It Runs in the Family (9 page)

And then another new beginning. Madeline Vida Berrigan Sheehan-Gaumer.

Before we were married, Patrick and I used to talk about having five kids—at least five. That makes us laugh now. We have a big house. It was a foreclosure that was empty for at least two years. The former owners installed a Jacuzzi bathtub but neglected to repair the roof. We bought it for less than some people pay their nannies. It has four bedrooms, a little study, a full attic, a full basement, a nice yard, and a back and front staircase. We thought we would never fill it—not even with five kids. But now it is full, and Madeline and Seamus will have to share a room if we want to keep a guest room.

Still, this is not the worst problem in the world. There are more than seven billion people on Earth today, with another 375,000 born every day. The United States is the third most populated country in the world and although China and India have more people by several orders of magnitude, each U.S. citizen out-buys, out-eats, and out-drives each Indian and Chinese person by several orders of magnitude.

Overpopulation keeps a lot of scientists and policy makers up late worrying about the global food and water supply, deforestation, and global warming. Today, hundreds of millions of people are hungry and tens of millions do not have regular access to an adequate supply of clean drinking water.

Like Western Europe and other developed countries, we have a relatively low birth rate in the United States. Until recently, immigration kept us from noticing that fact, but a December 2012 report from the Pew Research Center found that “immigrant births fell from 102 per 1,000 women in 2007 to 87.8 per 1,000 in 2012, bringing the overall U.S. birthrate to a mere 64 per 1,000 women—not enough to sustain the current U.S. population.”

The pressing issue in this country is not too many births, but too many unintended births. Nearly half of the births in this country are unplanned and unwanted. In 2006, the last year for which I could find full data, at least half of these pregnancies ended in births at a cost of more than $11 billion a year to taxpayers.

As a mother who loves her kids, I worry over their future. What will the world look like when they come into their own? What issues and problems will they face? What can their dad and I do to prepare them? And, the most fundamental question of all: is it right to bring more children onto a planet that cannot provide for all the people who already live here?

We are trying to raise our kids to be people who will consume fewer raw materials, not agitate for war, and help foster resilient and sustainable communities of people. Hopefully, they will play a part in resolving, rather than exacerbating, the problems of the world. But all of that can wait for now. When I found out I was pregnant again at thirty-nine, despite sustaining a voracious nursing toddler, I just cheered. Hurray, I am pregnant! Pregnant and strong!

Five months pregnant, I walked to the grocery store, a two-mile round trip, pushing Seamus in the stroller and moving rather fast. On the way home we were weighed down by a gallon of milk and other groceries. It was a lovely fall day, and he slept the whole way, his hand stuck in a cup of Cheerios. In the afternoon, I transplanted hostas, pruned bushes, and got the yard ready for the winter while Seamus and his dad and big sister visited their grandparents and watched baseball. At the end of the day, I felt a little tired, but also like a lot had been accomplished.

Examples of strong, pregnant woman are everywhere I look. A friend from high school ran a marathon six months pregnant. My sister-in-law, Molly, did a major relay race four months pregnant. I loved running with her when she was seven and eight months along because I could sort of keep up. Amber Millar and her husband ran and walked the Chicago Marathon in 2011 and then headed straight to the hospital afterward, where she gave birth seven hours later. She told the
Chicago Sun Times
that “the race was definitely easier than the labor.”

Nur Suryani Mohd Taibi competed in the Olympics eight months pregnant. But she wasn’t going “coast to coast” on the court, pulling a triple lux on the ice, or sprinting to the finish on the track. She was a sharpshooter for Malaysia. She didn’t advance beyond the first round, but she was the most pregnant Olympian in history. She told her unborn daughter not to kick too much while she was competing: “I told her, ‘OK, don’t move so much, behave yourself, Mommy’s ready to shoot, help Mommy to shoot.’”

Athletes, politicians, performers, normal Janes: women get pregnant. Model Alessandra Ambrosio hid her pregnancy so she could walk the catwalk for Victoria Secret in 2011. She looked great (in a Victoria’s Secret sort of way). She was two months pregnant and hit the gym hard for the few weeks beforehand.

Raquel Batista isn’t hiding. The lawyer and community organizer from the Bronx ran for New York City Council and gave birth to a baby girl in August. Sally Kohn of
The Daily Beast
asked if there is a “broken-water” ceiling where women are penalized by voters for being pregnant. Kohn wrote that throughout her campaign, “Batista’s pregnancy was never seen as a positive—a sign that if she would fight this hard to get into office while pregnant, imagine how hard she would fight for her constituents while in office.”

The strangest thing about being pregnant is how conspicuous you are—how often strangers talk to you and ask you questions. It is like wearing a big sign all the time, in a good way. My experience is that pregnant women make people happy. We are visible, so we might as well make the most of the nine months. The fact that pregnant women are running, rapping, dancing, giving speeches, and wielding paint brushes on top of step ladders helps to put to rest the enduring sexist notion that pregnancy is a malady, weakness, or condition.

We resist—with our brawn, bulk, and hormones—patriarchy’s compulsion to shut us away to worry over the nursery and do kegels. We are here and we are growing the next generation: get used to it and get to work making the world worthy of our children.

Frida and Phil Berrigan at the Pentagon, 1976.

Frida and her mother in the backyard at Jonah House.

Young Frida protesting, possibly at the Department of Energy.

Singing at a Columbus Memorial, October 1992. FROM LEFT TO RIGHT: Bruce Friedrich; Phil Berrigan; unidentified woman; Frida Berrigan (in the hat).

Phil Berrigan being arrested at the Pentagon, Riverside entrance, blood on the pillar behind him.

In front of 1933 Park Avenue, Jonah House, with some of our community, taken while our mother was in Alderson prison in West Virginia. The whole width of the house is shown—14 feet. The sign on the window reads “Nuclear Free Zone.”

FROM LEFT TO RIGHT, TOP ROW:
Jerry Berrigan; neighborhood friend; Greg Boertje, now Boertje-Obed, serving a 5 year prison sentence for the Transform Now Plowshares action, Tennessee, July 2012; Mary Loehr, holding Gandhi poster, now part of the Ithaca Catholic Worker.
MIDDLE ROW:
Ellen Grady, wearing black, now part of the Ithaca Catholic Worker, with her arm around me.
BOTTOM ROW:
Brian Barrett, lives in Baltimore and remains part of the Jonah House extended community; Ellen’s husband Peter DeMott, now deceased; Kate Berrigan.

HOME SWEET HOME: NONVIOLENCE BEHIND CLOSED DOORS

M
y son has fat little hands—the kind where the knuckles sink in instead of stick out. When Seamus was almost seven months old, he was learning to use his hands. He wasn’t operating machinery or doing intricate beadwork, but every day he grew more adept and added fine motor skills. I look at his hands sometimes and try to imagine what they will be like decades from now. These impossibly small and pudgy fingers: Will they grow up and wear a wedding ring? Play the piano? Fill beakers with bright chemicals and noxious compounds? Tickle a new generation of chubby children?