Here’s How To Actually Reverse The Baby Bust
The best way to promote fertility isn’t funding parenthood. It’s stopping the government programs that discourage people from having babies.The best way to promote fertility isn’t funding parenthood. It’s stopping the government programs that discourage people from having babies.Grateful for my parents and their 50 years of marriage
This Thanksgiving, I'm giving thanks to God for the gift of my parents and their upcoming 50th wedding anniversary.
Be not alarmed. All things considered, my Boomer parents, Richard and Karen, are in remarkably good health. That my family is not cherishing this holiday season in fear that it may be the last for one or both of them is itself a blessing.
We weren't always so lucky.
Just a few days before Thanksgiving in my senior year of high school, my father nearly died when an aortic aneurysm that had been silently ballooning in his chest suddenly ruptured. Only by the grace of God did he survive. So many others who have his condition, including late actor Alan Thicke, do not.
After that catastrophic event, my entire family underwent a thorough medical assessment, at which point doctors discovered a severe congenital heart defect in my mother, then in her early 40s. Over the next two decades or so, her health slowly deteriorated until she received a heart transplant three years ago. Had she not qualified for a transplant, she might not be here today.
I am not trying to be morbid this holiday season or to fixate unnecessarily on death. But I know that I am likely to outlive my parents, and when they're gone, Thanksgiving and Christmas will never be the same.
The older I get, the more I witness the heartbreak of other people my age losing their parents. In November 2021, my best friend from high school lost her mother to a rare and aggressive form of ALS. Six months later, my friend's father was gone too, less than a year after he and his wife celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary.
Another friend, two years younger than I, is still reeling from the unexpected death of his mother in the summer of 2023. Yet another friend is savoring whatever time remains with his mother, who was recently diagnosed with cancer.
And I would be remiss if I did not remember the death of my beloved Aunt Linda in May 2021 and the loss of my husband's uncle a few weeks ago.
Though memento mori is a good mindset to adopt at any time of the year, I am not trying to be morbid this holiday season or to fixate unnecessarily on death. But I know that I am likely to outlive my parents, and when they're gone, Thanksgiving and Christmas will never be the same.
I know no parents are perfect, but I am extraordinarily fortunate to have the parents I have. My mother, a skilled designer, taught me about the importance of beauty and acting like a lady. My dad instilled in me a love of sports, and his quick wit reminded my siblings and me never to take ourselves too seriously.
But even more important than those lessons, my parents gave me the gift of my Catholic faith and taught me through words and actions the importance of the sacrament of marriage.
To this day, I would be devastated if my parents divorced, and I cannot imagine the pain and trauma endured by children of divorced parents. That every day my parents wake up and choose each other is a blessing worth recalling this Thanksgiving.
This spring, the two of them will celebrate 50 years of marriage.
My in-laws are also still married, as are the parents of my two sisters-in-law and my brother-in-law. These couples are not impervious to marital strife. At various times, some of them have overcome addiction, financial hardship, estrangement from other family members, and, of course, devastating illness. Commitment is a choice.
My brother and his lovely wife, the mother of my darling nieces and nephews, now have 20 years of marriage under their belt too. So it seems that while divorce can be a generational curse, marital commitment can be passed down through the generations as well.
God willing, my husband and I will someday celebrate 50 years together. If we do, we will have God and our parents and their respective examples of marriage and commitment to thank.
I don't know why God has thus far spared my parents, Richard and Karen, and continues to allow them to live full and relatively healthy lives, but I'm grateful that He has. However many Thanksgivings we have left together, I'm especially thankful this year for them and their faithful commitment to one another — in sickness and in health.
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This Thanksgiving, I'm thankful for the greatest adventure
The unmoored young man can disappear for days or weeks at a time and move as it suits him. He can throw himself into barroom brawls or start them, testing his knuckles and chin. He can grow a wild beard or shave his head, waste time on pet causes, sample one too many whiskies, and risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss.
He can take such risks and liberties because no one and nothing really depend on him.
While his lifestyle has been greatly romanticized and is in many ways now incentivized, the Western ronin likely has no idea that true adventure begins when man sets anchor in truth and love — when he commits to God, to a woman, to children, and to a place.
When roaming, it's easy to intellectualize about starting a family but impossible to understand that when committing to a person for life and then together bringing little people into the world or adopting, your surface area as a human will vastly increase, exposing you both to multiplied risk, reward, suffering and joy. The corresponding responsibility is spiritually enriching. Nothing else compares.
This Thanksgiving, I thank God for the adventure of a lifetime; for the wonderful responsibility to and temporary guardianship over immortal souls; and for the worthwhile challenge of standing my ground by my wife's side until death do us part.
I pray that those solipsistic youth now adrift may similarly come to know such blessings.
The trouble is, however, that there are forces at work trying to preclude a great many from embracing them.
Gender ideologues, pharmacists, and surgeons have set about the sterilization and mutilation of children across the country, all but guaranteeing that the victims will spend their lives roaming. De-populationists and other anti-natalists have fed young people propaganda, promoting a culture of death and dissuading them from starting families. Kept in business by a eudaemonistic culture that promotes freedom from responsibility, abortionists, such as those who helped enrich the woman President Joe Biden recently awarded the presidential medal of freedom, have slain tens of millions of babies who could have loved, been loved, and starred in countless adventures.
When asked whether the attack on the family is a coordinated effort or just a confluence of dark forces that look like they're working in concert, Dale Ahlquist, the president and co-founder of the Society of G.K. Chesterton, told Blaze News earlier this year, "Well, let's go back to the Holy Family."
"How did the [Holy Family] begin? With Satan trying to kill it, all right. Herod sends his soldiers to kill all the babies in Bethlehem. So here are the forces of evil at work, first on the Holy Family and then on the rise of the normal family. It is an evil act," said Ahlquist.
It should surprise no one that the institution that evil appears most keen to destroy is that most worth pursuing, building, and protecting.
I pray that our readers enjoy great success in their respective adventures and that their anchors hold.
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Gift Guide To Seasonal Family Books From Small And Indie Publishers
Small publishers are bringing out new classics and reviving old ones. Check out these Advent and Christmas family books.U.S. Corporations Love Abortion Tourism Because It Means They Don’t Have To Pay For Parenthood
Businesses talk about the importance of family but often treat children as either a burden to be discarded or as optional luxury goods.Dog years: A decade as a MAGA exile in Los Angeles
Twelve years ago, my mother had a manic breakdown. She was found in Molokai, Hawaii, after disappearing for several days. The fugue state — in which she turned into a nightmare version of herself, eyes afire, flagellating her loved ones with a stream of deranged insults and delusions — lasted about six months until someone finally got her on lithium.
As she returned to herself, I pressured her to get a dog. She lived alone, so it would help her get a grip on reality. She said she liked whippets, so I found a local breeder. I wanted to name him Knut after Knut Hamsun, but she decided on Eliot after T.S.
I lost many jobs, many friends, many family members, all of whom called me problematic crazy fringe incel bigot weirdo resentful loser failure. But I just couldn’t let it go. I couldn’t not see the lie.
When the fugue began, I was finishing law school. When it ended, I’d taken the bar and moved to Los Angeles. I’d already experienced my parents’ terrible divorce as an only child at 17, but this year, 27, was the toughest and most isolating of my life. The safety net had ripped open, and I’d fallen through. Everything was most definitely not going to be okay.
After hitting the ground and dusting yourself off, making sure you aren’t dead, there is a sense of relief. “That happened.” There on the ground, you see the world as most people on earth do, all victims of abandonment or neglect or abuse or poverty or other societal failure, just not the upper middle-class American suburban milieu I’d been comfortably incubated within.
And when you hit the earth, you suddenly want to tell the truth. You don’t want to “win” any more. You want to help other people figure this thing out.
I was always edgy, but a good boy politically. In fact, I thought if myself as edgy for a good cause, that cause being “equality.” I’d dutifully campaigned for Obama, and my diverse group of friends had tearfully celebrated when he won in 2008.
But now it was 2012, and I worked for a gay Hollywood agent with six other young men, all of whom were gay. The time came to vote for Obama again, but this time, I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. It felt phony, a little numb spot where my righteousness had once curled.
What the hell did this guy know about anything? He certainly wasn’t talking to me. I told my co-workers this, and they were deeply offended. Didn’t I understand their rights were at stake? I already didn’t fit in, but this made it terminal. I was out within three months.
And thus began a decade of professional, personal, and familial torment as I slowly came out of the closet as a political bad boy, just as much to myself as to the world. I was, and still am, a liberal — it’s not possible to completely erase my deracinated bohemian upbringing. But it became increasingly clear to me that the good guys were in fact a mask covering a barely perceptible leviathan pulsing under the surface, rapidly reaching its tentacles across the earth.
As Eliot grew and my mother healed, I lost many jobs, many friends, many family members, all of whom called me problematic crazy fringe incel bigot weirdo resentful loser failure. But I just couldn’t let it go. I couldn’t not see the lie.
In L.A., I became a lone Trump supporter. I had zero MAGA friends, zero contacts to celebrate with when he won, maybe only one or two even in 2020 to lament the loss. On Tuesday, I celebrated with 100 friends, all culture kids and almost all recent converts who, like me, just couldn’t bring themselves to lie any more.
The thing we share in common? A breaking. Some loss, failure, death — the cozy cloak of a bourgeois upbringing ripped off, however fleetingly. All men used to be broken by war. Now far fewer are. But everyone in that room had gotten a glimpse. Tuesday: a decade of pain vindicated in a single night.
Wednesday morning after the all-nighter, I drove down to San Diego to put Eliot to sleep. He had a tennis ball-sized sarcoma dangling off his arm and typical whippet heart issues. It was time. Two guys came to the house and did it — it took 20 minutes. A decade transcended in a few quiet moments.
Mom is doing better now, but she still hates my politics.
This essay originally appeared on the Carousel.
Couple Who Rented A Womb Forces Surrogate To Abort In Case The Baby Is Imperfect
Chilling stories like Marty and Melinda Rangers' aborted baby should cause more people to question the surrogacy industry.Kids can't draw scary faces
My kids love to draw. They are always setting up shop at the kitchen table. Commandeering the place we eat for their own artistic creations.
Some days it feels like the floor is permanently littered with colored pencils and markers. Every night when the whole family cleans the house after dinner, we always discover some stragglers.
The other day, our son accidentally whacked his sister in the face when they were playing outside. She cried pretty bad. He’s such a good kid, he didn’t mean to.
An orange pencil under the piano. A green crayon at the bottom of the laundry. A blue marker in the bathroom. How the hell did a marker get in the bathroom? Oh, someone drew on the wall.
Ferocious beasts
The kids draw all sorts of things. Cars, trucks, animals, people, our family. They also try to draw scary pictures. They draw monsters. They draw ferocious beasts with big claws. But they can’t draw scary faces. They don’t shake me. They don’t send a shiver up my spine or make me want to look away. They make me smile in a terribly sad way.
Kids just can’t draw scary faces. And why is that? They try and try, but they can’t. A vampire with a little fang hanging out of his mouth. The other side of his lips curl up in a little smile. His eyes are a little misshapen and asymmetrical. His face is soft and funny. Kind and cute. It was the scariest thing my son could draw, and it wasn’t scary at all.
He excitedly shows us his drawing, and we pretend to be scared. “Ooohhh that is scary! A vampire!” But we aren’t scared. I feel that lump in my throat. It’s a rush of confusing feelings that all come at the same time, and I can’t explain any of them. And truthfully, I don’t want to either. This boiling hot ball of feeling makes me feel so good and so bad. I am so happy and so sad.
A very long time
Kids can’t draw scary faces because they haven’t seen scary things. They haven’t seen a scary world. They are innocent. They are pure. They live in the world that we create for them. We protect them. We don’t tell them scary things, and we don’t show them scary movies. When they ask when we are going to die, we tell them that we aren’t going to die for a very long time and that they don’t have to worry about that.
Their world is sweet and kind. Simple. Even when they are mad, they don’t know how mad you can really be. The knob goes all the way up to 10, but they think it only goes to 3.
'Even when I'm old'
The other day, our son accidentally whacked his sister in the face when they were playing outside. She cried pretty bad. He’s such a good kid, he didn’t mean to. He said that he’s never going to forget it. “Even when I’m old, I’m going to remember it,” he said.
They read old books and old fairy tales. There are scary drawings of witches and giants. My son is currently obsessed with dragons. He has this red toy dragon that he loves. It looks pretty fierce. It has a split tongue that sticks out through razor sharp teeth.
But still, he can’t translate that onto paper. He can’t draw a scary face. They are always cute. They are always happy. The world as he feels it betrays what he aims to draw.
We can’t be someone we are not. We can’t feel something we don’t know. They can’t draw scary faces because they don’t know them. They don’t feel them. They aren’t them. They are innocent. They are small. They are sweet.
We, on the other hand, are sullied. We are corrupted. We are conniving. We are ugly and hateful. We are liars and cheats. Children remind us that we are not, in fact, good. It’s easy for me to draw a scary face. Just give me a pencil.
Layer after layer
We hang all their pictures around the kitchen. We have a line of string lights that run from one wall to another. We hang them up there. My God, there are so many dangling, barely holding on under the weak pressure of these little micro-clothespins. We keep adding to our collection every day. They keep bringing them to us. Layer after layer on top of one another.
The world is tragic. Things go so wrong. Why do they have to go so wrong? I don’t know. But when I see those little drawings, I smile somewhere inside. Their little hands drew those little faces. They try so hard to make them scary. But they can’t, and it’s adorable, and I love them for it.
I stare at them, and I think of how different I am than they are. How much worse I am. And, of course, they make me so sad because they aren’t going to be innocent forever. They will eventually grow up and see a scary world, and they will know how to draw scary faces.
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