DADWAGON

(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.

Dr. Scott Atlas is not a happy man these days. He is not just the head of neuroradiology at Stanford University Medical Center, he was also Rudy Giuliani’s health care adviser during the former New York mayor’s abortive (oops, touchy word!) 2008 presidential run.

So when I heard him speak a few weeks ago at Stanford, to the rather undersized Stanford Conservative Society, he had serious, um, reservations about Obamacare.

He made several excellent points, mainly concerning the incredible quality of the research and innovation in American health care. Bully for us, we have a purring Ferrari of a health care system, and the very best surgeons and specialists from Cleveland to Clovis.

There was lots in his anti-Obamacare stance that I objected to, as a father and a freelancer.

Broadly speaking: The system, friends, is broken. A friend of mine (and of DadWagoner Christopher) had a baby a couple of months ago,  a handful of weeks early. She is home now with baby, and both are fine, thank God. The bill for her care and her baby’s care? $300,000. She, fortunately, had insurance. But millions of Americans do not. They have driver’s insurance, yes, but not health insurance. The time for celebrating incrementalism is over. Reform—even bolder than what the House passed—is the tonic. Deal with it. The insurers and the doctors have had their day (more like their century) of running health care, and they have only themselves to blame for their losses. It’s time to let someone else run the show.

Here’s a quick DadWagon rundown of what the health care bill means for dads and their kids:

• • If you’re a rich dad, then your taxes will go up. We certainly don’t like poor people reading our fancy blog, so I hope all our readers are rich. In which case, you should be a little miffed. Sorry, dudes. But really, even the really rich don’t like paying $300,000 for childbirth.
• • If you have a kid with an illness (and you aren’t filthy rich), this is a great reform. Insurers will no longer be able, in their blood-stained way, to deny you insurance because you had the temerity to bring a kid with a pre-existing condition into our awesome capitalist system.
• • If you are a sick dad, insurers will have to stop fucking with you in a similar manner, but not until 2014.
• • Immunizations. Yes, I know Jenny McCarthy blames them for autism and probably dwarfism and solipsism, but they are important. Health insurance plans will have to cover them. Herd immunity, baby, here we come.
• • Your children can stay on your plan until the age of 26, not 18 as they do now. This is important. Again, uninsured young adults cost the rest of us money when they break their necks doing kegstands.
• • CHIP, which was a pint-sized precursor to mandatory insurance (for low-income children) will be protected until 2019. At which time our Tea Party president will call it a faggot and disband it in a public ceremony, probably involving a pitchfork and some fire.