Life Ways

Life Ways

Why Should the Generations Overlap?
by Dr. Donald DeMarco

Nineteenth-century satirist Samuel Butler once asked whether parents would be more providential if they simply left their offspring wealth and independence rather than remaining close to their progeny only to risk smothering them under a protective blanket of parental love. "Why should the generations overlap each other at all?" he remarked. "Why can’t we be buried in neat little cells with ten or twenty thousand pounds each wrapped round us in Bank of England notes, and wake up, as the sphinx does, to find that its papa and mamma have not only left ample provision at its elbow, but have been eaten by sparrows some time before it began to live consciously on its own account?"

How would Samuel Butler have responded, we might ask, to the twentieth century’s human counterpart to his mud dauber wasp: parentless Athina Onassis who, at age three, stands to inherit an estimated $1 billion empire, including a fleet of ships, a chain of islands in the Ionian sea, and a collection of skyscrapers in various capitals of the world? Would he have responded with envy or dismay? No doubt the trenchant satirist would have agreed with most of us that, given the alternatives of loving parents or billionaire status, a little girl would be far better off with the former.

The generations overlap each other from the birth of children to, in most instances, the death of their parents. Birth and death, then, are the two events which mark the beginning and the end of the period of overlapping. If not being burdened by others is a reason for children not to have parents, then not being a burden to others is a reason for parents not to have children. A UCLA psychologist stated in a recent issue of Time that "for many, not having children removes the concern of being a burden to your children in old age" (May 2, 1998). And Gloria Steinheim adds her reason for opposing the overlapping of the generations when she says, "I either gave birth to someone else or I gave birth to myself."

Butler’s question, which may appear facetious at first glance, is not without contemporary relevance. It really amounts to asking the question, "Why should there be a family?" Why should God not have provided for an uninterrupted sequence of individuals who make their world entrances and exits without ever being burdened by or being a burden to other people?

The critical points of intersection between the generations—birth and death—are also the two critical points of moral turmoil in contemporary society: abortion and euthanasia. The family exists, we might say, so that birth and death are not an occasion for despair. The family is that extraordinary institution of ordinary people that finds in personal love the divine antidote for the burdensome features of human existence. It expresses love both in the pain of birth and in the sorrow of death. It represents the triumph of love over pain and sorrow. That is why the crucified Christ is such a powerful and realistic symbol of love.

The cross itself is an intersection between the human and the divine. It also reminds us that the lives of God and man overlap each other. God has not despaired of either birth or death. He has transcended both through love. He wants the Christian family to follow his example and to accept these events with love. The lives of God and man overlap because God wants to teach man about the supremacy of love.

Sigmund Freud once made the comment that wealth does not make a person happy because it does not fulfill an infantile wish. According to Freud, the desire for wealth represents a desire for a self-replenishing immortal body. The desire for wealth, therefore—and along with it, the desire to be free from the authority of one’s parents—is really a fear of death. And this fear of death prevails when love is absent.

The family welcomes new members into its fold; people do not become marooned on islands of selfishness, convenience or pleasure. "All babies should be loved," say the pro-abortionists. They utter this proclamation not to reiterate a timeless maxim, but to lobby for the position that babies who do not happen to be loved may be killed. Their moral effort goes into making optional the moral imperative that human beings act as loving persons toward their own kind, especially parents toward their own unborn children. Babies being loved; people being persons: There are options! Perhaps the generations need not overlap! What is mandatory is that everything be optional. It is the supreme act of indifference toward the moral structure of human existence, cosmic boredom in the face of the elementary obligation of a person to act as a person. It is the greatest of all illusions: that love would damage man’s freedom, that human beings must climb above a morality of good and evil to enjoy freedom in its finest form.

But Christian realism has different advice: Man becomes free through accepting personal responsibilities, not by refusing them. In rejecting his nature as a person and his command to love, man evicts himself from the sphere of moral realism; he then has no other choice than to inhabit the realm of fantasy, believing that wealth is happiness and independence is salvation.

The generations should overlap because parenthood is paradigmatic of personal love. It is a standard that others look to at times when their own capacities for love have become strained. To make personal love optional is to invite calamity. The press recently carried the story of four South Korean girls living in the United States, ages 6-13, who tried to commit suicide by ingesting rat poison to relieve their parents of the financial burden of having to raise them. The parents had communicated the importance of money to their children once too often. The six-year old died. The other three were given lifesaving medical attention. In another incident, a young boy developed deep psychological problems after breaking his arm. The boy knew that his parents had aborted his sister a few months earlier because she was "defective." Now that he had a broken arm, he believed himself to be similarly "defective," and feared the same fate that had claimed his sister awaited him.

The generations must overlap so that the family may feed the larger community of society. At the critical intersection where birth and death bring the generations together, an intimate and powerful love is infused. Neither the individual nor society can survive without this love.

The two vital junctions where the generations commence and close their overlapping are moments when Christ pours forth his love in a special way. Birth and death are the thresholds of eternity. They anticipate the acts of creation and redemption. But both these acts proceed from a heart of love. The family is God’s heart on earth. The generations should overlap because there is no joy or peace or hope without God’s saving love.

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