To Kid or Not to Kid.

Somehow or other I ended up reading this blog post about the Duggars.

Leaving aside my opinions on their religious views, because in the end, unless you’re sacrificing children or animals, using children in sex rituals, or marrying teenaged girls (or boys) and having sex with them, I don’t really care what you believe. To a point. The problem with the Duggars and others who think it’s okay to litter the earth with their spawn is that they are hurting others.

It should be fairly obvious why, but not one person who commented on that blog post got it, not one mentioned the reason having so many kids is bad. Sure, if Michelle Duggar (who reminds me eerily of Karen Allen) wants to be a broodmare just to let Jim-Bob prove his masculinity, fine. Personally, I think it’s warped, but it’s her choice. And I have no problem with the older kids helping to raise the younger ones. Folks, that’s the way it’s always been done in larger families, and the way it should be. The older kids learn, then teach, and by teaching and taking care of their younger siblings, they learn to take care of their future kids (or decide, hell no, I don’t want any). My opinion always used to be, if you can afford ‘em, have ‘em—nothing worse than poor people popping out one kid after another when they can’t afford to clothe and feed them. It’s rumored the only reason they can afford all those spuds is because of the deal they made with TLC, but if that is true, then I suppose they get kudos for figuring out how to fund their tiny army.

I don’t criticize Michelle and Jim-Bob for Josie’s premature birth. That could happen with a first child or any one of them. I don’t even condemn them for giving every last munchkin a name starting with J. But really, what the heck is up with that? And why all Js? Why not every other one an M for Michelle? All Js is proof positive of Jim-Bob’s infatuation with his own genitals, but, as they say, I digress.

Anyone out there remember the basic cycle of life, the one that allows us to live on this rock? Very simply put, it’s respiration. We breathe in oxygen (and a few other gases) and breathe out carbon dioxide. We cannot breathe that air back in until it’s “cleaned.” It’s why you suffocate if you put a plastic bag over your head. We always say, they ran out of air. That’s not strictly true. There’s air, alright, but we’ve poisoned it by using it. There’s a rather complicated process in which our lungs convert oxygen (O₂)-rich air into CO₂-rich air. We can’t use CO₂. Enter plants. Plants, very simply put once again, turn CO₂-rich air (which is toxic to us) into O₂-rich air.  It’s a deal made in heaven…or wherever you’d like.

Plants, and in particular, trees, are the Earth’s lungs.  Whether you believe in the six-day, Bada-Bing theory in which God pulls a rabbit out of his hat (along with a boatload or two of other creatures), lights all the stars in the sky and then ruins it all by making Man from a lump of clay (that should have told God right there what dirty bastards we’d be); or you believe in a godless universe that lit itself on fire; or somewhere in between, the symbiosis between living beings, mammals, rodents, birds, etc., and plant life is brilliant. And crucial.

We are killing trees and other green things as fast as we possibly can. And in return, their absence is killing us.

The average American, regardless of income, puts out about 20 metric tons of carbon dioxide per year (as compared with a world average of about 4 metric tons per person, per year.¹ Twenty.Metric.Tons. And yet we’re cutting down the forests and plowing up the fields faster than they can be replaced.

So, let’s do some wildly off-the-cuff math and say the Duggars finally figure out after the birth of wee Josie, that if Michelle pops one more puppy out, she’ll have to have a zipper installed, so they stop spawning (I have this sneaky suspicion that Jim-Bob would have to be made a eunuch first, but I digress again).  That still leaves 21 people in the household (let’s just say for a moment that the one daughter who’s already married and starting a tiny army of her own is still at home and not yet had any babies). 21 x 20. That’s 420 metric tons of carbon dioxide into the air, every year, as opposed to the “average” family of, for the sake of simplicity, four, or 16 metric tons.

Let’s take Michelle and ol’ JB out of the picture, because they’ve been around for awhile.  That leaves 19.  And we’ll be generous and take the 2 kids that the “average” family has from the equation, too.  That leaves 17.

That’s 340 metric tons of extra CO₂ in an already burdened atmosphere. Add to it the space taken by let’s say, to be conservative, 1/3 of them, 5.67, to build new homes.  Another third moves into new apartment buildings, and the last third, bless them, move into existing homes (either apartments, semi-detached, or detached housing).

The average new home size in the U.S. in 2009 was 2,135 square feet.² Fortunately it was showing a down trend from a high in 2007 of 2,277 square feet.  Let’s give those 5.67 Little Duggars the benefit of the doubt and say their yearly income, combined with a down-trend in new home size puts them at roughly 1800 square feet per Duggar. That’s 10,206 square feet, not counting concrete patios and driveways, that are not producing O₂ anymore (not to mention the reflected heat sending the temperature of the atmosphere even higher). Combined with whatever square footage the apartments the second third is living in. Let’s be generous and place the area at half what the first third is taking up, so 5,030 square feet. Total 15, 090 square feet, or roughly .42 suburban acre.

That certainly doesn’t seem like a lot, does it? However, by the time you figure in the square footage of new places to shop, work, worship, and learn, plus the parking lots, the square footage of greenspace—The Earth’s lungs, remember—lost is daunting.  Add water used, run-off, sewage and trash produced, lawn chemicals used, not to mention landscapes irrevocably lost or changed, and suddenly those extra Duggars, and the extra kids of any family that doesn’t seem to know what the words birth control mean, add up to a bigger threat than just the demise of Michelle Duggar's beleaguered uterus.

The right-wing Christian contingent (notice I do not say all Christians, because I know many who are horrified at what we are doing to our planet) seems to think that caring about the Earth is somehow or other evil, anti-God, and a liberal plot. That somehow, Jesus says it’s okay to piss on Mother Earth, to plunder her riches, to tear up her green mantle until there’s nothing left. That it’s okay to have one kid after another, without regard to where they will live and work, and what they will eat once we’ve paved over all the farms to make room for sloburbia.

Wow. Those are not the lessons I learned in Sunday School.

I don’t know about you, but I learned God created the Earth, making it sacred. We are stewards of the Earth. Good stewards do not rape or plunder that which has been placed in their care. Even if you don’t place any authority in the Bible, it’s just plain, practical sense to not destroy that which gives you life and that which will support your progeny.  In effect, people like the Duggars (i.e. Quiverfull) are not only selfish, but are also cutting off their noses to spite their faces. The more children they have, the harder it will be for those kids to survive, and even harder still for their kids to survive.

Things like verses 3-5 of Psalm 127 were written in a time when very few people, relatively speaking, inhabited the Earth, and the Jews in particular, needed more people to fight the growing number of enemies they were amassing.  Of course they’re going to tell you to have a bunch of kids, especially when over half of them would probably not reach adolescence, let alone adulthood. This is the problem with fundamentalism, it fails to place the Bible within its historical context. It’s nigh onto impossible to take something written for the illiterate who lived over two thousand years ago, before humankind advanced enough to delve into our past and into the very nature of life itself, and apply it to modern-day life. Of course, if you ignore all we know about the authors of the Bible and insist it was written by the Divine Hand, then all bets are off.

So, yes, your uncontrolled reproduction is hurting me, and worse, it’s hurting my children. I have a right to be angry about that and to let you know about it. Not that I think for a moment you care about anyone’s opinion but your own.

Related sites:

http://www.nrdc.org/cities/smartgrowth/rpave.asp