If all goes well (and indications are that things will), I will be a father by the end of this month.

For many guys, this event signifies an irreparable separation from the eternal childhood they like to believe they are living. I've never been into that brand of self-delusion, so for me the last nine months have been filled more with excitement than anxiety.

There was the issue of my unemployment, but luckily my wife Barbara and I are frugal people, and anyway, we figure trading in our his-and-her Ferraris is a reasonable lifestyle sacrifice.

A number of people (particularly relatives on my wife's side--though thankfully not my mother and father-in-law) have asked me how I feel about sponging off the wife while she works. This question hasn't been aimed at the year past but rather the years in the future, which I plan to spend as a stay-at-home dad.

Even today there is a certain stigma attached to the "unworking" spouse. As I have been in and out of paying jobs since graduating from college (though my workload has always been consistently high), I've heard this question before. And I can honestly say that sort of thinking doesn't bother me at all. I've never been one to worry about what other people think of me. If anyone thinks I sponge, so be it. It's my life, not theirs.

But other questions have cropped up as well. Since September 11 there has been a revival of the "who would want to bring a child into this terrible world?" nonsense. Never mind that our child has been in the oven since last May. My thoughts about children didn't waver one bit after the bombings or the anthrax scares or any of that. I've read a few books, and one truth just jumps out at me: The basic condition of the world changes in relatively geologic time. It's perception that whipsaws from one extreme to the other.

An example of this popped out at me when I was reading an book of old Dan Jenkins golf pieces the other night. I hate golf, but Jenkins makes it sound almost fun. And anyway, his stuff from the sixties is often brilliant.

"...out there on the tour in the Sixties a pro could hardly scrape by without an agent, a manager, a copilot, a secretary, a valet, a tax consultant and a corporate jet."

Jenkins was exaggerating, of course, but the notion that the recent influx of money (also known as the Tiger Woods effect) has ruined the game is an old concept. Folks have been saying stuff that for at least 40 years. Today people of a certain mindset pine for the fifties. I've read quite a few books from that time, and folks living in the fifties pined for the war, the depression (I'm not kidding) the twenties or some other supposed golden age. There's always a reason to be dissatisfied, and there's always a time that folks seem to think was better than the one we live in today.

So I'm not unduly bothered by terrorist attacks, or wars, or school shootings or whathaveyou. These things are all horrible, terrible events. Of course. But I think they need a little perspective. Let me put it to you this way: Would you rather have been in downtown Manhattan on September 11 or in Rome when the Goths came knocking?

I'm not trying to call our society soft, nor do I advocate buying a whole bunch of bombers to prosecute a guerrilla war (didn't Rummy learn anything from his earlier tenure at Defense?). But it seems to me that the world today is about as good a place to raise a child as it has ever been. Yes, there are more people than ever before, but I find that kinda exciting. As for overcrowding, well, sometime in the last year I heard a unique illustration of that situation. If the six-billion people (plus a few) of the world grouped themselves into single families of four, each family could have one eighth of an acre and the entire population of the Earth could be plotted into an area smaller than the size of Texas. Now, that sort of tight planning doesn't include streets, Wal-Mart or Disney World, but I thought the idea was interesting, so I did the math. No problems there. The truth is that we've got a lot of land to go before we start running out of space in any meaningful way. Resources, of course, are a completely different matter, but I think we're still on the good side of Mother Nature, if barely.

I've always subscribed to the philosophical school of misanthropic optimism. I believe that, over the long haul, people are too stupid to avoid doing the right thing. There are backtracks, of course (the Crusades, the European Middle Ages and Vietnam immediately jump to mind), but generally humans have moved two steps forward for every step back. Even our overblown jihad against jihad will end one of these days (unless Orwell was right, and I don't think he was), and we'll all get back to the business of making the world a better place (as opposed to making the world safe for unfettered capitalism). It's not that people are necessarily inherently good. It's that advancing society is in the self-interest of every person on the planet.

As for the kid, well, it'll have quite a few years to hear me spouting nonsense like this. If it's lucky, then it will quickly determine that I'm utterly wacko and come up with an even more convoluted and interesting way of looking at the world.

I'd be disappointed with anything less.

Jon Worley doesn't know the gender of the impending. Doesn't much care, either, as long as it's one or the other.