I admit to being a wimp when it comes to confronting people who express disdain for new children, perhaps because their comments come sandwiched into conversation that is otherwise pleasant or benign.

Maybe a good response would be "Why would I want to have a small family?" I think I'll use that from now on, and watch the socialized liberals do the stammering. As long as I'm willing to keep speaking to them, they should dig themselves into a hole rather quickly.

"And in the fourth generation they shall come hither again: for the wickedness of the Amorites is not yet full." -Genesis 15:16

I have a feeling in my gut we are on the brink of a societal collapse. I feel like I see just too many cracks making the U.S. particularly unsound even compared to Europe where at least people still stay close to kin instead of my family that is dispersed over thousands of miles between the two coasts. I think a nation with no regard for ancestors nails it on the head as I try to gather up genealogy documents from ambivalent or downright hostile first cousins of my parents. Those of my grandparents generation who are still around have always been helpful towards me. Those of the Baby Boomers always rebuff me with statements like how they're "more concerned with the living than the dead" after telling me how they threw all the boxes of records and photos passed given to them by the prior generation in the trash.

Though civilizations may be inclined to follow their natural course, through Christ all things are made new. However, the Church needs pruned as John Wycliffe remarked in regards to the judgements of famine, death, and plague that were striking down swaths of the population of Europe in his lifetime.

My wife recently bore our fourth son. When I told various people at my workplace the news, very few of them (one, perhaps) congratulated me. The other reactions ranged from raised eyebrows to downright eye-rolling derision.

Here's the really sad part: Had I said that my wife was going to have an abortion, because she just can't handle having a fourth, the reactions would have tended to be much more respectful.

People respect death and murder more than life and prosperity. To me, it illustrates how empty and unfulfilling our culture and its entertainment really are. Instead of anticipating greatness for newborn babies (a new artist, poet, writer, builder, artisan, public servant) I suspect people anticipate the same bleak, post-modernistic exisitence they themselves have.

Additionally. when you reach a predetermined age you will be expected to voluntarily terminate your existence for the betterment of mankind. Scant resources will need to be focused on the young and productive and not to the old and sick.

Don't believe their lies: you won't be killed, you will be Renewed through Carousel.

Often the witty and quick trivial detail is a quote from a Will Ferrell movie, sexual reference, or both. Try and tell a five minute story about an interesting or funny experience (with numerous asides for color) and you will see the eyes of most twenty somethings gloss over after, as you say, 10 seconds. If they havent walked off after a minute, you get the courtesy laugh at the end of your story (which graduates into an uncomfortable pause and then genuine laugh once the sitaution is saved by Will Ferrell).

Reminds me of a Biblical verse:

Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord:
And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse. - Malachi 4:5-6