Strapped: Why America’s 20- and 30-Somethings Can’t Get Ahead, by Tamara Draut. This book is from 2005, and explains how people born in the 70’s are struggling in an unravelling economy. The author is from a liberal think tank, so I don’t agree with her top-down big-government solutions. I also think the young adults in her book made a whole lot of poor financial decisions. She makes a $50,000 income sound like poverty level, when actually it is the median household income in the U.S. She also seems to think that graduation from college necessitates the purchase of brand-new sheets, towels, and cars, even if they must be bought on credit. “See, that’s why you’re poor,” is what I was thinking. The harder they tried not to look poor, the poorer they became.

Nevertheless, I thought her observation that zoning and development decisions have sometimes been rigged to favor childless households was interesting–families with school-age children use more local services (mostly schools) than they generate in property taxes, so some areas actively discourage their residence by impeding the building of affordable single-family detached homes, and by pushing for high-end homes, denser housing, and senior housing instead.

The other interesting thing about the book is that I caught some overtones of Fourth Turning ideas in it, probably because she cited Millenials Rising by the same authors. The attraction of The Fourth Turning is that we can blame most of my generation’s ills on the misdeeds of the previous two generations, while holding out some hope that our perilous times will resolve sometime before we die. However, I don’t agree that history is entirely cyclical; probably there are some cycles in recent U.S. history, but there is also a more linear progression toward decadence and decay and the general decline and fall of Western civilization.

What I have been pondering a lot lately is which effect I think will dominate in the next few decades. For the near term, my color trend tea-leaf economic readings are mixed; some bright springy colors in accessories, but still far outnumbered by the things designed to harmonize with funereal, bad-feng-shooey granite. Target even put a black plastic granite-patterned strip under their display Crockpots: “Look, it goes with granite! Really!” (Because the drab stainless steel, black, and dark blood-red products didn’t look that great against the pure white shelves.)

The one bit of economic hope in the retail sector that I have seen recently was at Bachman’s (local gardening store chain). In their decorating section, they had a lot of real, made-over, and somewhat repurposed antiques. Kind of a chic old-fashioned thrifty look, and one that MFH and I actually thought was kind of cool. A nice segue from the granite look, if they can pull it off.

And what do I find on the editorial page, but a nice big “Connect the Dots” cartoon, implying that all conservatives are raving lunatics, and one is going to try to shoot Obama. Making Obama a martyr would benefit the left more than the right, and I resent being blamed in advance for something that I’m not going to do. Anyway, it’s not like liberals didn’t just spend eight years raving like lunatics over Bush.

So I had to ask myself again, “Why should I give money to people who hate me?”

[By the way, I found an abstract of a study looking for lead poisoning deaths. They found about 200 deaths over a span of 20 years, and the typical victim was an older black Southern male who drank lead-tainted moonshine. The CPSIA ain't gonna do much to save those guys.]

Then there’s the newly introduced HR 875, which very broadly expands federal jurisdiction and oversight over “food establishments” and “food production facilities”–including farms of all sizes. The definition of a “food production facility” fails to exclude backyard gardens or subsistence farms. (It’s unclear if a home kitchen is a “food establishment” if you bake things for a bake sale in it.) The proposed law contains a lot about expanding federal powers to regulate and oversee processes and practices, complete with onerous requirements for registration, record-keeping, and inspector access. More about it here. So, no surprise that the husband of the introducer of this bill works for Monsanto, a giant-mega-agribusiness that would dearly love to squish the remaining smaller farmers (and organic farmers in particular) out of business.

It kind of takes all the fun out of “going Galt” when your own government–at the behest of large corporations, that are reliably abetted by Congressmen who don’t even read what they’re voting for–is practically forcing you into it. I’m almost beginning to look forward to the day when I can “go Revelation 14:13″. Until then, it’ll be patient endurance and prayers and blog posts and angry letters to Congressmen.

So I’ve been having morning sickness, not too bad, about the same as last time. But I have a terrible lack of energy. I lie around all day reading, until OLC demands to go to the playground right outside. I read my way through all MFH’s John Grisham books, and have started in on Tom Clancy. The morning sickness is doing away with most of my appetite, and then it’s hard to eat enough to keep up with the joint demands of a nursing toddler and a new pregnancy. I’m very glad that I’m not working right now, and that I wasn’t this pregnant when we were moving. (Though I sometimes think an outside job would be easier than the 23-hours-a-day job that I currently have.)

“You’d want anesthesia for your appendectomy, why wouldn’t you want it in childbirth?”

They must teach it in med school or something. Now a variation of it appears in this article. Argh. Well, might as well begin my rant:

Why forgo the epidural and try for a “natural childbirth”? BECAUSE GIVING BIRTH WITHOUT DRUGS DOESN’T FEEL ANYTHING LIKE GETTING AN APPENDECTOMY WITHOUT ANESTHESIA!!!

How about, “You like pepper on your steak, why don’t you want some on your breakfast cereal?”

Also, no one cares what effects anesthesia will have on their diseased appendix. It’s a different matter when there’s a baby involved.

I am not a natural childbirth Nazi like the article portrays. There are many circumstances where anesthesia and pain relief are necessary and welcomed. But I do take offence at the notion that labor and birth are ALWAYS excruciatingly painful, and that drugs are ALWAYS needed. I’ve read many birth stories from women who have done just fine without them, and now I’ve gone and done it myself. The Bible says somewhere that once the baby is born, the mother’s pain is eclipsed by her joy and forgotten–so true. I’m not sure that you can really take away the pain without taking away some of the joy as well.

If I was from the far left rather than the far right, I would say that there’s a medical conspiracy afoot: seed the “childbirth hurts as much as surgery” thought in women’s heads, then when their times come, they’ll be good little patients and take their epidurals and C-sections without any of that natural childbirth nonsense.

This post comments on a recent Townhall column by Nathan Tabor, about how ACOG (American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists) is now recommending that gynecologists give every woman a prescription for emergency contraception. The column has plenty of weak points, but I agree that doctors shouldn’t be trying to force these prescriptions on women, particularly on pro-life women like me. Any doctor that thinks I would take emergency contraception doesn’t know me very well at all, and may be surprised when I rip up the prescription and throw it back. I’m not taking anything that could mess up the implantation or life of an existing embryo.

I realize that EC mostly works by suppressing ovulation, and by thickening cervical mucus to prevent fertilization if ovulation has already occurred. Not so good at “preventing” pregnancy when fertilization has already occurred. But I’m not convinced that taking a big shot of reproductive hormones at the wrong time can’t interfere with implantation, or the post-implantation embryo.

I’m also not comfortable with doctors handing these prescriptions out like candy. One reason is that EC’s effectiveness is so timing-dependent; if ovulation has already happened, it probably won’t help to prevent fertilization, not much more than just trusting to chance. Why mess with your hormones if it won’t do any good? Another is that I don’t think it’s really feminist to promote the don’t-bother-your-little-head-with-how-your-reproductive-system-really-works-just-chuck-these-pills-in-it-and-everything-will-be-fine idea. A lot of my self-acceptance as a woman didn’t come until after I learned about NFP/fertility awareness, and I was quite angry that I didn’t learn about it until I was 24–it was so simple, and elegant in the way that some mathematical equations are elegant. I certainly didn’t learn about it from feminists. Anyway, how many women taking EC will have the least idea about when they ovulate, do you think?

Actually, feminists should really think twice about their enthusiastic support for EC. Why? Because it will lead to a somewhat higher proportion of boy babies! How? By preventing the conception of girls more that that of boys. Y sperm swim faster, and have the advantage when the egg is ready, but X sperm live longer, and can wait longer for the egg to show up. EC primarily prevents pregnancies from pre-ovulation sex–pregnancies that would have more often resulted in girl babies. Also, not all EC “failures” are aborted. Therefore, there will be more boys, most of whom will grow up into card-carrying members of the Patriarchy.