Leslie fields has written a marvelous piece in defense of large families though she admits: ” I am not a proselytizer for large families…” I am not so sure how that is possible, nevertheless this is a fantastic article. Here are a few sample quotes:
When large families make it to the movies and television screen, in shows like Yours, Mine, and Ours, Cheaper by the Dozen, and the Brady Bunch, children fare better. But comedy, it seems, is all that can be expected of a pack of kids. Chaos generally rules, with Disneyesque household destruction following in the wake of an errant animal or child, a riotous bedlam that miraculously concludes with everybody fed and dressed and out of the door each day looking nearly normal.
What happens in larger families? Children are more tolerant. They learn that they are part of a whole much larger than themselves and that the common good usually takes precedence over their particular desires.
So why do we have children at all? So much is against the whole enterprise. Children cost too much hmoney. They cost too much of ourselves. Children undo us. They show us how much and how little we’re made of. They come, it often seems, only to break our hearts. And we let them. We invite it all. We admit perfect strangers through our doors and decide before we even know who they are to love them wildly, without condition, for as long as we live.
