A few years ago, some friends of mine had their seventh child. At home. By themselves. No expert help.

Things weren’t supposed to happen that way, but there was literally “no room at the inn” (hospital) when the time came for the baby to be born, and baby wasn’t about to be put on a waiting list.

Ironically, the mother later described the situation as the best birthing experience she’d had. That’s surprising, considering she didn’t have a hospital bed, an epidural, high-tech equipment monitoring her vitals, or even a nurse to offer soothing words of comfort.

So what made this birth so great?

I’ll wager it’s because the mother and father were empowered to take control of the situation and actually be parents, something that doesn’t happen in many births today.

I hesitate to use that word “empowered” – it’s used far too often in our society today and for ill-fitting reasons – but in this case, I’m simply echoing the words of a midwife friend of mine.

A former nurse in a hospital, this midwife explained that mothers who give birth at home or in more natural surroundings (vs. a hospital) tend to take far more ownership of their children, particularly if they catch the baby themselves. As I understand it, in a more natural birth setting, a mother looks down at her baby, processes that she herself just managed to push a human being out of her body, and generally will be off and running in taking care of the child as her instincts kick in.

By contrast, those parents my midwife friend witnessed giving birth in a hospital were far more timid about their child. “Can I touch him?” they would ask the medical staff, speaking of their own baby, often acting terrified when they were told that they could do this thing or that to care for the baby themselves.

These observations were not solely her own, my midwife friend explained; other midwives – even those on the completely opposite side of the political spectrum – have shared the same thing. Her conclusion was that this is just one of the earliest examples of how our society tries to undermine parental authority, telling them they simply don’t have the chops to make it in child rearing.

This attitude especially ramps up as the child grows, the education system and other bureaucratic entities telling parents to leave the task of raising the child to the experts rather than try to handle it themselves.

T. S. Eliot captured the essence of this attitude when he wrote the following in “Christianity and Culture”:

In the society desired by some reformers, what the family can transmit will be limited to the minimum, especially if the child is to be … manipulated by a unified educational system ‘from the cradle to the grave.’ And unless the child is classified, by the officials who will have the task of sorting him out, as being just like his father, he will be brought up in a different—not necessarily a better, because all will be equally good, but a different—school environment, and trained on what the official opinion of the moment considers to be ‘the genuinely democratic lines.’

In other words, when parental authority is undermined, so is the family, and when the family goes, the government steps in and takes over – a nanny state, literally.

In recent years many have observed that Americans are bringing fewer children into the world. “The total number of children that women and men ages 20 to 39 planned to have, on average, dropped from 2.3 in 2012 to 1.8 in 2023,” Pew Research recently reported.

Such drops may be one reason for the promotion of children in high places. Since taking office in January 2025, for example, Vice President JD Vance has regularly normalized bringing his children with him on trips, arguing for the need for more children in America, while President Donald Trump has underscored these actions by calling for $1,000 baby bonds given to those American citizens who bear children in the next few years.

For those who recognize the many problems a birth dearth will bring to America in the near future, these moves are a step in the right direction. But are they enough?

Perhaps we need to get to the root of the problem rather than just give out incentives to ease the symptoms. So if we want more Americans to have children, do we first need to recognize that parents are far more capable than we give them credit? And instead of tearing them down and telling them to leave their children to the experts, do we need to look for ways to restore their authority and build up the confidence they once had?

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The republication of this article is made possible by The Fred & Rheta Skelton Center for Cultural Renewal. 

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