Most kids can't count to eleven.
Most kids can't even do a simple algebraic equation. If you say "Solve for x" to the majority of children they will look at you like you have hot-pink-sequined antlers. Freakonomics will tell you that low-income (implication being low intelligence) people are having most of the kids. This could have something to do with the generally unimpressive intellectual average for children, but I'm more inclined to think that kids are just plain stupid regardless of the financial situation of their parents.
Kids, even Ph.D's kids, get upset over the most inconsequential things. When I go to school with my mom a kid in her class will come crying to me, "Miss Trent, Samuel keeps taking my eraser and putting it in his desk."
"I'm sorry, Kylah, that Samuel keeps taking your eraser," I say. "What a truly gruesome fate you're facing. On the other hand, maybe you could look at this intermittent loss as part of getting older. I suppose this is good practice for when you put twenty-four years into a career at a monopolistic oil company only to have your $350,00 nest egg stolen by its corrupt Chief Officers. Get some perspective."
It gets worse. If a little girl falls off of her bike and so much as scrapes her knee she will come screaming and bawling down the street in reaction. "Mommy! Mommy! It's bleeding and it hurts so bad and my TIGHTS are RUINED!"
"I'll alert the media," is what I would tell her. She, being raised on four hours of TV daily, should know that were she famous this knee scrape likely would make the nightly news. Being a child, however, she is too illogical to make this point in the face of my sarcastic reply. Instead she runs off somewhere to whimper at the great injustices of the world because she has one lousy scraped knee.
If kids had any sort of acumen whatsoever they might stop for a moment and think about a child in Baghdad who lives life in a veritable minefield then maybe a goddamned scraped knee wouldn't cause a kid to go ape shit "I'm gonna die" all over the place.
For most people the reasons for sterilization are endless. When you give a kid some of your money what does he do? If he is six he blows all four dollars on candy. If he is sixteen he blows all $2,000 on a crappy Acura that will need a new clutch within four months. Little does the sixteen year-old know that if he put that $2,000 in an IRA it would grow to over $9,000 in twenty years assuming a conservative eight percent annual growth. How much money did you spend fishing your now-useless Acura out of the lake after you and your drunkass friend Tim went joyriding one night? How much money did you spend getting crowns on all the teeth your kid rotted out with his pre-pubescent bulk candy purchases?
Now I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, "But Katie, surely even you were not born with the astounding powers of perception you currently possess." Of course I wasn't. Just like every other idiot kid in my neighborhood I was born with the intellectual capacity of a mongoloid and only through extensive nurturing on the part of my parents and our very expensive if oft-ineffective educational system have I become any sort of functioning adult. I read somewhere recently that an American kid in a middle-class family costs his parents almost $200,000 to raise to age 17. That is pre-college cost! Couple that with the cost to society to educate and potentially cover the health care of a child and you might as well call a kid a yacht. A stupid yacht.
And people say a war in the Middle East is a bad investment? At least when we committed to that investment we knew we knew certain things: the country is oil-rich, the country presented a clear and present danger to American security, etc. When you commit to giving birth the only thing you can know for sure is that you are in for some serious mood swings. The educational potential, work ethic, beauty, and overall worth of a child is completely subject to fate's meddlesome ways. Investing in child rearing is like investing in a ski resort in the Sahara.
It's clear I'm correct because the ability to perceive obviously bad investments has escaped even the most savvy business professionals. You can educate a stupid kid but he will retain some of his poor decision-making skills for life. Is it any coincidence that Microsoft's stock slowed it's upward climb right around the time Bill Gates started procreating? Gates has a kid and suddenly he's cooing "oochie-goochie-goo" all over the boardroom. What a waste.
Is it any surprise that you rarely find a child at a high-end restaurant? Kids do not have the cultural wherewithal to fluidly discuss current affairs and Keats, let alone distinguish a salad fork from a dinner fork, both of which are tantamount to fine dining.
Of course some people need to continue having children in order to perpetuate our fabulous adult culture. I implore you, however, before you stop taking your pill to seriously ask yourself if you are ready to discuss Elmo and Little Bunny Foo Foo for the next six years, because your new constant companion will find nothing more titillating.
http://moneycentral.msn.com/content/CollegeandFamily/Raisekids/P144966.asp
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