Children and Responsibility

One of my favorite celebrerity blogs is CrunchyCon. I enjoy Rod's somewhat cantankerous writing style and have fond many diamonds of thoughts amongst some rough. For every post on immigration or Islam that bother me I find enjoyable notes on homemaking and points to good authors (I loved E.F. Schumacher's " Small is Beautiful" and found Russel Kirk's book on Edmund Burke very thought provoking see Jamie Simth's blog for a good reflection on this) but one issue that I just can't decide on is children. Rod is a firm suporterof having large families and bemoans the fallinmg western birth rates. I think this is both a result of his belief that big families are culturally good things and his fear of a coming Eurabia (I'm going to pt aside the question of whether or not xenophobia is a good reason to have children).

I want to have children and am a firm believer in Brian Walsh's a statement that having a child is one of the most profound acts of hope in a scary world. But I just can't get over my belief that falling birthrates in the west are a good thing (the extent to which this is due to abortion is a bad thing) and that with the rising world population it is simply irresponsible to have lots of children.

I vividly remember a TV special that pointed out that a suburban couple with two kids contribute to overpopulation more than a nepalese family with seven. This is of course because the American lifestyle puts a greater strain on the earth than the Nepalese lifestyle. I wonder if it is an important dual single of christian faith to have one child in order to say that the world is not lost and there is hope but that God expects us to be responsible. But, I love my brothere and love having a bother and would have loved having more siblings and think good families are important cultural and communal forces (this of course doesn't imply to the Gambino family or the Bush's of course).

I haven't read Bill Mckibben's book "Maybe One" which his reasoning for why he and his wife decided on one child.


Malcolm Gladwell had a good New Yorker article on how the falling Irish birthrate contributed to their economic upswing.

I need help thinking through this, it's possible the only people who read this are Ross, Sarah, and my mom but that's ok I still need input!