It’s About Making Babies!

Sharon at Casaubon’s Book mentions a recent CNN report about the Italian region of Lombardy offering cash to women considering an abortion – to keep the baby.

I understand the issues – the Muslim religion is exerting tremendous pressure toward population growth within their community (averaging 8.1 births per couple). This pressure must destabilize any non-Islamic nation.

I think I am coming closer to answering a question that concerned me some five or six years ago. Telling kids to not get pregnant – or not to have sex – seemed short sighted. That was the initial question that got me started here at ItsAboutMakingBabies.com.

What if we explained why they should have babies, and work from there on when and where it works out for the very best? Only, I couldn’t see an answer. The Bible claims “be fruitful and multiply” which is a means of growth for the Church – but lacks anything but an authoritarian “Do it because I said so.” Don’t get me wrong – for that particular Authority, that is a pretty persuasive argument.

But I wanted an answer that fit non-believers, and a secular culture and society.

I consider culture to be the rituals and traditions, with the values and definitions of right and wrong, that a family chooses. Here I mean family as adults choosing to care for progeny; extended family is the families that the adults were raised in, and the families of their siblings (brothers and sisters). The cultures of the families in a community make up the culture of that community. In times of affluence (cheap energy), communities can tolerate a lot of outlying, non-conforming families (family cultures). During periods of harsh choices – during conflict, scarce resources, and other periods of stress – there will and should be less tolerance of “not our kind”. Communities have a vested interest in assuring that children raised there, and newcomers, come to assimilate the general definitions of right and wrong, the median values, the most common rituals and traditions. Without the communal culture, the community loses the ability to care for itself, to provide a secure environment for its families.

So. Why should we (as a member of a family or community), choose to have a baby? To honor the culture of our extended family and community.

We learn what we are raised with. If we respect (not necessarily the same as enjoy or adore) our parents – we must feel a need to grow into their examples of adulthood, including the family they raised us in. We would need to produce the next generation, to assert the fulfillment of our destiny, to recreate the role models of our parents and family and respected members of the community.

The notion of romantic love as a basis of forming a family – or having a romantic “relationship” without benefit of family – is quaint, and since its invention in Renaissance Italy, has sold a lot of soap, cosmetics, provocative clothes and fancy vehicles. What Romeo and Juliet point out, poignantly, is that ignoring the effect on the community and extended family when choosing a mate can be catastrophic to the lives of the people involved.

I note that weddings in the US typically require one or more witnesses to complete the marriage certificate; none are needed to proclaim “I love you, your place or mine?” That is, that forming a family is a public event, a community event, and creates a new member of the community – the couple joined together choosing to raise progeny.

I am not denigrating marriages that don’t contemplate having children, not even adopted. It is just that such couples have chosen a form of genetic suicide, and even a disparagement of their extended family cultures, since they are refusing to teach their values and definitions of right and wrong, their traditions and rituals, to the next generation. For whatever reason, as of the next generation – their legacy is no longer active, in a community sense. Adults sharing time and home serve many useful purposes to nation and community. Serving the next generation, however, isn’t one of them. (Choosing to unilaterally reduce one’s own society and community is akin to cowardice in battle – it gives aid and comfort to the enemy, and increases risk and danger to one’s companions. Pursuing mutual goals might be different.)

Let us tell our children, “Grow up and have babies, because that is the strength of our community and family.” “Grow up, and choose a mate to make a family, and your children will be a blessing to your faith, your family, and your community.” Maybe even, “Any person that wants sex with you, but doesn’t want to participate with you in the community and your extended family, is refusing to be a mate or co-parent.” “No rebel is ever really happy.”

Don’t tell the poor single girls “don’t have an abortion.” So called Right To Life activists have always offended me. They wait until the ladies and girls have an unwanted pregnancy, they intervene with their own moral interpretations of life, and walk the hell away. I could respect an anti-abortion activist that signs up to pay the medical bills and adopt the baby from the unwanted pregnancy – nothing less is conscionable. In my opinion.

Instead, tell girls and boy, and men and women, that their community needs them to form families. That they need to find a mate-prospect with similar cultures, with excellent character, with suitable life skills and character – discipline, honor, honesty – and build a home. That marriage, or a so-called relationship (fornication, cohabiting, whatever), is not about “the last first date you will ever have”. That forming a family is a stepping stone, carrying their truths and beliefs forward in the same manner as their parents and grand parents before them.

Many states in America, if not all of them, have statutes making sex with minor children illegal. So – explain to me why we worry about whether pregnant teens (and preteens) have abortions – when we aren’t sending some man to jail for each and every pregnancy, let alone every sexually active minor? When single women have an unwanted pregnancy, why are we concerned about whether she has an abortion – when we used to enforce community and state laws forbidding sexual intercourse outside the bonds of marriage.

For the ladies in the Lombardy region of Italy, my sympathy. The elevation of ambition (“I scored last night!”, and “He was so fine!”) has replaced contentment of family life and community. There may come to be a culture and society that provides a context for a fruitful life for the single woman or poorly married woman with children and no culture, few assets, and reduced prospects. But it hasn’t happened yet.

As for the anti-abortion people, what I recall at the time of Roe v. Wade, was that abortion was illegal – thus only unlicensed procedures were available. And lots of women died, unnecessarily, in the face of unwanted pregnancies. My personal feeling is that I hope no one I know ever needs and abortion – and I pray it is available to anyone that believes they need one.

I left a comment on Baggage Reclaim about contract marriage, for a specified length of time, perhaps three years. Someone asked if that would be a good thing, or if merely waiting out the end of the contract would let people move on without resolving conflicts.

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I think people should get smarter about picking the people they consider marrying. That would solve more problems, though sadly not all, than a short term marriage.

Sharon Lee and Steve Miller write some compelling science fiction novels, set in the “Liaden Universe”. “Local Custom”, “Scout’s Progress”, “Agent of Change”, and “Balance of Trade”, among others, touch on what they call contract marriages, a contract to cohabit until a child is born that will go to one of the two clans, with moneys, property, and other concessions changing hands. They also talk about a life mating, which is a bit mystical, for that culture.

One thing that would have to be cleared up if there were such a thing as a non-life marriage, and that is divorce.

Upon reflection, though, I hesitate to recommend any kind of non-permanent mating. Communities grow or die. One part of growth is the birth of the young, and the formation of families. Families – marriages, handfastings, and other lifetime matings – form the real core that makes a community. The adults in a family assume new roles in their community, because of the mating. I would want to be assured that the community isn’t weakened when changing marriages or families.

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The reply posed a question – would children, if asked, prefer living with well adjusted parents living divorced and apart, or with abusive parents that were together.

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If the couple cannot maintain a marriage, one or both are horrible role models of adult family and community behavior.

If you have been following NML’s ebooks and writings, and the issues raised here on BaggageReclaim.ning.com, you are likely familiar with how we each (unthinkingly) repeat the patterns and choices we learned at our parent’s knees.

Those from functional families are less likely to wind up here. For those of us that fall into repeating patterns, most of our challenge is to grasp hold of those choices and preferences that we hadn’t questioned before, and find new perspectives and values in life. We have to deliberately find ourselves a new “way”. Those that grew up with unavailable parents, or withdrew for other reasons, have to learn to engage more fully, to create a life based on joy instead of defense against disrespect, distrust, and deceit.

My point is that socially, severing the parental rights of the non-custodial parent, including child support, wastes less money, time, effort, and emotional stress for each parent and for the community. By definition, the children are coming from a broken home, one that was dysfunctional – and thus have little basis for making a choice. They will be grieving the loss of one or both parents – making choices from a place of loss is emotional and not rational. It takes much time and introspection to know what is in our own best interest. Children in grief will be biased toward returning to the best of the world they have known, to deny the separation and loss. And they are likely to be driven muchly by their custodial parent – in denial, sympathy, or rebellion.

I think severing ties to either parent in a divorce has a better than even chance of losing a bad role model, with respect to the children’s future mature relationships.

The prospect of shared custody, of child care payments, these all presume relative affluence – and I don’t think that is rational. I think more and more that people are going to be facing an economic decline. Instead of hanging onto an untenable present in a divorce, we need to best prepare for the least difficulty in the future.