A Quiver Full

Diane sent me a Newsweek article about a protestant movement to raise large families. What has been traditionally a catholic phenomenon seems to be catching on in protestant circles. That is welcome news indeed.

More interesting than the article, were the readers’ responses. Some people were vehemently opposed to large families. They considered it an affront to the gospel to have lots of kids. Here is one of the more colorful comments:

This movement is WHOLLY UN-CHRISTIAN... IT IS frought [sic] with greed, selfishness and vanity…to selfishly ignore LIVING, STARVING children at the expense of your own genetic seed is SELFISH and flies in the face of everything JESUS CHRIST, LORD AND SAVIOR TAUGHT US.

I didn’t get his point until I read Wendy King’s comment:

[My] major concern about large families of eight or more children is the long-term impact of so many children on our planet's resources. One reason men and women use birth control is to ensure that they will have only as many children as they can comfortably raise on their income, without taxing their city's financial resources.

Now it makes sense. They have bought the overpopulation myth hook line and sinker. I’ll save debunking that myth to the experts. For now, let me share a little about my family.

My father has nine brothers and sisters. I have twenty-three (give or take) first cousins and twice as many second cousins. Family reunions are a blast. We need a family newspaper just to keep up with everyone.

My grandparents emigrated from Mexico in the 1930’s. They worked any jobs they could find to put food on the table. My grandmother worked all day as a seamstress most of her life while my great grandmother raised the kids. My grandfather worked many jobs, which included opening a grocery store. In today’s world they would have qualified for welfare, but they never took a government handout.

They taught their ten children a strong work-ethic, a patriotic spirit and good catholic values. Those kids grew up to be lawyers, college professors, bankers, businessmen, school teachers, psychologists, and, last but certainly not least, home-makers. All four of the boys served this country in the military. Not one of them is on welfare.

To those people who think it is irresponsible to have large families. Answer me this. Which of my grandparents’ children do you think should have been “contracepted” out of existence: the lawyer who spent 17 years in the military and served as an ambassador; the IBM executive who pioneered digital music; the college professor who teaches business law to future generations; the high school teacher who has two children serving in the military; or the house wife who raised an investment banker, a lawyer and a civil engineer? Had none of them been born, my grandparents would have had a much more “responsibly-sized” family, and they would have been impoverished because of it.