HARD WIRING...AND THE SPACES...

There was another…and then another. Two or three times over the weekend. Straight breeders on the street having a smoldering fight. One, the woman, would usually push away with the baby carriage. The man would be behind for a couple of steps saying ‘janice’ or ‘Betsy’, or call after his partner pushing a small child or baby as if the Panzer carriage had broken out of formation and was about to enter the Battle of Kursk on her own. The child would start to cry and both would attempt to down play the situation of disagreement in their midst. Disagreement over anything that you could imagine: ‘where was the milk? why did you drop the pacifier on the dirty ground or should they let junior sit in the poop pants for a little till they get to a place to change him. This spat is more than the wrong size sheets purchased at bed, bath, and beyond. On the mean streets this is a child, or, rather, a little person who also symbolizes their own vulnerability to modern telematic urban living. They are like to watchful guardians observing the progress of the little person against the impossibly hostile big city. Of course all of these feeling spring forth in public. It is the inhospitable markets and the corrosive streets that cause them to flare out at each other because the enemy guerillas are firing from the streets of Stalingrad. Parenting in the city is a test of moral fiber as well as plate spinning.

And then in the dim light of a Sunday evening they might both go over the bills. Without a child they might discuss whether they should forgo some netflick or cable bill. With children this is not possible. In the small pool of incandescent light they might discuss which of them might take another part time job. This will take time away from each other but they need it. Of course they do. They had no idea that moving in together would actually start costing them more money and not less. After some years the questions back and forth have the substance of one or another’s earning power. Why not more? It is some moral failing (and not the market volatility of course) that they now have to get rid of even the Netflicks account at twelve dollars a month. And this is a time of great relativity: the libratory literature of Betty Freidan or Simon de Beauvoir is something you can pull off the shelf if you need it. It is handy in times where you need to speak of the relative earning power of the partner. ‘I am not your father’ he might say, or she: ‘we can’t hire a nurse…. and besides, who do you want raising your child anyway?’

Breeders have the innate tensions and bliss from possessing two very different hard-wired narratives. This is the combustive source of the ecstasy as well and the sordid moral jabs at their very right to exist.