Best of the week entry 2

This entry comes from a Roman Catholic blogger on the environmental impact of large families. As she points out in Big Families Are the New Green, large families are not generally environmentally destructive, at least not more so than small families. I loved this line:

Probably not. Moms of many already know that the work of caring for seven children is not the same as caring for one child times seven. In some ways, it’s easier. In the same way, many large families actually have a small-er carbon footprint than a typical family with one or two kids. A household of nine is not like a household of three times three. It just doesn’t work that way.

That is spot on. There are economies of scale in large families and I would hazard to say that because we spend less time running around, buying fast food/convenience food and hand clothes down instead of purchasing a new school wardrobe every year, we probably have a smaller "carbon footprint" than many smaller families. I have commented before that many of our neighbors with one of two kids or even no kids at all put out as much or more garbage each week. We may be lots of people but we conserve our resources and are pretty frugal. It is an interesting article with lots of common sense, so before your friends with the recycling t-shirt and Prius badger you into saving the planet by refusing to have children, keep in mind that most of what they are accusing large families of is simply not true. It is not only possible but quite realistic to be good stewards of God's creation at the same time that we fulfill our calling to be fruitful.