Families

Our priest made a comment after church yesterday that got me thinking. He was getting ready to bless the fathers (since it was Father's Day after all - did you call your dad??) and made a comment about how many small children we have in our church. I guess we're all good Catholics lol. He talked about how great that is because it means our church is thriving and growing and will be around for a long time to come. When you see a church that has very few or no children, that's a church that will be closed in a few years' time. It struck me that the same is probably true for society in general. A society that has lots of children is one that is thriving and growing. A few weeks ago, another priest gave us some rather disturbing statistics about the numbers of children we have in society today. I don't remember the exact numbers but he did say that in the 50s, there were approximately 3 seniors for every 10 children, and the economy was thriving. These days the numbers have more than reversed. As I said, I don't remember the exact numbers, but it was something like 3 children for every 16 seniors. And we wonder why our economy is in shambles. When we don't have children to help our society grow, that means fewer workers for the workforce in the future, fewer taxpayers, fewer people to take care of that growing elderly population. And when those fewer future adults start having fewer children, then we're talking about a shrinking society instead of one that's growing as it should. Now, those who see the world as overpopulated will probably rejoice at this news. But those of us who see the ridiculousness of that realize that a shrinking society and shrinking workforce is not a good thing. Children are our future. They're the ones who will be making the money and the policies when we're growing older and retiring. They're the ones who will be taking over for us in our jobs when we retire. But if there aren't enough to replace us, that means more work has to be spread out over fewer people, meaning they'll have to work harder than we do just in order to maintain, not grow. Is that really what we want for our children? I'm not saying everyone should go out and have 10 children. I know I don't want to have 10 children. But we should all be open to children. And not just having a boy and a girl and being done because that's what society has deemed acceptable. But really being open to what God has in store for your family. Lately, every time we go to church, Trent and I start thinking about family and children and how nice it would be to have more kids. Then we have to pull over twice on the way home to spank one or both of the older kids and we start hitting ourselves over the head going, what were we thinking?? lol But it still doesn't change the fact that we enjoy growing our family and don't think we're done yet. We're willing to take on whatever children God sends our way and do our part to help our society continue to grow and thrive. It's a dirty job, but somebody's gotta do it ;)