Many believe that there can't be too many children on this planet. Mother Teresa told us that saying there are too many children is like saying there are too many flowers. Could she be right?
As I walked home today from work, as usual I walked by the local abortion clinic. A car was parked nearby. Its bumper sticker said something like: "Saying there are too many children is like saying there are too many flowers."
Bumper-sticker lady/man: A baby isn't a flower. A flower is here today and gone tomorrow. A child is here for upwards to 80 years or more. A child usually reproduces and has more children. Children grow into adults who consume more than a field of flowers will ever consume.
Now don't get me wrong! I think babies are more beautiful than flowers. I would rather hold a baby than be given a bouquet of hundreds of flowers. I have five children of my own. But I tell my children to be not like me. They can have one or two, but no more. A person can have too many children.
Like such persons, I was not responsible. My children will contribute much to make this world a better place. This I expect and for their success I am proud. Nevertheless, my children are leaving footprints on this earth. And the more affluent they are, the bigger footsteps they will leave.
It is only natural that we humans' hearts warm up to children. This is how the species perpetuates itself. We women are led to want to nurture our babies and other people's babies. After all, they are little us. They will care for us someday.
But they will also use up this world's resources. They will someday build homes. They will perhaps go to war against other mothers' children to have enough food, to have fuel for their cars. They will create wastes that will have to be stored somewhere. More 600-plus acre landfills will need to take land away from crop production. More water sources will be contaminated with seepage from these landfills.
Our darling children, who are more beautiful than flowers, are more valuable than little puppies and kittens who also warm our hearts. However, even in the face of these darling little animals, we continue to advocate for neutering of our pets. We know that our pets will over-populate if they are all allowed to reproduce. And even with all of the neutering that is done, there are still too many puppies and kittens that are put to death in a world without the capacity to give each humane lives.
In Africa, millions of orphaned children are dying slow deaths from a lack of touch and love. Their parents have died due to AIDS and malaria. These children are more beautiful than flowers, but very few adults are coming forward to love and nurture them.
People who love to compare children to flowers are living in a fantasy world. Do they not know that our earth has already reached beyond its carrying capacity for humans? Do they not know that we have just about reached Peak Oil, that wars are already being fought so we can have enough gas to drive our ever expanding number of vehicles driven by an ever expanding number of people?
I could go on and on about the sheer lack of responsibility such people exude when they compare the life of another child on this earth to that of a flower that is picked from the plant and allowed to die a few days later in someone's vase.
A child is much more than a flower. That is why we must limit their number, so the fewer we have can experience a humane life nurtured by parents who have the time and energy and resources to create healthy childhoods and future responsible adulthoods.
I understand that Mother Teresa of Calcutta came up with this saying. Like her, I also believe that once children are put on this earth, they deserve love and care, everyone of them. This is all the more reason to limit the number of births, of children.
Maybe the people who want more children should instead try their hand at raising a pretty flower garden instead.