Back to the Future: The Growing Movement of Natalism
CBN:
Worldwide, birth rates are plunging in places like Western Europe, Latin America and many U.S. cities. Nationwide, people are marrying later and having fewer children. But in some of the fastest growing regions of the country, like the Great Plains and the Southwest, fertility is on the rise.People are having three, four or more kids. Who are these people and what is causing them to buck the trend? They are a growing number of Americans that New York Times columnist David Brooks calls Natalists.
Rod Dreher is assistant editorial page editor for The Dallas Morning News, and a self-proclaimed Natalist. He says, "It's an attitude, it's a sensibility where families are open to life, open to children, open to large families."
Dreher continues, "Because we're Christians, we believe our commandment is to be fruitful and multiply. We think children are a positive good. They are not just another notch on the debit sheet. We believe they are given to us by God, and that big families are what God would have us to do."
Dreher and his wife Julie have two children, for now. They moved to Dallas from Manhattan in 2003.
"We wanted to have more kids,” says Dreher, “and we wanted to have kids in an environment that was family-friendly, that supported our faith and our moral values, and, indeed, our political values. So we came down here to Dallas, which is my wife's hometown, because we knew we could afford to live here. And we knew this is a place, a culture, where we could be openly Christian and be part of the mainstream. That's not the case in NYC."
Posted by Dane on April 27, 2005 | 0 Comments
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