Doctor Doctor Give Me the News

The first hour of Dr. Laura's show on Thursday, May 24, 2018 was a doozy. As I usually preface these notes about her show, I generally like Dr. Laura and think her show, books, etc. are great and I think she almost always gets it right. She typically does 15 hours of her show a week and she's bound to make mistakes here and here. OK???

There were three calls in that hour I wanted to mention here.

The first (not necessarily the first call, but the first I wanted to discuss) was from a married-with-kids guy who called up to say he was fat and wanted to lose weight. Dr. Laura blamed his wife for the kind of food that was in the house (such as potato chips) and told the caller that he needed to man up and perform the unexplained alpha male maneuver. He's supposed to "be alpha" and tell his wife to only bring healthy food into the house. She never told the guy how to do that. He's just supposed to magically do it somehow, even though his wife has her own mind, and since this was an American or Canadian guy, his wife has all of the real power (unless you want to get illegal). This is kind of like when Dr. Laura says her father saying illegal drugs were for losers/lowlifes, she was set on avoiding them. Yeah, great. But not all kids obey like that.

The second thing I wanted to discuss was Dr. Laura responding to a caller by bringing up a story from her private practice days. This is a repeated story (of course it is... when you've been doing a show a long as she has almost all will be repeated many times, and that's fine) about a set of Jewish parents upset that their son had converted to Christianity (Catholic, if I recall correctly from previous tellings). Dr. Laura says now (and told the family) that the son did it because they weren't being much of a family and the son found a family... The Father, Mother Mary, and Jesus the Son. She says it as though that had to be reason the son converted. He couldn't possibly have genuinely been convinced that this newfound faith was in something close to truth or somehow better or whatever word you want to use than whatever form of Judaism the family practiced. Now, maybe Dr. Laura is leaving something out of the story every time she tells it, or maybe that's what she really thinks. From many other things she's said, it seems to me that she doesn't think theology or religion in general matters all that much as long as you have something and it doesn't tell you to commit terrorism. She went through the trouble of becoming as practicing Orthodox Jew, and if I recall correctly from what I've read (which may not be accurate) she because disillusioned and stopped practicing after she felt betrayed by others... but I'm not sure what that has to do with whether or not Orthodox Judaism has it right. It makes sense if community was her priority above all else. Another example is that family cohesion is much more important to her than a spouse leaving what they perceive to be deception or false teachings or harmful practices, especially for what they sincerely think is the truth or better. To be fair, though, when parents call to complain that their (usually grown) child has left their religious organization or denomination, Dr. Laura usually tells them to accept it and not to interfere, because everyone has their own path.


Finally, she had a caller who had remarried even though they had minor kids (a big Dr. Laura no-no) and Dr. Laura went into comments about the generally kind of situation, saying that divorcing and remarrying means you can't expect kids to obey rules because you didn't.

Huh???

What rules tell people not to divorce and not to remarry when you have minor children? Dr. Laura's to be sure, but the kids usually don't know that. There are some religious groups that have restrictions but Dr. Laura other statements about religion (see above) imply those rules aren't tied to objective truth. What kid ever says, "Well, I don't have to follow the rules because you, mom, got divorced and remarried?" Now, what Dr. Laura has said at other times is relevant... that the kids are dragged through chaos and made to live with people who have not been their family all along and were not of their choosing, and that sometimes causes kids to act out. But that's not at all how she put it this time. She was very clear that the caller had broken some rule and so can't expect their kids to follow rules. But no parent is perfect. So by that reasoning, kids should never be expected to follow rules.

I hope the holiday weekend is a good break for her. There have been calls lately that had her missing some very important information clearly stated early on by the caller. I was thinking in those cases she must have gotten distracted by something. She's usually right on target and very, very good.

Canadian Men Shouldn't Fall For It Either

Here we go again! Canada has gone misandrist-matriarchal and people there can't understand why more people aren't getting married.

This time, either Peter Shawn Taylor was duped or he's trying to dupe readers under the headline of "The Marriage Secret: It Makes Your Richer and Happier" (I know, try not to laugh.)

Earlier this week a survey of 1,520 Canadians by the Angus Reid Institute asked “When two people plan to spend the rest of their lives together, how important is it to you that they legally marry, meaning exchange vows in a public ceremony, whether civil or religious?”

Exchanging vows is not the same thing as signing a contract that's mostly about wealth transfer. I'm not sure how Canadian law works, so maybe you can't exchange vows without it bringing on the legal contract, but let's not pretend that people promising to care for each other henceforth is the same thing as the wealth transfer mechanism. People could care for each other without sharing finances. Really, they could.

Fifty-three per cent said it wasn’t important. According to the pollster, this means a majority of Canadians now think “marriage is simply not necessary.”

Nobody should be surprised by this. When people can get literally everything they want out of a relationship without a government contract, when a country has decided that marriage is about the feelings of adults above all else and thus two women can marry and that a groom is no different than a bride, when husbands have been denigrated constantly in media, isn't this result to be expected???

In 1981, over 60 per cent of Canadians above the age of 15 were married; today that’s fallen to 45 per cent as cohabitating couples and lone parent households rise in step.

And, people are getting married later and divorcing (earlier). And who thinks 15 year-old should be marrying in this day and age?!?

Beyond the ring and the ceremony, marriage offers substantial and persistent benefits in terms of health, wealth and well-being for both spouses and their children.

It does appear to have some benefits for children, but those are almost entirely about the behavior of the parents. Parents can behave that way without a state contract, however. And it certainly has benefits to a woman who earns less than her husband: guaranteed financial support, and tagging him with paternity even if she got knocked up by the pool boy. It doesn't actually have any proven benefits for breadwinning husbands that they can't get without being legally married.

Many of these advantages are not present to the same degree in cohabitation arrangements—despite the fact Canadians apparently don’t see any difference between the two types of relationships.

Sure, when you take all cohabitation arrangements and compare them to all marriages. But what happens when you compare compare cohabitation arrangements that were deliberately planned between two independent, established adults? And we really don't know if any specific cohabitating couple would be better off if they married instead. We can't compare them to themselves.

Making Life More Difficult

Tom Leykis has recalled multiple times on his show how a woman who was living with him (I can't remember if he was married to her or not... I think he was) and had "lost" her job and appeared to be content to do whatever she wanted all day (since there were no kids). He came home from work, asked he what was for dinner, and she said she had already eaten, and since he had two hands, he could make his own dinner. She then proceeded to watch him prepare his own meal and criticized how he was doing it.

I think about that story when my wife tells me things she doesn't want me to do, but she offers no alternative solution.

A recent example of this is that we have a child who has been going to school without having had any breakfast. On days I work and my kids have school, I don't see this child before I leave. I tried preparing various things for breakfast this child likes, but usually that stuff has been left untouched due to lack of time. If the child does consume some of the breakfast on the way to school, being driven by my wife, it often becomes trash I have to later clean out from the vehicle.

My wife and this child will not wake up any earlier to make and consume breakfast.

So, I've been leaving packaged nutrition drinks because the kids like them and they give my child nutrients and is handy and less of a mess.

My wife keeps angrily telling me not to get these drinks. She thinks they are unnecessary and a waste.

But she doesn't offer a workable alternative. She no doubt expects me, the person who works full time outside the home, unlike her, to somehow come up with another solution, which will probably involve more hassle for me.

Likewise, my wife almost never cooks for us. Rather, I'm expected to prepare food for her and the kids as well as myself. This doesn't stop her from telling me to NOT pick up food on the way home from errands. Nah, why would  I wanted to save myself time and trouble when I can spend more time in the kitchen?

Don't get married, guys.