In Jennifer Senior's New York Magazine piece on recent research into the joylessness of parenting, Senior recalls a time when her beloved 2-year-old son dismantled a wooden garage then proceeded to chuck the wooden planks at her head, leading Senior to turn to booze. But does it make her happy?

Signs point to no! According to Senior, "a wide variety of academic research shows that parents are not happier than their childless peers, and in many cases are less so." Duh, right? While joyless parenting may constitute a newfangled field of research, that whole joyless motherhood thing has been racking up its share of anecdotal evidence for quite some time. In the Atlantic, Sady Doyle recounts 60 years of its horrors: Simone de Beauvoir's observation that "the child is merely harassing and bothersome"; Adrienne Rich's assertion that children cause "the most exquisite suffering"; Mary McCarthy's fictional mother feeling that, "to her shame, [the baby] was a piece of hospital property that had been dumped on her and abandoned—they would never come to take him away."

Feeling soulless yet? What this edition of Sexist Beatdown needs is a couple of fancy-free non-parents who have not yet been trampled by the misery of child-rearing! So join Sady of Tiger Beatdown and I as we discuss the Stockholm syndrome of baby-making, the luxuries of upper-class depression, and the quiet despair we are told we will forever regret not having!

SADY: Hello, fellow non-parent! Enjoying your non-parental non-miserable lifestyle yet? Because I sure am!

AMANDA: God, I am too. I plan on enjoying it until I have children too late in life, at which point memories of my blissful childless years will only contribute to my ultimate unhappiness.

SADY: If only we were all having children immediately after leaving our parents' homes! Surely this would alleviate our misery. Also, it would help if we were not so rich and successful. This makes it harder for us, unlike the lower classes and immigrants, who simply take these bodily matters of procreation in stride. POOR PEOPLE: Not at all subject to undue stress in the matter of having kids!

AMANDA: Indeed. It is so very taxing to have the time to dote over our own happiness.

SADY: The thing is, I don't think that the news that raising children can be stressful IS NEWS. Like 74% of second-wave feminists were talking about how grueling it is to raise children, and/or to have that as your primary responsibility.

AMANDA: Haha. And now that it's shared, people are suddenly all like, "Should we even be doing this?"

SADY: Right? Like, "wow. It turns out this is HARD. Who knew?

AMANDA: "Who" indeed! I do find these studies of happiness interesting, but I find it strange that people are looking for some sort of definitive answer from them: Like, Everyone procreate! Or, Condoms!

SADY: Right. I mean: "Happiness Studies," in and of itself, which I hear is actually a growing field, is strange. We can measure what makes people happy or unhappy, but ultimately I guess I'm with Senior on this point: Are we questioning what role "happiness" plays in our life choices? I mean, I have recently come to feel that I might not want kids, but this has to do with the fact that I am (a) poor, and (b) high-strung. I can't get a dog without Googling care instructions obsessively and researching what sort of terrible ailments might wind up killing it. But was "happiness" what people had children for, ever, anyway? Maybe the issue isn't that "parenting has changed"—because it seems to have changed most fundamentally in terms of who has to do it—but that we EXPECT "happiness" from popping one out in a way we didn't use to.

AMANDA: Right. I think the happiness part is some new-agey conception of raising children. It's important to remember that joy aside, the fact is that now a lot of people get to choose whether they have children or not, and if so, when. And so it becomes much more of a quality-of-life question than a biological-necessity one. And so I think it's fair to expect that you do the thing that you think will make you the happiest. But there's also a lot of fear-mongering about that, because of that whole ovary-loss thing. So people are like, "If you don't have kids now, you will never be happy and you'll regret it for the rest of your life!" And people on the other end are like, "Once you pop it out, there's no turning back! Life-ruiner!" When, actually, I bet that a lot of people could find meaningful, happy lives doing either of those things.

SADY: Yeah. I mean, women are so, so frequently scared out of, like, LIVING, or doing anything other than having children ASAP, because they're told that their fertility is evaporating and they'll be unhappy forever if they don't have babies. And I think it's worth noting that a ton of the parents interviewed, who were speaking most directly about being unhappy and frustrated, were women. Men in that article were mostly "experts," even if they were also fathers.

AMANDA: Right, I think there is some stat in there that women are on the whole less happy. Which, you know, probably has something to do with that whole "shared parenting" thing not being completely shared, and the general added expectations placed on mothers. One of my favorite parts of the story was the suggestion that you "always regret the things you didn't do, not the things you did do." Like, why does the "thing I do" have to be having babies? There are plenty of things I won't be doing if I end up having kids.

SADY: Haha, yeah. "I will never regret not having children, when I die because my child threw boards at me and one of them had a nail in it and it punctured my skull and killed me." But I'm also wondering if being told that children are the KEY TO HAPPINESS (if you are a woman) has to do with the disappointment (among women) that children don't auto-fulfill you? I mean, Simone de Beauvoir talked about this. Her whole deal was that women are told having children will fulfill them, and then it doesn't, and then they hate their children. Her solution: Make something else in your life more important than getting pregnant?

AMANDA: But there's nothing more important than hating your kids! If you never do that, you will regret it for the rest of your life!

SADY: It's true. You'll never regret hating your kids as much as you'll regret not hating them. It is fun to think about fathers in all this, though. I mean, I like to imagine they're at least MARGINALLY more involved in dealing with the poop and the breaking things and the eighteen years of college prep these kids are all being put through now.

AMANDA: Right. The story did mention that the most unhappy parents of all were those who were the non-custodial parent (mostly fathers). So having a kid and not raising it? Depressed for life. Having a kid and raising it too much? Also depressed—single parents and moms in general were less happy. Solution: Move to Norway?

SADY: Right. I, predictably, DID enjoy the part where they were all like, "maybe if we had state-sponsored child care?" "Also, longer maternity leave helps?" Like: All of these things that feminists are advocating FOR WOMEN would actually make parents' lives easier, in the long run. OR, you could just live a life of heedless wanton non-impregnated self-satisfaction. Until you die, and there is no-one who will visit you at the nursing home. Except for that one robot seal thing.

AMANDA: Right. I mean, is that the whole point of it? That someone will be there to care when I die? That seems to be the last-ditch explanation when I press people on why this is necessary. I'm guessing it's more like a Stockholm syndrome thing.

SADY: Yeah. Probably. We love our tiny oppressors!

AMANDA: The baby captors stole our happiness! Join us!

Photo via Smithsonian Institution

Among them: Punching, hitting, kicking, slamming kids into walls, holding kids down, death threats, graphic plans to carry out gun violence, threats to stab another kid in the eye with a pencil, and forming a "kill a classmate club." At school. In the second grade. According to the MCPS parent, the abuse was also sexual: "there was genital groping and there were unwanted sexual nicknames," she told WTOP.

The mother told WTOP that she reported the abuse to College Gardens staff, but says her concerns were shrugged off:

She went to officials at College Gardens Elementary School with her concerns.

"We were brushed off. They met with the boy that was accused. He denied it, and it went away. They said it didn't happen."

But she contacted other parents.

"And I simply said to them, 'Did your child report anything unusual on this date?' And I got back a fistful of responses."

Sound familiar? This is what many adult women—women who graduated the second grade decades ago—experience on a regular basis. They are sexually assaulted; they say something; the accusation is denied; it goes away.

Of course, this second-grade alleged offender—likely a 7- or 8-year-old boy—can't be held solely responsible for groping another child's genitals. No: That boy has been raised in a system where this is okay. When the groper is a second-grader, he is, indeed, "too young to know better." But that impulse to excuse away the groper's actions doesn't stop with second-grade offenders.

No one could argue that a second-grade girl was "asking" to getting groped. But as groping victims get older, commentators get more and more comfortable shifting the responsibility for preventing sexual assault to the victim—telling her that she shouldn't have gotten drunk, shouldn't have stood in the pit at a concert, shouldn't have worn a skirt, or shouldn't have gone to a bar and sat facing the bar like any normal patron. When groping incidents occur in bars and rock shows and workplaces, the implicit message is that women don't belong in these traditionally male spaces, and they deserve what's coming to them if they enter them.

In this latest case, it looks like these messages are being sent to girls as young as 7 for having the gall to show up to elementary school. The good news is that some media outlets and law enforcement agencies are taking this seriously, even if the school  allegedly failed to act on the complaint—the concerned mother ultimately secured a restraining order against the offending second-grader.

Margaret C. Hemenway, identifying herself as a D.C. Public Schools parent, claims to have filed a complaint with Chancellor Michelle Rhee over her seven-year-old child's "sense of innocence." At what exact moment was the first-grader's innocence whisked away from her, never to be returned? The moment little Hemenway's teacher at Tenleytown's Horace Mann Elementary allegedly announced to her first-grade class that she was planning to marry a woman. Think. Of. The. Children.

Hemenway recounts the horror for Parents and Friends Of Ex-gays (PFOX):

Our first-grader astonished her father at the end of the past school year as he dropped her off at our local Washington DC public school, Horace Mann Elementary, where he had attended school in the early 60s. She relayed to him that her teacher announced her impending marriage—to another woman—to the class. Following her revelation, this teacher encouraged questions from the children.

Our daughter also mentioned a book the teacher read aloud, "Uncle Bobby's Wedding,” about two male “gay” guinea pigs, promoted by the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual Transgender Lobby for children. Since homosexual activists cannot reproduce their own children, recruitment to their cause (especially at a young age, before parents have raised such sensitive and controversial topics with their children) is essential to the political agenda of promoting homosexuality and “gay” marriage.

Nowadays, most parents are resigned to the fact that a gay guinea pig will inevitably steal their daughter's sense of innocence, and there's nothing they can do about it. Not Hemenway. Hemenway began the slow bureaucratic process of getting innocence restored:

Most parents would not consider a Q&A session with first-graders about homosexual marriage as an "age-appropriate" discussion.  After our daughter’s revelation, we lodged a complaint with Chancellor Rhee's office, requesting an investigation, and asking what department in the DC Government we can appeal to for restoration of our child's sense of innocence?   We are still awaiting feedback from the school on whether there is a Teacher’s “Code of Conduct” and what D.C. policy is on “age appropriate” sexuality education.

By the way, when does "sexuality education" finally become "age appropriate" for D.C. schoolkids? According to Hemenway, "There are sound reasons that sexuality topics are not generally introduced in school until fifth grade, at an age when some children begin to ask how babies are made."

Image via Blue Stone Graphics, Creative Commons Attribution License 2.0

I'm pretty sure these two items are simply unfortunately juxtaposed, and entirely unrelated. Meanwhile, "Barebreasted Women Swordfighting and Kids" is still available for someone's  inevitable childhood trauma memoir.

(a) A father who films his hilariously drugged-up child after a doctor's visit:

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"David After Dentist"

(b) Or a hipster music video depicting a screaming child dodging scary monsters without the help of his unresponsive mother:

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MGMT's music video for "Kids"

Personally, I'd say that forcing your own child to go to the dentist—ughhhhhh—and then filming him totally cracked out on dentist drugs—Daaaaaad!!!—and posting the results to Youtube—YOU ARE SO EMBARRASSING DAD I HATE YOU—is slightly more cruel than subjecting a child actor to a hipster-video-of-horrors. Because, as David's Dad failes to assure his child in the video, "David After Dentist" is, in fact, real life. Meanwhile, MGMT insists that no children were harmed in the video's making.

But at least "David After Dentist" was funny! Less funny is when you actually start marketing t-shirts with your child's image on them referencing the time you forced him to go to the dentist, filmed him totally cracked out on dentist drugs, then posted the results to Youtube. That's not just child cruelty, Dad. That's tacky child cruelty! Perhaps it is Capitalism which is the true monster.

* Advanced Style, a street-style blog for the older set. Adorable, inspirational, and regularly updated, this elderly fashion watch is curated by three respectful whippersnappers.

* Jezebel asks if being a successful woman means staying single:

maybe if a woman's got guts and determination, she "intimidates" men. So she either doesn't get attached to a guy, or finds one who is content to live in her shadow. Oprah doesn't have a husband, per se, but when's the last time we heard anything about that Stedman guy? Anna Wintour? Divorced. Condoleezza Rice? Not married. Tyra? Single and looking to mingle. Angela Merkel? Wikipedia says, "Her second husband is quantum chemist and professor Joachim Sauer. He remains out of the spotlight" . . . While many men have careers in which they shine and the wife is content to stay in the background, it seems that women who live an ambitious life in the limelight rarely have a "quiet" husband at home.

Jezebel's expounding, of course, on Madonna's just-announced divorce from filmmaker Guy Ritchie. I wouldn't assume that the end of this seven-and-a-half year marriage is a result of Ritchie not being able to "handle" Madonna—you probably know what you're getting into with Madonna. Similarly, I would suggest that Tyra Banks' relationship status might not be wholly attributed to her "success." A lot of marriages fail, successful, famous, or not. Still, I fully intend to co-opt the Stars: They're just like us! treatment here and assert that by virtue of being a single woman, I am successful. It's that easy!

* In the wake of Joe Wurzelbacher-gate, Radar imagines the inevitable "Joe Plumber" porn spoof:

Layin' Pipe will feature five hard-core scenes, including a threeway with other pander-worthy icons, namely Mother of Iraqi Solider Against the War and Teacher In Tennessee Who Can't Afford Her Parents' Nursing Home. Bob Schieffer will also be spoofed as the announcer who dishes the sex action that will take place during the film.

Yeah, well, as long as he isn't portrayed by the lame, pathetically in-shape dude who hangs around the smoothie/tanning salon, I may be interested.

* Plus, what else might "Joe the Plumber" be hiding from the American People? Josh Levin for Slate has your non-pornographic predictions.

* Okay, one reason to have kids:

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Photo from Advanced Style.