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Brood Brooding
Is there something inherently hilarious about enormous families? Yours, Mine and Ours, a movie about the union of a man with 8 children and a woman with 10 just opened, and hot on its heels is Cheaper By the Dozen 2 (in which a family with 12 kids has to somehow do battle with a family that has merely 8; plain old Cheaper by the Dozen came out in 2003 and provides the set up for the hilarity). These pictures are new, but the fascination with mondo-families isn't. The original Cheaper By the Dozen came out in 1950 (with the marvelous Myrna Loy presiding over the brood with Clifton Webb) and Yours, Mine and Ours opened in 1968, with the unlikely but charming combo of Lucille Ball and Henry Fonda as the parents. The original movies are based on true stories. Yours, Mine and Ours started out as Who Gets the Drumstick? a memoir by the mother of the family, Helen Beardsley (nee North), and the book Cheaper by the Dozen was written by two of the notorious twelve.
In non-fictionalized real life, October headlines trumpeted the news of a woman in Arkansas who had her 16th child and has high hopes for another one, and it only takes a quick glance at the listings for the Discovery Channel (which made the show "14 Children and Pregnant Again!" about this same family a year ago) to get the measure of our fascination with multiple births ("Triplets and Quints" "Quads: Party of Four" "Triple the Triplets" "The Quad Squad" are some a few shows in the regular rotation).
Where does this come from? Certainly the Hollywood depictions of enormous families are funny and warm. (I've only seen the originals of the pictures I mentioned. I really couldn't be dragged to the remakes; I'd rather see Saw II, I think. Actually, being forced to sit through the remakes would make me want to take a saw to my own neck. I was interested, though, in how we were supposed to believe that Rene Russo had gone through 10 pregnancies and retained her stunning figure but the movie allows us to suspend our disbelief because her character only carried four of her babies and adopted six other kids.) But why are we so eager to see gigantic numbers of children? Is it because it seems like such a circus, so much fun? Is it because we enjoy tales of excess?
I hope so. It would be nice to think this particular fetish comes from some subliminal craving for decadence and the entertaining of a weird fantasy (a VERY weird one). The alternative is something ugly I've also contemplated: that these stories are a reflection of the logical conclusion of a land without birth control.
Now, before you think I've taken some sort of ugly left turn into hysteria, consider the precarious state of birth control in the United States. We have pharmacists who refuse to fill prescriptions for Emergency Contraception Pills. We have a Supreme Court that is probably going to do battle over abortion rights in the very near future. It is impossible to be sanguine about our reproductive rights in the future given what sort of government is in place and what sort of people are making the laws.
It may be a coincidence that these movies have been remade at a time when women's reproductive freedom is in jeopardy. In many ways I hope it is, because it suggests that if enough cozy, cheerful, bland, silly stories come out about how much fun it is to have 10 kids, people may be lulled into such a stupor that they start to believe it. It is one thing to have ten children by choice, another thing entirely to wind up with an enormous brood because of the absence of options.
* And here's a touch of support to my musings. The "trivia" section of the Internet Movie Database notes that the party band featured in the new Yours, Mine and Ours is the Christian alternative rock group Hawk Nelson. Perhaps coincidence, but given the way of things, I suspect not.
posted by Elise at 8:04 AM
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Sugarmama said...
Well now, this is a terrifying connection to have made. All I can say is, yikes!
11/28/2005 9:00 AM
said...
Funny the Discovery Channel never follows around the single mother of 9 in Chicago, whose children are all in foster care after being found covered in feces on a mattress in an abandoned apartment.
I watched that Discovery special. Nevermind the 16 kids, I can't get over that woman's mullet. And the meals she makes...aaagh! Tater Tot casserole. Egads.
11/28/2005 2:40 PM
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9/25/2006 10:40 AM
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9/25/2006 10:41 AM
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9/25/2006 10:42 AM
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