Pakaluk, Catherine Ruth. Hannah’s Children: The Women Quietly Defying the Birth Dearth. Regency, 2024.

This book wasn’t what I was expecting when I first heard about it. Written by a Catholic mother of eight children who is also a business school professor with a doctorate in economics, the book begins with what you would expect from a research professor: an academic recital of the facts surrounding the declining birth rates, both in the U.S. and globally. Ms. Pakaluk writes about how the birth rate is very rapidly declining to below replacement level in almost all parts of the world and about the effects of those declining birth rates on the global economy and on political stability. Then, she tells us why she decided to do a “qualitative study” of women who are bucking the trend toward families with fewer and fewer children. She interjects some personal anecdotes and observations, but the first 60 or so pages of the book are mostly academic and statistical facts given as background and justification for what becomes a fascinating story of women who have purposefully chosen to have more than four children.

” In summer 2019, I and my colleague Emily Reynolds traveled to ten American regions and interviewed fifty-five women with five or more children to find out why they do what they do and what they think it means–for themselves, for their families, and for the nation. . . .[T]he heart of the project of this book is conversations with a small number of women about the nature of their childbearing decisions. . . The narratives that make up my data do not yield descriptive statistics or causal inferences.

So a book about motives for having children would be incomplete without the meanings that women attach to the choices they have made–the reasons they wanted kids and the reasons they kept wanting them. To that end, I asked the women in my study to tell me how it started and how it’s going. I have presented their stories in as raw and unedited a form as possible. It was an unqualified privilege to hear the reasons of the heart I am about to share with you.”

I have eight children, so obviously I identify with the women who are profiled in this book. However, I don’t think you have to be a member of the MOMS (Mothers of Many Siblings) club to appreciate the stories and ideas presented in Ms. Pakaluk’s book. You don’t even need to be a mom at all. To be human is surely to think about what we as a society and culture and generation of people are leaving to our posterity, what kind of world we are making and what we as individuals and as family members are contributing to the future. What do our choices mean, and what are the good choices, the best choices not only for ourselves but also for the other humans with whom we share this planet and for those in the future who will inherit it? Whether we’re talking about climate change or expressive individualism or the birth dearth, these things matter immensely.

Unless you are especially sensitive about the subject, this book should not be offensive to those who have made differing choices about family size and number of children. No one is called names like “single cat-lady” in the stories and the recorded words of the women who were interviewed for the study. The women do question their own ideas and motives before and after their decision to have many children, and some of that self examination could be appropriated to offend readers who have made other choices or who have not been given the choices these women have. But for the most part the women in the book are simply telling their own stories of why they believe that giving birth to many children was the right choice for them and for their families. If the shoe fits . . .

I believe Hannah’s Children is an Important Book. It’s one of those books I want to push everyone I know to read and think about. You may not agree with all of the women in the book and their various ideas about family and family size. I don’t myself. However, I do agree with the women in this book who see a culture that has ceased to value motherhood and the raising of children as a vocation. We give mothers lip service on Mother’s Day, but when we see a mother making the daily sacrifices that it takes to raise a family, of whatever size, many turn away and ask, “why would anyone do such a thing?” I won’t give away the answers to that question that are found in Hannah’s Children, partly because the answers are complicated and varied. However, there are good reasons to give birth to children, and very good reasons to have a houseful of them if you can. Let the questioner read and consider.