Married (with a lot) of Children

Crisis Magazine ^ | February 2003 | Tom Hoopes

[ConservativeStLouisGuy]

Just a quick heads-up on the sort of discrimination that Catholics with large families face these days. By the way, the (Canon Lawyer) Ed Peters mentioned in the (above) article is my brother-in-law. Way to go, Ed!!!

- "ConservativeStLouisGuy" (Tom) to be married in 2-1/2 short months to a wonderful Catholic woman who is also open to however many wonderful children God sends our way!

[Maximilian]

Big Catholic family bump!

Normally I wouldn't want to circulate anything from Crisis, but this is a good article. It shows the ways that the Church has become the biggest obstacle to the faithful that want to practice what is preached. So many Catholics use birth control in order to afford Catholic schools. And they get no support whatsoever from their parish. Quite the contrary -- Catholics who accept children as blessings from God are actively discouraged from being "extreme."

The Bascoms, for example, converted to Catholicism specifically because of the birth control issue. Then when they entered the Catholic Church they discovered that they could not afford Catholic schools, that they were given no encouragement from their parish, and that they were considered way out of touch with the "post Vatican II" Church.

[nina0113]

I live in Fredericksburg & subscribe to the FreeSlant-Star. Amrhine's column was foul, & generated many many letters to the paper. In a twist of irony, another family named Kelly lost a child at the same time - they let their non-swimming son play at the swimming hole unsupervised after dark on a church picnic. Amrhine didn't have any comment on THAT negligence, however.

[Domestic Church]

"Good parents these days don't have 13 kids"

What an evil thing to say!!!!!

[Notwithstanding]

I read this last week in the paper copy at my school's library (Ave Maria School of Law subscribes to some great Catholic and conservative periodicals) and recommended it to my friends with large families.

Having a large family is such an amazing gift on so many levels that it is hard to describe to anyone who is not part of one. Every day I see God catechizing me by the exprience.

[Dajjal]

“I have been dismayed at the increasing tendency of Catholic schools, private for the most part, to not offer multi-child discounts for families with many children,” said Hasson, an author and frequent speaker on homeschooling. “I know of situations where couples are advised by priests or their pastors not to have more children, just so they can afford the Catholic school.”

In such circumstances, large families naturally congregate into clusters of homeschooling families. They form their own organizations and create their own systems of support apart from the parish community. If the homeschoolers feel wronged by the Church community, or even if they just feel unwelcomed (they often feel both), then the character of the homeschool community won’t only be a parallel Catholic universe; it will be an antagonistic one.

The irony of the situation isn’t lost on large fami­lies. They’re following the Church’s teaching and sacri­­fi­c­ing to do so. They don’t ne­ces­sarily ex­pect an award from the Church—but they don’t want to be treat­ed like they’re from Mars ei­ther.

Families complain about pews that make it impossible for children to sit still, impossible CCD schedules for large families, scowling homilists, in-con­ve­nient crying rooms, and tiny, hidden bathrooms.

The Bascoms used to be Evangelical Christians. They are Catholic now. Were the Evangelicals more open to their children? In some ways, yes. “The [Protestant] church had lots of programs for kids,” Paul Bascom said. In other ways, not at all: “Doctrinally, contraception and even abortion were an option.”

[PayNoAttentionManBehindCurtain]

Who ever wrote this article sounds like he/she has a wonderful family, and my hat is off to them. I am also sure there is lots of large wonderful families in this world, no doubt. The incident of the family related in the story could just as easily happen to a small size family, things sometimes just happen, that is just life.

But reality is there are bad sides to having a large family and bad sides to having a small family. Not all large families are wonderful, not all small families are wonderful. To say there is discrimination against large families is silly. They are not the norm now a days, so they will probably get remarks made about them. But guess what. I went to a catholic school all my life, I can't think of one family that attended the schools I went too that didn't have less then 5 kids, mostly 6-7. I have one brother. We were the minority. We had remarks made about what is it like to be in such a small family, remarks were made about my mother and father not having more chldren. I cannot ever remember thinking of it as discrimination.

IMO, people with that mind set are always going to be looking for discrimination, rather then realizeing that anything against the norm, even when not wrong, is going to have comments made about it. That does not mean discrimination. I know a girl whose young child got out of the house, she had two kids, ran into the same problems as the people in the story. As I said before, sometimes things happen, that's life deal with it fair or not fair.

Becky

[nickcarraway]

I agree with you-except as to the issue of Catholics using borth control to afford Catholic schools. This is as bogus as an excuse as those who have fewer kids to buy another Mercedes. The price of Catholic schools is not the issue! Plenty of parochial schools are affordable, and families that want to find a way to follow their priorities.

[RightOnline]

"It' what Mary Hasson, a mother of seven, calls the "Neanderthal" syndrome. "If you have many children, then it's assumed you must be a Neanderthal in every way," she said. "The dad must dominate the wife, beat the children, be morally rigid and repressive. The poor wife must be a doormat with low self-esteem, a flabby figure, frumpy clothes, and no ambition." This ready-made and mostly unconscious image affects the way people see large families."

So true. So many things in this piece hit close to home.

We're not Catholic (we're evangelical Christians), but we have seven children and we homeschool. The Lovely Wife certainly isn't some flabby-figured doormat (she's 6', thin, and drop-dead gorgeous) and I don't beat my kids nor am I "repressive".......but she's right; this IS the image many seem to have of large families.

Until they actually meet our family, we've experienced similar things.

Our children are well-loved, well cared for, well dressed, and well educated. We are what is commonly referred to as an 'upper middle class' family that just happens to be large. We didn't have this many kids for the hell of it. We love 'em........each and every one of them. I'm 47, wife is 45, and our kids range from 23 to 16 months.

It does get old, as well, watching people's jaws drop when they find out how many kids you have. "Know what causes that?" and all the other silly nonsense.

Wanna know the real truth? More often than not, when we get to know folks, they confide that they would LOVE to have had more kids. Well, we were willing to do without a bunch of things and "toys" in order to do this. Not many are so willing to do without any more, it seems.

[Scupoli]

Many congratulations and best wishes to you.

[Domestic Church]

Our parish school does offer an increasing discount for more than one child and after 3 the tuition for the rest is free. This is how it should be.

We still do home educate.

[PayNoAttentionManBehindCurtain]

Well, we were willing to do without a bunch of things and "toys" in order to do this. Not many are so willing to do without any more, it seems.

100% right:) It is so hard to convince people that what parents and kids give up is more then compensated for when you do what it takes today to have a close family. We only have two children, they are grown now, we homeschooled before homeschooling was cool:), but it has given us blessings that far out weigh the questions, remarks etc. that came our way over our life style.

Becky

[PayNoAttentionManBehindCurtain]

Not all, but the childern form alot of the large families that attended the schools I went to, that I have kept up with say the same things. The older ones don't want alot if any kids, because they say they are burnt out taking care of little ones, the younger ones are not close to the older ones because they resent having been bossed around so much by them. As I said before, big can be good, it can be bad, small can be good, it can be bad.I don't think family size is the real issue, it's the excuse.

Becky

[Utah Girl]

I'm one of ten children. We'd go out as a family, and my dad would get the comments "Are those ALL your children???" I think no matter how many children you have it is the wrong number. My best friend's husband was in the army, they have five children. When they were in Germany, it was a huge number of children, when they came home to Utah, it wasn't enough. But it was the right number of children for them.

[nina0113]

Seventeen does sound like a lot. Since Steve & I don't expect to have any bio's, it looks like a question of how many we can afford to adopt. I think four is an absolute minimum, and we're leaning towards eight. Since we're planning to get them through indirect adoption (foster care) I guess we'll stop whenever we think it's enough.

[Land of the Irish]

I come from a large Catholic family. The parochial school we attended would only charge tuition for the two eldest children in school. I don't hear of this policy anymore.

[Land of the Irish]

Congratulations. You and your fiancé sound like you'll be great parents. Best wishes.

[ninenot]

Pinging Blackie because he's from Ct., and may appreciate the story a bit more.

We, too, have been asked the snide questions--my response is now (and I don't really care...) "Yes, all nine are ours. That's because we don't worry about who will be our spouse in two years..."