Answer

Is It Okay to Delay or Limit Having Children?

You may be married, hoping for children eventually, and unsure whether wanting to wait is faith or avoidance. School is not finished, the debt is real, and the timing never quite arrives. That is an honest place to be, and it is where a great many faithful couples are standing.

The commandment stands and the timing is yours. Both halves are the answer, and dropping either one gets it wrong. Children are not one lifestyle option among several for a married couple. How many and when is a decision for the two of you and the Lord, and it belongs to nobody else.

Eternal Truths

The commandment to multiply and replenish the earth remains in force. The Family: A Proclamation to the World says so directly, tying it back to the charge given Adam and Eve (Genesis 1:28). Having children is central to God’s purpose for marriage rather than something couples get to once everything else is settled.

The decision is sacred, and it is yours. The Church teaches that decisions about the number and spacing of children are a matter between husband, wife and the Lord (Birth Control). Elder Neil L. Andersen taught that when to have a child and how many children to have are private decisions to be made between a husband and wife and the Lord, and that these are sacred decisions, made with sincere prayer and acted on with great faith (“Children”). He also asked members not to judge one another on it.

What Can Make This Confusing?

Children are now discussed almost entirely in terms of what they cost. Money, sleep, career, freedom. The list is accurate and it is partial, and a partial list repeated often enough starts working like a complete one. Meanwhile “ready” quietly becomes a moving target, because there is always one more thing that would make it easier.

What Research Shows

Lyman Stone surveyed 2,700 Canadian women about the families they wanted and the families they had (Institute for Family Studies). Many ended up with roughly half the number of children they had said they wanted, and those who waited longest reported the most regret. The survey cannot tell any particular couple when to have a child. It does show that postponement is a decision with its own cost, not a neutral holding position.

Questions to Think About

• What would have to be true before I felt ready, and is that condition ever actually reached?
• Have we asked the Lord about this as seriously as we have run the numbers?
• Which of our concerns need preparation, and which are uncertainties nobody can remove?

What You Can Do

Sit down together this week and separate the two lists: things you can genuinely prepare for, and things you cannot control and are waiting on anyway. Then pray about the next step rather than the whole future. The essay behind this answer works through the counsel in more detail.

Jesus Christ can help you plan wisely and still move when the Lord gives direction, which is a harder combination than either one alone.