AOC and the Quest for Happiness

Still basking in the glow of being home. The laundry, of course, is a catastrophe, but that is always the case. In order to avoid facing the inevitable, I have a couple of interesting items for this morning. It took me a long time to find them, wading past a lot of thoughts and outrage on Ye Olde Internette. Here, for example, is a person complaining about GenZ and the end of fashion. And here is a funny video (offensive language and general bad taste warning) about the “Jason Arday Affair,” as I am generally seeing it referred to:

And then there’s this link, clicker beware. It’s about covid and the vaccine and miscarriage and… words utterly fail me.

So anyway, speaking of worlds that get turned upside down, perhaps you have already seen that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is thinking seriously about her pressing biological realities. From The New York Post on account of being fatigued by the New York Times:

“Squad” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has started the process of freezing her eggs — and is using a vlog on Instagram to give her lefty fans mundane updates such as her taking hormonal injections. Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), 36, revealed in a weekend post that she had been saving up for and contemplating the procedure for some time — hailing herself as a “badass” for taking on what tens of thousands of women have already gone through. She said she felt “empowered” to start that process now while Congress is on its August recess. “This is a choice that I am making to feel more in control of my life,” said the prominent Big Apple leader of the Democratic Socialists of America. “And if people want to make assumptions about my decision, let them make those assumptions. I feel empowered to make this choice.”

Part of wanting to feel “empowered” and “in control” is that she is expecting (that’s just a little joke) to want to run for President:

The Bronx and Queens rep alluded to the speculation she has faced about a potential 2028 presidential run and complained that the media fails to realize that pols have other factors to consider beyond just a “craven” lust for more power. “The media will run up and ask a question like, ‘Are you going to run for this? Or are you going to run for that?’ And it is almost through this very two-dimensional, craven understanding or ambitious understanding of power,” she grumbled.

“I think a lot of us actually approach these considerations or these decisions through the larger context of our lives as whole human beings and what is happening in our lives, as whole human beings.”

Always the social media influencer, Ocasio-Cortez, according to this particular piece of reporting, “wanted to help inform other women about their options and normalize those discussions.” What seems to be really happening, though, is a great and epic proliferation of memes and also follow up interviews. She has to accomplish two weeks of hormone injections and then the eggs will be harvested. Whenever she feels she would like to have a child she will have to decide whether to endure the pregnancy herself, or, like many celebrities these days, pay a poorer woman to have the baby for her. It’s like, back in the day, how the upper-crust outsourced the feeding of their infants to “wet nurses” so as not to have to be bothered with something so physically and emotionally taxing. For me, it is in an utterly different category than the many married women I know and have read about who desperately want children and haven’t been able to have them.

Ocasio-Cortez, according to some random person on X, is very close to turning 37 years old which might mean that already the “quality” of her eggs has “declined rapidly.” At least as important as having a baby, apparently, is to raise awareness. “This is just not something that men deal with,” she is quoted as saying.

“Men run for office, or frankly, they interview for jobs, and people don’t think in the back of their mind, ‘Okay, this guy is running for office. How old is he? Oh, well, is he going to want to start a family,’ ” she said. AOC has been engaged to Riley Roberts, who has worked in marketing and web development, since 2022.

“I got sworn into the House of Representatives when I was 29 years old,” she reflected. “There’s this flip side where you have to then grow up in the public eye in a time that most people usually get to grow more privately.”

It’s just that even people who have grown older more privately have still grown older. Age is a sort of inevitable thing that catches your attention when you least desire it. I had my last baby at 36 and hoped to have just one or two more—just one or two more, that’s not very many… babies had become a sort of addiction for me. I counted on them appearing every year and a half or two years. I could stop anytime I wanted I told myself. But then, as many of you know, my body stopped all on it’s own. I was very grieved about the end of the time of babies for many years, but I picked up and went on with life and found many consolations to occupy myself. Six children in nine years is an enormous gift. If I had found a husband just a little earlier I might have had the “more” I imagined. But in the end, whatever God gives is sufficient to be going on with.

But that’s not what Ocasio-Cortez is contemplating. According to the New York Post, she has been engaged since 2022, and other reporting I’ve seen indicates that she has had a romantic relationship with this same person even longer. She technically could have had a child in her twenties and still pursued a political career. Who told her that she couldn’t have done that? But I think many women think the whole business of family or career is zero-sum. Under the guise of “having it all” they end up having only half, or even a quarter, and it ends up being the least satisfying portion. For, you might get to be in Congress for some number of years, but only President for 8, whereas whatever child comes to you at whatever point generally lasts far beyond that short moment. I’ve had mine for over twenty years and never thought once about trading them in for a career in politics. And, on top of that, having children has not prevented me from doing heaps of meaningful and interesting work.

So anyway (as my son always says in socially awkward moments), the New York Times dug up some “leading researchers” on “the science of happiness.” And, my dears, you will absolutely never guess what they discovered.