Next reading assignment: Molly at My Three Pennies Worth writes Quiverfull Schmiverfull. Good stuff to continue our discussion. Summation quotation:
“There are some good reasons why limiting family size can be godly, and I have friends who have had to make that difficult decision due to life-threatening issues. They are the minority, though. For many, the decision to “have 1.7 children” is not birthed (pardon the pun) from prayer, but from a nonchalant acceptance of what our godless society says is Normal.”
So to review from Quiver Full Revisited, Part 1, my first point was:Our culture is becoming anti-child, and this attitude is bad for our society and wrong for Christians.
My second point is easy to state and understand, too. The anti-child attitude and the lack of prayer and careful thought about the issue of contraception among Christians is a problem—not the number of children a couple chooses to have or not to have.
I consider myself “quiverfull.” We have eight children, and we don’t use contraceptives (anymore). We came to this place slowly after several years of the same prayerlessness and lack of careful thought that I decry in the above statement. I’m glad to see Christian women (and men) thinking about the issue of contraception and asking what the One who is supposed to be Lord of our entire lives would have them do in this area of decision.
A few years ago a leader of women’s ministry in my (Baptist) church told me, laughingly, in front of the younger of her two children, that she and her husband should have only had one child. The second one was a mistake. They were really only able to handle one child, and after the second one was born, they got that “fixed” right away so that there wouldn’t be any more mistakes. I couldn’t believe she was telling me this, and I was literally speechless. I have since thought of many responses, both good and bad, but the main question I would like to ask that lady if I were able to do so is this: “Do you really believe God made a mistake in giving you a second child?”
For Christians, children are never mistakes; children are blessings.
I’m the fourth of four kids, and when I came along eight years after the first three, I gather I was a bit of a surprise. I can remember hearing my mother (I was very small) telling people that I was their “bonus”–they’d done so well with the first three that God decided they needed another. Needless to say, I didn’t have a clue what she was talking about until much later. But it’s of a piece with everything else about my childhood.
Forty years later, Jane and I have four kids, and we’re raising them in the house my parents bought because I came along and they needed more room.
I just read this post to Jane; when she hears mothers say things like the mother in your story did, she turns to the child and says “I’m so sorry your mother feels that way.”
I feel so bad for that kid who has to listen to their mother talk about them like that. I was 7th out of 8 kids and I always felt as if we were ‘too much’.
It’s a shame she talks like that. If we could have more kids we would – absolutely!! However I always tell my kids that our family is complete – not only because that’s the way I feel but also I don’t want them to feel as if they are ‘not enough’.
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