A Different Perspective

In Katie Roiphe's "Do We Secretly Envy the Childfree?", I felt like I was recieving a lecture on not judging others for their personal decisions. This is fine and all, but I feel like it lacks the other side of the debate; those who decide to have several or more children recieve just as much judgement as those who don't have children at all. Even in Provo, UT where most of the community is Latter-Day Saints, I get strange looks when I say I am the youngest of eight children and have a sister with seven children. If we are going to promote the idea of being nonjudgmental when it comes to other's decisions on having or not having children, that should include those who decide to have more than two or three kids. I personally want to have a lot of children. This isn't because I want to overpopulate the Earth, get a welfare check from the government or because I want to be the annoying mother in the supermarket. It is because I want to be able to raise a large family to support one another in the crazy world out there. Is that wrong or should be looked down on?
One day, in the P.E. class I assisted in, the gym teacher and I got into a discussion about children and how many people should have. He went off on a tangent about how having a lot of children is a terrible thing, and that, just like in China, we should be limited on how many children we should have. He gave me the welfare and overpopulation debates and I sat and listened quietly. At the end, I replied saying I wanted to have a large family so that my children might be the changing affect in schools, workplaces and in the world. We left, neither persuading the other, but I feel we left with a different perspective than before.
I personally feel the greatest affect I can make in the world is raising respectful, polite and intelligent children to enter into the world and to make a difference. This doesn't have to be by creating new laws or changing the way we do things. It can be that one person that smiles at you on your worst day, and makes you feel like you were noticed. I want my child to be the one that gives someone faith in humanity, and give them the confidence to believe that the world isn't completely lost yet.

I believe William Ross Wallace says it best when he says, 

"Woman, how divine your mission, 

Here upon our natal sod; 

Keep—oh, keep the young heart open 

Always to the breath of God! 

All true trophies of the ages 

Are from mother-love impearled, 

For the hand that rocks the cradle 

Is the hand that rules the world."