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November 8, 2018
“Does the new baby like me?” my four-year-old questioned in the weeks following the birth of her younger sister. Her face lit up as I assured the older sister of the baby’s affection; it grew even brighter as the baby herself affirmed her affection through her gaze, smile and laughter.
The 4-year-old vied with her two-year-old sister for the prime place in Baby Elizabeth’s line of sight, for a turn to hold her, and for a chance to pick her bedtime book.
The natural affinity of small children toward babies is consistent and astounding: how often are other toddlers and preschoolers, elementary-age children and even awkward middle schoolers, drawn to our baby, delighted by her smile? How often do mothers of these same small children tell me that they ask her when their family will have another baby?
So, it was with some surprise when I read, in an otherwise sensible book on childrearing, that siblings generally view a new baby as a competitor. The chapter on siblings, entitled, “Sibling Rivalry,” began “How would a wife feel if her husband came home and said, ‘Honey, you bring me so much joy and I love you so much that I’m going to bring home another wife?’ This is how a child feels when you say you are bringing home a new baby.”
From my experience and observation, most children do not react this way to a new baby. Instead, they have an intuitive understanding of God’s design. There’s mom, there’s dad, and from their love comes new life. New babies are a welcome addition. Older siblings have an adjustment period, some more difficult than others; some are enamored of the new baby, others aren’t. But, there is an understanding that babies are the natural result of the parent’s love.
This summer marked the 50th anniversary of Saint Paul VI’s counter-cultural encyclical, Humanae Vitae, which re-affirmed the link between marital intimacy and new life. His writing rejected the attempt to unlink God’s design for both love and children through contraception and artificial means of conception; both are attempts to bypass God’s plan for human sexuality by severing the connection between the sexual act and babies.
The connection that God created is not arbitrary or incidental to the person. As the authors of the last essay in Janet Smith’s collection “Why Humanae Vitae is Still Right” put it, “The Church’s teaching on sexuality begins with an understanding of God as love and an understanding of love as a power that overflows into new love and new life. The human persons he creates have an immortal destiny. He has bestowed on spouses the tremendous gift of being participators with him in the creation of new persons, a gift that requires complete self-giving.”
The heart of the teaching is love. Love isn’t always easy. It requires self-sacrifice and the abandonment of our preconceptions about how our life will be, whether it’s the arrival of a small bundle of joy during a stressful time, the lack of arrival of a new baby or just the sheer amount of work it takes to raise children. But, it is in accordance with the nature of love: the gift of self.