The Nursery Is Red In Tooth And Claw

Tony Woodlief has an amusing essay over at OpinionJournal on what might be called the Hobbesian view of raising kids:

While some mothers and fathers stubbornly cling to the utopian beliefs of their childless years, the vision of humans as inherently sinful and selfish resonates with many of us who are parents. Nobody who's stood between a toddler and the last cookie should still harbor a belief in the inherent virtue of mankind. An afternoon at the playground is apt to make one toss out the idealist Rousseau ("man is a compassionate and sensible being") in favor of the more realistic Hobbes ("all mankind [is in] a perpetual and restless desire for power"). As a father of four sons, I've signed on to Mr. [Thomas] Sowell's summation of a parent's duty: "Each new generation born is in effect an invasion of civilization by little barbarians, who must be civilized before it is too late."

Hear, hear. As a matter of fact, one of my stock lines when lecturing the Llama-ettes on a given breach of conduct is, "You are all going to start acting like civilized young ladies, and not like a rampaging hoarde of barbarians!" (In my moodier moments, I've also been known to substitute "barbarians" with "savages" or even, when particularly moved, "apes".)

I think what keeps me going sometimes is the anticipation of what they'll have to go through with their own children someday. Oh, how I intend to sit back and roar with laughter!

Read the rest. And btw, the article lines up very nicely with my rant t'other day on the foolishness of the bumpersticker line that "reality has a well-known liberal bias." No it doesn't.