The Small Subtle Poisons

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

Imagine you were a crazy person who actually believes all the statistics that are collected, as well as books written by alarmist idiots (rich alarmist idiots, mind you) like Paul Ehrlich are G-d’s holy writ, handed down from mount infallible to your tiny little mind.

And imagine this is around the fifties, and you look around all these families with four and five kids a piece, and you think this means there is a population bomb and ahrgle bargle, gasoline gargle, you’re all going to diiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiie when the population bomb goes off and reeeeeeeeeee!

You could stand at the corner and scream non stop that people should stop having kids, but that wouldn’t work. At best people would point and laugh. At worse they would give you the much deserved beating of a lifetime.

Or, if you are the type of learned idiot, who has connections, you could start ensconcing yourself in institutions and, more importantly, the highly centralized centers of communication and entertainment media in this country, and from there slowly and gently — shall we say painlessly — poison the minds of the young so that they will OF COURSE decide not to have children. Because they’re “smart” and “educated” and, of course “of a higher class.”

Humans being social apes, you can sell almost anything to them as higher group social signaling. I mean, look at the things that have been sold to humans as denoting higher social class, from pallor so white it required the taking of small dosages of arsenic, to wearing miniature ships on your head (that had to hurt) to the bizarrely convoluted garments of various eras, to living in a big ol’ drafty palace where all the food arrived cold, and where you had to bankrupt yourself and your estates to remain, to the twiggy-thinness of the eighties, to sterilizing yourself and destroying your future …. today.

And that’s how a childless lifestyle, and frankly voluntary extinction was sold.

Oh, they tried the direct method too. Showing pictures of mismanaged third world countries and assuring you that’s where we’d be without serious population control; or showing you pictures of children in Africa, starved by their kleptocrat rulers and pretending that this is the result of your having enough to eat and having children.

Somehow it never worked or never very well. Like convincing people “rationally” that we were running out of fossil fuels.

In fact, like the “climate crisis” they can only terrify the extremely neurotic, the borderline autistic, and people so smart that in everyday lives they function like complete idiots, and can be convinced of everything that someone sells with enough gusto. I.e. no matter how much they scream and stomp, only a small portion of the population falls for it.

The rest continue to live in a sane way and know that fossil fuel is not scarce. The exploration and sale of it is being strangled in its crib by the malevolent idiots in power. Like food distribution in Africa.

Because when things are presented frontally people have defenses against the bloody stupid. Or at least most people do.

There are signs. Like, when I was in high school they gave us the contracts in which we promised — pinky swear — to never have children in 11th grade. By my kids’ generation they were presenting it in the seventh, trying to get in below the age of even mild reason.

Of course those don’t work, even when you get kids to sign them because they want good grades. Because kids aren’t stupid, and at some gut level you know contracts signed under duress aren’t valid.

Ah, but then there is the slow poison, and the intimations of social signaling.

So… We’ve been watching a lot of old mysteries/thriller series in the evening. By “we’ve been watching” you should as always understand that what this means is that Dan is watching them, because this is his activity of choice when his brain is fried from real work, and I’m doing the next day’s blog (as you can tell from time of posting, not recently, but that’s because of sleep disturbances. Meds are being adjusted.) I get bits here and there, between work, enough to get the gist. I mean, these are not high-demand shows (no tv show is, really. Colombo, maybe, but how long ago was that?)

Because my brain is divided and squirreling on other stuff, back and forth, it took a while to sink in, and in fact I didn’t see it at all. Dan did. And then I reviewed it through my head and went “Oh. Oooooooh.”

Two days ago, early morning, as I was getting dressed, Dan said, “You do realize that these shows, none of the “aspirational” married couples have children? Even the happily married ones have a dog or a cat, and if asked about children laugh and say it’s not for them. The only children are either conceived by single women in abusive relationships, or are the children of divorced mothers who obviously had bad marriages? Children are always associated with poverty and abuse.”

I reviewed it my head, and yep. It is exactly like that. Plus, mind you, the wife and the husband usually both work, the husband in some sort of corporate or high stress career and the wife makes JUST as much, and her job is just as vital, but the wife works at some artsy fartsy field, from outright art to catering, to custom cakes, or whatever. But she’s massively successful — everyone of them is — and makes a lot of money, and they both go out to eat or get take out, or cook GOURMET meals all the time, and dress in the dernier crie of fashion, and look down on the poor dumb peasants who don’t live like them.

Upper class. Totally unrealistic, bizarrely self involved upper class.

Yes, yes, I know. You’re all laughing at me now, “TV shows are unrealistic, news at 11.”

But that’s not the point. The point is that they’re all unrealistic in the exact same way. Like, they’re all reading from the same song book and only one song will be allowed, sung in perfect harmony.

I’m not proposing there is a conspiracy — though heaven knows, there might be, as recently it came out there’s yet another incarnation of the journolist, this time with the rabid left and the Never Trumper “right” (they must be so proud to be included! I hope they realize they’re still on the elimination list, and ahead of us at that) deciding how to report things to make it so that Potatus can fake a win in November. (Selling their country for a mess of attaboys. Pottage at least you can eat.) — but a prospiracy. These people who control what you see are hired and promoted by the media-news-entertainment-complex because they are either true believers or so ambitious they’ll sell their grandmother to an Havana brothel for a crust of bread, or a bit of social approval.

I.e. they’re not pushing this nonsense because they want to save the world — though some of them are probably stupid or smart enough to (the extremes really touch in this case) — but because they really believe these things they put in fiction. It couldn’t — wouldn’t — be so pervasive if they hadn’t internalized it.

And the problem is that the serving of poison in small measures works, where screaming at people won’t work.

It has been established that our Neolithic brains don’t process very well the idea that what we see on the screen isn’t real. And we internalize a lot of it as having happened to us, or as being our real social circle.

So, for instance, we tend to include characters of frequently watched sitcoms in our count of people we see every day. And we will describe events and things we saw on TV as having happened to us. (Why I don’t hold against Hillary describing disembarking in Sarajevo in a hail of bullets. And as for FJB his dementia has scrambled his brain, and he was always a filthy liar, but seriously, at this point the barrier really is gone in his mind, and he probably really believes Ol’ Uncle Bosie as eaten by cannibals, because he saw it in some show in the forties.)

And so, insensibly, our young people are internalizing that having children means being very poor the rest of their lives, or getting divorced. And women are internalizing that wanting children means they’re abused.

Children are still happening. Weirdly, this means they’re happening more concentrated. I.e. fewer families have children, but those that do have large families. Because they are stubborn and mullish enough to buck the trend. Which also means the future presents itself with four feet stuck in the ground and screaming “you can’t make me.”

But even those of us who raised children (granted my body didn’t allow us many) are going to lose much of the next generation to this subtle propaganda.

Yes, many of us said the reason that the birth rate is falling is not that the new generation is deprived compared to their distant ancestors. But then we’re not in the stone age, and if you try to raise ten children in a grass hut in the middle of the field, social services will come and take them away. However, and more importantly, young people all have, at the back of their heads, the certainty that if they have children their lives are over.

How many times have you seen the “studies” on things like raising a child to 18 is a quarter million or a half a million dollars? We were enormously flattered by these when we were raising ours. Because heaven knows, you feel pinched and exhausted (when they’re toddlers) and you feel like at least you’re saving that much. But is it true? Is it ever true? I know that we didn’t make enough to pour that much into each kid. No way. It would be more than 10k per kid per year, and you’d have to count “lost wages” if I were in a well-paying job, instead of staying home and trying to be published in that. And you’d have to not count all the money I saved by buying used furniture and refinishing, buying the ingredients and making food, buying thrift store clothing, etc.

Now, yeah, the kids did cost time, and I was in one of those artsy-fartsy jobs that don’t pay for decades. Eventually they might (or might never) but they don’t pay much while you’re breaking in.

And yes, we were very poor for a long time, but honestly? We’d have been even without the kids. Maybe poorer, because the kids counted as our entertainment system for a long time. (No, seriously. Now I’m not saying everyone has enormously amusing children, but we did.)

But the studies, the talk, the shows, all assure young people their lives will be over if they have even one or two kids.

I didn’t realize this, until one of you said it, but the lifestyle being sold as aspirational is “College student with money.” The marriage is just like living together in college, but both of you are making pots of money. And this is sold as what everyone should be doing.

Now– Does that lifestyle sound great? Sure. Though Dan and I never partied as college students (since — back when this was possible — both of us did college very cheaply by keeping high grades) but we did have our first six years of marriage as a sort of poor-man’s version of this. And when I was working as a high-rent version of this.

The thing is it’s not as fun as you think. The work in your twenties if you are in a high-demand, high-pay position (which wasn’t artsy-fartsy for me, more soul killing) is brutal because everyone expects you to do 12 hours, no paid overtime. So the eating out, the clothes, etc? Well, we did it, because we had no time to do anything else. And yeah, we had a group of friends who were like us, and we went to comedy clubs and music shows, and movies with them. But I was usually too exhausted to enjoy any of it. And at the end of the year, we had almost no money left.

More importantly, and left out of these shows which shows people in their forties living this lifestyle: it wears out. It palls.

The subtle poison won’t sell itself for more than a generation. Because not having kids is an ugly lifestyle as you age. Yes, I know. There are social services and charitable organizations. Do you want to count on them as you age?

We’re not seriously impaired yet. In some things, we are very much like people in their thirties, and on the good days I still do that level of work, no problems. But Dan’s knees have given out (we’re finally trying to get back on track on the replacement that the lockdowns derailed) and in physical work, I do about half what I think is my normal rate, so things take forever. (I have a list. From yard work, to painting, to tuck pointing, but it will probably take the whole summer, instead of a couple of weeks.)

But there are days, and there are times, already, that if we couldn’t call on one of the sons to help me take a piece of furniture downstairs, or to come help when we tried to bring an exercise machine in ourselves, and Dan fell and literally can’t get up, and I don’t know if he broke something. (Seriously. That was terrifying, because the treadmill was across our door, and he was outside. I had to lock the cats, then go around to even see if it looked like he broke something — he hadn’t –) Without the kid dropping everything and coming over to lend a hand (thank heavens he works from home) we’d have had to call the fire department and the ambulance and wait.

I’m not going to say we’re in big trouble yet. We always did stupid things. We’re not old enough to be in bad trouble. But we can see old age from where we are and the vulnerabilities and dangers of it.

Now, I’m the last person to rag on anyone who for good and sufficient reason chose not to have kids. (And good and sufficient reason includes “because no.”) Or anyone who tried to have kids and couldn’t. We were almost in that boat. And though I got married in my early twenties, I was an old maid by village standards, and I am also not going to rag on anyone who never found anyone to marry or stay married to.

However, it’s not a dream lifestyle where you get to be a college student with money forever, as the shows sell it. Eventually old age comes to us all. And while having children is not a guarantee of having some help, (we’re really very lucky that for now sons are within driving distance and one close-ish) it is more likely than if you don’t.

Sacrifices to raise them? I guess??? Though it’s hard to pinpoint exactly. I lost years of life and tons of hair over their schooling, but that was mostly because I was stupid and thought I couldn’t homeschool.

Still, their sales job, the subtle poison of “no children is better” is working. And though even government shills and some establishment lunatics are waking up and realizing that the “overpopulation” let alone the “population bomb” were likely always snow jobs, and the correction has been disastrous, they’re having trouble turning the boat around.

Partly because the poison continues, and is out there in re-runs too. And partly because when you establish that kind of social signaling in the culture “children are low class” it’s really hard to reverse. China, who, being China, forced it at first, now can’t overcome the “one child is plenty” expectation of the culture. And this is China, who if you remember, we were assured was in irreversible population explosion, such that if there was a line of Chinese jumping off a cliff, more would be born in line so it would never run out.

The rest of us…

The invasion over the border is giving people the idea the rest of the world is overpopulated for sure. But like high prices giving the idea that fossil fuels are scarce, this is not true. None of it is true.

Not happy with making our children into useless pensioners, we’re stealing the third world’s children to do the same to them. In their wake are left empty countries who can’t do anything, because the young people have left. Not quite fully visible yet, because as in most first waves of migration, it’s mostly young males. The females are left behind for now, as old-maids and functional widows even if married. And some of the older people are thirty and forty. But in ten years it will be obvious.

(BTW I never understood this part of the population bomb gospel. Mostly it wanted the first world to stop reproducing. But didn’t they realize that just meant we’d import people, and the total would be more or less the same? I did by 35. I wrote that story. Couldn’t sell it of course. I’m now amazed I was stupid enough to think I could.)

Because this fall in population is worldwide. Partly because the convincing by entertainment affects the entire world. Everyone watches American and English shows. Our left never understands that.

The more far-seeing population experts are now screaming about a catastrophic population drop, and extinction level event.

It’s funny I could see this twenty five years ago, when they thought I was crazy and tried to shout me down. Yeah, I know, Cassandra didn’t get half the beating she deserved.

Is it early enough to reverse it? Who knows? How low can we go before we can’t hold a technological civilization? Who knows?

It’s stupid. It’s bizarre. The entire species was convinced to commit slow suicide. Still is being.

Not by sudden catastrophe, not by preaching and raving on the street corners, but by slow dripping poison, convincing us that the next generation was just too much trouble and too expensive, and that if we didn’t give them life, we could live forever, young and golden in the isle of the blest.

I have no counter to this, except that we need to write stories of families, stories of happy parenthood. And we need to be open enough to explain how having kids was worth it — probably the biggest challenge and the best experience we ever had — and how humanity is worth it and worth investing in.

Oh, and how no one is perfect, childless or parent, and we’re all broken and do the best we can. And that’s the best we can hope for.

We need to believe and invest in life. Either creating it or adopting it and guiding it. (And I don’t mean legally. We’ve covered that.)

I don’t know about you, but I’m human and I’m for the humans. I don’t care if beavers, or lobsters, or insects are better.

I’m #teamhuman all the way. #teamhuman is worth it.

It might be too late. It might be hopeless. But grandma always said “While there’s life, there’s hope.”

Go and work for Team Human. Go work for the future. Hug a young ‘un today and tell them they’re worth it.

195 thoughts on “The Small Subtle Poisons”

    1. I can’t say for sure it’s original to me, but I know I’ve been using it for a few years now. Usually in the form of “Argle bargle and a gasoline gargle” for some insane and/or frustrating thing. It amuse me to see it here.

      Liked by 2 people

  3. We had 5 kids; 4 survive. 3 are married, and each has at least 1 child (they’re young, many more are likely on the way. Our 20 year old has a girlfriend; I know her and her family, and approve (although let’s get college out of the way first, please).

    I am old; the Dr. tells me I need bionic knees. I retire in 4 weeks – but who’s counting? Except for the youngest in college, our kids are within a 45 minute drive of us. Most weekends, they come over and help us on the ranch. The goal is to have our 7 acres as a refuge for our kids and grandkids – so far, so good.

    Raising kids has been the best thing in our lives. Exhausting and sometimes painful, but so good.

    Liked by 3 people

  4. “In fact, like the “climate crisis” they can only terrify the extremely neurotic, the borderline autistic, and people so smart that in everyday lives they function like complete idiots, and can be convinced of everything that someone sells with enough gusto. I.e. no matter how much they scream and stomp, only a small portion of the population falls for it.”

    But when that small portion is in the right positions…..

    https://twitchy.com/amy-curtis/2024/04/24/climate-crisis-covid-powers-n2395450

    “The White House is now considering declaring a national climate emergency.”

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      1. Those “IN CASE OF FIRE BREAK GLASS” signs for hoses and such? I picture something with a coil of rope behind it, only instead of FIRE, TREASON (Faucism, etc.)

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    3. Maybe the American public should consider declaring a “national governance emergency” and detaining any Feds until January 21, 2025.

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  5. “But even those of us who raised children … are going to lose much of the next generation to this subtle propaganda.”

    Already lost. Both of my children are dead-set against having children and/or raising a family. I know we were far from perfect, but we tried to be good examples and raise them to be good people…and they are good people. Kind-hearted and intelligent, and I like them a lot. They’re exactly the sort of people you WANT to be raising the next generation. Yet they don’t see any utility or desirability in the experience of having families of their own. I’m not sure how to deal with it; I never envisioned a future in which I had no grandchildren and my family just…ended.

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        1. I’m the only one who never found a spouse. My 4 siblings all were fruitful and multiplied, though one had to stop after only a single child due to an ectopic that burst. Of my sister’s 3 boys, the oldest is on the spectrum and, while interested in girls, is socially awkward. The middle one will be a heartbreaker and I’m hoping he finds a nice girl and has a half-dozen kids or more. The youngest has stated loudly and often that he’s never going to have kids. In fact, he’s never going to be in any sort of relationship. Two of the other grandkids are being groomed to be worthless slugs who play on the computer all day in just their underwear and live off of frozen pizza. The only granddaughter barks loudly and often about ‘my body, my choice’, and ‘why should I share my body with an unwanted parasite?’ (along with, ‘no one should have to drudge their life away at a job when we can all just sit back and live off other peoples’ effort’).

          I though we were going to be good, but as time goes on it looks more and more like limbs on teh family tree are self-pruning….

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    2. “The Education Of Tigress McCardle” by C. M. Kornbluth. Cyril was a prophet in many ways; I’m waiting for “Gladiator at Law” to show up in some form. Or maybe “The Syndic”. (With DEI/DIE/IDE we’re already well on the way to “The Marching Morons”…) 🤢

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    3. We are in the same boat. Only one child (broken record: wanted more). I think we did a wonderful job with him. He hasn’t declared that he never wants children, but he sure isn’t putting himself out there looking for a compatible partner. Of any kind. He has friends who have absolutely declared they are not having children to the point of making sure they can’t. We have neighbors whose grandchildren have declared the same. Seriously. One father (of son’s friend) said their adopted son is their only hope for children (fostered him and his half sister. When released to be adopted, sister’s father stepped up for custody. The boy’s father had already lost custody.) Son does have friends who have children. OTOH the friends *situations does not help the situation. Then there are his cousins, who are having children. While one started out rough, they are setting desirable examples.

      ((*)) Both were forced into marriage. First child was very premature. Wedding gowns were very full? Both heavily rely on parental support. Don’t know how much their wives parents contribute. But one and his family, wife and two kids, live with his folks. The other does have an subsidized apartment with wife and two kids, but rely on his folks to get by. To the point where both his parents went back to work after retiring. Grandpa’s retirement benefits minimal beyond SS. But grandma also has a significant public pension. Three of the parents are working. Both fathers are at very decent jobs. The subsidized apartment and the one parent not working is because she is blind due to T1 diabetes, triggered by birth of second child, diabetes is causing other complications.

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    4. Me too. Younger son (OMG! HE’S ABOUT TO TURN 39!!!!) and wife want kids, but haven’t managed it. Older son has imbibed the red ink. Might wake up someday. I tell myself that men don’t have to worry about their biological clock, but . . .

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      1. men don’t have to worry about their biological clock, but . . .

        No. But when you realize your children are same age as your great-nephews, and younger than great-nieces? Any you are not that much younger (3 years) than their grandparents? One advantage is for cousin is that is a tradition in our extended family. Usually though it is the youngest siblings who are from barely older to even younger than children of their oldest siblings so that they are being raised with their parents grandchildren, and their children raised with the great-grandchildren.

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  6. Turn the boat around? That would require a lot of people who have convinced themselves that they are the smartest and most moral people, not just around, but even possible, to conclude that they were wrong. Not only that, but to act that way publicly, so everyone could see that they’d concluded they were wrong.

    This is hard enough for a regular human being. To expect this of the class of the righteously self-satisfied is likely too much.

    It might even be too much to hope that they merely stop working actively toward such destructive ends, as their peers might conclude they had drifted away from rightthink and begin posing awkward questions.

    What inducement could we offer them to alter course? It goes beyond Sun Tzu’s advice to leave your enemy an escape route, so he doesn’t hunker down and fight you to the death (and hopefully, while retreating, gets disorganized so you can kill more of them). It’d be great if just not browbeating them for changing their minds worked, but I think they’d settle for nothing less than being left in charge of everything they’re in charge of now. Which means we’d have to take them at their word that they had reformed. How much do you feel like trusting them?

    To quote Yul Brynner, is a puzzlement.

    Republica restituendae, et, Hamas delenda est.

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  7. I can’t help but wonder if there is some feedback circuit in the mammal brain that breaks down or starts going destructive if there are too many of the same species around.

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      1. This thought is only partially formed. Marxism is an intellectual justification of envy, which is why it, and all of its siblings are so sticky, even with how destructive they are.

        That makes me wonder if this is so sticky because there’s something lower level going on in the monkey brain.

        There’s the mouse utopia experiments, which have limitations, and seem to be tailor made for the malthusians, except they never actually hit a resource limit. They went crazy and crazied themselves to death.

        And with centralization piping all media through the hive-cities where this sort of thing, if it exists, seems most likely to be a factor,

        We’ve discovered not having enough human contact harms one severely. That’s why I’m beginning to wonder if too muxh contact also burns out something.

        And we’ve also got the not-quite-contact as well.

        I wonder if that’s part of why Helldivers works too: it is up to only 4 player coop, and matches are 30m-40m per mission and not more 3 missions per operation. Enough to have a team, but not so many that you can’t get to know a bunch of randoms. And it is, at most, an evening commitment but not more.

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        1. We don’t even know if too much contact harmed the mice. The experiment was borked.
          Too much contact “harms” introverts, but I don’t think it’s a thing long term.
          Look, guys, you really have no clue of the experience of living in a traditional village. NONE. Even those of you in small towns didn’t grow up in Europe.
          EVERYONE LIVES IN EVERYONE’S POCKETS. ALL THE TIME. ALL THE TIME.
          When I moved here, I had the tv on for SOUND for 6 years, because my parents house was never quiet with neighbors coming and going. EVER.
          Seriously, forget the mouseutopia. The problem with the 15 minute cities is it makes totalitarianism much easier. But I don’t think it will happen.

          Liked by 1 person

          1. I think I’m thinking more about the raw number of people, rather than how much time and direct contact. I recall Dunbar’s Number that we can only maintain about 150 or so contacts. And we now have to split those contacts between work, dealing with gov and personal life. Plus bigger networks are a part of how you get ahead in life.

            I just wonder what it does to someone when they’re trying to keep up with more than their native people limit?

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            1. The raw number of people means nothing really, and nothing convinces me it does.
              Look, I’ve lived in cities most of my life. People I see passing are… landscape? Maybe in the same category as TV people?
              They don’t qualify as “social circle.”
              My social circle was always MUCH tinier than in the village, or even in school.

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            2. Dunbar’s Number would be for intimate personal relationships, not casual.

              And networks are a hack on that– by building a foundation, you can extend how many personal networks you can tap into, where they can and will vouch for you as at least somewhat known.

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          2. Reminds me of all the experiments where they give mice saccharine or some other food additive (or even food) in amounts that if eaten by a person would cause one to drown/have one’s stomach explode, etc., long before one got any cancer from what is being ingested, and then they push for bans of said substance/food.

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            1. The reasoning is: if massive overdoses cause cancer in mice, normal consumption will cause cancer in a few humans out of millions. I’m not sure that principle has ever been scientifically validated.

              The concentrated quantities given to the mice are insane, though. You’d have to drink 4,000 gallons of artificially sweetened pop every day.

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              2. Yeah, I read the one where they discovered that apples are carcinogenic. The trick is that you’d have to eat 3 tons a day for 36 years to build up enough of the chemical that would possibly cause the cancer. It’s ridiculous.

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    2. It’s called a “behavioral sink”, aka “mouse utopia”. A researcher in the late 50s early 60s experimented with colonies of rats (and later mice) giving them a “perfect” environment: plentiful food easily available, no predators, controlled climate, etc. He found that at first, the population exploded, but then as the population grew beyond some point the rats started to exhibit stranger and stranger behaviors, until the colony died out. How much this applies to human or other mammal populations is open to debate, but it’s some fascinating and disturbing research.

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      1. It got a lot of airtime because it fed into the “overpopulation will kill us all.”

        Notably, not replicated by anybody else.

        And we have the author’s word that the mice weren’t overcrowded… or inbred.

        I know you can get rabbits to eat their babies if there’s too much noise, for example.

        Liked by 1 person

      2. Oh, that is such bullshit. Not what you’re saying, but the mousetopia.
        It’s been debunked, multiple times, but the debunkings keep disappearing from on line.
        The mess was never traced to being crowded. They were never crowded. APPARENTLY they never managed to make them reproduce WILDLY.
        And now we know so much more about stress and lab animals, and…. you know?

        Liked by 1 person

        1. They were trapped, and not allowed to live like normal mice. Despite having all their basic needs provided, and risks removed, they went mad.

          I do not find it debunked at all. Man does not survive by bread alone. Slavers are loathesome.

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              1. “Keep the data”

                The problem is Don’t keep the data. Instead, it’s pollute the data. From gunshot deaths being called Covid to weather readings “adjusted” or entries from non-existent or badly sited weather stations included in the data set, they bork up the data sufficiently that no further analysis can be done.

                Same pattern applies to voting, by the way. Adjust the count, or add in more fraud by mail ballots.

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                1. They also don’t mention that their ‘pre-industrial baseline climate data’ is from the Little Ice Age and includes 1816, The Year Without A Summer. There’s some ‘climate change’ for ya.

                  Oh, but wait, that was caused by the eruption of Tambora, so it doesn’t count.

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                3. “it’s pollute the data” That too.

                  In the first eye-opener viz the vaccine industry, the American Pediatric Society published a study on the injection of the modified-RNA drug which contained novel SARS2-Covid-19 genetic material into pregnant women. In it, they published the data fair and square, so one could see that, what they described as “safe” for all stages of pregnancy (at least as far as spontaneous abortions), was fraudulent. They had simply taken the data from the ~100 first trimester dupes combined with the ~ 700 women in the 2nd and 3rd trimesters and averaged the kill rates. The numbers of spontaneous abortions, ridiculously high in the 100, became “within margin of error” noise comparable to the gen pop “unvaxed” rates.

                  Though keep in mind the definition of unvaxxed, we discovered was quite fluid, though I didn’t discover that little bit of fraud (thank you badcattitude) until much later.

                  When I and others, scientifically and mathematically literate at the sophmore high school biology level, began pointing this out, the APS simply stripped the labels from the data tables. They kept the study up, and linked to it in their “recommended and safe for pregnant women” text. For all I know, it’s still there.

                  At this point, just based on means, motive, and opportunity, I believe modern vaccines used on children cause both SIDS and severe colic, and many, many, other major and minor auto-immune injuries.

                  We needed some of those vaccines, and will need them even more, as populations from the global south flood the United States. (Though I do thank them all for giving us Omicron. Much appreciated)

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                  1. needed some of those vaccines, and will need them even more

                    When I asked about vaccines when our son was an infant, our physician all but shuddered regarding the idea I’d even consider not having them administered. He was old enough to remember the toil taken from, if not small pox or polio (vaccines available sooner), but from petussis, measles, and mumps, and for even longer, chicken pox. The illnesses are more dangerous than the vaccines. He did not down play the possibility of complications from the vaccines. We, even the poorest, in the US, will find out. I am very angry about the possibility that the vaccines will be “improved” with RNA processes.

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                    1. The useful ones are also adulterated. It’s cheaper to add toxic adjuvents to replace costly, properly-deactivated viral material.

                      And of course, vast numbers of the new ones vary from unnecessary to deadly (Gardisil, for example).

                      And doctors will no longer work with parents to pare back vaccines and space them out to give the young immune system time to adjust and to discover if any given injection is going to cause problems.

                      Makes me furious.

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                    2. “possibility”.

                      They’ve already done it with flu shots and have begun tests on some others.

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                    3. I know. I’ve taken my last Flu shot (before RNA). Pertussis, RNA derived, scares the heck out of me. Already epidemic outbreaks happen in the US. While not as deadly to adults, until older (65+ crowd), son and I seem to be vulnerable even with current vaccine. While can’t verify exactly how old my vaccination was, son’s was < 2 years out.

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  9. I apologize for the random thoughts that follow, but your post stirred a lot of turbulence in my pea brain.

    Reading this piece I couldn’t help but think about yesterday’s blog piece and the discussion about Child Family Services requiring my brother to have separate bedrooms for his 4 and 6 year old boys. I think this concept that a child has to be born with all the accoutrements of a 18th century king or queen might be more influence than the dynamics on TV that you describe. I had one friend who calculated that 70% of the working wife’s income went into extra taxes and child care that wouldn’t have been needed if she had stayed home with the kids. Maybe we should encourage reruns of The Waltons, Little House on the Prairie, My 3 Sons, etc?

    Most of my contemporary friends have 2 or sometimes only one child. My parents had 3 (and 2 miscarriages). My brothers have both had several children last time I knew. The young families I know at church are quite prolific (4 kids and counting), but, as converts to Eastern Orthodox, they are probably outliers. BTW we are having 14 baptisms this Saturday, and the church is starting to strain at the seams. One family has raised 20, but a number are adopted, and one was a late surprise happening last year more than 20 years after their first. To show how much the propaganda has affected me, I have wanted to ask one couple how they manage financially with their 4 young children with only 1 income.

    Also I believe a big part of the problem is one you talk about briefly, geographic scattering. I’ve written about how the Interstate highway system affected our way of life by scattering families far from their uncles/aunts and cousins. My one brother lives in Puget Sound. The other in Kansas City, and I live in San Diego.

    My wife and I never had children, but then my wife was never well, particularly in the reproductive department. Neither of us ever felt the urgent need to have children that I know others do. Just a quirk of our makeup. We were neither proud nor ashamed of that. Like the rest of our life, it just was.

    I’m likewise on #teamhuman, and as to your encouragement for writing stories about families, the book I’m trying to finish revolves a family of 9 over the course of some 40 years.

    Again, sorry for the disjointed rambling. I’ll shut up now and go back to trying to finish that book.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. Gee, converts to Eastern Orthodox with large families. No surprise there. Second son, currently with 5 children, his wife is a convert to Roman Catholicism. They attend a Latin Mass Church. I’ve been down to visit and attended mass with them and my RC wife. (BTW- I’m not RC) The only families attending mass there that don’t have 3 or more kids are only because they haven’t been married long enough yet.

      There was a recent population study of what the USA is going to look like in 50 years. From about 50 miles east of where I live in CNY down south or PA and over to somewhere in the midwest will be majority Mennonite/Amish. In my small rural school district last year’s public HS graduating class was <50. Down from 90 when my youngest graduated about 7 years back. Down from a 100+ when two older ones graduated. There are a lot more then 100 18 year old Amish/Mennonites around the two towns. But- they don’t go to public school, and the Amish don’t go to HS… My Mennonite neighbors are now at an even dozen. The oldest girl engaged and the youngest a newborn.

      The western Amish border to CA, OR, and WA will be majority Mormon.

      And the rest of the country will be a mixture. With not a whole lot of what us Protestants call mainline churches. Like Episcopal and Methodist.

      That’s outside of urban areas. No one is really predicting the religious population in them. But I can guarantee the rural areas aren’t going to want to be supporting them in any way, shape, or form.

      Interesting times are ahead.

      Liked by 2 people

      1. How are they making these projections? Given enough time, with the current birthrates and without a mass migration/invasion or mass resorting/resettling, I guess that’s how it could go, although I’m thinking the southwest, mountain west, and west coast are likely to feature a LOT of people of latino/hispanic ancestry, possibly more of them Catholic than Mormon. But there are so many unaccountable factors baked in…who’s to say, really?

        Liked by 1 person

      2. That study is either insane, or dropped a zero from the years of assumed zero change in birth rates for demographics.

        The Mormons are less than 2% of the US population, and various flavors of Anabaptist have to go to world-wide numbers to have any group break a million.

        Neither are having offspring, or converts, in the numbers needed to get to majority in an area. They’d need to average a dozen per other group child born to make the numbers work.

        Studies like this– which don’t correct for cultural vs practicing vs convert — still show the difference is simply not that big.

        https://religionunplugged.com/news/2021/10/4/the-future-of-american-religion-birth-rates-show-whos-having-more-kids

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        1. Now, this is interesting… it’s not the point of the study, but it does indicate how likely people are to leave the group.

          Also how likely they are to convert in, and where the generations that didn’t reproduce/kids left are. It’s just messy.

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        2. Mennonites/Amish are already in a majority in several towns in NY. Hard for most to tell because they don’t interact that much with us English AND don’t generally vote. A 2020 count say there are 335 Amish in our school district. Most in the other town and village.. That’s off by at least a factor of 2. There are at least 300 children in their schools. And the Amish don’t go past 8th grade, so… And doesn’t include Mennonites. If they voted as a bloc- they could take over all the elected positions in the town next door, but not the village. My town doesn’t have a village in it- the village was incorporated into the town just before we moved here. NY has kind of a unique town/village structure in rural areas. In my county, most of the villages are entirely surrounded by the town- which may or may not have the same name… Villages usually have water and sewer systems. towns generally do not. They share fire and school districts- which are both separate taxing authorities. My Mennonite neighbors have an even dozen children now. They are reproducing rapidly.

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          1. Evne if it’s four times that, it’s still rounding error for Mormons, much less for a non-niche faith group. The whole group, not just Amish or Mennonites.

            And yes, the religious group that favors group life is very likely to be a big part of a town if they are there at all.

            Thing is, they are not IN most places. At all.

            Confusing the sample of a town, with MOST towns, is a sampling error.

            Liked by 1 person

            1. Also in this sample we have “at least 300 children in their schools”.

              You can push the sliders all the way towards maximizing the total estimate you can get from that number, but you cannot push them far enough to have them being the majority of the town *AND* it be anything but a small town.

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              1. I’m not sure how the schools in NH are organized, but yeah, it’s not going to be a “really small school” like the one my husband was in, where his class was “barely” a hundred kids.

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  10. So I’m 71 now and have a brand new cardiologist added to my health care team – Yippie! Wife is 76 and has a bunch of (well managed) health issues but it ain’t gonna get any better, it will just go (hopefully slowly) downhill for both of us. 

    I mentally wrote a long missive about kids being long way off, they have a bunch of their own issues, etc. along with all sorts of local color and old fart stories. I then reconsidered and figure my tale of woe isn’t worth the time. As for the “assisted living” or AKA nursing home, that is a nightmare I don’t want to consider except as a final last resort. Doing the old fart research on these places and it is not good. There is a unhealthy turn over on ownership of many of them and while you get to see puppy dogs and fuzzy ducks the reality of actually living in them is not a way to spend any years much less the ‘golden’ ones. 

    Being very, very cynically minded and having worked prisons it’s sad that I would find a mid-western state prison a better place than the average assisted living home to be in senior years. Sigh… I’m going to just keep working as hard as we can to stay healthy and independent as long as we can and with luck may get to the finish line on our own and not have to compromise the final years. Sorry… don’t want to be a downer. 

    Liked by 4 people

    1. My parents, with managed health problems, are still living in their own home, on their own, in their 90s.
      Now, they do have my brother nearby for emergency situations. Which happen…. more frequently.

      Liked by 1 person

      1. Not much really… we’re looking for a new church as all of the local ones around us went hard core for BLM and Covid insanity and are still more concerned about the “equity” thing than actual religion. Haven’t found on yet but still looking. The neighbors are all OK but a substantial number are Indian B visa types and they hang together and avoid the other neighbors. The only family that we really talk to is the Italian couple and their one year old right next door. We’ve got them for an emergency, sort of, but they couldn’t do anything long term or extensive. 

        I’m thinking on it but most everyone we know has left the area and our (very small) family is nowhere close. We’ll come up with something. 

        Liked by 1 person

        1. God speed.

          For what it’s worth LCMS (Fort Wayne-trained) pastors & their congregations, some Catholic and Orthodox churches are good value, preferring the eternal over the temporal and God Himself rather than Christianity-And-[whatever utopian scheme is on offer this week].

          Not sure what to look for in the latter two, but I’m sure there are Huns & Hoydens who can help.

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    3. We purposefully bought a duplex for this reason. We remodeled the top half while living in the bottom half. We’ve now moved up and have remodeled the bottom. Once the outside is done (variance paperwork filed, today), we’re going to rent the bottom (furnished, short-term).

      Once we need help, that’s the incentive in order to get a good assistant for assisted living: We may not pay much, but the job includes housing!

      P.S. Yes, Sarah, I noticed the post you wrote for me. I’ve been busy and I’m working my way backward.

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  12. We had three, wanted more but dems da breaks. They’re all functioning adults, one married, No grandchildren yet. the daughter married right out of uni, no children, might not be able, damn. Number one son is on the spectrum and probably won’t marry. We thought number two son was fixed up, but many’s the slip twist the cup and the lip as my mother used to say and that didn’t work out. Still, I figure we’re three for three in the parenting game and that’s not too shabby.

    Outside the poor deluded rich ones, the kids are alright. 

    Liked by 3 people

  13. I had two kids. One on the autistic spectrum that the public education system destroyed by transing. One that still may give us some grandchildren depending on how much influence DIL’s parents have on her (Jewish, and they adopted her.)

    Liked by 2 people

      2. Adding Houst Jr. to the god-blesses. There but for the grace of God…

        Any ideas of what one can do or say/do as a merely very ancillary adult for any young autistic teen with whom he is working who has been caught in the Alphabet Pride net would be appreciated.

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        1. First step would be to remove him from that environment, post haste. Hard to do if you’re ancillary.

          Keep in mind I only minored in psych before I decided no way in hell was I going to try to make a career in it. I don’t have the necessary hubris. And I’ve seen too many legal challenges against psychologists and mental health workers to subject myself to that.

          Autistic kids aren’t wired the same as ‘normal’ kids. In my experience, in general, they lack a certain amount of empathy, an inability to put themselves inside someone else’s perspective. In other words, they feel, but they don’t realize other people feel, and they have a hard time looking at their own feelings objectively. They can’t look at themselves from outside themselves. (Not to be too picky, but the ability to look at yourself objectively is hard for even normal people.)

          What you can try doing is making sure everything you say to him reinforces that he is a man, not a woman. You ever hear the phrase, “You scream like a girl?” That reinforces not being a man, and being a woman to young people like that. Or instances where a girl receives less punishment than a boy for the same bad behavior. ”If I was a girl, then I wouldn’t hurt so much.” It’s insidious. 

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  14. I’m at 9 grandchildren today- thanks to a recent pair of twins- One newly married son and wife are busy trying to get pregnant. And 5th child has yet to marry- though we think we know who it’s going to be. They’re hesitant to tie the know before he goes off active duty. I told him not to be.

    I’ve used that line a bit lately- well, a version. The future will be inhabited by those who show up for it.

    Liked by 3 people

  15. I would have liked to have had more than the one child I did have and raise … but was foiled by a horrendously bad luck in the choice of a life partner to have them with. I could not have handled going through parenthood more than once absolutely alone. Nope. I would have started screaming and never been able to stop.

    Anyway, the subtle TV poison which I noticed and was extremely resentful about was the trope of the wise child/idiot parent. Yeah, the kid was wise, tolerant, all-knowing, and raising the consciousness of the numbskull parents. I saw this over and over in various TV shows and it made me furious.

    Why, thank you, TV and movies – undermining every shred of authority that I have as a parent. Burn in hell, you stinking, child-abusing perverts.

    Like

  16. One of my brothers has children; I hope they take more after their mother.

    Unfortunately sanity and self-preservation (you do not want to know the financial and other shenanigans those guys have pulled) means I can’t deal with that part of the family. At all. I hope they get good mentor figures, I really do, but I can’t be that person.

    So I’ll write. And hope.

    Liked by 2 people

  17. Considering the current views by too many, it may one day be perfectly acceptable to bash a newborn’s head against a rock, when it is perceived to be too much of a burden.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. The same people who would never do it to a kitten or puppy, in some cases.

      Their thinking and feelings have both been disjointed, and they just do not realize what they are advocating.

      OTOH, the malicious are perfectly okay with either set of victims.

      Liked by 1 person

  18. “But that’s not the point. The point is that they’re all unrealistic in the exact same way.”

    Almost as if all the people making them went to the same parties and all came from the same schools and all were very careful to be right on the cutting edge of social fashion every minute? Yeah.

    Now that the cutting edge has departed our Earthly realm for the stratospheric heights of “a man is a woman if he identifies as one” post-Modern drivel, the joke is pretty well exposed for what it is. A system of control.

    A broken system of control and one that will soon be bankrupt, if indications from movie studios and streaming companies don’t change. Also Big Publishing, they’ve recently admitted in court that their entire business model rests on JRR Tolkein, JK Rowling and a few other unicorn best sellers that only come along once in a decade or so.

    Now of course that we can see the wires and understand that Peter Pan wasn’t actually flying (and that actress Mary Martin was in fact a lady, and not a little boy), having been treated to a look behind the scenes by the Internet, a BRAND NEW system of control is being frantically scraped together by the same @$$h0le$ who constructed the first one.

    That what all this yammer about hate speech, “disinformation”, AI and UAPs/UFOs is about. Creating a new boogieman for us to be afraid of, while they change all the infrastructure of the Internet to always show what those who control these things want to have shown. (I don’t think they can do it, because even the limitless brutality of Communist China can’t do it, but clearly they’re trying to.)

    Oh, and by the way, Harvey Weinstein was just found not guilty of felony rape by the court of appeals, because Reasons. How about that?

    What are the odds on Harv being brought on board by Disney a week after he gets out of the crowbar hotel? Disney hired the convicted perv that used to run Nickelodeon, right?

    Liked by 2 people

    1. What’s really interesting is they used the justification that the jury was tainted by hearing about non-charged “offenses” against different women.

      Hmmm. Now who does that sound like? E. Jean Carroll? Bragg’s claptrap about election interference in 2016 for something that didn’t happen until 2017?

      Liked by 3 people

    2. Weinstein wasn’t found Not Guilty. A mistrial was declared in his New York trial due to the judge allowing improper testimony. The state has the option to retry him again. Further, he’s still in prison, as he’s also serving a 16 year sentence from a successful prosecution in LA County.

      And I happen to agree with the Appeals Court in this instance. There are circumstances when the kind of testimony that was used is proper. But those circumstances are few and far between. This wasn’t one of them.

      Liked by 2 people

  19. Sarah:

    1 — if you love Columbo, you should check out PokerFace, on the Peacock network. This network has had a lot of great shows, of late. If you don’t have Peacock on your channel lists, ATM, Pokerface is available on Hulu. I think if you watch two episodes you’ll get hooked — you need the first one to get intro’d to the main character and her unique skill — the second ep is where you get a feel for the show’s macguffin. It was created and at least some eps written by Rian Johnson, of Knives Out fame.

    2 — “And so, insensibly, our young people are internalizing that having children means being very poor the rest of their lives, or getting divorced. And women are internalizing that wanting children means they’re abused.”

    I get the feeling this is working less on the younger people than it has on the older millennials. The phenomenon of DINKs is getting downgraded in the “influencer” lists… A lot of women in their early 30s are starting to realize that they actually need to get their life into place just to have one or two of them, much less 3. I’d suggest you check out “The Comments Section with Brett Cooper” on Youtube. We’re all getting on in age, and it’s tougher to know what the young are thinking. I think she offers an insight into that. I get the feeling that there is a lot more “I wanna have kids” in the young than you have been led to think, and there is a lot of voicing of the fact that women have been lied to a lot about when is best to do so. I concur she does represent the more rightward side of the young, but that’s all you have any chance of getting to, anyway. The rest were brain dead from the start.

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    1. “It was created and at least some eps written by Rian Johnson, of Knives Out fame.”

      First, don’t give in to streaming. Physical media or nothing, because I own the things I buy, dammit.

      Second, Rian Johnson wrote and directed The Last Jedi, which deliberately destroyed Luke Skywalker, Star Wars as a whole, and broke the SW universe even more than The Force Awakens did (which took some doing). I, and many, many other people, do not care how good anything else he does going forward is, because he has been not only unrepentant, but positively gleeful at the fan reactions, which he clearly wanted. Johnson’s main reason for living seems to be sneering at the world “I’m better than you,” and his work shows it.

      Liked by 2 people

      1. Rian Johnson also did Brick, Looper, and the criminally underrated The Brothers Bloom (see: my profile pic). He’s got a genuine knack for twisted crime stories and offbeat comedy.

        Which makes it baffling that they tossed him a heroic space opera, let alone the pivotal entry in one of the biggest franchises on the planet. I genuinely like his work, and even I wish he hadn’t gone anywhere near Star Wars.

        Like

          1. Brick is exceedingly dark, which makes it hard to recommend to people. The only reason it clicked for me is that the protagonist keeps seeking the truth, even at the cost of his happiness. That’s what made me realize how valuable a proactive hero is. No matter how dark the situation, as long as someone is striving, the story has hope, whether the author intended it or not (e.g., Rorschach in Watchmen).

            Contrast that with protagonists who spend their time moping. Even when they are in the right, I can’t stand them.

            Liked by 1 person

              1. Shakespeare gets a free pass. I think he’s earned it.

                (This makes me realize that struggle is what separates tragedy from the kind of sad sack movie I have in mind. You can rage against your fate or face it with stoic resolve, but you have to take at least one step forward if you want the audience to care about your situation.)

                Liked by 1 person

                  2. Yeah, the funny part is that they had to change Klingon in order to do that, as the person who originally created the language deliberately made it without the ‘to be’ verb.

                    Liked by 2 people

              3. Asimov did a good analysis of why Hamlet waited to get his revenge without moping about it. His reasoning is thus: Hamlet was meant to be king after his father, and returns home from college to find that his uncle has gotten the throne. But he still wants it as well as revenge, so he has to have sufficient proof to accuse his uncle of murder to the various nobility, because the Danish throne was very much a “by acclimation” position at the time.

                That concept means that the only time Hamlet doesn’t actually act when he should is when Claudius in kneeling (unsuccessfully) at prayer and he decides to wait so that Claudius goes to Hell. Which is one heck of an “Oops” moment.

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        2. I really liked Brick, Looper was serviceable popcorn SF, and Brothers Bloom is in the running for my favorite con man film.

          So I was looking forward to seeing what he could do with Star Wars…oops.

          That combined with Daniel Craig’s execrable last few Bond films meant that I was no fan of Knives Out. Plot issues, sure, (but you can often fridge logic a mystery plot), but the cardinal sin was I disliked all the characters.

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  20. A young friend of ours (around twenty) recently married. (2022, I think, although it may have been back in ’21.) The happy couple had one baby at once and by now the second may have been delivered. (Any time now, I understand.) The husband told me they were actually GETTING FLAK for having kids. O.o

    Now, the husband comes of a LARGE family (nine kids), so it’s kind of natural he would want children. I don’t know the bride’s background, but clearly she’s fine with it. FLAK? For a happy young couple having kids??

    Poison, indeed. (I was never able to have children myself; we did try during my first marriage.)

    Liked by 2 people

    1. Niece and nephew in law, married 2022, lost their twins on their wedding day. They managed to get pregnant again quickly and little EJ was born. She’s about 8 months and crawling now. First grandchild for youngest sister. Cousin is expecting their first this summer. Cousin, age 45, married his 34 year old wife in 2023. They started immediately. His sister has two are past college age, and married. One just had their 3rd. The other is expecting their first sometime this summer.

      It is happening in our sphere and extended family (this is just on dad’s side, mom’s side is also contributing). Young people are bringing for children. Just not our young person.

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    2. Yeah, baby right away, and then having a second one already?

      That’s about right for folks doing the “clever” jokes. 

      We went through a year and change of thinking we weren’t going to be able to have kids (me!) and then got daughter, and then two years later had our second– and if I hadn’t been warned to prepare the “yes, we know what causes that, and we’re good at it” type response, I’d still be getting crud.

      I’ve had complete strangers go foaming at hte mouth screaming fit at me for having three or more.

      We’ve got seven, and are not trying for more, but– folks have no idea how much anti-natal nonsense there is.

      I treasure the folks who were nice or reassuring about it.

      Liked by 2 people

      1. I remember a woman contestant on Groucho Marx’s ‘You Bet Your Life’ game show with 14 children.

        Groucho: [incredulous] “FOURTEEN children?”

        Contestant: “I love my husband, Mr. Marx.”

        Groucho: [to the camera] “I love my cigar, too, but I take it out once in a while.” :-D

        Ah, the days of live TV when stuff just went out on the air before anybody could stop it. Years later, they hadn’t edited the tape, either.

        Like

        1. Dude…. that joke is about as transgressive as yelling “Vote Dem.”

          The only thing that’s changed is that now strangers will write “get off of her, already” on the back of a minivan with three car seats.

          Like

    3. If you’re curious, I have asked what they desire to have happen, ideally.

      Shorn of a lot of feel good, you’re “supposed to” have the kid be an only child at least until they are in school, better if they’re in first grade, before trying for another.

      This “lets you give them your whole attention.”

      ….of course, it also means they’re isolated from any siblings they can have, and maximizes the cost for having additional children, while minimizing how many you can physically have.

      Liked by 1 person

      1. “This ‘lets you give them your whole attention.’”

        A possible response to that:

        “If you can’t give sufficient attention to more than one thing at a time, it would be best for you not to listen to music while driving” (or substitute your favorite “walk and chew gum” pair of activities).

        Like

            1. It’s illegal to eat or drink while driving, and I honestly stopped listening when “adjusting the radio” was included as a reason to pull over. Not sure if that one passed or not.

              Basically, distracted driving possibilities as actual guilty.

              Like

              1. I thought it might be something like that. 😒

                I wonder how long before talking to a passenger or listening to music while driving gets included…

                Any progress on making stepping into traffic while looking at the phone (“WARNING! Cellphone Zombies Ahead!”) a misdemeanor? After all, it could cause a driver to swerve and kill someone.

                Like

              2. how long before talking to a passenger or listening to music while driving gets included…

                In Oregon, if a driver is still in HS it already is. Tried to pass it for all drivers. That failed. But the under 18 crowd can. In fact, a driver < 18 can not have anyone else < 18 in the vehicle with them while driving. One exception: Siblings living in the same household. Or son could not drive his friends home from school. Nor could his cousins ride with them. Nor could son ride with another student.

                Where the latter came into play was golf practice. Which never occurred on school grounds (duh). Always required a vehicle. What the compromise was, students with vehicles, drove and took vehicle full of teammate golf bags, and maybe a senor who was over 18, but no vehicle. Coach then would take a school van with remaining students that still needed to be driven. Reverse back to the school for students that didn’t get picked up at the practice venue. One of us was generally there to pick our son up, at least until he was the one under 18, with a vehicle, so hauling clubs.

                When it first hit this was a huge deal. It was being enforced hard.

                Hey. We were on board with our newly licensed 16 year old. Didn’t need the distractions of friends in the vehicle as a new driver. “It’s the Law” was convenient (it is our car would have worked too). But ALL new drivers don’t need the distractions until they have some time driving under the shiny new license, regardless of age.

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  21. While Married With Children was not a TV show with much realism, it was kind of refreshing that it didn’t copy everything of seemingly every other TV show. Granted, it sort of made the other mistake of automatically countering everything.

    Like

  22. The problem with small doses of poison is that the body develops an immunity to it after a while. So has the body of humanity.

    Liked by 1 person

  23. This is only hinted at in the post, but the source of this problem is, depending on how you look at it, either what Ayn Rand called the primacy of consciousness — i.e., that only “what other people believe” is of any importance (its opposite is primacy of existence, which is what most everyone here works on) — or, if you dislike Rand, call it the problem of psychopaths.

    It amounts to the same thing. If you’ve ever known a psychopath, or even a mere narcissist, you at some point realized that nothing they say is attached to reality. They only speak in order to manage your (and everyone’s) impressions, to achieve an end.

    A psychologist interviewed somewhere during the Johnny Depp-Amber Heard trial shared a story that illustrates what I mean. He had a client, a woman, who told a harrowing story about how her husband had utterly humiliated her in front of company, and then denigrated and insulted her in the most vulgar terms. He got her to bring said husband in for the next session, and the doc reiterated what the wife told him, and asked why the husband would do such a thing. The husband was completely confused, saying that none of it had ever happened. Confronting the wife alone, the doc asked her why she lied, and she blamed him. “I had to,” she said, “because if I told you what happened in fact, you wouldn’t understand how it made me feel.”

    We now have a generation of elites (if not more than one) that was raised and trained to be psychopaths. Reality is not of the slightest concern, it is completely unimportant. What is important is pushing society in the direction they want it to go, and therefore any narrative that advances that is Good, and any that works against it is Evil, even if Evil is just Reality.

    This is why the left needs to control all communications and education and every damn thing they can get their hands on. Dissent must be crushed, because then the Holy Narrative will take hold in everybody’s minds, and Things Will Be Better. (How? Never mind that, that’s crazy-talk, right wing conspiracy nonsense.)

    And AI is about to make things really, really frightening. We already have a case of someone caught using AI to create the impression that someone he hated was a racist. Don’t think that’s going to stop. And don’t think the psychopaths in government aren’t going to use it. Against Trump, first, if they can figure out how to get away with it, and then against all enemies of the state (and we’re all enemies, anyone believing in freedom is now a terrorist, according to government documents).

    The psychopaths Do Not Care that what they want does not work. It has to work, because they want it to. And if the mass graves of the USSR and China and Cambodia haven’t convinced them they’re wrong, don’t think that a few hundred million more broken eggs are going to cause them the slightest twinge of conscience.

    Liked by 1 person

      1. Having too many Cluster Bs in the family (even one is too many, and my family tree is apparently thronged with them), I have to say you are unfortunately correct in the kind of damage that will be done.

        But.

        This is why we need back-channels for passing e-books, and all the hard copy good books that have been written, and that we can keep writing. Because stories can save people.

        Not physically, no, not like a punch to the evildoer’s jaw, but mentally. If you can escape the madness, even in your own head, you get a breather. That breather can keep you alive.

        Sherlock Holmes’ “When you have eliminated the impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth,” was one of the first hands up I got out of the mental trap. It led me to test reality – not just believe people “because they’re your parents”. To remember exactly what was said, not what they tried to convince me they said later.

        When you have dozens, hundreds, of the same pattern happening – person says do X you’ll get Y, you do X, then get told, “Well of course you knew I didn’t mean it/we had a miscommunication”… then you know someone is lying to you. Deliberately. Consistently. And they’ll do it again.

        With that information, you can start deciding what you’re going to do about it. Not what society says you should do.

        Liked by 3 people

    3. We had a psychopath/pathological liar in our barony. She told, I’m told, a harrowing story of the awful abuse her husband had done to her and her two daughters, so awful the baronial encampment was on alert to proect her from him if he showed up. He showed up, and was an utter milquetoast, as harmless as humanly possible. And bewildered, because none of her story was true. Nothing she said was ever true.

      This was the woman who, when the family who had taken her and the kids in lost their youngest to SIDS, bitched loudly and profanely about the “f*cking cops,” who were investigating the circumstances. Where said cops could hear her. Over and over again. At which point I, as the baron’s wife, reared up and told her to shut her f*cking mouth. Since I don’t swear much and never used that word, I actually got her attention.

      She eventually vanished. And, of course, made the kids’ lives a living hell. Just a bad scene all around.

      Liked by 2 people

  24. Another factor, which I’m sure you’re aware of but didn’t have room to touch on (since this was an essay, not a book) is government regulations which make it more difficult and expensive to have more children, so that even couples who want children end up with fewer than they would have otherwise. To name one: car seats. They’re necessary for babies, and a good idea for young children. But California (the only state whose laws I looked up, because if there’s any regulation that can be stretched past the point of insanity, California’s going to do exactly that) requires children to be in car seats until the age of eight. EIGHT.

    When we had our third child, we bought a minivan (used, from a family that was leaving this country and going back to the US) because fitting all three car seats across the back of our regular-sized car was getting tight, and it was difficult for the child in the middle seat to get in and out of the car. Not impossible — if we hadn’t found a good used minivan when we did, we would have been able to put up with the inconvenience for another several months — but difficult. And that’s because the two kids who weren’t babies were two and four respectively, so they really did still need car seats. But imagine being in California and not being able to afford a minivan. You’re never going to want to have more than three kids, and probably only two. Not because there’s anything wrong with putting a five- or six-year-old in a car’s back seat without a car seat (maybe with a pillow under him so that he can sit a little higher and the shoulder belt will go across his chest rather than his neck — innately dangerous, that would be). But because California won’t allow you to be sensible about the safety of your six-year-old, and will fine you or throw you in jail (or take away your kids) if you try to be. So you comply under duress, and therefore have only two kids because having three kids is very, very difficult.

    That’s just one regulation among thousands. Depending on where you live, ALL of them might be insane, or (if you’re lucky) only MOST of them. All of which tend towards reducing family size, unless you’re rich enough to buy all the things the regulations are going to force you to buy if you want a large family. And generally, “rich enough” tends to start at “upper middle class” levels; the average middle class family would be highly pinched, or maybe priced out entirely, by what’s needed to have three or four kids in an insane-regulations state. And so family sizes are shrunk, without any television propaganda needed, simply by the sheer mass of regulations. (BTW, I’m not arguing against your thesis either; they reinforce each other.)

    Liked by 1 person

    2. While it is insane, “booster seat” counts as a car seat for purposes of the eight-year-olds. Source: I live in California.

      (I will say that I discovered just how aged out the booster seats were when my youngest outgrew them. That’s actually concerning, given how car heat affects plastics.)

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        1. I had a cousin and nephew that out grew all car seats and boosters by age 2, too (you know, the kids other adults tell parents to make their kids act their age? When the response is “He is, he’s 3″.) Both, as adults, are 6’4”. One is also “bulky” at 46. Nephew is lanky at 22, will see longer term. Our son out grew his by age 4, and he isn’t a big bulky child (5’11” as an adult).

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          1. There are a lot of tall and even muscle-y toddlers these days. Size says 3rd grade, mannerisms say they are two or three.

            On the bright side, I am starting to spot the mannerisms and face shapes better.

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            1. I don’t know about 3rd grade, but definitely 1st. Look twice as old as they are, or at least a couple of years.

              Then there are sister’s children. Got away with things longer because they look younger. They are all taller than mom and dad now, not a high bar given dad is my height (5’4″) and mom is 5′, maybe (still taller than grandma who was < 5′). Like me they didn’t get their full growth until college. But all well under 6′.

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            2. We actually stopped going to a diner because a waitress gave our less than two year old a GLASS of water, even though we were telling her not to, then tried to dress us down when he dropped it and broke it. and she said our seven year old should behave better….
              He was just massive, and had very attentive eyes. NOT fat, but he weighed 50 lbs at 3.

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          2. Our older. He’s only six one, but built like a tank. Also, he says “stunted” for various reasons. This is possible.
            The younger OTOH was tall but skinny till 22 and is now 6’4″ and also built like a tank….

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            1. Also had two co-workers. Both tall, over 6′. One built like a tank. The other still big but more of a skinny tank. Each had two sons each. The son’s are as tall or taller, and not skinny. Only one of the three was remotely standard toddler size when that young, and that was because he had a heart condition. Once that was taken care of, he took off. Still smaller than older brother. While I couldn’t directly relate, because we did not have that problem with ours, I could sympathize.

              The other problem (and hubby relates this as it happened to him and his brother, in the late ’60s) was “all you can eat”. Sister and BIL never were embarrassed (’00s), but my aunt and uncle used to be (’70s). Staff at “all you can eat” making comments about how much the boys were eating (why do you think that place was chosen?). Okay, aunt and uncle do have three boys, and the incident I was there for they were 8, 12, and 14. Granted, wet behind the ears college student, but my comment was “let them eat”. Hubby tells of when he and his brother were asked to leave. Hubby would have been 14 and his brother 18. Their mom did say she wasn’t cooking anything more that night when they got home. What else were the two boys to do? I mean, really? 

              Liked by 1 person

      2. They also have a height exception: if your kid is taller than X’Y” (I forget the precise numbers and I’m not going to bother to go look them up again), then you don’t have to use a car seat. So that part, at least, is possibly sane. (I say “possibly” because I haven’t checked if the height exception is reasonable or if it should have been six inches shorter to be reasonable).

        Liked by 1 person

        1. I had to laugh. There is a story out there somewhere in the internet ether, where a slight, vertically challenged adult, had some harsh words to say about the height requirement for booster seats. Before the age and weight requirements were added.

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          1. Honestly, if you’re short enough that the seat belt shoulder strap would go across your neck, it’s unsafe (your seat belt would strangle you, or possibly even cut your head off, if you got into a high-speed collision from the front) and you should be putting a pillow or something under you to raise your height relative to the diagonal strap. However, that is NOT something the government should be dictating. (Insurance companies, on the other hand, would be perfectly reasonable to require that in order to insure you.)

            Liked by 1 person

            1. I raise the seat to make the belts fit correctly. The back seats there are clips that can be used to force the shoulder strap to a better fit. I am probably more in danger from the driver side collision bag going off because I have to be so close to reach the petals. I am 5’4″.

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    3. This is also why the high end neighborhoods feature so many full size three row SUVs, even out here in Silicon Valley, driven by young women: Lots and lots of roomy seat rows. Sure, they are more likely to be recent vintage Yukon Denalis or Lincoln Navigator Limiteds or Cadillac Escalades, but they quite literally abound among the Teslas and BMWs and others, really the only US-manufactured class of vehicles that stand out in those areas.

      The wealthy can afford more kids, if they so choose.

      The impact of this financial dichotomy is something to ponder.

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  25. Now here’s a thought — the people who don’t listen to ‘their betters’ have children, while the NPCs don’t. It’s a slow process, but the elitists just might find their supporters are dying out.

    Liked by 2 people

    1. As long as the parents don’t make the mistake of sending their kids to public schools. Many of the instructors at public schools are like ideological cuckoos — having no kids of their own, they train other people’s kids into being copies of themselves, ideologically. (Which is not how real cuckoos actually work, but it’s the closest analogy I can come up with quickly). If you want your kids to remain yours, homeschool them or send them to a private school that teaches a worldview you agree with (e.g., if you’re a Christian, look for a Christian private school — and vet it carefully, because many Christians have bought into left-wing nonsense that’s disguised in Christian-looking terms, hiding its anti-Christian nature deep enough that they don’t see it because they’re not discerning enough).

      Liked by 1 person

      1. That last part. I hit the roof when our kids were taught The Giving Tree in RE — not even school, RE — because it’s communist, not Christian. But to them it was just “nice.”

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        1. Soooo many people have written alternatives to that, including one where the tree gives a good talk to the boy when he demands the branches, saying that fruit gets replenished but branches don’t, and he needs to get his priorities straight.

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      2. At our church, there’s a noticeable difference between the kids who went to school and the ones that didn’t. There’s unfortunately not much difference between the ones that went to public school vs private.

        Liked by 1 person

    2. Left a comment that got spam-binned. Perhaps because I used the word Christian in a discussion of why some parents would choose to send their kids to a school they agree with? Who knows what spam filters WordPress comes up with. Let’s see if this one goes through with the C word appearing in the comment body.

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        1. Whoops. That didn’t even occur to me, and I’ve seen plenty of fanatic Trump supporters (I’m NOT saying all of them are fanatic, nor that all the fanatics engage in this behavior) spelling “conservative” with… a different word replacing the “con”. And yet I didn’t think of that combination of letters when I was wondering what dropped the comment in the spam bin.

          Ah well, all is explained. And honestly, I wouldn’t recommend changing that spam-bin rule, even if it does make spelling that bird’s name correctly (I looked it up and that does seem to be the official spelling) a little hard. Don’t know if the spam filter allows you to whitelist specific words, but *shrug* doesn’t really matter. Thanks for rescuing the comment.

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    3. Shhhhh! Maybe the donkuloid dingleberries will self-extinct themselves!

      “Think of it as evolution in action.”

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  26. Eh. doesn’t work on me. at least not as far as hollywood and popular media go. I have been a skeptical, cynical son of a bitch and a cranky one at that, my entire life pretty much. 2. because of that..I don’t like most of humanity. nor trust it.

    Liked by 1 person

  27. I mean seriously? it’s like most crime shows. the popular ones like the csi’s and ncis. the popular cop shows like Chicago PD etc. it’s ALL hand wavium, horseshit. sadly a lot of people buy it.

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  28. the kids counted as our entertainment system for a long time. (No, seriously. Now I’m not saying everyone has enormously amusing children, but we did.)

    Oh. The mileage we got out of “Daddy broke his face!” and “Daddy broke the moon!” (Mom is 100% innocent. 😁

    First one, hubby always let his beard grow when he was off during the winter months. Come call back day, he’d shave his beard off. Son is 20 months. Figuring that sudden change might be a problem (oh howdy was it), dad and son went into main bathroom to setup and son could watch the process. Dad explained what was going to happen (I guess, wasn’t there, dad/son bonding time). Next thing I hear is a scream and hysterical sobbing by son. I’m thinking he grabbed something sharp, had fallen off the counter or closed toilet seat (so he had a good view), in other words, mayhem. I get there. Son is still sobbing and screaming. Dad is doing everything he can to keep from howling with laughter. Finally, son sobs “Daddy broke his face!” Me. “Um. Oh.” Dad “I’ve got this.” Me. “Okay.” Me runs away, and cries with laughter, and yes it was difficult to get far enough before laughing.

    Second. We’d been up to see MIL, and stopped at sister’s & BIL so the two, two year olds could play. Unknown to us, the dads had the toddlers out front. On drive home. Son has been asleep. All of a sudden a screech is issued, followed by hysterical sobbing, and mumbled words. “Sob. Mumble. Mumble.” Thinking something is very wrong. (Bee in the car and he got stung? Something major pinching of the car seat? Something?) Hubby slows down to start to pulls over the car, well off the freeway. Before he does. Son blurts out “Daddy broke the moon!” Hubby speeds up. I look over, he is looking really meek, and laughing. He then said. “BIL and I might be at fault.” (Might?) While outside, daytime partial moon. Of coarse the two adults had to insist to the two toddlers that they’d taken a bite out of the moon. We then taught son about the phases of the moon, and made sure he saw it whole, and then various phases of the moon.

    Of coarse we never once planned a trip around the Dinosaur National Monument, and Denver National Museum. Nor ever worked in trips to Mt. Helen, or the Lava Fields along Old McKenzie Highway, or other geological features, just because son was interested in rocks. Or the Rocket Garden at Kennedy Space station (okay that was as much on dad because son’s grandfather worked for Convere, who built those rockets. Still it was a space phase for son.) Nope. Never did any of those things.

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    1. Kid story time! We have lots, but here are two of them.

      First Son and Second Son are playing with the hose outside, which we allow them to do on hot days. The following exchange happens (they are 5 and 3 years old at this point):

      First Son: “I’m God and I can make it rain.” (Turning the hose off) “Rain, stop!” (Turning the hose on) “Rain, go!”
      Second Son: “$FIRST_SON, you’re God, and I’m a disciple!”
      First Son: “Yes, thank you. I love you, disciple.”

      Next story. Usually I’m the one who puts the boys to bed while my wife deals with the baby. But that night I was doing something else (I forget what) so my wife was putting the boys to bed. First Son had gotten his goodnight kiss and accepted that it was time for Mommy to go, but Second Son wanted Mommy to stay longer, and came up with a plan to MAKE her stay longer.

      Second Son: “But Mommy, can I ask one last question? I will be quick.” (He does this a lot, so it’s not as clever a tactic as he thinks it is).
      Mommy: “Okay, as long as it’s a quick one.”
      Second Son: “Mommy, do you know about my bed and my blanket and my pillow and my hair and my skin and all the things that are in our house and my toys and the couch and the table and the clothes and the shirts and the pants and the light and the crackers and the snacks and the toilet and the toothpaste and my toothbrush and my teeth and the shower and the floss and the books and the Legos and the toys and the pants and the shirts and the Christmas tree and the ornaments and the books and the Legos and the magnets and the chairs?” (That’s verbatim; my wife ran to the computer and wrote it down immediately.)
      Mommy: “Yes. Goodnight!”
      Second Son: “Goodnight!” (Makes no further objection to Mommy leaving.)

      Liked by 2 people

  29. Two thoughts, neither related:

    1. A generation of childlessness, while demographically horrifying, is a one generation issue. To the comments above (and elsewhere), there are people that are having children and they are the ones that will inherit the future, not the generation that proclaims that personal fulfillment (whatever that means) is more important. To use a concepts above (which I now love and will use), the generation that shows up inherits all.

       Although I was not a huge fan, perhaps the movie “Children of Men” is prophetic for certain parts of the population and world (looking at you, Western Civilization).

    2.   In the process of finishing our move, my wife has the opportunity to keep a part of her job as a part time gig. She has suggested, only partially jokingly, that she would like to take a “gap year”. Why not? The income change will impact our lives, but life is more than money and having more of it does not necessarily make one’s life better. She would like to take the time to help with our daughter’s wedding. That makes a whole lot more sense.

    Liked by 1 person

    2.   Although I was not a huge fan, perhaps the movie “Children of Men” is prophetic for certain parts of the population and world (looking at you, Western Civilization).

      :wry smile:

      Gee, thanks for expelling those of us who are having kids from Western Civ….

      Joking. Mostly. To make a point– the bird’s-eye view has some uses, but zooming out to a civilization blob level is misleading.

      You’d need to look at a level where the predictive power of demographic is accurate enough to…well, make a prediction.

      “Western Civilization” isn’t. ”Citizen of the US” isn’t. Practicing Catholic seems to be, in the demographics young enough that the cultural Catholics’ kids have faded off. LDS seems to be. Geeks that get married also seems to be three-plus.

      Add in that any stats gathered from services that pay more per reported kid are not going to be accurate. Student reports aren’t going to be accurate, either, they routinely “forget” to list a kid as having transferred, years prior.

      Liked by 1 person

      1. Student reports aren’t going to be accurate, either, they routinely “forget” to list a kid as having transferred, years prior.

        This is biting local school districts. Not the surrounding rural as they typically have one setting per typical level (one grade/middle, and HS, if they have a HS) on the same campus. But our city two districts. Both are losing grade schools. Haven’t lost a middle school, yet. But I can see it coming, at least for Bethel (won’t lose the HS, there is only the one). Reason? Lists of students do not count for state funding in Oregon (who takes the district school property taxes, except for special “short term” levy’s, and distributes it “evenly”). It is dollars per actual butts in seats. A student transferred out does not translate into butt into seat. Thus any study worth it’s funding (I know, very rare) will use the number of actual student funding for their numbers. This is why the loss of grade schools. The districts know enrollment is down and is dropping further. The bigger district has tried to lease to alternative schools, even that is failing as the student count drops. Not entirely due to lack of children because of the rise to home schooling, and private academies. It does mean they aren’t getting paid for students they don’t have.

        Liked by 1 person

      2. Foxfier – In using Western Civilization I perhaps used it to meaning the thought and philosophies of Western Civilization, not just the physical inhabitants of it (of which I am one). Without people to maintain the civilization and its history/philosophy/fill in the blank, it inevitably dies.

        What might interesting is, as things settle out, which portions of it are preserved.

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        1. To shorten and rephrase:
          Do not let your heart be troubled.

          Things are better than the stats look, and the Judeo-Christian ethos that the US is the flower of is really tough to kill off.

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  31. From the Four Loves: Until they have children, newly weds are constantly laughing at one another. Because sex is very funny.

    I’ve been making it a point to ask young ones about their marriage plans in the same situations where one would be talking about college or career. “Failing to plan etc.”

    Be the little platoons.

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  32. Having children is not in the cards for me. I hope the coming depopulation isn’t catastrophic, I fear it will be. In any case, prayer and relying on Him remain my best options.

    Liked by 1 person

  33. Just wanted to say, “Prospiracy” is one of the most useful words I’ve learned in the last few years. It’s an elegant description of the behavior we’re seeing all over the place, and it has way better predictive power than “conspiracy”, which requires inhuman levels of planning and discipline.

    The metaphor that comes to mind is iron filings lining up in the presence of a magnetic field. Imperfect and messy, especially around the edges where the field is weak, but all individually going in the same direction. (Contrast with beads on a string, where any breach in the string/conspiracy ruins the shape entirely.)

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    1. Consider that there may be an inhuman intelligence involved. One that hates humans and all creation.

      I do like “prospiracy,” though, and it does explain certain loose group behavior.

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      1. I haven’t ruled out the possibility, but I doubt any one intelligence is directing things at the level of granularity we’re talking about. There have been too many hitches for any specific plan to be going according to plan.

        Whether the bad actors are actually diabolical or just act like it is not something I’m in a position to judge.

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        1. Generally speaking you don’t need one. One to set the priorities and prime the pump, and the rest handle themselves. There was a phrase of a certain place and time–“working towards the Fuhrer”–that describes it perfectly. It’s what we’re seeing all over the place. Program the NPCs and let them do the rest, is the plan.

          Liked by 1 person

      2. It appears to the Reader that the Soros family may fit the definition of inhuman intelligence.

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  34. When I went back to college during the (Not So) Great Depression, the ladies I got to know as I worked on my degree were largely either vehemently against having kids, or wanted to wait another 5-10 years until they had gone through grad school and gotten established in a career beforehand. The latter sounds almost OK, until you factor in how many of them were thirty-ish and going back for a new degree, or finally picking up a degree after having worked for a while. Those aren’t conditions that lead to growing or even maintaining the population.

    Liked by 1 person

  35. Screwtape, again:

    “The use of Fashions in thought is to distract men from their real dangers. We direct the fashionable outcry of each generation against those vices of which they are least in danger and fix its approval on the virtue nearest to that vice which we are trying to make endemic. The game is to have them all running about with fire extinguishers whenever there is a flood, and all crowding to that side of the boat which is already nearly gunwale under.”

    We can all make a pretty good stab at which vice he’d be trying to make endemic right now.

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  36. My dad was one of nine living children. He had five kids. Ultimately, there were 15 grandkids. Out of his siblings, he’s the only one that had a large amount. I don’t know if it’s pertinent, but he’s also the only one that didn’t remain on the East Coast.

    (There are no great-grandkids yet. The oldest contingent, who have just broken 30, seem to have imbibed the “don’t have kids” mindset despite the fact that they were also in a group of five. One of them is engaged, though, finally.)

    We’ll see how my kids do. (Still fairly young.) The eldest definitely loves kids, and I’m always very clear to them about how data can become corrupted and swayed for trends. Haven’t talked about the demographic crash much yet, but maybe I should ramp that up a bit.

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    1. one of nine living children. He had five kids. Ultimately, there were 15 grandkids. Out of his siblings, he’s the only one that had a large amount.

      Immediate (sisters and me) family is starting slowly, on the grandchildren, six so far, from 3 of 8 grandchildren, from son’s cousins.

      Mom was one of 3. From her side, 9 grandchildren, 18 great-grand, and there was one great-great-grand before grandparents passed in 2006. The great-grand have been added to by the six above, and cousins grandchildren add another 6 (I think. I only get glimpses via FB postings).

      Dad was one of 7. His father was the only one to have children (one of 4, two sets of twins), because one sibling sister died as an infant. Her twin lived into her 70s but was a lifetime T1 diabetic. His twin died of misadventure before marrying. 18 grandchildren (16 surviving). 19 great-grand and counting, 10 great-great-grand and counting. Now grandma’s siblings, one never had any children of his own (raised one, married a WW2 widow with one child), but her other two siblings had 8 and a dozen, each. I haven’t even met all the distant cousins (well maybe the older ones at the extended family picnics that used to happen when I was a small child). Granted, none of the generations have produced the number my great-great-great grandparents, and two great-great-great-great uncles, did. Plus bringing 40 of 42 (lost two on the Columbia) on the Oregon Trail in 1842 healthy. Then had more after they got here. No, don’t know the total count, other than it “seems” like I’m related to half the residents born in PNW (not counting the tribal members), including northern CA, between mom (Montana) and dad’s family.

      Generational count has been dropping (even though it is difficult to tell which generation a child belongs to, i.e. great grand children being raised with grand children cousins, etc.) but not as drastic as some families appear (keyword is “appear”).

      Husband’s family is an example of this. I have no idea how many cousins he has. Just his immediate family, there were 4 children, 6 grandchildren, ages 35 – 55, and 7 great-grand children, ages 12 – 25. Would like to say “and counting” but son is the only likely one to have a child at this point. While I can hope, that is all I can do.

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  37. Let me share a happy tale. My grandparents had two sons, and then the depression hit and Grandpa lost his job. They survived, barely, but the nutrition was so poor that my grandmother had two miscarriages, and then a stillborn birth, and then no more. They wanted a big family but they only had two.

    One of the two is my dad, who has seven children, twenty five grandchildren, and six great-grandchildren so far. The other son is my late uncle who only fathered three kids, but one of them, my cousin, has four kids and is working on twelve grandchildren.

    Was it Heinlein who said that even after a catastrophe, valiant human women can repopulate the galaxy in a single generation?

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  38. I wanted more than the three sons I had but their father left. He fell for the exact fantasy TV ideas you described in your post. He had a high-powered exec second wife and HE was the artsy-fartsy one. They had multiple houses, a yacht, and a lavish lifestyle… but they had no kids. Despite the enforce poverty single parenthood pushed me into, I got the better deal as the custodial parent and, in the end, the kids knew I was there for them. 8 grandkids so far.

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  39. Absolutely nothing to do with the topic, but just pointing out that tomorrow is the big match between Sporting CP and Porto up at Porto, with Sporting going in to the match 7 points clear of Benfica and 18, yes EIGHTEEN, points clear of Porto.

    They also get to face off again in the final of the Taça de Portugal.

    Not that I am bragging to our gracious host or anything like that (okay I am, but given Sporting’s record in recent years, it is about time I get to brag about them).

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    1. Why do you remind me of this? Okay, fine, at least I know what my parents are thinking about right now.
      Also Sporting is just for people who are afraid to commit to the big teams. (Runs.)

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    1. If I did, I’d be moving about now. My ambition for old age was a loft in downtown Denver — near all the museums and lectures, and with elevator.
      Ah well….

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