Natalist Stampede: Some unorganized reflections
Outpopulating the Blue StatesThe Natalist "movement" doesn't really exist. There are some people who follow the Catholic Church's teachings on the purpose of marriage and there are some Protestants who adopt a version of it. Mormons tend to have kids too. There is less social and economic pressure to "limit" the number of children you have in red states - and these people who have kids - tend to vote Republican. Some people in San Francisco tend to hate them for their hair-cuts and make irrational claims about "neo-Christians" being "asexual".
Ross Douthat does the job on the S.F. Hater. But I'd like to take just a moment to point out that the insult of these Christians as "asexual" is not just a totally idiotic thing to say - it reveals a confusion about sexuality that is widespread. Many today view sexuality merely as just some great leisure activity. Sexuality that is tied to sexual reproduction in this view is "not sexy" and therefore it is easy for someone so drenched in this mentality to see a family that has 16 children as "asexual". The word that Mark Mofford means is "un-erotic". The sexual revolution has replaced sexuality with eroticism. This also puts the individual and their desires at the heart of the "sexual act". A view of sexuality that emphasizes duties and responsibilities is totally foreign to many people raised in our soft-porn culture. Should we be surprised then that the vocabulary used by defenders of the traditional family fails to resonate? Many people oppose homosexual marriage merely as a prejudice but find themselves unable to express a compelling view of sexuality and marriage that excludes homosexuals. The premises that support homosexual marriage (individualism, eroticism, marrriage as personal fulfillment) find broad support in the culture, even among many opponents of homosexual marriage. That is why there remains a kind of fatalism in opponents of gay marriage. "Well, I can disapprove of it, and vote against it - but I know it is coming".
The Duggar family is now on it's sixteenth child. My own grandmother grew up in Brooklyn and was one of thirteen children - which was not strange for turn of the century Irish Catholics in NY. They got through the Great Depression . But families this large do not seem to be typical of any age other than the Italian Renaissance when mothers often hired others to nurse their children. The practice - was fashionable enough among the upper classes that the emerging middle classes copied it. Fertility rates went way up as breastfeeding tends to act as a natural birth spacer. (This is a link to an incredibly bad wikipedia article that describes breastfeeding as a contraceptive. It also promotes Fertility "awareness". "Awareness" code word of the cultural left. "We're not breaking down the moral probity of Christian students with sex education. We're engaging in a dialogue that 'promotes sexual awareness'".)
But back to this "movement" of "natalists." It's not a movement - it is a phenomenon that almost anyone with eyes to see could have seen. The required reading is posted in the references to this post.
Michael Brendan Dougherty
in Politics, Culture
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Source: Baby GapIn tempting contrast, the cost-of-living calculator provided by Realtor.com says that a $100,000 salary in liberal Manhattan buys only as much as a $38,000 salary in conservative Pinehurst, North Carolina. Likewise, a San Francisco couple earning $100,000 between them can afford just as much in Cedar City, Utah if the husband can find a $44,000-a-year job—and then the wife can stay home with their children. Moreover, the culture of Cedar City is more conducive to child rearing than San Francisco -
here is a little-known movement sweeping across the United States. The movement is ''natalism.'' All across the industrialized world, birthrates are falling -- in Western Europe, in Canada and in many regions of the United States. People are marrying later and having fewer kids. But spread around this country,...
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Source: Sweet Sixteeno there's this family down in Arkansas that you may have heard about, the Duggars, that recently had their sixteenth kid. Which is a lot, I'll grant you, and probably more than you or I would like to have, even assuming that "you or I" happen to be particularly fervent pro-natalists. All of the kids names start with "J", which is a little much, too - and the parents say they want to have even more, which likewise seems just slightly excessive. (Though the sixteen include two sets of twins, so Mr
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Source: U.S. Family at 18 - and Growing?Their children include two sets of twins, and each child has a name beginning with the letter J: Joshua, 17; John David, 15; Janna, 15; Jill, 14; Jessa, 12; Jinger, 11; Joseph, 10; Josiah, 9; Joy-Anna, 8; Jeremiah, 6; Jedidiah, 6; Jason, 5; James, 4; Justin, 2; and Jackson Levi, 1.
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