Dear Henry and Hannah,
I am writing about a topic that can cause some people, more specifically, DINKs, to chew you up and spit you out alive, but that’s okay. If people can choose not to have children, I can choose to write about it.
There is a growing number of people on social media and otherwise speaking candidly about not wanting any children. Some call themselves DINKs (Double Income, No Kids). Others are not necessarily attached to a label, except the label of idiocy.
The Bible says in the last days, people will be lovers of themselves. In other words, self has become such a priority that even putting their child’s needs before their own seems preposterous. No time in history has this level of selfishness ever been more prevalent than in people who choose not to have children.
They say it’s their body, their choice to have children or not. But they say that only out of ignorance and selfishness. Ignorance, of course, is the main motivator.
The first mistake people make is thinking that the bodies God blessed them with are theirs. The Bible says that our bodies are God’s temple. Hence, He should tell us how best to use them, and He did. In the first book and first chapter of the Bible, God was crystal clear about His mission for mankind.
Genesis 1:28 says, “And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion…”
What’s sad is that even Christians are jumping on the bandwagon of choosing to be childless, as if they didn’t read the part where God says that we are to be fruitful and multiply.
A young man who calls himself a Christian released a beautiful video proclaiming the gospel. The video was a hit, and one would think he had a front-row seat to the Almighty.
Scrolling through some of the comments on the video, I found the man’s response to one commenter. He said, “I don’t want any children.” Not whatever God’s will is for my life, or God told me that I would not have any children, but rather, “I don’t want any children.”
Hence, we see it’s all about me, myself, and I. Even if it’s their body to choose because God gives us free choice, let’s recognize that all choices have consequences.
From 1980 to 2015, China implemented its One Child Policy. China thought they were successful in preventing millions of births, but as a result, there were severe unintended consequences. Since boys were preferred, there are currently millions more males than females in China. Millions of baby girls were aborted, killed, abandoned, and placed in orphanages. Even after the one-child policy was rescinded, China’s birth and fertility rates remained low, leaving the country with a rapidly aging population and a shrinking workforce.
In essence, the consequences of China’s choices are too grave to rein in even when the policy has been rescinded. Now imagine the consequences these self-imposed no-child choices will have not just on the individuals but on their generations and society.
What generation?
Allow me to rephrase that; after all, generations can only continue with people who have children. Those who choose not to have children will quite likely be the last of their immediate generation.
The human heart has become so cold and selfish that people believe that chasing money and a prestigious lifestyle, including travel, is the best way to live. Apparently, they are not au fait with Solomon, the wisest and richest man’s conclusion, about all being vanity.
While King Solomon established vanity in theory for us, the practicality of his conclusion is all around us. In my 20s, I rented a home from a wealthy elderly couple who owned several properties, including three on the same street. My landlords were well-educated, had successful careers, and had plenty of money.
What they didn’t have was a child together. Thankfully, the man had a few children from a previous relationship who were adults and lived far away from them. The woman had a son, who unfortunately predeceased her, and even after decades since his passing, she was still grieving his loss.
As we got closer, my elderly landlady bitterly lamented her choice of choosing her career over growing her family. Her daily encouragement to me was that I should have more than one child. As big as her house was, she stayed in a little room downstairs and grew even more heartbroken and lonelier after her husband’s passing. Up to the time of her death, her one regret was not having more children.
Her story was so sad that I wrote a poem about her. I will leave the link below so you can access it. Now, if this woman’s womb bore at least one fruit and she was so regretful about not having more children, can you imagine how bitter those barren wombs will be?
I can just hear people, both women and men, saying, “Oh, that’s your landlady, not me, I don’t want any children, and I won’t regret it.” I will hasten to say it’s a similar illusion my late landlady would have said to herself while she was busy climbing the career ladder.
Regret is too clever to show up when you can actually do something to change the trajectory of your story.
Motherhood in your 40s
There is now a trend of women having children in their 40s and even 50s. The headlines are skewed to give women the impression that 40-plus-year-old women have children naturally. This is a strategy to give women false hope while subtly fattening the pockets of physicians and podcasters who purport the older motherhood phenomenon.
While a small percentage of women are getting pregnant in their 40s, this strategy is misleading younger women into believing that it’s best to put off motherhood in their child-rearing years to pursue their careers. While neglecting the reality of the uphill climb to conceive naturally in their 40s and 50s, as well as the possible birth effects the baby may likely experience.
They also neglect to tell younger women about the biological changes and physical challenges that humans experience in these age groups, coupled with having to have the stamina to keep up with small children. Additionally, there is the emptiness that affects many marriages, and sometimes, as soon as the wife passes childbearing age, the man suddenly desires a seed. Often leading to uncomfortable compromises, including extramarital affairs.
While there are many complications to deal with, people who have children in their 40s and 50s also have to meet the demands of their aging parents simultaneously.
The truth is, most women who are having children, especially in their mid-forties, are likely just realizing that the careers, financial stability, and travel lifestyle they were chasing could not fill the void left by a childless womb. Secondly, getting pregnant in their 40s is a ferocious fertility battle that many of them keep private to save face. Thirdly, even after spending thousands of dollars on In Vitro Fertilization (IVF) treatments, many women are left childless.
Upon realizing their error, their soon-to-be gravest mistake- they are in a hurry, fighting against the natural progression of their mortality to become what they should have been all along. They painstakingly spend hundreds of thousands of dollars, some even millions, to ‘acquire’ a child they could have had then.
All of a sudden, the child who couldn’t fit in their portfolio has become the portfolio itself. Hence, they painstakingly inject themselves with IVF treatments, however often, to get pregnant and have technologically assisted children, or as some would argue, ‘artificial’ children.
Now, there are children who were conceived using IVF who may take offense to this statement, but since this is my letter, I am at liberty to call a spade a spade.
Having worked in the manufacturing business, I know that certain animals are not naturally conceived. It’s called artificial insemination.
A woman who uses IVF treatment did not naturally conceive.
What’s worse is that, in many cases, their eggs are not viable, or, at times, the woman who was instructed to store them cannot rehabilitate them, not to mention the complexity of having their fertilized eggs injected into the body of another younger woman to do the heavy lifting they cannot do.
These women who chose not to have children when they could, then proceeded to rent or hire somebody else’s body to carry children for them.
The audacity!!!
Time would fail me to write about the countless cases of errors, resulting lawsuits, as a result of women being inseminated unintentionally with someone else’s ovulated eggs. Like in the case of fallible humans, people requesting the ‘manufacturing’ of their babies of a certain kind, race, or even sex, are grossly disapointed when the ‘factory’ does not produce according to their requests.
Then there are those who contracted women to carry their babies but are likely to try and abscond from their contracted responsibilities because of the likelihood of the baby’s birth defects or even changes in their personal life.
As they get older, they also want to recruit somebody else’s children, whom they take the time to have, to care for them. Demanding that their caregivers be overly patient with them, when selfishness caused them not to be patient with themselves and be patient with their children, so they could reap even grandchildren to exercise patience with them.
As an observer, whenever I watch these interviews, obviously tricked by the title, I often hear some older woman say that they didn’t want any children. It sounds good, and while it’s obvious that some of them are selfish, I’m more concerned with the other issues that are invisible to ordinary viewers.
On a podcast, one woman spoke about not wanting children until she met her spouse in her forties. She got pregnant, and based on her biological progression, she lost the child. She went on to say that having that feeling caused her and her spouse to want children. So she went the IVF route.
What people don’t see behind the “I didn’t want any children” is ignorance. As soon as she found a spouse and became pregnant, she would give almost anything to have children after the loss of the pregnancy.
In case you missed it, she claimed she didn’t want children until she met her spouse in her 40s. Thus, it was not a matter of not wanting children; it was either not having a spouse or the right one.
Here are a few reasons why I believe some women not wanting children boils down to ignorance, selfishness, and often a facade.
- As mentioned above, the woman didn’t know that she wanted a child until she experienced pregnancy. Ignorance is also displayed in some women obsessed with the lifestyle of childless couples on social media, thinking that children will ruin their quality of life.
Yet to realize that those are highlight reels, which don’t fully demonstrate the emptiness in the couple’s hearts, the scenes, and the quiet temptations, especially for the man, to engage in extramarital affairs to acquire a seed.
- Perceived inadequacies. Thinking that, based on their childhood, they will not be able to care for their children. No childhood is cast in stone; thus, people are free to raise their children differently from how they were raised.
- They didn’t find a partner to do so. Some women are honest enough to admit they didn’t find a partner in time. Others, because of their perceived magnificence, are afraid to admit that no man wanted them. By the time they thought of accepting who they thought was less than them, the handles of their biological clock fell off. So instead of saying that, they lie and say they didn’t want any children.
- The fourth thing that people don’t see is the sadness in the eyes of these women; albeit invisible to the naked eye, the tears they cry at night over the void that’s left by a barren womb. Even with heavy makeup, one can tell they are lying, but only to themselves.
Kudos to older men and women who speak up and say their biggest regret is not having an offspring. No matter how big their bank balances are, no amount of money could suffice for the bone of one’s bone and the flesh of one’s flesh.
Hannah had everything except children, yet she asked God every day for children. It’s the same with so many others in the Bible, such as Sarah and Rachel.
As a mother, I am privileged to say that my second greatest accomplishment is the fruit of my womb. In case you are curious about what comes first, it’s accepting Jesus Christ as my Lord and Saviour from sin.
I’ve also seen the desperate, silent cries of women in their late 30s and 40s without children as they watch time pass. No matter how they try to hide it, there is a yearning that burns inside of them, hoping that they would feel what it feels like to hold not just a baby, their baby, in their arms.
I wouldn’t even get to the part of feeling a baby in their womb; a barren womb can’t perceive that, no matter how they try. That’s an experience of a lifetime.
Fortunately, there are those who, upon seeing how quickly time goes by, realize that those they didn’t want as a spouse are suddenly scooped up, all for the sake of having a child or children.
Still, younger folks are fooled by the headlines that not having children is sexy. I hear females say they didn’t want children because they didn’t want their breasts to be lanky, pure ignorance.
They cannot comprehend that having children would cause one to give up not only their breasts but their lives for their precious ones.
Having children is the second-greatest love of all, and so many people have no idea what it is like to love a child, let alone to be loved by one.
On another podcast, one woman said she is comfortable being the stepmother to her husband’s children, and all I could feel for her was immense pity. Pull back the curtains, and you will see there is much more to that story. While I am not saying she should tell all on the podcast, aspiring to and being satisfied with being a stepmother is not the whole truth.
So, if there is no issue with you, you want to benefit from another woman’s womb fruit?
They are lying, even when they list not having to clean babies as one of the perks of not having children. Look long enough, and you will see the sadness that follows the residual smile of what they thought was humorous.
The economy: A Contributing Factor
Then there are those who gravitate to social media headlines about not having children in “this economy.” If you ask 90% of them to clearly define what an economy is, they fumble, even when there is Google at their fingertips.
See how many of them are googling, or consider what Google thinks an economy is now. Illiteracy, perhaps, that’s the only reason not to have any children.
The ‘economy’ was still a thing when their parents and grandparents had 6, 7, 8, and even 12 children. While I am not saying that people should have so many children, I am saying that having children, however many, should be an arrangement with God.
The same people who say they don’t want any children are the ones who are proud to post on social media soliciting views and admiration about their large families from which they came.
But here is the sad part of this situation: it’s the idea that a child’s life is talked about in the same way a vehicle, house, or even a piece of furniture is classified as expensive. As if God’s hand were shortened so He could not provide for His children. Some of the most successful businesses were started out of a necessity to provide adequately for their children.
While it’s important to have a plan and make preparations for children, why can’t ideas be cultivated while they are here?
To the Barren Womb
What’s the use of having a fruit tree that can bear fruit, but never does? While there are countless others who would give almost anything to bear their own womb fruit, others on the other side of the scale do not want any. Some of whom are murdering- I mean, aborting their unborn children and have the audacity to call it reproductive rights, and even health.
In Proverbs 30:15-16, the barren womb is listed as one of the things that are never satisfied, and rightly so. There are millions of women and men who desire children and, for whatever reason, cannot have children of their own.
To those people, I say, keep on praying, and if it’s God’s will, like Hannah, Sarah, Rachel, and so many others, He will give you the desire of your heart. If it’s not His will to bless you with children, keep praying, thanking, and trusting Him. God’s ways are higher than ours, so if He will not give you children, ask Him to give you peace about it.
The good thing is, unlike those who don’t want children, you desired to have children, and for whatever reason we don’t understand, you can’t. Try as it may, regret can’t take vengeance on what you could not control.
However, for those who are barren by choice, they will likely endure agonizing bitterness as a consequence.
There are plenty of regretful stories, even about regretting marriage to certain spouses, but to date, I have never heard anyone regret having children.
Hen and Han, have out your lot!!!
Your great aunt,
Queen Patrene
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