During a recent eight-day family vacation to California, our clan came face-to-face with the all-too-common modern American reality that a family with more than two children constitutes a “sign of contradiction.”

Apparently, a great many people find that witness difficult to comprehend despite the fact that many of those making offensive remarks originally came from such families themselves.

Our vacation grew from a rare sale offered by the travel agency that allowed us to pay a lower ticket price for each additional child. My wife remarked that it would be the first and only time we would actually be rewarded by a company for our family's size. On the airplane, our family of seven took up the entire back row.

While we expected some negative comments about our family size, what surprised us the most was the sheer quantity of people who felt compelled to offer their commentary — whether negative or positive — about our family's size.

As lifelong Minnesotans, we're private and not prone to commenting to total strangers about anything. In California, however, the negative comments outpaced the positive.

For every, “What a beautiful family you have,” there were at least three, “Are they all yours?” or “You have your hands full” or worse. It didn't seem to matter whether we were at the airport, a restaurant, on the beach or at an amusement park. We were accosted everywhere we went.

At one restaurant the hostess said they didn't have a table large enough to seat us. Could our children, all aged 7 and under, sit at a different table, she wondered, or might we be able to sit in the bar?

At another restaurant our family was viewed not as a family unit but as a large group, thereby forcing us to pay an exorbitant 18% gratuity because we had more than six people. Forget the fact that our youngest, a baby, didn't eat the restaurant's food.

So frequent were the comments and the restaurant fiascos that we resorted to simply ordering dinner into our hotel room each night. But the hotel wasn't entirely a safe haven, either.

The occupancy rules at most hotels do not allow families larger than four to stay in the same room, thus forcing such families to either lie about their family size or to rent two rooms. Thankfully, we were able to find a family suite at a hotel that wasn't concerned about our family's size.

However, during the complimentary continental breakfast offered by the hotel each morning we found ourselves surrounded by other vacationing families — all with two children. While we never once commented to any of them on their family size, that didn't stop them from commenting to us about ours.

Perhaps the harshest comment came on the final day of our trip. It came from a 60-something-year-old male security guard at the airport. When he saw us, loaded down with all of our luggage, he shook his head.

“Whoa, five kids! That's a large family. I stopped at one,” he offered proudly.

We were so used to hearing these comments by this time that we simply smiled politely.

With his very next breath he complained, “I keep asking my daughter when she's going to give us grandchildren. I would like several grandchildren so that I can spoil them and send them on their way.”

Despite the strong temptation to lash out at him verbally, I held my tongue. Apparently the irony of the comment was lost on him. I didn't have the heart to point out the incongruity of his statement or the fact that if his daughter is anything like most parents in this day and age, he will have no more than two grandchildren.

So often we found ourselves wanting to offer back a smart retort or a charitable witness but knew that we needed to be careful not to judge others. Many might be unable to have children, yet for others the decision is a conscience choice.

As we entered an amusement park one father told us, “We found out how it worked after having twins, and we've had that taken care of,” implying either the use of contraception or sterilization. We could only remark that we, too, had twins, and proudly showed him the two children whom we were blessed with after the birth of our twins.

In March 1976, during the conclusion of the annual papal Lenten retreat, then Cardinal Karol Wojtyla said, “The times in which we are living provide particularly strong confirmation of the truth of what Simeon said: Jesus is both the light that shines for mankind and at the same time a sign of contradiction … Jesus Christ is once again revealing himself to men as the light of the world. Has he not also become at one and the same time that sign which, more that ever, men are resolved to oppose?”

The Pope's words ring just as true today.

It's sad to think that within just one generation the family has become so opposed and so maligned. Yet should we expect anything less in a culture that seems to despise life?

Given all of our vacation encounters, it's fitting that one of our most enjoyable afternoons was spent in fellowship with a Catholic family with four children. Our children played happily while the adults talked, and no one was required to justify their family size to anyone

Tim Drake lives in St. Cloud, Minnesota, with his wife and five children.