Answer

Is It Okay to Wait Until We Feel Financially Ready to Have Children?

You and your spouse want children, and the timing feels impossible. You may be finishing school, paying down debt, or trying to get established at work, and the culture around you says you should feel completely secure before you start. Those are reasonable concerns, and a great many couples are sitting with them right now.

Preparing is wise. Waiting for certainty is a different thing, and it rarely ends. The commandment to have children stands, the timing is a decision between the two of you and the Lord, and “ready” is worth examining before you let it decide.

Eternal Truths

The commandment to have children remains in force. After God joined Adam and Eve as husband and wife He commanded them to be fruitful and multiply (Genesis 1:28). The Family: A Proclamation to the World teaches that this commandment still applies. Children are central to God’s purpose for marriage rather than the last item on a list.

The decision is yours, and it is meant to be made with Him. 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”). President Dallin H. Oaks has observed that many young adults now delay marriage until temporal needs are satisfied, and that births among Church members are falling (“Parents and Children”). Nobody else gets a vote on your timing, including other members.

What Can Make This Confusing?

Responsible adulthood is usually pictured as getting everything in place first: education finished, career established, debt cleared, savings built, housing secure. There is real wisdom in preparing. The trouble starts when preparation quietly becomes a requirement for near-perfect stability, because that threshold moves every time you approach it, and faith starts to feel irresponsible by comparison.

What Research Shows

Lyman Stone surveyed 2,700 Canadian women about the families they wanted and the families they ended up with (Institute for Family Studies). On average they had about half the children they had said they wanted, and those who waited longest reported the most regret. Reproductive technology did not close that gap. The survey cannot tell you when to have a child. It does show that delay carries its own risk rather than being a neutral pause.

Questions to Think About

• Which of our concerns genuinely require preparation, and which are uncertainties nobody can remove?
• What has actually shaped my idea of being financially ready?
• Are we seeking the Lord’s direction as seriously as we are seeking financial security?

What You Can Do

Sit down together this week and talk honestly about what is making you hesitate. Put the things you can prepare for in one list and the things you cannot control in another. Then pray together about the next step rather than trying to solve your whole future at once. The essay on delaying or limiting children goes further into the counsel.

Jesus Christ can help you plan wisely and still move forward with faith when the Lord gives direction.