Essay

Children, and the Voices Telling You Not To

You may have wondered: Why should I have children when raising them seems so expensive and exhausting? What if I want children someday, but I do not feel ready yet? Can I still have a meaningful life without becoming a parent? And what does this commandment mean for people who cannot have children?

Those are understandable questions. The world can give you plenty of reasons to put off having children or to think mainly about what parenthood will cost you—time, money, sleep, freedom, or career opportunities. But Jesus Christ invites you to see children differently. Heavenly Father has a plan for His sons and daughters, and bringing His spirit children into mortality is part of that plan. Marriage and parenthood are not simply traditions or expectations; they are part of God’s plan to help His children receive bodies, grow in families, make covenants, and eventually become more like Him.

That does not mean having children is easy, or that you have to feel completely ready before moving forward. Most people probably never feel completely prepared for something as significant as becoming a parent. Nephi faced a very different commandment, but what he learned can help whenever God asks us to do something that feels bigger than we are: “I will go and do the things which the Lord hath commanded, for I know that the Lord giveth no commandments unto the children of men, save he shall prepare a way for them” (1 Nephi 3:7). Nephi did not know beforehand exactly how everything would work out. He moved forward because he trusted that if God had asked something of him, God would also help him do it.

That same trust matters when you think about having children. Heavenly Father knows your financial worries, your hopes for the future, your health, your marriage, and the circumstances you cannot control. He is not asking you to ignore real concerns or pretend parenthood will be easy. He is asking you to let His plan matter more than the fear around you. As you seek Him, He can help you know when and how to move forward, and Jesus Christ can give you courage and strength for things that may feel beyond you now.

Let’s take a closer look at what He is teaching us about children, trust, and the way He prepares a way for us to follow Him.

Why Was Parenthood God’s First Commandment?

The Family: A Proclamation to the World teaches that “the first commandment that God gave to Adam and Eve pertained to their potential for parenthood as husband and wife” and that the commandment to multiply and replenish the earth still matters today.

That teaching begins in one of the most beautiful parts of the Creation story. In Genesis 1:27–28, God creates Adam and Eve, male and female, in His image. Then He blesses them and invites them to “be fruitful, and multiply.” Parenthood begins there—not as a burden placed on them, but as part of the blessing God gave them and part of the life He was inviting them to build together.

That sequence helps us see something important. Marriage and children were never meant to be unrelated parts of life. From the beginning, God brought a man and a woman together and gave them the capacity to create and nurture life. Parenthood was not added later as a social expectation or a religious custom. It was woven into God’s design for marriage from the start.

Modern revelation makes that connection even clearer. Doctrine and Covenants 49:15–17 teaches that marriage is ordained of God and connects marriage with the very purpose for which the earth was created. Heavenly Father’s spirit children need mortal bodies to continue their eternal journey, and He allows husbands and wives to take part in that sacred work—to bring children into mortality, love them, teach them, and help them come to know Him.

Seen this way, the command to have children is not simply about obligation. It is an invitation to participate with Heavenly Father in His work and His love for His children. That does not make parenthood easy, but it helps explain why God speaks about it with such seriousness and such hope.

When Having Children Changes the Life You Thought You Wanted

It is one thing to understand that doctrine and another to imagine what it will actually mean for your own life. In this short first-person reel, Drew Harrisberg describes how he once thought of himself as someone who simply did not want children: “I don’t want kids. I’m a dog guy.” But becoming a father completely changed the way he understood what he wanted from life:

His experience shows that when you can set aside what the world is telling you about marriage and children and instead, trust that God’s commandments have purpose and meaning, you will be living your best and happiest life.

Your Eternal Identity Includes a Family

At your deepest level, you are a beloved son or daughter of Heavenly Parents. You lived with Them before this life, came to earth to receive a body, and are here to learn through agency, covenants, relationships, and experience how to become more like Them through Jesus Christ. That identity is already yours. But Heavenly Father has also revealed something about where that identity is meant to lead.

President Kim B. Clark taught in “Identity and Purpose in God’s Eternal Plan” that one dimension of our eternal identity is becoming “fathers and mothers in an eternal family.” Later he made the teaching even more personal: “You are husbands and wives, mothers and fathers in God’s eternal plan.” In other words, marriage and parenthood are not simply roles some people happen to take on during mortality. They are connected to the eternal future Heavenly Father is preparing His children to receive.

That does not mean your worth depends on whether you are married or have children right now. Your worth is already secure because you are a child of God, and circumstances outside your control do not make you less complete in His eyes. But knowing what Heavenly Father is preparing you to become can change the way you think about marriage, children, sacrifice, and even the decisions you make today.

President Clark also taught that we “become” our eternal identity through the mercy and grace of Jesus Christ. That is an encouraging way to think about parenthood. You do not have to arrive at marriage already knowing how to be a perfect husband, wife, mother, or father. As you make covenants, trust the Lord, and learn to love and sacrifice for others, Christ can gradually shape you into the kind of person who can build an eternal family.

Who Is Shaping How I See Children?

So many of today’s conversations online seem to be about what children cost (perceived freedom, money, sleep, travel, career flexibility, and personal time). But because Instagrammers show only one side of their single, childless life, that is partly why the message can be persuasive.

What can be left out is what children can give and what caring for them can help adults become. If personal freedom, luxury, and comfort become the main measures of a successful life, nearly every serious responsibility begins to look like a loss.

The adversary can use that narrowed view without needing to convince you that children are bad. It may be enough for parenthood to keep looking inconvenient, frightening, or perpetually postponable while other goals always feel more urgent. And, what if one of the biggest ideas modern culture has sold us about children and happiness is actually wrong?

The gospel gives you a larger measure of a good life. It includes joy and achievement, but it also includes covenant, responsibility, sacrifice, relationships, service, and becoming like Jesus Christ.

When the Desire for Children Brings Grief

For some people, this question is not really about whether to have children or when to begin. It is about wanting children deeply and finding that, for reasons outside your control, that blessing has not come. Infertility, miscarriage, health challenges, delayed marriage, divorce, or other circumstances can make parenthood impossible for now, and that can bring a very real kind of grief.

In “Children,” Elder Neil L. Andersen acknowledged how painful this can be, especially when your greatest desire is to do exactly what the Lord has commanded. He gave this reassurance: “Faithful members whose circumstances do not allow them to receive the blessings of eternal marriage and parenthood in this life will receive all promised blessings in the eternities” as they remain faithful to their covenants. Heavenly Father knows the difference between a commandment you are unwilling to keep and a righteous desire you have simply not been able to fulfill.

For some couples, adoption may become a beautiful way to welcome children into their family. Others may find meaningful opportunities to foster, teach, mentor, serve in the Church, or become a steady and loving presence in the lives of nieces, nephews, neighbors, and other children. Those relationships can matter enormously and can become part of the way God allows you to nurture and bless His children.

At the same time, those good opportunities should never be used to minimize the ache of infertility or to suggest that mentoring a child is simply the same thing as becoming a mother or father. The longing for children can reach into some of the deepest hopes of the heart. Jesus Christ understands that longing completely, including the prayers that seem unanswered and the future that did not unfold the way you expected. If circumstances outside your control have kept you from parenthood, you have not been forgotten, and you have not fallen behind in God’s plan. His promises are still yours.

Do Marriage and Children Really Make People More Happy?

In a 2025 survey of 3,000 American women ages 25–55, Jean Twenge, Jenet Erickson, Wendy Wang, and Brad Wilcox found that married mothers reported particularly high levels of happiness and were also more likely to report meaning and purpose in life:

A Few Questions Worth Thinking About

1. Who has taught me what a happy and successful life is supposed to look like?
2. What voices are shaping my fears about having children?
3. Are the voices shaping my view of motherhood and fatherhood helping me understand God’s purposes, or only emphasizing what having children might cost me?
4. Could raising children become part of my growth in Christ rather than an obstacle to it?
5. What would it look like to have children in faith instead of waiting for everything to be ‘perfect’?

If you are married, have an honest conversation with your spouse about children without comparing your family to anyone else’s. Talk about your hopes, fears, finances, health, and what you believe the Lord may be asking of you. Then pray about it together.

Having children t is part of Heavenly Father’s invitation to trust Him with the kind of life He is preparing you to build. Jesus Christ can help you move forward with wisdom rather than fear, make sacred decisions with faith, and become increasingly capable of the covenant love that marriage and parenthood require.