Why does the Orthodox Church baptize babies?

Christians always baptized their children. If you understand the Old Testament and the Old Testament covenantal theology, and the fact that children were circumcised to show that they were part of the family, the reality is that Christians don't give birth to pagans or any other type of religious sect. Christians only give birth to Christian children. And their destiny is to carry on the faith that has been handed on to them by their parents. And so baptism is a natural extension of the fact that they are already in the church and part of a Christian family, and this is well-pleasing in the sight of God. I'll give you a funny story as an analogy. I knew this Protestant professor who went to, I believe it was Africa, and they went to share the gospel, and they met this village and they shared the gospel, and the head of the village said, I believe what you are saying is true, and I believe in the gospel. We will all be baptized. And these Protestant missionaries were taken aback, and they said, well, we understand that you believe, but does everybody else here believe? And he was like, I don't think you understand. I believe, therefore everyone will be baptized. This is simply the reflection of coming from a hierarchical society. In a hierarchical society, the father is the head of the family, and in this case the chieftain or head of the village was seen as the representative of the village. This is totally normal and historical. The idea that a family is a sort of quasi democracy is very much the byproduct of Western thought and Western democracy, where people think that everyone has a vote and everyone needs to make a decision. I'm not saying that people don't need to make a decision, because even the saints say, even those children who are baptized have to affirm and embrace the Christian faith as they get older. But the reality is, as children they are part of the family, and their parents have given birth to them, and their destiny is to become Christians. And so of course they are part of the family of God. They are God's children, and it is natural and normal that they embrace their parents' faith. And in fact, if the family is healthy and normal, that is what you would expect. You would expect the children to become Christians. What else would they become? So infant baptism is something that was in the Book of Acts, although people don't understand that, because they try to read family different than how they read it at that time. When the jailer says, me and my whole family will be baptized, that was the way that it was. If the head of the family believed and wanted to become a Christian, everyone in the family was becoming a Christian.