What's the Matter with Parents Today?

The greatest achievement of the global village is that it's brought together our idiots, and they're all part of an online community.

You thought people who played Dungeons and Dragons were silly. My killfile beats your third-level garden gnome, dude. Dictorial communities form with their own rituals, norms and defense mechanisms, where the neuroses and prejudices of their members are embraced and nurtured. God help you if you interrupt the delicate balance of things.

This is Metafilter, not Newsfilter, asshat.

And the childfree revel in their status as the Internet's miscreants, thumbing their noses and sterilized reproductive organs at the status quo.

Whenever a pregnant woman makes a fashion faux pas and shows off her distended belly to the world, the childfree are there to gag at the sight. Wherever there is a child squealing in delight and rupturing eardrums, the childfree are there to shoot daggers at the inattentive parents. Whenever a mother takes time off to take her sick infant to the doctor but the company does not allow fur parents to take their sick guinea pig to the vet, the childfree are there to write a letter to human resources about the indifference to the needs of employees' pets.

They're there, swinging their non-functioning fallopian tubes and vas deferens in your face. Take that.

"I went to the health food store this week -- something I bet breeders never do -- and I bought tofu. Then, DH and I ate it naked while lying on our white carpet and giving thanks to Mother Earth -- a luxury that breeders don't enjoy. Why can I do all of this, folks? Because DH and I never have sex, procreative or otherwise, because we're too busy reading Tolstoy, debating Malthusian economics and glorifying our perfect childfree lives on a newsgroup!"

They're a fun bunch.

But beneath the photo albums of their RenFaire meet-and-greets, they've hit on something: A married couple without children counts for little. A single person without children counts for nothing, even though we're the ones picking up the tab. We pay for social nets that will never be cast wide enough to protect us, and we're supposed to hand over our cash with a smile on our faces and a spring in our step.

We're helping parents rear the upcoming generations! Huzzah! Take my money! Please! Buy a DVD player with progressive scan on which your children can view the Spongebob Squarepants collection instead of interacting with their environment! Pay down part of the credit card bill you amassed when you had to take the kids to Disney World because they'd surely die if Snow White didn't take a picture with them at a character breakfast! This is what sociali -- oh, capitalism -- is all about!

Child tax credits exist as part of a social contract, wherein the government ostensibly rewards a certain segment of the population for engaging in behavior for which all of society allegedly benefits. In reality, we know it's an expensive ploy to garner votes, but let's pretend for a moment that we're in the magical land of altriusm.

The primary benefit is that people reproduce, and then create productive, useful, educated, reasonably polite members of society who will cure cancer and wipe my ass when I'm alone and dying in a cold, sterile nursing home with nary a doe-eyed grandchild around to sulk and whine and sit in the corner playing GameBoy 2060.

Unfortunately, parents largely are not living up to their end of the contract. The money parents get back is not meant for a new home theater, a trip to the Packer Hall of Fame, a week playing shuffleboard and shopping on board a ship to the Caribbean, or a lengthy term for the backtalking teenager at Tranquility Bay.

We, that is, those of us footing the bill for the increased and advanced tax credit, understand that rearing a child is expensive, and if you manage to pull it off successfully, we're tinkled pink that a competent customer service representative might be entering the working world. Most of us don't begrudge you buying books, educational toys, and other material goods that might increase your child's intellectual capability. But put down the digital camcorder and squelch your dreams of amateur porn stardom, unless you give us single, childless folk a free password.

You can't buy kids at CompUSA like you can a hard drive. They don't come with a mail-in rebate, and you can't return them if they make too much noise or run too slowly. Having kids requires sacrifice, including substantial chunks of your salary. You chose to have them, you chose to be responsible for their considerable upkeep.

The impetus is on you to find a way to fund your reproductive choice. You're not going to create responsible children if they see mommy and daddy running to Big Daddy whenever something doesn't go their way.

Millions of Americans want children, but only a fraction of them want to be parents. Politicians milk this regret and inability to sacrifice for all it's worth, and what it's worth is money out of my pocket. Money I could just as easily pump into the economy, with my frivolous purchasing power -- money that is often less than what the middle-class parents eligible for this advanced tax credit earn or have banked.

In the midst of this display of middle-class welfare, the New Jersey Supreme Court ruled that the state was within its rights to put a cap on the amount of money paid to childed welfare recipients. More kids shouldn't equal more money. Those in favor of the cap argued that it promotes personal responsibility by forcing parents, mainly mothers, to be held accountable for their actions.

The same should be said of middle-class parents who might be living beyond their means and might someday come to depend on the government more than they already do. Just because you're not living in the ghetto doesn't mean you're a better parent or budget analyst.

The advanced child tax credit will help push the nation's budget deficit to $450 billion this year, while doing next to nothing to stimulate the economy. A large segment of the population, once again, is subsidizing the choices of a small segment, but in this case, the small segment is the one that complains most loudly about their tax dollars being spent to help subsidize the choices of others.

Welfare is welfare, whether your address is in Camden or North Caldwell.

Today's kids will be tomorrow's doctors, mechanics and cashiers, but they'll also be tomorrow's dregs of society. Do I get a refund? If the whole premise is that child tax credits help "struggling" families better rear their children, what happens if that doesn't ring true? And what happens if the public school system continues its steady decline due to the involvement of irresponsible parents and the administrators who want to keep them happy?

I'm reminded repeatedly that children grow up in my community, an honor I'm supposed to fall to my knees and thank the Good Lord for, but the community wants my my money, not my time, input, or knowledge. If I'm paying through the nose for the common good, I want a say in the process and a guarantee on the return.

Taxes pay for roads, and I use those roads, but I also pay tolls on some of the roads I use. We all help pay for road infrastructure, but some of us pay more because we're taking advantage of a system that's slightly more convenient for us when it works properly. No traffic lights. Higher speed limits. More lanes.

Very few New Jersey residents who don't use the NJ Turnpike or Garden State Parkway or the bridges linking us to New York, Pennsylvania and Delaware object to people who regularly do paying more for the privilege. I use Route 1 to save a few bucks. Why should I subsidize your choice of roads?

But they can't extend that logic to their own lifestyle choices. Just because everyone benefits from a social good doesn't mean that everyone receives the same level of benefit or should be expected to pay the same amount of money.

In New Jersey, public schools are funded primarily by property taxes. Local property taxes provide about 55 percent of school costs, while the national average is about 42 percent.

A childless individual gains a little from the public school system because a truly educated populace does benefit us all. The parent of one child gains a little more because her child is getting an education and she gains a reprieve from parenting for part of the day. And the parent of five children gains a substantial bit from the system, yet her tax burden is no higher than the childless person's.

I don't mind paying for services I use or might use one day, but some people simply use more services and are not expected to pick up the tab for it, nor can they comprehend why they should. Seattle wants to tax espresso to fund childcare costs, but no one proposes that maybe disposable diapers should be taxed, instead.

School should be a supplement. My parents taught me how to count, read, tie my shoes, cross the street, and generally not act like a prat. They didn't expect the school system to be a surrogate parent.

But parents today? They want the school system to take over every facet of the child-rearing experience, from teaching manners on up. And that benefits the parent, not me, because it's parents who reap the rewards of not having to do the work they signed on to do.

The public school system wasn't meant to become a baby-sitter, a disciplinarian, and Ms. Manners rolled into one, but no one foresaw lackluster parents hijacking the public school and tax systems to suit their own selfish needs.

Breed 'em, feed 'em, read to 'em, and for Christ's sake, blow the dust off your wallet and embrace the financial liability you chose to take on.

Providing jack-off material for white misogynists since 1997.

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