Childlessness

Keith and Pauline Johns (Caterham)

We write as a Christian married couple experiencing the worst case scenario for many couples in that we are not able to have children. Our reflection on our experience is written for those who are childless but who wanted to have children. This article is not and could not have been the immediate response to our situation, but the working through of much inward pain and bitter questioning over years. There are no easy answers! Every couple's experience of childlessness is different and children are wanted and missed for many good and not such good reasons, so we are not trying to share our experience to say this is how it should be. We are simply saying this is how we have come to think and hope it might be a help to some. 

The deep emotions that we experience are caused by the fact that our whole biology is wrapped up with survival and reproduction - our natural and basic instincts are to want to reproduce ourselves. You know this all too clearly when you can't! We wanted to hold our own children in our arms and we thought we would make reasonably good parents. We wanted grandchildren for our parents; we wanted someone to care for us in our old age and to pass on something of ourselves to the next generation. You cannot spiritualise the biology away - we are real human beings designed to reproduce and failure in this area feels like profound failure. 

Our faith does not alter the feelings of alienation from society, even church society. It is only those people without families (for whatever reason) who notice how family orientated most churches are. In some ways this is right, because society is built around family. However, we who do not conform to this norm find that church life can increase our feelings of inadequacy. This is not necessarily insensitivity on the part of others; it is simply that they cannot know what it is like to sit where we sit. Our pain has undoubtedly affected our psyches at a very profound level - we are not the same people we would have been if we had had children. We are damaged and possibly quirky in this area! 

It is difficult for us to respond to questions about our lack of family. This feels very personal to us and we don't want to discuss it. The only people we have ever opened up to are those who are also childless. People for whom it is not a problem can be very insensitive and assume that you can easily adopt children or tweak a few medical knobs and all will be well. Unfortunately, the alternatives to producing your own children naturally are never straightforward and involve much heart searching. Each couple has to come to their own conclusions.  In our case we felt that the kind of help available to us - and we did investigate some possibilities - would have

taken us down routes that we did not wish to travel as Christians.  We are thankful to God that although we have wanted children, we have never felt that we must have them at any price or by any means. 

Some Christian attitudes to the family are not guaranteed to help. So much thinking on the whole subject of families and their importance comes from the Old Testament without taking account of the radical dimension added to Biblical revelation by the new covenant.  Physical family is not the priority in the kingdom in this world or in the world to come. Jesus put it most clearly in Mark 3:32-35:

A crowd was sitting around him, and they told him, "Your mother and brothers are outside looking for you."  "Who are my mother and my brothers?" he asked.

Then he looked at those seated in a circle around him and said, "Here are my mother and my brothers!  Whoever does God's will is my brother and sister and mother. [NIV]

We have taken much comfort from the fact that it seems it was not necessary for the most 'whole' human being there has ever been to marry and have children. 

It is difficult when people have said to us that they will make it a matter of prayer. We have prayed for years that God would give us children and we have not had children. Is our faith not great enough? What takes greater faith? To believe that God is good and will only give good gifts to his children when he gives you what you want or to believe that God is good when he does not? We have struggled with our own expectations of how God should work and have been bitterly disappointed and angry when he has not. What has had to change is our understanding of what the believer can expect from the Lord - he never promised disciples 'happy families'! 

In our better moments the effects we can see in our own lives are not all negative. Our experience of loss does help us to identify with others' experience of loss. Our sense of failure and inadequacy makes us more in tune with others feeling those emotions. We can share with others who do not conform for whatever reasons to church norms. We can and have had an independent insight into what is happening in other people's parent/child relationships which has sometimes been useful for individuals. It has been good for us to stand back from the world's view that having children is a right. It helps us see more clearly when children become the family 'gods' as they do in many families, even believing families. 

It has also helped us to have looser ties with the material world, though we still struggle like everyone else in this area. We have no one to build up treasures for and it does help us grasp less tightly on the things we own and the things we aim for in this world. It does bring eternity more sharply into view. When we think of our ultimate aims and purpose we are forced to think in terms of heaven and spiritual realities, because we cannot invest the same emotional energy in the future of children or grandchildren. Perhaps the Lord designed it this way, because he knew that we would get too wrapped up in family matters! He plans all things in life for our good and ultimately it must be our spiritual good, he has in mind. 

It is all too easy for us to become selfish in our thinking that our problem is greater than anyone else's and that we deserve maximum recognition. The reality is that everyone has some burden that they carry and that others have heartaches that are much greater than our own. We cannot make our own experience the defining experience of how Christian life should be. We genuinely give thanks when others have children and enjoy having children round us - not to do so would mean that we cut ourselves off from so much that is good and a blessing from God. 

We have shared our experience in the hope that it might be of some help.  We are anxious not to make a big issue out of something which, in the full light of eternity, will not be the problem then that it is here and now.  If readers of this article feel that we could be of any further help they are welcome to contact us.

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