More Women Having Fewer Children

The US Census data as of 2006 shows that in the last 30 years mothers are having one-third fewer children (1.9 versus 2.9 in 1976). Also, twice as many women forego ever having children as compared with 1976.  If this trend continues, not enough babies will be born to replace the population. 2.1 children per woman are demographically needed for this.

What's behind this trend?

The USA Today article speculates that the reason for the decrease has to do with the time women are choosing to bear children.  Women are opting for marriage and motherhood later in life. Noteworthy, the educational level of women who reported the most births in 2006 was that of graduate or professional degree. And women in the work force accounted for the majority, 57 percent of recent births. To put it bluntly, significant numbers of women are choosing careers over children.

Would this decline occur if motherhood, the value of children and the global fame of Jesus Christ were as precious to the American culture as they are to God?

God places motherhood far higher in esteem than the value of a two-income lifestyle. "An excellent wife who can find? She is far more precious than jewels....Her children rise up and call her blessed; her husband also, and he praises her" (Proverbs 31:10,28). Few career women will find that their bosses, or co-workers, or market competitors will ‘rise up and call her blessed.' And even if they do, those blessings will ring hollow, compared to the sounds of a husband and children who bless her having known her well.

Would that all wives were so prized like jewels at home, that they never let money pressures lure them into the workforce.

Having children then would hardly seem the burden that it appears to be. God's command to "Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it..." would be seen, not as a burden, but as the blessing He intended it to be. The joys of motherhood, the rich rewards of parenting and the pleasure of passing on our faith in Jesus Christ to the next generation all would take on the treasured status God intends for them to possess.  Even in the midst of the daily difficulties of dishwashers and diapers.

One could applaud the impulse to not have biological children if it were driven by a higher ideal to give oneself to the care of orphans around the world. Steven Curtis Chapman, a man who knows much about God's heart for children, has recently quoted a stunning statistic: if just 7 percent of the 2 billion Christians in the world adopted an orphan, the world's orphanages would be closed!

The great German pastor and theologian, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, wisely observed, "The test of the morality of a society is what is does for its children."  If fewer and fewer American families choose not to even have them, for whatever reason, the test is complete and the results are not good.

Bless a child today. Choose to start a family if you are married, even by adopting. The rewards are far richer than Wall Street can ever imagine, much less offer.