Stunning. She's going to have her 18th child. ::every woman in a 100 mile radius of that sentence swiftly closes their legs unconsciously::
Now, part of me thinks "You could start your own soccer league!" and another ponders "how long has she been pregnant...13 years?" and another "Woman, take a stand! Just say No!" But, in the end what I think doesn't really matter. I'm sure that they decided as a family a long time ago that they would accept as many kids as biology (God?) saw fit to give them. Their family seems happy, healthy and relatively well adjusted. It could be worse. And it used to be the standard to have large families - lots of our grandparents came from families of 8, 10 or 12 kids.
That got me thinking....what happened?
My mother and father came from families with 4 kids, I come from a family of three children and so does Cliff. We've talked about kids and agreed that three would be our max. The numbers of children that American families are having are getting smaller and smaller, many couples choosing to be purposefully childless. I don't want to get into the argument here about the rightness/wrongness of purposeful childlessness; I do wonder though about why families are smaller than they used to be. Is it because kids are expensive? Is selfishness an issue? Do married couples fear having to change their lives? Is it a time issue? Is it because many homes now have two-income holders and so the feasibility of large families is questionable?
What do you think? Why do you think families are much smaller than they used to be? Are you an 18-kids kind of a woman (or man)?
3 comments:
Don't worry Beffy, 18 children are not on our radars! I'm not sure why there's been a shift to the downsizing of families, but I do believe that selfishness is one of the main culprits. Think about our grandparents and great-grandparents and how much they sacrificed so their family was taken care of. ALOT!
The Duggars are an amazing Christian family with an abundance of faith. They have said they're open to having as many children as the Lord will bless them with--He's blessed them alright! We would love a house full of little ones and continually pray about it, but we're ashamed to say that we don't have that kind of faith. Too many Christian families in our generation are having 1-2 kids, while the Mormans, Jehovah's Witness, and other religions are still going strong with 4-5 kids. It's interesting to think about what kind of children our kids will be growing up with and what religions will be prevalant and growing in the coming generations.
Good on you for that.
You have to admit, though...Lou would probably love as many grandkids as we could give her!
Oh, I have no doubt that our children will grow up in a very different world than we're expecting. But then again, so did we...
The Duggar family always makes me think about faithfulness and fmaily. In the end I think its less about faith and more about being faithful to what you think God's will for your family is. No matter how many children you have or don't have, I'm thinking that God cares mostly about if you raise them in righteousness whatever the circumstance.
And really...if God would like you to have 18 kids, I think He can get around birth control.
Listen to me blather on about family when all I have is a big fat cat!
You two are absolutely amazing, and you're right, Beffy, if you and Tiff were the mothers, I'd take as many grandchildren as the two of you would choose to bless me with. But - the number of grandchildren is not my business - just know that I will love them, help you with them as I can, and as long as they make sweet eyes for me, will pay for college!!
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