“There are moves afoot in our culture to both celebrate the childless life and point to the foulness of wine for its categorization as alcohol. I don’t subscribe to either.”
I don’t understand the movement to celebrate the childless life. I consider my kids to be a blessing in general and specific in my case as they never got into trouble and both have very successful careers. Pointing to wine as foul because it contains alcohol is equally absurd. Having retired completely out of the wine business after 40 years in the biz, I would call the product mostly plonk, produced as post-harvest processing. This isn’t limited to hot inland valley wines. There are plenty of bottles of mouthwash produced in coastal growing areas as well. There are (rare) exceptions, with some truly excellent wines being produced world wide. But I don’t think civilization would collapse if wine was no longer being produced. I loved the wine biz and got out on my own terms but the product, as a category just ain’t that special.
To be fair, from the perspective of a childless middle aged man: I don't see any "movement to celebrate" the childless life, at least not in the sense that we should stop celebrating the child-filled one. There's simply a sea change in questioning or guilt-tripping the childless life. Especially as the media covers birth rates and whatnot, the hand-wringing over every small percentile drop or tying the economy's health to ever-growing generations as though we didn't already know that birth rates of the past weren't sustainable. If children fulfill you or scratch an itch you're pretty sure you needed scratched, then by all means have kids! But if not, go with that, too, freely and without social pressure to do otherwise.
“There are moves afoot in our culture to both celebrate the childless life and point to the foulness of wine for its categorization as alcohol. I don’t subscribe to either.”
I don’t understand the movement to celebrate the childless life. I consider my kids to be a blessing in general and specific in my case as they never got into trouble and both have very successful careers. Pointing to wine as foul because it contains alcohol is equally absurd. Having retired completely out of the wine business after 40 years in the biz, I would call the product mostly plonk, produced as post-harvest processing. This isn’t limited to hot inland valley wines. There are plenty of bottles of mouthwash produced in coastal growing areas as well. There are (rare) exceptions, with some truly excellent wines being produced world wide. But I don’t think civilization would collapse if wine was no longer being produced. I loved the wine biz and got out on my own terms but the product, as a category just ain’t that special.
To be fair, from the perspective of a childless middle aged man: I don't see any "movement to celebrate" the childless life, at least not in the sense that we should stop celebrating the child-filled one. There's simply a sea change in questioning or guilt-tripping the childless life. Especially as the media covers birth rates and whatnot, the hand-wringing over every small percentile drop or tying the economy's health to ever-growing generations as though we didn't already know that birth rates of the past weren't sustainable. If children fulfill you or scratch an itch you're pretty sure you needed scratched, then by all means have kids! But if not, go with that, too, freely and without social pressure to do otherwise.
Beautiful, from the heart, text. Kudos for the reference to Western civilisation.