Specialized Inquiries: Children (parenting)

[Jim Eshelman]

GENERAL INTRODUCTION: Sidereal astrologers have rarely written at length about how to judge specific areas of life about which people may have recurring questions. Tropical astrologers dwell on this extensively, surely fortified by the idea (that may or may not be true) that different areas of life are "governed" by different houses.

Speaking for myself, I've not written about such topics extensively because my primary interest is exposing character and its unfolding. I disagree with the house-driven premise that we are drastically different in how we handle different parts of our lives. Instead, I find that, "How you are in one part of your life, so are you in all the parts of your life" - your inherent self ultimately shines through one way or the other. Therefore, my basic answer to any question of "How does this person act in the X part of his or her life?" or "Over the course of life, what is likely to happen to this person?" will always be: "Understand who this person is: That will tell you what you want to know."

Nonetheless, we do have ways of placing a magnifying glass over one or another area of life; we just haven't sharpened these tools. I propose to start a series of threads on different life areas. For each, I will post this introduction; then reserve the first reply space for me to post my primary answer (as I get around to it). The rest of the thread is wide open to discussion and contribution. (Over time, I will edit my premise-post with the idea of turning it into an instruction in the topic, fed by the discussion. You don't have to wait for my premise-post to post on the topic.)

Some will be tempted, based on the nature of these topics, to jump into the houses as a quick answer. As the thread is open to discussion, that's fine; but, as usual, my own opinion is that we should stick with techniques that we have proof work, which at this stage in astrology's unfolding would minimize or exclude the use of houses.

Everyone feel free to jump in!

[Jim Eshelman]

Although Sun and Venus are secondary factors in assessing the experience of one’s own parents, they and Moon are the primary indicators of our experience of being parents ourselves.

Regarding children and parenting, we can address three main topics from the natal horoscope:

• Strength of desire to have children.
• How we approach the role of parent.
• Likely sex of children

As one’s birth chart describes oneself only, our horoscopes do not describe our children. Rather, they describe our experience of creating and parenting them. How we approach the role of parent resembles the broader question of how we care about and relate to other people, although with unique twists.

How many children someone likely will have and their strength of desire to have and raise children varies against cultural trends of one’s time and place. Obviously, people usually want children: Survival of the species always has depended on it. Yet, how many a typical couple wants varies in different generations and places according to social expectations and the prevailing psychological tone. When the human species was busy initially populating the planet, our instinct to procreate was strong. Today, on an overpopulated planet, this has reduced in many places.

This commonsense consideration (and a little astrological research) reveals the silliness of many traditional astrological rules concerning the number of children. For example, only a few minutes of checking sample charts undercuts an oft-repeated aphorism that a woman will have as many children as she has planets in her 5th House. It simply is not so!

We can learn much, though, from the state of Sun, Venus, and Moon. Other planets, adding characteristic behaviors and themes, also touch on the subject of children. How strongly one desires children and how one parents them is shown by the entire horoscope, i.e., the whole of someone’s character.

Sun
Sun signifies the vital spark in humankind that leaps the generations.

A powerful Sun signals a need for immortality or posterity, a sense of personal continuity. While almost nobody believes in actual physical immortality, most solar behaviors arise from the psychological equivalent, usually through striving to have impact or make a contribution that will survive, something one can “leave behind.”

One of the strongest forms this can take, well within reach of nearly everybody, is bearing and raising a child.

I wrote “child” in the singular because, in raw numbers, solar individuals have few children. Despite the powerful need for posterity, fewer people with angular Suns have children and, quite often, they have only one. Whereas Moon and Venus are biologically prolific planets, angular Sun or Leo luminaries are less fruitful in raw numbers. Often a single child is enough to fulfill the need for continuity and successorship. Where there is at least one heir, there may be no need felt for a spare.

Even a single heir receives the best that Sun can bring and grows to have a powerful sense of whatever legacy might be his or hers to nurture and pass on. Solar individuals are warm, friendly, and loyal, wanting to share their light, plant seeds, and have long-term impact, all of which they can do as a parent.

Among public figures, this chain of continuity often includes elements of successorship or inheritance, familial and otherwise, that help show the forms solar impulses can take. From Appendix B, foreground Suns examples include numerous monarchs, the most U.S. presidents, and several First Ladies and royal consorts; truly dynastic figures with names Medici, Krupp, Hearst, and Bush; and scores of people who were the next in line of a heritage, such as successive holders of public office, heavyweight champs, or late-night hosts. Famous children defined almost as much by their parentage as by their own lives include Peter Fonda, Carrie Fisher, Jeff Bridges, Lisa Marie Presley, Miley Cyrus, John Kennedy Jr., Rep. Liz Cheney, and Patty Hearst, while parents of entertainment lineages include the likes of Martin Sheen and Naomi Judd. Others in the list lived lives substantially shaped by their having been direct successors to legacies.

During the 1950s, motivation researchers developing advertising approaches for life insurance companies found that breadwinning husbands and fathers have an unconscious hope for effective immortality, to continue controlling and contributing to their families’ standard of living after their own death. One famous insurance ad showed a happy family gathered around a feast-laden dinner table with a glowing transparent (ghost-like) image of the beaming father presiding from the head of the table as provider and hero, governing his family and its well-being even after his own death.

Sun signifies the need for posterity if not immortality and the vital spark that leaps the generations.

Sun’s Constellation: Style of Parenting
As the will to procreate is solar, Sun’s constellation and aspects describe what we bring to parenting, regardless of Sun’s strength by angularity.

Perhaps surprisingly, Moon’s sign has little to say about this. If you peruse the Sun and Moon constellation interpretations in Appendix A, you will find descriptions of parenting behavior in nearly all Sun sign interpretation and none of their lunar counterparts.

We do not need to repeat these interpretations here. I encourage you to find them on your own by studying the Sun sign notes. I will, however, mention a few salient points that speak to the larger picture.

Four constellations, Taurus through Leo, have an unusual orientation to children and love of the young. Each has a distinctive twist. Taurus, the constellation most likely to have the most children, is especially known for loving the young and being at ease with them. I have met many authors of children’s books, schoolteachers of the early grades, and others committed to the care, education, and encouragement of young children who have Sun in Taurus.

Geminis, in contrast, are themselves most like children especially in their great love of play and need for playmates and other companions. Often it seems more important for a Gemini to continue being a child than to have one.

Leo and Aries have the strongest solar influence in their basic temperament and usually are the most expressive of solar traits discussed above. Both tend to have few children, though it usually is quite important to them to have at least one. The idea of grooming and nurturing a royal heir usually gives the most accurate idea about how they parent. Sagittarius, the third imperial constellation, is deeply committed to family as community and especially matters of heritage, tradition, and legacy.

The other constellations are more complicated and less suited to quick thumbnails. Even the signs just summarized have more depth and detail than listed here. See the full interpretations for a better-rounded idea of the patterns.

Venus
Giving and receiving love is the heart of Venus’ function within us. Both biologically and psychologically, Venus is every bit as maternal as Moon, corresponding to pregnancy, gestation, birthing, and nurturing. Nor is the association entirely maternal: Men with Venus strong have the same desires and loving behaviors as women other than the obvious exception of the purely biological aspects of maternity. Venus-dominant men and women become deeply loving, affectionate, giving, connecting parents fiercely protecting those they love.

Unlike Sun, Venus is the most prolific, fruitful planet. While both Sun and Venus are warm, attentive, and giving, Sun’s child-bearing motives center on the future and posterity while those of Venus are more in the moment, to have someone to love and pamper. Garth Allen wrote wonderfully on this side of Venus in his 1956 “Kid Gloves” installment on the love planet, including insights from those 1950s advertising researchers that, this time, targeted those most maternal of symbols: milk and eggs.

As proved by the statistics of parturition, child-bearing is primarily a Venus matter… “babying” in the everyday sense of doting is equally of and through Venusian influence. Oohing tenderly over an infant is hardly different from awing fondly over a puppy… It is no accident that the commonest word in America for children is “kids,” and that affectionate nicknames for love partners draw habitually upon the same motif (kitten, lamb, chick, duckie, and just plain “baby”) …

It took the probings of advertising specialists… to unearth a remarkable parallel: A cake is the chief birthday symbol, and cake-baking the most pleasurable chore in the average woman’s homemaking existence, because they subconsciously represent what is called “pregnancy activity.” Women shoppers, it was found, instinctively spurned the cake mixes on the market which required only the adding of water, choosing the mixes to which they have to add eggs and milk and otherwise fuss over… [A]n extensive folklore had always associated female functions with the production of goodies in jokes, fairy tales and endless superstitions… The actual process of cake-making, from the original beating of the mixture of eggs (procreation symbols themselves), milk (maternal symbol), shortening and other ingredients, to the steady rise of the loaf in the oven (ovum chamber) until ready for removal, is a psychic enactment of the whole coitus-to-cradle saga. The decorating of the cake (its layette, figuratively) and then its proud presentation to the family are high points of the drama. “Sweet!” is no doubt the commonest adjective in people’s baby-admiring vocabularies, while the threat to eat it up is probably the most endearing thing a new mother can say to her darling creation.

Venus full cosmic state describes how we love, including how we baby our babies. Particularly her angularity strength and dynamic aspects (but also her natal constellation and all other considerations) are the best indicators of the desire for little ones to love (whether children or pets) and how we do it.

Moon
Broadly instinctual and the feminine complement of Sun’s archetypal masculinity, Moon obviously is maternal. Moon is not as connected to "mothering” as Venus in the sense of loving, doting, and caretaking, but is probably the central astrological and psychological factor in the wider idea of nest building.

An exact line between Venus and Moon functions is not always obvious. Generally, though, Venus describes person-to-person sharing of affection. Moon signifies family and other immediate community intended when we speak of one’s herd.

Accordingly, we see more preparing and populating the nest with strong lunar influences, especially luminaries in Cancer and Taurus. In contrast, Capricorn luminaries and Moon in her fall (Scorpio) often seem less likely to procreate or to have greater difficulties.

Other Planet Angularity
Besides Sun, Venus, and Moon, other planets, when angular, have the same meanings and styles we expect in other life areas. For the present purpose, think through how these familiar meanings apply to questions of children and parenting.

For example, Mars has only indirect effect on being a parent through aggressive, often risky sexuality that leads to more pregnancies; or fathers may display their children as if they are medal’s memorializing and confirming their masculinity, something important to the male Mars temperament.

Similar touches are common to each of the other planets. These need not be explained separately: Their character emerges in the general delineation of the horoscope.

[Jim Eshelman]

Astrologers who rely heavily on houses invariably look to the 5th House for clues about someone’s children. This is an ancient attribution: Early Greek astrologers linked 5H to the goddess Hera, patron of women especially when pregnant and during childbirth.

Yet, when we examine horoscopes of people for whom their children or the act of having or parenting children is an unusually important feature of their lives, we rarely see unusual 5th House involvement. Nor, when someone has planets in 5H at birth, do these reliably describe that person’s tendency to have children, relationships with their children, or, of course, the children themselves. One can always find an exception or two where old rules seem to work (e.g., see the charts of Jawaharlal Nehru and Carol Burnett) but these are so rare that they appear random.

My view of the 5th House’s usually dismal performance in describing children and parenting is not a siding against houses per se. Barely anyone in the appended chart catalogue with something outstanding about children has an equally outstanding something about their 5th House. On the other hand, creativity and showmanship usually coincide with a strong 5th House emphasis.

Look for yourself! People with a luminary in the 5th commonly display grand showmanship, a love of performance, entertainment, or other dramatic presentation often with color and flair; or they can hold others’ focus and exercise authoritative command. What you will not usually find described is matters concerning their children.

[Jim Eshelman]

Finally, we have one of the easiest details to predict: the likely sex of one’s children.

One important published study of this examined only the father’s Moon-sign. This can never be sufficient, since two parents participate in bringing about the theoretically random outcome. However, applying and extending this study in practice has provided a way to predict correctly about three times out of four.

In “Baby’s Sex” (1971), Garth Allen published the results of a statistical examination of the birth dates of 1,200 American fathers of two or more children of the same sex: 546 men who had fathered two or more daughters and no sons assessed against 654 men with two or more sons and no daughters. (The mothers’ birth information was not available.)

The results: Moon in Hub constellations had a statistically significant preference (beyond the 100-to-1 level) for the men to have daughters, while men with Moon in Rim constellations tended to have sons so often that it would only happen by chance one time in about 4,000.

There was a slight tendency for Spoke Moons to have daughters, much less statistically compelling than the other two. Mostly, the Spoke Moons were noncommittal.

Why check Moon signs? The motive for the study was a passage in the 6th century Hindu astrology classic Brihat Jataka. The author, Varahamihira, said that a man with Moon in Taurus “will have daughters” and Moon in Leo, “will give very few sons,” aphorisms entirely confirmed by the study. (A further statement about Moon in Virgo was not confirmed.)

Based on this study, the rule is simple: Hub Moons tend to daughters. Rim Moons tend to have sons. Spoke Moons have no strong preference either way.

Of course, this one detail only shows a tendency. Despite the statistically impressive results, there were hundreds of examples in the study that did not fit this simple binary rule. After reading this study in 1971, I strongly suspected that the mother’s chart had to be included in the equation. There was no reason to assume in advance that women’s Moon signs would follow the same pattern (it could have been the reverse or entirely different), yet I noticed that women’s charts indeed followed the same rules.

Considering both the father’s and mother’s Moons led to a simple equation that – perhaps coincidentally – had about the same chance of predicting a child’s sex as the basic genetic mix-and-match math of, say, determining eye color. Here are the rules, where “most” means approximately two-thirds to three-fourths of the time:

• If both parents have Hub Moons, or one has a Hub Moon and the other a Spoke, their children will be mostly girls.
• If both parents have Rim Moons, or one has a Rim Moon and the other a Spoke, their children will be mostly boys.
• If both parents have Spoke Moons, or one is Hub and the other Rim, the children will be approximately 50% boys, 50% girls.

Individual examples are useless for proving the point but do show how this operates: My parents, with Moons in Gemini and Capricorn, had four sons and one daughter. My wife’s parents, with Leo and Aquarius Moons, had two daughters. My first wife’s parents, with Aquarius and Scorpio Moons, had two daughters and a son. Barack and Michelle Obama have Taurus and Aquarius Moons and two daughters. John and Jacqueline Kennedy, with mixed quadruplicity Moons (Leo and Aries), had one son and one daughter. Joe and Neilia Biden both had Rim Moons and produced two sons and a daughter; but Joe and Jill Biden, a Rim and a Hub, produced a daughter.

[Jim Eshelman]

I've just replaced the original post on this thread with new posts that are subsets of my CSA chapter on this topic. I suggest this is the new baseline from which we can work and investigate.