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Preface: Why It\u2019s Okay to Talk About Family Size<\/b><\/p>\n
Family size is one of those hyper-sensitive issues that people gingerly tip toe around in the Church, and with good reason. First, it abuts with the kind of cultural touchstone gender role issues that the Church has kind of soft preferences around but has generally avoided hard positioning on.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Second, it is directly tied to other highly personal areas such as mental and physical health, infertility, relationship quality, sex lives, and wealth. At an individual level, questioning why somebody has as few children as they do is a recipe for all sorts of interpersonal awkwardness and drama.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n However, while it would be completely inappropriate to critique any individual\u2019s family size, commentary about the average number of children in a society or community is fair game. Each of the above variables vary from individual to individual, but it\u2019s arguable to what extent they have changed across time for society. At the end of the day you can\u2019t attribute the decline in family size in the Church to a rash of infertility, and while people are often quick to blame the economic situation, research on child incentives show that they at most have a marginal effect of childbearing, and fertility has declined among high-income families as well. No, it is clear that the preferences for family size themselves have changed. Church members simply don\u2019t want to have ten kids anymore, even if they had a pitch perfect spouse, great schools, easy pregnancies, a great career, and all the things.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n While, again, it would be inappropriate to critique any individual decision, there is no reason critiquing general attitudes towards having large families is any more inappropriate than critiquing any other schema or set of societal priorities. While unapologetically and explicitly honoring and acclaiming the large family ideal risks otherizing those that do not meet the ideal, the same is true for virtually any good, but that does not prevent us from, say, honoring those with higher education degrees or successful careers. Indeed, society at large already honors people with those things, they have their reward, whereas the dutiful stay-at-home parent with eight children gets little else from the public but weird looks at the store and park. If there is a place where particular in-group Church norms could make a distinctive, unique difference it\u2019s there, and I think what Spencer W. Kimball said in regards to families generally also applies to large families:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n We have no choice, dear sisters, but to continue to hold up the ideal of the Latter-day Saint family. The fact that some do not now have the privilege of living in such a family is not reason enough to stop talking about it. We do discuss family life with sensitivity, however, realizing that many sisters do not presently have the privilege of belonging or contributing to such a family. But we cannot set aside this standard, because so many other things depend upon it.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n The Case for Big Families<\/b><\/p>\n I have already written in some detail<\/a><\/span>\u00a0about how central pronatalism is to the theological structure of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. To wit, eternal reproduction is literally the defining feature that separates the Gods from the angels. In the celestial tier, the generative, creative impulse is taken to an eternal nth degree. Furthermore, it isn\u2019t creation for creation\u2019s sake, but the creation and multiplying of interpersonal relations that are \u201cat the heart of everything that is worthy to be called happiness.\u201d I suspect that the relatively high fertility levels among the Saints isn\u2019t just a local manifestation of generic conservative ideals, but is a residue of the days of large kinship clans when the above theological premises had very real implications for framing this-worldly norms about the good life, with large earthly families reflecting the celestial archetype structured by the theology. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
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