Sociologist Peter Berger has a theory about why religious believers tend to have more kids than their secular peers:
I will venture a hypothesis. Religion has always given its adherents a sense of living in a meaningful universe. This protects individuals from what sociologists call anomie—a condition of disorder and meaninglessness. Religion, by the same token, gives a strong sense of identity and confidence in the future. More than anything else that human beings may do, the willingness of becoming a parent requires a good measure of confidence in the future. Mind you, this is not an argument for the truth of religion. Illusions may also bestow meaning and confidence. But my hypothesis offers an explanation for the ubiquity and persistence of religion.
I am not sure whether this function of religion works in the same way in the Abrahamic traditions (Judaism, Christianity and Islam) as in the religions to the east of the Muslim world, notably Hinduism and Buddhism. It probably does. For a believing Jew, Christian or Muslim, the future of the world, his own future, and that of his children lies in the hands of a compassionate God. Every mother, of any faith or of no faith at all, will get up in the night to comfort a crying child. She may not speak. Her presence and her holding the child may be enough comfort. If she does speak, it is likely to be some variation of saying “everything is all right” or “everything will be all right”. This may well be true at the moment. In a purely secular perspective, these formulas are finally not true. The mother, the child, and everyone and everything they care about are fated to perish. Religious faith gives a cosmic validation to the mother’s comforting words.
July 8th, 2011 | 9:53 am
Correlation is not causation, and I think we should look for qualities that very religious people might have that might be found elsewhere. What I often see in people that have kids early and often is a kind of “leap before you look” attitude. For example, I remember the boys and girls who had kids in high school had this relatively nonchalant attitude about the situation. Whereas me or my wife would have been freaking out about our future and our kid’s future, they just seemed very calm and relaxed about the situation. They on the other hand had this “what is there to worry about” attitude.
July 8th, 2011 | 10:14 am
They on the other hand had this “what is there to worry about” attitude.
Jeremy,
Isn’t that perfectly consistent with the teachings of Jesus?
July 8th, 2011 | 10:40 am
1. Um, is this supposed to be some sort of new and shocking theory? Is there actually anyone serious who doesn’t know this already? (Ruling out those who would say something along the lines of “those dumb christianists are too dumb to know how to put on a condom–aren’t they dumb!” as unserious)
2. I was going to read the article, but after clicking to the link and seeing the title, I felt no need to waste any more of my time on it: “Why do Godders have so many kids?” Really? Is that supposed to be clever?
July 8th, 2011 | 10:44 am
True but incomplete. All things being equal, I believe you could find a measurable difference between folks with and without children, regarding their relative optimism for the future. It wouldn’t surprise me if the “with” group turned out to be more religious on average, but whether there’s any causation involved would be unclear.
It’s also unclear whether a religion like Christianity, for example, is really a cosmic way of cooing to people, “There, there, it’s gonna be all right.” To the contrary, it actually promises that an end will come, and it’ll be painful. Obviously, religious faith inspires great comfort and strength in people; but in my cursory consideration, those qualities seem more potent in addressing death (in the extreme case, martyrdom) than encouraging new life.
I would suggest two important spiritual qualities that certain religions promote, which might account for the disparity in fecundity.
First, a consciousness that one is part of a holy heritage, with roots in the distant past, and a destiny in some undefined future, perhaps fortified by the knowledge that others of your heritage have overcome past vicissitudes. This gives a greater context, indeed a sense of vocation, to one’s own acts of parentage: childbearing is not an act of personal fulfillment, but a contribution to the heritage, and a necessary step forward towards its destiny. Orthodox Jews and traditional Christians (I’m an Armenian Christian) have had this feeling, historically.
The second quality is a feeling of welcome towards life: seeing it as a blessing for its own sake. It seems to me that once a child is conceived, traditionally religious people would be far less likely than irreligious ones to terminate a pregnancy; they may also be less likely to employ methods of restricting conception to begin with.
Optimism and comfort surely play there roles, as do other things, no doubt. And I couldn’t say at this point whether these reflections (and Berger’s) apply mostly to the modern world, in which childbearing is no longer an economic necessity to provide for one’s old age.
July 8th, 2011 | 10:45 am
I observe in addition, that those who are yet more religious than just “believers,” those who eschew contraception, have more kids still.
Skeptics will say, sure they do since they are not “protected.” But since Natural Family Planning (when used right) has the same effectiveness as the Pill (when used right), there is a deeper reality.
Natural sex has the power, through God’s grace, to bestow on its practitioners a deeper sense of the dignity of the human person–including those very human persons called our children. Don’t ask me how it works, but it’s very consistent.
NFP users have more children because it’s their choice. They refuse to let the culture, which wishes to be “protected” from kids (the little terrorists!), persuade them to limit their joy.
I speak from observation of others, and from personal experience.
– “Octodad”
July 8th, 2011 | 11:20 am
I think the largest factor is that many religious people don’t believe in abortion. They have more kids because they don’t believe in aborting them: it’s a heinous sin.
Also, it’s becoming apparent that without some form of faith belief, children are becoming a liability. They get in the way of a woman’s career and her autonomy, and the growing numbers of the “child-free” are a testament to this. They are a cost and a sacrifice, and without some belief that gives them value, is it any surprise people don’t have them?
July 8th, 2011 | 11:46 am
The proper question is “Why do non-religious people have so few children?” There is an insidious assumption in the question “Why do religious people have so many children?” It presumes that having ‘more’ children is abnormal – which in itself explains much.
Children are voracious consumers of time and money. To the extent that we do not see children as gifts of God, we will see them as competitors who encroach on our standard of living. Since the cost of old age has been socialized, we no longer feel the need to produce children as a form of social insurance. Contraceptive technology allows us to indulge all manner of sexual desire without accepting the responsibility of children as a natural outcome. In effect, we have made children a cost to be minimized in the search for a comfortable life – an option to be traded against the benefit of a new car, or a resort vacation.
The root of the difference is found in the selfish and self-centered nature of man. If he thinks that ‘this life is all he has’ then he will seek to maximize the happiness he personally derives from this life. He will see children as an impediment to that quest because a child imposes costs and responsibilities that cannot be shirked. A zero-sum analysis develops in which a benefit to the child becomes a cost to the adult. The question becomes “How much loss of self-indulgence am I willing to bear for the sake of raising children?” The answer is “Not much.”
In the absence of God, man has no framework to see children in terms of gift and blessing. Combine that attitude with contraception, and you get the demographic winter that is killing the west. The irony is just too rich. “Death by orgasm.”
carl
July 8th, 2011 | 12:10 pm
“I think the largest factor is that many religious people don’t believe in abortion. They have more kids because they don’t believe in aborting them: it’s a heinous sin.”
And yet studies show that although these religious groups might not believe in abortion, that doesn’t stop them from getting abortions. Lookup the statistics from Guttmacher on the percentages of abortions had by women who identify as catholic or born-again Christian. Here’s another study: “The study, available as a downloadable report, reveals that Christians have just as many abortions as non-Christians. Data analyzed for all fifty states show that the rate of abortion is the same in the most-Christian segments of the population as it is in the least-Christian. The most-Catholic segments, on the other hand, showed significantly higher abortion rates.” (http://www.edwardtbabinski.us/articles/christianity_abortion.html)
July 8th, 2011 | 12:31 pm
Jeremy, I think you’re conflating “religious people” with “members of religious groups.” The article makes clear that the finding involved “intensely religious people.” On the whole, an intensely devoted member of a religious group that opposes abortion is far less likely than the general population to have or procure an abortion — even if the members of that group as a whole are not. Just like any group (whether a visible group or a social or ideological classification) you have those who exhibit the principles of the group more and less strongly.
July 8th, 2011 | 12:33 pm
Notice also that the groups focused on were Amish, strict Orthodox Jews, Mormons and so forth — groups noted for the moral conservatism and high buy-in price of their lifestyles. I really doubt if Guttmacher could come up with studies showing the rates of abortion for those groups were similar to those of the general population.
July 8th, 2011 | 1:33 pm
Jeremy, except that the link to the actual study is broken. I tried looking guttmacher up, and got a hit from religion dispatches which said similar as your original post. But the study they linked too said that religious people are as likely as secular people to use contraception, not abortion.
If you can link to the study directly it might help.
July 8th, 2011 | 3:36 pm
Joe DeVet wrote:
“I observe in addition, that those who are yet more religious than just ‘believers,’ those who eschew contraception, have more kids still.”
It is not exactly that they are more religious, it is, more precisely I believe, that they are followers of Christ as well as believers in Him. There are many who believe in Jesus but do not follow Him.
Couples who follow Him recognize that God has His own plans regarding the number of children He wants to bring into existence through their union to spend eternity with Him forever. They respect that and are open to His plan. We are called to believe in Jesus and then to become His followers. Stopping at just believing in Him is refusing to live a life of faith where He is in charge, not us.
Jeremy wrote:
“The study, available as a downloadable report, reveals that Christians have just as many abortions as non-Christians. Data analyzed for all fifty states show that the rate of abortion is the same in the most-Christian segments of the population as it is in the least-Christian. The most-Catholic segments, on the other hand, showed significantly higher abortion rates.”
This clearly demonstrates the difference between “believers” and “followers.”
July 9th, 2011 | 6:58 am
I don’t believe it’s because religious people are this that or anything else.
I believe it’s because “non-religious” people – that is, humanists (who else defines their belief system in terms of opposition to religion?) – believe in the individual. No other life really matters very much. The logic they use in constructing their ethics demonstrates that whether the Golden Rule applies is mostly a question of whether the other person in the transaction (the “others” in “do unto others”) is someone who benefits you/your society, or has the power to harm you/your society.
Whether you acknowledge it as a religion or not (and really, that’s just a function of how one defines what a “religion” is), the Enlightenment-beliefs are inherently self-serving, and lead inexorably to the belief that nobody else will ever really matter to you as much as you do. Selfishness is simply more “rational”. There is no comfort in having children when you see family is a thing that you “have” (possession), rather than a thing that you “are” (identity).
July 11th, 2011 | 5:32 am
[...] HT: Joe Carter [...]
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