Having kids makes you think differently. It makes you think about longer term plans, and immediate plans. It makes you yearn for stability. It makes you more succeptible to scare tactics. It makes you less likely to rock the boat.

It made me personally accept shittier situations personally (work) for the percieved benefit of ensuring stability for my baby. You can imagine how that extrapolates across an authoritarian society.

Even knowing it would probably be fine to advocate for myself, to push for what I deserved; knowing that it was purely biology pushing me to make the choice, I still picked percieved stability. I just couldn’t bring myself risk being fired.

Counter-intuitevely, we think of parents as being primed to defend their children from any and all attacks and threats. That works monkey to monkey, but at scale, it breaks down. Being parents makes both men and women more vulnerable.

As for immediate effect: I’d be a lot easier to coerce if you had access to my family.

Edit: It also makes you busy as fuck. Ain’t nobody got time for nothin’ when they have a kid. Certainly not for uncertain outcomes, like resistance groups or political disident work

He could do with a few more.

When my daughter was 10 months, she wriggled off the sofa and bashed her bottom lip. I rushed to pick her up to make sure she was okay, and as I did, a tiny trickle of blood welled up from her split lip.

She was perfectly fine, made loads of friends at the hospital. But in that moment, if there was a cliff next to me, I’d have jumped off of it.

If someone else hurt them, or dropped a bomb on them, the whole world wouldn’t be safe. I can’t imagine what’s that guy is feeling.

Buster’s slightly concerned he’s about to be replaced with bookworm