I have a highly unique vantage from which to observe and judge different child rearing environments.

20240214

I raised three children born in 1982, 1983 and 1988 - millennials.   

• They were raised in relative luxury in Bethesda, Maryland.  We had a household income well into the six digits – quite a bit in the 1990s.  They attended expensive Episcopal private schools and went to toney summer camps. 

• Our family traveled extensively, to Europe, Japan, the Caribbean, Latin America and Canada.  Our son flew to Oregon several summers to take snowboarding lessons on Mount Hood.  Our younger daughter did community service in Haiti and Peru.   

• The children had their own rooms in a 5,000 square foot house.  The family had a full-time housekeeper, as well as baby-sitters and then a string of six European au pairs to drive them to school, music and dance lessons and whatever.  They had cars to drive once they were licensed. 

• The children went to the pediatrician like clockwork.  They received every childhood vaccination recommended by the CDC.  They were treated to every form of therapy the schools might suggest: speech therapy, tactile defensiveness therapy, psychotherapy, ADHD therapy.

• The children participated in such sports as were considered good for them, whether or not they were enthusiastic.  This included swimming lessons, diving lessons, dance lessons and the like.  They likewise were subjected to such music lessons as they could tolerate. 

We divorced in our 26^th year of marriage.  Though my wife got the bulk of our estate, most of which had come from my investments, many predating our marriage, I came away with enough to live comfortably.  I moved to Ukraine within a year with the expressed intention of starting a new family, which I did with a marriage in 2010.  The children of my second family were born in 2011, 2017 and 2020.  Generations Z and Alpha.  Their circumstances are very different.

• We live on a modest IBM pension and  my Social Security, scarcely touching our savings.

• We did not have a car until my wife got one in January 2024.  I am not licensed to drive; I travel by bicycle and public transport.

• Our first-grade daughter goes to a small, inexpensive local private school.  Our son is in an elite public school that asks us for a PTA contribution of $20/month.  The kids bike to school in good weather, otherwise generally take the bus.

• The children go to the free polyclinic when Mom thinks they are sick.  My usual opinion (so far correct) is that it is a waste of time and exposes other people to the germs.  Doctors can't and won't do anything.  Thank God they don't prescribe antibiotics for what appear to be viruses.

• The kids are unvaccinated with the exception of our son's MMR, which he got when he was well past the age of autism onset.

• The kids participate rather unenthusiastically in capoeira, tae kwan do, acrobatics etc. at their mother's insistence.

• The kids take voice and piano lessons, with a bit more enthusiasm.

That's the background.  I divorced in 2007, at which time the three children of my first family had totally cancelled me.  A hundred pages of detailed analysis are on my web site to be read.  My ex-wife has absolutely refused to talk to me since Christmas 2009.  The break is as absolute as it could be.  Mine is a perfect laboratory situation for comparing different environments and methods of child rearing.

There are some commonalities.  I never fought with either wife.  There has never been infidelity.  Prior to my decision to leave there was not even talk of divorce.   As a self-employed guy I had a fair amount of time to spend with my first family.  I did most of the cooking, and we usually ate together.  Same as a retiree with the second.  I have done a significant amount of the housework and home maintenance in both marriages.  I have handled the investments in both marriages.  I contributed actively to caring for both fathers-in-law in their final years.

The differences are marked:

• Lots of money vs. a modest budget

• US private schools, with woke indoctrination on every topic, vs. schools whose mission is simply to teach.

• Totally vaccinated vs. (almost) totally unvaccinated

• Servants and nannies everywhere vs. just family

• Lots of travel vs. very little

• Professional therapists for every occasion vs. absolutely none

• Schlepped everywhere in car seats vs. walking and taking the bus.

What about the outcomes? The following paragraphs describe where each of the six children, youngest to oldest, finds him or herself in life at this point. Videos tell a lot.

Marianna is a lively, totally normal girl of three. Speech came early to her. She is very fluent in Ukrainian and understands my English.  She loves jigsaw puzzles labeled five and six years. She loves to climb all over her daddy and be carried. She is comfortable with other children and adults in kindergarten.

Zoriana is a first grader. Though she is not enthusiastic about homework, she does not have any problems getting it done. She is outgoing and loves to sing – you will see videos on my YouTube channel. She does pretty well with piano lessons. She has been riding her bicycle to kindergarten and school since she was four. We took our first ride of the new year yesterday, a mile and a half to pick up a new clothes drying rack.

Eddie is the youngest seventh grader and the smallest boy at the elite Russanovsky Lycée.  He is well-liked by boys and girls, and is more than holding his own academically. Though he is beyond my ability in geometry, I am able to help him with algebra, English and physics. He is not as academically inclined as his father, but much more assertive. He has an air of authority that enables him to take the lead in just about every project. We are already talking about careers. He expresses an interest in engineering. I am trying to steer him into agricultural engineering, playing to Ukraine's strength.

That completes a survey of the three children of my young family. The take-home point is that they are all normal. They enjoy the family, they have never questioned their sex and gender, they get along with adults and other kids and they are doing well in education.

Daughter Susanna – she styles yourself Suzy Q – has lived in Stockholm since graduating from Trinity College, Dublin in 2007. Though she moved there following a boyfriend, I have heard nothing since about men in her life. She is an ardent feminist. As you will read in the account on my website, it was her uninterruptible half-hour tirade about evil white men, me in particular, made with her mother listening passively, that convinced me it was time to leave.

She did not treat her high school boyfriend Aiden with much respect. Suzy swallows the climate change story hook line and sinker. She refused to learn how to drive because cars pollute, though she was not at all reluctant to cajole her father into driving her places. She was the president of the Walt Whitman high school GLBT club in 2006 – back when it had only four letters. She considers her father to be a raging homophobe, racist, and everything else evil. At 35 she will not marry and will not have children.

Suzy's older brother and sister did not welcome her into the family. She was always the odd one out. She didn't play much with them, and there were no other kids her age in our upscale neighborhood. When she was young the three kids would play together with me in the family room and accompany me on walks along the C&O canal in Washington. That ended when the older kids hit their teens and Suzy started to accept the woke mantra from the schools she attended. Though she was smart enough to have done all of her homework herself, Suzy insisted that (1) she absolutely would not accept help from her father, and (2) we should hire a tutor for her as we had done for her brother. As a consequence of the tutors doing the work for her, I do not think she learned much from her expensive schools.

Daughter Naomi died suddenly in her sleep in February 2023 at the age of 39. The Massachusetts medical examiner's report attributes "complications of alcoholism" even though there was no alcohol in her body at the time of the autopsy and her liver was normal. I have a strong suspicion that was the Cоvіd 19 jab that killed her. However, it may have been time to go.

She did drink too much. She had unfulfilling marriages and relationships with a series of total losers. Men with drug problems, PTSD, unemployment problems, ex-wife problems and all sorts of things. In high school she had spurned the interest of boys who were destined to accomplish things in life. She was smart and successful in her career, but was totally unable to control her temper, as written about in the link above.

Naomi was a difficult child to raise. She lied to everybody about everything. As I have written, her mother accepted the lies and the babysitters and I had to put up with them. Her mother likewise refused to deal with her horrendous temper.

Son Jack, soon to be 42, was not at Naomi's funeral last year. A private investigator could find no trace of him working, signing a rental contract, having a phone or anything since about 2011. Last I knew of him he was in Portland, Oregon. I would not be surprised if he were living on the street there, or receiving monthly stay-lost money from his mother to keep a roof over his head and food in his belly.

Jack absorbed the messages from his woke surroundings. From about the age of 12 he swore he would never work for "the man." He could never articulate who the man was, although I could well imagine it was a white man just like myself. He never learned much about computers - his were constantly gunked up with pornography. He did not apply himself in school. Against my inclination, we followed the school's advice and got him a tutor. The tutor was able to do the homework well and Jack graduated.

The French language is the metric I apply to his education. He started studying it as a boutique subject in the fourth grade and had it throughout high school. He graduated unable to speak the language. Finally, after a few semesters at Humboldt State College he and I could have a conversation.

None of the kids were dumb – as I recall their SAT scores were in the 1300s. They simply did not believe in the system and did not want to work. That's the fate of my first family. One totally dropped out, one dead, and one recluse who is bitter about everything. Of the common factors listed above, I think that the most influential may have been the vaccines and the hyper-liberal social and school setting of Bethesda Maryland. I will never know, but I will certainly avoid subjecting my young family to those influences.

That's the word from Lake WeBeGone, where the strong man is spending far too much time reading copious amounts of email about the Carlson – Putin interview.  The Ukrainophiles like to think that the world will soon figure out that Tucker has shot himself in the foot. I do not think so. I think Ukraine needs to come up with a vigorous rebuttal, which even then may not work. I tell Oksana that I think that the unfair peace which may be forced on us will benefit our family even if it hurts Ukraine. We will have time to raise the kids before Russia comes back for another bite that might include Kiev.  And, there are many other events taking shape in both the West and Russia that could make it all moot.

Graham