RoguePlanet

Like the roaring waves that flop onto the Atlantic shore, I was hit repeatedly in the head by one single overriding observation on my vacation: The American family is getting bigger.

By "bigger," I don't just mean wider -- statistics on childhood obesity are available to anyone who has the courage to look at them. All I seemed to see for four days were little fatties in American flag T-shirts and American flag trucks, chomping on burgers and donuts, sucking down Big Gulps, squatting in the sand or any available resting spot, chatting on cellphones. The American parents, too, waddled listlessly about, stopping now and again to catch wheezing lungs full of humid air and make endless calls back to the mainland to check on ... what? Business deals? The dog's progress at canine camp? They may as well have had a ball and chain attached to their wrists.

American families are, as the teenage girl suggested, bigger in another respect. There are more of them. Where did all these kids come from?! Four, five and six spill out of the same motel room, descending on the breakfast buffet and motel swimming pool like swarms of locusts. Just as America has collectively said "screw global warming" as they climb into gas-guzzling SUVs (with requisite "Support The Troops" ribbon), we've also collectively said, "screw smaller families."

As Joy Williams put it in her extravagantly nasty essay, "The Case Against Babies," "While legions of other biological life forms go extinct, human life bustles self-importantly on. Those babies just keep coming! They've gone way beyond being 'God's gift'; they've become entitlements."