Guest Columnist Whatever Happened to Large Catholic Families?

Sep 14, 2009

These days, images of large families have lost the luster once afforded to famous clans. Benjamin Franklin was the 15th of 17 children. Queen Anne and Queen Victoria had at least 25 children between them. Remember the Osmonds and the Jacksons? Putting aside Michael’s adult descent into the bizarre, these families were admired for being close and of course, driven. The recent death of Sen. Ted Kennedy was a nostalgic reminder of a time when that clan was just a wealthier, more glamorous version of a very common occurrence in Catholic families all over America – large, often double digit broods.

 

These days having four kids is considered a lot and anything over five is worthy of an "extreme parenting" reality show. In fact, the portrayal of large families in reality television is the most incisive sign-of-the-time for a culture so ambiguous about the personal, economic, and environmental costs of large families. The LA-based offices of TLC and Discovery Network, the cable channels dedicated to large family docu-dramas such as "Jon and Kate plus Eight", and "Meet the Duggars", has decided that America’s enduring fascination with large families needs a "twist." Family television dramas about large families, like the WB’s wholesome and entertaining "7th Heaven", Tvland classics like the "Brady Bunch", and glossy black and white coffee table books of the Kennedys are so passé. Viewers, they’ve decided, want to see the intimate world of stressed out parents of sextuplets divorcing or they want to witness the sheltered and perennially cheerful Duggars, whose Christian household of 20 runs with a system of order envied by the U.S. Army.

 

I don’t begrudge the Duggar family’s apparent and sincere happiness or their exemplar harmony. I just wonder if Hollywood’s rush to give these parents of 18 and counting a reality show was less of a tip-of-the-hat and more of a desire to portray their family in the same mold as other shows they produce that tell the story of 600 pound teens and people with hideous and incurable diseases. Yes, fascinating and often heartwarming stories all but portraying large families as curiosities says a lot about how far we’ve gone from a time when most Catholic neighborhoods were brimming with kids.

 

As a parenting blogger and mother of five who is expecting her sixth child, our culture’s perception and acceptance of large families is of particular interest to me. One of the first people I told about my current pregnancy was a fellow mother of six. After giving me her warmest congratulations, she warned me of the stares and even admonitions she commonly received from when her now college-aged kids were young. On more than one occasion, strangers in the grocery store scolded her for having so many kids. I had to admit that in the first few weeks of knowing I was pregnant, I was concerned about the fact that a sixth child would mean that we would need to replace our seven-seat minivan. Would I need a small bus, I wondered? The thought of pulling up to the mall or soccer field in a bus and parking next to energy efficient hybrids and Volvos made me cringe, not to mention wonder what kind of environmental epithets would be hurled at me or my innocent kids. As it turns out, there are eight-seater minivans. But, of course, these are concerns that the Kennedy’s never worried about as they happily added more bathrooms to the Hyannisport estate with each birth, bought more groceries, bigger boats, and (sigh) hired more help. If only it was that easy now.

 

The truth is, even though I can’t afford extra help, and the thought of spending leisurely weekends sailing in Cape Code is as alien to me as the thought of living in Katmandu, seeing the old Kennedy photos this past month on television, especially those of my favorite Kennedy, the ever resilient and faithful matriarch, Rose, inspired me. I felt proud to be the matriarch in my own right; the conveyor of the tradition and faith for my own unique brood. Six is not nine, but it’s no small potatoes either.

 

Environmental fads and the current cultural aversion to the sacrifice, chaos and messiness of large families are just that, fads. Sure, having six kids may look a little retro now, but like the Catholic faith, large Catholic families have a timeless, enduring quality. Take that Hollywood!