Yes. There's no doubt about it at all. James "The Bleat" Lileks has a two year old. All we can do is wish him luck, tell him that in a remarkably small number of years she will be embarassed to be seen with him in public, tell him that by the age of four she will no longer feel like fifty-minute wailing marathons, and tell him that he is a Good Father.
But of course he is a Good Father. Darwin has programmed us to be. The first time you see, touch, and smell that small creature that shares 50 percent of your genes, what Friedrich Nietzsche calls the "transvaluation of values" sets itself in motion. You no longer care about what you cared about before: instead, the overwhelming drive in your mind is to take care of--nurture--please--help grow--make happy this small bundle of flesh making gurgling noises. You want to be bounced? Okay! You want to fall asleep lying on my stomach listening to my heartbeat? Okay! You want me to completely reorient my life around your needs and desires? Yes! I will! I love it!
The closest analogy I can think of is Mind Control: someone who comes into your house, alters your neurochemistry profoundly, and takes all of your skills and ideas and resources and turns them around so that you devote all your intelligence to thinking of ways to secure their safety and to promote their development. Of course, mind control is exactly what it is--only it comes from inside instead of outside as the neurochemical triggers fire and my brain changes.
Moreover, it is a two way street: your love for them is exceeded only by their love for you; your desire to make the world a safe place for them and to make them happy is exceeded only by their desire to win your approval...
Posted by DeLong at August 18, 2002 04:18 AM | TrackbackLILEKS (James) The Bleat: Problem: I need a vacation.
No vacation is in sight.
Any vacation would, under the current circumstances, not be a vacation at all, unless my dearly beloved child can be cryogenically frozen and stored.
Even if this were possible, I would spend the vacation worrying about the reliability of the power supply in the freezers.
Therefore, I am hosed. Buy a 60-yard spool of hose, grease it up, roll it in: hosed is that which I am. My head is a bowling alley, and it's league night. I think when the book is done I'll just make a little tent around the big-screen, and have my wife shove trays of cold-cuts and Pale Ales through a slit every five hours. The book has given me an eyelid twitch severe enough to ruffle pages in an open magazine - and I'm not talking about a cheap-paper rag like This Week, but a heavy stock mag like Vanity Fair. Hook up turbines to this eyelid and you could light up a small town.
I'm tired; my eyes are scratchy and my head is full of useless cotton, the stuff you can't quite get out of an aspirin bottle. I am tired of sitting at this desk; when I go downstairs later to open the laptop and upload this bleat, I will be tired of sitting at that table. I am tired of writing. I am tired of the whirrrr of the scanner, the sight of every web page I visit, the sound of Jasper scratching on the door when I've gone outside for a cigar and he wants to join me, the plink-plonk the TiVo makes when I call up an episode of Maisy - of which I am also tired. The TiVo today had the following helpful program description:
MAISY "Fleas; Boo; Sticks; Ouch." (1999) Fleas; Boo; Sticks; Ouch.
Worth every dime, those listings. I am mostly just tired. Epstein-Barr sufferer after four days in the Tour de France tired. Personal assistant to Rosie O'Donnell tired. Today was a marathon of Gnat-care, because she would - not - nap. Put her down every fifty minutes; screaming and wailing, alive alive -o. Retrieved her, played for fifty minutes, tried again. She didn't fall asleep until 3 PM, which was three hours later than usual, and by then we had played every game, puzzled every puzzle, rearranged the facial architecture of Mr. Potato Head into every conceivable permutation including arms jutting hideously from his face like a vivisectionist's nightmare. We did every toy twice. At three I steeled myself for the barrage of guilt, put her down, heard her sob Daddy! as I walked downstairs, then put on the headphones and went outside to sit it out. Went back in after five minutes. Silence. She's choked on her own vomit! Must check!
"All true wealth is biological."
I have a _minor_ problem with that, and
with the related comment about creatures
that share half one's genes ... as the
father of a two-year-old, (and a four-y-o,
and a 6-y-o) by adoption, I insist that
the biochemistry affecting one's brain
chemistry and gross behavior can be
initiated by creatures who share a
MUCH smaller percentage of one's genes
than 50%.
As is evidenced, as well, by the chemical
changes induced by one's (presumably)
unrelated spouse.
There is probably enough raw data out there
on how many people spend how much money over
what lengths of time in how many attempts
to adopt, (or conceive via IVF) to come
up with an estimate of just how much acquiring
a kid is (typically) worth. Considering
that it's well known that raising said kid --
buying diapers and formula; dressing, housing, feeding, transporting, entertaining, educating, medicating, etc -- is a present value expense
already measured in the six figure range; even for those who acquire offspring for "free"; the amount that less lucky people invest up front in order to undertake the project is striking. I don't know of any rigorous analysis of that
choice, however.
Got any new grad students looking for an unusual
thesis topic, Brad?
"Shares 50 percent of your genes" is a little bit wrong. The child actually receives 50 percent of his/her genes from each parent. However, any two humans (either sex) share well over 90 percent of their genes. Actually, humans share over 90 percent of their genes with a chimpanzee.
As for good fatherhood, don't forget the hypothetical Darwinian alternative strategy: producing as many children as possible with as many women as possible while supporting as few as possible. I don't know of any evidence that using this strategy is genetically based; but then, I wouldn't know. And it's talked about a lot.
:-)