Children are not a choice

On the heels of a declining birth rate for the sixth straight year in a row, the Washington Post reports that more adults in the United States now say they are unlikely to have children. Not everyone agrees on why this is so or which factors have caused this phenomenon. Still, one thing is certain: the study presupposes the idea that having a child is a choice rather than a natural result of engaging in sexual activity. The idea that one can choose whether or not to have children is a relatively new one that many, even Christians, take for granted.

But consider, for example, the 15 percent of couples who try to achieve pregnancy, who cannot for some reason or another. Or the one in ten women taking hormonal birth control (to prevent so-called “unplanned pregnancies”) who wind up with precisely that: a pregnancy they have not planned. It was for this reason that, during oral arguments in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health at the Supreme Court on Dec. 1, the U.S. solicitor general who argued in favor of a “right to abortion” awkwardly made the point that contraceptives actually generate demand for abortion.

The idea that individuals and families should choose whether or not to have children exploded into popularity in the 1960s, with the advent of birth control and alongside the idea of “family planning.” A simple Google search shows that these concepts simply did not have traction in our vocabulary before 1960, as children naturally followed from marriage and sex. The effects have been profound: from the ongoing sexual revolution to a subtler, conceptual revolution that procreation is a matter of choice due to human “mastery” over the forces of our nature.

This language of “choice” objectifies children as if children are things we decide to possess, like a car or a house or a new watch. And more nefariously, it plays into the idea that pregnancies are things we can choose to end because we simply do not feel like having them; that abortion is a right we’re entitled to because we do not wish to possess children; and that we should be able to continue to choose to have reckless sexual encounters without their natural result.

The Christian does not believe that, in marriage, children are a choice. The Christian believes, with the Psalmist, that children are a gift, a heritage, and a reward (Psalm 127:3). And no matter what humans do to curb or control the reproductive process, sex is meant to lead to pregnancy, whether intended or not.

Our culture idolizes autonomy and self-sufficiency. It tells women they can’t succeed professionally without killing their children in-utero, and it scorns the idea of marriage and family. It tells young people they should not have children before establishing their careers, and it treats families with multiple children as the height of irresponsibility. In such a culture, there is no stronger witness to nor fulfillment of the first biblical mandate than to marry and care for children. The command to multiply and fill the earth is the first instruction given by God to humanity.

For centuries, Christians, including Christians who cannot have children through biological means, have been caring for orphans, welcoming infants exposed on cliffsides into their homes, and today supporting the women who find themselves pregnant without the family or social support they desperately need. Christians are more than twice as likely to adopt than the general population and more than three times as likely to have seriously considered foster care. Not to mention the pregnancy resource centers (PRCs), ultrasound drives, food and diaper banks, and countless other initiatives that Christians spearhead to care for the least of these.

So as the birth rate continues to decline, with all the social and economic impact such a decline will wreak on our society, let Christians be the ones to say, “Children are not a choice.” Indeed, it is fitting that the very mother of our Savior, Mary, the God-bearer, was one such woman who welcomed a pregnancy she had not planned for herself, despite being young and unmarried, with all the social and emotional trauma she must have known she would bear. Christmas is about the gift of a child—not the gift of choice.