PBS is a comfortable home for secular liberals – with the added bonus of getting a major chunk of its funding from religious conservative taxpayers. MRC’s Claire Chretien sent along a popular PBS NewsHour online commentary by “secular-parenting blogger” Wendy Thomas Russell headlined “The case for having just one kid.”
The number one argument? “1. It’s eco-friendly. You’re replacing two trash-accumulating, water-wasting, gas-burning individuals with one, which means your impact on the environment is drastically reduced. You get to be a mother without destroying Mother Earth.”
So God forbid if families (like mine growing up) have six trash-accumulating, water-wasting, gas-burning children. Russell also underlines it’s all about Mommy having more free time for her friends and her husband:
8. You have time and energy to pursue your own interests, socialize with friends, and devote to your marriage. If you want your child to have a happy, fulfilled life, you have to model that. And if all you do all day is try to keep your head above water, because society (or your co-parent) pressured you to expand your family even when your gut told you not to, you’re not modeling that.
At the end, Russell discussed how her young daughter Maxine thought about her only-child status and the child announced “I want to be a sister...but I don’t want a brother or a sister.”
Russell oozed: "And then it occurred to me: Being a sister or brother isn’t just a condition of biology, but a condition of friendship. It’s a frame of mind. It’s a desire and willingness to protect, empathize and support." Actually, it usually is a condition of biology. If you want to compare your friends to siblings, that's your use of metaphor.
On her own secular-parenting blog Natural Wonderers, Russell was pleased by the controversy that followed:
A great many parents were offended, seeing my defense of having one kid as disparaging those with more than one. Others didn’t get my sense of humor (or find my humor at all humorous). Others thought my story amounted to meaningless drivel.
But among all the insults were a great number of thoughtful comments and even some really fascinating debates — all of which helped the story build momentum. Lots and lots of momentum.
By the end of the day, the essay had been shared so many times on Facebook (upwards
of 25,000) and had generated so many comments (more than 300) that it was the No. 1 story on the NewsHour’s website — far above any, you know, actual news. It was also the No. 1 story on all of PBS.org.
Next question to Russell: Doesn't all this debate on the Internet have a wasteful impact on the environment?
