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A meanie... a book... a song...
Mar. 17th, 2004 11:45 amWhoo. The office meanie is good practice in human relations, all right. ( I'm improving. )
Anyone here read The Two-Income Trap? It's about how middle-class American parents now have two incomes, but live so narrowly within their means that when crisis strikes, they get screwed. Unlike in the older one-income model, there's now no spouse in reserve who can enter the workforce or provide free health care to an ailing family member. And having a child is now the primary indicator of whether someone will declare bankruptcy in the future, especially because competing for houses in the best school districts is much of what drives parents so close to the edge in the first place. Okay... so in spite of all this, why do the authors not recommend having fewer children? They do mention the childfree at the very end of the book, but primarily in worried "what if their numbers grow?" tones, and then they come out with this priceless quote: Our advice here is born out of hope rather than sound financial reasoning. If you feel called to be a parent, we hope you will follow your heart. Yes, you may lose your home, and you may go bankrupt. We hope the joys will outweigh the financial pain. Uhhhh... yipes!!! I hope so too, but those had better be some heavy-hitting joys, and I'm sooo not going to play that game. Thanks but no thanks. I'll be sitting in the bleachers eating a corn dog. :o
In the end, the authors may be right to say that some policies ought to change to make things easier on parents, but ending the insane rush to spend more and more on Junior to give him an edge would go a long way, and that starts with financial education of parents-to-be... another thing the authors mention only briefly. And even playing by the "society needs the next generation" rule, it would have been fine to mention having one child fewer than the womb desires, wouldn't it? It's hard not to feel that they missed the point of all that fact-gathering. Grrrrrrrrrrrr.
I must do my best to concentrate until 6:00, when I can fly home on lightened feet and begin to whip up my kitchen magic. People were hoping pretty hard for today to be a snow day, but alas, it was not. So in the spirit of randomness, here's the song that's stuck in my head:
And they were singin'... my, my, this here Anakin guy; maybe Vader someday later, now he's just a small fry. And he left his home and kissed his mama goodbye, singin' now I'm gonna be a Jedi... now I'm gonna be a Jedi.
Anyone here read The Two-Income Trap? It's about how middle-class American parents now have two incomes, but live so narrowly within their means that when crisis strikes, they get screwed. Unlike in the older one-income model, there's now no spouse in reserve who can enter the workforce or provide free health care to an ailing family member. And having a child is now the primary indicator of whether someone will declare bankruptcy in the future, especially because competing for houses in the best school districts is much of what drives parents so close to the edge in the first place. Okay... so in spite of all this, why do the authors not recommend having fewer children? They do mention the childfree at the very end of the book, but primarily in worried "what if their numbers grow?" tones, and then they come out with this priceless quote: Our advice here is born out of hope rather than sound financial reasoning. If you feel called to be a parent, we hope you will follow your heart. Yes, you may lose your home, and you may go bankrupt. We hope the joys will outweigh the financial pain. Uhhhh... yipes!!! I hope so too, but those had better be some heavy-hitting joys, and I'm sooo not going to play that game. Thanks but no thanks. I'll be sitting in the bleachers eating a corn dog. :o
In the end, the authors may be right to say that some policies ought to change to make things easier on parents, but ending the insane rush to spend more and more on Junior to give him an edge would go a long way, and that starts with financial education of parents-to-be... another thing the authors mention only briefly. And even playing by the "society needs the next generation" rule, it would have been fine to mention having one child fewer than the womb desires, wouldn't it? It's hard not to feel that they missed the point of all that fact-gathering. Grrrrrrrrrrrr.
I must do my best to concentrate until 6:00, when I can fly home on lightened feet and begin to whip up my kitchen magic. People were hoping pretty hard for today to be a snow day, but alas, it was not. So in the spirit of randomness, here's the song that's stuck in my head:
And they were singin'... my, my, this here Anakin guy; maybe Vader someday later, now he's just a small fry. And he left his home and kissed his mama goodbye, singin' now I'm gonna be a Jedi... now I'm gonna be a Jedi.
