June and her husband had pined for children. Children eventually came, a couple years later than they hoped. June dove into caring for her first newborn. When their second child came soon after, June reveled in how their two children absorbed her every bit of time, attention, and energy. June was in heaven, and her husband saw and appreciated it. Yet with a third pregnancy, June and her husband realized that they might have a subtle adjustment to make when their next child joined them. With their two children already June’s whole focus, something told them that they couldn’t just keep adding more children without somehow rescuing and restoring the family structure. Otherwise, maternal chaos would rule. And so June and her husband committed to keeping their marriage central in the home, even as they prepared to welcome their third beloved child.
Children
Children are a family’s fruit and natural focus. Children can all at once represent the devotion, intimacy, hope, and purpose of a marriage and family. Children can be a family’s biological and social justification, the ground on which the family claims its primacy. Children not only give the family the basis to claim priority and advantage. They also give the marriage and each spouse their justification. Children hold marriages together and keep spouses getting up in the morning, not only to care for the children but to care for themselves so that they can care for the children. When children finally leave the home, marriages and spouses sometimes fall apart, having lost their rationale as surely as removing the wheels from a vehicle. No wonder that spouses desire children, pray for children, prepare for children, bear children, and adopt children. They adorn, invigorate, and justify the home. That’s a good attitude with which to welcome children into your marital home.
Hierarchy
Observers of American families sometimes say that parents make children too much the focus of the family to the point that they rule the home. Parents might reply by saying just try stopping it. Children at various ages and stages do rule the home in the sense that the home must organize itself around their needs and behaviors. The newborn infant just home from the hospital is the perfect case in point, completely dependent on the parents for every need and fully capable of making those needs heard and felt. Yet the observers and critics of parental indulgence of children at times have a point. Spouses welcoming children into the home may do best by preserving, rather than inverting, the family’s hierarchical structure. For their rationality and maturity, parents, not children, must rule the home. Parents must keep their logical heads, and decide and implement what’s best for the family, despite biological and behavioral imperatives, and indeed because of those demands and distortions. When welcoming children, retain your marriage as the family’s foundation, and keep your place and your spouse’s place at the family’s head. Don’t succumb to the demands and behaviors of children. They need you to maintain the family’s hierarchical structure.
Deciding
Deciding whether to have children is both a thing and not a thing. Spouses can make a lot out of the decision of whether and when to have children. Or they can largely ignore the subject and see what happens. Spouses may have a good deal of control over the question but not entire control. Couples who badly want children sometimes don’t get them. And couples who don’t really want children sometimes do get them. Spouses do well to keep that reality in mind when discussing, deciding, and desiring children. We often want control over our lives. And we should often strive to take control and maintain control. A life out of control can be a hazardous, difficult, and distorted life. Make a sound, thoughtful, and sensitive decision as to whether the two of you want children, and if so, then when and how many. Yet we may not want complete control. Take all the variability out of a life, and you’d probably not end up with the life you want. If you could order up a child like a hamburger, exactly to your liking, you might not be so happy getting exactly what you want, when you want it. A lot of us wouldn’t be here if our parents had their perfect wishes as to whether, when, and how many children.
Factors
Newly married couples considering children may take several factors into account as to whether to have children and, if so, when and how many. Newly married couples often want and need some time together before children join them, to get to know and enjoy one another, and grow together. Finishing education, gaining employment, and finding suitable housing, transportation, and medical and maternity care can all be other sound reasons to wait before trying. Yet plenty of couples have children while still in college, before full-time employment, and while in temporary married-student housing. More power to them. Welcoming children into the family may even be easier at such a young age, with such a fresh start, and in an institutional setting, before the demands of full-time work and major homemaking. Then, it’s just the two of you and the baby, not the three of you plus work, home, mortgage, vehicles, and every other accoutrement and burden of middle-class life. Health can be another factor in deciding whether to have children, especially if the wife has significant disabilities that would make child-bearing dangerous, except adoption may then be an option. Career and lifestyle interests may dissuade a couple from wanting children, as may concerns over a spouse’s addiction, corruption, or other questionable parental fitness. Listen to one another, discern, and respect, all while keeping in mind that the decision is not always and entirely within your control. Patience can also help. Spouses change their mind.
Denial
Nature sometimes denies a child to a couple wanting one. Once again, patience can help in these circumstances. Plenty of couples wait longer than they want before having a child. Plenty more couples adopt a child, believing themselves incapable of having their own, but then have one or more of their own. It’s a beautiful thing. Yet other couples have no such success in conceiving and bearing their own child. Medical diagnosis and intervention may help. Medicine and law have given couples options that may bring forth a biological child of both parents or a biological child only of the father or mother. Explore options, but do so wisely and with the counsel of pastors, mentors, close family members, or others who can help you discern the fitness, morality, ethics, benefits, risks, and hazards.
Adoption
Adopting a child or children is an attractive option for couples who want a child but cannot have their own biological child. Adoption is also attractive for couples who have children but want more children and, in particular, want to adopt a child or children. Adopted children are in no sense solely an accommodation for childless couples. Adopted children are special in their own right, indeed an indication of the adopting couple’s commitment to love and care for the adopted child. Adoption plainly requires considerable discernment around the agency or private placement and the candidate child’s age, health, behavior, and special needs. Families who knowingly adopt special-needs children are heroes. Families who unknowingly adopt special-needs or behaviorally disturbed children after agency deception can be both heroes and victims. Infant adoption also entails decisions over whether and when to disclose the child’s adopted status. And adoption of older children may require sensitive decisions about heirs and inheritances. State laws generally treat adopted children akin to biological children as to inheritance rights when you don’t have a will. You may make your own decisions about how to treat biological versus adopted children when executing a will. Proceed through adoption with open eyes and the right mind and heart.
Fostering
Families with and without biological or adopted children also foster children. Foster care is an urgent need in many communities. Foster care ensures that children from abusive and broken homes experience the love, care, stability, and security of a sound family home in transition toward adoption or adulthood. Fostering children can bring children into a married couple’s home for their love and care, without the permanency of adoption, and thus without some of adoption’s risks. Adopting a child after fostering the child can reduce or eliminate some risks, for instance of undisclosed behavioral or other special-needs issues. The temporary nature of fostering also provides a degree of flexibility, as the capacity of a married couple to care for children changes or their circumstances change. Consider fostering as an alternative or additional way to welcome children into your family. Foster parents can be saints and angels.
Maternity
Welcoming your biological child into the family is an exciting process. As soon as conception is apparent, if not before, spouses should ensure that the expectant mother has qualified maternity care and is following through with that care. Care for your child begins at conception, not at birth. The mother’s health habits, including both nutrition and the ingestion of alcohol or drugs, or smoking or vaping, can seriously adversely affect the unborn child. So, too, can stress or violence. Conversely, the couple’s peace, prayer, anticipation, and joy can positively affect the unborn child. Make maternity its own special part of the welcoming process. Doing so gives your family a firm foundation for the child’s transition into the household. Maternity is the time to arrange the family’s living quarters for the child’s room, crib, and changing table, to equip the home with the infant diapers, blankets, clothing, tub, bottles, formula, and other items necessary to the infant’s care, and to equip the family vehicle with a child seat. Helping other children already in the home prepare to welcome their newborn sibling, including ensuring their appropriate living space after the newborn’s arrival, is another critical step. So, too, is making adjustments to pets and the home to ensure newborn and infant safety. A couple going through maternity has a lot to do. Do the necessary things collaboratively and with excitement and anticipation. And do a few unnecessary but celebratory things, too.
Delivery
The delivery of a newborn infant is a defining moment for a family. Other stages of a child’s passage through a family up to their final departure from the home can be gradual. Growth happens slowly. Children mature in stages, not all at once. Delivery, though, is an event unto itself, and one with instant and dramatic effects on the parents and family. With a child’s delivery, everything changes. The better prepared the family is for those changes, the better delivery can go. Make clear plans for delivery, including the home, hospital, or birthing center, and choice of delivering physician or midwife, recognizing that the delivery’s timing may require a different attendant. Have things packed and ready to take to the hospital or birthing center. Have plans for hospital transportation, including when the husband is away at work. Also have plans for childcare for any children remaining at home during delivery, whether from a nearby relative or close friend. Maintain constant communication availability, and plan for the husband’s attendance. Avoid missing the birth of a child if at all possible. Follow the wife’s preferences as to the husband’s presence in the room at delivery. How effectively and sensitively a husband helps a wife deliver, and how much the wife trusts and relies on the husband, can reveal the quality of a marriage.
Homeward
The return of mother and newborn child to the home is another poignant, unforgettable, and irreplaceable moment. A husband does well to make it as special and memorable as he can. A clean, orderly, and well-stocked home is a good start, while any special gift, decoration, adornment, meal, or other comfort can encourage the mother. Care for the mother so that she can attend to the newborn’s nursing and care is the husband’s primary responsibility. After delivery, a mother needs time out from housekeeping, cooking, and other household activities to heal physically, recover emotionally, and care for and bond with the newborn infant. The husband should be prepared to do anything he can to support the mother’s needs, including providing or arranging for all care of other children in the home, meal preparation, and housekeeping. Devote those first few days and weeks with the newborn infant at home to the care of mother and infant.
Accommodations
Families do well to accommodate a newborn infant’s arrival with adjustments to the household rhythm. The Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) requires covered employers to recognize not just maternity leave but also paternity leave. If your employer has at least 50 employees within a 75-mile radius of your workplace, and the employer has employed you for at least one year and 1,250 hours in the prior year, you have up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave to care for your newborn child. Some employers provide paid maternity and paternity leave. Employers generally also permit, encourage, or require employees to use vacation time and personal days off during family leave, to provide compensation during leave. Take as much leave time off as you, your spouse, and your newborn infant need, and as your family can afford. You may also wish to arrange for a grandparent, sibling, or other relative to help for a period of adjustment, or to retain professional meal, cleaning, or other household services. Making special temporary arrangements for the care and encouragement of your other children, such as spending brief respite times with relatives and close family friends with their own children, can help give the parents and newborn infant time to adjust together. Make the accommodations you need to welcome your newborn infant into the family home.
Reflection
Have you and your spouse decided whether to have a child or have more children? If so, what factors did you consider? On a scale from one to ten, how confident and excited are each of you over the decision? Are you prepared to welcome a child even if you and your spouse did not plan one? How would you deal with the prospect of not having a biological child even if you wanted one? Would you and your spouse consider adopting a child if unable to conceive and bear your own? Would adoption be an attractive option even if you do have your own biological children? What would be your preferred profile of the child to adopt? How would adoption affect any children you already have at home? Would you need or want to make arrangements as to heirs and inheritance to be sure to treat your biological and adopted children appropriately? Are you and your spouse interested in caring for foster children in your home? If you are expecting a biological child, are you getting the maternity care that your unborn child needs? How are your preparations going for the newborn infant’s space, furnishings, and necessary items once in the home? Have you chosen the delivery location and obstetrician or midwife yet? Have you made hospital transportation and communication plans, and packed the bag? Do you have care arranged for your other children remaining at home? What arrangements do you need to make for maternity and paternity leave from work?
Key Points
Children are a great gift to and justification for a family and household.
Children should not turn a family’s natural hierarchy on its head.
Whether to have children deserves attention but isn’t always a choice.
Having a child can depend on factors like education, jobs, and housing.
Families denied a biological child should explore options thoughtfully.
Adoption is an alternative or additional way to bring a child home.
Fostering is another alternative or additional way to care for children.
Treat maternity as a special time for substantial preparation.
Plan and prepare for delivery to make it a smooth and exciting event.
A husband is responsible for caring for the mother and child at home.