Has Anyone Ever Been More Wrong Than Paul Ehrlich?

Abby Eilers would be the type of mother who believes love doesn’t divide but multiplies, especially when it comes to the size of a family.

The 32-year-old mother of four triggered an online debate in social media when she reacted to what she perceived to be a growing sentiment against big families.

Based on the latest Census, the average family in America consists of 3.15 members, though families with two children are slightly more common than those with one.  Back in the latter part of the 1800s and early 1900s, Mary and Samuel Smartwood had 29 children in 27 years.

Specifically, Abby was pushing back on the notion that children in larger families suffer because parents are distracted and their attention is dispersed unevenly.

“The idea that if you have ‘too many’ kids, someone must be overlooked,” she wrote. “That a mother only has the capacity to truly care for one or two well. Every family is different — but that hasn’t been our story.”

She then added:

“I think a lot of our fear comes from the culture we live in — one that tells us good parenting means giving our children everything we didn’t have. More activities, more things, more individual experiences, more perfection,” she wrote.

With fewer large families having a firsthand understanding of the dynamics and rhythms of a lot of children under one roof, popular culture has also helped to paint images in people’s minds that aren’t necessarily true. Movies regularly depict big families as cauldrons of chaos — messy kitchens, frantic parents, and disheveled kids, some even mistakenly left home alone as the rest of the crew heads off on vacation.

“Not every large family is overwhelmed or neglected,” she noted. “Sometimes it’s just a house full of people learning to love each other well. For us, more children didn’t take anything away. It gave everyone more.”

Paul Ehrlich, the climate alarmist and propagandist who passed away last week at the age of 93, was wrong about nearly everything, and yet he continued to be quoted and treated as an expert. Consider his radical comments back in 1970 about family size:

The very first thing the government should do is try and take the pressure off to reproduce. There’s a lot of pressure in our society now to reproduce. If you’re single, people try and push you into getting married.

The first thing that should happen is that the president ought to say from now, here on out, no intelligent, patriotic American family ought to have more than two children, preferably one, if you’re starting a family now. Not any law, but just say this is what responsible people do. He ought to make the FCC see to it that large families are always treated in a negative light on television wherever they appear.

You would increase taxes on people with children rather than decrease them since when they have the children, they require more services. If that doesn’t work, then you’ll have the government legislating the size of the family. And people say, oh, that’s impossible.

In the not-too-distant future, the government will simply tell you how many children you can have and throw you in jail if you have too many.

Thankfully, Paul Ehrlich’s suggestions weren’t taken seriously, and his predictions haven’t come true, but forms of this dangerous philosophy still exist.

Many of us blessed to come from larger families can resonate with Abby Eilers’ perspective. Every household is unique, but as the youngest of five children, my parents seemed to have everything dialed in quite nicely. From mowing the lawn to washing dishes to taking out the trash, everybody had an assignment. Our father used to joke that with five kids, he had a built-in staff and he and our mother were the benevolent dictators.

Scripture is clear that children are blessings and not burdens — which means having more children equates to enjoying more blessings.

“Behold, children are a heritage from the Lord, the fruit of the womb a reward,” we read in Psalms. “Like arrows in the hand of a warrior are the children of one’s youth. Blessed is the man who fills his quiver with them! He shall not be put to shame when he speaks with his enemies in the gate” (127:3-5).

Why would any Christian couple voluntarily or deliberately try and hold back the blessing?

The societal fear that Abby alluded to in her post touches on one of the main drivers behind the rising and even entrenched attitudes against larger families. While financial realities may also play a role, it’s financial expectations that often overshadow and drive the concern. There are countless items considered “necessities” today that were “luxuries” just a few generations ago.

Paul Ehrlich has now passed from the scene, but vestiges of the same dangerous and toxic sentiment he peddled remain in the ether.

If you’re married and able, have children. Lots of them. You will not regret it.