[DerekBuffington]

If your child would never be more than a fast food worker...

...would you still want them born?

I was making up some sandwiches at Subway today, and the kid behind the counter said he was going to UCLA. He told me he could not wait to get out of his repetitious job. He told me about the "lifers" who worked there and had no hope of ever advancing. That is what this thread is about.

I understand that in France workers get six weeks of vacation a year because they believe life is for living, not working. I go along with that. If I had a large family where educational opportunity was limited to being a fast food worker, I would not bring the child into this world.

The manager of our Subway worked her way into that position, and had four children. She told me that if she had to do that today, she did not think she could make it happen. She is exhausted all the time, but says she would do it again if it would give her children a better life. I think she is the exception, not the rule. I think that people who have more than two children without the income to send them all to college are doing their children a dis-service. I think child rearing is a "quality" not "quantity" proposition. What do you think?

[mum]

Im going to do whatever I can to make sure my kids are well educated and entrepreneurial as possible.
If the best that they can achieve is subway, then that's fine.
As long as they do the best they can

[slybaldguy]

When you say you were making up the sandwiches, what do you mean? I thought that was what the staff were there for?

[jessupjonesjnr87]

I wouldn't give a shit if my kids worked in a fast food place as long as I don't have to.

[quetzalcoatl]

This thread is indicative of the rapid and comprehensive devaluation of labor in our society. It was not always so, even in my lifetime (I'm 64). I served an apprenticeship in a skilled trade, when working for a living was considered honorable. Today, any kind of manual labor, whether skilled or unskilled is considered beneath contempt. But here's the catch: we can't all make a living being managers...the numbers just don't work out. A large proportion of our young people are fated to find no respected and modestly paid employment - it will literally be a struggle for survival.

What sucks about McDonalds is not the work itself, but the loathing its workers are subject to from their employers, their customers, and even themselves.

It stinks, but this is the system we have designed.

[Tainari88]

I have two sons. One of them is adopted from the foster care system. He was born weighing about 4 pounds because he was born to a drug addicted mother and a father in prison for life for murder. I got my older adopted son when he was nine years old and had been through about six different foster homes. For social workers and many others kids like him are born behind the eight ball. Born to get bad jobs and drop out of school and wind up in prison. The statistics are bleak. Many foster care kids wind up homeless, and working very low paid jobs or in prison. My adopted son is African American. If I believed that my husband and I could not make a difference in his life I would never have adopted him. I think even though the kid is old, has detachment disorder, oppositional defiant disorder, may have learning disabilities due to drug addicted birth mothers out of their minds while pregnant taking beers, and drugs, etc into their wombs and destroying capacity in their babies...even with all that crap? Environment and nurturing kids is the key to change. Not enough people who are comfortable,
educated, and have means decide to raise the children of those who can't raise kids. I think working class parents are good and decent parents. I don't believe only wealthy and middle class people should have kids. That is a load of bs. What kids can't have in their lives are irresponsible adults and guardians and parents. Can't have that at all. If you can't struggle and make a life for your children because you choose to zone out on drugs or alcohol and give your kids away to grandparents or the state to raise because the challenges of this bad system you live in is too much for you? Don't have kids. Or give them up from the very beginning and don't beat them, starve them and abuse them to the point that the state steps in and has to deal with the situation. The state is a cold institution. And very few people want the children that have been damaged as hell. All these couples want kids who are newborns and who don't remember their extremely irresponsible birth parents.

Life is a precious gift. For every single person. Life is also struggle, pain and disappointment. In evolutionary theory any species in order to survive its youth and get to reproductive age must 'struggle for existence'. Fast food jobs can be useful for teens and others who need an income and need to learn about how hard it is for the working people to make a dollar. More than how much money my kids wind up making in this life, I want them to learn to respect working people. To respect life. To respect the pain and hardship humanity must go through in many nations and in many societies. To be true to themselves and be genuine people who are kind, respectful, considerate, and giving and have a work ethic and good study habits. That can be independent and productive adults. And to have enough of a sense of self to be able to not allow the society to tell them they are less than other people. That is what I want for my sons. If they accomplish that? Mom is going to be very proud of them.

[Godstud]

I've seen unemployed people, on welfare, mock people who work in retail and restaurant jobs. Apparently, any kind of labour is beneath the contempt of some. That said, I'd have no problem with my children working in such jobs. Quetzalcoatl was quite correct.

[mum]

who cares what some people think of labour ?
If you are worried about that then you don't really have your own life anyway.

[quetzalcoatl]

who cares what some people think of labour ?
If you are worried about that then you don't really have your own life anyway.

You are quite wrong there.

What society values and devalues is a current that sweeps us all along, like it or no.

[DerekBuffington]

When you say you were making up the sandwiches, what do you mean? I thought that was what the staff were there for?

I was ordering sandwiches to our specs. We live near the beach so when Sunday comes, we prefer Subway because no one wants to cook or clean up. We buy enough sandwiches for lunch and supper, and each of us eats when we want. The point is to spend as much time on volleyball at the beach as possible.



My wife and I are in our 30s both college educated. We have decided on no children. She is a hard-nosed exec, and we do not believe in hiring a nanny to fulfill our responsibilities as parents. Besides we already know that the job you could get 25 years ago with a high school education, now takes a college education simply because there are two many college grads out there. Television said that in June, 2013 only half the college grads would get career positions, the rest end up waiting tables. In the last ten years both my wife and I have achieved MBA's just to stay ahead of the job market.

When both of us look at our parents we see people who lived for money and social position. Our dislike for that kind of life is part of what brought us together. We operate on the leisure ethic, not the work ethic. The more time we spend out socially, and at home near the beach, the better.

We both love our careers because we continue to be fascinated, but we work to live, not the other way around. They say no one has laid on their death bed and reflected, "I wish I had spent more time at the office!"

[DerekBuffington]

This thread is indicative of the rapid and comprehensive devaluation of labor in our society. It was not always so, even in my lifetime (I'm 64). I served an apprenticeship in a skilled trade, when working for a living was considered honorable. Today, any kind of manual labor, whether skilled or unskilled is considered beneath contempt. But here's the catch: we can't all make a living being managers...the numbers just don't work out. A large proportion of our young people are fated to find no respected and modestly paid employment - it will literally be a struggle for survival.

What sucks about McDonalds is not the work itself, but the loathing its workers are subject to from their employers, their customers, and even themselves.

It stinks, but this is the system we have designed.

I would disagree, my first job, (I was late to my 16th birthday party because I was interviewing) was a busboy at the Paradise Restaurant, and old nick was a hard-ass. I left there after a few months to work for more money as the dishwasher after school. I bought my own clothes at Roberson's Department store, and was one of the best dressed a school. From there came clothing sales, and in summer I would hire myself out to mow lawns.

That work ethic was worth developing at a young age, and has served me well. Today, my boss knows that more money will not make me work harder, but he also knows I will stay late Thursday night if I can get out at noon on Friday.

There is dignity in all honest work. But, my dad was a VP of a commercial airline. I liked traveling for free, and taking vacations. A home near the beach in Southern California will cost $1,000,000 for a small lot, (the house is only worth $200,000). Sure we have an address in Pacific Palisades, but not on the most fashionable side of town where Tom Hanks lives. Frankly, we don't need anymore. HDTV, computer, two Lazyboy chairs, a deck with a view, and walking distance to the water, we don't need anymore. We live in heaven.



This is similar to how we live.
Below is how Actor/Director/Producer Tom Hanks lives in his $26 million home on the other side of town.

[Tainari88]

Well Derek, just don't complain when 2050 gets here and the vast majority of the young people replacing the retirees are from people who worked fast food jobs. Lol. Or Subway jobs.

Hell, my husband and I were of very modest income and still decided to adopt one son and then when I am old and gray I get pregnant and have a biological child at age 45. People ask me about fertility treatments like I see these high power/hard nosed executive couples who decide they want to be parents in their mid forties and beyond and don't want adopted children or foster care kids and they buy some twentysomethings ovaries for thousands of bucks and do spend small fortunes trying to get pregnant at an old age. They ask me all the time how did I get pregnant by my old 50+ something husband and in my mid forties without any artificial stuff? My theory is pretty simple. Do the right thing for children and don't think money is the solution to anything in life as intimate as love and marriage and family life---and voila...the universe will give you the most gorgeous, beautiful child you can think of. It is all about that famous Beatles song Derek: The love you make is the love you take.

The future generations will inherit this world. And if the well off don't rear any children? Guess who will? The working people. The poor. The strugglers. And their children will inherit the Earth. Not the ones who decided to not spend time and money on raising children that are hard as hell to raise. For me, I already had a wonderful single life Derek. When the kids came along it was fun to sacrifice. I was ready for it. I feel sorry for parents who never got an education, never got a time in their life to figure out who they were before they had to burn their butts off working just to make end's meet and raise kids and realize their opportunities were lost the day they became parents without any kind of support or skills. That is hard!

[DerekBuffington]

Well Derek, just don't complain when 2050 gets here and the vast majority of the young people replacing the retirees are from people who worked fast food jobs. Lol. Or Subway jobs.

Hell, my husband and I were of very modest income and still decided to adopt one son and then when I am old and gray I get pregnant and have a biological child at age 45. People ask me about fertility treatments like I see these high power/hard nosed executive couples who decide they want to be parents in their mid forties and beyond and don't want adopted children or foster care kids and they buy some twentysomethings ovaries for thousands of bucks and do spend small fortunes trying to get pregnant at an old age. They ask me all the time how did I get pregnant by my old 50+ something husband and in my mid forties without any artificial stuff? My theory is pretty simple. Do the right thing for children and don't think money is the solution to anything in life as intimate as love and marriage and family life---and voila...the universe will give you the most gorgeous, beautiful child you can think of. It is all about that famous Beatles song Derek: The love you make is the love you take.

The future generations will inherit this world. And if the well off don't rear any children? Guess who will? The working people. The poor. The strugglers. And their children will inherit the Earth. Not the ones who decided to not spend time and money on raising children that are hard as hell to raise. For me, I already had a wonderful single life Derek. When the kids came along it was fun to sacrifice. I was ready for it. I feel sorry for parents who never got an education, never got a time in their life to figure out who they were before they had to burn their butts off working just to make end's meet and raise kids and realize their opportunities were lost the day they became parents without any kind of support or skills. That is hard!

Your opinion is level-headed and sounds grounded to me. By the year 2050 my children, (if we had them), would be a minority group. White birth rates fell behind other races in 2012 for the first time. The divide between rich and poor continues to widen. MBAs and perhaps PhDs will be a dime a dozen to hire by 2050. The middle class will be all but gone. Competition will be more cut throat than ever before. The aggressive from the third world will live with survival values and will do anything to get ahead destroying our soft offspring. This is not a world I would want my children to have to compete in. Next time you meet someone whose whole future will be flipping burgers, ask them what they think of your post here.

[Vilko]

By the year 2050 my children, (if we had them), would be a minority group. White birth rates fell behind other races in 2012 for the first time. The divide between rich and poor continues to widen.

The USA will be like Brazil. Not exactly what the Founding Fathers had on their minds, but still livable, although definitely third world.

The aggressive from the third world will live with survival values and will do anything to get ahead destroying our soft offspring.

What makes you think that your children would be soft? I'm a Frenchman living in France, I'm 57, so my experience of life is different from yours, but we live in the same Western World.

I have three Eurasian children. One is an accountant, the other one is an IT engineer, the third one is a college student. They are certainly less soft than my generation was. They all worked as cashiers or fast food employees when they were teenagers. They know what it means to get up at 4 a.m. to clean the toilets of a fast food restaurant at 6 a.m., or to scan goods for hours in a busy supermarket, for the minimum wage.

When I was a student, in the 70's France, many students didn't work during their studies. Crime was rare: there were still few places where white people were unwelcome to, in their own country. Nothing makes you more suspicious of others and more selfish than crime and diversity (as American sociologist Robert Putnam has shown). In other words, less soft. When I was a student I heard liberal silliness all the time from fellow baby-boomers: "It isn't your country. Countries don't belong to a particular people, they belong to all humans." Etc. When economic times are tough, there's no room for that kind of universalist BS, except from disingenuous manipulative politicians.

When I was in high school, the worst job you could have if you dropped out was a clerk's position. Now, that would be a streak of good luck.

Sometimes, I'm almost ashamed of being a Boomer. I was in law enforcement. I retired at 55 with 80% of my last salary. My son the engineer has calculated that to get full retirement (and that wouldn't be 80% of his last salary, not even close) he would have to work until the age of 67 or 68. He doesn't know anyone who is 67 years old and still works in IT. I tell him that he'll have a management position or something similar, but he's skeptical about it.

If my children ever became fast food employees for life... Well, the world goes in circles. My children's French great grandfathers were dirt poor woodcutters and relatively well-off bakers. Their Chinese ancestors were probably poorer, my late father in law was a Chinese orphan who joined the British navy as a cook when he was still a teenager, and eventually ended up in Mauritius, selling Chinese food on the street for a living. Nevertheless, his children were educated in private schools and became middle-class people in Mauritius, France and the UK.

Affluence is (was?) an accident in human history. I consider myself incredibly lucky to be born at the right moment in the right country, with the right attributes. My parents were young teenagers in occupied France during WWII, where food was scarce. My maternal grandfather fought in the trenches during WWI, and had his lungs permanently damaged by poison gas. I escaped all that. I was a young man when the pill already existed but AIDS was unknown. Unfortunately, I'm seeing France going downhill, like parts of the USA, and it's rather depressing.

By not having children, you are basically leaving America to people whose average IQs are in the mid 80s. In a world of scarcity, you can expect the relatively bright to ruthlessly exploit the absolutely dumb, third world style.