And Baby Makes How Many?

This is a surprisingly quasi-balanced article from the New York Times on larger families and the struggles of prejudice they face. The author, Kate Zernike, like any good writer, hits pros and cons, works in the controversial buzz stories, like unwed and unemployed Nadya Suleman, the new octuplet mother (I’m not even going to begin my critique here), or British environazi Jonathon Porritt‘s orwelian declaration that there should be a two-child limit imposed on families to save the environment, and anything contrary would be “irresponsible.” Don’t forget the mandatory Angelina Jolie brood mention.

She talks about how larger families don’t seem to be inherently immoral as Porritt suggest, but states, “If large families are the stuff of spectacle, it is partly because they have become rarer.”

I really like that Zernike delves into this topic with a sympathetic ear and a balanced pen, but the question she doesn’t ask–or at least doesn’t publish–in depth is why large families are rarer. Sure, she mentions the dawn of contraception and its widespread use, but she doesn’t get to the burning question at hand: why do large families forgo contraception, and what are the results, and the differences between them and the “average” family? A great follow up to this article would be a piece on the contra-contraception movement, which is made up of a diversity of advocates, large families and small.

Zernike does go the extra mile to show that these families are regular, intelligent people, and I like that.  She also shows their sense of humor in the face of intrusive and rude comments about their family size, relaying any number of sassy replies.

Among her interviewees is Leslie Fields, author of “The Case for Kids,” whose brave and forthright testimony in Christianity Today drew all sorts of angry letters. (Thank you Lambeth ’30 for planting those seeds.) Fields rightly notes that you can’t even enter into debate with people who are that angry and irrational (as we found out from the childfree comment-and-crucify session we had last year and the year before).

Some of my favorite quotes:
“How can you afford so many? ‘Lifestyles are expensive, not kids.’ ”

“‘Children are a kind of wealth,’ Mrs. Curtis said. ‘Just not the kind of wealth our society tends to focus on.’”