September 27, 2022

"At one point before she got married, however, she nearly became a nun."

"As a teen, she applied to join the convent and was accepted. Despite her hope for a large family, 'I just felt I had a vocation,' said Koller, explaining that she is a person of faith and a Catholic. It was her mother and then-boyfriend (who later became her husband of 66 years), who convinced her to get married instead and, in hindsight, she’s glad they did. Her family, she said, is her greatest source of pride. In 1942, Koller married William Koller, a World War II veteran.... The couple was not sure at first how many children they wanted, but once they got started, 'we just kept going,' Koller said, adding that her life was never lonely again."


Why is The Washington Post publishing this story? Pure pro-natalism. How does this serve the WaPo agenda?

50 comments:

Buckwheathikes said...

Amazon.com cannot grow sales at the scale Wall Street demands without new human consumers. (Which is also why they're pushing unlimited open borders and massive immigration, regardless of how destructive that would be to the nation.)

The Washington Post isn't a "newspaper." It used to be a newspaper. It is now the in-house newsletter for Amazon.com.

Everything it prints must be viewed in the context of how the story impacts the personal wealth of Jeff Bezos.

Once you accept this, figuring out why they publish the articles they publish is very easy to do.

n.n said...

An epiphany? Probably not. Morality unchained requires an ethical adjustment.

mccullough said...

In order to continue, all businesses need customers. No babies, no future customers.

Plus, they now might get 101 new customers by profiling Koller.

mikee said...

WaPo publishes one article like this to point at when anyone complains about the 10000 articles with the opposing bias.

gahrie said...

Why is The Washington Post publishing this story? Pure pro-natalism. How does this serve the WaPo agenda?

Oh sweet fucking Jesus Christ! Pro-natalism!?!

What the Hell is wrong with being in favor of life? Except for the Zero population lunatics, why would anyone be opposed to the creation of more human life?

What is the Left's pre-occupation with death? They're either sending people to death camps, performing mandatory abortions or pushing "voluntary" suicide.

Considering that the basic biological function of women is to give birth, why would any woman ever be opposed to natalism?

Shouting Thomas said...

My first child was an “accident.” Prior to the accident, I was one of those leftists who was never going to have children because the world was too evil.

I married her mother. At the time I felt a little aggrieved by these circumstances.

That accident was probably the best thing that ever happened to me. I live now in a garden apartment with my accidental daughter and my three grandchildren living upstairs.

They’ve made my old age joyous and wonderful.

When the kids are on vacation, or on weekends, they knock on my door and yell: “Come out and play, Grandpa!”

It doesn't get any better than that.

PM said...

1. Could be the Post thinks it's a heartwarming story about a lovely family.
2. Could be the Post wants readers to think 'those asshole Catholics keep adding too many people to the planet while restricting my access to on-demand abortion.

minnesota farm guy said...

Great question, Ann. I suppose they would prefer to publish this kind of National Enquirer stuff rather than deal with the malfeasance of the Biden administration.

Inga said...

I guess everyone’s agenda can be put aside for sweet human stories like this.

William said...

If every woman who lives long enough to see her great-grandchildren has over a hundred of them, the world will be a crowded place. Population bomb goes nuclear. I didn't read the article, but that's an obvious subtext, and you don't have to criticize the woman involved to reach that conclusion. It helps that they point out that she's Catholic.....The world will be a needlessly complicated place if every woman decides to abort her female fetus (feta?), but don't look for such an article anytime soon.

Big Mike said...

How did she marry a World War II veteran in 1942? Was he in the service when she married him and he became veteran? Did they actually marry in 1945 or sometime thereafter? Are Post writers and editors historically illiterate?

CJinPA said...

Most-liked comment there, from BlueVoterAlways:
I'm old and from a time when lots of children were the norm. I am sure that this is a happy family but we do know more now. My mom was one of eleven kids. My grandmother had an apron on which that she embroidered the names of all of her grandchildren. She had to get a second one to add her great grandchildren. My mom had nieces and nephews who were the same age or older than she was. Fortunately, for my generation and following ones, there is awareness and access to birth control. Of course, the right is trying to deny this as well as the teaching of sex education. They are trying to send us back to the time of my grandmother and her having no choice but to have as many children as her body could bear. There were plenty of times during the depression when my Mom and her siblings went hungry. My grandfather, whom I never met, came home sporadically and nine months later there was another child. Let's learn from the past and look to the future and do what's best for the planet and our bodies.

#2
A big, loving family. I'm grateful that mine was much smaller. What brings joy to some would be an over-crowded nightmare for others. But most importantly, it should be a choice.

After that, they're generally positive.

Eleanor said...

Given how many navel-gazing articles from WaPo you link to here, why complain about one that is pro-family? Or is it meant to be anti-Catholic?

Sean said...

Did not read because of NYT but does she have 101 great grandkids or 101 decendents? Can't imagine having 10 kids and then each of them having 10 kids.

Having that many decendents is likely. The western Mormon part of my family is like that. The family reunion parties for my aunt and uncle have hundreds attend.

Kate said...

Oh, definitely what PM said. Those freak Catholics and their overpopulating. You don't want to be like them, do you, dear WaPo readers?

This was the kind of story (done sincerely) that Parade magazine included on Sundays. If a major newspaper has this on a Tuesday, don't be naive.

tim maguire said...

Though she didn't live to see if it happens, my mother had 9 children. Those 9 children gave her 20 grandchildren, who have so far produced only 4 great grandchildren, but most of them are still in their 20's, so there's plenty of time. There were 3 weddings in just the last year, so we'll see...

Take that, Paul Ehrlich!

Derve Swanson said...

I live now in a garden apartment with my accidental daughter and my three grandchildren living upstairs.
--------

You should let your little girl move in with her children and their daddy...

Derve Swanson said...

Now do the Mormons!!
lol

Yancey Ward said...

My great-grandmother in the maternal line is probably closer to 100 great grandchildren than 70 (I would have to check with my oldest sister). Of course, that great-grandmother died 40 years ago next month.

West TX Intermediate Crude said...

Probably an own goal by WaPo (I read only our host's excerpt).
It should be obvs that the leftist coalition is mostly barren, whether due to biology or preference.
They have to recruit, like Shakers, or they will die out, like Shakers.

RMc said...

Why is The Washington Post publishing this story?

Beats me. Isn't the WaPo in favour of aborting everybody?

RMc said...

Why is The Washington Post publishing this story?

Beats me. Isn't the WaPo in favour of aborting everybody?

RMc said...

Why is The Washington Post publishing this story?

Beats me. Isn't the WaPo in favour of aborting everybody?

boatbuilder said...

Pro-natalism? Is that supposed to be some sort of bad or evil thing?

News flash: Malthus was wrong. And Ehrlich was wrong. More babies is a good thing (and grandbabies are apparently wonderful!, based on my friends' experiences. I'm still waiting.)

There is a very interesting Jordan Peterson podcast on Spotify--#284 with Marian Tupy and Gale Pooley--addressing this issue. Highly recommended.

boatbuilder said...

Just read the comments.

If grandbabies can make Shouting Thomas happy, what more proof do you need?

Congrats, ST.

Narayanan said...

tell us about the music talent of the extended family and their mountain orienteering skills

John henry said...

My mother in law was one of 17, my father in law was one of 15. My wife has at least 100 first cousins that she knows personally.

She also knows a couple hundred 2nd and 3rd cousins with various degrees of removal.

Wife is 1 of 6. A couple, inclusing us, are pikers with only 2 kids. Most have 4-6.

A big family is a nice feeling.

traditionalguy said...

Pro life as it comes. Humans going out and multiply is obeying God. Pro family too.

Thank God there were no medical butchers back then to convince her she would feel better pretending she was a man and slaughtered her woman parts.

jim5301 said...

Why is The Washington Post publishing this story? Pure pro-natalism. How does this serve the WaPo agenda?

Maybe they are publishing it because she is 99 and has 101 grandchildren. it is a heart worming story. Is it possible that sometimes the agenda is no agenda?

Smilin' Jack said...

“ Why is The Washington Post publishing this story?”

Haven’t read it but I assume they’re shaming her for a disgracefully selfish contribution to global warming.

Inga said...

“It should be obvs that the leftist coalition is mostly barren, whether due to biology or preference.”

Do you even know any “leftists”? Most people I know on the left are married and have families, including me and mine and friends and their families. Sometimes I think you people are the ones who live in the bubble.

Witness said...

"Why is The Washington Post publishing this story? Pure pro-natalism. How does this serve the WaPo agenda?"

Did you click on it? Did you share it with your audience?

I think that serves their agenda pretty well.

Humperdink said...

Humperdink said...

Just read an article a day or two ago where China's population will be in steep decline over the next few decades. By end of this century, they will down several hundred million. They must have been glued to Paul Erhlich's book. Their economy will be toast. Better take Taiwan while taking's good.

The Amish are regularly in double digits. Lack of farmland remains an issue.

mikee said...

My mother was the youngest child in her family, the 14th pregnancy her mother had over about 25 years, of which only 5 babies lived to adulthood. The other 9 pregnancies ended in miscarriages or with early deaths due to common diseases of the early 20th Century. And one of those 5 adults died in WWII. One reason for lots of pregnancies 75 years ago was to insure a few offspring survived to adulthood.

Joe Smith said...

'How does this serve the WaPo agenda?'

Subscribers?

RigelDog said...

I don't know why they published this story, but it seemed to be very straight-forward and positive. Also, the family funeral home, Koller, is in my neighborhood! Might just could have to give them my business when the time comes, now that I know they are big-time family owned.

Shouting Thomas said...

“Do you even know any ‘leftists’?

I know a ton of them. I lived in Woodstock, NY for 45 years and I still live in the Hudson Valley, which almost never elects a Republican to any office.

The school districts in this area have been shutting down one elementary and high school after another over the past couple of decades as the child population craters. There aren’t enough kids to go around.

MadisonMan said...

@ShoutingThomas, that does sound lovely. Enjoy!

Sean: your computation is incorrect. You missed a generation.

n.n said...

China's population will be in steep decline over the next few decades

Over a hundred million lives reset through Maoism for social progress, redistributive change, and DIE (Diversity, Inequity, and Exclusion), and several hundred million more abortions of excess females with State's Choice, NOW her Choice through ethical sanction. Hitler, in practice, was, at best, a mini Stalin with dreams of Mao.

n.n said...

A big family is a nice feeling.

The very model of fitness and a community unto itself.

gadfly said...

Why is The Washington Post publishing this story? Pure pro-natalism. How does this serve the WaPo agenda?

Pronatalism is a political ideology that promotes the reproduction of human life or, perhaps more aptly, sees women’s primary role as giving birth in order to boost a country’s native population.

I did a Google search and found Washington Post stories on both sides of population control - and Yes, Virginia, there are articles out there about both reducing births, and increasing births, and you can toss in eugenics in order to select those that can be birthed.

But of late, the Pro-abortionists are honest-to-God adults who are demanding the killing of unborn babies mostly for the sake of purging emotional mistakes. Now that is as "antinatalistic" as you can get!

Antinatalism, by definition, is the thought that all human beings or all sentient beings should not be born.

n.n said...

The wicked solution (e.g. planned parenthood, elective abortion, clinical cannibalism) has liberal support. WaPo et al publish with plausible deniability, as, perhaps, the modern model of journolism... journalism to hedge their bet. Here's to a divided nation that mitigates the progress of slavery, diversity, political congruence, and human rites performed for social, redistributive, clinical, political, and fair weather causes. That stand up to an ethical religion that denies women and men's dignity and agency, and reduces human life to negotiable commodities. First, they came for "our Posterity" through State's Choice then delegated to her Choice.

MadTownGuy said...

"Why is The Washington Post publishing this story? Pure pro-natalism. How does this serve the WaPo agenda?"

It gives the appearance of evenhandedness.

Michelle Dulak Thomson said...

Shouting Thomas,

I spent seven years or so in the Hudson Valley, growing up (Monroe, Orange County), and it was not then a Leftist hotbed of any sort. Perhaps things have changed in forty years?

Lee Moore said...

Life is reproduction. Everything else is a hobby.

Tina Trent said...

Shouting Thomas: I grew up in Poughkeepsie. It was a great place to live. But the Democrats made the tax burdens the highest in the country, and people left. My high school was small, but now it's much smaller.

The Hudson Valley is also less economically stable for the people born there as leftist yet rich Wall Street grifters pour in to snatch up real estate after their politics befowled their own city beyond repair and Cuomo screwed up the pandemic response.

Don't give up on upstate Republicans yet. They're lean and tough, and reality is a powerful tool. There are elected Republicans managing towns and cities, the hard, unglamorous work, because leftists view government as a honeypot, not a job. With the State Democrats' extremist new plan to release anyone from prison at 55 if they have served 20 years -- I mean anyone, rapists, killers, terrorists, cannibals -- you may see some course correction. Also, get yourself a gun. Cuomo, Hochul, her indicted former Lt. Gov Benjamin...New York Democrat voters are political vermin.

sharkcutie said...

I don't know any pro-choice person who is anti-child. They just want women to be able to choose for themselves, as Peg Koller did!

The Vault Dweller said...

I don't know any pro-life person who is anti-woman. They just want unborn children to not be arbitrarily terminated, as all of us were not!

RigelDog said...

Sharkcutie said: "I don't know any pro-choice person who is anti-child. They just want women to be able to choose for themselves, as Peg Koller did!"

You will find plenty of pro-choice and anti-child people if you find out what the child-free say, or what a lot of today's feminists say, or really what an unnervingly-large percentage of today's younger generation thinks. They are choosing to avoid ever having children in large numbers. Environmentalists sometimes say that anyone having a child these days is killing the Earth.

I used to cross paths on my morning commute into town with a truly hateful woman. I never met her, but her small black truck was plastered with a lot of angry, Leftist messages. Among these were several that were literally pro-abortion because of hatred towards babies.