Rich Kids

on Wealth & the True Cost of Having Children

When it comes to natalism —meaning, having kids —a latent hostility to big families may be nearing its expiration date. We seem to be at an inflection point because two trend-lines are crossing: the advent of demographic winter and Baby Boomers retiring en masse.

A recent indicator is an op-ed in The Financial Times by fashion editor Elizabeth Paton, entitled “The ultimate status symbol? A big family,” published on August 24, 2025.

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C. R. Wiley is a pastor living in the Pacific Northwest. He is the author of The Household and the War for the Cosmos and In the House of Tom Bombadil. He is also a co-host of The Theology Pugcast. He is a senior editor of Touchstone.

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more on family from the online archives

28.2—March/April 2015

As Goes Sweden

Neo-Pagan Family Policies Doom Any Recovery by Allan C. Carlson

33.2—March/April 2020

Blessed Peacemakers

Encounters with Faith & Forgiveness in Communities of Faith by Nicole M. King

33.3—May/June 2020

Maternity as Theophany

Maternal Body: A Theology of Incarnation from the Christian East by Carrie Frederick Frost
Fertile Ground: A Pilgrimage Through Pregnancy by Laura S. Jansson by Agnes R. Howard


more from the online archives

11.6—November/December 1998

Rediscovering Advent

by Thomas S. Buchanan

32.3—May/June 2019

What Makes Men Men?

The Nature of a Man Is What He Is For by J. Budziszewski

30.3—May/June 2017

St. Luke the Evangelist

by Mary Elizabeth Podles

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