Em goes on a rant.

I urge you to read this article in its entirety. It was written two years ago when the extremely fertile  and semi-famous Duggar family of Arkansas popped out their sixteenth kid. They just had their seventeenth.

This brings up my own stance on reproduction. It’s a very touchy subject, I know, but I’m pretty firm in my feelings about it.

I don’t want to have children. Is it because I’m unloving? No. Because I hate kids? Of course not, I’m a teacher for crying out loud and I go gaga over other people’s babies. Because I just haven’t found the right person to have children with? Not that either. Because I can’t handle it? Maybe partially, but generally no. Essentially I believe (and I remember vividly the moment this revelation came to me in middle school) that there are already so many children in the world who need love and attention and food and shelter and education that there really is no need for more people. We’re ravaging the planet, having trouble getting along, yet perpetuating the whole mess.

Maybe all of my baby-coveting friends and relatives will laugh at me some day… just a week or so ago my aunt was teasing me that I’ll end up with more kids than anyone in my family since I’m the one who never wanted them, but if I end up having one someday I’ll just get “hooked.” What the fuck?  Are we talking about potato chips or human beings with needs and desires and challenges?

I don’t believe anyone should dictate how many kids a family can have — not like the Chinese government does. That obviously results in disaster (I’m sorry, but millions of abandoned baby girls is a disaster as far as I am concerned). But prudence should be exercised when expanding a family. Maybe there should be some sort of law (I’m kidding, people, silence your screams of “hypocrite!”) that requires any heterosexual American couple who wants to make a baby of their own adopt three or four additional children who the world is already too small for — one of the aforementioned Chinese girls, a mentally handicapped Russian baby (due to social stigma, thousands of them are tossed into orphanages where they are treated terribly),  an African child orphaned by the AIDS epidemic, a kid from somewhere else in the US who was born into a lousy situation with abusive or neglectful parents… maybe even save a baby from India where issues with the caste system sometimes leads to infanticide of female babies.

I know many people — friends, relatives, neighbors — who are wonderful parents. I understand why people have children. But seriously, people like the the Duggars need to think about the kids that they keep making. Maybe their god keeps blessing them with children, but why not return the favor by getting Mr. Duggar a vasectomy and devoting the rest of their lives to caring for and interacting with the children they already have?

I’m sorry if you, dear reader, think that I am being judgemental. I am just being honest. The Duggars might be great people, I don’t know, I have never met them. I am certain that they think that they love each of their kids equally, and that they try hard to do so. But even in a classroom, there is a HUGE difference as to what I can get kids to accomplish when there are thirty of them versus what I can get them to do when there are fifteen of them. I would venture to guess that it’s the same at home. The more kids you have, the more you have to divide your attention and affection. It’s just not fair to only let your children get a tiny fraction of the parental love and nurturing they could have gotten if their parents only would have stopped at eight. Or ten… or twelve…