The Future of the American Experiment Depends on Mothers With Large Families

Catherine Pakaluk and Emily Reynolds’ new book, ‘Hannah’s Children,’ studies mothers of large families and concludes they may hold the key for solving many societal ills.

In 2018, French President Emmanuel Macron made the dubious observation that educated women don’t choose to have many kids. “I always say: ‘Present me the woman who decided, being perfectly educated, to have seven, eight, or nine children,’” he said.

Catherine Pakaluk, a Harvard Ph.D. and Catholic University professor, immediately posted a picture of herself with her six children and started a viral hashtag #postcardsformacron, urging educated women with large families to send photos to Macron letting him know how wrong he was.

However, the subject of large families is a professional, as well as personal, concern for Pakaluk. Along with her colleague Emily Reynolds, Pakaluk has now conducted a uniquely experiential study over the course of several years and across ten American regions, dissecting the reason, meaning, and intentions behind large families through lengthy, relational interviews with 55 women who have five or more children. The results are chronicled in their new book, Hannah’s Children: The Women Quietly Defying the Birth Dearth.

While there is much to be said about the particular reasons people choose to have large families, Pakaluk writes that there is one beautiful commonality among these women:

I suppose it boils down to some sort of deeply held thing, possibly from childhood — a platinum conviction — that the capacity to conceive children, to receive them into my arms, to take them home, to dwell with them in love, to sacrifice for them as they grow, and to delight in them as the Lord delights in us, that that thing, call it motherhood, call it childbearing, that that thing is the most worthwhile thing in the world — the most perfect thing I am capable of doing. […]

— Read More: thefederalist.com