Why Motherhood Matters

August 9, 2024

By Jim Towey

One of the joys of getting older is the delight of witnessing your children bloom into adulthood and your grandchildren get lost in wonder – and mischief.  This week three of our five kids and all our grandkids were over for a meal. There simply is nothing that compares to their company.  My son and daughter-in-law are expecting another grandchild, ok, child. This news only deepens our joy and reassures us that life is good, life will go on.

But what if such beautiful experiences become the exception and cease to be the norm? What are we to make of the sustained drop in the number of births in America?

A five-alarm fire

A national birth rate that does not meet the replacement rate should be a five-alarm fire for both the U.S. and the other countries throughout Europe and Asia undergoing this demographic decline. The elites, and the media controlled by them, don’t seem to care. Technology will compensate for the fewer workers and caregivers needed, they say, maintaining the unprecedented assault on the importance and virtue of motherhood.  

Here’s what I know: No mothers, no future.

In today’s culture, that statement can unleash a firestorm of controversy. But there is no mystery on why the birth rate is pointed downward.  Key factors include:

• The high cost of housing and educating children
• Plummeting marriage rates
• Half of marriages ending in divorce
• The social acceptability of adults choosing careers over kids and the rising DINK phenomenon (“dual income, no kids”)
• Of the approximate 11 million pregnancies a year in America, over one million  ending by abortion
• Two-thirds of women between the ages of 15-49 using birth control
• Ubiquitous pornography’s persistent degradation of women and undermining of relationships
• The belittling of stay-at-home moms by some feminists
• The hostility of the “birthing persons” crowd toward women  

Put all these stats in a pot, let the media, academia, and other secular forces denigrate motherhood and marriage, stir it all up, and you get the dangerously declining birth rates we now witness.

No wonder so many young people have no intention of getting married or having children. We all have a stake in the future. And begetting children requires parents to nurture their issue and this may require help from others. Yet the rewards are great. Ask any old person as their days draw to a close what they look back on most fondly.

A great mother

My last couple of blogs have been profiles of greatness. Here’s another one about a mother. Meet Danielle Rose.

We reconnected recently after being out of touch for years. A study of her generous life displays motherhood in all its beauty. Danielle was gifted with a voice as pure as any I have ever heard. She could have pursued a career as a vocalist of any genre of music and risen to the top by the sheer majesty of her singing. Her professional possibilities and maternal instincts were strong, perhaps in competition, which made her life choices all the more difficult.

She headed out on the concert circuit after studying music and theology at the University of Notre Dame.  Those two disciplines, too, tugged on her heart strings. After recording five albums in her twenties, she wondered if God was calling her to a life of contemplative prayer. When she discerned her vocation was to leave the convent, she went back on the road performing, donating all the proceeds to an orphanage in China that she had come to know and love. She met her future husband, Mitchell, on a trip to China and married him four months later, just after she turned 33.

Danielle is now 44. She surprised me with the news that she just gave birth to her seventh child. Of these seven, one was stillborn and another resulted in a miscarriage. Even these heart-wounding experiences bore fruit for others. She recorded a new album dedicated to their memory and to couples who have known the same grief (like my now-pregnant daughter-in-law and son did 7 years ago). She also wrote a new song for her latest two cherubs.

A mother without having children

Every woman’s story is different and the choices one makes are deeply personal and spiritual.  Some choose not to be a mom and others have that choice made for them by their genes. I judge no one. But you don’t have to have biological children to parent, to shepherd, to care for others.

When you see the beauty of motherhood, a beauty that goes unnoticed these days, you see the difference one loving mother can make, and what will be needed for the United States to reverse its current birth dearth.

(The opinions expressed herein are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Aging with Dignity and/or its Board of Directors.)