A regret
The last article, archived just below, unnecessarily lacks tact. I regret this. Let me explain.
My wife and I live in a rural area where the cost of living is low. Our close friends where we live, couples that share our religion and values, average about five children each; and the friends who have fewer than five either married late in life or, well, are prevented by physical causes; other friends have as many as eight. So, you see, the article would not have offended my friends, among whom one of the wives’ favorite, recurring topics of conversation regards the evils of birth control. Since I enjoy your company and value your electronic acquaintance, but have never met you face-to-face, what sort of mental image do you suppose that I have of you and your fellow readers as a group? My only model is the shadow of the mental image of my friends.
For I don’t really care whether the blog offends malicious liberals. In fact, I must rather hope that it does, else what use would it be?
What I do care is whether the blog offends fellow conservatives who are honestly trying to do what is right in life—and, though when I wrote what I wrote I had in mind the legions of selfish women whose lack of children is vanity, I forgot the many good, conservative, traditionally American women who have various entirely valid reasons to bear few children if any, who moreover do not go about drawing undue attention to themselves for it. The reason my wife and I tend not to know the latter women personally is that powerful economic incentives today sort such women to the cities where wages are higher, while squeezing women like my wife out here to the country where the cost of raising children is lower. This is how it comes to pass that I forget whom I unnecessarily offend.
What makes it worse is that cultural Marxists and their dupes so frequently feign offense and demand apologies, when they ought to be the penitent ones, that you and I come to feel that we should not have to apologize for speaking our minds. We forget—or at least I forget—that not everyone out there is a Marxist and that robust Political Incorrectness is no excuse for inconsideration and bad manners. To kick over the shibboleths of the hard left is mischievous fun, I admit, but the fun ends when one starts damaging things one oughtn’t.
Please pardon.
To your credit, not one conservative reader among you has written me to complain bitterly—and according to the Web server’s logs about a thousand distinct readers visit the blog in a typical month, so the relevant sample is not insignificant in size. Every one of you has afforded me the benefit of the doubt as far as I am aware. I appreciate this. I have however received a pair of private e-mails that obliquely draw my attention to my misstep. I appreciate these even more. It probably won’t be the last time I inadvertently put a foot wrong in this blog, but if you’ll help to keep me on the proper path then we ought to do all right.
If any female reader over the age of 30 or male reader over the age of 35 can think of a clear yet appropriately tactful way to have asked the question, a way by which the question would offend hardened liberals but persuade the persuadable, I should be glad to learn of it, because I do think the question important enough to deserve not to have been botched by me.
Howard Harrison
P.S. My electronic address is not found in the blog because, like you, I really don’t want private e-mails from new and one-time readers (that is what the public comment columns are for) and naturally I don’t want spam. One is always pleased to hear from regular readers however, including the majority who never comment publicly. They can construct my address correctly from my initials and the blog’s domain name in the obvious, conventional way. —HJH—
P.P.S. My fellow blogger and virtual friend Vanishing American has added a comment to the original article, the comment more worth reading than the article itself. Readers are directed to it. —HJH—
January 3rd, 2009 at 11:22 pm
Funny you should post this. I’m a childless career woman with a high IQ, although most emphatically not a feminist, and when I read your last post, I just nodded in agreement without commenting.
My reasons for being childless: I married my high school sweetheart. We were going to have children, but we could barely support ourselves, so we were waiting until we had more money. (My grandmother was appalled; my grandfather and several of my great-uncles were in the same line of work as my husband and had no trouble supporting wives and children at the same age. That was before feminism changed the economy so that employers didn’t have to pay a man enough to support a family.) By the time we were more solvent, well, he left me. Not for any particular reason he could give; I think it was just that he grew up in a broken home, so it seemed normal to him. His father was married four times, and his mother ran off when he was a baby and was never heard from again. My husband didn’t learn any concept of sticking with a relationship. His parents were 17 when they conceived him, by the way. Three years later and he’d have been aborted, as would my first boyfriend and my high school best friend. This is what encouraging premarital sex did to people.
I hoped to marry again, but finding someone who wants to commit and raise a family these days is hard. It would have helped if I’d been religious, but unfortunately, when I was in my teens I allowed my parents to pressure me out of my natural inclination to be deeply religious, and I didn’t find my way back until I was in my 30’s. Just another of the ways in which today’s society tears apart the things that hold us together and keeps us on the right track when we don’t have the wisdom to figure it all out for ourselves.
Now I’m 38. I’m considering having some of my eggs frozen because at my age, that’s the only way I’ll have any chance at all, but as I’m still single and have no prospects, I’m not at all sure I’ll ever take it, or that I ought to. I don’t blame the men I meet; if I were a man, I’d want to marry a woman in her 20’s, whose chances of conceiving and delivering a healthy child are much better than mine are.
I’m very bitter, I admit it, at the way our society has discouraged people from making commitments and having real relationships until they’re so old that having children requires expensive and sometimes risky medical assistance. I’m not the only adult who’s approaching middle age alone, childless and lonely.
January 4th, 2009 at 3:31 am
I’m male and forty. My story is the reverse of the commenter Jane Doe. I had a wonderful girlfriend in my mid 20’s. Kind, generous, funny and pretty. Who obviously wanted to have a family with me. But i left her - looking for something else. And as i get older i am haunted by this other path i could have taken.
January 4th, 2009 at 7:46 pm
Jane:
Your comment may be the single most moving expression this blog has ever seen. May I elevate it to the blog’s headline?
Howard
January 9th, 2009 at 3:19 am
Please do.
Jane