The Road Taken Again

#7. Back in the naughty 1960s and ‘70s there was a practice called “wife swapping,” which was exactly what it said. Husbands exchanged wives for a temporary period in order to find new thrills and escape the boredom of love lives grown stale. Such husbands were in a rut for being in a rut. The only way out, short of prostitution, was to borrow someone else’s wife—with the husband’s approval. There was wife swapping. Why not kid swapping? I’ll trade my Tommy for your Timmy and throw in Barbie as well. Of course, kid swapping is more complicated than wife swapping. The gender of the swapped children would have to be worked out. Can boys be swapped for girls and vice versa? Or can boys only be swapped for boys and girls for girls? And the ages of the children would have to be negotiated. Do two preschoolers equal one adolescent? Or is it the other was around, with two adolescents equaling one preschooler? Is there an upper age limit in kid swapping? Ten maybe? Or twelve? Or fourteen? The lower age limit depends on toilet training. No one would want to swap a child who isn’t toilet trained. And there’s another, by no means minor, issue that needs resolution before the practice can be put into effect—what if the swapped kid likes the new parents better than the old parents and refuses to return home?