1 Trending: The Lazy ProPublica Hit Piece On Cleta Mitchell Is Full Of Howlers

2 Trending: Trump Rallies For ‘Best Ever’ AG Paxton At Packed Lubbock Rally

3 Trending: What The Midterm Senate Polls Won’t Tell You (And Where They Might Be Wrong)

4 Trending: You Can Be Your Career-Obsessed Friends’ On-Ramp To Motherhood

How To Build A Family Legacy That Lasts Centuries

Austin Ruse’s latest book, ‘Not Just for Kings: Cultivating a 500-Year Vision for Your Family,’ makes the case for building big and influential families.

Share Article on Facebook

Share Article on Twitter

Share Article on Truth Social

Share Article via Email

Alan Alexander Milne, the British author responsible for Winnie-the-Pooh, one of the most beloved characters of children’s literature, had one child: Christopher Robin, the inspiration for Pooh’s best friend. Christopher, in turn, had one daughter, Clare Milne, who died childless in 2012. And he’s not alone — the same is true for Mark Twain, Laura Ingalls Wilder, and Kenneth Grahame. It’s a depressing thing to consider, that some of the most-beloved authors of children’s literature over the last 150 years have no one to carry on their family name.

Yet, perhaps for many younger Americans, it’s not so sad. About twenty percent of women ages 40-44 have never had children. A recent survey found that almost forty percent of women ages 20–29 who had never given birth did not expect to have any children in the future. A growing percentage of Americans do not care about projecting a legacy into the future, and for reasons that would have befuddled earlier generations: They don’t want children; they want to focus on other things; they are concerned about the world, affordability, environmental concerns; or they don’t even like children. No Winnie-the-Pooh for them!

Conservative activist and author Austin Ruse wants to counter this civilizational suicide. In his new book Not Just for Kings: Cultivating a 500-Year Vision for Your Family, he draws on his own family experience, the stories of some of the great families of history, and a variety of contemporary examples to urge readers to consider what is necessary for a family name to “blaze for centuries.” It is a commendable, but at times uneven, project.

Why Bother With Projecting a Family Legacy?

Ruse is on firmest ground when arguing that pursuing a family legacy is an extension of what we might call filial piety, the obligation to honor and respect those who have come before us. “To consider that our lives are our own is the true egotism, vanity, and narcissism,” he writes. “It is not about you. It is about them,” the “them” being our ancestors.

Certainly most civilizations have understood that our ancestors, even if they are dead, maintain a claim on our lives. Our existence is a gift we owe to God, but also to our parents, who, with varying degrees of success, created the circumstances for our happiness and flourishing. Perhaps part of the reason why an increasing number of Americans have no interest in children is because many of us no longer think this way —........

© The Federalist