The Wall Street Journal posted today “The Fertility Gap” subtitled “Liberal politics will prove fruitless as long as liberals refuse to multiply.” The author makes an intelligible argument that a gap in fertility is a loss in elections…

Simply put, liberals have a big baby problem: They’re not having enough of them, they haven’t for a long time, and their pool of potential new voters is suffering as a result. According to the 2004 General Social Survey, if you picked 100 unrelated politically liberal adults at random, you would find that they had, between them, 147 children. If you picked 100 conservatives, you would find 208 kids. That’s a “fertility gap” of 41%. Given that about 80% of people with an identifiable party preference grow up to vote the same way as their parents, this gap translates into lots more little Republicans than little Democrats to vote in future elections.

Quite an interesting article narrowing the demographics of not having children with a political disadvantage. Read it.

The photo below is of two families: the Jeubs on the left and the Heppners on the right. This was taken Father’s Day 2003 when the Heppner family (from Warroad, Minnesota) spent a week at our house. While this may seem like a lot of people, we are missing our oldest daughter plus we have had three kids since (we had only 10 kids at the time), and the Heppners had only 12 of their 16 children along for the ride. Total pictured: 24…total heritage: 33.

The Heppners are being featured on The Learning Channel on a special episode they are pulling together on extra-large families. The Grand Forks Herald did a feature story titled, “‘Eight Is Enough’ times two for Warroad family.” The article is a pleasant highlight of the Heppner family’s joys and challenges with so many children. I love the angle Miriam (pictured cuddling with her husband on the right) takes:

“The motivation behind the story is the idea that if we can do it, other families with fewer children can do it,” Miriam said. “Hopefully, others can pick up on some things that we’ve had to do to - basically, to survive. Some moms feel overwhelmed and walk away from the family. This is where my heart is - to encourage young moms.”

The feature is expected to run in January-February, 2007. I called the Heppners last night and talked with Moses, their 5th-born son, about the experience. He said the 4-man crew simply hung out with them and captured as much footage as possible. The purpose of the feature is not to portray the Heppners as weird or out-of-the-ordinary, but rather to show–with real footage–how a family with so many kids manages. To the Heppners, it is normal. To the rest of the world, it is incredibly interesting.

In fact (how can I forget to mention?), the Heppners came with their school bus conversion. Here’s us on our way home from church. DuWayne put me behind the wheel and we drove to an icecream shop. I was hooked. About 7 months later, I bought our school bus.

The Jeub family believes that baptism is a representative display of our accepting Jesus Christ as our Lord and savior. It isn’t a magical means to salvation, but a public display of commitment to the King. The Bible says,

Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. (Acts 2:23)

Micah, our 2nd born son and 6th born child, has been talking about baptism for a couple of months now. He and I have had some nice early-morning conversations about it, but we hadn’t the opportunity to get totally wet. We went camping with four other families in the mountains last weekend and had that opportunity. My friend Greg was baptized, too, and his daughter, Ashley. What a great weekend!

Here’s a view from the cold lake…Yes, this is only five total families: