When Your Inner Monologue Escapes

On the hidden costs of raising children in late-stage capitalism.

Throughout my entire life, I have suffered from an inner monologue. I don't talk about it much because I suspect it might lead to some sort of diagnosis. Everybody has diagnoses these days, except me. Some days, it makes me feel a little left-out.

But what happened was that, in accordance with the directives of evolutionary psychology, I elected to have children. And this must be the absolute most expensive era to raise children throughout the entire history of western civilization.

Now, honestly I go out of my way to avoid other parents for a whole host of very solid reasons that I don't wish to get into right at this very moment. But, suffice to say, sometimes I have to do it. Like, when picking up my children from school, a parent catches my eye and starts talking and ... that inner monologue which I mentioned earlier starts up on me. I'll get to that in a moment.

In this sort of society, people's cars are apparently rather a big deal to a lot of people. Not to me; I don't know how to drive. I lack the requisite interest, and also one of my eyes is short-sighted and the other long-sighted, which means that no matter what I am looking-at, I am blind in at least one eye.

See how I fit that into one sentence? Well, that one sentence will just about confuse anybody I tell in person. Occasionally, they might say something like, "Oh, like that affects depth perception?"

And then I shrug and say: "It's a matter of perspective."

Anyway, the thing about other children's dads is they're enthusiastic about their cars, and they want you to be enthusiastic as well, sometimes. But if you were to analyze me at a molecular level, you would find I lack any capacity to become emotionally involved with the purchase of automobiles. Mind you, if you designed or built a car, then I want to hear all about it.

Speaking of things that fascinate me more than cars—inner monologues. Something like 30-50% of people don't have them. My wife doesn't have an inner-monologue and she graduated from Harvard.

Perhaps, I wonder, my inner-monologue is what's been holding me back all this time. How do I feel about all this? Well, if I'm being honest, it gets my goat. Especially when it wakes me up in the middle of the night to yap at me about things. Look, it's yapping at me now.

I've never mentioned this before, but I happen to own a car. Or half a car. I've only ever sat in the passenger seat. But I paid for half of it, and this might possibly be why I absolutely lose my mind whenever Hattie or Boudica climb into the front seat and start adjusting its position and angle to their liking. It feels like this has become an every-day thing in my life and ... anyway, when people ask me what kind of car I have, I tell them it's a white one. Other dads think this is a funny response. I don't tell them about how my daughters move my car seat around because even talking about it out loud makes me break into hives.

Yesterday, one of the dads mentioned he's bought this year's Range Rover. And that inner-monologue of mine grabbed the metaphorical wheel and went for a drive.

"Listen, man," it says, "you don't have to prove to me you are bad with money. You have kids, your work is done."

What follows is a true verbatim account of my inner monologue as it spoke to me, yesterday, when I went to pick up my daughters at school.

You know, I don't blame you or anybody for having children — I, too, clearly suffer from irrationally high levels of optimism. Besides, every organism on this planet descends from beings who reproduced — though it occasionally does not seem that way, judging by the way some people drive. The inclination to spawn progeny is a directive. Still, not every organism reproduces, and — as I often think when I'm standing around with the parents of other children at their school — not everybody should.

Consumer capitalism has trapped parents in a system where they're forced to spend absurd amounts on their children's education—because if they don't, their kids will suffer. It's a form of extortion that most are too polite to acknowledge.

This also means that unless you wish to pay stupid amounts to for-profit private schools, you have no choice but to live in an area with well-funded public schools. I feel like there should be pamphlets about this in every doctor's clinic in the world.

By the way, here in Australia, the majority of private schools receive more tax-payer funding than comparable public schools¹ ... and they're almost always run by very religious people, which is a whole other discussion.

You can easily find yourself paying tens of thousands of dollars each year in school fees. Or, you can move near a good public school where you will find the rents to be proportionately extortionate. Most people don't have millions in inherited wealth, so any parent you see is usually far too stressed about money to actually parent their children properly.

On the one hand, *parenting well* should be widely-acknowledged as the highest of civil responsibilities, but on the other, raising children is now one of the most economically unviable things any citizen can do. You can do it well, and become absolutely destitute. Or, you can throw money at the problem, via tutors and private schools, and — quite likely — be so busy working long hours, you never see your children but for a fraction of the day, when you're exhausted.

It used to be easier than this. Older generations remember a time when it was easier, but in the past few decades something changed, and that something was that a certain minority declared war on us.

I don't mean migrants. I'm not talking about foreigners or brown people or gays or trans people; I mean the billionaires who own everything, including those divisive, hate-peddling media companies.

Through a process of naked corruption, they sucked all our money from the economy. They bribed governments and stripped us of our protections because, in their hearts, they're monarchists. They will never be satisfied until they are kings and we are their serfs. Those are the people who declared war on us. That's why they want us fighting among our peers and not —

The dad with this year's Range Rover is staring at me with alarm. My inner-monologue comes to a crashing halt.

"Sorry," I mumble, "that was my outside voice, wasn't it?"