{"id":2611,"date":"2006-04-26T16:16:18","date_gmt":"2006-04-26T16:16:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2006\/04\/making-babies.html"},"modified":"2006-04-26T16:16:18","modified_gmt":"2006-04-26T16:16:18","slug":"making-babies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/04\/making-babies.html","title":{"rendered":"Making Babies"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/news.scotsman.com\/latest.cfm?id=625012006\">A piece on Frances&#8217; (relatively) high birthrate<\/a><\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Researchers admit that their understanding of the relatively high French birth rate still retains a degree of mystery.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;For every rule you can come up with you find an exception,&quot; said Grant. Pison agreed: &quot;There is a bit of mystery. We are doing studies but we don&#8217;t yet have all the secrets.&quot;<\/p>\n<p>For example, it is sometimes suggested that because the two most fertile countries in Europe &#8212; France and Ireland &#8212; are mainly Roman Catholic countries, the Catholic tradition of having large families would help explain the high birth rates.<\/p>\n<p>But Italy and Spain, two other Catholic countries, fall near the bottom of the EU list, in 16 and 17th position.<\/p>\n<p>Experts also point out that while France&#8217;s fertility rate can partly be attributed to generous social support, Ireland is more fertile and does not have as many incentives.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">The article, like almost every one I&#8217;ve seen, declines to look at the impact of Muslim immigrants&#8217; fertility rate as a factor in the total.&nbsp; I really don&#8217;t understand why &#8211; we do in the States, as we consider the impact of the fertility rates of Hispanic immigrants on the total US demographic. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A piece on Frances&#8217; (relatively) high birthrate Researchers admit that their understanding of the relatively high French birth rate still retains a degree of mystery. &quot;For every rule you can come up with you find an exception,&quot; said Grant. Pison agreed: &quot;There is a bit of mystery. We are doing studies but we don&#8217;t yet&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2611","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Making Babies - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/04\/making-babies.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Making Babies - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"A piece on Frances&#8217; (relatively) high birthrate Researchers admit that their understanding of the relatively high French birth rate still retains a degree of mystery. &quot;For every rule you can come up with you find an exception,&quot; said Grant. Pison agreed: &quot;There is a bit of mystery. We are doing studies but we don&#8217;t yet&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/04\/making-babies.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2006-04-26T16:16:18+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"awelborn\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Making Babies - Via Media","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/04\/making-babies.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Making Babies - Via Media","og_description":"A piece on Frances&#8217; (relatively) high birthrate Researchers admit that their understanding of the relatively high French birth rate still retains a degree of mystery. &quot;For every rule you can come up with you find an exception,&quot; said Grant. Pison agreed: &quot;There is a bit of mystery. We are doing studies but we don&#8217;t yet&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/04\/making-babies.html","og_site_name":"Via Media","article_published_time":"2006-04-26T16:16:18+00:00","author":"awelborn","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/04\/making-babies.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/04\/making-babies.html","name":"Making Babies - Via Media","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website"},"datePublished":"2006-04-26T16:16:18+00:00","dateModified":"2006-04-26T16:16:18+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/04\/making-babies.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/04\/making-babies.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/04\/making-babies.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Making Babies"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/","name":"Via Media","description":"Amy Welborn","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a","name":"awelborn","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/9f2\/9f2100183464289fedc5b8a621c15110x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/9f2\/9f2100183464289fedc5b8a621c15110x96.jpg","caption":"awelborn"},"description":"Amy Welborn was born in 1960, the only child of a now-retired professor of political science, a teacher-librarian-artist mother,deceased since 2001, was a teacher, librarian and artist. The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2611","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2611"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2611\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2611"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2611"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2611"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}