Having 5 Kids Is Real Diversity, But The Left Hates It

Corporations and federal employers promote it as their most important value. Educators declare it as central to their mission. Our politics is increasingly defined by the need to represent it. I speak, of course, of diversity. Businesses, schools, and the entertainment industry all declare their unwavering loyalty to it. Political pundits in every election cycle now argue the need for “more diverse candidates.”

Yet who, in an America that is increasingly racially, religiously, and sexually diverse, actually represents diversity? I do. Or, more accurately, my family does.

Large Families Are Like Circus Freaks

It occurred to me recently when I was introduced to a group of highly educated, accomplished, technocratic elites from the Washington, D.C., area. It was mentioned that I had five children. Cue the incredulous shock.

“You have five children?” (Yes.) “How old are they?” (9, 7, 5, 2, and 3 months.) “How do you sleep?” (Depends on if anyone in the house is sick.) “What does your wife do?” (Well, she’s sort of the chief executive officer, chief financial officer, homeroom teacher, and head chef, all rolled into one. I’m more or less just the titular head, though on weekdays I moonlight as an evening chauffeur.)

Often the questions can be more biting. Upon learning of my wife’s third pregnancy, a co-worker asked me if I had forgotten to put on a condom. Upon learning of my wife’s fourth pregnancy, someone asked me when I was planning to visit CVS to buy a lifetime supply of contraception. For our fifth, an acquaintance bluntly demanded to know, “Are you done yet?”

Even when it’s well-meaning, my wife and I could certainly misinterpret and take offense at the comments we hear. An acquaintance recently told me he had met my wife and our “reality show-size family.” Thanks, I guess? Though that’s not exactly a compliment given how those families typically turn out!

When people try to connect with us, it’s often in bizarre, patronizing ways. Other mothers at neighborhood swim practices or ballet practices regularly volunteer information to my wife about birth control strategies, decisions to have only one or two kids, or how their husbands decided to get vasectomies. Look, just because I’ve impregnated my wife five times, we don’t need to hear about what your husband did to his vas deferens.

The Diversity Regime Is Dull

The demographics that our culture champions as “diverse” don’t have to deal with this behavior — or, if they do, they can expeditiously leverage the disciplinary arm of the modern bureaucracy to punish their detractors and coerce them into acceptable behavior. Consider the professional consequences if you reacted with shock and concern to learning that your gay co-worker had a child via surrogacy, or that your co-worker was encouraging her pre-pubescent child who thinks she’s “trans” to pursue wrong-sex hormones. The appropriate, human resources-approved response to such information would be the opposite of surprise. Whatever words we employed, they would need to communicate: “Oh yeah, very normal, nothing weird or bad

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