OH, THE PEOPLE YOU’LL MAKE

Here’s Why You — Yes, You! — Should Have a Shitload of Kids

Circular, Literary “Logic” on Why My Crazy Grandparents With Nine Children Were Right

Most of my six children would tell you it’s gross to have children at all. (“Ewww, Mom.”)

And it’s a crime against Earth. Unsustainable, from a time management standpoint. And financially? Let’s just say Suze Orman wouldn’t likely approve.

And yet? I’m so, so glad I had a shit ton of kids.

Having (or adopting, or fostering) a buttload of young’uns is not a choice we all can make. But people who have more children are happier, says one parenting and psychology researcher. According to Dr. Bronwyn Harman [external link] of Edith Cowan University in Australia, parents with four or more kids report a better sense of wellbeing — and their kids are more resilient.¹

If this family-size arithmetic seems overly simplistic, that’s fair. Let’s veer away from math and look at art. The Harman et al. study reminds me of a stanza about “certain ladies” — i.e., mothers?

“The past, for them, is safe and sure. Perhaps their only vanity Is that they know they can endure the rigours of another day.”

-Noël Coward, in: To L. R-M

Moms, dads, and nonbinary parents are at least as badass as Coward’s muses. I love telling people I have six kids. It’s a sick flex, like you’re telling somebody you went to Princeton.

Droppin’ the P-bomb — that’s “P” for (excessive) Parturition — is also the quickest way to tell someone you’re weird.

My other excuse for having six children is just as flimsy. Large-family parents raise their unwashed, chaotic broods to be able to endure stuff, above all else. But tell that to my teenagers, who can’t so much as bring their own dirty dishes down from their bedrooms.

And of course, there’s a huge bias afoot. My cousins saved my life. My (late) grandma, Kathleen, was the oldest of twelve kids. My dad is the fourth of nine.

There are absolute crapgaggles of us grandkids — not to mention Ham and Kathleen’s 33 great-grands (and counting). And we aren’t even Mormon!

Catholics hump like hamsters, too, I guess.

My husband and I are well into our 20th year of parenting. And there are very few solid conclusions I can draw. But here’s one:

Without human connection, life does not rhyme.

Without my kids, I probably wouldn’t meet other mothers. And without so many damn kids I’d be less able to credibly to reassure people with fewer kids that they’re doing just fine at this momming thing. Sure, I’d probably support woman (and other humans) in different ways. But in a time where people feel strikingly lonely and unmoored, mom-to-mom anchoring is something that matters.

It’s about connection. I wouldn’t know teachers, principals, coaches, volunteers, business owners, and countless other adults in my community. And I wouldn’t know hundreds of kids — the stewards of the future.

Your large-family mileage may vary, but personally, I wouldn’t have grown into a more pro-social person if I hadn’t had “too many” children for my own comfort.

Blank verse poetry is fine for some. Hell, Shakespeare wrote that way. It’s a decent choice to conserve energy, time, money, and other (increasingly) scarce resources for you and you alone. Or for you and just a few.

Dr. Seuss didn’t have to have children to be impactful.

But time climbs clear of us.

Until we’ve learned to be immortal, there will always be a meter to our days. Unconstrained, free verse in our great, grand poem? There’s no such thing.

Seussian philosophy says it best. In Seuss’ Did I Ever Tell You How Lucky You Are?, he lays out an alternative to life as we know it. What would it be like to be a relic of human use — a solitary, old coat hanger that dangles in the cold? I can’t know. But my guess is that, to hang in the vacuum of space, to be little but a placeholder for clothes or a collector of rust, is an abysmally empty state.

There’s existentialism like this in other great books. In Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston’s Janie tries to connect with her estranged husband, who is “ten immensities away.” She must do this before he dies of kidney failure.

The reader can infer that Janie makes amends for a great reason: when we fail to exist in the context of humans, we fail to exist. We lose electrons; we oxidize and become artifacts. Rather than by continuity, we are more readily defined by loss.

From children’s lit kings to Harlem Renaissance queens, the book folks tell us to go breed, young person.

Okay, maybe they don’t. But you get the idea.

As for my family? Our boat groans with the weight of many Legos. We are seasick, too, at the thought of how much we’ve spent on tiny, injection-molded figurines. They come and go with the short tides.

And my self-congratulatory blessing to you is thus — may you read Seuss out loud ever-so-muchly. And may you step on plastic yellow people for the rest of your evenings.

¹ https://www.powerofpositivity.com/science-explains-why-families-with-4-or-more-kids-are-happiest/

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