August 29, 2014

"Each of the couple’s six children had a job in the nuptials. The bride was walked down the aisle by eldest sons Maddox and Pax..."

"... while daughters Zahara and Vivienne tossed flower petals. Shiloh and Knox served as ring bearers."

Nice. The kids were central, and it was the kids who wanted the wedding. Angelina Jolie had been explaining to them for years that "our commitment when we decided to start a family was the greatest commitment you could possibly have," but the movie stars' kids were "watching movies featuring weddings, including 'Shrek,' and had been asking a lot of questions."
Earlier this year, she joked that the kids would serve as wedding planners, and the nuptials would be Disney-themed or feature paintball.

“It means something to them,” [Brad] Pitt said of a wedding in 2012. “We will [get married] someday, we will. It’s a great idea. ‘Get mommy a ring.’ ‘OK, I will, I will.’ ”

“Most kids have a wish for their parents to be married, even or especially kids of celebrities,” says Lisa Brateman, a New York-based psychotherapist. “I think marriage offers a perception of emotional security.”
"Perception," says the psychotherapist. We adults know marriage doesn't make permanence, but the kids believe.

On the subject of the faith of children, Jesus said: "Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Therefore, whoever takes the lowly position of this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven."

20 comments:

Skeptical Voter said...

Always nice to see a newlywed couple walk down the aisle accompanied by five or six of their children. I've seen it on one other occasion. I guess Ms. Althouse is arguing that "it's for the kids".

jimbino said...

Kids are born innocent and atheist, with no interest in weddings. It only takes a few years of brainwashing and public education to make them like us.

YoungHegelian said...

Children will ask their Moms for a peanut butter & jelly sandwich for lunch every day for a whole year. They are profoundly conservative creatures who want to see the foundations of their daily lives made as secure as possible.

I can understand how, for Brangelina's kids, the marriage means much more to them than to their parents. At least the kids now know they aren't "bastards" any more.

Alan said...

Apparently Jolie's father was not even invited. Perhaps a real gift to those kids might have been for her to suck it up and reconcile with him and give them their grandfather. It's not like she didn't inherit her looks AND talent from him.

MayBee said...

Kids are so invested in the idea of their famiy being a strong foundation upon which they build their lives. It's the least we can do, to provide them that.

Ann Althouse said...

"Kids are born innocent and atheist…"

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar:
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home:
Heaven lies about us in our infancy!

Lucien said...

Religion always wants to encourage childlike thinking -- critical faculties are anathema. Eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge is original sin -- like stealing fire from the gods.

Anonymous said...

I wonder what role the children will have in the divorce.

Are they watching movies with divorce yet?

William said...

What a feel good story. Brad and Angelina were able to overcome the liabilities of wealth, fame, and beauty and find true love. If such damaged creatures can commit to each other, then perhaps there's hope for the rest of us.

William said...

All in all, I think Brad and Angelina have had a positive effect on the world. The good causes that they publicize really are good causes.

mccullough said...

Althouse,

Thanks for the Friday morning Wordsworth. Love that guy.

Ann Althouse said...

How do we know they are legally married? Maybe it was all play acting for the children?

SeanF said...

Althouse: We adults know marriage doesn't make permanence, but the kids believe.

Even the kids don't believe that marriage makes permanence, Ann - they believe that permanence makes marriage, and that a lack of marriage is indicative of a lack of permanence.

And you know what else? They're not wrong.

Anonymous said...

In my experience, little girls from 2-9 years are obsessed with mommy, daddy, babies. They want to see their birth vids over and over. They want to see the parents' marriage vids. They are busily engaged in creating their own myths. If the parents weren't married, that would break the reverie.

But that changes as they march ever onward towards puberty. That whole state of mind just drops off.

It really won't matter that much for the older kids, but it will for the younger.

Unknown said...

What SeanF said

Molly said...

It was not the fruit of the tree of knowledge that did the damage in the Garden, it was the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil--the implication being that before that act of disobedience Adam and Eve did not know evil.

Presumably they knew good in se and per se, since God kept evaluating things as good and very good.

jimbino said...

Molly,

Do you know that "knowledge of good and evil" is a Hebrew biblical euphemism for "sexual intercourse"?

The formulation occurs only two or three times in the OT, but can always interpreted to refer to sex, as in the passages in Genesis.

YoungHegelian said...

@jimbino,

Do you know that "knowledge of good and evil" is a Hebrew biblical euphemism for "sexual intercourse"?

Do you have any other gems of Biblical interpretation you'd like to pull out of your ass & entertain us with?

Find me a single rabbinic source that claims that this refers to sexual intercourse. I know that's not the standard Christian interpretation. For one thing, there's no discussion of any other such "tree" (in Hebrew "etz") outside of the Eden story in Genesis, and I can't think of anywhere else that the phrase "knowledge of good & evil" (ha-da'at tov va-ra) is used in the OT. The Hebrew verb that gets translated in the King James Bible as "know" in the sexual sense (as in "And Adam knew Eve his wife and she conceived" is "yeda", which is not used at all in the "tree" phrase.

Let me guess: your source on this is some weird-ass atheist who's reading these texts but who isn't a Bible scholar at all.

Freeman Hunt said...

Excellent use of that particular Bible quote.

mtrobertsattorney said...

I think the previous commentator was referring to the "fruit of the Tree of Jimbino."

This tree was first mentioned in ancient writings of a primitive cult of materialists. They were said to worship the atom.