Astonishing story of family with 11 children under age 12 hits the mainstream media

ROCKVILLE, MD, August 16, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) — The astonishing story of a Maryland family with 11 children, ranging in age from 1 to 12, has been featured in a back-to-school piece by the Washington Post Newspaper. The August 10 story chronicles the Kilmer household's day-to-day life and details how they manage to stay lighthearted and have fun while balancing what some might consider an impossibly difficult lifestyle.

In an interview with LifeSiteNews (LSN), Larry Kilmer, a native of Halifax, Nova Scotia, said he viewed speaking with the Post about his family as "an opportunity to show that large families can exist and survive in the Washington area."

"It was a chance for others to see that with some sacrifices it can be done," he said. "Despite the fear that 'you cannot survive,' we wanted to show that it is possible."

The article introduces readers to Larry, a high school teacher, and his wife Jen, a stay-at-home mom, as well as children Christina, Joe, Michelle, Julie, Tommy, Steven, Matthew, John Paul, Larry, Rosemary, and Peter, none of whom are twins or triplets.

The feature chronicles the Kilmer family's daily life, from 5 a.m. to 9 p.m. It notes the many challenges the family faces, but also highlights the many blessings, including the tight friendships shared by the children and the role that the "rock of Faith" plays in the Kilmer household.

"A large family helps to instill in a person many of the strong values and virtues that a society needs in order to survive and continue," Kilmer told LifeSiteNews.com. "In my opinion, the issue of putting others first is at the heart of a large family as you work and exist with other human beings in a close-knit environment."

Commenting on the Washington Post story, Jenn Giroux, founder of Speaking of Motherhood, who is also the mother of a large family, told LSN, "This is an incredible and fair portrayal of this beautiful large family. It is rare to get this perspective from a liberal media outlet."

"Large families have a positive impact on society," Giroux said. "At a time when our national birthrate is dangerously low, large families are producing the future workers that will sustain the elderly in the very near future… They are raising the next generation of Church and political leaders."

"At the heart of large families is the surrender to God’s supreme rights over our lives and an embrace and love of His gift of children," she said. "Unfortunately, this is a foreign and/or unknown concept that has been gradually lost over the last 50 years."

"It requires ‘blind trust’ in God in times of difficulty," Giroux said. "This is a difficult concept for a contracepting society where those today seek to control everything from the day they conceive to sometimes the very sex of their baby."

Dear Tax-chick,

“The sarcasm tag is appropriate, I believe, because many a person appears to believe that what he receives is fully deserved, while everyone else exists simply as a parasite on Himself.”

I think the sarcasm tag is not appropriate, precisely because folks who are retiring now, who were forced by law, at the point of a gun, to pay into Social Security for 40+ years, and now will receive back perhaps as much as they contributed, without much, if anything, by way of a return on investment, have fully earned what they receive.

To say otherwise is unjust.

Folks who take AFDC or food stamps may have earned them, in a sense, if they were previously-high earners who are now down on their luck, and previously paid lots of taxes. But that isn't the point of these programs. The [original] point of these programs is to assist folks who are in temporary need. I hope few would begrudge them the help.

But that subset of folks who take AFDC or food stamps who intended all along to order their lives in such a way as to derive part of their living from programs like this have acted in bad faith, have not earned what they receive, and are acting parasitically.

“Have you ever worked for the government, at any level? Plenty of people are legal employees, but to say that their salaries are ‘earned’ - and particularly that they are ‘deserved’ from the taxpayer - is a gross distortion of reality.”

No, but my father did for many years. He was an engineer for the Dept of the Navy, involved in ship design, ship building, ship logistics, shipboard weapons systems, making sure that ships could withstand the rigors of battle without sinking, without having all their systems become inoperable. Part of his services was during the last years of the Nixon administration, and during the Ford and Carter administrations, when the military was being "hollowed-out."

At times, his actions went counter to the explicit instructions of his superiors - and he risked his job, his livelihood, the well-being of his family to oppose these instructions - who wished to reduce the battleworthiness of our naval ships in order to save budget dollars. These interventions probably saved the lives of sailors under fire in the decades following my father's employment, as they served on the classes of ships on which he worked.

Would you like to tell me he didn't fully earn his wage and benefits? Is that a gross distortion of reality, to say that he fully earned everything he received, including his modest pension on which he still lives?

“The fact that we are even having this discussion is wrong, because the programs, from Social Security to AFDC to the Department of Agriculture to eternity simply should not exist.”

I agree.

“Private pay or private charity is the only way to keep the ‘needy’ from being slaves or pets of the bureau-class,...”

I agree.

And if ifs and nuts were candy and nuts, every day would be Christmas.

That the current order is flawed and faulty doesn't mean that folks who paid Social Security - by force - and now receive it didn't FULLY earn it. It just means that an intrinsically unjust and flawed system was imposed upon them. However, it would be perverse to suggest that folks, after having this stupid system imposed upon them by force of law, are undeserving of what they paid for because the system itself is flawed and intrinsically unjust.

How does the injustice committed against retiring people somehow make them unworthy of what they receive? In what way does the imposition of injustice on retiring workers make them to have less than fully earned what the system gives to them?

This goes for folks, as well, who are employed by the government for jobs that you consider unworthy. Again, they didn't create the system, they didn't make the rules. They're just doing their best to follow the rules IN GOOD FAITH (I explicitly exclude those government workers who coast "on the job," doing little more than taking up space, and letting their co-workers do all the work and bear all the burden. Although I've never worked directly FOR the government, I've worked around and in the government plenty, and have seen that sort of behavior up close. It is, at least in some cases, as bad as folks whose "careers" comprise having babies and drawing welfare.).

Whether you think their work is valuable or appropriate or constitutional, they ARE working for their wage and ARE earning what they make. The imperfections of the system do not vitiate their efforts. Perhaps if our society were organized better, if our government were ordered better, these folks would have found work in jobs that were actually more economically productive or in jobs that were not part of the overall screwed-upness of the present system. But those opportunities don't exist because of the contours of the present system. Folks finding work where they can incur no moral blameworthiness, and cannot be said to fail to earn what they receive because the system is flawed, and better, more productive and appropriate jobs don't exist because of those systemic flaws.

One CAN say that those that order their lives in such a way to obtain something for nothing from the government in terms of benefits originally meant for those who encountered exigent circumstances have acted in bad faith, and have acted in a morally-unworthy way.

“...and to keep the contributors from turning into death-eaters who hate their neighbor simply for existing.”

There is certainly no excuse for this. Even those who act in bad faith should not be hated for it, and certainly, their children bear no guilt for having parents who have acted in a morally-unworthy way.

Yet, it is important to keep distinctions clear. Folks who were forced to pay into the flawed system of Social Security who are now receiving back what they earned have not earned it any less because the system should never have existed in the first place.

Folks who receive AFDC or food stamps because they have fallen on hard times are not parasites, but can't be said to have earned what is given to them, regardless of whether these programs should be government-run or not.

Folks who conceive out of wedlock knowing that they will rely in the long-term on programs like AFDC or food stamps act immorally.

sitetest

Dear wagglebee,

“I've run the numbers versus annual returns in the S&P 500. Assuming a person works for 40 years, they would be far better off putting the money (assuming the employer had to match it) in a private retirement account.”

That is certainly true, absolutely correct, and on a conservative website, I hope entirely uncontroversial.

It would have been far better never to have constructed Social Security as it is set up, and, at most, to have forced workers to lay away a part of their wage in private retirement accounts, invested in private equities, bonds, etc.

But that merely accentuates the injustice done against workers, which hardly REDUCES their moral claim to what they receive through Social Security as being their just due, FULLY EARNED by them.

That's like saying the slave doesn't truly, fully earn or deserve his daily bread because, after all, the system of chattel slavery is inherently immoral. Say what??

As to abortion, etc., to me, that's a side issue (albeit one, in itself, of a level of importance that exceeds this issue by a couple of orders of magnitude) in terms of the fundamental justice or injustice of the Social Security system as established.

sitetest

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