Why Fatherhood is Not For El Rushbo

RUSH: Cleveland and Jerry, I’m glad you called. Welcome to the program.

CALLER: Rush, thanks for taking my call. How you doing, sir?

RUSH: Yeah.

CALLER: I have a question. Last hour you had a story that a woman could tell a future good father by his face or something like that.

RUSH: Yes, just look at the guy’s face and know instantly that he’d be a good father.

CALLER: Exactly, and then your comment is what sparked my call because your comment was, you know, you get it all the time [that] you’d make a great father and everything like that. I get that too, and I do take that as a compliment. I’m 39 years old now. I’ve never been married, because I don’t want kids. It’s literally come down to the ultimatum: ‘If you want me, you gotta have kids,’ and I’ve said no.

RUSH: Yes.

CALLER: And even to take it farther to take the issue off the table, I got a vasectomy. So now when they meet me, they know it’s not going to happen. My question is to you, most women that I say this to, they can’t accept this. They have a lot of trouble accepting that I’m so certain that I don’t want kids and everything, and I know you feel the same way because I’ve listened to you for years. I was wondering: Why do you think that women have such a hard time dealing with the fact that a lot of men don’t want kids at any cost?

RUSH: That’s not hard at all. I think it’s nature. I’m not trying to describe this scientifically, because when I do that, scientists call and tell me I’m an idiot. But why is there the phenomenon of the biological time bomb? Why do you think it is — (interruption) — okay, ‘time clock,’ time bomb to me, whatever. Why do you think it is? Let’s take a look. Let’s give this thing a little historical perspective here. You have the feminist movement. It started in the late sixties or seventies. They told women to go out and will it and be like men. Be in a career. Rise to the top. Don’t let your sisterhood down by just having a relationship to find your happiness in your life. You don’t want a man to be the sole reason for that. Go out there and find your full potential — and so a lot of them bought into that. ‘Yeah! Yeah! I’m going to do that.’ They get out there, they start climbing the corporate ladder, they work hard, and they start getting heart disease like men do and all this, and then the biological time bomb starts ticking, and in the late thirties, ‘I want a baby. I want a baby!’ It’s quite natural to me. Women are the only ones that can do it. Until we get the artificial womb, we’re stuck with the way things are, and then what’s happening — and this is to the great disgust of feminists — a lot of these women after the birth of the child and their maternity leave say, ‘You know what, I kind of like this,’ and a lot of them are choosing to just punt the career and stay home and raise the child. I think nature is a big factor in that, too. As long as the economics make it possible, nature is a big factor there. Now, if I were Snerdley answering this question for you, it would be real simple. From his perspective, your being hassled to be a father is nothing more than a woman trying to control you.

CALLER: Well, I — yeah, I was — yeah. I — I’m — let’s put it this way.

RUSH: (laughing)

CALLER: Put both of you reasons together.

RUSH: Do you think Snerdley got it right? (laughing)

CALLER: I think both of you are right, because when you were talking, I’m thinking, ‘Well, maybe I’m looking more deeply or sinister into this.’ So I think my answer —

RUSH: Jerry, look. You gotta allow for this possibility, too. I don’t know these women that have been trying to pressure you, that forced you to go get your vasectomy. It could also be that they just love you and that they really want to marry, and they really want to have a family, and they really think you’d be a great dad. It could be no more complicated than that.

CALLER: I’m going to — I’m going to — this is — this may be a little personal, nothing… But, I’ll tell you what. You know, I’ve listened to you a long time and everything, and I look at it this way, and I know nothing is perfect, but I go, ‘Damn, if Rush has trouble making marriages work, I think I would have even more trouble because of your situation and everything.’ What do you think about that?

RUSH: Well, you shouldn’t do that. Don’t make the mistake of that. Don’t just compare yourself to me. Don’t compare yourself to anybody. (interruption) Yeah, especially Snerdley. Don’t start comparing yourself to people. That’s the recipe for disaster in anything. I don’t care whether it’s economics, jobs, anything. Don’t start doing that. In my case, I think I’ve just concluded that…um… How best to say this? There are some of us, and I even had a caller once. In fact, we had a woman call me and say, ‘Don’t ever get married. Your work is too important to be distracted from,’ and I think there are some of us to whom that applies. I don’t know what you do to the country, Jer, but I’m out there saving America and so forth, and that’s a full-time job.

CALLER: Understood. Hey, thank you, sir. I appreciate it.

RUSH: All right, Jer, appreciate it. (interruption) Well, okay, well that’s what I (interruption) that — that. Well, that’s what (interruption). Okay. Snerdley is reminding me about George Gilder. George Gilder got thrown off the Oprah show for saying what I’m about to tell you. George Gilder is a genius. He is brilliant. His big mistake was tying this in with the destruction of welfare families. He says, George Gilder, in a societal sense, that he’s looking not at individuals here. He’s looking at human civilization over time, and he says that women are the civilizing force in our culture.

A woman, by agreeing to marry man X and then give birth to his children, is a powerful statement of trust, because he says that the vast majority of people, regardless of their socioeconomic circumstances, the vast majority of people having children, raising children is — whether they’re aware of it or not — an instinctive, most important thing they do in their life, and the woman is the one who says ‘yes,’ in normal circumstances. I mean, I guess there’s some women that propose these days, but it’s the woman that has the power to say ‘no,’ and when she has that power and exercises it to say yes, it is quite a statement, and so Gilder said look at what’s happened when families have been busted up by the welfare state.

It is the women, the grandmothers and so forth that keep those kids who are fatherless as best they can on the right track. They don’t always succeed, but they’re the orienting factor. So he says this on Oprah, and Oprah just got livid and literally threw him off the show before it was over. That’s when I knew I had to meet George Gilder. So when I say ‘nature,’ that’s really what I meant was the Gilders. I don’t think there’s anything wrong. I hope nobody misunderstood this. There’s nothing wrong with Woman A wanting to get married and have a kid, or three, just not with me. But I don’t think there’s anything wrong with it.

I’m 55. Let’s say I got seduced into changing my mind about this. All right, and let’s say it happened tomorrow. Well, by the time Rush the Fourth is born, Rush the Third is 56. So by the time Rush the Third is 70, the 14-year-old kid has a grandfather for a father, not a father, and I’ve just (interruption). I know. (interruption) I’ve talked (interruption). You remember…? (interruption) I — I — (interruption). When I first moved to New York, not long after starting work at WABC, Robert Vaughan, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., a big talk radio fan, lived up in Connecticut. He came down to say hello to a bunch of us that were there. He was 56 and his wife had just given birth. It was the greatest thing that ever happened to him. It was the greatest thing that ever happened to him. I have another friend who didn’t have his first kid ’til he was 60. He plays basketball with the kid. The kid’s three years old; he plays basketball with the kid in the backyard. It’s the greatest thing that ever happened to him. Fine! That is absolutely wonderful. I’m not China. I’m not out there trying to establish a no-child policy for the country, or even a one-child-per-family policy for the country.

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