Children Make Parents Happy...Eventually

I have been developing a growing aversion to being in our house. I've realized that the two places in the house that agitate me the least are:

1) On the toilet, reading (regardless of whether I'm actually putting the toilet to its proper use); and,

2) In bed, either asleep or getting there.

What is the common theme? I'm alone!

I've said that I love being a dad. Which I do. But it's getting harder to love the role enthusiastically and unconditionally. I usually do really well (and the kids benefit from this) when I'm with one or two of them. But it's very tough to be with more of them unless we're out of doors in an open space.

This afternoon (while sitting on the toilet --lid closed-- with the door locked), I read this article:

Parents: The late-night feedings, midnight diaper changes and temper-tantruming toddlers might be worth it after all. A new study finds that while having more children makes young couples unhappy, bigger families bring parents joy in midlife and beyond.

Previous research has found that despite the oft-cited joys of parenting, raising kids can be psychologically tough on parents. Having a baby diminishes marital satisfaction, for instance. In response, parents may rationalize their decision to have children by idealizing parenthood.

But as kids grow up, the unhappiness melts away, according to a new study published in the March issue of the journal Population and Development Review. The more children parents over age 40 have, the happier they are, the study found.

"Children may be a long-term investment in happiness," study author Mikko Myrskyla, of the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research in Germany, said in a statement.

The researchers surveyed over 200,000 women and men in 86 countries, including the United States and China, between 1981 and 2005. Globally, they found, parents under age 30 become less happy with the birth of each child. Parents between the ages of 30 and 39, on the other hand, stay as happy as childless couples as long as they keep their brood to four or fewer. From age 40 on, parents with one to three children are happier than childless couples. After age 50, mothers and fathers are happier than childless couples regardless of how many children they have. The results hold true regardless of sex, income or partnership status, the study found.

The researchers acknowledge that people who chose not to have children may be different in some way from those who chose to have children, differences that could affect their happiness. However, they wrote, analysis of the effects of having an additional child (a method that compared parents to other parents), suggests that it is children, not some other factor, causing the happiness change.

The study explains the long-standing discrepancy between people's belief that children cause happiness and the research findings that consistently show less happiness per child.

"Seeing the age trend of happiness independent of sex, income, partnership status and even fertility rates shows that one has to explain it from the perspective of the stage of parents' life," Myrskla said.

The reasons for the finding are expected, researchers say: As children grow up, they require less care – and cause less stress for moms and dads. Adult children can become a source of support for parents. This is especially true in former Soviet states like Russia, Poland and Hungary, the study found, where elderly people rely less on government welfare and more on their children for financial help.

In countries with well-developed welfare systems, on the other hand, the differences between childless couples and parents are smaller. In western Germany, Switzerland and Austria, the study found, adults are similarly happy whether they have children or not.

V838 Monocerotis

I made it home from work last night in time to grab #2 and shoot up the canyon for a bit of hours of night skiing.

We only managed to get in a handful of runs, but the snow was perfect, the air was sweet and crisp, and once the sun had faded, the sky opened up like diamonds on a black velvet blanket.

#2 has discovered Google Sky Map on my phone and became an immediate fan, and this was a perfect opportunity to put it to work. We spent the entirety of our last two or three lift rides checking out Orion, the Gemini, Ursa Major, and a bunch of stuff that I didn't remember from my days with my mom, a flashlight and one of those "star wheel dialer chart" things in our backyard. I'd never heard of Monocerotis, for example, but it seemed to be the brightest thing in the sky, and the app's embedded Hubble shot put an entirely new and awesome perspective on it. I was very aware that my life was, for a few minutes, imitating a "Families: It's About Time" and I loved it. I tagged a few dozen yards behind the little guy as he rocketed down the slopes, and realized when my teeth hit a subzero chill that I'd been smiling involuntarily and widely the whole way. Can't remember the last time I smiled like that.

At bedtime, he prayed, "I thank thee for friends and food and trees...and stars."

Lucky 13

It's our anniversary. Not sure which adjectives to associate with our having reached another one -- bizarre, surprising, promising, stifling, miraculous, deluded, encouraging, resigned, stupid, exceptional, hopeful and others come to mind, at varying levels of intensity and stickiness. But at this moment, choose from primarily the positives among them. I bought my wife a necklace from the Sundance Catalog, and enjoyed focusing strictly on what I thought she would like, rather than what I would like to see her wear. Must have worked, because she was delighted.

At her suggestion, we combined an overnighter up one of the canyons with a convention for the latest MLM she's embraced (her fourth or fifth since we've been married). Capitalism, Mormon zeal, and pent-up housewives with no remunerative outlet for their talents and white-knuckled fear of being dependent on their husbands' incomes, is an unquestionably volatile mix, and I couldn't tolerate being in any of the revival meetings. One presentation was literally lifted directly from Alma 32 (with "growing faith" replaced with "building the business" and some identities changed to protect the innocent), and another invited those present to close their eyes for a moment and "focus on [name of one of the MLM's executives who had just addressed us]...picture him in your mind...feel the challenges he's faced from detractors...know of his kindness, his dedication to this great effort and how dearly he wants each and every one of you to succeed and change your lives and the lives of those with whom you share this..." I'm not exaggerating.

Having beheld a few of those pearls, I helped her to understand that it would be best for all involved were I to be exempt from the MLM agenda and just do my own thing while she participated. She'd ping me when she was free, and we'd get together. It worked out really well and we got along great. In fact, to steer things, as you've come to expect, back to The Carnal, I'd covertly sneaked into her bag two bra/panty sets (one lacy and blue, the other black and sheer) that had seen far too little action in...well, in as long as I can remember, and she was game to give each a go. It was the first time since early December that I'd "seen her" en boudoir in any sort of light, and noticed that a bit of a paunch is for the most part all that remains from her pregnancy with #4, born last winter. Of her own volition (absolutely zero spoken or unspoken provocation on my part, trust me), she's begun to express growing dismay that her breasts have, as she says, disappeared ("I could use [#1]'s training bra!") and has on several occasions mentioned getting implants, "just to get me back to what they were before I started nursing." This may, understandably, shock you, but I honestly don't know how I'd feel about that. Well, physically I can assume how I'd feel about it physically, but I'm not sure there's room enough in this home for two Utah clichés: The sex-starved "Priesthood holder," and now his silicated spouse.

Il gran tenore ciecco

I think I've figured out why women swoon so for Andrea Bocelli --who is very musical but whose decent voice is very small and far from spectacular by operatic or even poperatic standards-- so much so that his career received its earliest turbo boost when he became the de facto soundtrack of Victoria's Secret.

That he's tall, attractive enough, perceived as romantic and sensitive is all well and good. But the coup de grace is that he's blind. Which delivers two thunderclaps of value to women:

1) My physical beauty, or lack thereof, is of no consequence to him.

2) He's never going to have wandering eyes and their accompanying ills.

Wow, that boy's got it made. That is, if you're willing to forfeit your sight as part of the deal.

Incidentally, I've seen his fiancée in person. Not a knockout, won't (as seems to be generally the case Italian women) age as well as La Loren, but certainly nothing to piggishly nitpick about her legs.

Gettin' Iggy wit it

Until further notice, know ye that the the best legs in the Great State of Utah belong to the hostess at the Pioneer Park Iggy's.

As she stepped out from behind her little podium thing to lead us to our table, my breath was literally taken away. I remained distracted and spellbound for the remainder of our stay. Except for her calves, everything about that lunch is a blur, so I may have excused myself 3 or 4 times to "go to the restroom" or "take an important call" or ask the cooks whether the lettuce was locally-farmed or whatever, as a lame pretext to just get another glance of her, but I can't remember.

It's really a shame that I, The Pathetic Stalker, was only able to memorialize their splendor with a blurry shot captured in poor lighting while we were both moving, because they could command armies, drive economies and power the world's grid. Or at least have their own reality show.

Picking up the pieces

This evening I read this article in the Post, reminiscent of the Weekly Standard article I mentioned a while back. (An abbreviated version of the Post piece follows below, in case the link breaks.) Damn, I really miss the hunt.

SAY THE WORDS “pickup artist” and every face within earshot wrinkles in disgust, picturing the slick lothario wearing too much cologne and scanning the room for his next conquest.

But James Norton is more of an overgrown teddy bear. He’s a former rugby player, 6-foot-1 and topping 200 pounds. Norton swears he was once like the men he teaches in his workshops: intimidated by women and scared to make the first move. Now there’s no one he won’t approach. It’s just a mind-set, he says—one he has passed on to more than 50 guys through Professional Pickup, the coaching business he runs with Ernesto Gluecksmann, a 36-year-old technology consultant.

Enrolled in this session are A.K., a recent college graduate who works on Capitol Hill and just got out of a relationship; B.D., a muscular tech professional in his 30s who fares quite well with women (“but I’m lazy—I end up taking what falls in my lap”); and S.W., a soft-spoken federal worker in his mid-20s.

Frustrated and embarrassed, men come to Norton—$600 registration fee in hand—looking to crack a secret code. Some are virgins. For most, the thought of starting a conversation with a woman provokes a paralyzing fear.

Dozens of self-proclaimed gurus have emerged to soothe that anxiety. Some run websites, host conventions, and offer “seduction boot camps” for $2,000 or more. Popular sites such as Pick-up Artist Forum are littered with advice that’s both misogynistic and unethical. But Norton insists that his program is different, that it’s ultimately about self-confidence and forging emotional connections.

“The whole journey is a process of them finding out who they are and then connecting with people, which a lot of them are not that capable of doing,” Norton explains. “Because if they were able to connect with people, they’d be getting laid all the time.”

NORTON AND GLUECKSMANN espouse a pickup philosophy known as “natural game,” meaning they don’t believe in canned lines or routines. They would rather a student approach a woman and say, “Hey, what’s up?” than try to spark her interest with a question like, “Who lies more—men or women?”

That was the line Norton always used when he first started learning about pickup. He was 28 then and suffering his third big heartbreak.

Looking for help, he turned to websites and best-selling books such as The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists and The Mystery Method: How to Get Beautiful Women Into Bed.

The books and Internet forums promoted specific—and sometimes appalling—attraction techniques, from feigned apathy and casual insults to subtle mind control and hypnosis. Men were advised to wear attention-getting apparel, such as goggles and big hats, and to open with goading questions.

To Norton, some of it—such as understanding body language and sexual chemistry—made sense, but a lot of it backfired.

In 2007, Norton found his ultimate wingman in Gluecksmann. The pair began going out together regularly, refining their methods. In 2008, they decided to offer a free six-week coaching session. By the end, Norton and Gluecksmann were in possession of several thank-you notes, plus the basic idea for a business plan.

In every conversation, there’s an alpha and a beta, Norton says, and “whoever’s frame is most dominant has the lead to say what’s going to happen.” Men are supposed to be leaders, women followers.

Norton says students have a much easier time coming up with reasons not to talk to a woman, so the next topic is the elimination of negative thoughts. Anxiety is useless, Norton tells them. “It’s not what reality is.”

The coaches talk about ways to build trust to grease the wheels for sex.

“It’s really about listening,” Gluecksmann tells the men. “This creates comfort. This creates familiarity.”

But it’s not just about listening. Earlier, the men learned a technique called “body rocking”—leaning in toward a woman, then away from her. It’s meant to be a teasing motion, as if to say, “Maybe I’m interested. Maybe I’m not.”

The emphasis is on “kino” (short for kinesthetics). “The longer you wait to touch her, the weirder it gets,” Norton says. First arms, shoulders, hands, Gluecksmann tells them. “Then more intimate.”

Pickup is a kind of hero’s journey, Norton declared at a pickup conference in New York last summer. Wearing a tuxedo with no tie and an unbuttoned collar, he stood in a white-walled Manhattan loft addressing 50 guys, many adorned in distinctive attire—orange eyeglasses, aqua pants, a fedora—intended to elicit a second glance. “You decide that your life is no longer working, and you decide to go down a different path. So you go inward and start trying to figure out what’s right and wrong. You’re going to start finding the dragons and demons and everything else that’s in your way. And you’re going to come back stronger, better—more of a hero to everybody.”

He was riffing on Joseph Campbell’s classic 1949 text The Hero With a Thousand Faces, which deconstructs the arc of history’s most famous protagonists, from Odysseus to Jesus.

Norton is a seeker, set on a continuous self-improvement project. As a kid, he moved around a lot and was teased about a slight lisp; the teenage Norton filled notebooks with personal musings and confessions.

At the start of his freshman year at Guilford College, a small liberal arts school in Greensboro, N.C., Norton signed up for a program that required students to make solo wilderness excursions. For three days, each freshman camped alone on a mountain with no food or worldly distractions.

Norton came back changed. “It makes you really just stop and be with yourself and start listening to yourself,” he explains.

As an upperclassman, he led younger students through the process. The last stage of a hero’s journey, he told the crowd at the conference, is to bring some benefit back to the community. It’s what he believes he’s doing with pickup now.

Norton and Gluecksmann refer to themselves as “dating coaches” and are hyperaware that “pickup artist” carries a stigma of chauvinism and lasciviousness.

Even coaches such as Norton who say their goal is to make men believe in themselves could be damaging how their students relate to the opposite sex, says Denise A. Romano, a former therapist who has posted a set of Web articles titled Game Over: What Women & Men Need to Know About the Pick-Up Artist Industry.

She says pickup tactics are “wholly dehumanizing to both women and men.”

“Women will have to become even more vigilant,” she continues, “wonder which men are lying, which men are only dating them to get laid...as opposed to being emotionally and psychologically healthy enough to be in a relationship.”

FOR THE THIRD class, J.K. joins the group. He emigrated from South Korea as a 10-year-old, went to a prestigious college, and landed a high-paying technology job. At 27, he’s successful but has never had a girlfriend.

“What’s the word for ‘extreme hunger’?” he asks when describing why he joined the workshop. “Somebody who’s been starved—not in a nutritional way, but just for emotional connection.”

Sexually, he says, “I’m quite inexperienced, so I guess I’m trying to increase my odds.”

On the docket tonight are lessons on keeping a presentable home, approaching large groups of women, and expressing attraction.

To see whether a girl is into them, Norton and Gluecksmann suggest a “compliance test”—giving her an instruction to see if she follows it.

“You want to tell her, ‘Look, I can’t hear you. Come over here for a second,’” Gluecksmann says. “You’re leading her to test to see if she’s willing to comply and come with you.”

But tactics like these, which equate control with confidence, don’t seem so different from tricks taught in more manipulative circles of pickup. For all the talk of self-improvement and forging “emotional connections,” in the end, most of Norton’s lessons still revolve around helping guys achieve what he calls “the ultimate kino”: sex. But before they can go for “full closing,” they have to learn to go in for a kiss.

“You want to do the triangle,” Gluecks­mann advises. “Look at her eye. Look at her other eye. Look at her lips. Then you kind of want to lean in.”

At some point, Norton tells them, they should make a “statement of intent.”

“I look at her, and I’m like, ‘You know what? I kinda want to make out with you—that’s what I’m feeling right now,’” he says. “It’s you sexualizing the interaction.”

Sealing the deal, Gluecksmann continues, is all about logistics. They need to have a place for a woman to park her car and condoms at hand. “You want to provide her with sufficient excuse. Like, ‘Hey, let’s go to my place, ’cause I got this great collection of stamps I gotta show you,’” he explains. “As opposed to saying, ‘Let’s go back to my place for some hanky-panky.’”

“And be perfectly okay with her saying no,” he continues. “In your mind, it just means, ‘No for right now.’”

Honesty is key, Norton insists, because women deserve it, but it’s important for the guys, too; if they’re just putting on a charade, he says, they may still be thinking they’re not good enough.

When he was in New York at the conference, Norton put his skills to use. He locked eyes with a 5-foot-10 redhead while out at a bar. He spent the night with her and the next night, too. And when he told her he was a dating coach who went out with multiple women, she shrugged and told him she was seeing other people, too.

His students are still trying to reach a point where they have that option. The previous week, J.K. talked with several women, including one who seemed to like him. “This girl was just latched on to me, and I was just absolutely shocked,” he says. “And I started panicking. I lost my step. And she kind of lost interest.” J.K.’s luck with women hasn’t changed dramatically, but he’s working out more, paying attention to fashion trends, and forcing himself into social situations. “I’m just seeing a spark of light,” he says.

A light was coming on for Norton, too. He went back to New York and stayed with the redhead the weekend after he met her, and again the next week. Six days later, she visited him in Washington.

“She lit something inside of me that had been dormant for a while,” he says.

Still, a month after they got together, he went through with plans to spend a week in Bermuda with another woman. “After that is kind of where it went downhill,” he says. “I think she got really upset that I went.”

She stopped returning his calls. In the weeks that followed, Norton was dismayed and contemplative, regretting that things went sour.

“If I could find somebody really special and they could be in my life right now, I’d be pretty [expletive] happy about that,” he says.

So his hero’s journey continues. He’s still meeting women in bars and posting on websites, still speaking at conferences and recruiting new protégés.

Still trying to teach other men about emotional connections.

Flashlights

Riding shotgun on the commute last night was a half gallon of Breyers natural vanilla ice cream and two cold liters of Barq's root bear. #2 went a full week without wetting his bed, and the kids knew that there would be a celebration when I got home from work.

As I rounded the corner into the cul-de-sac, I saw the beams of two little flashlights moving around in the shrubs near the corner of the front yard. I slowed down, and the beams fixed on me momentarily, then after a bit of bouncing around, the beams scampered around the corner. My headlights caught the reflective strips on #3's galoshes as he followed his big brother to a better hiding spot.

I waited on the carport after turning off the car, until I heard whispers approaching in the dark. Then suddenly, but not unexpectedly, a pair of loud "Boos!" rang out, followed by lots of big, hardy giggles.

Bliss.

Today, my boss shared with me this article and said that the struggles he's facing right now with his only son are directly attributable to his having failed to follow its counsel. Tonight while I was at my desk well after "quitting time," he peeked his head into my office, held out the article and said, "Go home. I'm serious. I give you permission. Do it." I got out of there about 45 minutes later and missed taking #1 to salsa club.

The hearts of the mothers

Last night, we celebrated, as promised, #2's week of dry beds with root beer floats. It was a big deal for the kids, with lots of build-up as we checked off each pee-less morning on the calendar. And #2 was beaming as we gathered 'round the table to celebrate his little victory.

No sooner had the foamy top started to flow over the mugs, than the doorbell rang. It was the ward genealogy expert, here for a tutorial that my wife had forgotten about. My wife disappeared into the office without a word, and didn't emerge for an hour and a half -- long after the dishwasher had run its cycle the kids, having given up on the hope of their mom's reappearance, were tucked into bed.

I floated some out-of-context "let the dead bury their dead" by her. She couldn't come up with a credible case for prioritizing dead ancestors over living posterity, but never actually admitted that she'd handled the situation wrong.

Hopefully she won't be doing sealings when we celebrate 4 weeks with a family bowling outing.

Fantasy ball

I'm a fair-weathered BYU football fan, and, until last season's tournament victory against Florida, hadn't really been interested in BYU basketball since the days of Devin Durrant, Timo Saarelainen and Mike Smith.

But, like the rest of the sports world, I caught a mild case of Jimmermania about midway through this season. So I'd been wanting to take the kids to one of the games for a bit of history, and had tried unsuccessfully to get tickets to tonight's game. So that's the background.

Last night, I dreamed that I approached the Marriott Center with the crowd. It was saturated, late-afternoon light, like after a rainstorm. There were scalpers everywhere. I neither had nor bought a ticket, but got in the outer doors anyway. My seat was up near the rafters, and it was quiet and dim where I found my portal to enter the arena itself. I walked toward the door, but standing next to it was a stunning blonde with a catwalk-ready body, wearing nothing but heels and a faintly mint-green bra/panty set, almost identical to the one shown here. She was leaning listlessly against the wall and stared blankly into the arena from the door. She wasn't sad, just uninterested in her surroundings, like she was mildly stoned.

I paused before opening the door, and instead leaned in slowly and kissed her. It startled her but she complied. I then pulled back, and when I saw that she was now looking willingly into my eyes, I took her hand and we passed instead through the door of the adjacent men's bathroom.

We went into the large handicap stall at the far end of the empty room, locked the swinging door, and she unbuckled my belt, pulled down my pants and took me into her mouth. But she didn't finish me. Instead, I pushed my back against one wall and put my feet on the handrail of the opposite wall so as to form a "bridge" across the stall. She stepped up on the toilet and then straddled me, our feet now completely off the ground so that nobody who might enter the room would see us. She pulled her panties aside and guided me into her, all the while looking me in the eyes, and rocked gently until...I woke up.

The back seat beckons

This ad for Hyundai's new Equus luxury sedan caught and held my eye the other day.

Understand that precious little in advertising photography is left to chance, especially in big dollar national campaigns by big firms for big clients.

The latest numbers suggest that women buy 52% of new cars sold in the U.S., and influence more than 85% of all vehicle purchases. So I get the role of Thomas Payne here, and the symbols of intelligence (common sense), power (being chauffeured, heavy metal bangles), revolution and independence ("I can buy a Mercedes, but I don't have to"), etc.

But wow, the sex appeal salvos fired by this modestly-clothed woman are off the scale: The slender legs (note the playful and form-showing capris), the toned arms, the idle and mischievous fingers, the ready-to-race pony tail, and, of course, the curve of her right breast under the strap. And all in the back seat.