Held to answer

His mama was Catholic, and his daddy was horny.

So it’s not surprising that John Boehner grew up in a family of 13 kids in a two-bedroom, one-bathroom home. But that’s not why he is moved to tears when he talks about the sanctity of life. It could have been worse.

He could have grown up in a two-bedroom home, with no bathroom, no electricity, no running water in a tiny town in South Dakota. That’s where my grandmother Agnes Maunders gave homebirth to 13 babies, 11 of whom survived infancy.

“Grandma was Catholic, and Grandpa was horny,” my oldest brother used to say, only partially joking.

Did my grandmother want to be treated like a brood mare? Did she have a choice? For all the children that she had, did she ever have a single orgasm? Clearly, my grandfather had no trouble enjoying himself.

I have a memory of my grandmother’s dark, low-ceilinged house. She had few teeth, and she wore thick hose that could not conceal the snake-like veins in her bird-like legs. The word used most often to describe her was “spry.” Everyone in the family liked to comment on her cheerful demeanor, and strangers who met her would always tell my mother, my aunts and my uncles: “Your mother must have really been beautiful when she was young.”

The memory I have of my grandfather was of a scowling, white-haired man who wagged his finger at kids if they looked like they might misbehave. My mother said that when she was growing up her father would yell “Hark!” when he wanted the children to be silent so he could listen to the radio. Although the family had little money, he insisted his sons go to school wearing white shirts and ties. He worked a railroad job and wrote letters to the editor of the Des Moines Register, often denouncing Franklin Roosevelt.

My mother adopted his politics, quoting him often, “Dad always said … Dad believed … Dad thought … .” She remained in awe of him until she was well into middle age and then she had a dream in which a voice told her, “Bert Maunders never gave a damn about his daughters.”

By then, women in my mother’s generation (particularly those in the lower socio-economic classes) were looking on as their daughters pursued opportunities and adventures previously unavailable to girls.

My mother had given birth to three children, probably two more than she wanted, two kids who kept her in a marriage she wanted to leave. If she’d had the opportunities I had, would I even exist? Perhaps not. But I wouldn’t know the difference. My mother knew the difference. She knew what her life was and what it could have been.

“Of the myriad lies that people often tell themselves, two of the most common, potent and destructive are ‘We really love our children’ and ‘Our parents really loved us,’” wrote psychiatrist Dr. M. Scott Peck. “It may be that our parents did love us and we do love our children, but when it is not the case, people often go to extraordinary lengths to avoid the realization.”

Peck wrote those words in his book “The Road Less Traveled,” which spent 13 years, one month and two weeks on the New York Times paperback best-seller list (from mid-November 1983 to late-December 1996).

Of all the people who bought the book, how many actually read it? How many of them stopped to consider how often they have told themselves those two lies?

In 1975, a young married couple wrote to Ann Landers, then one of the most widely read advice columnists in the U.S., and said they were in a quandary about whether to have children. They asked Landers if she would solicit opinions from her readers who were parents.

“The question, as I put it to my readers, was this: ‘If you had it to do over again, would you have children?’ Well, dear friends, the responses were staggering,” Landers recalled in her book, “Wake Up and Smell the Coffee.” Much to her surprise, 70 percent of those who responded said no. She doesn’t give a break down by gender, but of the three letters she ran as representative examples of those who regret having children, all three were from mothers.

Did Boehner’s mother really want 13 children? Like a lot of kids in his generation, he probably didn’t really know his mother. He does know how glorious and rich his life has been vs. what his mother’s life was like. He’s glad he didn’t have her life. None of the men in Congress would trade their lives for that of a housewife. Boehner cries out of a guilt he can’t admit. Tears are all he can offer for his mother’s sacrifices.

If he wanted to, he could honor her memory by acknowledging the sanctity of female life, that no girl or woman should have her life controlled by a boy’s or man’s sexual desire.

Boehner hasn’t chosen life. He has chosen politics.

–Pamela Fitzsimmons