How to Talk about Having Children

Maybe God intended babies to mess with our well-planned lives.

Her.meneutics June 22, 2011

For all the ways reality television star and Hollywood socialite Kim Kardashian and I differ from each other, we do share one striking commonality: We both turned 30 this year. And for both of us, our entry into this new decade sounded an alarm on our biological clocks. It is ticking ever so loudly, which means we are both thinking more and more about babies.

Kardashian recently shared her thoughts on the future with gossip magazine US Weekly, saying that she would like to try for kids in the next year. Kardashian explained, “Well, I won’t have [a baby] by the end of the year, but maybe we’ll start trying by the end of the year. After the wedding [to NBA player Kris Humphries].”

Although US Weekly‘s interview with Kardashian was a relatively benign, feel-good piece, it incited frustration in blogger (and onetime Christianity Today columnist) Mollie Ziegler Hemingway. Responding to the interview at Mommyish, Hemingway wrote,

“I guess what annoys me is the general idea that we can effectively plan when to have our children. I mean, it is true that you can take actions to prevent conception … But just because you want to have children doesn’t mean they will come …

” … Kardashian is saying nothing that different from what I hear many men and women say. But should we treat babies as a consumer good? I mean, the last time I said I was hoping for something and hoping I’d get it by the end of the year, it was an iPad. Babies are no iPads. They are not consumer goods to be acquired. They are blessings granted to couples. Our language should reflect that.”

As a woman who is currently in major talks with her husband about having children, I have felt the tension that Hemingway named. Amid our discussions about the “best” time to have children, I sometimes feel crass speaking of our future children as scheduling conflicts. Like Hemingway noted, these are children we’re talking about, not iPads.

Both inside and outside the church, the dominant language about having children is consumerist in tone. The conversation more often occurs in the context of “when is best for us” than it does God’s intended design for marriage. My husband and I chose Natural Family Planning as a way to avoid the secular approach to childbearing, but we still notice the cultural mindset creeping in at unexpected times. We are both pursuing our doctorates, so we easily slip into the language of “fitting babies” into our programs.

One might of course argue that these are mere semantics. Whether we use language of “fitting” babies into our schedules or eagerly welcoming them, the outcome is often the same. Does our word choice really matter?

From a Christian perspective, the answer is a resounding yes! We first learn about the power of words in Genesis 1, where God literally speaks the world into existence. Later in John 1, Jesus himself is referred to as the “Word” through whom all things were made. John Calvin summarized God’s power-infused words saying, “[God] fulfills whatever he declares; for he so speaks, that his command becomes a reality.”

As beings created in the image of God, our words have a similarly creative power. Our words may not speak material into existence, but our speech shapes the way we see and process the world. It creates new ways of understanding, which impacts the ways we live. It either builds up and tears down, which is why Proverbs 18:21 tells us “the tongue has the power of life and death.”

With all of that in mind, the language we use about children is important. Our words shape the way we understand life itself, an urgent truth in a culture that increasingly questions the personhood and dignity of the unborn.

How, then, can we honor the imago dei in our discussion about children? How can we talk about having children in a distinctly Christian way?

Christian teaching on wisdom and stewardship provide us with a great place to start, but we cannot stop there if we want to break with consumerist language. An additional Christian principle that wrenches the focus off of us and places it on our children is hospitality. Rather than “fitting” these divine image bearers into our lives, we actively work to welcome them, both in our own families and in the world at large.

And finally, the Bible almost exclusively refers to children as a blessing. For all the frustration and exhaustion that children can bring, they are a gift from God made in his image. Rather than speak of children as a burden or an obstacle, our language should reflect the image they bear and the immeasurable worth they possess.

For all the debates about when life begins, I believe it begins in the mind of God. God exists outside of time, so our future children are as real to him as if they were flesh and blood. Knowing this, my husband and I will continue to navigate this conversation clumsily and imperfectly, but I pray that our words will reflect our children’s eternal value to their loving Creator.

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