It’s About Making Babies!

I substituted in a High School English class last winter (’03-’04). The assignment was to describe the ideal marriage partner.

One girl mentioned that she was looking for guys to have fun with now, she would look for a life-partner later. I asked, “Why would you waste your time with someone that won’t be a good parent for your children?” When and how is she going to start learning the values and skills a parent or mate require, so she can evaluate potential suitors?

How many guys date a girl because she is pretty, popular, or ‘easy’, without regard to whether they have respectable personal values? How many girls choose a date for what the guy does for her popularity, without looking at how respectful and responsible he is, or how good his communications skills are, or whether he tends to be abusive physically or mentally?

I look at what dating has become. Since the days of the song ‘Shop Around’ I see that instead of shopping until the right mate is found, the shopping continues all life long. Successful daters have highly developed skills at attracting partners. What dating doesn’t do is improve mate selection skills, or long term relationship management skills.

How can we waste time dating someone that isn’t going to be the most stable, reliable, responsible person in (the rest of) our lives? How can we afford to spend time with someone that doesn’t show an appreciation for parenting skills in their life?

I contend that the purpose for getting men and women together into bed, is the body’s drive to make babies, sanctioned by governments and churches that require a steady resource of babies to mature into soldiers, bureaucrats, voters, and church members.

Some families also push the young adults under their regard to produce new family members (grandchildren), for much the same reason. Although much of this drive for babies is poorly understood, and relates to the Renaissance — and the invention of accumulation of wealth by inheritance. This centuries old drive to build empires out of family members is still a social force today, even though the use of such empires has largely been abandoned in America.

If we want to be responsible for this ‘fact of life’, making babies, shouldn’t we limit our potential dates and acquaintances to people suited by education, experience, and aptitude for parenting and ‘good’ spouse?

If you don’t think the central fact of society and human kind is the drive to procreate, if you think that sex is supposed to be ‘fun’ and the best partner will be the one that provides the most fun, then we disagree.