The Sanger Gospel, Part 1

To measure the level of sadness and despair in individual families, count their children. The more they have, the greater their misery. To achieve happiness, both for your family and society at large, keep your family small. Such was the perspective Margaret Higgins Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood, adopted early in her childhood.

Sanger grew up in Corning, NY, a mill-town home to the factories which produced CorningWare along the Chemung River. In the mill village, she observed differences between the small families of the mill owners and executives and the large families of the workers. In her words, “This contrast made a track in my mind. Large families were associated with poverty, toil, unemployment, drunkenness, cruelty, fighting, jails; the small ones with cleanliness, leisure, freedom, light, space, sunshine.”

Sanger grew up in a family of eleven children and noted that her’s was a “difficult” childhood. Altogether, these experiences, along with the socialistic idealism of her father, led her to write, “The most serious evil of our times is that of encouraging the bringing into the world of large families. The most immoral practice of the day is breeding too many children.”

Did you get that? “The most serious evil” is to have a large family. Those words are breathtaking! In her view, uncontrolled childbearing is the root cause of “war, famine, and oppression of the workers.” Uncontrolled childbearing is the original sin in Sanger’s religion. Women bear responsibility for this original sin since, “By her failure to withhold the multitudes who have made inevitable the most flagrant of our social evils, she incurred a debt to society.”

Christians must be careful not to criticize Sanger while embracing her philosophy. How many deliberately forego having children or refuse to have more than one or two so they may keep more of their money and time to spend on themselves? You’ll sacrifice to have luxury, but not a large family.

Raising children is hard, time-consuming work. But it isn’t hard because of the number of children. It is hard because we are fallen, sinful people whose greatest love is ourselves. Raising children is work that exposes our deep-seated selfishness. Sinfully we might say, “It’s my money and my time! I want to take vacations, drive nice cars, and have a fancy house, and therefore refuse to have children who will interfere with those ambitions!” Well, let me ask you, what is so different between you and the founder of Planned Parenthood? Have you thrown out the baby and drunk the bathwater?