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How do we order and feed such a top-heavy, resource-consuming society of elders—a demographic of which most who read this article are a part? Who will produce the goods needed to keep the nation's engines and industries running? When our self-reliance wears out, when our self-authenticated minds and our spiritually unfettered and independent souls grow dim with age, who will feed and sustain us? Who will wheel us into surgery, deliver our packages, grow our food, research and formulate the medications that enable us to live longer and better? In an overburdened medical system, who will decide whether or not our lives still have value when our medical costs outweigh our economic worth? In all of this, we will depend on the actions and judgments of other peoples' children.

Perhaps we will need to hope that some of those in charge, some of those upon whom we will be dependent, will have been raised in large families. We will need to hope that these providers, care-givers, and government leaders can resist our culture's obsession with self and remember their family's lessons of tolerance and sympathy extended to all, especially those less able than themselves—knowing that, above all, the universe is not theirs alone.

Leslie Leyland Fields is a writer living with her family on Alaska's Kodiak Island.

Copyright © 2006 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

Also posted today is

Inside CT
Love to Love Children | Our growing families.

Sidebar
A Counter Trend—Sort Of | Large families are a small but growing minority.

Children Matter: Celebrating Their Place in the Church, Family, and Community is available from Christianbook.com and other retailers. Co-author Scottie May reviewed a set of books on the faith of children.

An excerpt fom Amy Laura Hall's Conceiving Parenthood is available from Books & Culture.

A summary of Why Do Americans Want Children?" is available from Science Daily.

More Christianity Today coverage of large families includes:

Editorial
Fill an Empty Cradle | Falling birthrates demand new priorities for families. (Nov. 1, 2004)

Make Love and Babies | The contraceptive mentality says children are something to be avoided. We're not buying it. (Nov. 9, 2001)

'Be Fruitful and Multiply' | Is this a command, or a blessing? (Nov. 9, 2001)

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August 2006, Vol. 50, No. 8