The real story behind the anti-parenting bias in ‘enlightened’ publications?

NoOneofAnyImport has a great post today about being a mom – and those who choose to NOT be one – go read it for context. I’ll wait

[elevator music playing]

I read an article linked at Real Clear Markets about a fifth grader who reasoned and worked his math through why Keynes can’t possibly work….it drove two thoughts almost at the same time:

1. this is what I’ve been attempting to teach my own fifth grader to think through for himself – I wonder how well I did….
2. Maybe this kind of “logic from the mouth of babes” is why so many uber liberal ‘enlightened’ and over-educated types choose to not have kids.

The beauty of kids is that they don’t start out conditioned with ideas about “intelligent people are supposed to believe X” or “it’s fair to be unfair to some who live now because of the unfairness of people who lived before them“. If given an opportunity, they can do an acid “does this add up” test and – here’s the rub – they have no qualms about pointing out (usually loudly, in public) “YOUR ZIPPER IS DOWN!” or “Hey mom! You have toilet paper dragging from your shoe”

That must be what makes parenting so hard for these types of people – the ‘I want to show everyone how intelligent I am by everything I do, read, and say’ types – yeah, the ones buying books with tips on “Living like a Liberal.”

Can you see Krugman’s head exploding having a kid like the linked article (Fifth Grader disproves Keynes)?

The title of Linda’s post is “Deliberate childlessness is for wimps” – I would add that it’s the path for people who are fragile, with fragile ideas that can’t pass the logic test or the math skills of a fifth grader without having their heads blow off in the pages of the NYT because the kids aren’t socially conformed enough to know that ‘smart people don’t let themselves think things like that’