Protect Children By Parenting Your Children

"Protect Children Not Porn" is a false dichotomy.

It is expressed on services like Twitter/X as #ProtectChildrenNotPorn by the usual antiporn crusader would-be censors and the people who make a living grifting off of them, who try to make life as difficult as they can for people who make, sell, and watch any erotica.

Groups like Exodus Cry (originating from an Evangelical church), Justice Defense Fund (which is basically Laila Mickelwait, who was with Exodus Cry but might not be anymore for some still unexplained reason), National Center on Sexual Exploitation (which is a rebrand of Morality in Media) and Fight the New Drug (which insists it is NOT a Mormon organization, and we know Mormons have never tried to conceal their motives and operations before) know that very few people will support a religious crusade trying to ban all pornography, but their core supporters want that. So these groups try to fool people with campaigns that claim to be secular campaigns about children and women being abused. 

Except that we know their campaigns are really about attacking the freedom of consenting adults to make and watch erotica.

How?

1) They claim that porn websites must be shut down if rogue users violated the terms of service by uploading illegal video content, claiming that such content victimizes women and children. But these same people have never called for shutting down churches (or their Mormon equivalents) when staff is is caught making or distributing such material, or actually, personally assaulting a woman or a child. They don't even pressure banks/credit card companies to stop processing payments to/for those churches.

2) They use social media that has far more illegal videos on it than any of the porn sites they target, and they know this.

3) They have attacked OnlyFans, one of the best services for ensuring the women participating are consenting, are indeed women and not girls, and that the people viewing their explicit material are adults (they charge!).  

One of them, let's just call her Mayla Ficklewaste, has let her toddler play with her phone, even though Mayla constantly searches out illegal videos, frequently visits porn sites, and the child was able to access X/Twitter, which has rape and snuff videos. Anyone can upload anything to X/Twitter right now. PornHub only has verified uploads. Guess which service this MF attacks?

It's a RUSE.

It's a SHAKEDOWN.

It's a FUNDRAISING PLOY.

They're NEVER going to ban porn, but they'll keep collecting money from scared, insecure, gullible people who are counting on them to do so. All they can do is shake down what other people have earned, and make life difficult for models and performers. Likewise, they tell the broader public that they simply want these restrictions, but that's a lie. Their crusade would continue.

They haven't prevented one person from being abducted, enslaved, or assaulted. But Laila sure has gotten lots of attention, fed her ego, and lined her pockets.

It is not "defending porn" or "protecting porn" to value freedom of speech, freedom of expression, and free enterprise.

It is not defending porn or protecting porn, and certainly not attacking children, to point out that "leaders" in these "movements" are hypocritical, two-faced, and fleecing the gullible.

They say there's nothing stopping children from viewing porn websites. There is "nothing stopping" kids from walking into traffic, or taking an automobile a joyride, or setting themselves on fire, or burning down their residence.

Except that there is. It is called...

P A R E N T I N G

That's why I use the hashtag #ParentYourChildren

These crusaders are such bad parents that they want the whole world to change for the sake of what they don't want their kid seeing.

Here's what people can do to parent their own child.

1) Don't give your a child a networked phone or tablet. If you do, have controls and monitors on it.

2) Keep any other device that can access online content in common areas of your home, where it will be supervised. Controls can also be used on these.

3) Don't let your children go without your supervision to any residence that doesn't follow these practices.

You Can't Tell She'd Make a Good Mother

If you're looking for "the one," and you shouldn't be, you might ask "Will she make a good mother?"

Now, there are some red flags that indicate she definitely wouldn't be a good mother. But just because you don't see certain red flags (yet) and think she's compatible with you and on the same page when it comes to parenting does NOT mean she will actually be a good mother.

There really isn't any way to know for sure.

In the good ol' days, she didn't have much choice. She'd better do things your way. Things are very different now, with a culture that undermines parenting.

She might SAY she wants to raise children, but just like you, she really has no clue. Being an older sibling, or babysitting someone else's kids can cause someone to legitimately realize they don't want children, but they're not a good way to decide that one DOES want to parent. How can things work that way? Because if children irritate, annoy, exasperate, or otherwise bring you down, that's enough to know you shouldn't raise any, but even if you enjoy being around them, that's far different from being their parent, who is financially, socially, morally, and legally responsible for them 24/7/365 for 18 or more years.

Having a dog isn't being mom to a human child.

There are some definite signs, other than not liking kids in general, she's not mother material. She wouldn't make a good wife. Her career comes first or she has a highly demanding career (long/odd/extra days, frequent travel, instability/having to hop from company to company, emotionally draining/stressful, leaves her exhausted); she's misandrist; she's impatient or easily angered; she needs everything neat and orderly; she's unhealthy; she's mentally ill; she's a substance abuser; she's irresponsible; she's abusive; she isn't nurturing or affectionate.

Other things are harder to discern.

If she already has children, you shouldn't be with her, let alone making more with her or bringing your kids around her and her kids.

You can't tell with reasonable certainty a woman will make a good mother, and frankly, you probably shouldn't marry.

So you probably shouldn't have kids, or if you are going to have kids, you might want to consider not having a wife and keeping control by using a donated egg and a surrogate for gestation.

Answering Marriage Seller Assertions, Talking Points, and Questions - Part 13

Read Part 1 here and Part 2 here and Part 3 here and Part 4 here and Part 5 here and Part 6 here and Part 7 here and Part 8 here and Part 9 here and Part 10 here. and Part 11 here and Part 12 here.


Don't you want to raise children in the best environment?

There is more than one way to answer this depending on your situation.

A) I don't want children.

B) I am willing to sacrifice my desire to have children to avoid burdening a woman.

C) I haven't found a compatible woman who is suitable to be a good mother.

D) The terrible state marriage contract does nothing to help my children other than making it less likely I will leave. Since I will not leave my children, the terrible state contract does nothing positive. This is one of those apparent correlations; people who get along well and live healthy lives are likely to be good co-parents AND get/stay married. However, we can be good co-parents without the terrible state contract. Behavior is what matters. She's either going to cooperate and be a good mother or she won't. A state contract that rewards her for divorcing and further encourages her to divorce by emasculating me certainly won't help.

Mind you, anyone who argued during the push to have two dudes be able to legally marry that "marriage isn't about children" shouldn't be attempting to use this argument. Plenty of other people will try to use it, because when all unmarried child raising is compared to all married child raising, children appear to be better off being raised within marriage. But of course that data never separates out parenting by people who intentionally avoided marriage even though they got along well and shared goals, including the goal of raising children together.

You do not need a terrible state contract to raise children well.

Grandpa Lived in a Different Era

I’m so tired of people asking why husbands and fathers today aren't like their grandfathers or great-grandfathers in terms of leading their homes, tempering their wife when she's way out of line, and keeping their kids in line, etc. The embellished memories of how those men of yore kept everything hunky dory without losing their cool can be entertaining and even amusing to hear once or twice, but the constant extolling of this imagined past familial utopia is irritating.

There are very important things that aren't included in this praise of these "real" men.

Those men could literally beat their wives and children, rape their wives, and kick any of them out of the home without giving them a dime in walking money. If some punk was horning in on one of the girls in the family, the dad could run him off the property with a gun. And none of it was against the law or, even if it was technically against the law, nobody would arrest these men, let alone prosecute them or convict them. Now, not all men actually ran their homes like that, but the general cultural understanding that they could was enough to keep their families in line. Wives and children did run away, facing destitution in doing so, especially when relatives were unwilling to take them in. Many of their relatives would side with the husband/father. Yes, a woman might find that her own father would side with his son-in-law. Just about everyone else did, too... employers/customers, clergy and congregations, mental health providers, doctors, banks, newspaper editors... just about anyone. Wives were told to go back and obey and please their husbands, with maybe doing something on the sly behind his back (like squirreling away some savings if the husband would spend too much or wouldn't let his wife have enough money).

A married woman couldn’t get a credit card or engage in many other financial actions without her husband’s agreement. This is the real reason some women had secret stashes of cash the home. They couldn’t put it in a bank without their husband knowing.

Unlike now, a marriage license was an actual license to live together, have sex, and have children. There could be serious legal consequences if you did any of those things without a marriage license. That license gave a man access to his wife’s body, whether she felt like it at the moment or not. If she cheated on him, not only could be beat her, kick her out, and divorce her, but she could be criminally charged and she certainly wouldn’t get half of everything plus lifetime alimony.

Is that how things should be run? I'm not saying these were good things. But they "worked" in that they 1) kept children from being a disobedient presence in the family home, and 2) kept wives from emasculating their husbands or acting significantly in contradiction to what he wanted. If you can find an acceptable way to achieve those goals now, please share it with us. We’d love to know the secret. And sorry, telling men to “be like your grandfather” ain’t going to do it. You might as well tell someone to fly on a magic unicorn. Grandpa lived in a different era.

The men of today have different dynamics to deal with in the home. They also have different dynamics to deal with outside the home. Every workplace, every institution has been feminized, and most of them have been integrated with women. Most media and most businesses and other organizations seek to cater to feminine sensitivities and priorities when there is a conflict with masculine. Grampa didn’t have to compete with both other men and women in selling his labor. He didn’t have to worry that having a normal conversation with another guy at work could get him fired for “harassment” because someone overhead something they didn’t like.

Sorry, everything else has been changed. You can't expect men to behave as though nothing has changed.

It Costs More to Raise Children Now

“People in the past had (more) kids even though they had less wealth.”

That statement is made to try to cajole people into having (more) kids, as though other factors haven’t come into play.

Life has changed.

More people used to live on family farms or above family shops. The kids were working in the family business as soon as they could walk. Or the kids were going to work in factories, mines, or other income-earning jobs.

If mom and dad weren’t working the family farm or shop together, dad could be working his entire career for the same employer, in the same town.

High school is not much more than a century old, and a much smaller percentage of the population went to college.

Now, for many “professional” or career-type jobs, at least a Bachelor’s degree is required by employers. Landing a job, and subsequent promotions, often requires jumping from company to company and relocating. When you have kids, that becomes very difficult. Layoffs don’t help! If you’re getting your health insurance through your employer, it’s much less of an issue if you’re childfree.

Kids were financial assets from an early age, now they are liabilities for 26-plus years.

Most people don’t think it’s good or even acceptable anymore to have kids, especially kids of the opposite sex, sharing small bedrooms, so each additional child can mean needing an additional bedroom. Even if you’re willing to cram your kids into a small place, housing costs have outpaced inflation.

As have automobile costs, and each child needs their own seat, with a special child’s seat contraption, and then a booster seat, almost until they’re ready to drive themselves. This isn’t the old days of packing onto the floor of a van or the back of a station wagon. Speaking of driving themselves, there are more restrictions on teens driving. Having kids usually means needing larger automobiles.

Healthcare costs have also outpaced inflation. Oh, there are glasses/contacts, dental work, orthodontics, therapy…

College costs have also outpaced inflation. But before college, there’s hiring tutors. Public schools involve certain costs, too, but if you find them unusable, how much do you think private schools cost, hmmm? Oh, “Just homeschool!”? Who’s paying off mom’s student loans then, eh? Homeschooling usually isn’t entirely free, and means much less time and ability to earn income.

I won’t even get into the costs of day orphanages (daycare).

Birthdays. More kids today have a party every year. That doesn’t just mean you have to pay for your own kid’s party every year. There’s buying gifts for, and attending their friends’ parties, too. The time itself is costly. And of course there’s the really big birthday parties: Sweet 16, quinceañeras, bar and bat mitzvahs, which are rivaling weddings for expense and trouble.

Recreation and entertainment costs have gone up. Do you know what it costs to visit a major theme or amusement park now? Professional sports games/matches?

Are you going to pay for your child’s wedding??? 

None of this is even taking into consideration that your child might get involved in something as simple as a schoolyard fight that, nowadays, will require you to hire lawyers. Those aren’t cheap.

What if your child has special needs or a disability? This can not only be costly in money, but time, effort, and freedom as well. And that might continue the rest of your life.

Let’s not forget taxes and all of the other ways government of various levels collects money from us that have increased.

And what happens if the person you made the kid with decides they don’t want to be married anymore? How much is a divorce and ongoing battles over custody, support, and other matters going to cost? How much will the support cost? Therapy for the kids?

No matter how much the fertility rate panic pushers try to gloss over things, children are expensive, draining, and limiting.

People often want to have the same “things” others have, if they see it’s a better life. People also see what other people go through and realize they don’t want that in their life. Many childfree people see what parents deal with, and say “No thanks!” The panic pushers don’t want people to believe their “lying eyes.”

Maybe some of those people in the past or elsewhere are poor mainly because they had more children? It’s also possible poor people have (more) kids because they are something that is “theirs” and they think they can control. Everything else is only theirs until it gets repossessed or their landlord raises rent.

None of these people telling you to have (more) kids are going to be there to pay your bills, or deal with the toils and troubles. No, that will be up to you. And some of those people will be first in line to criticize you if you don’t handle parenting exactly the way they want you to. Because it isn’t simply, “Have kids.” No, no, no… it’s “Have kids, then do everything else the way we say, too.”

They want you to feel guilt and shame for wanting to be somewhat secure, wanting to enjoy your life and freedom, not wanting to struggle. They’ll say what approaches “But you CAN afford kids! You can rent a few square feet in Montana & live in a tent!”

Haven’t we heard over and over again that people sacrifice and struggle and work hard so that future generations have a better life, and can live better than previous generations? And yet if you try to actually fulfill that by living a better life, these panic pushers freak out. These fertility cultists seem to be saying, “No, not a better life for you! Someone else, down the line!”

In addition to monetary costs, many people staying with the default of being childfree also think children should have parents who will stay together, cooperate, and treat each other well, but are perceiving, correctly, that they can’t provide that, or there’s a significant risk of not being able to provide that.

The claim that concerns about the costs of raising children aren’t warranted doesn’t withstand scrutiny.

The Costs of Raising a Child

Oh No! Not Lower Fertility Rates!

If you don't know what "fertility rates" are, it refers to the average number of children born to a group.

There are people freaking out that certain populations are having fewer children. Who? Well:

• People who want more taxpayers around to support the government-run ponzi schemes like Social Security
• Government agencies (and their unions) that rely on saying they need to serve children in order to keep their funding
• Businesses that sell a lot of overpriced, quickly consumed or outgrown stuff for children
• Businesses that "serve" children, such as day orphanages
• Racists who are afraid the "wrong" people will outnumber their descendants

Now why are people having fewer children? Here are the reasons I can think of right now, in no particular order:

Motivation For Going Childfree

I wanted to take a moment to address a comment that was left after this page asking for one good reason for men to marry.

 Here's the comment:

The question you should really also ask is:
Why would you want to have children? If you really feel the urge to raise one or more, adopt them, there are waaaaay to many parentless kids out there. And when push comes to shove; Putting a child onto this horrible planet is more like a crime than "something that should be done". Humans are overpopulating, overconsuming its resources, wasting away the planet as it is, and it will take ages (and many pandemics) to have them scale down a bit. Here's my advice (after putting one daughter into this world, and still being together with the same woman I had the child with): DON'T commit yourself to one woman, and DON'T have children. It's going to be bad to bear witness to what the child has to go through, and it's going to be bad to realize your favorite woman stops being attracted to you, or vice versa. Staying together 'for or because of the children' is horror for how it will grow up.

I did write an entry asking if it is now irresponsible to have children. But that has nothing to do with environmentalism, population growth, or the general state of life in this world. It does have to do with the latter part of the comment: being tied to a woman and not being able to provide the child with a present mother and father, happily together.

We are not an overpopulated planet.

We are not in an environmental crisis, and human ingenuity will continue to address environmental challenges.

In some parts of the world, life is pretty good overall.

The problems we have right now include that the state has taken ownership of children while still placing all blame and billing on the parents; misandry and opposition to masculinity; a lack of responsible, appropriate, and genuine femininity; emasculating laws and culture; and detrimental family laws and courts (among others). Most people can't give a coherent, logical, rational, unselfish reason to have children, and most men shouldn't have children. A lot of people will not think this through, though, and will still have intercourse without taking steps to avoid conception, so most people, at least for a while, will continue to keep having children regardless.

Wanting to be a Husband or Father

Guys, there's nothing inherently wrong with having a desire to be a "husband and father."

What I mean by that is that most people want some amount of companionship, and most people want to reproduce.

Society has traditionally channeled these into marriage. When most of us were living on family farms, that made sense. A man could get his own farm hands (and before that, hunting assistants) by growing them himself. Eventually, he'd get injured or ill or otherwise feeble and his progeny could take care of him and then bury him. To get those farm hands, he needed at least one woman. The woman would also provide companionship for him. He had incentive to protect her and the young children and make sure they had food to eat, and to teach those children (what some might call "mansplaining"). A woman could often feed the youngest children from her own body via breastfeeding.

For a man, underlying the desire to raise children was his desire to create his own assistants and allies. The desire for female companionship usually, conveniently, enabled the creation of those children.

But life has changed.

Don't Do Things You Can't Afford

Matt Walsh writes a lot of good stuff. I follow him on Twitter. I haven't listened to his podcasts or read his book. Every once in a while, I disagree with what he writes, and this is one of those times. [This is bumped up from May 2017.]

This time, Walsh wrote to encourage people to go ahead and have children young. Walsh is greatly disturbed that so many people his age are still living with a parent, but even if they're not, he's still bothered that they're not marrying, and not having children. And it probably bothers him a lot (though he doesn't say it in this column) that most of them are fornicating and/or masturbating.

I generally do think people should move out of their parents' home when they finish with college or before, but it doesn't bother me in the slightest that people are not marrying and not having children.

I was 27 and broke when we had kids.

And that was irresponsible of Walsh.

They were twins, so we became a family of four right out of the gate. We didn’t really know anybody where we lived, and we were about 600 miles from the nearest family member.

Bad planning.

I wasn’t making much money at my job, we had nothing in savings, and we were pretty far in the red because of medical bills and my wife’s student loan debt.

This is what you SHOULD NOT DO, kids.

...it’s clear that we were not in what our society would consider the “ideal” position to get married or have kids. We weren’t ready. We couldn’t afford it. And yet we did get married and we did have kids.

Which was irresponsible.

And here we are. All of us (five of us now). Still breathing, somehow.

Yes, it is called debt, handouts from family, and, for a lot of people, public assistance in one form or another. If Walsh avoided all three of these things, I'd be very surprised.

My generation has been stuck in neutral for years, not wanting to get married, not wanting to have kids, refusing to move out of mom’s house and be adults, always insisting that we aren’t “ready.”

People can be living on their own and still not want to get married and even if they do want to marry, still not want to have kids.

Most Men Shouldn’t Marry Nor Have Children

Most men shouldn’t marry nor have children, so most boys should not be raised with the assumption that they will or should marry, and they definitely shouldn’t be raised with the assumption that they will have a lasting, happy marriage.

I realize there are religions out there that pretty much mandate people marry and try to have children. I can’t argue with every different religious organization that claims to have authority over your life. What I do know is that the Bible, taken as a whole and rightly divided, does not mandate you marry and have children. Don’t tell me contraception, tubal ligations, hysterectomies, and vasectomies are wrong because they are are unnatural, as you accept artificial medical treatments, live in a home that has been constructed, and drink water and eat food that has been processed in some way.

Most men shouldn’t marry or have children because 1) they aren’t suited to it, 2) aren’t positioned to do it, 3) aren’t living in a culture that supports it, and 4) won’t find a suitable woman with whom they could.

An Unmarried Individual May Not Be Happier Married

 

There are marriage-selling sociologists and their marks who post graphs that depict married parents as happier than “unmarried,” childfree people.

I’m a married parent. I’d love to tell you that if YOU marry and have children, you’ll be happier.

But there’s no solid evidence of that. It might make you miserable.

The graphs rely on statistical trickery and for marks to not understand that apparent correlation isn’t proof of directional causation.

Who is counted as “unmarried” in those graphs?

• Divorced people, whose unhappiness could be primarily due to their marriage
• People who are too sickly, ugly, poor, or unpleasant to attract a spouse - how happy do you think they are?
• Generally unhappy people, whose unhappiness makes it more difficult to attract or keep a spouse 
• Desperate people who think they’re losers, sinners, failures, or doomed (perhaps taught so by their clergy or cult leaders) for not marrying/multiplying 
• People who are partnered and living like they are married, but haven’t legally married; a state license isn’t going to make them any happier 
• Intentionally never-married, childfree people

The people in that last group could be, as a group, much happier than married people. Marriage sellers NEVER separate them out in the statistics, though.

Another trick common to graphs is to shorten an axis to make disparities look larger than they are. For example, if the data goes from 0 to 100, only showing 40 to 60 on a graph can make differences seem larger than they are.

In the case of the specific graphs we’re talking about, time frame can also matter. If the ages included only go from, say, 25 to 35, that’s definitely not the whole picture.

There are never-married, childfree people who are very happy.

There are also married parents who are miserable. Some even murder their spouse and/or children or are murdered by their spouse or child. That’s extreme, but there are many other things, like abuse, that can be involved without it getting to the point of murder. If you are living free, you can easily leave abusive people.

Don’t be fooled by graphs that rendered and presented in misleading ways.

Consider embracing freedom and making the most of it.

Entering A Bad State Contract Won’t Save the World

Attention Men!

You don’t have to enter into a terrible state contract to:

-Share life with a woman

-Take care of, provide for, and protect a woman

-Raise children

You don’t have to enter into a terrible state contract, share life with a woman, or have children to:

-Make America strong

-Be a good citizen

-Be a good Christian

-Be a good conservative

-Be a good Republican

-Be a good man

-Fight Leftism

-Live a good life

-Leave a legacy

-Change the world for the better

You can do those things as a Free Man.

Entering a terrible state contract that does little other than shifting your earnings and power away from you doesn’t do any of those things.

To What Should Males Aspire

You Can Choose to Persuade Rather Than Parent

There's a lot to like about Western civilization. It's clearly imperfect, but nothing of this world is perfect. Some people are hellbent on destroying Western civilization and others are useful dupes who are working for the same goal, without realizing it. A major component of Western civilization (WC) is Europe. As such, some people who hate WC and some people who love WC equate the concept with "white" people.

Many defenders of WC fret about the "low fertility rate" in European and certain Anglosphere countries, like the USA. Essentially, if the people of these countries don't have enough children to replace themselves (meaning, more than one child per parent, or more than two children per married couple), the countries will either undergo depopulation or immigrants will fill the void, taking up available residences and jobs.

Some of these fretful defenders of WC really do see it as White Culture and are very concerned that "white" people aren't having enough children and are being "replaced" by others.

Whether someone is concerned about white or Western, they see it as the duty of Europeans, Americans (of European ancestry, if white is the concern), etc. to get married and have and raise at least three children and, in some cases, as many as possible. That way, they reason, we can defend and perpetuate Western culture, preserving our heritage.

There's a problem with that, however.

Are You Worried About Lower Fertility Rates in Your Country?

Then YOU have more children, OK?

Stop trying to convince people who aren't enthusiastically seeking to have (more) children to pop out babies.

If you're so concerned, you have more children. You pay to raise them. You make the sacrifices. After all, it's worth it, right?

See these posts:

We Are Not Going Back

Having A Family Doesn't Guarantee Happiness

Is It Now Irresponsible To Have Children?

Why Are They Surprised?

The Costs of Raising a Child

Oh No! Not Lower Fertility Rates!

The Men Who Are Beaten Dogs

The best humor contains a lot of truth. Check out the late great Sam Kinison's first appearance on national broadcast television, on Late Night with David Letterman:


That was in the 1980s. Things have gotten worse since.

Beaten Dogs are the opposite of Free Men.

They are emasculated. Their dreams have been killed.

We all know beaten dogs. Some of us are beaten dogs.

Beaten dogs deny themselves, or are denied, not only their dreams, but peace, quiet, autonomy, freedom, and many joys. They are often denied the ability to enjoy the fruits of their own labors. Their current lot in life is quiet (at least usually) desperation, servitude to an irrational and often abusive creature in the form of a wife, girlfriend, or babymamma.

Quite often, what accompanies this, if not retired or on disability, is employment in bleak conditions, often until they die. They are lucky if they have one space at home that is truly their own, and any time with the guys, apart from the clucking hens, shrill shrieking shrews, and ungrateful brats.

If a Beaten Dog has a job they enjoy, they will try to spend as much time on that to avoid being home. Otherwise, they might take up golf or bowling or try to find some other way to hang out with guys.

Make no mistake. Beaten dogs put themselves into this situation. They believed what was sold to them about relationships, marriage and/or parenting. "They didn't choose the right woman," say many observers. For most of these men, there was no such thing. The problem is that they didn't take the necessary steps to be and stay Free Men.

Can a Beaten Dog become free? Yes. But it takes changing just about everything, takes a lot of time and energy, and a whole lot of money. It almost always means needing to move and get a divorce. It means the loss of a lot of supposed friends, and possibly losing relationships with their sons and daughters, and maybe their parents and siblings as well.

Prevention is best. Stay free!

Running Game as a Father

If you have children, you need to make them your priority. If you're no longer with their mother and reconciling isn't possible, don't bring more chaos to their lives via new women and the children of those women.

Running game can help with that, because it minimizes the amount of time, money, and energy you spend on women and keeps those women separate from the rest of your life.

Get a vasectomy if you haven't already. Your kids don't need you making half-siblings for them to deal with.

Date when your kids are not with you. If you have full custody, see if your siblings or parents can babysit, but accept that you're not going to have as much free time or freedom as if you were a completely free man. Do not date when your minor children are with you, even if they are teens who can stay home without you. They need your attention.

Never bring any of your lovers around your minor children. Don't make the mistake of thinking you need a girlfriend or wife to be a mother figure for your children. If their mother isn't in their life, and you think they need a mother figure, move next to your sister or mother. Even if you'd foolishly want to marry (again or for the first time), marriages in which there are stepchildren have a very high failure rate.

If their mother is bringing her new lovers around them, if she even makes more babies, you can't control that, and it is all the more reason for YOU not to add chaos to the lives of your children. Make sure your children are aware and will report if any of their mother's lovers or the lover's children abuse or attempt to abuse them, because according to reported statistics, abuse is more likely in such situations.

If you didn't avoid creating a broken home for children, consider running game as how you handle dating.

Who Is Right About Staying Together For the Kids - Dr. Laura or Dennis Prager?

Dr. Laura's priority is the well-being of minor children. She has experience as a marriage and family therapist, although she's far more experienced as a radio talk show host and author dealing with family problems, moral dilemmas, values, ethics, and more.

Absent actual abuse, she tells married parents who want to divorce to wait until the youngest child is 18 years old, up and out of the home. Her reasoning is that this avoids breaking up the child's home and bringing chaos into their lives while they are minors.

Dennis Prager, who says people should divorce instead of living in misery, says that it can be worse for the children to be in their (adult) late teens or early twenties and then have their parents split, because then the now-grown children think of their family life as fake or a lie, and they can still get extremely upset about the divorce.

It should be noted that Dennis Prager, who has no formal experience as a marriage and family therapist and has written much less on parenting/family and spends fewer talk show hours discussing those issues, has had more children than Dr. Laura and one more divorce than her (Dr. Laura was not a mother when her first marriage ended).

It's one of the things I would very much like to hear these two radio talk show host veterans discuss directly. I doubt that will ever happen since their shows aren't part of the same company. Also, because Dr. Laura refuses to argue/debate on her show, and my guess is that would also include any other show as well (this is probably one big reason she didn’t appear anyone else's show for many years, except for one on the same channel as hers - on which she doesn't argue.)

Unlike either of them, I would advocate most people avoid this question entirely by not marrying.

There Are Rare Circumstances in Which Using Daycare Is The Best Choice

People shouldn't have children unless they are prepared to raise them. Raising them means having them with a parent until they go to Kindergarten at age five or six, then having with a parent before and after school. School doesn't end at 6pm. Dumping a kid in daycare is almost always a result of choices.

A good daycare is, of course, better than being with an abusive parent, but even then, it would be better for the kid to be with grandparents or aunts and uncles.

Let's consider the other rare circumstances in which daycare is the best choice.

 

A) The other parent killed themselves, or abandoned the family (and there were no signs either of those was a likely possibility before making the children) and they're not paying enough support to allow the other parent to be with the kids; B) and there wasn't enough in funds or other assets and no way/time to work to avoid having to leave the children for work; C) and there's nobody else, like good, reliable grandparents, aunts, uncles, etc., to care for the child while the remaining parent is at work.

For 99 percent of the kids dumped in daycare, the circumstances weren't anything like that.

Unfortunately, there's no way to be certain the other parent is going to be around, present, and either able to care for the children well or provide enough income, for the duration of raising the children. People can try to set things up that way. They can try to choose wisely, treat kindly, and all of that, and have things like life insurance. They can try to only make children with someone who is already wealthy and set things up so the children will always be taken care of regardless of whether there is a death or the relationship ends. But most people aren't that wealthy, certainly not when they are 40 or younger, and there's no fail-safe way of ensuring things will work out. It's always somewhat of a gamble to have children, even for someone who tries to make the odds be in their favor as much as possible.

You can have a great life insurance policy on your income-earning spouse, and if they commit suicide you're SOL. Maybe there was no sign they'd do that when you had kids with them, but they suffered a trauma after you had the kids and eventually they did themselves in. Or maybe the trauma leads to them abandoning the family to live on the streets, jobless.

So, there can be circumstances in which daycare is unavoidable.

But "We want to live here, in this house, with these investments" or "I deserve my career" aren't those circumstances.

If you don't have children yet, think about these things very carefully.

When Someone Regrets Being a Parent

Duncan Jones recently issued a couple of controversial tweets: [This entry is bumped up from January 2019.]

I have 2 kids. 2 1/2 years and 9 months old respectively. I’ll tell you something I never see anyone admit... they are exhausting, frustrating and life-destabilizing. They are rarely fun. Sure, smiles are great, hugs are lovely, but it’s HARD and not obviously a good choice in life.

This is where people feel compelled to say “i wouldn’t change it for the world!” But you know... Of course I’d reconsider! It’s exhausting! Its banal! It’s like looking after a dog you can’t housetrain. What it is, is that it is. and they are mine. Hopefully they turn out ok.

Columnist Matt Walsh, conservative Catholic hubby and dad that he is, lit into Jones and those who responded in solidarity.

What's most concerning is the reaction these tweets provoked. In the 24 hours or so immediately after they were published, a sizable portion of the responses were entirely supportive and sympathetic. A bunch of parents decided to join the fray and register public complaints about their own children. Until saner voices joined the discussion, the thread was a long litany of unseemly parental bellyaching. And not just vague "parenting can be tough" type complaints, but much more specific and personal "my life is miserable and my kids are awful" type complaints.

Those are their experiences. Yes, they shouldn't say these things if they are using their true identity and thus their kids can find out about it. In some cases, it won't matter because the kids are already too far gone, but in most cases, sure. But let's be honest. Walsh isn't just upset that their kids might see this. People like Walsh don't want people speaking the truth about parenthood: that for some people, it brings misery. Some people aren't suited to it.

Let's not deflect from the fact that many people regret having children. Many of them aren't being great parents as a result. Let's encourage people to think very carefully about becoming parents, instead  of saying "Oh, it will all work out! You'll love it! Don't worry, just do it!"

Women who do this are told they're ignoring their motherly instincts. Men are told they're just immature.

You Don't Need a Bad State Contract to Raise Children

Here's what matters to children:

• Being fed and clothed with a roof over their head.
• Being able to play and learn.
  
• Having adults who listen to them and give them attention, comfort and care about them, protect and advocate for them more than anyone else, give them love and affection, affirm their worth as human beings.
• Having people with more life experience than them, who know what it is like to grow up, helping them deal with life.
  
• A sense of belonging and stability.
• Having a positive male role model who loves them.
  
• Having a positive female role model who loves them.
  

It doesn't hurt your children if you don't have a marriage license on file with the county or state. It doesn't hurt them if you're not wearing rings, you don't have wedding pictures on display in the home, and you don't celebrate a wedding anniversary.

Those who say the bullet points above are more likely under an intact, legal marriage (and I used to be such a person) are neglecting to account for the fact that, traditionally, people who get along well with each other, want to live together, and commit to parenting were also likely to marry. It isn't that getting legally married did anything at all for the children. The main way legal marriage might, in some cases, make the bullet points more likely to be fulfilled is in keeping a husband/father from leaving while the children are being raised because he knows family law and family courts are likely to beat him nearly to death.

Men, you can't ensure children get that last bullet point. The more wealth you have, the more you can ensure the other bullet points, especially if no woman has parental rights to your children.

If you have found a great woman who seems to be compatible with you and in agreement with you about how to team up with you to provide all those things to the children, and she stays devoted to doing so, that would be wonderful for the children, but there's no way of being absolutely certain that will be the case. Wives file the overwhelming majority of divorces. You have the power to decide YOU will be and stay devoted. You can't control what she does. She can leave, she can kick you out, she can divorce you, she can fight you in court, she can deny the children access to you and poison them against you, and the children will be deprived of many of their needs. Clearly, legally marrying does not keep women around. It is to keep you around, and you can decide to stay without getting married; but married or not, she can decide to send and keep you away.

The point is, even if you're determined to raise children, you legally marrying won't help the children because what matters is your presence, involvement, and determination to raise them, not the government paper. If you truly believe "Yeah, but maybe I'll change my mind and want to leave and having that government gun to my head will keep me there." ...then don't have kids.

If you have a great and willing sister or mother, it might be better to live with her or next to her so she can be the positive female role model. That would likely be more stable than a romantic relationship. Unless you use a legally donated egg and legally rented womb (that's expensive!) you can't set that up free from the interference of someone else, who'll have the power to ruin things. If your sister has her own kids, there's likely to be some conflict of interest there.

These are serious considerations. Deciding whether or not to conceive children is one of THE most important decisions you can make. Having children changes everything. They need involved parents. Do not have children just to dump them into daycare, boarding schools and summer camps, or the lap of a nanny.