Childfree Nader's latest book? All about parenting.

Erstwhile presidential candidate Ralph Nader may be childfree, but his latest book The Seventeen Traditions is all about parenting--specifically what his parents did right.

Here's a snip from a recent interview about the book:

Mowing the lawn was hardly a favorite childhood activity of yours, but you say that kind of hard work was foundational. Where I live in Southern California, nobody, much less kids, seems to mow their own lawn. Even friends who are struggling to pay the mortgage always have $60 each month to pay the gardener.

That's a pronounced difference in the generations. These kids are missing out. They're not exercising their bodies, they're not getting the discipline of manual labor, which is important. Maybe later in life they'll have white-collar jobs, they won't know what goes into mowing or raking leaves or shoveling snow. In that sense, too, there's a loss. It's creating a spoiled generation, even. The discipline of work is part of being raised.

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Yet another article about how childfree Japanese women prefer dogs to kids. I never get tired of reading these! Alas, the author of this piece is extremely judgmental. Check it out:

Weird as Japan's dog mummies are at first blush, they are more to be pitied than decried. Have they no real friends to take them aside quietly and tell them how ridiculous it is for a grown woman to play mother to a dog? Society in general also has to take some of the blame. Japan boasts the second largest economy in the world, but its huge shadow has almost eclipsed family life.

Don't you hate it when a perfectly good story goes to the dogs?
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