Dated a young lady once who was a dedicated Randian; she had me read ‘Atlas’, which I did, cover to cover. As talented as Rand was at identifying the absurdities of the left, that’s how clueless she was in understanding healthy personal interactions of actual human beings.
In particular, the absence of children in a book the size and scope of “Atlas Shrugged” was especially striking to me. (Granted, the book does begin with Dagney and some others as children, but they’re not really children - if you read their dialogue, they’re apparently small underage humans with the maturity of adults who just haven’t yet crossed some legal treshold of adulthood. And there’s a small mention of kids in the segment on the hidden-away homestead of a group of freedom-loving dissenters. That’s it).
And that absence of children is hardly surprising - as wonderful as they can be in one’s life, they are the ultimate challenge to “the virtue of selfishness”. If you’re going to raise good kids, you pretty much have to buy into something akin to altruism - a whole lot of giving, and no guarantee of any reciprocal behavior in return. I don’t think Rand had a clue what healthy family life would require, and as such, she at least had enough sense not to try to fake it in her written work (or in her actual personal life, for that matter).
Astute observation. She does mention a child in her endless John Galt speech, about a mother who prefers to feed her child rather than get a new hairdo, because she values the child more than a hairdo, as opposed to viewing it as a sacrifice. But that’s about it. Oh, yeah. Evil leftists were threatening to start killing children if John Galt didn’t agree to lead everyone. It’s beginning to sound a lot like modern-day leftards pressuring Trump to do a sales pitch for the vaccines that the leftards were unable to sell themselves, after saying during the campaign that they’d have to suck because Trump is behind them. But that’s under “leftards suck,” not “children are our future,” which, as we both agree, Ayn Rand was great at illustrating.
You have to read an Ayn Rand’s biography. There are several. (Note I do question some of their accuracy !) She came from an upper middle class Russian Jewish family. So she was shaped by that experience probably lots of antisemitism directed at her by Russian orthodox Christians. That probably colored her views on Christianity. Then she survived the cataclysmic Bolshevik Revolution, Leninist (maybe early Stalinist!) Russia all before coming to the US. It’s amazing she survived and learned the lessons she learned. Yes she has warts, maybe they are more psychological calluses then warts. She does have some important things to say.
“We the Living” is often claimed to be the nearest thing to her autobiography. It’s a claim I take with a grain of salt. Still its a worthwhile book.