Why are highly educated, ambitious women choosing large families in an age of falling birthrates, frozen eggs, and fertility tech? In this episode, Dr. Catherine Pakaluk joins Brave New Us to unpack her groundbreaking book Hannah’s Children: The Women Who Defied the Birth Dearth.
We explore:
What drives women to embrace motherhood as a vocation—not a fallback
How the fertility crisis and biotech age shape our cultural assumptions about children, work, and worth
Why choosing family is the most radical—and future-focused—choice a woman can make today
About the guest:
Dr. Catherine Pakaluk is a professor of social research and economic thought at the Catholic University of America and a mother of eight.
Mentioned in the Episode
A Catholic Guide to Infertility with John DiCamillo
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Grab a copy of Samantha’s book Reclaiming Motherhood—a theology of the body for motherhood in the age of reproductive technologies.
TRANSCRIPT
Samantha: [00:00:00] Welcome to Brave New Us, where we explore what it means to be human in the age of biotechnology. Today we're asking, what if the solution to our population crisis isn't policy, but people? And what if the quiet revolution is already underway?
Samantha: Our guest today is Dr. Catherine Pakaluk, economist and author of the new book, Hannah's Children. The Women Quietly Defying the Birth Dearth.
Samantha: In a culture where fertility is often delayed, minimized, or outsourced, Dr. Pakaluk set out to understand the women choosing something radically different, large families, not because they're stuck in the past, but because they're imagining a different kind of future. We will talk about what motivates these women, what they know that the rest of the culture has forgotten, and why their lives offer a powerful counter narrative to a world that increasingly sees children as optional or [00:01:00] even as obstacles.
Samantha: This is not a conversation about nostalgia. It's about calling courage and what it means to reclaim the meaning of fruitfulness in a technological age. Dr. Kolic, welcome to Brave New Us.
Dr. Pakaluk: Thank you. I'm really happy to be here.
Samantha: Excited for our conversation today. So first of all you're an economist.
Dr. Pakaluk (2): Mm-hmm.
Samantha: lots of things that you could have studied and other methods you could have used to study them. How did you land on this topic of all things and why did you choose the approach in your study?
Dr. Pakaluk (2): Good question. Okay, so the topic that's easier to answer.
Samantha: Hmm.
Dr. Pakaluk (2): So the topic I guess I like to say that it sort of sits at the intersection between my personal interests and my professional interests. I think, which is always a, I mean, if your interests are lively, that's always a good approach, right?
Dr. Pakaluk (2): 'cause it takes something that [00:02:00] seems like work and kind of turns it into play in a sense. I grew up in a large family and I have a large family. My husband and I got married. He was already a widower and had lost his first wife to breast cancer, and he he and she. I had welcomed seven children. One little guy had passed away already, but they had six children living, and so we thought, well, that would be enough work to raise the six of them together. We really felt called to, to marriage and kind of a, an academic life together. And then we weren't sure if we would be blessed with more children, but we did within a year we had our first child, a little boy, and we just, I would say in two ways.
Dr. Pakaluk (2): We, first of all, we really enjoyed him so much. And then we watched as the gift of that little boy really healed healed the hearts of those grieving children that we had at home and pulled us together in ways that we [00:03:00] didn't anticipate, right? So a lot of people said, well, is that really smart?
Dr. Pakaluk (2): Like, should you really have a baby right away? Anyway, so he was just such a bomb and a blessing to us that it was hard not to imagine. Just looking forward to our next little boy. Well, it was a little boy anyway. We just had we kept going, so we, we. We had a large family when we got married and we kept going and we welcomed eight more over the years.
Dr. Pakaluk (2): So okay, all of that's just to say that I we knew we had all of these children we loved, we knew many other families that had welcomed lots of kids. Meanwhile as an economist, I was working on questions related to demographic change, and there's a lot of different angles of that. I thought it was very interesting. It was an area that wasn't really well studied and an area I think that women naturally gravitate towards, right? Because it touches on so many aspects of the labor market. Which touches on aspects related to poverty and inequality and you know, like whether people are doing well, they have enough to eat?
Dr. Pakaluk (2): Things like that that I think are [00:04:00] actually really compelling topics in economics for women. And so I was studying those things. And then, you know, around 2010, 2012 when the financial crisis had sort of taken its toll, a lot of articles started being written about the puzzle of declining birth rates. thought like, whoa. Well that's really interesting. What do I think about it? I had followed the demographic trends for a long time. And so the topic in general, the falling birth rates and then the potential insights we could draw from people who kind of didn't fit the trend. That's kind of where I entered that conversation.
Dr. Pakaluk (2): I thought, well, are there any insights we could bring from people who've had. A very different experience. So more to that part of the story, but I'll just leave that there. And so, you know, so in other words like here you have the entire world as sort of like heading off of a demographic cliff.
Dr. Pakaluk (2): And I thought, but meanwhile there's all these people who are just like, resistors just not doing this right? And so like if we were to think of anything [00:05:00] else, like I assume that. Your listeners think a lot about various technological questions, right? Like if you, the entire world is, you know, glued to their phones or their screens and you go like, oh, but there's these strange people over here that have just gone off the grid and they're not using them and they're still functioning, you'd be like, well, maybe not everybody could do that, but what could be learned from them?
Samantha: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Pakaluk (2): was sort of the thought. Because really 99.9% of the research in the academic space on falling birth rates looks at falling birth rates,
Samantha: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Pakaluk (2): right? So this idea that sort of the outliers could tell us something important that was, that kind of really was compelling to me. The method is a, probably a shorter answer. but the idea, so the method I, I. basically went out and interviewed people and yeah, economists don't do that very much. I had to sort of make an explanation right on the first few pages of the book, like, why am I doing this? But the deal there is that, well first off, you know. [00:06:00] Everybody kind of gets that.
Dr. Pakaluk (2): Economics has become a very deeply quantitative field. It's, you know, it's the place where you get the big boys statistics, not putting it that way. It's a, sounds a little bit dismissive. And I do mean that. But I've thought a lot about this. I've worked with those big boys statistics and they have their merits and their contributions, but the time to really pull out the, the interviewing, the long form deep dive into personal stories is when you know a lot about the statistics.
Dr. Pakaluk (2): You have a lot of information about kind of like, let's just say the key correlations that you're interested in, what you don't have a good handle on is kind of like the nature of the decision making process. And so we might call that theory. Like, it's kind of like, what are, what's the theory of childbearing?
Dr. Pakaluk (2): Like what is, what motivates that kind of human action? And now we're sort of like, oh, okay. Yeah. Economists do think about human action and choice and decision making. Okay, that's interesting. So basically the time to pull out the [00:07:00] qualitative interviewing method is when we kind of have a good sense.
Dr. Pakaluk (2): Like we already know that the people who aren't following the trend to be more religious than other people. It's like that correlation is well established. we don't know is why. Right? So if you think, for instance, it's just religious people because like they don't use this technology like a birth control for instance. And it's sort of, in other words, it's sort of accidental. It's like a, it's like a side choice. It's a side result of they're rejecting a certain part of modern life. Then you might just think, well, this is gonna go away. It will go away little by little. These are the technology non-ad adopters or something like that.
Samantha: Hmm.
Dr. Pakaluk (2): And so there's, I mean, I could, we could tell other stories too. So, but if you don't talk to people, you're not gonna get that story. Right. And you could tell like 10 stories that would fit the correlation that you really want. The one story. That's right. And so that's why I chose to interview people.
Dr. Pakaluk (2): So it doesn't really matter that it's not a representative sample. You can't do that with interviews. What matters is whether you can put [00:08:00] together those disparate interviews and start to have some insight into the really, the heart of the decision maker, the heart and the mind we'll say. And that was the, that was the reason to do it this way. I thought it would be, I thought it would be insightful and good, but I will definitely tell you that while I was writing this manuscript and trying to make sense out of this data. I had a lot of moments where I thought, this is very strange stuff. Like, I don't know, I don't know how this will communicate with my field, but you know, now within the months following the book's release, I'm really pleased to say that it's had such a warm and welcome reception. Not only among the general public, but, and journalists and, you know, policy makers, but among people that consider themselves like kinda normal mainstream economists. So, I feel like the bet paid off. So
Samantha: Yeah, that's really encouraging to hear.
Dr. Pakaluk (2): Which I think is great news for people who always sense that there's like more humanity behind the social science or like there could be more [00:09:00] humanity behind the social
Samantha: Yeah, yeah, for sure.
Dr. Pakaluk (2): Yeah.
Samantha: Yeah, I, I also wanted to say I thought the way that you prefaced the book and set it up was really lovely in terms of explaining that your sample, looking at this question was women who had five or more children, but all that the family size didn't qualify or discount women from holding these values that are so beautifully expressed and voiced in your book.
Samantha: So I only have four children, and so I wouldn't have qualified for this study, but
Dr. Pakaluk (2): No,
Samantha: about the meaning and the value, and, you know, I'm, I'm sure there are lots of women who don't even have kids yet or
Dr. Pakaluk (2): right.
Samantha: don't have children who also would say that that's me, even though my family doesn't look like the family's chosen for that.
Dr. Pakaluk (2): That's right. I I struggled over that for such a long time. I thought the, the biggest hazard to drawing a [00:10:00] line, you have to draw a line someplace. I thought what people will feel. Like, maybe I didn't think they were good enough to be in the study. And I, so I wanted to say that like, no, this is, this was for me, research appropriate.
Dr. Pakaluk (2): But, but yeah, life didn't, doesn't hand everyone the same opportunities. Right. My sister my closest sister and age who I, I think we see children very much the same way. Didn't meet her spouse until her, you know, early forties and They haven't been blessed with the child. So, yeah, I could co keep going, but it's good to make sure that anyone listening to an interview about this book understands that interviewing people with a lot of children wasn't about making a qualitative judgment about whether some moms are better than others, but about being efficient.
Dr. Pakaluk (2): I needed to go out and find those. Those those expressions, like, what are you up to? And so I knew, I knew that it was a risk, but thankfully all the readers I've heard from have been very gracious about that. So [00:11:00] yeah.
Samantha: And so, you have as you mentioned, several kids yourself, you are your. Target or your sample demographic.
Dr. Pakaluk (2): my population.
Samantha: Yeah. But I, I'm really curious to know if anything surprised you in the testimony of the women. Was there anything different? You know, what were you expecting and then was there anything that came outta there that you didn't expect?
Dr. Pakaluk (2): Yeah. I, I, I like to say like everything in a sense because pretty much what I wrote in that first chapter is still really well, it, it was honest. Been able to tell you, the, the reason like, hmm, I would've been able to tell you why I didn't why, like the reasons I wasn't motivated to have these children.
Samantha: Hmm.
Dr. Pakaluk (2): is like, not because I'm backwards or it's not because I don't know how this works. Would you get all that? But did I have the language on the tip of my tongue? The answer is sort of no. I probably would've blurted out something like, well, I just believe children are good and I do. I might have [00:12:00] even accomplished saying something like, you know, I don't know.
Dr. Pakaluk (2): I always thought that having a child would be more valuable than. The next paper I could have written. In other words, like, the papers will wait, but the children will not wait. But kind of like a deeper or more articulate expression of that, I think I would've struggled with, and I had struggled with it.
Dr. Pakaluk (2): I mean, you know, you get asked all the time, I'm sure you do with four children. If you bring, you know, I would say more than two children out in public at this point, you're gonna get asked like, why do you have all these kids? Are they all yours? And I had struggled with that. You know, sometimes you're embarrassed, sometimes you, feel like bold and you say, oh, you know, just, they're so great. And other times you just think like, what am I even supposed to answer to this? Remark. So what did I learn? Yeah, a lot of things. I guess the first thing would just be that how first of all language that I really could could say represented like my kind of a, a, a deep sense of what I thought I was up to. But. That's a finding and also a surprise. And the [00:13:00] reason's a surprise is because I really didn't know whether women of different faiths viewed it in the same way. And what one of the things that to me was super surprising was to hear such a similar expression across women of so many different faiths about what they were up to.
Samantha: Hmm.
Dr. Pakaluk (2): And so I've tried to like pull that together. Just kind of, sort of succinctly that sense that children are divine blessing an expression of goodness, the goodness of God, and the purpose of your marriage. Now there's a lot packed into that. You know, there's a lot we could sort of unpack and get, get into, but I thought that like, in a sense that triple formulation, that's something I learned.
Dr. Pakaluk (2): But what was really interesting to me was it was really shared and common. And if you just heard that right, of course, it was sort of like all of these different women of different faiths, different pastors, different religious teachers, and some who are less religious. This wasn't a story of, of, I, I think a kind of backward [00:14:00] looking. And this was of course what I was most interested in. In other words, is there anything in this population that can tell us about the future? Or help us think about the future, right? Because I wrote this book in the backdrop of this tremendous really population collapse. and we, we could get into that too.
Dr. Pakaluk (2): So, you know, like the world isn't gonna have enough people, in a sense, at least not to sustain we have today. Now we could debate whether or not that's a good thing. I do meet people all the time who say, that'd be just fine if we all just go away. Right. So, but you go like, well, what could we, what could we learn if this isn't backward looking?
Dr. Pakaluk (2): These aren't people who are just clinging, like to the past, or they're rejecting technology or they don't really know when their children are conceived. They are determined to be ignorant. You know,
Samantha: Yeah.
Dr. Pakaluk (2): that wouldn't be very helpful. Instead, I, I heard what one reviewer called almost like a kind of manifesto.
Dr. Pakaluk (2): Like there's this almost like statement of, of conviction about the value of children. And I [00:15:00] thought that is fascinating. Like, I. I would've signed on to that, but I did, I did. I know for sure whether women of other faiths it for the same reasons or would it wanted to sign on to something like that, the sort of statement of the value of the child. And so once I heard it in all the different expressions, the Jewish expression, the evangelicals in my sample, the various other Christian face that I spoke to, I thought, this is, is really interesting here. We have a common behavior that really amounts to telling a story about whether and how valuable this type of choice is for women and their, their marriages and their families.
Dr. Pakaluk (2): And I tried to dig into that a little bit. and it's really like a, it, I, I thought it presented a very compelling story about the types of things that will get us out of the demographic crisis. And so I'll, I'll kind of pause and we can, we can maybe come back to that or not come back to it as you wish. But that's kind of, you know, I would say like. Apart [00:16:00] and aside from interesting podcasts and you're one of them most of my inbox is just filled with journalists saying what do we do? Like, how can we fix this? And so, you know, of course everybody wants to fix everything. That's maybe a, like a, a weakness of human nature, right?
Dr. Pakaluk (2): Like, we see a problem, we had fix it instead of just sort of bearing with it. But but gosh, like I am, I'm astonished at how much interest there is. so,
Samantha: what do you, what? What is your response to those messages when they come?
Dr. Pakaluk (2): Well, well first of all, I try, I try to take all the ones that I can reasonably fit in. 'cause I do think it's worth sharing these stories.
Dr. Pakaluk (2): I feel like there's a really, a body of testimony that is powerful and beautiful. But in a sense, like the me, the, the medium here is the message. Like, so what's in this book is like, I'm, I'm communicating something the findings would suggest that. The best solutions to falling birth rates are to lean into and explore [00:17:00] more deeply the value of children. What that means is that the answer, like to put this in policy terms, the answer is not likely to be found in finding creative ways to reduce the burden of having children.
Samantha: Hmm.
Dr. Pakaluk (2): Now that sounds a little like maybe callous, like what do you mean you don't wanna help people bear their burdens? I do, of course. But what I feel that I mostly learned was that stories testified to how much seeing children as very valuable overcomes the most important trade-offs that women face today. Having children and those trade-offs are really profound. They're deeply personal. They're subjective. You know, like the one woman who gave up her music career. You know, that has a total different character from what I've given up. Right? Like,
Samantha: Yeah.
Dr. Pakaluk (2): it, it's not replaceable. It's not like, well I could do this. I, so you can't really compensate for that. It's a cost for sure, but [00:18:00] it's not something you can compensate for. So what I was discovering was that for women who did for whatever reason, place tremendous value on having children, it's not that they didn't fill those costs, they felt them deeply, but they had a commensurate, large reason to bear them. And so, yeah, some, so the main lesson is sort of like the various things we can do to recover from this problem are to sort of, but that's okay. That's great news actually, because we've tried a lot of ways to reduce the cost of having children. And there's, again, there's a lot of sides of that on the economic front, actually. I don't think we've spent a lot of time thinking about how we can share and spread and develop a language about the value of childbearing. So I think there's probably a lot of like low hanging fruit there we can work on. So anyway, that's,
Samantha: Yeah,
Dr. Pakaluk (2): that.
Samantha: something that surprised me in listening to their stories. I'm listening on audiobook, is, that they weren't, the group of women was not, it was [00:19:00] pretty diverse. I mean, you mentioned already that many of them came from religious convictions or came to religious convictions. But other than that, like, they came from all kinds of ethnic backgrounds socioeconomic backgrounds.
Samantha: They came from big families, they came from small families. You know, the, the stereotype of being all in home, but also
Dr. Pakaluk (2): mm.
Samantha: like you academic career doctor, like, all kinds of different backgrounds, which is, I don't think it's such a small population, but I think there's a stereotype and it didn't seem like,
Dr. Pakaluk (2): Mm-hmm.
Samantha: that it's a representative sample, but even from just the, the variety of women in this thing, it's kind of like, oh, that dispels a lot of stereotypes about these women.
Samantha: So
Dr. Pakaluk (2): Yes.
Samantha: I, I would be curious to know for women who didn't come from the large families or didn't already just grow up, but know, a lot of them didn't know that that's, they didn't set out to do [00:20:00] that. Some of them didn't. Were like, maybe kids, maybe not. And then they end up having these huge families. So what did you hear from them about what was drawing them to this different way of living?
Dr. Pakaluk (2): Yeah, that was a surprise to me too. I wasn't sure. If I would find out like, gosh, every, because I came from a big family, so I was kind of open to it, you know? And I thought, was that gonna be like the majority? And again, not a representative sample. By the way, the of this research has led to now a lot of interest in doing a bigger representative sample.
Samantha: Great.
Dr. Pakaluk (2): yeah, which is great. So hopefully that's something we'll be able to tackle at some point. But certainly in so, you know, we had about 600 women apply to be part of this study, and of course we could only pick about 60 or 70, and then ultimately interviewed 55. We certainly, we were looking for diversity, we were looking for different ways.
Dr. Pakaluk (2): So we did explicitly try to interview people with all different backgrounds. And was amazed at the number of people who ended [00:21:00] up with large families who didn't come from a large family. I would say there were like two. Maybe three. I think I'll give you two or three ways that this happened. The first, which I, I think I opened the narrative with a story like this is a really beautiful, I mean, just beautiful in the way she tells it the beautiful story of just straight up kind of religious conversion. They didn't see it as like something everybody had to do. They just this Kim and Alex Kim and her husband Reading the scriptures felt that their hearts were opened to the idea that the Lord should have authority over like the growth and development of their family, that they should give that to God to decide. And they put it really simply, like we should just, I think she said something like, whatever, whenever, like we didn't ever seek to like space or plan. it just, it just happened whenever God wanted to send us a baby. Now it's [00:22:00] really different. They, they were not similar to all the other people in my study, but it was just a simple religious conversion. They felt that God was calling them to this and they felt it was like a call for them personally. And they're, they have a funny way of telling it 'cause I think he got there before she did he didn't wanna tell her. 'cause it just sounds kind of like, I don't know, misogynist or something else. Anyway, that's a great story.
Dr. Pakaluk (2): They end up with 12 kids. Neither one of them was from a big family, I think. Really small or just maybe even only children. So religious convergent. And there were many other types of religious conversions as well. I tell the story of Miki who's so different, a religious conversion, but she's more academic about it. So the religious conversion is one way. I think a second way was some sort of experience. So some people really just started having children intending to have one or two, and then really just kind of fell in love with having children or felt. in the words of Danielle she said something like, we just kept like liking the children that we were [00:23:00] having and liking having children, and it sounds, and she says she's a medical doctor who finished her residency and then dropped out of medicine because she didn't like practicing medicine. So she's a very well educated person and she says, I know this sounds ridiculous, but this is our story. And you're like, that's wild. It's amazing. then she has all these beautiful reflections about it. So just I think some kind of human experience that was outside of the normal. And then I, I kind of said there's, so I would say like experience and religious conversion, those are like the top two. then the third, I'll say like two and a half, the the, the third type of way happened for some people was that they moved or entered into a community where a lot of people welcoming more children than they were planning on. And that seemed to. Go alongside of some of those other stories. And that kind of looked like in a couple cases, like, well, we moved to this new neighborhood to use this new school because our kids weren't thriving. [00:24:00] We had heard great things about this community and this say church-based school. And then when we moved into that neighborhood and started to go into church there, we just kind of looked around and thought like, there's a lot of people with four or five kids here and they look kind of normal. And it's like, okay.
Samantha: Yeah.
Dr. Pakaluk (2): then they're looking at each other like, I don't know, like, could we do this too? And it's kind of a neat addition because there's that kind of sense of like, we are so social. And so we do see this in the data, the not my data that people do. They, they are very much informed in their fertility desires by what other people around them seem to think is normal. so it's not very common to bump into a school or community where there's a lot of. Childbearing happening like these lots of larger families. But if it happens, it does seem like
Samantha: Mm.
Dr. Pakaluk (2): it rubs off on some people.
Samantha: Yeah. Well it seems like the common thread there is just that something entered into their lives to change their hearts and [00:25:00] change their values, whether it was religious conversion, changing their value or their experience of parenthood changing values or their experience of their social community.
Samantha: Kind of helping them to make, make meaning or just to be open to the idea of it being
Dr. Pakaluk (2): Totally.
Samantha: to pursue that.
Dr. Pakaluk (2): Yeah.
Samantha: is interesting 'cause our culture and our policy tends to even name childbearing children as burdens. Or even like threat to self-fulfillment or pursuing your. Goals, which is probably a question that you get a lot as somebody who's continued to pursue goals and has a family.
Samantha: What did these women reveal about another way of thinking about motherhood as not maybe opposed to fulfillment or burdensome or
Dr. Pakaluk (2): Yeah.
Samantha: burdensome and.
Dr. Pakaluk (2): Yes. I mean, in some ways, yes. I mean, some of them were [00:26:00] like, well, the burdens aren't as big as people make them out to be. true that in many spaces it looks like child, you know, having kids is like turned into like this big scary boogeyman. on the other hand, a lot of them were like, yeah, it's like a whole total life commitment.
Dr. Pakaluk (2): And it's hard. It is a burden, but it's like a joyful burden. I think in one place, and I'm not sure if I have my own language correct I would say that the. This question like a fulfillment is probably best expressed by providing an analogy with other things that we're more familiar with.
Dr. Pakaluk (2): So, in my family, they're, some of my sons and my husband are really interested in the history of mountaineering and like the great mountain climbers. Some of my sons, my brothers are rock climbers. And so we, we, we, we watch, we read a lot of the documentaries and testimonies and stories and books of people who, you know, summit big peaks and terrible conditions. And I would say that that's probably [00:27:00] like a better analogy for thinking about this because it's like, well, like if you were setting out to like climb on Everest, you know, like it's, of course it's a burden. Like, I mean like, all the things you have to do to get ready and then you're gonna face all these difficulties and like, you might come back missing a finger you know, from frostbite.
Dr. Pakaluk (2): I mean, there's, right, there's a lot of things that can go wrong. I mean, or worse, you know? and yet, like you see that kind of, the choice is made and it's, it's not a, it's not a sad choice. It's a choice that somebody, I, I think would say like in general it's made because someone is really like seized a conviction that this is a kind of. it's a, it's a human experience and it's a kind of excellence that is worth pursuing. not everybody has to be in love with mountain climbing, right? There's other human excellences that are worth pursuing, there's nothing excellent that we could be aimed at, which doesn't come with a cost. I would say that [00:28:00] that is a truth of human life and that that is kind of the way that the women I talked to described what they were up to.
Dr. Pakaluk (2): I don't think anyone actually used the mountain analogy, but like, but I've, I've liked it because it's sort of like no one says, no one says that about, you know, these like, well, why would you wanna ride in the Tour de France? Like, you're gonna live a horrible life for the next five years as you trade or whatever. You know, you kind of go like, it's not for me, but I can see that it's a thing worth doing. think that's the thing that most of the women I talked to felt that's where they felt most alone in the culture, that they didn't. They didn't expect everyone else to want to do what they were doing, but that they didn't feel that in general people had any handle or language or like reference point to see like choosing to have four kids as kind of summit experience, right.
Dr. Pakaluk (2): Where someone could be like, yeah, that's your, that's your job. Like you're gonna like have a bunch of kids. And I see that. [00:29:00] That's so like hats off to you, like deep respect. You've chosen something hard, amazing. Very interesting. I'm not drawn to it, but like, it's so clearly valuable. But anyway, that's how they talked about it.
Dr. Pakaluk (2): So of course, like back to your question about fulfillment, if we do like, we want deeply to be fulfilled, right? They didn't see it as like, an obstacle to fulfillment, but almost like as the fulfillment of who they were because they had become so deeply convicted it was worth doing. Yeah.
Samantha: Yeah, then that really shines through. So as we are entering or exploding in this era of reproductive control from contraception, IVF egg freezing now these apps that let you optimize the embryo that you choose to implant, how do the stories in your book challenge this technocratic view of fertility?
Dr. Pakaluk (2): [00:30:00] Yeah. Well this is a great and really deep question, which I didn't discuss directly
Samantha: No, it's a challenge. It's a, it's a special challenge Question.
Dr. Pakaluk (2): I know, I was gonna say like it's, but it's actually so close. It's like right around the corner from what is discussed in the book. And so I'll just, I'll just do my best and then, because this is your expertise, maybe you can like take what I'm seeing and it work. Okay. So. Lemme try to do it this way. So, one of the things that was most difficult for me to try to convey over the course of the book was the difference between two types of planning, So we think about families, right? We think about family planning. a name, like, that's a phrase that's there for all of us. one of the ways in which these women look different is that they've chosen these larger families. so they've rejected a [00:31:00] certain type of planning. Now, obviously, I'm, I'm, well, alright, I won't, I won't skip to technology yet. Now if you, they did not all reject birth control. They used a diff, a variety of different types of birth control.
Dr. Pakaluk (2): Some of them were like nature only, like natural methods, fertility awareness methods, but some of them were, had no problem with you know, IUDs for some of them, the pill for spacing their children. So the point is that they, they didn't reject kind of intentional. Cooperation with their fertility and kind of applying a kind of rational welcoming, right.
Dr. Pakaluk (2): It's not like, like if you had a hospitable home, wouldn't say like just, you know, come and go night and day, like whatever time. Like, I wanna be hospitable, but you probably shouldn't come at two in the morning. You know? Right. And so I think that's kind of, so on the one hand they don't look like [00:32:00] traditional family planners. On the other hand, they're not like just haphazard. So trying to get a sense of that. And so. that was the biggest challenge because Okay. What that ended up looking like was a kind of delineation of two ways of thinking about the world and that really, this is where faith came in for so many of the people I talked to. One of the women said something like, well, God designed the world from before its foundations he knows what's good for us. And so I really trust that when I'm ready for another child that God will. Help me see that. I'm ready. And so I'm, I'm waiting right now. I might be using some form of family planning or spacing, but I expect that at some point I may be ready again. Okay. So this was kind of the playbook for most of the people I talked to, which is like, unless they had a serious health condition, they [00:33:00] hadn't gotten to a point where they were like, never say never. really loved having children. They wanted more, but they also wanted that to occur in cooperation with, with God's plans.
Samantha: Hmm.
Dr. Pakaluk (2): that God wanted them to be healthy and well. So if that meant space, that was fine. If it meant permanent space, that was fine too. Okay. So one type of, planning, which was a kind of like rationally plan, family plan a kind of. Respect for the creation of things and for God's governance of the world through.
Dr. Pakaluk (2): I think the language one lady used was like secondary causes. Like wants me and my husband to be ready and to feel ready. And yet we still, the child is a blessing, so God has to act. This was really contrasted. A different type of family planning. That type of family planning looks at children. And I would say this is coming out of the eugenics movement [00:34:00] largely.
Dr. Pakaluk (2): So we're gonna go back, you know, maybe a hundred years, a little bit over a hundred years as sort of a problem like looks at children as a problem to be solved or fertility as a problem to be solved. And the way we solve it is by injecting a certain kind of rationalism into that space. This was really like in the modern times, really initiated by Thomas Malus who thought that we were gonna just out breed our food supplies.
Dr. Pakaluk (2): And, and so what we needed to do was like raise the age of marriage so that we had fewer children. 'cause he figured like once you got married, the kids would just come, you know?
Samantha: Yeah.
Dr. Pakaluk (2): So he might just need to control that. And then of course he gets, it comes back again, like over and over, like we need to sort of control our fertility. A decision about what's the responsible number of children to have, the types of things that go along with, I would just sort of, for lack of a better word, like that whole what we, what we normally think of by saying family planning. Like you kind of decide in advance there's, yeah. Okay. So [00:35:00] those are the two types of planning.
Dr. Pakaluk (2): The, a kind of over, we could say like an overly planned parenthood or like a control of fertility, either through technological means or through a rationalistic kind of approach to reasonable and responsible on the one hand. On the other hand, this kind of. of fertility as a gift. The sense that God governs through the way he built us and made us, and that we can trust him to provide that.
Dr. Pakaluk (2): Those are the kind of notes, and this is how you would get from like two to five. You'd be like, well, okay, child is so valuable, God will provide. Okay. So I feel, like I said, I didn't engage technology directly in the book, but it was right around the corner and I feel like that's the way. It's right around the corner And this is where I'm gonna put it back at you and be like, okay, how does that work with the things that you think about a lot? Because I feel like maybe we could do something like that with technology. Like we [00:36:00] could think about trying to size things up in terms of technologies that maybe help and assist the created order or reality as we encounter it as dependent creatures technologies that we use to sort of control nature or to control or transmute ourselves from the givenness of what we find in nature to maybe a, a, a fantasy world that's quite different, but maybe that we think it would be better than the one we received.
Samantha: Yeah
Samantha: absolutely. For our podcast listeners, we have an episode with Dr. John De Camillo, who's now the president of the national. The NCBC, national Catholic Bioethics Center. And,
Dr. Pakaluk (2): Yeah.
Samantha: He talks about the, that exactly what you're saying is the difference. When we're looking at reproductive technologies, is this something that is assisting reproduction or procreation is what we should call it?
Samantha: Is this something assisting or is it replacing and [00:37:00] making it reproduction? And, and modifying. And I think something else you said too that was earlier that was interesting is that with the mountaintop analogy that we have, it seems lost a framework for thinking about children as being valuable
Dr. Pakaluk (2): Yeah.
Samantha: for themselves, for what they bring to us in our lives.
Samantha: And we, we really do this. Commodification comes in and we think about them as valuable as products. Like if you. If you desire or if you want to complete your adult desires. So something to be
Dr. Pakaluk (2): right.
Samantha: obtained. And then if you lack that that feeling, or if you're, if you are like you think about any object around your home, you just recondo.
Samantha: If it doesn't spark joy anymore, then well out the door with it. And at least we still think of kids as something that you can't do that with. You can't just get rid of them and they no longer [00:38:00] spark joy. Which, you know, it doesn't always feel joyful admittedly, but I think that that is part of the problem with the approach.
Samantha: And the other thing that you said, or, or just along that same line, is how sad is it that so many people in our culture must have not felt valued as children
Dr. Pakaluk (2): Yes.
Samantha: and not received that love and then not be able to. Imagine themselves giving that way or, and then, and, and how beautiful that some of, some people who didn't, not the, the, the women in your book necessarily did receive love or something, but the women who just, that wasn't their mindset were then
Dr. Pakaluk (2): self worthiness.
Samantha: So then those women who were brought to this new understanding or meaning of motherhood by the experience of having a child. And I have a friend who had a really terrible experience with. Mold. And so for a [00:39:00] time in experiencing loving feelings was something that wasn't accessible to her because it really the toxic mold kind of muted her ability to feel certain things.
Samantha: And then she Yeah. Was, it's a it's a really tough story, but the, the brightness, and she would, she has many kids, so she would've qualified for the story. But she thought she was starting to heal and so her body conceived again. But she thought, I'm not gonna be able to love this kid. I am not. I I don't have that.
Samantha: I like, I the kid, the, the, the family's gonna have to raise this kid 'cause I don't have any love. But amazingly, kind of what you said at the beginning about how. Your, your son was this experience of healing in the midst of grief. All of the feelings and the hormones and the rush of love, of motherhood.
Samantha: The child was so healing for their family and, and they were able to to experience that. [00:40:00] So I think there's a lot of fear behind, oh, well I won't be able to have this, or A child's gonna mean this. And yes, there are limitations that come with any important choice to pursue. You know, any any yes comes with a bunch of nos.
Samantha: I think maybe you said that in the book, but at at the same time, let's not throw out the baby literally with the bath water. Like those, there's that, that's a really beautiful good. Yes, and I think the stories in your book really bring that home.
Dr. Pakaluk (2): yeah.
Samantha: Something I would be curious to know more about.
Samantha: What do you think about this idea that these technologies, and I'm specifically now about contraception, I guess less than IVF,
Dr. Pakaluk (2): Sure.
Samantha: meant to liberate women, or maybe IVF would come into play here too, but it's meant to bring you freedom. So freedom to avoid children, freedom to have them. When you, when you now desire them,
Dr. Pakaluk (2): Yeah.
Samantha: [00:41:00] How does that actually make family life harder to choose, or at least the kind of family life that you were study participants or are discussing?
Dr. Pakaluk (2): Yeah, that's a great question. I've written in some places, no, not, I think, not in my book, that it's the sad irony of history that birth control, the pill, because it's so, so, it's unique for a lot of reasons in the history of birth control. Seems to have rather than deliver, deliver deliberation, it seems to have delivered like the moment in history when women stop being able to achieve a certain desired family size.
Dr. Pakaluk (2): So, you know, I have lots of. Comments about that whole question of like desired family size, it definitely yeah, it put more choices on the table that that is correct. So it puts these choices on the table, and then the problem is kind of for most people now you have to pick, you know, and [00:42:00] so I think one way to interpret kind of the story of the women's labor market in the 20th century which as you know, like starting with the birth control pill we see a, a doubling of the female labor force participation rate from 1960 to 1980 and really for the first time in history, mothers with children going into the labor market.
Dr. Pakaluk (2): So I was just single women before that or people who were committed to avoiding children. And so what's, what ended up happening? It's like, because people said, well, did, did, did somebody like. Does somebody have an interest in devaluing family life? But it really, to me as an economist, looks more like, and sure there's somebody out there devaluing everything.
Dr. Pakaluk (2): You know, there's somebody out there doing, it looks more like the classic problem of adding a choice. So you add another choice. And the problem with this choice in particular is it looks like a choice for education, for a [00:43:00] fulfilling job or career. And if it's not even fulfilling, maybe it's just a second income, right?
Dr. Pakaluk (2): A lot of women do jobs that are jobs and not careers and, but they are second income. And none of that, as I've just described it as bad, as a matter of fact, education, a job or a career, second income. Those are all really good things. The things that I would not from any like moral or ethical standpoint want to. Denigrate or put down. you're choosing between two goods and without some clear sense of how to prioritize those two goods, which is precisely as it turns out, what certain religious faiths can provide.
Samantha: Yeah.
Dr. Pakaluk (2): Without any clear guidelines, what ends up happening is people sort of face chocolate. The chocolate and vanilla problem.
Dr. Pakaluk (2): I like them both. And what I'm really gonna have is a twist, you know, like, or a little bit of both. And what we end up seeing is women reporting children than they maybe wanted to have. But also fewer, I don't know, achievements or accomplishments professionally than they would've [00:44:00] liked. people today who are focused on the birth dearth, on the fertility collapse, they focus a lot on the way in which women aren't getting as many children as they say that they want. it's important to notice they're also not getting like as far in their careers as they say that they want. In other words, they're compromising in both spaces.
Samantha: Hmm.
Dr. Pakaluk (2): And, you know, without sort of making a judgment on that, I think just as a description of what took place. so I don't know if that, if I've gotten too far from your question, but I think yeah, people don't see themselves as choosing birth control.
Dr. Pakaluk (2): They're choosing more education, they're choosing, right? Like that. And those are goods. Those are definitely goods. And I'm, I'm like fully in support of choosing more education. But the trouble is like, this is such an effective it's such an effective tool that I guess I would put it like people are waking up in their thirties many times [00:45:00] or even forties and saying like, how did I get to a place where I have to choose between leaving this job or career that I love or that's supporting my husband's income the child that I desperately want.
Dr. Pakaluk (2): And it just feels like a really kind of fasty and. Dilemma. Like, not something that they feel like they, they put themselves there.
Samantha: Yeah.
Dr. Pakaluk (2): Again, like it's one, one wants to look for sort of like an analogies, like is this the only one? Like it? And I think, I think we're starting to see helpfully, other analogies from other technological spaces. Like when I see the way that Jonathan Haight talks about like the screens and the kids, it's like, actually some of them feel really liberated when you take away the screens,
Samantha: Yeah. Right.
Dr. Pakaluk (2): Because they're like, right now I'm choosing between, I don't really wanna be online, but like, I don't wanna not be connected to all my friends or miss out, you know, FOMO or whatever.
Dr. Pakaluk (2): So this is tough. It's like the only way you can kind of opt out of that is by just sort of [00:46:00] being really different
Samantha: Yeah. It comes back to that question of like, what is it, what is freedom? Is freedom more choices and the, the ability to just choose whichever of the more choices is best? Or is there a deeper, more profound understanding of freedom as pursuing a human good that is beyond ourselves, that we can sort of rule out some choices as like, well, that's not ultimately gonna get me to that.
Samantha: So like, that's like an easy no. It's harder. I mean, just, just try to pick a show on Netflix. It is harder to choose
Dr. Pakaluk (2): choose with more choices.
Samantha: Yeah. I, I, I'm old enough to remember when you could turn on the TV and you would see. There are these shows on, and if you don't wanna watch those shows, you turn off the tv, you find something else to do.
Samantha: And in some ways, that limitation was actually a gift
Dr. Pakaluk (2): actually a
Samantha: so than a thousand things to choose from. And then we have the life equivalent of, of a endless catalog of shows and YouTube video and [00:47:00] like endless entertainment, but doesn't necessarily get us to being the human being that we want to be or we're designed to be.
Dr. Pakaluk (2): And I, something else that you said really struck with me, I think it's worth kind of underscoring, which is this idea of the shift to, because you do have to choose parenthood
Samantha: Hmm.
Dr. Pakaluk (2): deliberate way, right? Because of the effectiveness of birth control, mainly 'cause like the shift that takes place demographically with the arrival of the pill. Something I did, I did say explicitly in the book is that, what happens behaviorally to, to couples is that it used to be like you'd got, you got married and you had a few kids as they came, and at some point you kind of decided to try to like put a limit to it. You're like, oh, we, we've, we've had like three or four, like probably time to stop.
Dr. Pakaluk (2): We seem to be really fertile compared to other people. right. 'cause effective family sizes with child mortality were never like seven or eight. The things we do now are actually. family sizes that [00:48:00] large was, was not that common. so that's a really interesting decision node, right? You get married and you like the kids hap are happening to you because of your desire to live as a married couple. Pre hormonal contraception is pretty invasive, not not really great condoms, not super wonderful. And IUDs. So people are just kind of getting married and having some kids and then deciding when to stop versus the changeover that happens with hormonal birth control. So is is really, is something that's really profound.
Dr. Pakaluk (2): You get married and you start out sterile, right? 'cause that's what
Samantha: Hmm.
Dr. Pakaluk (2): Like you, and then you decide when to, so you split up the marriage and the start your family decision. And so what it really means is you have to opt into childbearing. And now when you have to opt in it, now it has all the characteristics of a consumer good
Samantha: Hmm.
Dr. Pakaluk (2): something that you kind of have to explicitly choose.
Dr. Pakaluk (2): You're not choosing it because you're a married person,[00:49:00]
Samantha: Right.
Dr. Pakaluk (2): and that's like the meaning of your ma. It's you're choosing it because you're choosing it to become a parent.
Samantha: Hmm.
Dr. Pakaluk (2): that has definitely had this, it's generated this kind of like received habit as a culture of seeing parenting as something you choose. And then it's just such a close to say like, I've opted into parenting. Why can't everyone opt into parenting? Why can't I opt into the right. of child right. Like if I'm gonna choose, you know, like if we're all gonna have one kid here, I wanna make sure like
Samantha: Better be the.
Dr. Pakaluk (2): Yeah, exactly. So yeah, so those are all really important and you know, I'm not the first one to bring those things up. They're it's been but, but yeah, as childbearing is a path to a certain kind of fulfilled life, which is sounds good. sounds like, oh, people are, but it's actually pretty self-reflective. It's like something that you do to, to, to do a better, to have a better life or to fulfill [00:50:00] your life rather than child is good and should exist. Right. Which is really that emphasis on the value of the child. And so it's. Eh. Anyway, there's, I, I think there's a, there's a delineation there between those two approaches to child, to, to,
Samantha: Okay.
Dr. Pakaluk (2): And I think we're just feeling the impact of that. Obviously we're seeing that with the designer babies and surrogacy to some extent, me, meaning especially people who are fertile, choosing surrogates,
Samantha: Hmm.
Dr. Pakaluk (2): just because they don't wanna bear some of the physical difficulties of being pregnant
Samantha: Right.
Dr. Pakaluk (2): of people who are infertile, choosing surrogates, or people who could not possibly make a baby choosing surrogates. it, you just keep going. Right? And then of course,
Samantha: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Pakaluk (2): the gene selection right now, of course is pretty shocking.
Samantha: Yeah.
Dr. Pakaluk (2): yeah, so a lot of people working in this falling birth rate space, like I am, are really strong advocates of like selecting the best genes when you get your kids, you know, Malcolm and Simone Collins for instance.[00:51:00]
Samantha: Hmm.
Dr. Pakaluk (2): yeah. We'll that's, that is brave new us
Samantha: Yeah. Yeah.
Dr. Pakaluk (2): And I'm. Not super excited to see that.
Samantha: Well, I, it goes back to that idea of like, not nevermind for time. I'm gonna, I'm gonna edit that out. What do you hope Hannah's children inspires in readers who may not yet be open to large families? I know, even though I was already open to a large family, because it's still deep in my openness and conviction hearing these stories.
Samantha: So I'd love to hear from you. Think about that.
Dr. Pakaluk (2): Well, I actually never, I never really thought about it as like, here's an exercise in helping people be more open to large families. But I guess I might wanna echo what a couple of the women said in my book. kind of just, I'm hoping that readers would be just two things. I think one is persuaded sort of to keep the door [00:52:00] open. I've learned from a lot of a lot of women who have a different approach to family planning than I do. the decision to be done, to be like, done forever, like, which is a really big thing. That's a thing. It's like you have your kids and you're done, and like the question is, when are you done? That, that decision provides a lot of stress for couples.
Samantha: Hmm.
Dr. Pakaluk (2): like, it's like, I remember a conversation with a, a, a friend a long time ago and she said, well, you mean you guys never have to have that conversation? I said, no, we don't. We, we would never say never. We might say, not now.
Samantha: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Pakaluk (2): we might just keep saying not now if I didn't feel well or healthy, and she said, wow.
Dr. Pakaluk (2): Like it would be so freeing not to have to decide about doneness, right? Like, so not doing anything permanent that would be hard to reverse. I think that's like, that's something I hope people would take away is just to keep the door open because our, what we want and see as good can change so radically over the [00:53:00] course of our lives and our careers. and that's one of the things like we see is so wrong with like many aspects of our biological like. that we're up to these days, right? Like offering little, you know, young children a choice to do something that's completely irreversible.
Samantha: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Pakaluk (2): you know, and that's just tragic and devastating.
Dr. Pakaluk (2): But yeah, with the, with this child brain space, just to not be done, done, but just to say not ready. and I think that's a really like useful heuristic. And the other thing which I sort of ended the book with this one sweet lady who was like, I know that having a lot of children isn't for everyone.
Dr. Pakaluk (2): She said, but she said, but maybe just think about, maybe just one more. Like maybe you just have one more than you thought. And that's like, I guess that kind of sums it up. I think a couple of different people I talked to said that. And I think that would be, like, that alone would be a really great, yeah, just addition.
Dr. Pakaluk (2): Like, don't have to be done. You can just, you can just rest for a while. [00:54:00] And, I know there's dynamics in marriages, but yeah, those are the, those are the things.
Samantha: That's excellent. Beautiful. One question that is a concluding question to ask all guests
Dr. Pakaluk (2): Okay.
Samantha: who is one person alive or dead real or fictional, who you believe exemplifies the very best of being human?
Dr. Pakaluk (2): Hmm. Amazing question. Well, I'm a Christian, so it'd be easy to say Jesus Christ a Catholic, so I really love his mother. But I was gonna say like, I'm a really big fan of the life and writings of St. Edith Stein, who was a German Jewish philosopher grew up in the early hundreds and wrote a lot about the nature of being a woman.
Dr. Pakaluk (2): I've read, I've read her readings for so long. Anyway, she. Exemplified to me, just like the pinnacle of the intellectual life. She studied and thought and prayed [00:55:00] so much that I,
Samantha: Yeah.
Dr. Pakaluk (2): just wanna read what she thought. I wanted to be like her when I was reading. So I really, she's really compelled me. and then of course as she grew older, she taught, beautifully. She was really a devoted teacher to girls, and I've learned from her and tried to emulate her in that sense. And I think teaching is a really important part of our, you said procreation. I think teaching is part of procreation, right?
Dr. Pakaluk (2): You don't just reproduce a child, but it's a lifetime of teaching your child. So for me, participating in the teaching vocation is a really huge part of being human. And then finally, you know, she willingly gave up her life and kind of went to went to her, her death at the hands of the Nazis kind of willingly and, and to to show her solidarity with her people who are, she was a Jewish convert to Catholicism. And I think that is another one of those like wow moments where you think, like, would I, like, in other words, she didn't try to hide or run away. She, she said, well, [00:56:00] if my people are being persecuted, I. Don't wanna avoid that cross. So, yeah, those are all just some reasons why I think she really exemplifies of heroic virtues that are possible in our humanity. And that I hope I can just emulate a little bit of, so
Samantha: Yeah, and I, I think it's also really beautiful to. Look at her as an example of spiritual motherhood.
Dr. Pakaluk (2): Yes.
Samantha: to say that
Dr. Pakaluk (2): Right.
Samantha: I think she's somebody who would absolutely agree with the values of the articulated in the women by the women in this book. And even though she did not physically bear children in this world, like she had so many so much spiritual motherhood and, and really exercised the best of the values that are behind and the way that God called her to.
Dr. Pakaluk (2): right.
Samantha: so I think that's a beautiful way to
Dr. Pakaluk (2): Absolutely.
Samantha: you. Thank you.
Dr. Pakaluk (2): Welcome.
Samantha: where can listeners connect with you, find your [00:57:00] work and buy the book?
Dr. Pakaluk (2): They can find the book on Amazon, that's probably the best place to find it. And it's usually on sale on Amazon right now. It's on a deep sale. I'm on X I'm not a huge I don't have huge, huge following, but it's growing. And ultimately at the university, Catholic University don't have a great webpage, but maybe it'll get better soon.
Samantha: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Pakaluk (2): yeah,
Samantha: Excellent.
Dr. Pakaluk (2): now.
Samantha: And we can put all of those links in the show notes. And, and it's also on Audible I, or I don't know if it's on, it's still on Amazon. It's probably on Audible. I'm listening.
Dr. Pakaluk (2): Yeah,
Samantha: got it on Apple Books. So
Dr. Pakaluk (2): audible, Kindle, Spotify,
Samantha: can listen to the audio, but
Dr. Pakaluk (2): Thank you.
Samantha: Wonderful. Thank you so much.
Dr. Pakaluk (2): You're welcome.
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