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Friday, April 16, 2010

Alternatives in Parenting

Mrs. G. recalls it as "the darkest year of my life." She cried all the time. She had trouble speaking in complete sentences. She lost 15 pounds. One of her friends remembers fearing that the stylish blond mother of two, and owner of both an Upper East Side apartment and a Long Island beachfront home, was suicidal.

A child stricken with cancer? The collapse of her husband's business? The death of a beloved parent? Menopause? No, the darkest year of Mrs. G.'s life came the year her son was rejected from kindergarten.

-Kay S. Hymowitz, City Journal
It’s time to start looking for a school for your child. I don’t mean to point out the obvious but you really should have started looking earlier. You screwed around and waited until he only has two years before kindergarten. Most responsible parents these days start filling out applications to competitive schools once they get a sonogram or as soon as the paper turns blue on the pregnancy test. I don’t mean to overstate this but you may have destroyed any chance whatsoever for your child to have a meaningful life—at least the way that it is decided in your neurotic social circle. You and I know that if your kid doesn’t get into the right kindergarten you may as well send them to a lunch lady training academy. You may as well change your baby’s name from Wilson to Spartacus if all you have planned for him is a public school education.

If after all of your considerable efforts you only manage to get your child into a second-tier kindergarten there is no need to panic. All you have to do is put that child up for adoption, learn from this mistake, and start over with another baby. If you have become too “attached” to this child to relinquish it, you may consider keeping it as an employee in some domestic capacity, say as a maid or gardener. Let’s be honest with one another, even though your second choice of kindergarten costs $35,000 a year plus supplies, the only thing your child will be fit for in life will be manual labor, politics, or crime.

If this whole process seems too daunting, too much of a crap shoot, there is another option available to would-be parents. Instead of the traditional process of having a child of your own, scratching and clawing to get that kid into a succession of ever more expensive schools which may or may not culminate in producing an offspring you would be proud to call your own, then there is a new service for you. At "My Kid Is Better than Yours" Adoption Agency you can chose from an array of accomplished adults. You can pick and choose among the adoptees who are licensed professionals from leading universities, or even professional athletes (all of our candidates have at least a .350 average, and that’s in the American League!). Saying “My son, the doctor” has never been easier.

At a cost of only $500,000, the My Kid Is Better than Yours adoption process will save you a fortune over raising your own doctor or World Series ring-holder from scratch. The price may seem a bit high but, by skipping their actual childhood, you’ll save at least that much by not having to buy little metal cars. The bond between you and your adopted kid will be so authentic that your adult child will want to have nothing to do with you, just like in traditional families.

I know what a lot of you are thinking: What if my hyper-successful kid turns out to be a complete scumbag? It’s hard to believe but many extremely successful people in our society don’t rate very high as human beings. For those parents who wish to eliminate any possibility of risk regarding their offspring we offer a new service. When you choose "Only the Good Die Young" Adoption Agency there are no surprises. We will painstakingly fabricate the perfect child for you, working backwards from the stellar New York Times obituary, to a remarkable career, to a childhood that filled you with pride. Everyone knows that the tragic demise of a promising youth trumps any other parent’s boring story about their little go-getter urchin.

Imagine having a child who doesn’t drag your good name through the mud with a sex scandal or drug issues. Can you put a price tag on that sort of peace of mind? We have and if you have to ask you can’t afford it and we’re sure your kid will love public school.

1 comment:

  1. I rewrote this almost entirely from something I found in my archives.

    ReplyDelete

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