Kim Kardashian West and her husband Kanye West announced they were expecting a baby via surrogate last week. This will be their fourth child, and their second via this method. The family chose this route because Kim experienced difficulty during her pregnancy with the couple’s second child, North, including preeclampsia and placenta accreta, which posed significant health risks.
As a mother of four children, I’m glad to see larger families in the news, and I hope it encourages people to have more children.
While it’s reasonable that Kim and Kanye would choose a surrogate, I hope seeing a growing family on a platform as large as their family’s (who collectively boast a net worth of several hundred million dollars) inspires others to have more kids — whether naturally, through a surrogate, or even through adoption. Studies show the fertility rate has been declining for several years, but the 2017 fertility rate shows the steepest decline yet. Adoption in America is declining and experts believe there are 36 couples waiting to adopt for every one child available.
The decline in families, particularly large families, is saddening for many reasons.
Pragmatically, the U.S. simply needs more humans. The fertility rate is declining and that’s not good for the economy or society. The fewer the humans, the fewer the number of challenges solved, diseases cured, planets explored, possibilities explored. In short, “economic growth cannot occur without human growth.”
More philosophically, children are a joy, even though they’re also a challenge. In 2011, I wrote a piece for The Atlantic after I’d interviewed Bryan Caplan, an economics professor at George Mason University, about his book, Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids. He encouraged parents to relax, work on only a few areas of parenting (sleep, discipline, activities, supervision) and everything else will fall into place.
Large families need not be overwhelming, he argued. Most of the time, I think he’s right.
Even though the Kardashian/West clan have resources at their disposal that the average family does not, and will likely raise their children, due to their fame, in a way the average family may not, I hope their growing clan inspires people to have more children or adopt a child in need of a family.
Nicole Russell (@russell_nm) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. She is a journalist who previously worked in Republican politics in Minnesota.
