Welcoming children!

“And whoever receives one child such as this in my name receives me.” (Mt 18:5) Today’s gospel fits with the Singaporean debate on how to have more children. Nick Chui proposed recently in The Straits Times to change the law of abortion so that more children, who otherwise would be aborted, could be saved and see the light of day. That would certainly help.

Unwanted children through contraception and abortion is certainly the root cause of the problem. But a further question should be asked. Why do today’s couples seem to feel very reluctant towards procreation? I believe that at the root lies what is obvious and everybody seems to see clearly, the cost of raising a child, but also what is hardly visible to the plain citizen but did not escape the prophetic eye of John Paul II– a distorted idea of freedom.

A freedom that is understood as a mere capacity to choose what I want, as long as I do not interfere in other’s freedom, makes of us mutual enemies. Jean Paul Sartre, a very different John Paul, preached that “Hell is the other” which is very much consistent with a vision of freedom that is threatened by “the other.”

In fact, children are seen as the end of matrimonial bliss and the beginning of marriage chaos. Children are the cause of the couple needing to tighten their belts, preventing them from travelling, enjoying nights out, etc. Children are seen as a threat to freedom, and therefore an obstacle to happiness.

Only a mind-set shift of the understanding of freedom, not so much as the capacity to choose, but the capacity to become someone greater, can really bring about a practical solution. Children, the church believes, help in the sanctification of their parents. If this is true, and sanctification is the real purpose in life, then having children is not an obstacle but is the most important way to achieve it.

On the other side, we have the economic problem. Our econmic system is an anti-child system. The church believes that a fair wage is the wage that is sufficient to sustain a family. Our economic system is built in such a way that one’s wage is not enough to sustain a family. When labour is also subject to the laws of supply and demand, couples who are eager to sacrifice family in the name of two wages, push the supply-demand curve to a point in which average wages are indeed not enough.

However, everyone takes for granted that both parents need to work and nothing is done about pushing the curve to more family-friendly levels.

In that context, it is really hard to hear Jesus saying, ‘whoever receives one child… receives me”