My rule of thumb is always “does my daughter look forward to being a woman?” “Does this look like fun to my daughter?” “Would a reasonable young girl look forward to this life?” Community zealotry always shows up in the young girls: in any community, if the young girls are miserable, sullen, silent, or constantly picked on by the modesty brigade, you’ve got problems.
There are probably multiple causes. But to examine only one facet: in times past both men and women were held somewhat captive by their respective biological limitations. Women’s biology demands their interests take a back seat to reproduction, to birthing the next generation, while men had a duty to toil and provide and defend and fight in wars.
Men now can choose whether to fight in wars, and choose whether or not to work or be supported by the welfare state, and choose whether or not to pick a wife and support a family.
I don’t see as clear a modern relief from burden for women. Many women do in fact choose to abstain from having children and building families, but that comes with steep social and financial costs, obviously. Is it the same for men? Do men feel the same shame and are they treated to the same social disdain for shirking their traditional obligations to protect, provide, support? If they don’t choose to have a wife and don’t choose military service, I don’t see a lot of social disdain heaped upon them.
Women can and do opt out of reproducing but they still have the monthly pain of their cycles, and they still will have the difficulty of menopause. Their bodies encroach on their autonomy in pretty profound ways. What biological difficulties do men face for opting out? Loneliness? Is that loneliness more profound on their part than on the spinster’s part?
There is a long line of social science research that women were happier in the "Bad Old Days" than they are today. It's such a recurring finding that they named it the paradox of declining female happiness. Why do you think that is?
“There is a way, I believe, to communicate the beauty and goodness of family life without implying that every woman for whom it isn’t a vocation or possibility is defective or subhuman. I absolutely resent this characterization on behalf of everyone who knows that life isn’t as flat or linear or predictable as the online right would like to make it seem. True pronatalism, if it is to have moral and cultural integrity, must be rooted in love, not contempt. It must inspire, not coerce. And it must account for the true diversity of human experience, not demand blind adherence to a flat meme. Anything less is not advocacy; it is idolatry peacocking as virtue.”
👏
My husband and I are unable to conceive. We are devout Catholics and our openness to life is evidenced by not only the nature of our marriage vows, but also by the years of medical treatments that were sought, the major surgeries that I underwent, the five godchildren that we are blessed with, and our roles within our families as examples of spiritual fatherhood and motherhood.
If God’s plan was for us to conceive, we would have. Therefore, His plan for us and for our marriage is a different plan than what we expected. We are still working towards finding out what that plan will look like in the big picture of our lives. We cannot be reduced to the status of a meme.
I also wanted to add that it especially annoys me to see Catholics imply that women are only good for one thing (breeding) and that any woman who doesn’t have children is a waste of space when you consider the huge number of female saints the church venerates, the majority of whom were nuns who chose to forgo marriage and children for lives of contemplation and good works.
Oh my gosh, THIS is the thing I keep thinking, too! It’s what makes me so wildly uncomfortable about, say, Matt Fradd. Someone like St. Catherine of Siena, who was a laywoman (she is shown in Dominican habit because she was a third order Dominican) falls WAY outside their very weird, limiting view of femininity in the Church.
Yep. I actually find it really interesting that Catholicism has this ready made alternative path available to women, and a lot of women opted for it. I read a stat that in this one city in Italy in I think the late 1500s, something like 40% of the city’s female population was connected to one of the religious houses.
Which of course isn’t to say the only paths that should be open to women are mother or nun but I just find it interesting how the religion (and others) carves out a space for women who for whom motherhood isn’t appealing or desired.
Not to be a downer but this is also because poor women's families would force them into convents at young ages, not because women were flocking to the convent necessarily
Yes, true! But the point I was making though is that there has always been another path open for women besides marriage and children, and it was one a lot of women (and their families) opted for.
Oh yea, that’s to say nothing of all the nuns who never made sainthood but nonetheless served the church and their communities and managed to life worthwhile lives all without having kids of their own.
I do wonder how many people will be memed into this ideology and how much inevitable backlash there will be from children to their trad parents. I think of e.g., the ex-vangelical movement, whom conservatives often deride as sh-tlibs or reddit atheists or whatever...and maybe they are those things, but, honestly? Reading their stories, I'm like, yeah, objectively the culture they grew up in was screwed up, and I probably would have become a cringe reddit atheist type had I been subjected to purity balls or quiverfull ideology or a certain brand of toxic homeschooling (obligatory disclaimer that this toxic brand does not ofc represent all homeschooling, which I'm not opposed to). Anyway, I think a lot of today's trads, insofar as they actually live out the conclusions of their ideology, will absolutely produce children who want nothing to do with their upbringing.
I've met plenty of well-adjusted homeschoolers outside of conservative media and I don't think it has to be toxic, but it's worth keeping in mind for people like me who otherwise support homeschooling that it can indeed be wielded by overly controlling and otherwise toxic parents.
I think a lot of trads should brace themselves. These people have WAY too much confidence in their children growing up to be exactly like them and I think that’s more than a little delulu, especially if their raise daughters to perform the kind of stifling femininity they love to promote online — a lot of these girls are going to run far and fast as soon as they can.
"There is a way, I believe, to communicate the beauty and goodness of family life without implying that every woman for whom it isn’t a vocation or possibility is defective or subhuman." Thanks for saying this
The idea that everybody should crank out as many kids as are biologically possible is just wildly ahistorical. In the distant past that these trads long for, a man did not marry until he had the means to support a family, and a woman’s family wouldn’t allow her to marry some loser that could not support her and her children. People did have a lot of kids, and some just never did end up marrying since they did not inherit property or did not have economic opportunities that would permit them to do so.
There were also all kinds of rules about when married people had to abstain from sex. To our modern senses these seemed silly and arbitrary, but it probably had a benefit of slowing down the rate at which couples did have children. No sex during Lent, on Sundays, if wife was menstruating or nursing, on feast days, on Fridays….etc.
Another thing that happened in the not-so-distant past is that people had a lot of kids, fully aware of a much higher probability that some of those kids would be stillborn, or would die in infancy or early childhood. Given those odds (and also, the needs for farmers in agrarian societies to generate as many hands to help with the crops as thy possibly could), then having 12 kids made sense for lots more people. Let's not romanticize those times, though.
This is really interesting. Can you share your source for this? I'd like to share this info with more authority than "I read on a comment on a substack..." lol
The key is that the confessor’s handbook says “all feast and fast days,” which means that Fridays and Sundays were automatically off limits in addition to the days marked on the church calendar.
Re: kids in church, I think whether parents let their kids run completely amok during liturgy is a good litmus test for idolatry. Parents should view themselves as training their kids to participate in the liturgy, and the other parishioners should assist in that endeavor to the extent that they are called. This means giving those children grace and understanding that they are still working on their liturgy skills, sure, but also, one of the aspects of training kids for church is inculcating in them a reverence for the liturgy. God is not a god of disorder (1 Cor 14:33), and if we're just letting kids disrupt the service willy-nilly, then we're prioritizing their comfort over the right worship of God. I'd say that's somewhat idolatrous.
I'm no stranger to how stressful it can be to know when to intervene and/or discipline a child in church and when to let something slide. What's helped for me is developing a clear method, communicating the rules and expectations with your child in advance, and following through on boundaries consistently. And maybe talking to your fellow parishioners about your approach so they know you're not doing nothing.
Agree completely. Our kids range from a baby to a very wiggly 4-year-old to a teen, so I know whereof I speak when it comes to managing kids in church. There will be times when you have exceeded your child’s ability to be still and quiet - you’re no longer in a teaching moment; that moment is past; it’s time to go take a long potty break, run around the parish hall, have a snack, etc. When my kid is no longer able to be quiet even with reminders, I know we’ve hit that time.
You don’t get to a kid sitting quietly and reverently through mass by letting them run through the pews, in my experience. That’s how you end up with kids who are 7 or 8 and still struggling to participate in worship. For many kids, it’s a long, slow process, and yes, you may spend a lot of the service walking around in the narthex.
I mostly agree. However, I have to ask (genuinely, I am not trying to be argumentative) — am I the only one that thinks a toddler running down the aisle for a few minutes is not *all* that bad? I’m surprised by the reactions people have to this. I was at a service at a very high fertility church a few weeks ago and there was a little girl doing somersaults in the aisle. Her dad was dealing with a gaggle of other children and it took him a few minutes to get free enough to haul her out. She ran through the church twice more throughout the service. I don’t think anyone was particularly bothered. I think a very high tolerance to childish antics is required for a church to really promote large family sizes — and large families inevitably force the rules to relax a little.
Also, I say that as someone who runs out as soon as my child makes a noise. But I am really okay with other kids being disruptive as long as their parents are doing their best. Very much agree with your statement about infrastructure. There should be cry rooms for moms AND dads in new churches.
I agree that a little mayhem isn't the end of the world. I really think my children have provided several people with time off purgatory with their antics!
This was incredible and absolutely needed, especially after that bizarre piece about teen pregnancy started making the rounds… I’m all for nuance but hot damn, that was crazy. I wonder if in 40 years any matriarchs and patriarchs will be like “Ya know, we weren’t going to have kids but then we felt shamed by some memes and jealous of this gorgeous long haired milk maid dress wearing homestead wife so we decided to start a family.” Probably not. But I could see some families getting started because they felt heard and supported by essays like this. Keep it up, Helen! Love it
Thank you for this post, Helen! This was a pleasant addition to my Sunday.
I find the conversation about women from the “rad-trad” perspective to be distasteful, and this is one of the many reasons why. There is no doubt that modern society is flailing in several aspects, but blaming single women for all of the world’s problems feels like a bloated witch hunt.
It is peculiar that “rad-trads” always seem to attack single women and never call out single men on the fertility issue. God’s original commands to both man and woman were to be fruitful and multiply, as well as to have dominion over the earth (Genesis 1:26-30). I feel like “rad-trads" attack women for having professions outside of the home and simultaneously draw men away from their familial responsibility, or at least the very online ones do. It strikes me as odd how many of these people would readily attack a woman working part-time to support her family, but would not go out of their way to call the behavior of a man working 12+ hour days to the detriment of his family disordered. I also thought it was darkly comical how the meme pointed out in this post seeks to ridicule women for going into debt to further their education, but then how many of the same people will tell a woman she needs to go into debt to start a family early.
As a Catholic, I also think it’s strange how many “rad-trads” believe that marriage is the one-size-fits-all vocation. This seems like an overly Protestant exaltation of marriage above celibacy and virginity. I’m not sure how these people reconcile this with the countless canonized female saints who chose to sacrifice marriage and childbearing for the sake of Christ’s kingdom.
Yeah, I was thinking along similar lines when I read this column this morning. I grew up in the Catholic Church of the 1970’s…post Vatican II, but anybody teaching kids was formed in the old pre-V2 world. Vocations were still seen as the highest and best use of your life and gifts—marriage was fine, but only if you couldn’t hack it. It definitely had the “second best” vibe about it….of course that was when nuns still taught catechism. I have since left the RCC but it seemed like the idea of somebody having a vocation changed somewhere from being celebrated to being seen with a bit of suspicion—“what’s wrong with you that you don’t want to get married?” Somewhere I bet Martin Luther is having a good laugh.
I have lived with the people pushing the idol you describe. I think the left was very succinct in their observation of conservatives, “they are pro-birth not pro-life.”
What kind of life is being completely socially isolated, outside of church service, a bare-bones “unschooled” homeschool education, hardly parented or civilized—the only item on the resume being a lack of v@ccination. I would show up at my (previous) “pious” church to find 18m wandering alone around the parking lot, 6yos who don’t know colors, and 9yos that can’t carry a conversation without violating your personal space. How holy. They’re really “saving civilization.”
These church communities do very little to make schools or communities safer or provide opportunities or the rich village experience that extends beyond a casual virtue signal. Don’t get me started on the anti-intellectualism. Right next to poverty-as-virtue, there’s ignorance-as-virtue.
Once again, it falls on women to do the labor of a whole civilization, creating her own army—though they are soldiers without boots or arms.
These people will say they care about western art, ancestral culture and rigor, virtue but their actions are as narcissistic as the leftist mom documenting her 5yo transition on fb. The resources flow backwards back to the parent.
All great points although I would say that I personally have hackles about “pro-birth, not pro-life” because of the implication that being aborted would be preferable to suffering. This is personal for me because one of my parents was a victim of childhood sexual abuse and neglect. I am so grateful for my parent’s life, and by extension, my own, my siblings’, my children’s, my nieces’ & nephews’. Do we all wish that this abuse had not occurred in our family tree? Obviously. But abortion in order to avoid that would have snuffed out more than just my own beloved parent—it would’ve prevented all of our existing.
Ehh, I don’t think that’s what that phrase means in most contexts. Conservatives generally adopt a low- to medium-parental investment strategy so that’s what it means to be less about the “life” beyond the “birth.” Like fish spraying eggs in a stream, it’s God’s Will that bears all responsibility (oh and if they’re non-religious conservatives, then Darwin and full genetic determinism are the sole actors). They, in my thorough experience of American Conservatism, generally don’t invest in arts, education, health (outside wedge issues like raw milk and v@ccines), making communities safer, pollution, job opportunities, et al. If you’re a conservative parent and want your child to learn a classical discipline like oil painting, math, ballet, violin, or chess, etc., you’re going to have to crawl back over to the leftists since they’re the only ones who know how to do any of these things, they have, funnily enough conserved western civilization. Leftists also make lonely attempts to conserve our native habitat and keep it clean and safe. The Biden administration is the government that is replacing the lead pipes in the Midwest—not the conservatives! Lead in the water primarily affects young children and babies. For all the conservatives self-proclaimed brawn, they’ve done nothing to increase security at schools—there have been 3 school shootings in my district since my eldest child was born.
So the “life” part isn’t there. Just the birth and the headcount. Those are the bragging rights. Quantity over quality.
I’m glad you were born and not k!lled. Additionally, I hope that your family provided you with basic resources to live a functional LIFE.
The only parts of the country that are growing and attracting families are conservative parts. The Sunbelt builds houses, has people moving there, keeps costs low, and provides freedom.
I've lived in "blue" areas. They are completely unaffordable and full of public disorder. The local test scores are sometimes high because only upper middle class people with 0-2 kids can afford to live there (post 2022, even they can't afford it), but when you adjust for the demographics is nothing impressive and the costs are out of control.
"High investment parenting" mostly takes the form of a Red Queen Race culture of doing things you don't care about to put on your college application. The highest investment parenting in the world is South Korea, where the TFR is 0.7 and they are literally investing themselves into not existing in two generations.
I look at revealed preferences and people are moving to and having kids in red areas. They aren't in blue areas. If the blue model is so superior, why are no families choosing it?
I've had very positive experiences with the home and religious schooling our local Catholic community has.
If I whistleblow about the widespread abuse and parental neglect in right wing spaces, if I point out that the right wing puts very little effort into conserving much besides what serves their pious self-image—I must be advocating for a hyper left wing education…?
Are improvements in which all would benefit impossible? It would require working between the identity 2-party binary.
If I call out that having children for political reasons and religious clout is lacking virtue—I must be advocating for abortion??
Is conceiving, birthing AND rearing an individual with the skills they need to participate, in a pro-social manner, in a complex society, too much to ask?
What I have noticed, with a conspicuous lack of exception, is that these types of homeschooling families compare their academic progress to low performing public school rather than to the successful schools. Downward social comparison. Yikes.
“Only parts of the country”, “completely unaffordable and full of public disorder”, “why are no families choosing it?”; I would suggest your extreme language is a sub type of the rhetoric criticised in the main Substack post.
It is less convincing to use such terms than you may suspect…
My nephew is leaving California and moving a red state because the housing cost is 70% lower.
To afford a median home where he lives requires a down payment of $280k and payment of $8,500 a month on a 30 year. Using the 30% rule that means he needs a household income of $340,000 a year.
That is an extreme difference, and extreme language is justified.
Helen, I restacked this as well. I agree, the pro-family movement has gone off the rails.
People of faith (I'm Jewish), or even no religious affiliation, can support families and children. But name-calling, insults, telling people to go into debt or, um, teen pregnancy is good is not helpful.
Also, if the people with kids are *so happy* why are they on the internet all day screaming about how happy they are and deriding those who've made different choices? 🙄
I also can’t help but suspect that these pronatalist men who want “young virgin wives” to have max # kids are not going to end up being very helpful and involved dads
I appreciated the Keller quote at the beginning - it's a good one for a reason!
In working on a piece thinking through Neil Postman's "Technopoly" (namely, the chapter on medical technology) - there was a thought that resounded through my head about how fear can either have us avoiding bodily things at all costs (our cycles, babies, even death) or imprudently/harmfully grasping or seeking them out at all costs (babies under any circumstances, IVF/gamete donation/surrogacy, assisted suicide and euthanasia).
While this idea has a broad scope, and the context was the ideology of modern medicine... it's been helpful to solidify this concept in my head that there are good things in life that we can either avoid or pursue to some kind of detriment, and knowing the virtuous mean comes with wisdom. So I appreciate calling out this particular kind of excess and demonization (often stemming from pride or fear, and almost always idolatry).
Thanks for this, Helen! How fitting that I saw this in my inbox just as I stumbled across a "teen pregnancy is good" post on Substack (yikes). Giving birth underage twenty is a substantial risk factor for both maternal and neonatal death, though according to some pronatalists this may be the cost of doing business. What's more, studies suggest that, over the past 250,000 years, first-time mothers were about 23.8 - 24.1 on average (this isn't surprising given the risk of very early childbearing). Pronatalists who claim that teen marriage and pregnancy were the historical norm are wrong. That's not to say "natalism" is completely bad. I'm Catholic and generally in favor of people having more kids, but as you say there is necessary prudence involved.
For anyone else who was curious, I wrote a response to this essay on my Substack. There’s more I could have said, but I made a start at expressing my thoughts!
Trophy wives is evil. But trophy # of children is much worse.
Nothing wrong with having many children, if it is a decision made with full, non-manipulating consent of wife and husband, and based upon Prudence. It’s not ok if the ideology behind the decision is “God demands that we have as many children as we can and as fast as possible!!” That’s neurotic and fanatical Pharisee trad ideology. Or even worse if the motivation is to be part of the “cool club.” Or fertility Calvinism: “Look, we have 4+ children! (4 in the magic number). We are part of the elect!”
Do you think you are a better Catholic because you have more children? Do you look down on, say, a family of “only” 5 and think—“mid” Catholic? Do you cite the number in your bio as if it were a resume builder? Do you mention it at least once a day so people know you’re a real Catholic? Always the last line on the bio—“John Supercatholic is the father of 8.” Why do we need to know this? Why not just “John is a father and husband”? Father of three? Not so much. That’s shameful in these circles.
Eric Sammons and Tim Flanders and Kennedy Hall and John Henry Westen are notorious for this. Any excuse to announce their # of children on X: “Man, tough flu this season, All SIX of my children got it.” Not “All of my children got it”—never that. You’ll notice that Catholics in these circles or who aspire to be in them with “only” three children hardly ever announce their # because of shame, it’s just mid. It shows that you’re secular and don’t really love children for their own sake and use NFP and don’t trust in Providence or whatever.
“Good afternoon candidate. You’re here to interview for the editor position of Trad Magazine. I have some questions for you. I’ll ask the most important one first: How many children do you have?”
“Gee, only three. But I’m a good Catholic and I know my stuff and I’m published and….”
“Well you’re 40 years old and you should at least have four children by now—three is just not gonna cut it. We have competition you know. The editor of John Paul II the Heretic has 10 children and he’s only 30. Now that’s a Catholic. Next!”
Seldom discussed, however, is the utter depravity of many of these big families, with neglected and abused children, and tortured, mentally ill mothers. But the externals look holy! The children become aware that they are valued more as trophies or resume builders or as tokens of a neurotic Calvinist compulsion to insist that one is of the elect or better than “those Catholics.” Devastating. No one deserves hell more than those who use our Holy Religion to serve their will to power.
And you can’t challenge anyone on this. They just hate you for exposing it, or they think you’re just jealous because you’re not in the elite. It is precisely the Phariseeism that enraged Our Lord. And it leads to hell.
In short, anyone constantly tells you in person or in print the number of children he has (if four or more, of course) is an obnoxious and insecure and holier-than-thou Trad ideologue neo-Pharisee. “Look, I’m a real Catholic, a member of the fertility elite.” No, you’re a bizarre Catholic Calvinist replacing fertility with worldly prosperity. Good for you for having a large family, if that’s indeed what God wanted for you and your wife. But knowing many dysfunctional large Catholic families with abused wives and neglected, thoroughly neurotic children, perhaps some NFP was in God’s plan. “But no, NFP is Vatican II! And I wouldn’t get to be in the elite 4+ children club!”
My rule of thumb is always “does my daughter look forward to being a woman?” “Does this look like fun to my daughter?” “Would a reasonable young girl look forward to this life?” Community zealotry always shows up in the young girls: in any community, if the young girls are miserable, sullen, silent, or constantly picked on by the modesty brigade, you’ve got problems.
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What little girl would want to grow to a puppy mill 🙃🙃
There are probably multiple causes. But to examine only one facet: in times past both men and women were held somewhat captive by their respective biological limitations. Women’s biology demands their interests take a back seat to reproduction, to birthing the next generation, while men had a duty to toil and provide and defend and fight in wars.
Men now can choose whether to fight in wars, and choose whether or not to work or be supported by the welfare state, and choose whether or not to pick a wife and support a family.
I don’t see as clear a modern relief from burden for women. Many women do in fact choose to abstain from having children and building families, but that comes with steep social and financial costs, obviously. Is it the same for men? Do men feel the same shame and are they treated to the same social disdain for shirking their traditional obligations to protect, provide, support? If they don’t choose to have a wife and don’t choose military service, I don’t see a lot of social disdain heaped upon them.
Women can and do opt out of reproducing but they still have the monthly pain of their cycles, and they still will have the difficulty of menopause. Their bodies encroach on their autonomy in pretty profound ways. What biological difficulties do men face for opting out? Loneliness? Is that loneliness more profound on their part than on the spinster’s part?
There is a long line of social science research that women were happier in the "Bad Old Days" than they are today. It's such a recurring finding that they named it the paradox of declining female happiness. Why do you think that is?
“There is a way, I believe, to communicate the beauty and goodness of family life without implying that every woman for whom it isn’t a vocation or possibility is defective or subhuman. I absolutely resent this characterization on behalf of everyone who knows that life isn’t as flat or linear or predictable as the online right would like to make it seem. True pronatalism, if it is to have moral and cultural integrity, must be rooted in love, not contempt. It must inspire, not coerce. And it must account for the true diversity of human experience, not demand blind adherence to a flat meme. Anything less is not advocacy; it is idolatry peacocking as virtue.”
👏
My husband and I are unable to conceive. We are devout Catholics and our openness to life is evidenced by not only the nature of our marriage vows, but also by the years of medical treatments that were sought, the major surgeries that I underwent, the five godchildren that we are blessed with, and our roles within our families as examples of spiritual fatherhood and motherhood.
If God’s plan was for us to conceive, we would have. Therefore, His plan for us and for our marriage is a different plan than what we expected. We are still working towards finding out what that plan will look like in the big picture of our lives. We cannot be reduced to the status of a meme.
God bless you, Jana. Thank you for sharing
I also wanted to add that it especially annoys me to see Catholics imply that women are only good for one thing (breeding) and that any woman who doesn’t have children is a waste of space when you consider the huge number of female saints the church venerates, the majority of whom were nuns who chose to forgo marriage and children for lives of contemplation and good works.
Oh my gosh, THIS is the thing I keep thinking, too! It’s what makes me so wildly uncomfortable about, say, Matt Fradd. Someone like St. Catherine of Siena, who was a laywoman (she is shown in Dominican habit because she was a third order Dominican) falls WAY outside their very weird, limiting view of femininity in the Church.
Yep. I actually find it really interesting that Catholicism has this ready made alternative path available to women, and a lot of women opted for it. I read a stat that in this one city in Italy in I think the late 1500s, something like 40% of the city’s female population was connected to one of the religious houses.
Which of course isn’t to say the only paths that should be open to women are mother or nun but I just find it interesting how the religion (and others) carves out a space for women who for whom motherhood isn’t appealing or desired.
Not to be a downer but this is also because poor women's families would force them into convents at young ages, not because women were flocking to the convent necessarily
Yes, true! But the point I was making though is that there has always been another path open for women besides marriage and children, and it was one a lot of women (and their families) opted for.
When has Matt Fradd ever said—or implied—such a thing?!
Not to mention the legions of nuns that have served the church for over 1000 years….
Oh yea, that’s to say nothing of all the nuns who never made sainthood but nonetheless served the church and their communities and managed to life worthwhile lives all without having kids of their own.
Yes!! My husband and I are infertile, so this idolatry in Catholic circles is especially painful for us
I do wonder how many people will be memed into this ideology and how much inevitable backlash there will be from children to their trad parents. I think of e.g., the ex-vangelical movement, whom conservatives often deride as sh-tlibs or reddit atheists or whatever...and maybe they are those things, but, honestly? Reading their stories, I'm like, yeah, objectively the culture they grew up in was screwed up, and I probably would have become a cringe reddit atheist type had I been subjected to purity balls or quiverfull ideology or a certain brand of toxic homeschooling (obligatory disclaimer that this toxic brand does not ofc represent all homeschooling, which I'm not opposed to). Anyway, I think a lot of today's trads, insofar as they actually live out the conclusions of their ideology, will absolutely produce children who want nothing to do with their upbringing.
Yeah, I agree. Talking to homeschooled adults who didn’t happen to make a career in conservative media afterwards is…eye opening.
I've met plenty of well-adjusted homeschoolers outside of conservative media and I don't think it has to be toxic, but it's worth keeping in mind for people like me who otherwise support homeschooling that it can indeed be wielded by overly controlling and otherwise toxic parents.
Agreed. I was homeschooled, LOVED it, and now I homeschool my own family. It does not have to be weird.
Ouch.
I think a lot of trads should brace themselves. These people have WAY too much confidence in their children growing up to be exactly like them and I think that’s more than a little delulu, especially if their raise daughters to perform the kind of stifling femininity they love to promote online — a lot of these girls are going to run far and fast as soon as they can.
"There is a way, I believe, to communicate the beauty and goodness of family life without implying that every woman for whom it isn’t a vocation or possibility is defective or subhuman." Thanks for saying this
Believing that takes a strong imagination, if we really look at human history. 🥴
The idea that everybody should crank out as many kids as are biologically possible is just wildly ahistorical. In the distant past that these trads long for, a man did not marry until he had the means to support a family, and a woman’s family wouldn’t allow her to marry some loser that could not support her and her children. People did have a lot of kids, and some just never did end up marrying since they did not inherit property or did not have economic opportunities that would permit them to do so.
There were also all kinds of rules about when married people had to abstain from sex. To our modern senses these seemed silly and arbitrary, but it probably had a benefit of slowing down the rate at which couples did have children. No sex during Lent, on Sundays, if wife was menstruating or nursing, on feast days, on Fridays….etc.
Another thing that happened in the not-so-distant past is that people had a lot of kids, fully aware of a much higher probability that some of those kids would be stillborn, or would die in infancy or early childhood. Given those odds (and also, the needs for farmers in agrarian societies to generate as many hands to help with the crops as thy possibly could), then having 12 kids made sense for lots more people. Let's not romanticize those times, though.
This is really interesting. Can you share your source for this? I'd like to share this info with more authority than "I read on a comment on a substack..." lol
Hahaha! Yeah—there’s a very funny flowchart if you google, but here’s a more legit source: https://www.brown.edu/Departments/Italian_Studies/dweb/society/sex/sex-spouses.php
The key is that the confessor’s handbook says “all feast and fast days,” which means that Fridays and Sundays were automatically off limits in addition to the days marked on the church calendar.
Re: kids in church, I think whether parents let their kids run completely amok during liturgy is a good litmus test for idolatry. Parents should view themselves as training their kids to participate in the liturgy, and the other parishioners should assist in that endeavor to the extent that they are called. This means giving those children grace and understanding that they are still working on their liturgy skills, sure, but also, one of the aspects of training kids for church is inculcating in them a reverence for the liturgy. God is not a god of disorder (1 Cor 14:33), and if we're just letting kids disrupt the service willy-nilly, then we're prioritizing their comfort over the right worship of God. I'd say that's somewhat idolatrous.
I'm no stranger to how stressful it can be to know when to intervene and/or discipline a child in church and when to let something slide. What's helped for me is developing a clear method, communicating the rules and expectations with your child in advance, and following through on boundaries consistently. And maybe talking to your fellow parishioners about your approach so they know you're not doing nothing.
Same! Well said. Thanks for understanding.
Agree completely. Our kids range from a baby to a very wiggly 4-year-old to a teen, so I know whereof I speak when it comes to managing kids in church. There will be times when you have exceeded your child’s ability to be still and quiet - you’re no longer in a teaching moment; that moment is past; it’s time to go take a long potty break, run around the parish hall, have a snack, etc. When my kid is no longer able to be quiet even with reminders, I know we’ve hit that time.
You don’t get to a kid sitting quietly and reverently through mass by letting them run through the pews, in my experience. That’s how you end up with kids who are 7 or 8 and still struggling to participate in worship. For many kids, it’s a long, slow process, and yes, you may spend a lot of the service walking around in the narthex.
I mostly agree. However, I have to ask (genuinely, I am not trying to be argumentative) — am I the only one that thinks a toddler running down the aisle for a few minutes is not *all* that bad? I’m surprised by the reactions people have to this. I was at a service at a very high fertility church a few weeks ago and there was a little girl doing somersaults in the aisle. Her dad was dealing with a gaggle of other children and it took him a few minutes to get free enough to haul her out. She ran through the church twice more throughout the service. I don’t think anyone was particularly bothered. I think a very high tolerance to childish antics is required for a church to really promote large family sizes — and large families inevitably force the rules to relax a little.
Also, I say that as someone who runs out as soon as my child makes a noise. But I am really okay with other kids being disruptive as long as their parents are doing their best. Very much agree with your statement about infrastructure. There should be cry rooms for moms AND dads in new churches.
I agree that a little mayhem isn't the end of the world. I really think my children have provided several people with time off purgatory with their antics!
The kid’s parent said that he also “raises his voice a bit.” That’s probably too disruptive.
This was incredible and absolutely needed, especially after that bizarre piece about teen pregnancy started making the rounds… I’m all for nuance but hot damn, that was crazy. I wonder if in 40 years any matriarchs and patriarchs will be like “Ya know, we weren’t going to have kids but then we felt shamed by some memes and jealous of this gorgeous long haired milk maid dress wearing homestead wife so we decided to start a family.” Probably not. But I could see some families getting started because they felt heard and supported by essays like this. Keep it up, Helen! Love it
Thanks, Haley, very happy to hear this.
Thank you for this post, Helen! This was a pleasant addition to my Sunday.
I find the conversation about women from the “rad-trad” perspective to be distasteful, and this is one of the many reasons why. There is no doubt that modern society is flailing in several aspects, but blaming single women for all of the world’s problems feels like a bloated witch hunt.
It is peculiar that “rad-trads” always seem to attack single women and never call out single men on the fertility issue. God’s original commands to both man and woman were to be fruitful and multiply, as well as to have dominion over the earth (Genesis 1:26-30). I feel like “rad-trads" attack women for having professions outside of the home and simultaneously draw men away from their familial responsibility, or at least the very online ones do. It strikes me as odd how many of these people would readily attack a woman working part-time to support her family, but would not go out of their way to call the behavior of a man working 12+ hour days to the detriment of his family disordered. I also thought it was darkly comical how the meme pointed out in this post seeks to ridicule women for going into debt to further their education, but then how many of the same people will tell a woman she needs to go into debt to start a family early.
As a Catholic, I also think it’s strange how many “rad-trads” believe that marriage is the one-size-fits-all vocation. This seems like an overly Protestant exaltation of marriage above celibacy and virginity. I’m not sure how these people reconcile this with the countless canonized female saints who chose to sacrifice marriage and childbearing for the sake of Christ’s kingdom.
You’re welcome, Sadie, and thank YOU
Yeah, I was thinking along similar lines when I read this column this morning. I grew up in the Catholic Church of the 1970’s…post Vatican II, but anybody teaching kids was formed in the old pre-V2 world. Vocations were still seen as the highest and best use of your life and gifts—marriage was fine, but only if you couldn’t hack it. It definitely had the “second best” vibe about it….of course that was when nuns still taught catechism. I have since left the RCC but it seemed like the idea of somebody having a vocation changed somewhere from being celebrated to being seen with a bit of suspicion—“what’s wrong with you that you don’t want to get married?” Somewhere I bet Martin Luther is having a good laugh.
Agreed on all points!!!
Thank you, once again, for writing this.
I have lived with the people pushing the idol you describe. I think the left was very succinct in their observation of conservatives, “they are pro-birth not pro-life.”
What kind of life is being completely socially isolated, outside of church service, a bare-bones “unschooled” homeschool education, hardly parented or civilized—the only item on the resume being a lack of v@ccination. I would show up at my (previous) “pious” church to find 18m wandering alone around the parking lot, 6yos who don’t know colors, and 9yos that can’t carry a conversation without violating your personal space. How holy. They’re really “saving civilization.”
These church communities do very little to make schools or communities safer or provide opportunities or the rich village experience that extends beyond a casual virtue signal. Don’t get me started on the anti-intellectualism. Right next to poverty-as-virtue, there’s ignorance-as-virtue.
Once again, it falls on women to do the labor of a whole civilization, creating her own army—though they are soldiers without boots or arms.
These people will say they care about western art, ancestral culture and rigor, virtue but their actions are as narcissistic as the leftist mom documenting her 5yo transition on fb. The resources flow backwards back to the parent.
All great points although I would say that I personally have hackles about “pro-birth, not pro-life” because of the implication that being aborted would be preferable to suffering. This is personal for me because one of my parents was a victim of childhood sexual abuse and neglect. I am so grateful for my parent’s life, and by extension, my own, my siblings’, my children’s, my nieces’ & nephews’. Do we all wish that this abuse had not occurred in our family tree? Obviously. But abortion in order to avoid that would have snuffed out more than just my own beloved parent—it would’ve prevented all of our existing.
Ehh, I don’t think that’s what that phrase means in most contexts. Conservatives generally adopt a low- to medium-parental investment strategy so that’s what it means to be less about the “life” beyond the “birth.” Like fish spraying eggs in a stream, it’s God’s Will that bears all responsibility (oh and if they’re non-religious conservatives, then Darwin and full genetic determinism are the sole actors). They, in my thorough experience of American Conservatism, generally don’t invest in arts, education, health (outside wedge issues like raw milk and v@ccines), making communities safer, pollution, job opportunities, et al. If you’re a conservative parent and want your child to learn a classical discipline like oil painting, math, ballet, violin, or chess, etc., you’re going to have to crawl back over to the leftists since they’re the only ones who know how to do any of these things, they have, funnily enough conserved western civilization. Leftists also make lonely attempts to conserve our native habitat and keep it clean and safe. The Biden administration is the government that is replacing the lead pipes in the Midwest—not the conservatives! Lead in the water primarily affects young children and babies. For all the conservatives self-proclaimed brawn, they’ve done nothing to increase security at schools—there have been 3 school shootings in my district since my eldest child was born.
So the “life” part isn’t there. Just the birth and the headcount. Those are the bragging rights. Quantity over quality.
I’m glad you were born and not k!lled. Additionally, I hope that your family provided you with basic resources to live a functional LIFE.
The only parts of the country that are growing and attracting families are conservative parts. The Sunbelt builds houses, has people moving there, keeps costs low, and provides freedom.
I've lived in "blue" areas. They are completely unaffordable and full of public disorder. The local test scores are sometimes high because only upper middle class people with 0-2 kids can afford to live there (post 2022, even they can't afford it), but when you adjust for the demographics is nothing impressive and the costs are out of control.
"High investment parenting" mostly takes the form of a Red Queen Race culture of doing things you don't care about to put on your college application. The highest investment parenting in the world is South Korea, where the TFR is 0.7 and they are literally investing themselves into not existing in two generations.
I look at revealed preferences and people are moving to and having kids in red areas. They aren't in blue areas. If the blue model is so superior, why are no families choosing it?
I've had very positive experiences with the home and religious schooling our local Catholic community has.
Ahhh, hello darkness.
If I whistleblow about the widespread abuse and parental neglect in right wing spaces, if I point out that the right wing puts very little effort into conserving much besides what serves their pious self-image—I must be advocating for a hyper left wing education…?
Are improvements in which all would benefit impossible? It would require working between the identity 2-party binary.
If I call out that having children for political reasons and religious clout is lacking virtue—I must be advocating for abortion??
Is conceiving, birthing AND rearing an individual with the skills they need to participate, in a pro-social manner, in a complex society, too much to ask?
Embarrassed for y’all.
All of the big homeschool families I know seem to be doing just fine. Better then the public school kids.
What I have noticed, with a conspicuous lack of exception, is that these types of homeschooling families compare their academic progress to low performing public school rather than to the successful schools. Downward social comparison. Yikes.
“Only parts of the country”, “completely unaffordable and full of public disorder”, “why are no families choosing it?”; I would suggest your extreme language is a sub type of the rhetoric criticised in the main Substack post.
It is less convincing to use such terms than you may suspect…
My nephew is leaving California and moving a red state because the housing cost is 70% lower.
To afford a median home where he lives requires a down payment of $280k and payment of $8,500 a month on a 30 year. Using the 30% rule that means he needs a household income of $340,000 a year.
That is an extreme difference, and extreme language is justified.
" I would suggest your extreme language is a sub type of the rhetoric criticized in the main Substack post."
Is it wrong? Is there something factually wrong with what he said?
Helen, I restacked this as well. I agree, the pro-family movement has gone off the rails.
People of faith (I'm Jewish), or even no religious affiliation, can support families and children. But name-calling, insults, telling people to go into debt or, um, teen pregnancy is good is not helpful.
Also, if the people with kids are *so happy* why are they on the internet all day screaming about how happy they are and deriding those who've made different choices? 🙄
I also can’t help but suspect that these pronatalist men who want “young virgin wives” to have max # kids are not going to end up being very helpful and involved dads
Or good providers.
Or loving partners.
I appreciated the Keller quote at the beginning - it's a good one for a reason!
In working on a piece thinking through Neil Postman's "Technopoly" (namely, the chapter on medical technology) - there was a thought that resounded through my head about how fear can either have us avoiding bodily things at all costs (our cycles, babies, even death) or imprudently/harmfully grasping or seeking them out at all costs (babies under any circumstances, IVF/gamete donation/surrogacy, assisted suicide and euthanasia).
While this idea has a broad scope, and the context was the ideology of modern medicine... it's been helpful to solidify this concept in my head that there are good things in life that we can either avoid or pursue to some kind of detriment, and knowing the virtuous mean comes with wisdom. So I appreciate calling out this particular kind of excess and demonization (often stemming from pride or fear, and almost always idolatry).
Thanks, Haley, for the recommendation. Keller is excellent.
Thanks for this, Helen! How fitting that I saw this in my inbox just as I stumbled across a "teen pregnancy is good" post on Substack (yikes). Giving birth underage twenty is a substantial risk factor for both maternal and neonatal death, though according to some pronatalists this may be the cost of doing business. What's more, studies suggest that, over the past 250,000 years, first-time mothers were about 23.8 - 24.1 on average (this isn't surprising given the risk of very early childbearing). Pronatalists who claim that teen marriage and pregnancy were the historical norm are wrong. That's not to say "natalism" is completely bad. I'm Catholic and generally in favor of people having more kids, but as you say there is necessary prudence involved.
I saw the same essay, Kelly, and I don’t even know how to begin to unpack my feelings about it.
I’m so curious to know your thoughts! As Helen pointed out, humans being have this terrible tendency to twist even the best things!
For anyone else who was curious, I wrote a response to this essay on my Substack. There’s more I could have said, but I made a start at expressing my thoughts!
Yes: https://childrenbewareofidols.substack.com/p/trophy-number-of-children
Trophy wives is evil. But trophy # of children is much worse.
Nothing wrong with having many children, if it is a decision made with full, non-manipulating consent of wife and husband, and based upon Prudence. It’s not ok if the ideology behind the decision is “God demands that we have as many children as we can and as fast as possible!!” That’s neurotic and fanatical Pharisee trad ideology. Or even worse if the motivation is to be part of the “cool club.” Or fertility Calvinism: “Look, we have 4+ children! (4 in the magic number). We are part of the elect!”
Do you think you are a better Catholic because you have more children? Do you look down on, say, a family of “only” 5 and think—“mid” Catholic? Do you cite the number in your bio as if it were a resume builder? Do you mention it at least once a day so people know you’re a real Catholic? Always the last line on the bio—“John Supercatholic is the father of 8.” Why do we need to know this? Why not just “John is a father and husband”? Father of three? Not so much. That’s shameful in these circles.
Eric Sammons and Tim Flanders and Kennedy Hall and John Henry Westen are notorious for this. Any excuse to announce their # of children on X: “Man, tough flu this season, All SIX of my children got it.” Not “All of my children got it”—never that. You’ll notice that Catholics in these circles or who aspire to be in them with “only” three children hardly ever announce their # because of shame, it’s just mid. It shows that you’re secular and don’t really love children for their own sake and use NFP and don’t trust in Providence or whatever.
“Good afternoon candidate. You’re here to interview for the editor position of Trad Magazine. I have some questions for you. I’ll ask the most important one first: How many children do you have?”
“Gee, only three. But I’m a good Catholic and I know my stuff and I’m published and….”
“Well you’re 40 years old and you should at least have four children by now—three is just not gonna cut it. We have competition you know. The editor of John Paul II the Heretic has 10 children and he’s only 30. Now that’s a Catholic. Next!”
Seldom discussed, however, is the utter depravity of many of these big families, with neglected and abused children, and tortured, mentally ill mothers. But the externals look holy! The children become aware that they are valued more as trophies or resume builders or as tokens of a neurotic Calvinist compulsion to insist that one is of the elect or better than “those Catholics.” Devastating. No one deserves hell more than those who use our Holy Religion to serve their will to power.
And you can’t challenge anyone on this. They just hate you for exposing it, or they think you’re just jealous because you’re not in the elite. It is precisely the Phariseeism that enraged Our Lord. And it leads to hell.
In short, anyone constantly tells you in person or in print the number of children he has (if four or more, of course) is an obnoxious and insecure and holier-than-thou Trad ideologue neo-Pharisee. “Look, I’m a real Catholic, a member of the fertility elite.” No, you’re a bizarre Catholic Calvinist replacing fertility with worldly prosperity. Good for you for having a large family, if that’s indeed what God wanted for you and your wife. But knowing many dysfunctional large Catholic families with abused wives and neglected, thoroughly neurotic children, perhaps some NFP was in God’s plan. “But no, NFP is Vatican II! And I wouldn’t get to be in the elite 4+ children club!”