Too Much of a Good Thing?

So by now you've all heard that Ms. "Eight for the Price of Seven" Babies already had six littles waiting for her at home. If you're a reader of internet news story comments (as I am, despite it usually driving me to enraged distraction), you've also heard a fair amount of condemnation directed toward a woman who placed herself and her newest babies at such a great risk with so little necessity, given that she already qualified for a group discount at Chuck E. Cheese.

Why does this story bug me so much? Ostensibly, this woman has family support (although no husband/baby father has surfaced), so perhaps there's the requisite fourteen villages around to help raise these kids. Grandpa's headed off to Iraq to make money to feed everyone, so assuming they indeed have a huge house in an undisclosed location, these children will not be burdens on society.

And it's not that the number fourteen is really all that obscene. Certainly, it has become that nowadays, with most North American families staying safely close to the national average of 1.86 and only a few venturing out into 4 or 5 carseat territory. But in the olden days, kids in the double digits was pretty standard, no? It's only in the last few generations that Jon and Kate and their eight or the Duggars have become sideshows solely by virtue of their size.

No, I think what bothers me most is that this story points to a changing cultural attitude towards having children, one that has only become possible due to medical advancements of recent years.

Now, I think reproductive technologies are awesome, both of the "assist you with having babies" kind and the "assist you with not having babies" kind (at least, the ones that prevent the babies in the first place. The ones that send babies back to heaven before they've even had a chance to look around down here - not so much).

To those who rail against fertility treatments, saying that it's up to God and not Science to giveth and taketh life, I say, "thanks for lowering my healthcare premiums as I assume then that you won't be undergoing chemotherapy when you get leukemia."

To those who judge women who avail themselves of medical assistance to get pregnant, asking why don't they take in one of the millions of orphaned children who need homes instead of adding one more mouth to feed to the world's roster, I say, that based on what I've seen, current adoption processes seem uniquely designed to ensure that people who want them don't get babies, and that if IVF is cheaper and/or less potentially heart-breaking than the emotional minefield of adoption, it's tough to blame someone for choosing it.

But it's all a bit Pandora's Box-ish, yes? The power to give life is a great one, and with it comes great responsibility. And a great number of ethical questions. Implanting embryos is not like buying jeans at Costco, where you buy a few sizes because there aren't any changing rooms, and you bring back the ones that don't fit, so I certainly respect those who determine to carry all their babies to term. But is it any better to continue to implant multiples and then drastically increase the chances of pre-term birth, given the tremendous health risks for all involved?

In addition, medical intervention has made it possible to push the natural boundaries of conception. On the one hand, good stuff - being able to have a say in the timing of one's maternity leave makes it much easier to get a career going before taking a hiatus. On the other, do we delude ourselves into thinking we have more control than we do, resulting in more and more women delaying their first child into their late thirties and early forties, ironically leading to even more issues with fertility and thus more need for costly and dangerous pregnancies?

Moreover (and I think this is what I find so disconcerting), stories like this one point to the way that our society of consumers has turned children into just another item of consumption. Celebrities collect children like passport stamps and turn babies into accessories. TLC and Life Network show round-the-clock episodes of J&K, The Duggars, A Baby Story, and so on, and viewers take notes in the same way they watch HGTV to be inspired about bathroom renos and Food Network to see what that crazy Paula Deen will do with butter this week.

Ultimately, having a baby is becoming less and less about two people playing doctor and more about people making doctor appointments. It's becoming an industry. An industry that declares that babies are the must-have item of the season. An industry that advertises itself as the bringer of miracles, on-demand, without giving people a chance to read the fine print of tremendously high costs. An industry that fosters the idea that more is better and that turns wonderful and life-enhancing technologies into tools for the highest yield.

So it's not so much about the number "14," it's not about Jon and Kate, and it's certainly not about people who use fertility treatments. It's about a society that leads a woman who already has six children to decide that she should have a few more zweiback in the oven and that sets up an expectation that having a baby is like going to the supermarket - you can pick out what you want, when you want it, and you can buy in bulk.