Why We Had Children

Americans are having fewer babies. We’re down 3 percent from 2016, the largest single year decline since 2010.  The “replacement” birthrate would be 2.1; we are now at 1.76, well below replacement. Since this may lead to an aging population and a dearth of young workers, it is important news.

The New York Times wanted to know why the birth rate is low, and so they polled young people.  (https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/05/upshot/americans-are-having-fewer-babies-they-told-us-why.html). Here are the top reasons they found: 

1. Wanting more leisure time and personal freedom 
2.  Not having a partner yet 
3.  Not being able to afford child-care costs 

Reading the article made me start thinking. 

Why did Paul and I choose to have babies? And then, for goodness sake, why did we go on to have five of them?

For one thing, back when we were having babies, it was just what you did when you fell in love and got married. There was even a rhyme about it that I chanted while jump-roping: “First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes Betty Ann with a baby carriage.” Or Susie or Debbie or Mary Jane. 

We all expected to have children. That is what you did. I remember having my pre-marital physical and the doctor bringing up birth control. I said, “Oh, we’re ready to have children. I’m not worried about it.”

So we weren’t surprised when, a few months after marriage, we found we had started a baby. We were thrilled!

We didn’t think about loss of leisure time or personal freedom. We certainly didn’t think about child-care costs.

At the time our first child was born, neither of us had a paying job. We were living in Canada, without a work visa, where Paul was studying for his PhD. We lived in a one-bedroom apartment with borrowed furniture. Anna spent her first months in a borrowed baby basket, and then, when we moved, a cardboard box. Our parents helped us buy a few baby clothes and some cloth diapers. Having a baby did not seem to add to our expenses much at all, really, and we didn’t worry much about it.

At the time, I didn’t really think about why I wanted children either. But now, having read the NYT article, I am thinking. Here are thirteen reasons why I’m glad we had children.

1. 1. Because baby toes are the sweetest. But puppies are cute too, so let’s look at some other reasons.
2. 2. Because I’m glad I can look at my dad’s photo as a young man and see how my son looks just like him. Each of the five children share in my husband’s and my DNA, similar to us and yet different in wonderful and surprising ways.
3.  3. Because I have five favorite people in all the world that I would do anything for, and I believe they would do the same for me.
4. 4. Because I am a better person for having been a mother. In my young adult years, at the very time that humans are most likely to live selfishly, I was forced to put others’ needs before mine, to learn to sacrifice. 
5. 5. Because I was still able to build a satisfying and useful career while I was raising children. In fact, I think I was better at my job because I was a mother.
6. 6. Because raising children didn’t really cost a lot. We welcomed hand-me-downs, ate casseroles, and went camping for vacations. 
7. 7. Because I can’t think of a better way of using my free time than raising five people.
8. 8. Because I believe in investing in the future, and my children are my contribution to the future of the country and of the world. They work hard, they care, and they are making a difference for good. I can’t even imagine the loss to the world if they didn’t exist.
9. 9. Because, if we are to find solutions to the problems of climate change, pollution, cancer, poverty, and other problems yet unseen, it is our children and our children’s children who will find them. 
10. 10. Because my children are five uniquely different souls. I love learning more each year about  their particular talents and strengths, watching how those strengths play out in their lives. I am so glad I was able to be a part of their growth.
11. 11. Because my children have had their own children, with the same wonderful outcomes
12. 12. Because my parents chose to bear and raise me. I’m glad I’m alive. And I want to pay this gift forward.
13. 13. Because I am always stunned by the limitless potential of every human soul. 

I know that there are many reasons not to have a child, and everyone needs to make that decision personally. But I am glad that my husband and I made five decisions to welcome a child, a person, into the world and into our lives. 

Politics and Our Better Angels

Here I am at the State Convention. 

The other day the President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, Russell M. Nelson, met with NAACP president Derrick Johnson, and together they called on the world to “demonstrate greater civility, racial and ethnic harmony, and mutual respect” while eliminating “prejudice of all kinds.”

This call for civility was particularly powerful to me, because the same news cycle reported on a singular lack of civility within the Utah Republican Party. Signatures to get an important issue on the Primary ballot were evidently “lost” in the county clerk’s office before being counted.

Such shenanigans have come about as certain factions feel that their side is right, and because they are right anything is justified in order to win.

I saw this first hand as I served as a delegate to the Utah Republican Conventions, both at the county and state level. I was elected to this position one evening at the local school gym. My mandate was to represent my neighbors by thoroughly researching all the candidates running for office and then voting for the ones to represent the party on the November ballot. Accordingly, I reviewed websites, attended meet and greets, listened to debates, and talked personally to candidates on the phone. I made a spread sheet of all the candidates and compared their positions and qualifications. I came to the conventions ready to cast my vote for the candidates I felt were most qualified.

At the conventions, though, I found a rancor that did not fit with this simple mandate I felt. I heard people say, “I won’t vote for that candidate because he doesn’t support the caucus system.” Or “Sure, he’s a good man, but he’s just a RINO—Republican in Name Only.” Or "He can't represent our state, he not really a Utahn." Some people seemed to judge the candidates by the “side” they perceived them to be on rather than their qualifications for office.

At the state convention, 4,000 delegates gathered, some driving for hours from distant parts of the state. We were all ready to vote for the two offices before us: US senator and US congress (for various districts). Then we spent over two hours arguing over rules for the state party. The infighting among the leadership was vitriolic and clearly those in power feared a coups. Thousands of ordinary delegates did not understand the fuss, but we were subjected to their anger and name-calling nonetheless. 

Then there were problems with the voting clickers. And endless talks by candidates who would end up getting fewer than 10 votes. 

We didn’t finish the voting until after 7 pm, by which time many of the delegates had left, so the voting was not representative. The very purpose of the convention had been derailed by factionalism.

We can’t choose the best candidates if we are so caught up in factionalism that we don’t vet the candidates according to their fitness to serve. 

Orin Hatch, who has served as US Senator for over 40 years, put it this way in a recent op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal:

I am more than the sum of my parts, and so is every American. Yet increasingly we sort each other into groups, making sweeping assumptions based on binary labels: Democrat or Republican, black or white, male or female. . . . Our tendency to use labels to box each other in is indicative of a much larger societal problem: the unleashing of identity politics. . . . If we allow [identity politics ]to metastasize, civility will cease, our national community will crumble , and the US will become a divided country of ideological ghettos. 

Ideas—not identity—should be the driving force of our politics. By restoring the primacy of ideas to public discourse, we can foster an environment that will allow democracy to thrive.

I’m glad I served as a Utah Republican Caucus Delegate. I’m glad I was able to learn about the candidates and cast an informed vote. 

But I am disgusted by the increasingly divisive nature of politics today—the anger between parties and within parties, between conservatives and liberals and between conservatives and ultra-conservatives.

Here is what I am going to do about it. 

Following the guidelines of the group Better Angels, my friend and I are going to host a group in which both sides of the political spectrum are equally represented. We will talk and we will listen and we will find ways we can work together to solve common problems. 

But more than that, every day I am going to listen to others. I am going to look for unbiased news sources, and lacking that, I will listen to all sides of the news so I can make my own decisions. I am going to check facts before I am outraged by them. I  am going to show respect for others. I am going to look for areas of agreement. I am going to try to find solutions rather than highlight problems.  I am going to try, as Abraham Lincoln urged in his first Inaugural Address, to be influenced by the “better angels of my nature.”

Mothers, The Country Bunny, and the Hardest Job Training Seminar I Know

Once in my job-life, I needed to pull together several professors of differing opinions to work together on a project. A colleague who was aware of my efforts calling and meeting and cajoling, asked, “How do you know how to do this?” 

Surprised by the question, I considered. “Well,” I responded, “it’s not all that different from putting together the carpool schedule each year.”

Though I didn’t often make the connection, my work as a mom in many ways prepared me for my work I was paid for.

Which brings me to one of my favorite Easter books. In The Country Bunny and the Golden Shoes (published in 1939) “a little country girl bunny with brown skin” aspires to be an Easter Bunny. In the story there are five Easter Bunnies, who must be “the kindest, the swiftest, and the wisest” of all the bunnies. When this little Cottontail tells of her dream, the rich white bunnies and the tall boy brown bunnies all laugh and tell her to “go back to the country and eat a carrot.” (Yes, in this picture book from the '30s, both racism and sexism are the foes of the little brown girl bunny.)

She is not deterred by prejudice, however, and simply says, “Wait and see!”

But something does seem to slow her down. “By and by she had a husband, and then one day, much to her surprise, there were twenty-one Cottontail babies to take care of.” Her detractors really laughed now: “Take care of [the babies] and leave Easter eggs to great big men bunnies like us.” Then, “they went away liking themselves very much.”

So Cottontail settles down to raising her twenty-one little ones. Now, the story skips over a lot of work here. That husband seems to be absent (maybe he was killed by Farmer MacGregor? Maybe he just hopped off to find greener grass?), and Cottontail is caring for those bunny babies as a single mom. 

Now remember, the Easter bunnies are chosen because they are kind, wise, and swift. Any mother know that Ms. Cottontail learns to be kind as she gets up in the night to feed her babies, as she rocks them to sleep even though she hasn’t slept herself in what seems like days, as she listens to their problems without (very often) complaining about her own. 

She learns to be swift as she runs from one emergency to another, as she hustles to cook meals and wash clothes and clean the house before the next meals need to be cooked and more clothes need washing and the house is a disaster again. 

She learns to be wise sorting out squabbles, managing limited funds and time, and learning what priorities to prioritize.

I can fill in the blanks, as can many of you, because of my own experience as a mom. I may not be the kindest or the wisest, and certainly not the swiftest, but I know I am a better person today,  because I have been a mother, trying my hardest to do what is best for my own little brood.

Holly Tree Richardson, a modern Ms. Cottontail, the mother of 25 (4 delivered the usual way; 21 adopted), explains this metamorphosis:

Being a mother has unquestionably shaped me into the woman I am today. Strong-willed and vocal? I learned that advocating for my children. . . compassion? Empathy? Speaking up for the underdog? Learning to drive a bus or octuple recipes? Efficiency and working as a team? Loving unconditionally? A multi-tasking ninja? A strong work ethic? All traits and attributes I have developed because I first became a mother. ("Mother's Can Relate to the Heart-Driven Life," Salt Lake Tribune, April 28, 2018)

But neither Ms. Cottontail nor Holly Richardson stopped at using her talents to serve her family.

Out little Cottontail mother knew that her babies wouldn’t and shouldn’t be babies forever, so as soon as they were old enough, she taught them the work of being adults. She says, “Now we are going to have some fun,” and two by two, she teaches all the bunnies important adult work: cleaning, cooking, washing, sewing, gardening, art, music, and literature. 

Here again, the book skips over the hard work of training the little ones: the patience when they burned the food and stained the clothes or ruined the floor by using the wrong cleaner, the chaos when they squabbled over why Flopsy got to paint pictures while Mopsy had to clean the toilet, the disappointment when they went off to gather daisies instead of mending the torn trousers. But somehow, in a feat of incredible management skill, Mother Cottontail does train her twenty-one children, and the bunnies not only learn to do the work well, but also to work as a team and to enjoy it. 

Then, her household running smoothly, her children well taught, Cottontail learns that there is a vacancy in the Easter Bunny profession. She gathers her family to go watch the job interviews, a little sad, thinking “now she was nothing but an old mother bunny and could only look on.” 

However, after watching all the big white rabbits and long-legged brown Jack rabbits show off their strength and speed, the big boss, Grandfather Rabbit (who has obviously learned a thing or two through parenting as well) notices our little brown Mother Cottontail. 

In the job interview, he asks about her parenting, recognizing how wise and kind she must be to have raised such a large family of good bunnies. All she must do is demonstrate her speed with a quick game of tag with the children, and the job is hers. Our little brown country girl bunny reaches her lifelong dream, but not the way she thought she would. Surprisingly, the mommy-track leads to the pinnacle of bunnydom, becoming the Easter Bunny.

Similarly, our modern Mother Cottontail, Holly Tree Richardson, became a political activist, and served in the Utah state legislature. She is now a columnist for a major newspaper, an active blogger, and works with a non-profit helping Rohinga refugees.

In my own dual career (mother and teacher), I started out teaching only one class a semester when my own bunnies were little, but as they grew I added more, and when they were grown, I worked full time administering a major writing program. In my work, I used the skills I had honed as a mother, including patience, grit, and laughter.

Though The Country Bunny is an Easter book, it’s really about mothers. I was not surprised to learn that, though the book was written by a man, the story is based on a tale told by Dubose’s mother. His mother knew, as all good mothers do, that moms are great not only because they help their children grow, but also because they grow as they help their children. Mothers are always learning as they are mothering, and because mothering is both hard and important, the skills they learn are some of the most important skills in the world.

And mothers, as they share those skills beyond their homes, will make the world better.

So happy Mother’s Day! Thanks, moms, for all you do for others. 

But also, remember you are enrolled in one of the most intensive job training seminars on earth. Kudos on all you are learning!

What’s Missing: A Wrinkle in Time, the Movie

The other night we went to see the new movie A Wrinkle in Time. I was eager to see it, because the book by Madeleine L’Engle has been a favorite since I first read it as a freshman in college. The movie was good—you should all go see it. It is warm and uplifting. Storm Reid as Meg Murray is pretty much perfect. Oprah Winfrey as Mrs. Which and Reese Witherspoon as Mrs. Whatsit are delightful.

But, leaving the theater, I felt something missing. So I went home and stayed up late rereading the book. I discovered what is, at the heart, missing from the movie: God.

If you haven’t read the book or seen the movie, here’s the basic plot: Meg’s scientist father has disappeared while doing top secret work. An eccentric trio of visitors from outer space appear; Meg, her precocious little brother Charles Wallace, and her friend Calvin go with them to rescue the father. They end up on the planet Camazotz, which has been taken over by the Darkness, by "It." The father is imprisoned there, and Charles Wallace is captured in the course of the adventure. Meg is able to rescue both her father and brother, and they all return to earth.

The movie follows the plot pretty closely. What it misses is the real reason Meg is able to complete the rescue.

In the book, we get the first indication of that power early on, when the three visitors – called Mrs. Whatsit, Mrs. Who, and Mrs. Which--take the children to the planet Uriel to explain the battle they are to enter. There they experience the transcendent beauty and peace of the place, where angelic creatures are singing “Sing unto the Lord a new song, and his praise from the end of the earth.”

Only after hearing God’s praise are the children allowed to see the Shadow “that was so terrible” that it “chill[ed] her with a fear that was beyond shuddering, beyond crying or screaming, beyond the possibility of comfort?”

Though neither is named directly, the power of light and the power of darkness are clearly God and Satan.

Mrs. Which explains the shadow is “Eevill. Itt iss thee Ppowers of Ddarrkknesss!” When the Mrses encourage the children by listing those who have fought against the shadow, the first warrior spoken of is Jesus, “The light [that] shineth in the darkness.”

On Camazotz, where the Shadow reigns, everyone is the same. “We are all happy because we are all alike.” Just as Satan’s plan was to force everyone to do his will, the Shadow allows for no agency.

None of these references is in the movie. It is out of fashion to believe in either God or Satan.

But in the book we get the clear contrast of the two great powers.

The Mrses are not just eccentric and powerful beings; they are “Angels!. . .Guardian angels! . . . Messengers of God!” When Calvin names the beings as such, at the time of greatest need, they immediately arrive to aid the children.

At this climax of the book (which is completely left out of the movie), in contrast to the mend-bending, mind-numbing power of the Shadow/Satan, these angels give Meg a choice. Only she can save her little brother, but she is the one who must decide to do it.

“I can’t go!” Meg cried. “I can’t! You know I can’t”

“Ddidd annybbodyy asskk yyou tto?”

“All right I’ll go!” Meg sobbed. “I know you want me to go!”

“We want nothing from you that you do without grace. . .or that you do without understanding.”

Meg’s tears stopped as abruptly as they had started. “But I do understand. . . . That it has to be me.”

Then Meg returns into the shadow, back to Camazotz, to rescue her brother. But first she is given powerful gifts, and all the gifts are the same: Mrs. Whatsit explains, “I give you my love, never forget that”; Mrs. Who offers a charge to remember “God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty”; and Mrs. Which reminds Meg, “Yyou hhave ssomethinngg that ITT Hhass not. . . Bbutt yyou mussst fffinndd itt fforr yyoursrssellff.”

Then Meg walks into the darkness and finds her baby brother completely overcome by the Shadow, “eyes slowly twirling, his jaw slack.” But she finds her gift: it is love and she speaks it. “Charles, I love you. You are my darling and my dear and the light of my life and the treasure of my heart. I love you. I love you. I love you.”

And love, through the grace of God, saves Charles.

This is the place in the book where I always cry. Because the power of light, the power of God, the power of love is so much greater than the power of darkness. And we, foolish and weak as we are, we can always love, and through loving, share in the power of God and bring salvation.

And this is what I missed in the movie. Though Meg speaks the words of love for Charles, the movie seems to be more about empowering Meg than about the power of love through the grace of God. I was happy as Meg triumphantly returned home, filled with confidence she lacked before. But my soul was not touched as the book touches it.

So go see the movie. It’s good. But be sure to read the book. It’s better.

My Grandpa, the Cowboy

I was 25 when my Grandpa Finch died, and he was 97. It seemed to me that he had been old for all of my life, and I guess he had. It wasn't like some people who grew older as you watched, Grandpa was just always old and slow and deaf, it seemed to me anyway. 

I remember when I was really little, Grandpa took me to the rodeo and bought me so many hot dogs and so much Cracker Jack that I was sick to my stomach. Every time the hot dog man or the drink person or the Cracker Jack boy came by Grandpa would say "Do you want some?" and I was just too scared of him to say no, so he would buy me some and I would eat it until finally I was sick. Even then I thought Grandpa was very old.

I don’t have many other memories of Grandpa until I was a teenager in the 60s, when he would come stay with us in Minnesota for several weeks in the summer.  He was so quiet you hardly knew he was there most of the time. He would stay in his room for a while, then take his cane and walk out through the back door to the yard, and sit for a while in the lawn chair and chew tobacco. After a while he would walk slowly, moving that cane before him, over to the big oak that had the wooden swing Daddy had put up for me when I had been younger. Grandpa would sometimes lower himself down to sit on that swing, or sometimes he would just stand there, leaning on his cane and spitting tobacco juice.

In time he would shuffle on around to the screened sun porch to watch the trees and the weather. Coming from the Utah dessert, he loved to see how green the trees and the grass were. I remember his standing in the sun porch watching one of our big violent Midwestern thunder storms. He would grin out at the storm and exclaim, "Damn, that's a fine rain!"

Grandpa appreciated rain because all his life he had worked to coax a living from the dry Utah land. Born in 1880, the youngest child of Mormon pioneers, Grandpa was a cowboy. When he was about twelve, his dad put him on a horse and sent him alone up Provo Canyon to live with his married sister and help with their ranch in Park City. That was the end of school for him.

When he came back to Spanish Fork as a young man, he was tall and lean, more comfortable on a horse than anywhere else. His mother had died, and he and his dad were batching it.  I’ve heard they  both spent much of their time in the local saloon.

One night, as my Aunt Kathryn told the tale years after his death,  Grandpa and some buddies heard about a church dance up at the Fourth Ward building. They decided to have a little fun and rode on up to the church hall--right through the door and into the midst of the dancers. My grandmother was there as a chaperone, a small redheaded woman who had worked in service for other families since she was eight. But she was feisty.

She ran right after the tall cowboy on his horse, shouting to him to stop. Hands on her hips, she yelled, “You boys get right on out of here! You can’t break up this dance!”

As I see it in my mind, Grandpa looked down at that little redhead and fell immediately in love.

In any case, they were soon married and moved in with the dad, where Grandma set about civilizing both of the wild cowboys.

Grandpa settled down to be a hard worker and they made a success, raising cows or sheep or hay or peaches, as the opportunity arose. They also raised five boys and two girls who all learned to work hard.

But I don’t think Grandpa ever went to church, and I think the saloon was still a favorite place to relax. When Grandpa came to visit us in Minnesota, I used to be embarrassed by his swearing and by the way he chewed tobacco, though he was very clean about it and never used it in the house. Also he drank coffee, and Mamma had to fix him some every morning, which seemed very wicked in our Mormon household.

Daddy used to take Grandpa for rides in the green rolling Minnesota farmland. Grandpa would stare out the window at the tall fields of corn and the fine red barns and big herds of dairy cattle grazing on the green fields. "Damn, this is a fine country." he would say, his face suddenly lighting up in a grin that spread from one huge deaf ear to another.

One summer day, Mamma had to be gone at lunch time and left me to give Grandpa lunch. I fixed him what was my most sophisticated lunch at that time--cottage cheese salad. He obligingly ate a bite or two, and then quavered, "I like a little sugar on my clabber." I got him the sugar bowl but felt greatly insulted, that he should call my elegant creation clabber. That same lunch time I remember him talking to me, something he rarely did. It was a story about driving the cattle somewhere, far away--it wasn't clear to me where--and something happening, something that sounded very exciting, involving guns and rustlers, something like the plot of a TV western, but the story rambled and his voice trembled. I really couldn't follow it.

Now, as I look back on that afternoon, I wish I had made the effort to listen to him. What could he have told me, if I had only asked, if I had only tried to understand? In the 1960s, my cowboy Grandpa was like a traveler from another planet, and I didn’t make much of an effort to learn about his world.