[21] Again, why not? If everyone is almost identical in Utopia, why not swap children around as one might swap Barbie Dolls? In the same way, a family with too many children passes off the surplus to another family who lacks them.[22] Friends of mine taken with the legendary example of More's household tell me that of course parents would accompany the children moved to another dwelling unit. Maybe so--but not one word of such accompaniment is to be found in the text. Indeed, the Utopians have many of the qualities of the early Christian fathers who saw family, spouses, and children as secondary or even tertiary to the most important obligation of the Christian male. That obligation was to serve God and the Catholic Church. St. Augustine (I say again, the most important single influence on Thomas More's mind) dismissed his concubine of fifteen years when he became betrothed to a rich young woman, and in all his voluminous writing, he never tells us what her name was. His son by that union, Adeodatus, had an intelligence that amazed his father, but when he died his Augustine seemed little grieved.[23]Jesus himself had said, "No man is worthy of me who cares more for father or mother than for me; no man is worthy of me who cares more for son or daughter."[24] And with regard to conversations between husbands and wives, we should also recall St. Augustine. Why did God create Eve to live with Adam? Augustine pondered the question. He mused that "If it was company and good conversation that Adam needed, it would have been much better arranged to have two men together, as friends, not a man and a woman."[25] One might also reflect that the Utopians were very much like the Stoics and the Epicureans of classical times who believed we are most free and therefore most human when we tame that emotional part of ourselves that forms attachments to other human beings. To a friend who had lost a friend to death Seneca wrote: I am sorry to hear of your...
