsible for the suffering and deaths of billions of other humans and non-human animals. If that level of destruction were caused by another species we would rapidly recommend that new members of that species not be brought into existence.

This one is just empirically false: I can easily name a species that causes the deaths of billions of animals: housecats. The peer-reviewed journal Nature Communications estimates that “domestic cats kill 1.3–4.0 billion birds and 6.3–22.3 billion mammals annually.” Are we really going to call for the voluntary extinction of the domestic cat? Look, Benatar: the world is a harsh place. Get over it.

Finally, a widespread tenet of the antinatal movement, as documented here and here, is that by having a child, we are exposing that person to pain and suffering without his or her consent. The popular antinatalist YouTuber Lawrence Anton explains, “So, you’re creating someone and they’re going to go through all this suffering, whatever it is in their life, and you’re not even able to ask them if they want to take those odds.” Well, what would that consent even look like? Don’t teenagers breezily blow past every privacy warning and end user agreement they ever see on social media, because they don’t have the fully formed neocortex required for the consideration of consequences? How much reasoning power does a zygote have?

Kidding aside, do these antinatalists really believe that we humans who have gotten the chance to exist are in a position to provide consent for our own future suffering? What if God came to me in a vision and said, “Dana, as a fallen Unitarian you are scheduled to have crippling back pain in your 70s. Would you prefer to be struck by lightning at 69?” I wouldn’t be able to decide. And what about the elder population a generation or two from now, whose safety net would be demolished if antinatalists got their way and there was no younger generation to pay into Social Security? Are we planning to get their consent? How come suffering is only to be avoided when it’s hypothetical instead of assured?

To be continued…

I advised earlier that I would consider each of these three “is it wrong” rationale in order of how much they vex me. As this post has gone on long enough, I shall save the “best” for last. Tune in next week when I’ll tackle the reason that 38% of the adults between 18 to 49 gave, in the Pew survey, for not having children: “Concerns about the state of the world.” I’ll also go into the number one reason those surveyed gave for not having kids, and why I’m actually fine with it.

UPDATE: Part II is now posted here.

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High School Dress Code - The Redline

Introduction

I have tried to be a good parent, but it’s not always easy keeping up with the job. A recent example: my younger daughter’s college tuition bills always went to her, and she never forwarded them because who cares? So I’d suddenly have to scramble after she received her third reminder and decided to bring it to my attention. Could I have put this recurring task on my calendar? Sure. Did I? Nope.

Thus, I suppose it shouldn’t have been a surprise when I recently stumbled across a document that my kids’ high school sent home, years ago, for me to sign. I swear I’d never seen it before, though it was certainly my signature at the bottom. Probably my kid thrust it in my face when I was trying to hustle her out the door, and when I didn’t see any financial impacts I just blindly signed it. Well, now that it’s come across my desk again, and I finally have the time to look at it, I’ve decided to redline it like I should have done in the first place. Since the school is most certainly not going to review my edits, I’m posting it here as a service to those who still have kids in high school and should be campaigning to refine their schools’ regulations. Note that due to HTML complexities, I’m not going to actually use a red font or strike anything out. You get to figure out what the original text was and which verbiage comprises my amendments and embellishments.

Albany High Dress Code – suggested revisions for immediate review

1. Clothing should be neat, clean and appropriate with shoes worn at all times. Common sense and reasonable judgment should eliminate the need to correct students in the area of dress and personal appearance. In the event that common sense and reasonable judgment do not prevent the need for correction, the source of the faulty judgment or lack of common sense will need to be established. This is a two-way street, and surely students will find administrators’ judgment lacking. Since these kids are the darlings of marketers, with their clothing choices becoming the habits that will cement lifetime value for the clothing industry, consideration will be made to grant the kids some clout, versus the educators who are, let’s face it, kind of bitter and probably not contributing much to the economy, based on their famously poor wages.

2. Shorts may be worn, but shorts and skirts that are too short, frayed, torn, or too tight are not acceptable. Clothing must not have holes that would attract attention and/or cause a distraction to the educational process. The judgment of this is up to school personnel, who are actually quite reasonable. For example, after last year’s dust-up around skirt length and the impressive solidarity of boys who began wearing miniskirts to support the cause, the school is now officially allowing skirts (of appropriate length) for both boys and girls. Also, staff members generously do allow holes in garments that are essential to their function, such as arm holes, neck holes, and leg holes. The staff acknowledges that a lack of a necessary hole, such as a missing aperture at the base of a sleeve, would be distracting if it were to inhibit the student’s actual arm from being usable. Also, if a garment has fringes, which are effectively quite similar to fraying fabric other than being tidier and more obviously engineered, as opposed to suggestive of excessive wear, the garment will be tolerated. Moreover, tassels are acceptable and even encouraged. The main distraction to the educational process is any feature of a garment that would be noticed by teenage boys with their raging hormones. Since most teenage girls find boys gross, it is reasonable that boys’ attire can be shorter, more frayed, or even torn, though too tight would be distracting to anybody. A final note: it is unreasonable to expect an educator to have to explain what, specifically, is unacceptable about a garment, in the event that it is distracting on a hormonal level. This could cause blushing and the suggestion of untoward attention. Educators will simply use the term “frayed” in a very generic way and students should accept this as a catch-all term for inappropriate clothing.

3. Markings or insignia on clothing or the body must not be obscene, suggestive, show gang affiliation, feature inappropriate language, or advocate disruptive behavior. Staff acknowledges that gang activity in Albany is exceedingly rare, so the colors red and blue may be freely worn, though red is preferred as it is the school color. It is also acceptable to wear clothing bearing a Berkeley High insignia, but only ironically. Inappropriate language is to be determined by the educators. For example, “FIGHT THE POWER,” though it advocates disruptive behavior, is acceptable as a tribute to Public Enemy (a rap group many staff members enjoyed as teenagers), whereas “DIE YUPPIE SCUM” is offensive to educators who are acutely aware of their lack of yuppie status. In situations where staff members disagree, a recent example being the phrase “I POOPED TODAY” on a t-shirt, determination will be made based on any staff member being uncomfortable. In such cases it is strictly forbidden to single out the offended staff member, such as by calling her “constipated” or “bitter.”

4. Clothing must not advertise or promote alcohol, tobacco, or drugs. If, for example, a student’s parent works for Pfizer and receives a branded t-shirt as swag, and the student wears this to school, he or she may be asked to go home and change. Furthermore, if a garment advertises a product that could be mistaken for a drug, such as Pfister (a plumbing fixture company commonly confused with Pfizer), that garment cannot be worn. The rule applies even if an alcohol-related brand is not featured primarily to promote the product. For example, if a student wears a retro Coors Classic t-shirt that he nicked from his father, he or she will be sent home, even though Coors beer is practically water.

5. Underwear may not show. However, it must be worn. The school administration acknowledges that this is difficult to enforce. For the most part the “honor system” will be used, but if a student is suspected of “going commando,” he or she may be sent home to change, with zero dialogue around why the staff member is suspicious.

6. Tops worn by boys or girls must not be revealing as judged by school personnel. Exceptions may be made based on what is being revealed. For example, a tight shirt revealing belly paunch will be tolerated, to avoid fat-shaming.

7. Clothing should cover the midriff. It’s bad enough when a nice flat midriff distracts hormonal boys; when a “muffin-top” is exposed, that’s distracting to everybody.[ In fact, consider changing “should” to “must.”]

8. Clothing that is disruptive or causes distraction while at school or a school function is not permitted. This includes disruption or distraction that accrues to the wearer, not just staff and fellow students. For example, if a student must hitch his or her pants up every thirty seconds to avoid violating rule #5, the pants are considered distracting. Certain exceptions may be made; for example, a student unable to concentrate due the discomfort of a hair shirt may continue wearing it if he or she is doing penance in accordance with his or her religious beliefs, which are protected under school policy.

9. Cargo pants/shorts with more than five pockets are prohibited. The “watch pocket” does count as a pocket, whether or not the student actually carries a pocket watch. An exception to this rule may be granted in the event that the student  must carry more prescription medication (including inhalers, insulin pens, Narcan spray applicators, and EpiPens) than would fit in five pockets. In this event, given the weight of all these full pockets, a belt must be worn to avoid violation of rules 5 and 8 as described above.

10. Albany High School reserves the right to allow or disallow certain apparel and accessories. If a student is asked to remove a hat or other headgear by any school personnel or guest teacher, the request must be honored promptly with no discussion. In the event of conflict, such as a student wearing a Stanford cap because a parent attended school there, which annoys a teacher who went to Berkeley, the teacher will automatically prevail. Or, if a teacher thinks visors simply make no sense, the student must remove his or her visor or add a yarmulke to complete the cap.

Postscript

In case you were wondering, almost all of the above rules are from the actual Albany High dress code. The only exception is number nine, which is from Southern Nash Middle School. I find this five-pocket prohibition a bit rich, especially from a school whose logo is highly anatomically suggestive.

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