All Glory, Laud and Honor to the Grand Multiparous Woman

In my post on encouraging higher fertility rates, I forgot to mention one other tool that the pro-natalists can use: denigration of people who don’t have enough children.

I have never fathered a child, primarily as a matter of choice based on a complex algorithm wherein I have constantly evaluated the costs and benefits over the years. On occasion, the analysis has come close to popping into the positive side of the ledger, but a visit by the nephews always resulted in an adjustment of the perceived benefits downward putting the bottom line solidly back into the red.

Because of this, I have been told on numerous occasions that I am selfish, that I owe it to society to have children. Even folks who are not that rude often question my decision in a way that makes it clear that they regard childlessness as pathological. The stigma of childlessness has already been captured in my cost benefit model, and it is conceivable that I might some day father a child just to get people off my back if that factor added to all others put the analysis into the black.

It doesn’t really bother me all that much, but I sometimes mess with people who question my reproductive choices by telling them that I am, sadly, sterile or that I once had three children who died in a fire and thanks very much for reopening old wounds. I usually turn the tables on them by asking them why they don’t have more children. Was your youngest child so horrible that you wouldn’t risk having another? That is, is she a "stopper"? Did you become infertile? It is theoretically possible for a woman to have 15 to 20 live births (more if there are twins and such) if she wastes none of her fecund years, and is it not selfish for families to have fewer children than possible? With fertility drugs, a woman might have multiple births every pregnancy and produce 30 or more offspring. Anything less would be slacking off.

In some societies, such as the Ashanti people of West Africa, grand multiparous women (this is a term for mothers of ten or more) are accorded high honor and prestige. Glenn Reynolds and the pro-natalists should do the same. All grand multiparous women should be feted and honored and held up as exemplars of virtue. Women with fewer than ten children should be less highly regarded but praised nonetheless since it is not always possible to bring every pregnancy to term or to conceive on demand. Women with fewer than five should be pitied, and women with two or fewer reviled for their selfishness unless they are still working on adding to their collections.

As it stands today, having more than two kids makes you suspect unless it is clear that you were trying for a particular gender combination, in which case three is acceptable. Four kids? Are you Amish or something? Five or more? You want watching. Let’s make having only two kids shameful instead of ideal. If enough women have huge families, the childless among us can rest easy knowing that our decision will not lead to the extinction of our race.