We are grandparents and have friends who never had children. They usually have pets that they treat like children or grandchildren. You will be old someday, and if you don't have children and grandchildren, life will be barren. Even our friends who had children, but who don't have grandchildren, are always wondering about what is wrong with their rapidly aging childless children. Those who value the immediate and superficial rewards of careers and freedom over procreation are demonstrating the lower quality of their genes, and should and will be replaced by those who are of higher quality. The raising of children is really a very small slice of a persons life, but one that yields rewards far in excess of the costs.

In my (limited) experience women who have had children screw a lot better than those who haven't. Since athletic and intellectual ability also improve after women have children it is not surprising. My brother, who is in his late sixties, has two teenagers. And is he glad he had them. Better late than never.

I was being a little facetious when I said "genetically inferior", but only a little. Genes exist to reproduce themselves, those that don't leave room for those that do. Your genes built your body to make more genes, but the mix might not have come out right. I live in a very Mormon area, where a woman who has only two or three children is pitied. I dont't want the Mormons to take over the world, so do your duty and get with it. As far as the athletic and intellectual ability goes, it has been scientifically documented. As for the sexual ability, it is merely a personal observation, but I believe it. Now I've got to go upstairs and take care of 64 year old wifes sexual needs before she gets really antsy.

I am really looking forward to taking my grandchildren sailing, hiking, XC skiing, etc.

Even the Walmarts have a pretty good produce section these days. We found a samll operator in our town who sells hormone and anitbiotic free meat, but grain finished. I discussed it with him once and he just knew that beef had to be grain finished. We buy our milk and cream from a local dairy three miles from our house, where the cows are clearly visible. They appear to eat a lot of grass and roam around in the pasture. Large trucks carry their manure to the farms that surround us, and it gets a little stinky in the spring. The best place for produce is the "Good Food Store" in Missoula, Montana, about 300 miles from our house, but we pass through Missoula every couple of months on our way to visit our daughter in Coeur d'Alene. So we stock up on the way through in both directions. It's run by a ccop so the profit motive is not there to subvert their mission.

The best way to avoid poor quality food is to never buy processed food and never eat fast food. It has to be compulsive almost to the point of being a little crazy. There's no such thing as drinking an occasional soda, the sight of a can of soda should arouse feelings of fear and paranoia about how the evil geniuses of the food industry are trying to poison us. But of course they are.

My wife and I spend $550 a month on "food", but that includes soap, pet food, toilet paper and all the other stuff we buy at the supermarket. We have taken to cooking like our colonial ancestors in that we cook enough for three meals and eat leftovers for a couple of days. Saves a lot of time, and avoids the temptation of buying something bad for us because we're too tired or busy to cook. Luckily we appear to have instilled the same attitudes in our daughters, who are as compulsive as we are at avoiding processed food. They are in their 30's, model thin, athletic, and eat amazing amounts of home prepared food. Their friends all hate them, not realizing that by avoiding the processed and fast stuff makes it easy to be slender and healthy.

I read vainomoinen's letter, and it sounded reasonable. Those who don't have the moxie to have children shouldn't have them. It's that simple. But if you don't you are admitting you don't have what it takes. In the past the sex drive pretty much took care of the problem. If a woman didn't want children she had to be pretty much celibate. Now that we have effective birth control, it's easy to have sex without what used to be the natural result of having sex. That in itself is a weird and unnatural situation and we have no idea of the long-term results. Some of you people who are avoiding having children might have some genes that would be of value. I remember reading a report on voles. They have alternating generations of those that are good at raising young, and thereby overpopulate the area, and those who easily succumb to social pathologies. During the overpopulation phase all kinds of social pathologies develop, so the population crashes. Then the breeders are able to breed without too many crazies around to interfere with the breeding. Are we in the crazies period? The vole population varies by an order of magnitude because of this. The problem for the child-raisers is how to separate themselves from the crazies. One indication of crazy might be an overwhelming concern with self and a tendency to indulge that narcissitic self.