Essay

Why Parenthood Is a Commandment

Maybe you have watched an ultrasound and found yourself staring at the screen longer than you expected. A tiny body moves. You see a head, arms, legs, or the quick rhythm of a heartbeat. Suddenly a question that can sound abstract becomes much more personal: What exactly am I looking at? Why does this developing life matter so much to God?

That question connects to several others young adults are asking. Do I really need to have children someday? Why does the Church still teach that married couples should bring children into the world? What if parenthood interferes with travel, finances, education, or a career? And why do motherhood and fatherhood matter so much in God’s plan?

The restored gospel gives those questions a much larger setting. A developing child is not simply another project adults may choose to add to their lives. Mortal life belongs within Heavenly Father’s plan for His sons and daughters to receive bodies, come into families, exercise agency, form covenant relationships, and eventually become more like Him through Jesus Christ. That is why life, motherhood, and fatherhood are treated as sacred.

What Are We Actually Seeing on an Ultrasound?

In this video, Australian creators Rosie and Harry share an ultrasound from their pregnancy. Their reaction is fun and natural, but what appears on the screen points to something much larger than the moment itself.

An ultrasound lets parents see part of a process that ordinarily happens quietly inside a mother’s body. A new human life is developing. The baby is dependent, small, and still changing rapidly, but development has already begun.

That matters because the value of a child does not begin when the child becomes large enough to hold, recognizable enough on an ultrasound, or independent enough to survive without help. The Family: A Proclamation to the World simply affirms “the sanctity of life and of its importance in God’s eternal plan.”

The ultrasound helps us see developing life. Revelation helps us understand why that life matters.

Every Child Belongs to a Story That Began Before Birth

Before you were ever seen on an ultrasound, born into a family, or given a name, you existed as a spirit son or daughter of heavenly parents. The Family Proclamation teaches that each of us knew and worshipped God before mortality and accepted His plan to receive a physical body and continue progressing toward our divine destiny.

The Lord gave Jeremiah a glimpse of this premortal reality when He said, “Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee” (Jeremiah 1:5). God was speaking specifically about Jeremiah’s premortal calling as a prophet, but restored revelation helps us recognize the larger truth underneath the passage: our relationship with God did not begin at birth.

Psalm 139:13–16 then gives us a beautiful view of life developing in the womb. The Psalmist describes God’s awareness of that hidden development and responds, “I am fearfully and wonderfully made.”

So when you see developing life on an ultrasound, you are seeing part of something that fits inside an eternal story. A physical body is being formed for mortal life, and mortality itself is an essential part of God’s plan for His children.

The First Commandment Created a Pattern of Mother, Father, and Child

That brings us back to the very beginning of mortality.

After God created Adam and Eve, He commanded them to “be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth” (Genesis 1:28).

Notice the order. God created man and woman. He joined them as husband and wife. Then He entrusted them with the power and responsibility to bring children into the world.

The Family: A Proclamation to the World deliberately returns to that pattern: “The first commandment that God gave to Adam and Eve pertained to their potential for parenthood as husband and wife.” It then adds that “God’s commandment for His children to multiply and replenish the earth remains in force.”

Motherhood and fatherhood therefore are not simply cultural roles that developed because adults needed a convenient way to divide responsibilities. They belong to the pattern God established around the beginning of human life.

A child comes through both a mother and a father. Pregnancy makes the mother’s physical relationship with the developing child especially visible, but fatherhood is not secondary to the child’s beginning. A father helped create that life, and God gives him responsibilities to love, protect, provide for, teach, and remain faithful to both the child and the family he helped create.

What Science Lets Us See Before Birth

Modern technology allows us to see remarkably early stages of human development that previous generations could only imagine.

The Cleveland Clinic’s overview of fetal development explains that by around the ninth week of pregnancy, major organs and body systems are continuing to develop and the fetus can move its limbs.

More detailed documentation of prenatal development describes movements such as swallowing, stretching, and tongue movement around nine weeks after fertilization. Most major body systems have begun forming during these early weeks.

Those facts are remarkable, but they are not what gives developing life its sacred worth. A child does not become more valuable when fingers can move or an ultrasound begins to look recognizably human.

Science helps us observe development. Revelation tells us how to regard human life.

Family researcher Jenet Jacob Erickson discusses another remarkable dimension of prenatal life in this clip: the profound physical relationship already forming between a mother and her unborn child.

That relationship begins before anyone outside the womb can hold the baby. And while fathers do not experience pregnancy in the same physical way, a faithful father can begin fatherhood during those same months by protecting, supporting, loving, preparing, and taking responsibility for the mother and child.

Why Does God Care So Much About Protecting Life?

President Russell M. Nelson understood human development both as an Apostle and as a physician. In “Reverence for Life,” he taught:

“Life comes from life. It is a gift from our Heavenly Father.”

That is the deeper issue underneath Christian concern for unborn life. The power to create life is not merely biological. God has entrusted men and women with powers through which His children can enter mortality.

That helps explain why the Church opposes abortion. Ending developing human life is a serious moral matter because life itself is sacred and belongs within God’s eternal purposes.

God’s reverence for life begins much earlier than birth and continues long after it. He cares about the unborn child, the mother carrying that child, and the father whose choices and responsibilities are also part of the child’s story.

Having Children Is a Commandment—and a Sacred Stewardship

The commandment to multiply and replenish the earth remains in force, but that does not mean every married couple should have the same number of children or follow someone else’s timetable.

Questions about when to have children and how many to have belong prayerfully between a husband, wife, and the Lord. Health, physical and emotional capacity, and other serious circumstances may be part of those conversations.

But there is a difference between prayerfully asking God how to fulfill the commandment and beginning with the assumption that children should come only if they fit conveniently around everything else we hope to do.

A covenant husband and wife can ask a different question: Heavenly Father, what would Thou have us do with the power and responsibility Thou hast entrusted to us?

Fatherhood belongs directly in that question. Becoming a father is not simply agreeing to help once a baby arrives. It means accepting responsibility for the life you help create and preparing to give a child presence, protection, provision, teaching, fidelity, and love.

Cherishing Life Means Caring for Mothers, Fathers, and Children

Elder Neil L. Andersen showed what this can look like in real life in his April 2025 message “Cherishing Life.”

He told about a young woman who became pregnant unexpectedly. Her boyfriend urged her to have an abortion, but she chose not to. What happened next is an important part of the story.

Her own father embraced her. Her bishop and Young Women president supported her. Her ward surrounded her with practical and spiritual care. She later recognized the Lord guiding her and her family through a situation she had not expected.

Elder Andersen taught that when a woman and man face an unanticipated pregnancy, spiritual, emotional, and financial support can help them feel the Savior’s love.

There is an important lesson about fatherhood here too. A man’s response to pregnancy matters. Fathers can abandon responsibility, pressure a woman toward abortion, or treat pregnancy as primarily her problem. Or they can begin acting like fathers—protecting life, supporting the mother, accepting responsibility, and preparing to love the child they helped create.

Cherishing life therefore means more than opposing abortion. It includes helping mothers and fathers become capable of welcoming and caring for children.

What If I Want Children but Cannot Have Them?

For some people, teaching about the commandment to have children brings real sorrow.

Maybe you want children deeply and have not married. Maybe you and your spouse have experienced infertility. Maybe pregnancy creates serious medical concerns. Maybe you imagined a large family and discovered that your circumstances would allow something very different.

God knows the difference between rejecting His purposes and longing for a blessing that circumstances have placed beyond your control.

You can honor the doctrine of motherhood, fatherhood, and children while grieving that your own circumstances are different. You can also bless nieces and nephews, Primary children, students, neighbors, foster children, and other young people who need faithful adults. Those relationships do not replace the children you hoped for, but they are meaningful ways to nurture God’s children now.

Jesus Christ understands desires that remain unfulfilled. Alma taught that He took upon Himself the pains and afflictions of His people so He would know how to succor them. No faithful person will lose eternal blessings because of circumstances beyond his or her control.

When Children—and Fathers—Begin to Look Optional

Once you understand the doctrine, some cultural messages become easier to recognize.

Children are often discussed primarily in terms of what they cost: money, sleep, travel, career opportunities, independence, comfort, and freedom. Those costs are real. Raising children requires sacrifice, work, patience, and a great deal of love.

Fatherhood can also be minimized. A man may be encouraged to think primarily about his own education, career, freedom, relationships, and sexual choices without thinking very far ahead to the children those choices may create or the kind of husband and father he is becoming.

The distortion is not acknowledging that parenthood is difficult. The distortion comes when difficulty becomes the main way we measure its value.

The gospel invites you to see much farther. A child is a son or daughter of heavenly parents. Motherhood and fatherhood give men and women opportunities to participate in God’s work, nurture another person’s eternal development, build covenant families, and learn forms of sacrifice and love that help them become more like their Heavenly Parents.

A Few Things Worth Thinking About

• When I see an ultrasound or think about developing life, what does God’s plan help me see that biology alone cannot explain?
• When I imagine motherhood or fatherhood, do I mainly think about what children might cost me, or also about what loving and raising them could help me become?
• If I am a man, am I preparing now for fatherhood by learning responsibility, fidelity, sacrifice, protection, and commitment?
• What worries me most about having children someday—money, freedom, career, my childhood, the state of the world, or whether I would be a good parent?
• Is there someone around me facing pregnancy, infertility, miscarriage, singleness, or another difficult circumstance whom I could strengthen?

What Can You Do This Week?

Begin by watching the ultrasound clip again after reading Genesis 1:26–28 and the first several paragraphs of the Family Proclamation. Ask yourself what changes when you see developing life within God’s larger pattern of Heavenly Parents, mortal bodies, mother and father, marriage, and eternal family.

If you are single, you can prepare now. Women can prepare to honor motherhood; men can deliberately prepare for fatherhood. The choices you make about chastity, work, money, emotional maturity, dating, commitment, and covenants are already shaping the kind of parent and spouse you may someday become.

And if someone around you is facing an unexpected pregnancy or difficult circumstances involving children, find one concrete way to strengthen them. Cherishing life includes caring for the mother, encouraging the father to act responsibly, and protecting the child.

Jesus Christ is at the center of that plan. Through Him, we can become the kind of men and women who receive life with reverence, accept the responsibilities God gives us, care for mothers and fathers in difficult circumstances, and build families where His children can be loved, taught, protected, and prepared for eternal life.