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Monday, August 06, 2012

Why it can be hard to regret leaving Cambridge

An ad from the Crimson website:
What if the kid only ends up at a third-tier school? Does he get sent back to the manufacturer? Is there a money-back guarantee on this transaction?
Posted by Miss Self-Important at 11:00 AM

8 comments:

Alpheus said...

I love the Stanford alumni email address. I guess they want their kid to have a better life than they did. :-)

8/06/2012 11:09 AM
Miss Self-Important said...

Ha. Also good to note in public that it's the wife's infertility that got us all into this mess. Daddy's mechanics are still worthy of their elite pedigree.

8/06/2012 11:21 AM
Withywindle said...

TMI! TMI! TMI!

8/06/2012 8:47 PM
Miss Self-Important said...

Your TMI = some hard-up Harvard student's incentive for invasive surgery?

8/06/2012 10:09 PM
Withywindle said...

There must be people out there for whom reading that would be an incentive. Not the sort of person I'd want to contribute genetic material, though.

8/07/2012 1:41 AM
Anonymous said...

I'm more sympathetic. I'm older, have more friends who have gone through Infertility Hell. NYT had an article about sperm banks, a while back: nobody will buy jiz from a man who is less than 5'9". They don't even bother to stock it any more.
My own kids: we fed them, we watered them, and we discovered what we had. They were on a course, and there was damn little we could do to guide them.
So if you are needing help to make a family, why not look for someone a lot like yourself, in hopes that you will get someone with whom you will be comfortable?
Another angle: a lot of the adoptive kids I grew up with did not match their adoptive families at all. It was very tough on the parents.
There is some snootiness in the ad, than's off-putting. But hoping for a smooth match in the family, and shared goals, what is so bad about that? dave.s.

8/07/2012 9:41 PM
Miss Self-Important said...

I'm not sure I see the link b/w infertility and the necessity of a tall sperm donor or a perfect SAT-scoring egg donor. Infertility can be circumvented with donor gametes, but doesn't require supermodel rocket scientist donors. So if what you want is a child, there is no need for such extravagant demands and there should, I imagine, be some resignation to the possibility that one's children, genetically-descended or not, will not be clones of oneself. If what you want is a trophy b/c you think you are the greatest being who has ever lived, then perhaps cloning is the only way to go, and this couple will have to wait a bit longer for the technology to catch up. Family harmony is desirable, but flexibility is also necessary, and a child capable of being admitted to Harvard and only such a child cannot possibly be the minimum standard for getting along with one's kids.

8/08/2012 11:56 AM
Alpheus said...

How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is to have a short, academically undistinguished child!

8/08/2012 2:26 PM

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