She'll come to you in the summer sometime
She'll talk about things you don't understand
She is beautiful, she is small
She don't wanna play basketball
There's no tellin' what she might do
Before her doin' days are through
But right now she can't even crawl
Your brother and sister don't understand
How your tiny feet and your tiny hands
Could carry the weight of a thousand earths
Into our little universe
But, Georgia, we all think it's grand.
John Hiatt 1988
“Dear Ethan, Justin,
Landon, Gavin, and Hayden:
Well, you made it. You’re all grown up. I brought you all together tonight to talk to
you about probably the biggest decision that you'll ever make - how many kids
to have. Now to be honest, that decision
is a personal one between you and your future spouses, and really even a parent
should stay out of it. But I’m going to
ignore that and give you my opinion anyway.
Also, I could be politically correct and tell you that there are many
people I know with small families who are perfectly happy, and for them that
was the right decision (which is true). However,
since I went the other direction I'm going to ignore that also, and make my
pitch for you all to have a bunch of kids.
Have you ever heard
people say that “every child is a jewel”?
If I offered you a jewel (or a car or house) for free every year or two,
at first you might say that you don't need it.
You might already have a car or house, and then you start thinking about
the cost of maintenance, insurance, etc. But if you thought a little harder about it, you
would take me up on the offer. You would
figure it's an asset, that in one way or another it would be a net positive. The difference is I never woke up in the
middle of the night in a cold sweat because I had a nightmare about something
bad happening to my house. But I did
with you all. Every child will be a
jewel for you. Each one is the ultimate
gift; take advantage of the opportunity.
And if you’re going to
have a lot of children, I recommend doing it quickly so they can all be close
in age. You all were never bored; there
was always another brother or sister to play with. Yes it makes it much more challenging to do
it this way, because you have so many toddlers and young children at the same
time. But it's worth it in the long run. In my experience kids with a lot of siblings
seem to be very close their whole lives, and after watching you all I can see
why.
Then
there's the religious angle. When I was
growing up in Louisville, when I heard about a big family, you would always ask
if they were Roman Catholic. Now I think
it's just Orthodox Jews. I'm sure you
all remember our neighbors, 5 kids, 7, 11, etc.
I won't bring up the Torah verse of “Be fruitful and multiply”, because
you already know it, and to be honest, for me that was not the main reason I
chose to have a big family. I can just
tell you that having you guys made me feel that I was straight with God. I don’t know how else to explain it.
But don't
kid yourself, it's damn hard work. But
you know what? It's not exponentially hard. What I mean by that is it's not
like having a second kid doubles your work and a third kid triples it. You're already at the grocery store so you
just pick up a little more food. You're
already giving a bath, you just give a few more. Like most things in life, you adapt, this
time to the workload. You’ll sleep when
you’re dead.
I'm not going to lie to
you about the cost either. It's brutal. If you go the private school route, which you
will, it's seriously punishing. But
you'll be fine. No one starves. You'll adapt to this too; of all the reasons
not to have a big family, this is the one I would pay the least attention to. Trust me, you'll be able to provide the
physical necessities to have a healthy child; the things that are the most
important long-term for them, like inculcating morality, intellectual curiosity,
and teaching them how the world works, are all free.
Look,
here's the bottom line. Whenever someone
has a child, whatever the circumstances, once they're born they never want to
give them back. Once the kid comes into
your life, you won't be able to imagine your life without them. So take a swing. And enjoy the Netflix”.
Have
a good night everyone.
JR
