Parenting at All Costs

Parenting is a wonder and a joy and the most difficult job ever. Strangely enough, much of the joy comes from the grindstone. Still, I sometimes wonder: does raising children have to be so challenging?

I’m anxious for the day Ian and I can ride our bicycles through the park, leaves swirling behind as we race side-by-side. That’s fatherhood! But of course that means he needs to learn how to ride said bicycle. We can’t get through one milestone without the kid having to learn something. It’s exhausting! We can’t keep asking Kelly’s folks to handle the burden. It’s just gauche.

Here I am, raising my son like a chump, when clever parents on the East Coast are having and eating cake all over the place. And not having to wipe their children’s mouths. If you’d like to experience parenting at its finest easiest, New York Magazine offers The Outsourced Parent: The hands-free, do-nothing, price-is-no-object guide to rearing a child from conception to college.

I can barely catch a cold. Why teach my son to throw a ball when former Yankees pitcher Jack Aker will do it for $95 an hour?

Why suffer the embarassment of ‘the talk’ when a complete stranger can blush in my stead for $400? Though that seems a little pricey for someone else to say, ‘Ask your mother.’ In fact, why talk to Ian at all when a $149 per session ‘life coach’ can give him more assurance than I ever could?

And the bicylce thing? $130 per session.

Melissa at The Parenting Post estimates that, in a money market account earning 4%, the $4 million outsourcing price tag could grow to nearly $6 million.

Kelly and I left Southern California because we didn’t want to raise our son in a culture that treats children as accessories. That may have been the biggest financial mistake of our lives. I could’ve earned $50 an hour teaching someone else’s kid to say ‘please’ and ‘thank you’.

Leave a Reply