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Children

[Marriage] is given as the foundation of family life in which children are born and nurtured.

(Preface to The Marriage Service, p. 105)

By the time they get to their wedding day, most couples will have honestly discussed their feelings about wanting to have a family. But, amazingly, some have not. Rather more only discuss it superficially and, finding that they have differing views, avoid the subject, often on the basis that the other one will change his or her mind eventually.

Recent medical advances have the potential to give couples choice in planning their families. But each advance means a further set of choices. Contraception comes in various guises and every couple has to make the choice of what suits them best. If there are problems in conceiving, there is plenty of help to be had – but, again, it raises complex choices about what is right for each couple. The increasing number and accuracy of prenatal tests may raise enormous questions about what to do if some serious abnormality were predicted. For all good things there is a price to be paid, and couples today need far more skills to help them make appropriate choices than their parents ever did.

Babies are born into all sorts of family situations. There is no doubt that cohabiting couples and single parents are often superb at their job of nurturing their offspring. But there is now growing scientific evidence that, in various ways, children who come from stable marriages do better than their contemporaries. One of the functions of marriage seems to be to provide the most appropriate nest-building in which the next generation can thrive.

At the end of the day, those who do want to have a family, and are able to do so, would find themselves in sympathy – most of the time – with the writer of the Psalm who said, two and a half thousand years ago:

Children are a heritage from the Lord

And the fruit of the womb is his gift.

(Psalm 127, The Marriage Service, p. 149)

In their less pious moments, and particularly as children get older, they may have sympathy for Ogden Nash:

Children aren’t happy with nothing to ignore

And that’s what parents were created for.

(from ‘The Parents’)

Where are you coming from?

Every one of us is both the beneficiary and the victim of our parents. They not only gave us life, but they also gave us our initial way of seeing life. The process of growing up includes making proper judgements about what was good and bad in our upbringing. Hopefully, most of us don’t end up feeling as negative as the former Poet Laureate Philip Larkin. In his celebrated poem ‘This be the verse’, he expressed in no uncertain terms that however well-intentioned our parents are, they mess up our lives. They hand on to us some of the faults and prejudices they inherited from their parents and then add more of their own for good measure. This is an extreme view, but his words are a reminder in strong language of how much our parents influence us. You can easily find the whole poem on the Web.

‘By the time they get to their wedding day, most couples will have honestly discussed their feelings about wanting to have a family. But amazingly some haven’t.’

Craig and Jane both come from happy homes. He was the fourth in a family of five, and she was an only child. Their feelings about childhood and what it means to be a family are radically different, but both have happy memories. In their heart of hearts they both want to reproduce those good memories for any children they might have. But that is not possible: they cannot have one child and several. The decision may be made for them because of practical factors like money, but they really need to tease out what it was that made for their happiness, and how they can come to a joint decision about what they want for their own family.

Helen and Mark, on the other hand, have had very different experiences. Whilst he was part of a relaxed and supportive family, she grew up in a succession of foster homes, some of which were loving and healing for her, but the last of which was a place where she was abused by another child. She could not bear the thought of being less than a perfect parent, and did not think she could live up to the standards she would set herself. So she was dubious about having children at all. He was much more laid back, and knew from his experience that children can cope well with the rough and the smooth, and longed for the family life he knew himself.

The combinations of backgrounds are endless. Every couple has its unique mix. But, unless you really talk about what your childhood has meant, you are less able to make good decisions about what you want for yourselves. You may not be in touch with both your parents. You may not know who one or both of them is. You can idealize both about what you had and what you never had.

Things to talk about and share

What are the best and worst memories of your childhood?

What were the good and bad things about being an only child, or in having brothers and sisters?

What are the things you want to be the same for your children?

What things would you like to be different for them?

Where are you now?

Let us assume for the moment that you don’t have any children. At this point in your relationship, you don’t want any. It takes two to have children, and ideally it takes two not to have them. Do you review your decisions about contraception from time to time? You probably need medical advice as well as discussing your personal preferences. Good decisions are ones made together, and not to please your partner. Sometimes when people are getting married after living together for some time, one partner assumes that this is also a signal that it is time to start a family. But that isn’t necessarily so, and this would be a good time to talk again about your medium- and long-term plans.

The decision to have or not to have children will have wider implications. What will be financially possible? What will it mean in terms of employment? Will one of you give up work to be a full-time carer for your family and, if so, which one of you will it be? A few couples manage to reduce hours for both of them and job-share looking after their family. For many it will be a question of someone else taking care of the child – relatives, a childminder or a workplace nursery. Whatever the decisions, there will be huge changes to the demands on your finances, and to the freedom you have to do as you please. It is probably the most radical change in your lifestyle that you ever have, and for many couples it is stressful as well as rewarding.

Things to talk about and share

Do you want to have children

• soon?

• sometime?

• never?

Why have you made that decision, and does your partner share it?

Are you both happy with your choice of contraception?

If you have children, what are your plans for their day-to-day care?

How will you cope with the increased demands on your time and energy?

Where are you going?

We are very privileged to have the ability to plan our families. The decision about having children is often central to the dreams we have about the long-term shape of our relationships. John and Hilary want to have their children while they are young. Lucy and Michael want to develop their careers before taking time out to have a family. Hugh and Petra are so involved in their careers that they cannot see a time when having children would be appropriate for them. Louis and Freda already have five children between them and feel that having more together would make life over-complicated for everyone.

But plans don’t always work out. People who don’t want children find one is on the way. Most people these days have friends who are having difficulty in conceiving. The figures are quite alarming. One couple in six goes to their doctor to say they are worried. For many of them it is impatience rather than a problem but, nonetheless, the number of people who do have problems of infertility has risen sharply. There is a great deal to be said for talking now about how you would feel if this became your situation. If you don’t discuss it until it is a hot issue, you will then be full of highly charged emotions. Talking about it now in a detached way may help you if the issue arises later. You don’t have to agree later with what you said, but at least it gives you a starting point. Some couples simply want to accept the situation. Others want to look at other options like adoption or fostering. Yet others will want to pursue medical interventions of various kinds. Each of them has a price to pay – in the case of IVF treatments it may be a financial as well as an emotional price. If there is a problem, either in having or not having children, you need to be open enough with each other that you are not secretly taking or giving blame.

In some parts of the world genetic counselling is routinely offered to couples getting married. Unless there is some obvious reason, that is not so for most of us. But tests during pregnancy may reveal possibilities, of varying degrees of certainty, about potential health problems for your child. Again, it is a good idea to have talked about this kind of thing before it is for real. For some, terminating the pregnancy would be utterly unthinkable in any situation, for others it might be a possibility they would seriously consider. Between you there may be differing views. Do you know how each other thinks? It takes a great deal of trust and honesty to be able to face all this but, with increasing numbers of tests available, more and more people will be in this situation. Jill and Tony’s marriage came under great strain when they discovered that he had agreed to a termination only because he thought that is what she wanted, and she had gone ahead only because she thought it was his wish.

Things to talk about and share

How would you feel if you had difficulty in conceiving?

• What would you do in that situation?

How would you feel if you found you were expecting an unplanned child?

• What would you do in that situation?

How would you feel if you were told you might have a handicapped child?

• What would you do in that situation?

How will you share the nurture and care of any children you may have?

• Will you look for support from parenting courses?

For everyone who has children, there needs to be thought about who does what. There is much evidence that, unless we consciously make decisions, we will tend to do what happened to us in our own childhood. The words attributed to King George V provide a grotesque example: ‘My father was frightened of his mother. I was frightened of my father, and I’m damned well going to make sure that my children are frightened of me.’ Most parents find themselves, in the heat of the moment, saying things to their children that they swore they would never say, because they hated it when it was said to them. Under strain, we tend to go back and replay the tapes that were recorded when we were small. There is a huge amount to be gained from learning parenting skills together, so that we share and support each other in a task that is the most daunting and also the most rewarding in the world. One of the prayers in the Common Worship marriage service puts all this on a very high plane. It says to God ‘you enable us to share in your work of creation’ (Prayer 23, p. 167). There is an old Jewish saying that there are three involved in the conception of a child – a man, a woman and the Holy Spirit of God. And, in nurturing our children, every home is a place for spiritual as well as physical, intellectual and emotional growth.