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Extinction of the American Sibling: Part 1 of 2

by Margaret Datiles 

Imagine a world without minivans. No brothers to wrestle with, no sisters to give a maid-of-honor speech at your wedding. No “family-size” meal options, and no need for that big dining table when the holidays roll around. Families in China and most of Europe have already accepted what this Sunday’s Time magazine cover story has dubbed as the new ideal. 

The article, “One and Done,” by Lauren Sandler, promotes the one-child family as the new American family model. According to the article, who needs siblings, anyway? They’re expensive, lead to lower SAT scores and cause poor self-esteem. And the bottom line is – as the article put it – it’s “simply easier with one.” 

The current economic recession was listed as the first reason why one-child families should become the new American dream. The article opens by assigning a monetary value to a child: each child costs a parent around $286,000. Who can afford that nowadays? With the economy as bad as it is, and children as expensive as ever, the birth control industry was pointed out as “one of the recession’s few growth industries.” 

It’s obvious that having children during a recession will be difficult financially. However, saying that one option is less expensive than another fails to prove that the less expensive option is intrinsically better than the other. As the saying goes, “Worth is not the same as value.”

Sandler continues, citing Christianity as one of the factors which has created social pressure to have more than one child. Christian culture, she argues, has brainwashed women into thinking that having children is what is expected of them by society. Sandler dismisses the reality that women may genuinely want to be the mother of more than one child, shrugging off the idea as an outdated cultural phenomenon.

Directly critiquing the Biblical instruction to “be fruitful and multiply,” the article claims that the saying came about as a practical instruction aimed at clan survival, ignoring the belief that children and parentage are goods in themselves. 

The Church teaches that marriage “is ordered to the good of the couple, as well as to the generation and education of children” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1660). According to the Church, children can be viewed as the “crowning glory” and “supreme gift” of a marriage, as they reflect God’s creative power and “contribute greatly to the good of the parents themselves” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1652). As contributing to the good of parents, having children is complimentary and inseparable from the main purpose of marriage.

Time’s proposed family model, on the other hand, presents a different take on the purpose of marriage. According to Time, “the mutual happiness and fulfillment of adults” is separate and distinct from the “bearing and raising of children.” In cases where there is more than one child, parenting is depicted as being contrary to the happiness and fulfillment of parents, and therefore contrary to the very purpose of marriage. 

This underlying principle of Time’s “ideal” family completely dismisses the contribution of multiple children to family life and to the character development of the parents and siblings. As stated in the article, “singletons offer the rich experience of parenting without the consuming efforts that multiple children add.” Having a second child would be destructive (or “devastating,” if you use Time’s language) to family life. Instead of portraying a second child as a gift, a joy or a means to sanctification, they are viewed as an obstacle to the ideal way of life. 

The way to achieve this new American dream? Lose your religion. “Religiosity and fertility go hand in hand, whether in more secular Europe or in more pious America.” In order to follow in Europe’s footsteps and become a one-child society, the Time article suggests that Christian principles and Christian culture need to be eradicated.

 Ironically, the closing paragraph of the article admits that step-parents, step-siblings, cousins and friends will have to step in to fill the empty sibling shoes in this ideal single-child model. Unmarried and gay parents are glorified as leading the way to this new society. “What really changes, the fewer siblings we have, is how we define family.”  

Obliteration of the traditional family, a re-definition of marriage, a devaluation of children, the extinction of siblings and loss of religion ... it is clear that Time’s new “American dream” comes at quite a cost.

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(The views expressed in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of Headline Bistro or the Knights of Columbus.)