At home, in the village, she had 21 children, Madame Dussault. Maybe one more or one less. I don’t really know anymore. In any case, only the living were counted, without regard to miscarriages or stillborn children, these little angels, as they said then to exorcise the specters. My grandmother only had 11 children. A trifle, in comparison…
If these large families, in the land of maples, were less the norm than we wanted to believe, they were still held up as ideals, even after the Second World War.
Antoine Rivard, one of the pillars of Maurice Duplessis’ government, like others, encouraged these pronatalist impulses. This minister affirmed, to anyone who would listen, that the main contribution of women had been to generate swarms of children, in the name of the “revenge of the cradles”, this “Canadian miracle”.
After the defeat of the revolutionaries of 1837-1838, the Church had fully embraced the reactionary power. The vocation of ignorance, of rural labor, of the daily fight against the forest was therefore celebrated. Failing to really control the political, social and economic instruments of this half-country, it was enough, it was believed, to reproduce there endlessly.
This “revenge of the cradles” was rightly celebrated, said Antoine Rivard: “we paid deserved homage to the Canadian Mother, whose fertility had ensured the existence and progress of our people”. This increase in the population at all costs, that is to say with disregard for the lives of women, made it possible to lower or keep labor costs very low. Enough to delight those who know so well how to take advantage of the exploited.
These children conveniently took their place, perfectly aligned according to the order desired by the religious leaders, like the dead in the cemetery. There was constant talk of holy images, of the Virgin, of Heaven, of Hell, of small tin medals and crucifixes installed everywhere, on the neck, in the wallets, in the glove box of the car. auto, in the lining of the coat.
In the midst of so much nonsense, the priests acted as volunteer notaries, small scribes dedicated to supervising the acts of union, death and birth. They also provided convenient social police functions, notably through the institution of confession. Through this pastoral influence, everyone was monitored, forced to obey the laws of heaven decreed to justify base poverty on earth.
Former correspondent for Radio-Canada who became editor-in-chief of Duty then university professor, Paul-André Comeau readily recalled that the most obvious sign of the revolution which swept several societies in the 1960s appeared in Quebec well before the election of Jean Lesage’s government. The great clap of thunder that tore the gray sky of this society occurred at the end of the 1950s, he noted, that is to say before the arrival of the contraceptive pill. The birth rate had already recorded a notable decline when it became available. This fact struck him. Couples wanted smaller families, despite the Church’s dictates to the contrary. In other words, a quiet revolution had initially taken place quietly in the bedroom area.
There are still people, here and there, who regret those days gone by when knights of the bedroom reigned.
Now there is once again the question, almost everywhere, of a similar revenge of the cradles, for equally ideological ends. The new ultra right chants everywhere that we must produce more children, according to vague theories of the great replacement, in order to counter the supposed disappearance of a civilization in which it imagines itself as a model.
The multi-billionaire Elon Musk constantly repeats, in every forum, that sexuality must be used primarily for reproduction. Here is the return of a priest’s thought, but now powered by electricity. Musk sets an example: he mass-produces children, in the name of humanity whose moral prototypes he aims to draw. The names given to the dozen of his children are reminiscent of distant constellations: Saxon, Exa Dark Siderael, Strider, X Ae A-XII, etc.
Before Christmas, on the occasion of a congress of rights from around the world held in Italy and sponsored by the Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni, Elon Musk came to explain, transported by his private jet, that the birth rate was the pressing solution to oppose to immigration, to make up for the decline in labor and serve as a bulwark against the decline of its civilization. What does this ayatollah of the wealthy who had more than 440 private flights last year mean by “civilization”? Born in South Africa, would he have retained, behind him, without even realizing it, some of the recalibrated desires for ethnic domination that were in broad daylight there?
In the United States, we are now talking about couples who obey, in the name of the nation, such pronatalist injunctions. In addition to restricting access to abortion, these new evangelists who support the Trumpist right rely on laboratories to choose human embryos supposed to ensure the renewal of humanity.
In Russia, Vladimir Putin has revived a medal given to mothers of large families during the time of Stalin. Is Putin trying in this way to compensate for his military losses in Ukraine in the future, in an uninhibited reappropriation of a far-left past capable of serving his far-right ideas?
The injunction to increase birth rates, one thing is certain, is making a comeback among us, served by new ideocratic priests as dangerous as the old ones. And it is women, of course, who risk once again paying the price with their lives.