Saved Through Childbearing

'There are economic and societal implications that accompany the mainstreaming of the childless life, of course. But there are spiritual ones as well.'

From Crisis

By Rob Marco, MA(Theol)

Children have a way of stretching you beyond what you think you can bear. They are both blessing and cross; joy you never thought you could experience and pain you wish you never did.

I’m not a sci-fi aficionado, but Alfonso Cuarón’s 2006 dystopian film Children of Men has been hitting close to home now—almost twenty years after its screen debut. Set in London in 2027, a worldwide infertility epidemic has prevented any new births from occurring for eighteen years, and humankind faces extinction. Refugees stream into the police state of Britain (the last stable government), and pro-immigrant underground resistance movements are working to advance their agenda.

Amid all this, the protagonist, a jaded civil servant named Theo, is kidnapped by the Resistance and forced to protect a young refugee named Kee, who is pregnant—the only woman in the world with child. The future of the human race depends on her giving birth, and Theo is sworn to protect her so that she is not co-opted by the government and stripped of her baby for political purposes.

It is a thought-provoking modern-day spin on the nativity narrative in Matthew’s and Luke’s Gospels: a young refugee finds herself miraculously with child. Her husband is sworn to protect her and her baby from an ill-willed king. They travel in secret. Wise men come from afar to behold the sight. The child born will be a savior to the world, to redeem mankind from death and destruction, all of which was foretold by the prophets.

A haunting line from the film comes from Kee’s midwife, reflecting on the beginning of the infertility crisis in 2009, when people stopped getting pregnant and giving birth. “As the sound of the playgrounds faded,” she said, “the despair set in. Very odd what happens in a world without children’s voices.”

It seems as if yesterday’s sci-fi is today’s reality show. Over 65 million lives and counting have been lost to abortion in the United States since Roe v. Wade in 1973—and more than 1.5 billion worldwide since 1980. We manufacture human life in test tubes, freeze or destroy embryos, bank sperm, and take a morning-after pill to terminate a pregnancy after contraception fails. Governments enact policies to limit children per household and force sterilization and abortions when citizens don’t comply, while black-market surrogacy is thriving.

Human life is commodified and exploited by merciless systems of production, and traditional nuclear families are in the minority. Meanwhile, Europe faces a population disaster due to plummeting birth rates, the economic implications of which are starting to be realized. We have taken human life for granted, and the piper expects to be paid.

After the Dobbs v. Jackson ruling, a recent study found that the rate of women 18 to 30 getting tubal ligations doubled in 16 months, while males getting vasectomies tripled. Unlike the pill or barrier contraceptive methods, these sterilizations are largely permanent. Teenagers and those in their twenties are making decisions to close the door on their fertility for good, and seemingly without remorse. 

The trend of an intentionally chosen “child-free life” has correspondingly been on the rise as well, increasing ten percentage points from 2018 to 2023. Alarmingly, 57 percent of those surveyed in a 2023 Pew study stated that their reasons for choosing this lifestyle were that they “simply didn’t want kids.” Only 26 percent of adults surveyed said that having children was extremely or very important to live a fulfilling life. Most said that not having kids had made it easier for them to “afford the things they wanted, make time for their interests and save for the future.” 

There are economic and societal implications that accompany the mainstreaming of the childless life, of course. But there are spiritual ones as well. If one were to scour the Christian Scriptures for the most triggering polemics to modern sensibilities, one may come up with a few choice verses: Romans 1:27 (“Men with men working that which is filthy”); Ephesians 5:22 (“Let women be subject to their husbands”); Matthew 19:24 (“A rich man shall hardly enter into the kingdom of heaven”). 

But there is one underrated verse in Paul’s first letter to Timothy on par with the aforementioned that is sure to rile passions: “She [the woman] shall be saved through childbearing” (1 Timothy 2:15). 

While Eve closed the door on grace in heeding the deceitful words of the serpent in the Garden of Eden, the sterilization was not irreversible. Yahweh could have struck her and her husband dead, but instead He subjects her to her husband’s power and ascribes sorrow to her conceptions (Genesis 3:16). St. John Chrysostom, in his Homilies on First Timothy, notes: 

It is as if he [St. Paul] had said, You women, be not cast down, because your sex has incurred blame. God has granted you another opportunity of salvation, by the bringing up of children, so that you are saved, not only by yourselves, but by others. (9) 

What are we to make of Paul’s proscription—that only women who physically bring a child into the world will secure their eternal reward? Of course not. Not to be neglected is the continuation of verse 15, that women shall be saved through childbearing “if she continue in faith, and love, and sanctification, with sobriety.”

Children have a way of stretching you beyond what you think you can bear. They are both blessing and cross; joy you never thought you could experience and pain you wish you never did. They will nail your hands to a cross because they want a cookie and will make you hand them the mallet. Sometimes they are chosen, and sometimes they just come anyway. Paul was speaking plainly and in truth to Timothy: children will save you first, and then give hope to the rest of the human race, provided you actually do bear them. Children are your second chance: to learn the wager inherent in faith, the meaning in love, the pain in sanctification, and the clarity that comes with sobriety. Children are the subjects that become the teachers. 

And that is my concern, from a spiritual perspective, for the intentionally child-free: that in preferencing “affording the things they want, making time for their interests, and saving for the future,” women (and men) forgoing children have listened to the serpent and chosen a wide path not leading to life. In giving preferential treatment to the self, rather than the other, one has “already received their reward.” The restaurant dinners, the vacations, the 401k balances then become like pillars of salt, cairns dotting the landscape of the dystopian future ushered in by the childless generation.

We will wonder why the path we traverse on the way to the grave has become so eerily quiet, so disturbingly orderly, so squeakily sterile, and so incredibly impoverished. When the despair sets in, it will be like a blanket of fresh January snow—soft, still, silent…like a muffled scream. “Yes,” we will say, “very odd what happens in a world without children’s voices.” Very odd indeed.