If you have an income, are healthy, and your wife wants a baby and is healthy, there probably isn’t a valid excuse to delay children

A couple who think they ‘aren’t ready’ to have kids probably shouldn’t get married. After all, ‘accidents’ happen.

I’ve personally known one couple in a similar situation, where the wife wanted kids and he didn’t. He finally agreed to children, but told her they were her responsibility since he didn’t want them. He’s a preacher, by the way. :/ So I don’t doubt that this kind of husband and wife dynamic exists.

Personally, if I was in the situation of desiring children with a man who didn’t, I’d just deal with it. Yeah, I might be upset, but if I committed to marriage with such a man, I believe it’s my responsibility to deal with it. I would think it a nightmare to bring kids into this world with a father who was reluctant to have them. I’m not talking the natural ‘fears’ of the huge responsibility of parenthood, but someone who, as the article describes, simply doesn’t want kids for selfish (freedom, money, immaturity) reasons. This marital divide definitely requires counseling, but even so, I don’t know that I’d ever trust the man enough to bring kids into the world with him. The implications of bearing children with a reluctant and uninvolved father are staggering, IMO.

[TylerR]

Mt 19:9. Obviously, reconciliation is the goal and adultery is not a trump card (e.g. “Yes, she cheated and now I’m outta here!”).

doesn’t it raise that?

Just my personal experience, but I think that the desire for a child is probably the strongest desire many women will ever experience, even more than the desire to marry. This is why infertility is so excruciating.

There are exceptions to this, and I know one personally :D

To send some kindness toward the author (and I have no idea who this is), I think she’s addressing a very particular type of situation—a man doesn’t want kids for apparently selfish reasons. She’s not addressing every reason for childlessness known to mankind.

And it’s true that statistically, conceiving after 35 (or 40? I forget which) is much, much harder.

I honestly don’t agree that motherhood is a calling. That kind of irks me. I just think it’s the normal state, esp for the married. We don’t have to answer the feminists by somehow ultra-glorifying it.

[rogercarlson]

I always cover the Children question in premarital counseling. She should have known before they were married. Very sad that he did not tell her.

i was recently perusing a book on Puritans, and infertility/childlessness was a reason they allowed for divorce. It was interesting to read what they allowed divorce for!

Neither here nor there just a factoid from respected Christians in the past.

I have never seen that before Anne. Could you pass along the reference so I can do some more reading myself?

Well, I still think that choosing not to give your spouse any children, when the spouse wants them, is a great evil. It is denying your spouse one of the greatest blessings there is in life.

I remember the story in the Bible of the woman who lost her husband and was childless. Her brother in law was then required to have sexual relations with her to give her a child. But when the brother in law slept with her, he wasted his semen on the ground, because he did not want to share his inheritance with this woman’s child. What did God do? He struck that man dead.

The Puritan Family by Edmund S. Morgan

http://www.amazon.com/The-Puritan-Family-Relations-Seventeenth-Century/…

I am honestly amazed anyone looks at the puritans as these great models of christianity. Thanks for posting Anne. This is more reason to reject their nonsense.

Matthew 19:9 And I say to you, whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another, commits adultery; and whoever marries her who is divorced commits adultery.

Can you please elaborate a little more. As I read the above verse, the “exception clause” is that the other spouse has committed sexual immorality (ie adultery). How are you reading it?

[Mark_Smith]

Matthew 19:9 And I say to you, whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another, commits adultery; and whoever marries her who is divorced commits adultery.

Can you please elaborate a little more. As I read the above verse, the “exception clause” is that the other spouse has committed sexual immorality (ie adultery). How are you reading it?

Your bolding makes my point - two different words are used and adultery is not used in the exception clause. The word translated sexual immorality is porneia; the word translated adultery is moichao. The second specifically means intercourse with another’s spouse - adultery. The first is a much different term loosely referring to inappropriate sexual conduct. I think there is a reason why an “exception clause” is only included in Matthew and why Jesus gives this exception clause in almost the same breath that He affirms marriage to be a life-long, indissoluble relationship.

Give the book a read; it’s not a huge volume. I think you would find it interesting even if you don’t come to agreement.

Just give us the upshot. Infidelity during Jewish betrothal period or what??

[DavidO]

Just give us the upshot. Infidelity during Jewish betrothal period or what??

Chip are talking the Ryrie/Laney position? That is something I need to read up on.

Laney offers more than one possible conclusion, and memory indicates he leans toward the unfaithful betrothal explanation. I am more inclined to his second suggestion of the illegitimate marriage. I have done little reading of what Ryrie wrote specifically on divorce and remarriage, though I did peruse this article recently, and my brief scan suggests he also supports the illegitimate marriage understanding (see page 189 in particular).