Tea at Trianon: How to Bring Up Children in a World of Chaos

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Friday, April 5, 2024

How to Bring Up Children in a World of Chaos

People have brought children into the world under all kinds of dire circumstances. If they had not, most of us would not be here. From Intellectual Takeout:

A woman I knew in college who later became an important figure in Planned Parenthood often stated her aversion to bearing children. “Who would bring a child into today’s world?” she’d say. “Look at the mess we’re in.” That was 47 years ago. Today when I tell some people I am a father and grandfather, some people echo the same sentiments.

“It’s an awful time to raise children,” these folks say, filled with sympathy. “I sure wouldn’t want to do that responsibility.”

No matter how many times I’ve heard it, this response leaves me stunned for several reasons. First, it lacks any historical perspective. Did Americans in the Great Depression make similar comments? Did people then decry couples having babies because of tough times? Did couples after World War II decide to forego children because of the atomic bomb? History has witnessed many more tumultuous eras than our own, yet human beings living through the Fall of the Roman Empire, the Black Plague, the Thirty Years War, and other cataclysmic events still bore children and tried to raise them as adults.

Moreover, we are living in an age when technology and medicine virtually guarantee healthy newborns and healthy children. Want to talk about an awful time to bring a child into the world? If we go back only a century, we find staggering infant mortality rates. Bringing a baby into the world and raising that child to the age of five in 1900 was a risky business. (Read more.)