Let’s take the first question – finances. I think most people would agree that many of our 2007 “needs” would have been constituted “wants” in earlier times. Beyond that, our culture has begun to place importance on things that earlier generations couldn’t have conceived of. A good example, and a pertinent one in our family’s life, is the importance of college funds. Our children have no college funds, at least not yet, and many people we know consider this unthinkable. Our take is that our most important “savings” are our two-year supply of food and necessities, our retirement accounts/investments, and a general savings account that can dipped into for legitimate needs. When our children are older and able to work for money, we’ll establish college accounts for them and may even contribute to them, but it is not realistic for us to have $100,000 sitting in the bank for EACH child, earmarked for college. (In our case, if you do the math, that’s $1,000,000. A million bucks.)

Does this mean we shouldn’t be parents to 10 children? Society tells us a college fund is practically a requirement for having children, but I simply don’t buy it. My husband and I put ourselves through college and graduate school by working hard, applying for grants and taking out some loans, and these are all options available to our children. Which of our children should we have not borne or adopted because we couldn’t afford to send them all on a full ride to college?

Consider the other “needs” society tells us we should be providing to our children: cars for our teens, cell phones, expensive trips, clothes and toys, cable, computers, video games, jet skis – the list is unending. I’m certainly not saying that our family doesn’t have/do some of these things, nor am I implying that they’re “bad.” What I am saying is that these options weren’t even available as considerations to families years ago. Life was simpler then, and it was easier to identify real wants and needs. If Satan can subtly convince us that we need more, we can convince ourselves that we need more money (i.e., two income households) and/or that we can’t afford many children.

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