This Father's Day, give dad what he really wants: Kill yourself!

I've never been a fan of holidays that honor certain classes of people for merely existing, especially when they reinforce the status of classes already held up in countless everyday arenas as the social ideal. Take parents.

Several years ago I filled all four panels of a Mother's Day card writing about all the reasons being a parent is nothing special, how holidays honoring parents for not abandoning their children were just plain silly and how devoting one's life to being a mother is actually an unwise course of action if one takes a greatest-general-good view of ethics. (It was a hit.)

I enjoy Father's Day, though. It's the one frivolous familial greeting card holiday I can completely bypass without suffering debilitating social sanctions. I also get a minor thrill out of seeing ads for Father's Day sales. They remind me of all the money I've saved over the years.

Just the other day, Border's sent out a helpful little e-mail highlighting gift ideas for different types of dads. But as the apt category of "deadbeat drunken degenerate" wasn't listed, I hit delete and was perversely content.

I'm not saying we shouldn't thank our parents for the things they do for us, on whatever day of the year they happen to occur, but why should any of us have to devote an entire, arbitrary day to thanking our parents for merely being parents?

They bring us into existence without our knowledge or consent, and then expect us to thank them for sustaining the lives they created? As if what they're doing is particularly novel or morally praiseworthy?

From a happiness-maximizing ethos, parenting also makes you miserable–something readily observed in restaurants and minivans across the land that was also commented upon by Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert in this week's Time Magazine:

Psychologists have measured how people feel as they go about their daily activities, and have found that people are less happy when they are interacting with their children than when they are eating, exercising, shopping or watching television. Indeed, an act of parenting makes most people about as happy as an act of housework. Economists have modeled the impact of many variables on people's overall happiness and have consistently found that children have only a small impact. A small negative impact.

And that's if you don't already hate them to begin with.

Gilbert, a father himself, goes on to lay out a simple three-point psychological survival mechanism by which parents convince themselves their children make them happy:

1. "Given the high price we pay, it isn't surprising that we rationalize those costs and conclude that out children must be repaying us with happiness."
2. "Memories are dominated by their most powerful–and not their most typical–instances."
3. "We believe our children are our greatest joy, and we're absolutely right. When you have one joy, it's bound to be the greatest."

Then, as not to upset anyone, he goes and screws it all up in the last paragraph by arguing in light of all this, we should celebrate parenthood even more as the glimmering apex of humanity because, in essence, sires still don't take the rational, raw utilitarian course of action and smother their spawns with the nearest throw pillow, but rather love them in spite of the constant trials and pain. (In less evocative language, of course.)

Basically, by this argument, because parenting entails so much strife, a parent's love for a child is somehow even stronger and purer.

But this logic seems to be unique to parents. We don't honor and aspire to be like people who stay in abusive relationships, or people with self-destructive addictions–and with good rational reason. We certainly don't call those people selfless humanitarians and deem them admirable.

Parents, though, in between orating at length about all the sacrifices they make for their children and treating their progeny's accomplishments as their own, in a rather deft act of social swift-boating, like to insist that people who choose not to have kids (or don't want anything to do with theirs) are selfish.

But if children themselves don't make parents happy, that means they're deriving the pleasure of being a parent from something external to the source–namely, they like to be able to brag to other people about having kids, take pride (and tax breaks) in instantiating their slice of the American dream, fish for respect as selfless martyrs and try to force their supposed joys down the throats of those around them with repugnant pictures, free-range strollers and malplaced pity, as appropriate. That doesn't sound terribly altruistic.

Assuming parents are less selfish and therefore better people than the child-free also assumes anything parents do for or because of their children is good in itself simply because it is being done with someone else in mind. But as in anything else, spending time with or doing things for your kids doesn't automatically benefit or improve them–it can just as easily hinder or harm them as well.

The fact is, you can't have it all. Everybody's selfish, and everybody makes choices as to where they're going to direct their energy. Workaholics or travelers or fitness fanatics or others who choose a source other than kids are all "selfish," but whatever they do doesn't float out in a vacuum, either–it still impacts other people, with at least equal potential to do so for the better. And at least it doesn't directly churn out another boisterous generation of mediocre posterity to pop anti-psychotic prescriptions and exude entitlement.

So, dads, take this Sunday to soak up the praise and revel in the self-justification–and enjoy your dumpy polo shirt, tacky sports paraphernalia or talking bottle opener. You've earned it.