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Contents © 2000
by Jim Holman.
All rights reserved.

OCTOBER 2000 CONFESSIONS

ANOTHER LARGE FAMILY ARGUMENT

There is a flipside to one of my peculiar-to-the-young vices, that of stewing about the future, especially when the here and now becomes pressing. The flipside is indulgence in positive speculation founded on minimal experience, and my wife's third pregnancy in five years has given rise to all sorts of theorizing. Obedience to God's will, openness to life, and maintaining true marital unity are my primary reasons for assenting to the idea of multitudinous children, but I find myself imagining other, secondary goods. Perhaps this is an unconscious attempt to quell my fears in this matter, something short of simply trusting God. He, after all, has been known to give crosses as gifts, so it's more comforting to look elsewhere for reassurance.

One of those goods involves the formation of a community whose primacy is sufficient to withstand the buffets of the world. Recently, I heard a story about a Catholic intellectual -- an older man whose stature in some circles is leonine -- which troubled me. I'm not certain that the story is true, but that's not important. It's similar to others I've heard before, rumblings from the orthodox, mostly older folks who perhaps can remember a time when American sensibilities were not so divergent from Catholic sensibilities, when Catholics had palpable influence over popular culture, and faith (or at least the sentimental remnants of faith) held enough power to make most people feel ashamed of their baser urges. The story about the intellectual concerns his expression of a desire for formation of Catholic communities, where the faithful may live the Christian life without the world's interference.

The idea is not without appeal, especially as regards the raising of children. I do not want the world -- with its superficial, sugar-sweet appeal -- to penetrate deeply into my kids before I've equipped them to meet the world without being traumatized or seduced. (Of course, part of that formation consists in experiencing the world and learning how to react to it.) Nor do I want them to be insular, incapable of dealing with people different from themselves. Such an attitude seems a barrier to charity, and I do not want my kids to rest easy in the notion that we are safe within the Church's bosom, and not required to invite others in through the surest means after prayer -- charitable personal contact.

There is a balance to be struck here, and I find myself believing that such a balance will be easier to maintain if the family is large enough to form real community, if my kids' first involvement is with their parents and, in some respects more importantly, their siblings. It's a bigger base from which to branch out, a larger support to fall back on. The culture of the home will be more visible, and hopefully, more influential.

Connected to this is the avoidance of a certain malaise, one I imagine afflicting some two-child families. Though I am from a two-child family, and though I do not recall any such malaise, I wonder if things are different now. I wonder if an increased hostility toward large families (something I have witnessed) has hardened the concept of family into an artificially-controlled, socially acceptable unit, one in which the children bond only insofar as it's against the parents, one in which there is enough leisure time for cultural sewage to seep in.

That last sounds almost Protestant, I know -- idle hands and all that. Or if not Protestant, cynical, assuming that empty hours will be filled with worthless -- if not downright evil -- entertainment. But here, I'm trusting my limited experience, and not my intuition. I reject the idea that by limiting the demand for goods -- fewer kids means each kid lucky enough to be born gets more -- you are likely to improve the quality of life for those who receive them.

I see no signs that kids today are better, wiser, or more cultured than kids past. I have discovered no evidence that nihilism had the hold on yesterday's youth that it has on today's. It looks to me like the same despairing emptiness that confronts the modern adult who has managed to free himself from the need to work confronts the child whose time is too much his own. There is no notion of true leisure in the current culture; there is only work and entertainment. This is the culture that influenced me, and I see in myself the ill effects -- the tendency toward waste and dreck. I want to avoid instilling that tendency in my children.

I guess the underlying speculation is that a large family will first leave less free time for all involved, less time to grapple with the emptiness, and perhaps, Lord willing, better use of that time when it is obtained. Second, and most importantly, my mini-culture will have some chance of fostering true leisure. We'll see.

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