Posted on 03/13/2008 7:08:42 PM PDT by jdm
Over at the Corner, they’re quoting Bruce Thornton: [Europe is not reproducing because] “children are expensive. They require you to sacrifice your time and your interests and your own comfort. If your highest good is pleasure, if your highest good is a sophisticated life, then children get in the way. Why would you spend so much money and so much energy on children if your highest good is simply material well-being? That’s sort of the spiritual dimension of the problem.”
Read Dr. Melissa Clouthier on the news that she was pregnant with twins at challenging time of her life H/T Fausta:
That’s what happens when you choose to love and go out on a limb and take a risk. Most people don’t view having children that way, but it’s true. When you make the choice to have a baby, you think about the love and the expansion of your life. You imagine holding him and caring for him and loving him. The excitement. The anticipation. The romance clouds your mind.
The reality of children is that suddenly, you’re more vulnerable. Suddenly, you have something to lose. Suddenly, it matters a whole lot more when a politician makes a stupid law or creates debt for the next generation. Suddenly, healing the world takes a back seat to protecting your children. Suddenly, the society’s scariness comes into sharp focus.
Loving makes us vulnerable.
Withholding love doesn’t make you strong though. This is one of life’s paradoxes. Being a rock, being an island might spare you pain but it also isolates a person creating a brittleness of being. A person can protect herself and by doing so, limit vulnerability. It calls to mind something G.K. Chesterton said. He described a soldier, timid and afraid versus a soldier bold and engaging. Often to save his own life, the soldier has to risk it, because to try and protect it is to surely die.
Very wise.
Yes, love makes us vulnerable, and you can’t love without being willing to hurt, too.
I’ve realized over the years that anti-life action, abortion, euthanasia, are all failures of love, and failures to be willing to open yourself up to all the ache and beauty that love brings. People don’t mind the beauty but they don’t want the ache, so they settle for a beauty less vibrant but safer.
A long time ago I wrote:
So this is how God keeps us going! It’s not the babies, per se, it’s not the corporeal creation - it’s the LOVE that becomes created at the [new birth]…THAT is what keeps us going.
Think of it. Little Isabella, still a question mark in the womb was already loved by her parents, and by all of the prospective grandparents…then she arrived, and with her came to all of them a love that hadn’t existed in the world before, but exists now, in our world, and feels as real and intense and palpable as something that has existed before time. The love between Isabella and her Mama in that photo didn’t exist in the world before her birth. Now, the parents are awestruck with it…a Love so complete, so unconditional and all-encompassing, that they would die for it.
If God is love, here is God, renewed constantly through this Love - Ever Ancient, Ever-new.
[One] understands why abortion is such a triumph for the dark side. Every time a babe is aborted, this love is denied, is not allowed to Come. It cannot be Brought Forth. God is shut out…With abortion, there is no Coming of Love.
Pope Paul VI pretty much predicted all of this in HUMANAE VITAE, didn’t he, the selfish-absorption (and perhaps a self-loathing) that would lead to the devaluation of life, the destruction of human relationships and the diminishment of man and society? Prophetic. And most people, without even reading that document, just waved him off as knowing nothing because what could a celibate possibly know about life and love?
ping.
Do what they always do when they want to change our behavior. Tax us for having less than 4 kids.
George: I might tell her that I love her. I came this close last night, then I just chickened out.
Jerry: Well, that's a big move, Georgie boy. Are you confident in the 'I love you' return?
George: Fifty-fifty.
Jerry: Cause if you don't get that return, that's a pretty big matzoh ball hanging out there.
Of course, the irresponsible folks are having kids even though they are expensive and can’t afford them.
Great post. Well said.
The self-absorption ignores the centuries of travail that made today’s comforts possible. It adds nothing to the well-being of the next generation. The loss of
“old-fashioned” knowledge, morals, work ethic, sense of community, etc. bodes ill for the next few generations. I feel sorry for them.
Who needs relationships, when we can just talk about faceless "lives"? And when we care more about "lives" than individuals, how can that "life" have much value?
Ten amoebae have life...yet I say I'd much rather know an individual human being, learn his personality, his desires, his preferences, his thoughts...
The view of caring only about the generic "life" disrespects humanity and each individual person. Let's focus on individuals, and bring respect back.
So much for overpopulation explosionnnn
back to global warmint
I put a good portion of the blame for low birthrates on government. Your children are no longer yours. The state has taken them from you. The state controls how you can discipline your children, what and how you can teach your children. They tell you to strap them into car seats approved by the government. They will soon tell you what you have to feed your children. You are just a child care provider hired by the state to take care of the state’s children, and if you don’t take care of them to their liking, they’ll take “your” children from you and give them to another hireling.
It’s no wonder people don’t want to reproduce. Who’d want to bring children into an oppressive, totalitarian existence like that?
You don’t need kids to take care of you in your old age. The government will do it. Honest. They say it all the time.
Government will "take care of you," alright! Dr. Kevorkian...paging Dr. Kevorkian....
Last I heard, the government prosecuted Dr. Kevorkian.
Perhaps you and your clan merit a substantial rebate under this formula.
This article hits the nail on the head. Western civilization has become hedonistic and materialistic. Young and beautiful is what rules. The pleasure of the moment is king. Self-sacrifice is pointless.
Just wait. He'll be looked upon as a persecuted hero someday as assisted suicide laws become more popular as us boomers age. In fact, I think he's already a hero in Oregon.
Suicide first becomes a right, then a duty, then a requirement. At least that Social Security and Medicare problem gets solved.
I have the same basic take on things, but a different rationale.
When modern societies reach a particular economic plateau, the birthrate sharply drops to between 2.1 and 2.3 children per couple. However, through its interference, government can drive down this birthrate far lower.
Government does this in several ways. First, by encouraging women to work instead of having and raising children. This strongly improves “national productivity”, which is a major goal of government, but it does so at the expense of its people having more children.
Second, government then raises taxes to effectively *force* women to work, yet providing no benefit to her family through her labors. Women must work just for them and their husband to keep the same standard of living as they had when only their husband worked.
Only third, is where things such as rampant materialism, inadequate housing, adult entertainments, and social pressures placed on parents over “quality of life” issues for their children, most of which are superfluous, force many people to give up entirely on marriage and having children.
Government is aware of the problem it has inflicted, though is unaware that it mostly responsible for it. However, government is also at a loss to what can be done about it.
There is only one large scale example of a post-plateau baby boom, the one that happened in the US after WWII. It was caused by a situation ideal to encourage married couples to have more children.
The first element was the creation of the suburbs, that began with the building of Levittown. Newly married couples, all of child bearing years, clustered together in family oriented housing. Instant pressure on them all to have children. Pregnancy was the norm, not the exception.
Second, women stayed home as housewives to raise their children. This boring and drab situation was also felt by their husbands in the explosive growth white collar industry. So both wives and husbands were bored.
Pay was good, but there was little to spend it on. There were few amenities that were not family oriented. Even liquor was most often bought by the drink, not the bottle. Ironically, when the children grew up, this meant a profusion of “garage bands”, because most everybody could afford instruments. In turn, this was responsible for the quality and explosive growth of music in the 1960s.
Put it all together, and you have a baby boom. If a modern nation could reproduce much or all of that situation, then just back off, it would probably have the same result.
But there are too many politicians and bureaucrats who wish to inflict themselves on young couples, uncaring that by their actions, they may doom the people of their nation to extinction.
It would be nice if more people cared about peoples' rights.
SuicideLiving first becomes a right, then a duty, then a requirement. Remember, you belong to the state, and your individual rights and desires don't matter.
There...fixed it.
All that matters is what others who "know better than you" say...whether they are pro-life or pro-death.
I'd much rather live in a world where we respect individuals and their preferences.
BTW, Dr. Kevorkian has announced candidacy for Congress.
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