Conspicuous Reproduction
The well-off like to advertise their success in many, mostly unproductive ways. They like to buy expensive luxury cars from Europe or build tacky, gaudily landscaped mansions, or purchase boats they never use. The point is to make the rest of us know that they have made it big and that we should be duly impressed.
But according to this Washington Post article, they've hit on a new favorite flaunt: having lots of kids. Anyone with kids knows it's not cheap, but it's especially not cheap when you're trying to impress people - or just keep up. Kids get real sore when their peers get all kinds of cool stuff and privileges and they don't, and they start wondering whether their old man ain't got his game no more (my kids have long ago given up on my "game" - though the 1993 Nissan Quest is still a much resented source of embarrassment). The cost of private schooling is of course beyond belief, but there are activities such as traveling sports when they're young, constantly eating out because of all the activities, trips to Europe in their teens, and then the horror of college tuition. And it keeps going - weddings, subsidized apartments, even paying for internships. So if you've got 5 kids in an upper-middle class milieu, people are going to be impressed.
This is one trend that should be encouraged - by all means, show off. You might worry we'll soon be inundated with swarms of spoiled brats, and this is certainly true. But these kids will for the most part be able to read and write and do high school math, which is an enormous boost over what is now the most fecund population segment - immigrant children with 50% high school graduation rates. It would be nice if this trend were to catch on in Western Europe, where they face a much scarier demographic trend. Another positive side of this is that this involves real sacrifice on the part of the mother. Well-to-do women work extremely hard at keeping themselves looking good, spending many hours at the gym and starving themselves the rest of the day, probably only infrequently being rewarded with a quick fling with the trainer (for which the competition is particularly fierce). Thus having several children requires a level of commitment to a "higher societal goal" we're unaccustomed to seeing in today's movers and shakers. So let's not sneer at this latest status symbol - cheer it on!
But according to this Washington Post article, they've hit on a new favorite flaunt: having lots of kids. Anyone with kids knows it's not cheap, but it's especially not cheap when you're trying to impress people - or just keep up. Kids get real sore when their peers get all kinds of cool stuff and privileges and they don't, and they start wondering whether their old man ain't got his game no more (my kids have long ago given up on my "game" - though the 1993 Nissan Quest is still a much resented source of embarrassment). The cost of private schooling is of course beyond belief, but there are activities such as traveling sports when they're young, constantly eating out because of all the activities, trips to Europe in their teens, and then the horror of college tuition. And it keeps going - weddings, subsidized apartments, even paying for internships. So if you've got 5 kids in an upper-middle class milieu, people are going to be impressed.
This is one trend that should be encouraged - by all means, show off. You might worry we'll soon be inundated with swarms of spoiled brats, and this is certainly true. But these kids will for the most part be able to read and write and do high school math, which is an enormous boost over what is now the most fecund population segment - immigrant children with 50% high school graduation rates. It would be nice if this trend were to catch on in Western Europe, where they face a much scarier demographic trend. Another positive side of this is that this involves real sacrifice on the part of the mother. Well-to-do women work extremely hard at keeping themselves looking good, spending many hours at the gym and starving themselves the rest of the day, probably only infrequently being rewarded with a quick fling with the trainer (for which the competition is particularly fierce). Thus having several children requires a level of commitment to a "higher societal goal" we're unaccustomed to seeing in today's movers and shakers. So let's not sneer at this latest status symbol - cheer it on!
posted by ziel | 4/08/2008 07:44:00 AM
9 Comments:
If Americans are having kids as status symbols now then that is probably just one more sign that we are becoming a 3rd World country. I remmber reading several years ago that the reason Kenyan women had on average 9 children each in their lifetimes was because Kenyan men believed the more children they fathered the more prosperous they appeared to be.
Thats what will happen in this country. Since middle-class Americans' greatest fear is that someone will discover that they're not as successful as they want everyone to believe they are, they will have more kids than they can afford just to help create this false image of prosperity. Thats the root cause of the housing crisis we're experiencing now, phonies buying houses they couldn't afford so that their friends and inlaws will think they're rich. And just like them, people who have kids they can't afford will whine to the government to bail them out by giving them a much bigger tax allowance for their kids and a much more generous earned income credit.
I wish these dispshits would just get over their adolescent image-consciousness and grow up.
I - Don't you think we are already well on our way to becoming a Third World country with the high unmarried, high-school dropout Mexican birth rate. I feel anything to increase the married, upper-middle class Euro birth rate can only be a positive, regardless how much you loathe these people personally.
I think whites are simply afraid of becoming a minority and dont wan that for their children, so a few of the more religiously-minded are beginning to have more. The government told us all in the seventies that we'd be overcrowded and in danger of starvation with their one-child propaganda back in the day (I was in school and saw it back then), but now we know that was a farce, and the government is bringing in hordes of third worlders and telling us that its for our retirement. We could have made 30 million more Americans the old fashioned way, having babies.
Im elated when I see large white families. It equates with MORE law-abiding, productive, tax-paying, conciencious, and generally polite ENGLISH-speaking citizens with a shared heritage who actually LOVE America.
The roots of the HOUSING CRISIS were generally from poor people buying houses they could not afford with ARM-loans. Guess what, most were black and hispanic proportionate to their share of the electorate. The McMainsions aren't being foreclosed on.
"I said" is either misinformed (probably) or a liberal trying to spin the finance dilemma on boring-law-abiding-educated-employed-white people.
I'm pretty sure "I" is not a liberal (he's commented here before). It seems more likely he just doesn't like spoiled, status-conscious brats. He has a point, but I think there's a more serious demographic challenge that overrides this concern.
No, i am most definitely not a liberal.
I don't have any problem with people having large families because they REALLY like children, and can afford them. But if people are having more children just for appearances, seriously, that is just stupid.
But I also hate this idea that whites should, well, procreate like Kenyans - just so that we can have the upperhand in some kind of reproductive arms race. Instead of white people having lots more kids, why don't we just shut the door on 3rd world immigration. It seems to work fine for the Japanese.
Isaid wrote:
"But I also hate this idea that whites should, well, procreate like Kenyans - just so that we can have the upperhand in some kind of reproductive arms race. Instead of white people having lots more kids, why don't we just shut the door on 3rd world immigration. It seems to work fine for the Japanese."
I agree 1000%. But in the meantime....I hope whites have that second or even third kid. Us getting outnumbered at the ballot box will practically ensure a Euro-style socialism here from which we will never fully recover. If there is any hope of killing identity politics, its not going to come from an electorat that is only half-white in this nation.
I keep telling myself we were 89-% white as recently as 1965. Its amazing.
the nissan quest...oh god
Ziel drives the Nissan Quest for one reason: he wants to eliminate any chance of being carjacked in large, criminal infested cities.
James Francis (the other) said:
"Ziel drives the Nissan Quest for one reason: he wants to eliminate any chance of being carjacked in large, criminal infested cities."
Isn't Newark, NJ the auto theft capital of the U.S.? Good thinking on his part.
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