by Dr. Jean Garton

A few years ago the United Nations conducted research to identify the most significant and enduring satisfactions in life. After studying many societies, from the most primitive to the most advanced, the evidence revealed that the greatest satisfaction came from traditional family life.

There is much talk today about the need to “support family life” or “strengthen family life.” But how effective will such efforts be if every social group is called “family” and if everyone means something different by that term? “Family,” a word long understood to mean a social unit consisting of parents and children, now also means a social unit which is deliberately without children.

Until recently children were an integral part of “family life,” and our society traditionally gave them an exalted position. In the past two decades, however, we have witnessed a growing prejudice against children. Many people no longer even pretend to like them.

Housing units increasingly advertise rentals for those with “NO CHILDREN,” while more subtle institutionalized prejudice exists in restaurants and even in some religious buildings and services.

Trouble, inconvenience, noise, and cost are words frequently used to describe children by those who call themselves “happily childless by choice.”

Why do people have children?

In survey interviews, men said that having children motivated them in their careers and fueled their ambition. Yet studies reveal that the average American father sees his preteen child only 12 and one-half minutes per day, while middle-class fathers spend an average of 38 seconds a day with their one year olds.

Some women have children in response to what a Washington Post article called the growing “baby panic” among feminists and yuppies. As they approach age 35, they have a child in response to their ticking biological clocks. Still others, interviewed when applying for surrogate motherhood, say they want to have a baby for someone else to “somehow make up for having an abortion.”

The pregnancy epidemic among teenagers has been scrutinized, revealing that some boys want babies to prove their virility and some girls want babies because it is the “in” thing. Still others want a child to fill the loneliness of their lives in a world they perceive as too impersonal.

Many view children as a mixture of expensive nuisance, fragile treasure, super-pet, a means of penance and—judging by statistics—as objects or things to be exploited, abused, or discarded.

How does the Bible view children?

Who gives us children?

Ruth 4:13

What was Isaac’s prayer for Jacob?

Perhaps, then, more important than why people have children is the question of why God gives children. Certainly children arrive with demands on our schedules, budgets, and patience. But just as certainly they arrive as a nested gift—a gift from God bearing gifts within the gift.

Children teach us about faith.

What did Jesus mean by His words in Mark 10:15?

Children help us fulfill a life goal. It has been said that we are always only one generation away from paganism. What are the implications for spreading the Gospel when a society chooses not to regenerate itself?

Children help us live as “little Christs.” We do for children what we would not do for money, power, or even ourselves. Consider the sacrifice involved in the following situations. What similarities do you see with contemporary life?

Children restrain our selfishness. Christ comes to us hidden in the needy. How are others’ needs, as mentioned by Christ in His discourse on the Second Coming, met in our daily caring for children?

Children give women a unique opportunity to serve Christ. How would the passage just read, especially the words about nourishment, speak to a pregnant woman who is nourishing the child within her?

At Christmas, we commemorate and celebrate the fact that God Himself came to earth as a child. Recall the words of a virgin named Mary when given the opportunity to serve God through childbearing. How did she react?

Luther said, “Why do you not daily learn the article of divine creation by looking at your children and offspring who stand before you? Here you may behold the providence of God, who created them out of nothing. But we pass by these gifts…”

Volumes upon volumes have been written about the unsurpassed giving of a parent for a child. Yet seldom do we hear of what a child gives a parent.

What has a child given you? Why not keep a journal for a week of the ways in which you have been taught by a child, had your spirit stretched by a child, discovered something about yourself because of a child. Take time today to appreciate the unique gifts God has tucked inside a child, His gift to you.
 

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