I usually want to respond with "with kids like yours, I can understand why you feel that way".
Sopater Family
Posted on 09/19/2008 6:51:50 AM PDT by Sopater
These days, the issue of family size can be controversial - just ask any couple with several children. Large families are often seen as oddities and treated as an imposition. Why would anyone willingly have so many kids? Don't they know about birth control?
Few comments reveal as much about our times as these. Those with even the slightest historical awareness would know that large families were the norm throughout human history, and for good reason. In the Bible, large families are seen as a sign of God's blessing and children are celebrated as God's gifts. Only with the development of modern birth control and the transformations of values and worldviews that followed, does any other view of large families make sense.
The pill changed everything. In addition, concerns about human overpopulation and an ecological crisis led some to see large families as expensive and inefficient hobbies, or worse. Social planners held out the example of the two-child family, and some ideologues wanted to define "normal" as one child per couple. By the early twenty-first century, reproduction rates were falling around the world. Some European nations were facing a demographic crisis of low birthrates and not a single major European nation was reproducing at even the replacement rate.
The same would be true of America, were it not for the higher reproduction rates found among recent immigrants.
Now, within the span of just a few months, two major figures have called for putting a stop to large families - and at least one has suggested making large families illegal.
One of those calling for an end to large families is the Duke of Edinburgh, Britain's Prince Philip. In an interview broadcast on British television this past spring, the husband of Queen Elizabeth II spoke his mind on a number of issues, including family size.
As The Times [London] reports, "Prince Philip emerges in a television interview this week as the model royal 'eco-warrior' who believes overpopulation has contributed to the pressures on the world and that anyone who believes in God should go green.
"The duke hints that curbing family sizes may be the best means of keeping the soaring cost of staple food products, such as bread and rice, in check."
He continued by arguing that rising food prices should be blamed on large families. "Everyone thinks it's to do with not enough food, but it's really that demand is too great - too many people," the duke asserted. "Basically, it's a little embarrassing for everybody. No one quite knows how to handle it. Nobody wants their family life to be interfered with by the government."
Just taking that argument at face value, the duke states that the problem is not that there is not enough food, but that there are "too many people." Speaking as delicately as those words allow, that argument is stunningly stupid. If food was in abundance, would the duke argue that people are too few? How does he arrive at the "right" number of people?
Of course, Prince Philip and his wife, the Queen, have four (amazingly maladjusted) children. This is far above the level Prince Philip wants others to have. Perhaps there is a Windsor dynasty exception to his proposal.
The interview was conducted by Sir Trevor McDonald, who evidently saw the duke's comments as rather ... surprising. Nevertheless, as Sir Trevor explained of the duke, "If he launches into a flow, it is not proper to interrupt."
In The Rise and Fall of the House of Windsor, A. N. Wilson describes the awkwardness British citizens feel when Prince Philip and his eldest son, the Prince of Wales, speak in public. Wilson writes of the sense that there is "something extremely embarrassing about men of clear intellectual limitations attempting to form sentences which would impress the average newspaper reader."
Prince Philip is famous as the consort to the reigning British monarch, Elizabeth II. He and his children have done much to bring that royal house into disrepute. Prince Philip has sought to burnish his reputation by taking on ecological issues as a personal cause. This has been hard for the duke to pull off, given his penchant for pheasant shooting and fox hunting. As Kermit the Frog might advise the duke, "It isn't easy being green."
The other figure to warn against large families in recent days is Paul Ehrlich, author of the scaremongering 1968 bestseller, The Population Bomb. The on-line magazine Salon recently interviewed Ehrlich, along with several others.
In the Salon interview, Ehrlich suggested that every couple "should have slightly fewer than two children." Then he said this:
"I believe it is immoral and should be illegal for people to have very large numbers of children because they are then co-opting for themselves and their children resources that should be spread elsewhere in the world. You only get a chance to get your fair share."
Look closely at those words. Ehrlich, a professor at Stanford University argues that "it is immoral and should be illegal" for couples to have "very large numbers of children." Immoral? Should be illegal?
Ehrlich even finds good things to say about totalitarian China's "one child only" policy. "The Chinese government, by the way, is the only government that has connected population numbers to global warming, and pointed out how much they have saved in the way of CO2 emissions by their family-planning policy," Ehrlich explained.
Later, Ehrlich allowed that perhaps a change in tax policy would suffice. "You could simply raise the taxes very high on people who have beyond two children."
The most amazing thing about this interview is that anyone would take Paul Ehrlich seriously - but the ideological Left still does. Ehrlich has been spectacularly wrong time and time again. In the 1960s, he predicted mass starvation around the world that would threaten the existence of humanity. It didn't happen. In the 1970s, he warned that within the next decade all major species in the oceans would be dead. Didn't happen. He warned that great smog attacks in New York City would kill hundreds of thousands in the city in 1973. Didn't happen. He once predicted that there was a good chance that London would not even exist in the year 2000. We can assume that the interview with Prince Philip is a sign that London still exists.
He has been wrong again, and again, and again. He is still taken seriously by many on the Left because he tells them what they want to hear - and they want to hear that big families are a threat to humanity.
These two interviews, coming to public attention within a few months of each other, are indications of the worldview clash all around us. The response to large families with several children is now like a litmus test that reveals what we really think about the family, about children, and about humanity. Remember that the next time you see that multiple passenger van pull up in the church parking lot. Do you smile?
...or, "Mr. Erlich, I sincerely wish your parents had believed the way you do."
High level perspective on large families:
The parents tend to “trust God” more and accept the children as blessings instead of burdens.
Parents “get good at it” as they have more kids. The youngest benefit from having experienced parents. The oldest benefit from seeing the good example of their parents and helping with the younger ones.
Children teach us parents about our relationship with our Father - the rebellion, the disobedience, the unconditional love that we feel for them, etc.
Now, on the flip side, Who benefits from discouraging large families?
Oh, and I love the fact that the church I go to is 90% homeschoolers with families of 6+ children each, some with 10.
In your face, Satan.
In a socialist system blessings are curses and visa versa.
To the extent social pressure is exerted on you to limit your family sign, that is the extent we have gone down that road.
Cute Kids BTW. (Look just like their parents)
“Go forth and multiply” was the first commandment we were given. As an “ardent and practicing Catholic” (like our esteemed House Speaker), I truly believe that God wants us to have large families. They are a real source of joy.
The theories promulgated in the 1960s and 1970s that we would run out of room or food are just plain wrong.
sign = size.
I am the seventh child of a seventh child. In yer face, Ehrlich!
They hate large families who do not need government assistance. Fewer customers and less demand for government checks means less political support for such programs.
It’s not just “social pressure”, it’s the force of government.
Used to be that you could pile six kids in the back of a station wagon and get where you needed to go.
First, make the station wagon illegal with legislation (CAFE).
Next, make sure that kids take up more room than necessary by requiring car seats. Yes, they are marginally safer than not having them, but not statistically significant to the safety factor of simply getting them out of the front seat.
Now, make an energy policy that limits the availability and increases the price of gasoline so that a big vehicle is unaffordable.
Voila! Legislate smaller families.
I was in Trader Joe’s (don’t judge, they have healthier, better food and it’s cheaper!) with my four kids a year or two again and my now four year old was singing a song about her daddy. A (large) woman walked by with her boyfriend/husband walking a few feet behind her and loudly proclaimed, “She should have had her tubes tied!” I turned around and asked her, “Excuse me?” She then said she wasn’t talking to me, and I replied that she was talking loud enough than I was meant to hear her. I yelled as she waddled away, “Maybe if you’d diet, you wouldn’t be so fat!” I usually don’t insult peoples’ weight but grrrr...which of my kids was she saying shouldn’t have been born?
Besides, out of my grandma’s five grandchildren, I am the only one who has children so far (but the rest don’t appear that interested), so I figure I’m just keeping the family alive!
Large families offend the feminists, the eugenics-abortion lovers on the left as well as the envirowhackos.
The left is going to kill themselves off in this country given their anti-child, anti-family views. That is why they are so hell bent on indoctrinating children in public schools ASAP and, in general, trying to insert the state between parents and their children as much as possible.
And isn’t there something a little racist about white liberals decrying large families, especially considering that some of the racial minority groups they obstensibly support tend to have large families?
I know, I know, they care while mean old nasty conservatives don’t.
amen! and btw, why would I listen to some inbred Brits about what’s right and whats not?
BTW... your “In your face, Satan”.... best line EVER.
Large families, bump
My Wife & I would have liked to have a large family, but we started ours late in life. We have a beautiful daughter, and a great son [who has Down Symdrone] and did not want to have any more with even more special needs. We are Blessed to have Lance, but he is more than a handful even with Mom,Dad [me] & big Sister helping him. KathyinAlaska, and Queenkathy, know about Lance a lot.
> One of those calling for an end to large families is the Duke of Edinburgh, Britain’s Prince Philip. In an interview broadcast on British television this past spring, the husband of Queen Elizabeth II spoke his mind on a number of issues, including family size.
A in-bred Greek telling the proud British people about birth control? Crikey, it is to laugh!
Funny, the want to stop overpopulation in America BUILD A FENCE !
In Europe, it would be the Moose-limbs. Someday they will own the place, thanks to the eco-leftist self-centered Eurotrash.
Good point.
I am the seventh child of a seventh child. In yer face, Ehrlich!
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