Why you should have more kids

The underlying assumption in Glaser’s tweet is why the heck would anyone want that many kids in the first place? Kids make some people happy: They fulfill a dream, give people meaning, help pass along family traits, traditions, and genetics to another generation.

Big families make some people really happy. Research shows happy families could share something in common: size. Although I’ve seen some studies show kids decrease the happiness of a couple, I’ve also seen some research show larger families are happier than smaller ones, more cost-effective too. Many people enjoy the bustling chaos of multiple children underfoot. Personally, I know families who are as content with two children as they are with eight: As long as the children are cared for, loved, protected, and nourished, why not?

Another reason people have kids, that Glaser or other liberal women may fail to understand, is that it takes a certain level of selflessness to raise a family. When a selfless adult is paired with a difficult task, it produces a little-known concept in modern society: joy.

Having kids is stressful, exhausting, and just plain difficult. Parents with special-needs children, or children who are severely ill or disabled, must feel this immeasurably more, if only for the lack of independence among other factors. To understand this, one must only: 1) have children or 2) skim my all-time favorite article on this topic which ran in New York Magazine years ago: “All Joy and No Fun: Why Parents Hate Parenting.” The author makes the opposite case as far as happiness and develops an entire piece on the thesis that parenting is hard, mundane, unfun, and the only reason people have kids is for the pure joy they bring. Of course they don’t mean Disney World “joy,” but rather C.S. Lewis kind of “joy,” which he described as something that “must be sharply distinguished both from Happiness and Pleasure.” It’s a state of contentment a person experiences beyond or despite adverse circumstances.

When parents raise children, they discover the kind of joy that comes from experiencing grief, hardship, difficulty, and character tests. Kids, by their very nature, make these things happen like it’s their job. Whether it’s through larger challenges (like illness, disease, addiction, or rebellion) or small things (like a crying baby or getting dinner on the table amid another sports practice), these things can test even the most patient person. I know, I have four children: two boys and two girls.

Is there a greater challenge than stepping on a Lego and not immediately disowning the child that (continually) leaves them on the floor for bare feet to find? Not to mention, you haven’t lived as a parent until you have cleaned up vomit at 2 in the morning or pulled over on the side of the road to let your potty-training child “use the restroom.” If life is a process of becoming less selfish (as my dad used to say to me growing up), parenting is a process of growing up again every single day, such are a child’s constant needs — both in the early years, physically, and later, as they develop, emotionally.

This is why Glaser’s follow-up tweet, where she posits she actually meant people should just adopt rather than have a slew of biological children, actually hurts her argument. Though it’s pretty clear she’s backtracking and mischaracterizing her first tweet because of the backlash she got, adoption is great too, and just as hard, in a myriad of ways, as having biological children.

Kids also bring good times to a family which are too numerable to count. Precious moments — eating ice cream on a hot day, watching a child read for the first time, or splashing in the ocean with them — when coupled with the stress of raising a child often translate to joy. For children, it’s often the simplest things that give them the most pure glee — watch a child in a sprinkler on a hot day, and you’ll know what I mean — and this can make mom and dad smile and, for a moment, push aside their own delirium and stress.

Sure, you have your childless freedom, progressive liberals, but you have not experienced the unique challenge of holding out your bare hands to catch the vomit of a six-year-old who is suddenly carsick. Sure, you can tell women not to have babies, but you haven’t really matured into adulthood until you’ve kept yourself from clobbering another grown-up whose child is bullying yours because you know adversity creates character — for both of you.

Many well-meaning adults aim to grow up, become less selfish, and develop their character. They stumble upon discovering having children aids in that goal as well as any other. I’m not saying most parents set out to have kids to strengthen their own character, but it is a known fact that kids will be the iron that sharpens iron in the time it takes to change a diaper at 3 a.m. in the dark or spend 10 hours in an emergency room because your son decided to actually test the sharpness of a razor blade (that landed on his foot). This coupled with wet kisses, long talks, leisurely bike rides, and midnight snuggles — not because it’s so easy to be a parent, but because it’s so hard. These are the things Glaser and her like-minded progressive friends not only are trying to restrict with their half-baked tweets about parenting, but may never experience themselves.

Nicole Russell is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. She is a journalist in Washington, D.C., who previously worked in Republican politics in Minnesota. She was the 2010 recipient of the American Spectator’s Young Journalist Award.