What Authority Do You Have in Telling Me I Should Have (More) Children?

The Birth Gap and Declining Fertility Rates

I’ve been consuming a lot of Christian and other content on the nearly worldwide birth gap, the less-than-replacement declining birth rate, and the slow and steady drop in fertility rates. What always strikes me is that, more often than not, it’s men writing, questioning, and wondering about this complex topic.

A Woman's Perspective

So here’s one woman’s perspective. I am a nearly eight-year married Christian mother of one—someone who wasn’t initially but is slowly and surely feeling convicted about having (more) children. I speak only from my own experience and not for Christians or women at large.

I only have one child, and every aspect of motherhood I’ve experienced so far (pregnancy, labour, delivery, newborn, infant, toddler) has been hard in a new way compared to the stage before it. Granted, some of the difficulty could be chalked up to moving away from family, among a myriad of other things—but still—I firmly believe the hardest stage of parenting is the one you are in. As @motherhoodredefined.co puts it: “Reparenting the child within you while also parenting the child in front of you is one of the most challenging and least acknowledged parts of parenthood.”

The Challenges Women Face

If I could struggle my way through early motherhood with postpartum depression that led to suicidal ideation as a stable, married, wealthy (by worldwide standards), white, Christian woman with access to free healthcare, benefits opening doors to various forms of mental and physical therapies, a faithful and supportive husband, and a community around me—how much more could any other woman struggle?

With child-rearing being a definitively female role, surely men should not be the face and voice of this subject. I’m not saying they shouldn’t have a say (far from the abortion rhetoric of “my body, my choice”); I’m saying they shouldn’t be the face and voice of this topic.

Feminism: Progress and Harm

As an ex-feminist, I can see that feminism has both made some incredible progress for women and done some serious damage to society over the last 1,000 years. For example, the inclusion of women in medical studies began in the 1980s and became more widespread in the 1990s. Postpartum care only became normalized in healthcare in the late 1800s and early 1900s. We should all know by now that historical bias, policies, and challenges to recruiting women in clinical trials limit our understanding of women's health at large.

Worldwide, would you say women are really loved and cared for?

Biblical Perspective on Childbearing

God gives Adam and Eve the Cultural Mandate: to "be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it." As a command only found in the Old Testament and not included in the Ten Commandments, I’d argue that He is the only One with the authority to prescribe that to us today. Surely, if it is as important as the church makes it out to be, Jesus would have preached that message. Instead, Jesus preached the Great Commission: to “make disciples of all nations” while He summarized the law with two commandments: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength” and “Love your neighbor as yourself.”

As the world falls largely away from Christianity, and girls grow up carrying the weight of millennia of physical and emotional abuse, sexism, lack of care, and generally being “less-than” on their shoulders, they are less and less likely to sacrifice their bodies, minds, and spirits for the greater good of continuing humanity through childbirth—for the same humanity that has continually done them wrong.

A Personal and Loaded Question

There is a myriad of complex, possible responses to the very personal question, “So, are you going to have (more) kids?” From a stranger, acquaintance, or otherwise, it’s so emotionally loaded and varied in nature. An honest response could range from “Well, we’re having loads of unprotected sex!” all the way to “We’ve experienced many miscarriages due to health complications; it’s not the right time.” If you are not close enough to a person to receive an honest response with care, perhaps the question shouldn’t have been asked at all.

Something so huge, so nuanced, so personal, and life-changing as the intimacy of a husband and wife translating into childbearing and rearing—and being parents for the remainder of one’s life—should surely only be between the couple and God. Stop asking women if they are going to have (more) children and start asking women how they are really doing.

Showing Love and Care for Women and Children

Now, is the lack of children being born an opportunity for Christians who feel convicted to bear (more) children and raise them up to be God-fearing to “fill the earth”? Absolutely. Scripture is very clear about how God feels about children.

But it doesn’t matter how many times you share Bible verses or the declining birth rate stats. Until women and children are shown to be loved, cared for, nurtured, and treasured in society:

• Women will continue to delay babies.

• Women will continue to abort babies.

• Women will continue to forgo babies.

Why? Because women are naturally nurturing, and for some, those options feel safer, more right, and more caring right now than bringing more babies—especially girls—into this world.

The Way Forward

Want the human race to continue? Here’s my take: make the world a safe and inviting place for families. Love and take care of the women and children. Prove, affirm, invest in, and cherish the innate value of both as equals with men, and the birth problem will take care of itself. Go and love and care for them both like our existence depends on it—because it does.