Friday, January 06, 2006
Eight Is Not Enough
"Today fewer than 10% of Americans live in households of five or more people and only 1.8% in families of seven or more. That means that if your family consists of a mother and father and five children, you live where I do, which is statistically on the lunatic fringe. "Omigod, five kids?" people gasp when I tell them. "Are you nuts?"
"The odd thing is that, off the [movie] screen, large families are seldom the ones with wildly misbehaving children. In real life, they tend to be the orderly people with the polite children, the families in which older siblings can be seen caring for their little brothers and sisters without griping about it. Indeed, onlookers are so taken in by the popular stereotype that they are often surprised to see a large family acting peacefully.
The recent return of big families to the screen is both telling and pleasing. It will be more pleasing still when those families are able to appear not solely amid zany pandemonium but also in orderly accommodation with the rest of society. Then reel life will be a whole lot closer to real life."
"The odd thing is that, off the [movie] screen, large families are seldom the ones with wildly misbehaving children. In real life, they tend to be the orderly people with the polite children, the families in which older siblings can be seen caring for their little brothers and sisters without griping about it. Indeed, onlookers are so taken in by the popular stereotype that they are often surprised to see a large family acting peacefully.
The recent return of big families to the screen is both telling and pleasing. It will be more pleasing still when those families are able to appear not solely amid zany pandemonium but also in orderly accommodation with the rest of society. Then reel life will be a whole lot closer to real life."
