Lauren Sandler, a proponent of having one child, writes a predictable piece in a predictable news magazine, Time, about he joys of stopping at one child.
Having raised three children I can say that for my family the 234,900 per child figure was way off base, unless one adds into the mix the lost funds of my wife not having a job during much of the time that the kids were growing up. Of course that is the wrong way to look at it. My wife and I did not get married in order to see how much stuff we could accumulate during our lives. We got married because we loved each other and hoped that our love would be blessed with children. My wife worked harder than I had to in our efforts to raise our kids, and I often told her that she had the important job in our house and I worked merely to facilitate her efforts for the kids.
In this vale of tears we have no guarantees as to our economic success, no guarantees as to how many, if any, kids we will be blessed with and no guarantees as to how they will turn out. Every minute of our lives we are working without a net. I often plan and calculate various aspects of my life to ensure the best outcome that I can, but I realize that the most important parts of my life are often completely out of my control. It takes quite a bit of faith to endure the “slings and arrows of outrageous fortune” that come our way in this world and to realize that we always and everywhere are dependent upon the mercy of God to see us through. Modern men and women mostly do not accept this. They think that they can eliminate risk and turn our journeys through this life into a cocoon where we will have endless fun, accumulate lots of material items and never hear of such things as pain and sacrifice. Such is not, and never will be, our mortal lives.
A much more accurate reflection of our lives is contained in the closing prayer of the Rosary:
HAIL, HOLY QUEEN, Mother of Mercy, our life, our sweetness and our hope! To thee do we cry, poor banished children of Eve; to thee do we send up our sighs, mourning and weeping in this vale of tears. Turn then, most gracious advocate, thine eyes of mercy toward us, and after this our exile, show unto us the blessed fruit of thy womb, Jesus. O clement, O loving, O sweet Virgin Mary!
Life is not for the timid and it has never been a matter of calculation. It is for the bold and the faithful and those who realize that love is our purpose in this life, and that will never be reduced to a matter of weighing costs and benefits.
From a practical viewpoint, having one child by choice is a bit daft. We become a burden as we age. That is the reality and the more adults to share that burden, the better.
My maternal grandfather died in 1954, when my mother was seven. Worse yet, he was the only child to survive to adulthood, as was his mother and father. My mother was an only child of an only child, of an only child.
Mom describes her childhood as “lonely,” surrounded by aging and distant relatives. She cared for my grandmother for many years, a draining task for single children.
We may not need lots of kids to work the farm anymore but they are still the surest security we will have in old age.
[…] Illusion of Security – Donald McClarey, T.A.C. […]
An article in The Economist reported the demographic crisis in the West.
In the European community there is 1.4 fertility rate — that means that in five years deaths will outnumber births. The most prosperous areas have fewer children. The fertility rate in Italy and Spain is 1.2, that translates into a population in twenty years to half of what it is today.
The typical citizen will have no brothers and no sisters, no cousins, no aunts and uncles. The Economist continued that the situation in the US is better because Americans are more devout — we are churchgoers and churchgoers get married and have families.
One of the reasons the Church defends marriage in the face of divorce, cohabitation and redefinition of marriage is that marriage and family are the Sanctuary of Life and when that sanctuary is violated, life liberty and the pursuit of happiness, real happiness, society itself are at risk.
Church is hated by liberals and democrats because it is the one bastion against their cult of death.
As western populations age, we will see the generation that aborted their children euthanized by the survivors.
Do the math: 4 grandparents -> 2 parents -> 1 child
Mr. Shaw,
Your second to last paragraph is brilliant. I will have to borrow it in argument.
In addition to the other good comments; who will the Dems tax if there are no children? Or, “Jordan, te presento a Juan Carlos.”
We can be sure that the Moslems are not worrying about the cost of raising up a large family.
We will pay for this selfishness, and not just by the lost productivity of millions unborn.
A weighted average of the total fertility rates in the Near East and North Africa places it at around 2.66 births per mother per lifetime (and the most recent measure for Israel is 3.0). A weighted average for the Central Asian states and Pakistan is around 3.5, and (bar Afghanistan) rates in these countries went into long-term decline around 1985). The 2011 rate for the U.S. was 1.89, but the rate has been above 2.0 for most years since 1990.
“and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our posterity.” One of the purposes of our Constitution.” “And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.” from The Declaration of Independence. “A nation divided against itself shall not stand.”
The typical citizen will have no brothers and no sisters, no cousins, no aunts and uncles.
And I was feeling lonely because my kids only have two first cousins once removed, and three first cousins twice removed that we actually get to see….
Today’s (June 13, 2013) Wall Street Journal reports, on page A8, that 12,419 more white, non-Hispanic Americans died than were born in the year ended June 2012. In 2009, there were about 200,000 more births than deaths among that demographic group.
I hate those child cost statistics. They ignore the benefits of raising children and reduce it to how many fewer toys a person can buy. A child may cost money in direct expenses and lost earnings, but each of those children will provide a benefit to society when grown. They will add to GDP when they enter the workforce, and the amount they produce will far outweigh what they cost. Children are an investment who will yield a profit. The greatest predictor of wealth for a society is the level of investment compared to consumption.
Rather than count the cost of raising children, we should count the cost to society of those who remain childless by choice so that they can spend everything on themselves. Children are not leeches. Selfish people are leeches. I say we ban contraception and require everyone to have at least five children! That will pull our economy out of its current long term prospects for insolvency.
“I say we ban contraception and require everyone to have at least five children”
Believe it or not, that WAS actually the law at one time in one country…. Ceaucescu’s Romania. The motivation there was to build up the country’s military and it’s workforce. Unfortunately, it was also a big part of the reason there were so many Romanian orphans after their revolution.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m NOT saying that we shouldn’t be more supportive of largers families, or that there are not real dangers to a declining birthrate or to a critical mass of adults in society choosing to have only one child or none at all. And I agree that the “cost of raising children” articles are extremely misleading.
That said, the Ceaucescu five-child policy was, in some ways, comparable to the Chinese one-child policy in that it treated people as mere cogs in an economic and military machine, and was instituted by a repressive Communist regime. I doubt very much that it was motivated by reverence for human life or for the integrity of the family.
It’s one thing to try to make life easier for those who choose to raise more children via tax breaks, etc.; it’s another thing entirely to establish a de jure or de facto maximum or minimum number of children that everyone “should” have and ostracize or punish those who violate the “norm.” Also, don’t forget that there are many people out there (like me) who have only 1 child, or none at all, because God for whatever reason saw fit not to give them any more. I sure do wish I had more siblings and that my daughter had some but it just didn’t happen and it’s too late to do anything about that now.
“12,419 more white, non-Hispanic Americans died than were born in the year ended June 2012.”
Could that be as much attributable to the start of the dying off of the Baby Boom generation (the oldest of whom are now 66-67 years old; I know several people who died of cancer or other conditions at that age) as to a decline in births?
I strongly disagree with the idea that the State should encourage childbearing because I see nothing to suggest that such a policy would encourage those who should have more kids to have them.
The State is not advantaged by single-parent households. Extraordinary stories of great single-parenting are exactly the, extraordinary. Parenting is hard work; hard enough for two parents and damned near impossible for one. (why anyone in command of their wits would choose to be a single-parent is beyond me.)
A policy like you suggest would add to kids from single parent homes without adding kids to two parent homes. We did that before if you recall. It was the effect, if not the stated purpose, of American welfare laws before Welfare Reform.
Furthermore, the parents that I know with only one or two kids didn’t limit their procreation because they couldn’t affor more kids. They did so because their values include exptic vacations, new cars before the old is worn out, expensive private schools, and “time for us.”
Parents of many kids, as I gather from your other writings, understand parenting to be full of sacrifice. Those with one or two kids want the benefits of kids without those sacrifices. (Understanding of course that this is a broad generalization.)
It wasn’t a serious suggestion. I was deliberately being over the top with the suggestion that the state require five children from each couple. I had no idea that Romania had that policy. Wow! I just did a little quick reading on it. The policy applied to single was well as married. Both single men and women who didn’t have any children by age twenty five were taxed punitively. Yeah, that’s not the Catholic model. Children are the product of love, not social engineering.