Telling. . .

Now more than 25 years ago, I was on a plane heading to a Synodical meeting of some sort when a woman in the seat next to me asked if I would hold her baby while she went to the restroom.  I was wearing a clerical collar and we had spoken a few times during the flight but it was normal and natural.  Of course I would hold the baby.  By the time she had gotten back, the frustrated baby who was not liking air travel had grown tired and fell asleep in my arms.  The baby remained in my arms for the rest of the flight and mom got her baby, now awake, about the time we are deplaning.  It would probably never happen today.  First of all there are far less children  and so fewer flying.  A man wearing a clerical collar is suspect to some for history we all know only to well.  Finally, we live in a suspicious world in which no stranger is deemed trustworthy and certainly not trustworthy enough to be entrusted with a baby -- even a crying one.  It was normal to me.  I had held my own three children and held every baby and small child I had baptized and was always holding children in my parish.  But it is not normal today.  Not just for a pastor on a plane but for many adults.

You can get to middle age now without ever having held a baby.  Let me say that again.  It is possible today to get through half or more of your life and never having held a child in your arms.  There is a remarkable lack of experience around children that has become normal to these days but marks a distinct difference between us and those who went before us.  It reveals to us how our society has evolved once marriage and family are optional and even secondary to the individual life and pursuit of people.  Children are not normal anymore and so we are experiencing a deficit in our experience that is telling.  What do you do with a baby or a toddler?  Out of sight, out of mind, and out of our realm of experience.

Oddly enough I flew several long flights last month only to encounter in the waiting area six dogs, four of which made it onto the flight I was taking.  There were no babies, a couple of children perhaps 5 or 6 years old, and plenty of adults without a wedding ring who were traveling alone but no babies.  I did not realize how odd that was until I thought about it.  We had small dogs in carry on pet luggage but not a car seat to be seen at either the luggage check or the baggage storage section in the gateway.  Now I have nothing against dogs and have had them and loved them as well but have dogs in carriers become more common than an infant or small child in a full plane headed west?

The children we do have will surely notice the absence of a baby or a small child in circumstances like this.  It has become normal for an old guy like me to who looks for what is missing but for the child growing up today it will be the always normal perspective -- children and babies absent from their lives and their experiences.  A growing gulf in America are families with more children and those with none and the experience of those families is very different and so their perspective on life and marriage and family is also different.  Sadly, more of them will become adults who never held a baby in their arms.  Chances are by the time they become an adult without having held a child in their arms, they will probably also age into their twilight years without this experience.  A long time ago, those who had no children of their own either sought out or were encourage by the parents to hold the new baby.  Now, with our dramatically declining birth rate, they have no babies around them to hold.  If you think this does not matter, carry a baby or a small child into a congregation of gray haired adults and watch their eyes light up.  It makes you wonder if a future church without children and without people who had held a baby in their arms would welcome the child or see it as foreign to their experience.  Just something I thought about today from a memory of one experience on a plane and a more recent one....