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You Can Never Have Enough Kids

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The American Spectator 

A particularly idiotic aphorism touted by our mindless culture is this cliché: Wait until you have enough money to have kids.  This nugget serves as secular wisdom, courtesy of the noxious winds of the zeitgeist. It always frustrates me. When...

The post You Can Never Have Enough Kids appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

A particularly idiotic aphorism touted by our mindless culture is this cliché: Wait until you have enough money to have kids. 

This nugget serves as secular wisdom, courtesy of the noxious winds of the zeitgeist. It always frustrates me. When I hear it regurgitated by young couples, I calmly ask them questions like these: 

How many kids did your grandparents have? How about your great-grandparents when they came to America dirt poor on packed ships headed to Ellis Island?

When they acknowledge that those ancestors had a bunch of kids, I then ask this conversation stopper: How much money did they have?

The guy and gal are usually taken aback. This isn’t what they’ve heard from the culture. Yes, they know that their ancestors had no money and raised large, intact families — and stayed married. They wouldn’t be alive today without those ancestors bestowing multiple gifts of life. Their grandparents gave life freely and lovingly. Money was not the object. Life was. Kids were. (READ MORE: Forget Cats and Dogs — There Aren’t Enough Kids)

Conversations like these are how you reach young people distorted by the culture. You take the lid off and ask common-sense questions. Get them thinking.

A few follow-up observations likewise leave them baffled. I’ll ask: How much money will be “enough” before having that kid? How much cash should be shoveled into this child’s materialistically ideal existence? What are you planning to buy for the kid? Any concerns about spoiling little Timmy or Suzie?

People singularly focused on having “enough” money for kids will find that there’s never “enough.” At least not within their current value system.

If they do mercifully set aside these financial constraints and go for it and have babies, they will soon find that kids really aren’t that expensive. Children can be raised cheaply and happily. The big financial hit usually doesn’t come until college, if college is the objective. Even then, parents will be shocked to find that the more money they have, the less financial aid they’ll get. Sometimes, having more money costs you more.

The Greatest Gift You Can Give Your Child Is a Sibling

Young parents will say in astonishment to my wife and I: “You have eight children? One kid has been hard enough for us!” My response is that, yes, one kid is harder. Two kids, however, are easier, because the one gets a playmate other than you. When we had only one child and I came home after a long day, I didn’t want to play Legos for several hours. When the second boy came along, he was all in. Little Paul now had little Mitch to join him at his level, both running around with boundless energy, enthralled by their new worlds in ways that I could not fake. Our first boy now had someone genuinely fascinated by his Hot Wheels.

And then came a third for us, a girl. And she was likewise over-the-moon excited when our fourth, another girl, arrived. They played together. 

The cycle continued. Each new arrival was a new brother or sister, with each sibling ecstatic about the next. Doubt me? Try this experiment: Ask a five-year-old if he wants another sibling. Go ahead. A kid doesn’t say no to that.

I’ll never forget when my wife got the phone call from our adoption agency explaining that the mother of our previously adopted child had just given birth and was putting the child up for adoption. They preferred to find a family in which the infant had a birth sibling. That would be ours. Were we interested? This would be our eighth. (READ MORE: The Human Disappearing Act: Why Are We Not Reproducing?)

I was driving the family van when that call came in. All eyes fixed on me as I expressed doubts about whether I could personally handle another baby. But the van of nine voices erupted into jubilant chants of “Yes! Yes! Yes! Do it! Do it! Do it!” I was shouted down and outvoted. The oldest girls assured their old man that he wouldn’t have to change diapers anymore. 

That infant, Benedict, turns 10 next week. He’s my little buddy. He’s the baby of the family, adored by all. Children bring joy.

To that end, last week someone sent me a post from the inane “Instagram.com/facts.” This “Facts” post was headlined, “People without children tend to be happier than parents.” The post was eviscerated in a snappy 11-point takedown by Dr. Jordan Peterson. It made me angry. I wanted to know which faceless 22-year-old twit was responsible for that drivel. Sure, some people without children are happy. That’s fine, totally good. But we should encourage parenting rather than discourage it.

And I’ll bet this: Twenty years from now, if this twit is married without kids, there’s a good chance he or she will not be happy, and perhaps miserably and unwittingly childless because of a lack of fertility after contracepting too long. That person may well be single right now, and 20 years henceforth might regretfully remain so after years of heartaches, breakups, STDs, and possibly aborted children. My sincere prayer is that the person gives up the self-centered pleasure-seeking, finds a caring spouse, that the two become one flesh together, and gives the gift of life. (READ MORE: Abortions Are on the Rise, Planned Parenthood Proudly Reports)

I can assure her that she would find infinitely more fulfillment in a little boy with Legos or a little girl with dolls than in their dogs and hiking boots.

Mother Teresa once said, “How can there be too many children? That is like saying there are too many flowers.”

Personally, I don’t care about flowers (though I make sure my wife gets flowers every Mother’s Day), but I do care about children. We’re called to fill the world with them. You can never have enough — of them.

To all fellow dads out there, Happy Father’s Day.

The post You Can Never Have Enough Kids appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.