As we all know, Japan is always on the cutting edge of everything. And with a perennially ailing economy and a declining birthrate, the Japanese have an awesome new tool to get their citizens procreating: a robot baby with vaguely human facial expressions! The video:

On the one hand, you’ve got to admire the Japanese devotion to all things virtual. The nation that gave us Tamagotchi is a place where you can have a virtual girlfriend, marry a pillow, and have sex with a lifelike simulacrum of an anime character. For anyone even a little bit anxious about love, sex, marriage, and fatherhood, it can be  enticing: Why deal with all that messy reality when technology can clean it all up?

What I see here, though, is not just Wacky Japan getting wacky again. No, I see a society that’s gotten to a point where the practicalities of the traditional process of having a family have gotten so complicated and difficult that no one’s having kids. Seriously: In 2001, the nation had 1.2 million births, and the government projected that by 2050 it would be half that—in a nation of 127 million people! This is not good news.

Now, I don’t particularly care if Japanese people fail to reproduce, although without Japanese people who will make my yummy, yummy ramen? But I see this as instructional for us here in New Yorkistan.

For example: I’m 35, rather old in traditional terms to have a 1-year-old. Why did I wait so long? Why do so few of my friends have kids older than 4? Is it because we weren’t emotionally ready for the responsibility? Or was it because it just seemed, on a very practical level, impossible to have kids and pursue anything resembling a career?

I don’t mean this all as a big kvetch—just as a way to think about American policies designed (or not) to make it easier (or harder) for families to survive. Parents taking off work early, maternity/paternity leave, health insurance, acceptance of children in public places—all those things that some people love to complain about are, I feel more and more, essential if we want this country to, you know, keep going.

The alternative, of course, is to permit much more immigration—which, of course, I’m also totally in favor of.

Okay, so we don’t condone what the teacher did here. Obviously. Even though Christopher did kick his own kid in the face.

And although I’ve made some poor discipline decisions, I don’t think I’ve ever thought up something  this stupid. In the Houston suburb of Sugarland, 5-year-old Devarius punches a girl in the face on a pre-K field trip. So the teacher allegedly told the other kids in the class, “When we get on the van, I want everyone to punch Devarius in the face.”

This is good video, not least for the vintage Quanell X appearance toward the end. I first heard about Quanell after he protested the Joe Horn vigilante killings I wrote about a couple years ago. He’s an odd one, born in the seventies but forever stuck in the sixties, with a long resume of pretty dubious statements, and yes, that arrest for evading arrest.  Quanell was actually right about Joe Horn, but I’m not so sure about this one. Is it really true that this boy could have been killed by the crushing fistfalls of other pre-K students? Should the whole school be shut down (the teacher was fired immediately, as she should have been)? The report doesn’t make the case that this was just one in a long string of abuses.

(This is the Tantrum, in which Dadwagon’s writers debate one question over the course of a week. For previous Tantrums, click here.)

Bloomberg News recently ran an article on what sort of accommodations New York’s fanciest restaurants make for children. What was discovered was outrageous and a threat to Western Civilization as we know it.

Think I’m exaggerating? Consider this: “not one of 24 of the city’s top restaurants…has a special children’s menu. Less than half of them offer high chairs.”

Oh my god!

The article then goes on to give a brief run-down of the actual kid’s policies at some of New York’s flagship dining establishments:

• Daniel allows kids but has no high chairs and no kid’s menu.
• The Spotted Pig likes children. Full stop. But that’s just their labor policy.
• Aldea has no kid policy, because kids, they state, are “human beings” (clearly they have no kids; kids are not human beings; they are wild animals with portable DVD players).
• Craft has high chairs but no kid’s menu.
• Masa allows kids older than eight but they get the same sushi as everyone else–and they pay the same $400.
• Le Bernardin says no kids under 12 (and they do it with a snooty French accent).
• Eleven Madison Park doesn’t outlaw kids outright, but they do point out that dinner takes two to three hours and doesn’t include pizza.

At the risk of being a hypocrite, I don’t think kids under, say, 30, should be taken to any of these places. I know, I know,  Dadwagon’s unofficial policy is that all children are welcome in all establishments at all times, particularly if they sell alcohol, and definitely if there are strippers involved. This is who we are. Perhaps we will pay for it one day, perhaps not.

But the article provoked a Tantrum-worthy thought. This was not whether these restaurants should do what it takes to keep the crotchfruit happy while we devour comestibles organic, locally-sourced, and delicately plated. No, what I wanted to confront was whether it was right to bring those kids to these places at all.

I’m going to be in the no camp, for a variety of reasons.

First, in my specific case, fancy food is lost on JP. Second, any meal in which he has to remain seated for longer than fifteen minutes is fourteen minutes too long. Third, why would I pay good money for food that he is mostly going to be wearing? Fourth, if I go to a good restaurant I want to be able to enjoy it—this won’t happen if my child is there, at least not at this age.

Yes, yes, I know it’s a good thing to expose children to all kinds of new experiences; and yes, when will he ever learn to behave if I don’t teach him; and no, I know there’s no real difference in foisting him onto people in a restaurant than a bar; blah, blah, blah.

Listen carefully:

• Bar: fun for me; limited to no impact on child; who cares what anyone else thinks?
• Restaurant: no fun for me; limited to no benefit for child; expensive; who cares what anyone else thinks?

Curious to see what my colleagues have to say on the matter, and please, Dadwagon readers, let us know how you feel.

At the urging of a new friend in Italy, I recently sought out and bought the out-of-print children’s classic The Lucky Yak. And when I say “children’s classic,” I really mean “a children’s book for adults who don’t want children.” Let me delve into DaddyTypes territory and explain:

The Lucky Yak, written by Annetta Lawson and illustrated by Caldecott Medal winner Allen Say, is the story of Edward, the son of Tibetan-immigrant yaks who settle first in New Yak, then in more-friendly Yakima. Edward grows up, opens a chain of Yak-in-the-Box restaurants and becomes a financial success.

But he’s not happy. He tries tennis, swimming, painting, violin, macramé and a sporty convertible, but he’s still “depressed and miserable.” So, since this book was published in 1980, he goes to see a psychiatrist, Dr. Huffin N. Puffin, who is a puffin.

Also since this is 1980, the shrink does not simply prescribe Klonopin. Instead, Dr. Puffin tricks Edward into taking care of his two-and-a-half-year-old daughter, Muffin Puffin, for a weekend while he goes on vacation. It does not go well:

By lunchtime Friday, Muffin Puffin had taken all the pots and pans out of the cupboards and played drums with them. She had broken a bottle of vinegar and smeared the kitchen floor with butter. She had applesauce in her feathers. She had fallen and skinned her beak and she had made a dent in the refrigerator with her tricycle.

Before long, Edward has called Dr. Puffin back from vacation and told him, “I need to go home. I need to wash the applesauce out of my fur and clean the crayon off my horns. I need a quiet lunch, an afternoon stroll, and a peaceful evening reading a good book. I want my old life, Dr. Puffin. It’s a good life and I’m going to enjoy it.”

And that’s it! The story has wonderfully entertaining moments, and the drawings, reminiscent of Wall Street Journal stipple-portraits, are detailed and funny. But since this is kidlit, I can’t help but wonder what the takeaway for Sasha would be: It’s better to be single and childless than to have to take care of a brat? Ergo, when you, Sasha, misbehave, Mommy and Daddy wish they didn’t have you? What’s the message here?

I’m being facetious, really. It’s actually quite nice to have a book without an overtly hippy-dippy “kids are awesome!” point, and I have a feeling that when Sasha’s old enough for me to read her the book, she’ll love the gleeful way in which Muffin Puffin drives poor Edward to distraction. And it’s those moments—rather than any Aesopian moral—that make for good literature. Even if it is a bit strange.