I am Horrified

...by this article from The New York Times. The article itself is merely annoying; it's the comments following the article that are enough to make you doubt whether there is, in fact, any intelligent life on our planet. (You gotta read these comments; otherwise you wouldn't possibly understand why I am so very MAD.)

Apparently some people out there don't approve of big families--defined as more than the two kids required to replace the two parents. I know, I know..."WHAT?" It's the zero population growth nonsense, this idea that there will just be too many people on the planet and we must take unnatural measures to prevent more births. Somehow this will finally enable the end of poverty and, probably, global warming, or something. And there's even the accusation that having more than one's allotment of children is...get this...selfish!?!

Well, trust me, having a handful of kids doesn't feel selfish. I must say that the idea of having lots of kids as something selfish has truly never occurred to me. Quite the opposite--to me, the opposite path seems a bit selfish, but I'm not one to assume I know the whole story behind anyone's family size or composition. That being said, I must also say that it seems to me that many people who choose not to have a large family mostly do so because of the--well, unglamorous lifestyle associated with traipsing around with a nursing baby and a handful of wee ones. It's hard to drop everything and fly off somewhere cool for the weekend. It's hard to afford fancy vacations. It's hard to drive a BMW--they just don't make 'em big enough, even if you could afford it! It's hard to find time to exercise and go for mani-pedis. You never get enough sleep. You eat too much pizza, and far too little pate de fois gras. There are certainly far, far too few tropical drinks associated with the large-family lifestyle.

Obviously, in my family we think the tradeoffs are worth it, to say the least. (And I must note that we have no plans or expectations for the U.S. government to support our basic needs any time soon--unless you count, say, homeland security. We're cheerfully paying taxes for schools we don't use, as a matter of fact. As for people who have more kids than they can afford, well, I'm not one to tell others how big their family should be, see?) For me, having more than two children isn't about being selfish. It's about being called--no kidding--to participate in the miracle of creation.

See, these little people are precious, unique, eternal human souls. To suggest that we should limit the numbers of souls in future generations surely requires a fundamental misjudgment of the value of human life. "How can there be too many children?" said Mother Teresa, "That is like saying there are too many flowers." We should love them all--biological, adopted, orphaned, hungry, every color of the rainbow--all.

Overpopulation is not the problem. Didn't I read recently and write in this very blog about the fact that Americans spend more each year on pet food than would be needed to feed everyone starving in Africa? We've got, like, 5% of the world's population consuming around 30% of the world's resources, here. If we stop the madness of American consumerism and materialism, it would go a long way towards ensuring sufficient resources and opportunities for all the precious little eternal beings.

C.S. Lewis says something on this that always sticks in my mind: Your neighbor is the closest thing you will ever encounter in this life to Eternity. People are not animals, to be counted and fed and controlled and euthanized. People are much closer to angels. In fact, people are much more precious than angels, as evidenced by the fact that our Creator actually became human.

I would love to hear from some of you on this. Am I missing something, here? Is the big family a luxury from a bygone agrarian society? Is it actually selfish to give birth to one's own biological children instead of driving the Prius over to get a couple from the adoption agency, because that's somehow nobler than going through pregnancy and childbirth? Is it actually admirable to artificially, unnaturally inhibit one's own fertility? Am I just blinded by religious fanaticism or something?

These lunatic New York Times commenters have gotten me just fit to be tied.