Family: What are Children For?

The Case For Kids
by Leslie Leyland Fields

Since 1975, Brazil's birth rate has dropped by nearly half, to 2.27 children per woman. This comes not as the result of a national family planning campaign—Brazil has never implemented such a program. Rather, the change in attitudes and family size has been correlated with the advent of television, and more specifically with the advent of telenovelas, Brazilian soap operas. Today, the size of a woman's family can be strongly predicted by the number of hours she spends watching telenovelas, writes Philip Longman in his May 31, 2004, article in the New Statesman entitled "Even in Africa, the World's Running out of Children."

These daytime shows, much like our own, portray a life of wealth and ease. "The men are dashing, lustful, power-hungry, and unattached," Longman writes. "The women are lithesome, manipulative, independent, and in control of their own bodies. The few who have young children delegate their care to nannies."

American and European media exports communicate the same message: People with wealth, education, and independence have few, if any, children. The good life is not defined by community or family but by individualism, the pursuit of "unfettered time," and the freedoms of self-fulfillment and self-actualization. All of which requires money. None of which translates into changing diapers, scrubbing food flung by a toddler off the kitchen floor, working an extra job to pay for your son's tuition, driving a used minivan, or sacrificing your own needs to help provide for others.

"People with wealth, education, and independence have few, if any, children. The good life is not defined by community or family but by individualism, the pursuit of "unfettered time," and the freedoms of self-fulfillment and self-actualization."

The correlation between numbers of children and the accumulation of wealth has been noted for decades. Many scholars and demographers assume a "wealth flows" model that explains large families and high fertility rates throughout much of human history as the result of the economic benefit children bring to their parents' lives. By this theory, children are seen as resources who garner wealth and provision for their aging parents. This cost-benefit analysis explains the American family's low fertility rate today, just barely clearing the replacement level and significantly below earlier levels. It no longer makes economic sense to have a large family.

In fact, it no longer makes economic sense to have a child at all. Books, articles, and internet calculators coolly estimate the financial liability of raising a child to adulthood and arrive at staggering figures, ranging from $700,000 to $1.5 million per child. By these calculations, Americans should stop having children altogether.

Yet even though our birth rate is historically low, the U.S. still has the highest birth rate of all industrialized countries. "In short, there is no explanation for why Americans still want children," say the authors of "Why Do Americans Want Children?" (Population Council). The authors of the study conclude that "while the economic value of children to their families has disappeared, their value as a social resource has persisted. Having children is an important way in which people create social capital for themselves." Social capital is described as establishing new relationships between family members.

"Yet even though our birth rate is historically low, the U.S. still has the highest birth rate of all industrialized countries."

Few parents are likely to describe their children as "social capital," the term again revealing a sense of investment and expenditure. The ancients did not describe their children so. The Psalmist proclaimed, "Happy is the man whose quiver is full [of children]," and "Children are a gift from the Lord." The early Egyptians valued children and considered them a blessing. They were called "the staff of old age," and families commonly had four to six children, even as many as six to ten. Hispanic culture has traditionally placed utmost value on children. Hispanic writer and poet Rebecca M. Cuevas De Caissie, who is also a mother of five, writes, "Children are not looked upon as a burden that needs thinking and sacrifice to have. They are looked upon as a blessing and as something to be sought after and cherished."

The question—What are children for?—may be best answered personally, as it is lived out in my own family, not anyone else's. I must begin with an essential piece of information: Most families are larger than intended. The National Institutes of Health says that 60 percent of pregnancies in the U.S. are "mistimed, unplanned, or unwanted altogether." It was not my plan to have six children—it was God's. Though the last pregnancies were difficult, life was the only possible choice. What else could I say but, like Mary, Yes, I am your servant.

What happens in larger families? Children are more tolerant. They learn that they are one part of a whole much larger than themselves and that the common good usually takes precedence over their particular desires. They also discover the principle of scarcity; they learn to conserve. Their clothes are on loan and passed on to others when they are done. They have to share their toys. They cannot take more food than they can eat, or someone else will not have enough. They can't take long, hot showers, or someone else gets a cold shower. They learn that their singular behavior affects multiple people. They are not the center of the universe.

"Most families are larger than intended. The National Institutes of Health says that 60 percent of pregnancies in the U.S. are 'mistimed, unplanned, or unwanted altogether.'"

Children with multiple siblings are also more accepting. They practice living with a variety of temperaments, quirks, and ages. Older children cannot stay safely within their own peer group. They learn to hold babies, sing lullabies, and change diapers. A teenager cannot retreat, morose, into his bedroom every afternoon to listen to his music—his 3-year-old brother will jump on his back and demand a gallop around the room. A 16-year-old girl will trudge through the door from school, worry on her face, to be greeted by a flying 18-month-old jumping into her arms.

Children from larger families have to work together. Every morning, the grump, the overachiever, the early riser, the dreamer, the snuggler, and the toddler must negotiate their separate concerns toward a single goal: to get out the door and to their respective schools on time. In summer, for a family with a commercial fishing operation like ours, the goal is to pick all of the fish from all of the fishing nets before the next meal. The children have to help each other. They have to work together in storms on the ocean…

"A 16-year-old girl will trudge through the door from school, worry on her face, to be greeted by a flying 18-month-old jumping into her arms."

Longing for Sacrifice

For all this, I am not a proselytizer for large families. I do not encourage couples to have more children than they want. I tell younger women the truth: If you aspire to be a mother, you aspire to a job without pay that is harder than any job you'll be paid for. It's a job with no time off, only time away. I tell them they should not have children to derive anything from them—not love or joy or fun or a legacy. It is possible that any or all of these may come, but there will be long stretches when little fulfillment is in sight.

So why do we have children at all? So much is against the whole enterprise. Children cost too much money. They cost too much of ourselves. Children undo us. They show us how much and how little we're made of. They come, it often seems, only to break our hearts. And we let them. We invite it all. We admit perfect strangers through our doors and decide before we even know who they are to love them wildly, without condition, for as long as we live.

"I tell them they should not have children to derive anything from them—not love or joy or fun or a legacy. It is possible that any or all of these may come, but there will be long stretches when little fulfillment is in sight."

How do we account for this behavior? In the end, it is possible that our desire for children is a longing not to benefit ourselves, but to sacrifice ourselves; not to replicate ourselves, but to escape ourselves. For me, this longing hit at 28, while I was tunneling into the heart of the Congo on the back of an expedition truck. Suddenly, I was unutterably weary with my own small life and my endless requirements for fulfillment. I wanted the freedom to give my life away. I wanted an intimate, lifelong, indissoluble relationship with others, the kind of life that simultaneously sucks you dry and sustains you. I guessed that it would take nothing less than an infant to pry open my death-grip on self-determination. I did not know when we started our family a few years later that each birth would deliver into my arms an immeasurable weight of vulnerability and terror, but I guessed that parenting would bring a profligate, extravagant, others-centered life. As it has. But there has been a kind of death involved, make no mistake. "Unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed," Jesus taught. "But if it dies, it produces many seeds." My ambitious dying life is far from over.

But fewer couples worldwide choose this kind of life. What do we miss without children? What does the world miss with fewer children?...

This excerpt is quoted from “The Case For Kids: A Defense of the Large Family By a ‘Six-Time Breeder’” by Leslie Leyland Fields. Read this thought-provoking article published by Christianity Today in its entirety here.

"In the end, it is possible that our desire for children is a longing not to benefit ourselves, but to sacrifice ourselves; not to replicate ourselves, but to escape ourselves."

Resources for Young Families

1. Mothers of Preschoolers (MOPS). “…because mothering matters."

2. National Center for Biblical Parenting’s, Effective Parenting website. This is the home of “Say Goodbye to Whining,” video series and helpful articles on anger, ADD, lying, and more.

3. Zonderkidz. You'll find the VeggieTales Bible Storybook, The Kids’ Devotional Bible, FREE downloadable educator resources, and much more.

Meet These PREGNANT Blogging Moms

● Laura at Here and Now. (1 month to go!)

● Thrills at The Thrills of Being a New Mom (6 mos. to go!)

● Kili at Live Each Moment to the Fullest (9 mos. to go!)

Meet Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar,
Parents of SIXTEEN Children!

● Devoted Christians, this Arkansas family was featured on the Discovery Health Channel when they built their enormous new home. Visit the Duggar’s personal website to find out what makes this amazing family tick! You’ll discover their household organization secrets, plus tips for debt-free living and homeschooling.

Did you choose to have children?
If so, why?

Photos courtesy of Yogi (Flickr)

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