"Without Children there is no Future"

How many folks it takes to be a "large" family varies. My father spoke of my "large" family: which was accurate, from his point of view. My wife and I have four surviving children.

As an only child, I had a steep learning curve as our family started growing. My wife was the second of seven children, thankfully. And that's another topic.

Size, and Points of View

By American standards, my wife and our four kids form a "large" family.

In 2010, the average married-couple household in America numbered 3.25 people.¹ That's not an average of three and a quarter kids. That's an average of three and quarter total. Family size has been decreasing in America, ever since the '60s and the end of the post-WWII baby boom.² Which is why the 'population bomb' fizzled, and that's almost another topic.

That '3.25 people' is a national average. Not all communities are exactly on the 50th percentile.

Take the parish where we worship, for example. A family with seven children often sits in front of me at Mass. That's not, by local standards, an unusually large family. In some parts of the country, I've gathered that they'd look like a walking population explosion to the locals.

So much depends on a person's point of view.

Optimism?! How Counter-Cultural!

America's perennial End-Times prophecies, and succession of secular scaremongers, can give the impression that America is a nation of doomsayers. Or at least that 'decent' folks don't expect the world to last much longer.

Judging from the number of above-average-size families around here, quite a few of us don't seem to have gotten the memo.

Here's what got me started on today's post:

"Big Families Are Sign of Optimism, Says Pontiff"
Calls for Legislation to Safeguard and Support Them
ZENIT (February 16, 2012)

"Benedict XVI on Wednesday offered words of encouragement for families with many children.

"At the end of the general audience, he greeted representatives of the National Association of Large Families.

" 'In today's social context, families with many children are a witness of faith, of courage and of optimism, for without children there is no future,' he said...."

Courage, Optimism, and Manure

One of the reasons I don't buy into the latest fads in calamitous prognostications is that I've got a pretty good memory: and I've read about what happened before I was born:

• London wasn't buried under mountains of manure
• Global warming replaced the coming ice age as a bogey man
• Now we're supposed to be scared because the climate changes
  • What, we're supposed to be living in a static, unchanging, ever-constant world?

Still more topics.

I've been over this sort of thing before. (October 3, 2009) Fairly often. (Apathetic Lemming of the North (December 30, 2010))

I don't think things will get better without effort. We've got work to do, if today's children are going to prosper: or survive, in some cases. But I'm pretty sure that we can make things better: and we will, with God's help.

Related posts:

• Family
  • "Sex Selection, Newspeak, and Getting a Grip"
    (August 11, 2011)
  • "Family Values: Addams and Otherwise"
    (July 12, 2011)
  • "The Family, the Church, and Defending Human Dignity"
    (June 2, 2011)
  • "Home Schooling and This Catholic Family"
    (February 26, 2011)
  • "Diapers and the End of Civilization"
    (November 10, 2010)
• How things are
  • "A Little Look at the Big Picture"
    (February 13, 2012)
  • "My Take on the News: Condoms; Incredible Shrinking Countries"
    (November 4, 2011)
  • "7,000,000,000 People, More or Less: Why I'm Not Alarmed"
    (October 31, 2011)
  • "America's Economy Isn't Doomed?!"
    (August 10, 2011)
  • "Climate Changes: So What Else is New?"
    (May 16, 2011)
Working to make things better
• " 'Love Thy Neighbor:' Putting Faith Into Practice"
  (February 5, 2012)
• "Caritas in Veritate: Progress, Ethics, and Sex"
  (January 23, 2012)
• "South Sudan, the Táin Bó Cúalnge, and Working for a Better World"
  (January 6, 2012)
• "Hope, Joy, and Working for a Better World"
  (September 13, 2011)
• "Sustainable African Development: And Swift's Modest Proposal"
  (May 6, 2010)

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¹ Source:

• "Households and Families," 2010 American Community Survey 1-Year Estimates
  census.gov

² Source:

• p. 2, "Households and Families: 2000"
  Census 2000 Brief (2000)