Focused Link: Eight is Not Enough
The full article:
http://www.opinionjournal.com/taste/?id=110007776
*~*~*~*~*
There has been much gloomy beard-tugging in recent years about the demographic decline of Western countries. Though it is true that parents in the U.S. are managing to replace themselves--unlike, for example, Europeans--we do not live in an era of big families.
Today fewer than 10% of Americans live in households of five or more people and only 1.8% in families of seven or more. That means that if your family consists of a mother and father and five children, you live where I do, which is statistically on the lunatic fringe. "Omigod, five kids?" people gasp when I tell them. "Are you nuts?"
There is, however, one corner of the U.S. where family size has suddenly expanded to titanic proportions, and it isn't Utah. It's Hollywood.
Three movies out this season suggest that we are experiencing a large-family pop-cultural moment. "Nanny McPhee" features seven grubby, uncontrollable children who drive away nannies by the score. "Cheaper by the Dozen 2," depicts one family of 12 cereal-spilling children and another of eight. "Yours, Mine & Ours" has a gargantuan passel packed into a lighthouse: "Eighteen kids. One house. No way!" goes the movie-poster tagline.
http://www.opinionjournal.com/taste/?id=110007776
*~*~*~*~*
There has been much gloomy beard-tugging in recent years about the demographic decline of Western countries. Though it is true that parents in the U.S. are managing to replace themselves--unlike, for example, Europeans--we do not live in an era of big families.
Today fewer than 10% of Americans live in households of five or more people and only 1.8% in families of seven or more. That means that if your family consists of a mother and father and five children, you live where I do, which is statistically on the lunatic fringe. "Omigod, five kids?" people gasp when I tell them. "Are you nuts?"
There is, however, one corner of the U.S. where family size has suddenly expanded to titanic proportions, and it isn't Utah. It's Hollywood.
Three movies out this season suggest that we are experiencing a large-family pop-cultural moment. "Nanny McPhee" features seven grubby, uncontrollable children who drive away nannies by the score. "Cheaper by the Dozen 2," depicts one family of 12 cereal-spilling children and another of eight. "Yours, Mine & Ours" has a gargantuan passel packed into a lighthouse: "Eighteen kids. One house. No way!" goes the movie-poster tagline.
posted by Chipi Buenafe at
6:31 PM
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