Eric Cohen asks "Why Have Children?" in this chilling article about where we are headed given our anti-child attitude worldwide.
Once today’s childless generations grow old, they will face the prospect of their own mortality without children to care for them, comfort them, and mourn them. As the personal freedom of the past ends in isolation, euthanasia may come to seem the most rational, or perhaps the only plausible, solution to the debilities of old age.
You may wonder why I use such romantic depictions of children. It's because romanticizing family life helps us muddle through it, heroicly, patiently and successfully. Every family must have a vision of themselves as a group or subculture and every family member a view of their role as attractive and meaningful.
G.K. Chesterton understood this and says the following on romance and realism:
Romance is more solid than realism, and that for a very evident reason. The things that men happen to get in this life depend upon quite shifting accidents and conditions. But the things that they desire and dream of are always the same.
So by all means romanticize family life and the raising of children in order to draw adherents to this essential truth and confirm your own commitment to your husband or wife and children.
2 comments:
I wish I could have 50 children. I have such a strong maternal instinct and I can't get rid of it no matter how hard I try. Unfortunately, my husband is dead set against having any more.
Amen to that! I'm trying.
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