Posted on 06/30/2008 4:18:23 PM PDT by SJackson
There are four things in America for which there is little forgiveness. The first is killing your wife, as O.J. Simpson discovered. The second is allegations of child molestation, as Michael Jackson found. The third is being old, as John McCain is rapidly discovering. And the fourth is having too many children, as I have found.
Looking down at primitives with "too many" children is one of the last acceptable prejudices in the West. With our ninth child expected imminently, God willing, I find myself pitied and pilloried wherever I go. "Wow, that's a lot of kids," is a refrain I constantly hear. What a shame I didn't have instead, say, eight antique cars, or better, eight homes around the world, for which I would have been thought a success. But eight kids? That proves your either a religious kook or someone ruining the environment by overpopulating the earth.
Enter The New York Times Magazine this past Sunday with a cover story called "Childless Europe" which claims that the Germans, Italians, the French and the Bulgarians are disappearing off the face of the earth due to a shockingly low birthrate, or what demographers call "lowest-low fertility." This truly ominous article relates that for the first time on record, birthrates in parts of Europe have dropped below 1.3 per family.
"For the demographers, this number has a special mathematical portent. At that rate, a country's population would be cut in half in 45 years, creating a falling-off-a-cliff effect from which it would be nearly impossible to recover." In Germany "where the births-to-deaths ratio now results in an annual population loss of roughly 100,000, the government's family minister declared that if her country didn't reverse its plummeting birthrate, "we will have to turn out the light."' Italy is dealing with the crisis by paying parents to have children, and Russia has national make-love days where they encourage couples to go home and conjure up a child.
Pope Benedict summed it up best. "Europe is infected by a strange lack of desire for the future. Children, our future, are perceived as a threat to the present."
WHILE THE article blames the falling birthrate on poor government policies that do not enforce maternity leave or subsidize post-natal care, as well as inflexible working conditions for women, a far more important reason is growing Western narcissism. As the West becomes richer, it is also becoming more self-absorbed.
Children consume time and resources both of which young adults would rather focus on themselves. Better to have the freedom, and the cash, to jet to Paris for the weekend than push a kid on some dumb swing. Not that we don't love kids any more. We do, but in an abstract, as-long-as-it-doesn't-interfere-with-our-freedom kind of way. Having them in our thirties, and about one or two max, minimizes the disruption.
Never before in history has a civilization skewed more away from the needs of the community and toward the aggrandizement of the individual. In the US, a warrior class consisting of about two percent of the population fights bad guys in Baghdad and gets blown up in Kabul while the rest of us go on Facebook to update our "friends" as to our emotional state. The regular flow of Facebook status updates telling us that "Jane feels like shopping today" or "Mort misses his ex-girlfriend Linda" feeds the Truman Show mentality of American youth who are taught to believe that the whole world revolves around them. Sacrifice be damned.
The most powerful TV show in modern American history is American Idol. The title is telling. It promises that you too can grow to be a puffed-up celebrity. Meanwhile, when I approached several television executive friends and pitched a family healing show for the brave military families that have to be re-integrated after a hero returns from Iraq, I was told that the military doesn't rate on TV. We simply don't want to be reminded of the selfish lives we are leading by watching the selfless lead theirs.
When you ask twenty-something Westerners to contemplate parenthood - with its diapers, school runs, and estimated $250,000 cost of raising a child to adulthood - they think you fell off the moon. Spend my life focused on someone else, even if it is my own child - have you gone mad?
When you later tell them that the very future of their nation depends on it, they gaze with the same incredulity. The idea of doing almost anything for their country, baby-making included, is utterly foreign to them. Meanwhile, tens of thousands of Jewish singles continue to attend a truly staggering variety of singles events in Manhattan in a never-ending quest to find the best. Do they deserve any less?
BUT LOOK at what is lost when young people delay having children until their mid-thirties and then have one kid. At risk is not only the morbid disintegration of once great nations like Japan and South Korea, both of whom average 1.1 child per family, or half the replacement rate, but something far more fundamental. When children have no siblings, they don't learn to share as much and they don't assume responsibility for taking care of one another. And the condition of being an only child runs the risk of fostering the very narcissism we decry, as the child becomes the epicenter of his parent's life with no other children to distract them.
And is it good for boys to grow up without sisters, given that one of our society's greatest problems is growing male disrespect for women? The boy who feels a filial connection with a girl who is his sister remembers the feeling of how he wants her to be treated when he dates someone else's sister.
I know the complaint that too many kids in a family means that each will get less parental attention. The simple response to this absurd argument is that attention is a poor substitute for real love. Celebrities get attention, while family members get love. A child who is immersed in an environment where he is surrounded by the love of both parents and siblings is a child who never feels alone.
Everywhere you look these days, people are becoming grandparents at about 70. But how many years does that leave a child to grow close to his grandparents, learn from their wisdom, and connect with an older generation? By the time the child is 10, his grandparents are already octogenarians who are often growing more physically dependent and infirm.
The Western cult of narcissism is spoiling our kids, making us neglectful of our elders, spawning an out-of-control material insatiability, and destroying us - quite literally - by having us die off without a replacement generation.
And of all the many remedies available that might free us from our growing self-absorption, having one more baby than we originally planned for our marriages is the best remedy of all.
we had three...I wish we had more as well.....
This received a spontaneous round of applause at the theater where I viewed the movie.
Let us not forget the 50 million American children dead because of abortion! Yea were selfish,I see it all the time through my kids and their friends. And my kids were not brought up that way!!!
Having said that, hubby and I have not done anything to prevent a pregnancy - I am not on birth control and our intimate life is strong - but the fact that we did not have more children wasnt because of some political reason or because we want to indulge our selfish pleasures (I homeschool my only child!). Sometimes, nature does itself in.
**McCain’s suggesting to raise the Dependant tax credit is a step in the right direction.**
Bump that thought!
One of seven children here.
I was just at my dad’s 95th birthday. There were plenty of little children and pregnant moms (one of them was my daughter) to go around.
Catholic bump.
**but Westerners are too soft to promote those other methods.**
Not all of us fall into that one bucket.
Embryonic stem-cell research immoral, unnecessary, bishops say
Catholics should not vote for Obama
Catholic Caucus: It is a sin to vote/support Obama/DNC [abortion]
More Catholics leaning towards Democrats, poll reports (really not Catholics)
The Catholic-Obama Problem (Pope Benedict XVI instructs Catholics about pro-abortion candidates)
Obama's Abortion Bombshell: Unrestricted Abortion....
NARAL Catholics Line Up for Obama
Editorial: Disagreeing with Doug Kmiec One More Time
State-Funded Embryo Research "Makes Taxpayers Complicit in Killing", say Bishops
McCain Meets Privately with Fr. Pavone - Says Constitutional Right to Life Applies to Unborn
Faithful Citizenship: “Catholic Vote” is very sought after
Has Obama dissolved his Catholic advisory council?
Commentary: Faithful Citizenship and the Formed Conscience
Catholic League: Where's Obama's 'Catholic Advisory Council'? [Not to be found!]
Right-wing Christians beginning to lean left (Misleading headline)
US Bishops Urge Voters to Give Priority to Life [Ecumenical]
Corralling the Catholic vote: Political necessity or pipe dream?
DOUG KMIEC: Catholic Reasons for Hope in the General Election
EDITORIAL: Why This Catholic Dreads the Campaign
The Catholic-Obama Problem (Pope Benedict XVI instructs Catholics about pro-abortion candidates)
Thoughts On ‘Roman Catholics For Obama’
How Obama's Catholics Will Dodge the Infanticide Question
Catholic Pro-Life Leader Feuds With Barack Obama's "Catholic" Backers
McCain and the Pope: McCain cannot win in November without the Catholic vote (Reagan re-visited?)
Catholics Cannot Vote for Pols Who Support Abortion, Except for Morally Grave Reasons: KY Bishops
Bingo.
Thank you! :*)
Yes, God has truly blessed us really good!
I’ll be sure to post a little vanity post
when the time comes for my little FReepers-to-be to arrive, which could be any day now!
Thank you! :*) Wish we could have had more as well, but God had other plans for us. Thanks for the prayers, we appreciate them!
Actually, I don’t have problems with people with lots of children - I have admiration. These people are the future of the nation.
Git in Muh belly!
{{{{Hugs}}}}
Prayers that you find success soon if it is meant to be. We’ve dealt with this since we married in ‘94. :*(
By the grace of God we no longer suffer from infertility.
I wish all couples could be successful as well. *sigh*
I always hated getting in arguments with people who considered infertility a blessing, and treatment as the highlight of ‘selfishness’ in a couple—”Why don’t you just adopt? Why do you have to have a biological child, are your genes that much better than anyone else’s?!”
Um, when a couple gets newly married and wants to have a child/ren, is this something you would ask them? Aren’t they
to be considered ‘selfish’ for wanting a biological child of their own?? Oy. :*(
Don’t even get me started about arguing with ‘child-free’ people online. They are like that UK woman who had an abortion and then a complete hysterectomy to ‘save the earth’ from the horrors of more children on the planet—cleaning up the gene pool is more like it to me, thank God!
“If you live near a university, “adopt” graduate students from Muslim countries. You’ll form enduring friendships, and open eyes to the fact Hollywood hides so well — there are Americans who love God and family.”
I am impressed. Your actions should be those of all believers [including me]—develop relationships with those who do not know the Lord.
Just think: one intelligent graduate student visiting you in your home could be to a currently Muslim country what St. Patrick was to Ireland.
I only have one daughter and one granddaughter but they are a handful. Grandkids are best because you can send them home when they get on your nerves. :-)
If we are created in the spiritual image and likeness of G-d, then we should care about the whole world, as he does.
Again, there are other ways besides going to Riyadh. There’s Free Republic and the rest of the Internet, which is seen all over the world. Or we could go to Baghdad.
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