What does the Bible say about the number of children in a family?

Question:

There is such a question that is treated differently by Christians. Those who have 6, 7 or 8 children condemn those who have only 1 or 2. I know that the Bible has got answer to this question as well. For example, I have two children. Both of them were born very difficult through surgeries. Then doctors bound the organs of my wife, forbidding her to have children. What about the sisters that go to doctors deliberately to have surgeries not to give birth anymore? Is this similar to abortion? If not, why then others keep saying that it is? (For example, I think it is important planning the family with your wife…)

Children are a blessing

Unfortunately, we live times when children are received as a burden. When people lived even more difficult, most of them received children as a blessing from God. Today, people, worried of their wealth, don’t see children as a blessing. Only when they are old realize that all their effort was in vain, because there is no one to inherit the result of their effort. If they had been attentive at the Word of God, when It says:

Unless the LORD builds the house, they labor in vain who build it; unless the LORD guards the city, the watchman keeps awake in vain. It is vain for you to rise up early, to retire late, to eat the bread of painful labors; for He gives to His beloved even in his sleep. Behold, children are a gift of the LORD, the fruit of the womb is a reward. Like arrows in the hand of a warrior, so are the children of one’s youth. How blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them; they will not be ashamed when they speak with their enemies in the gate. (Psalm 127:1–5)(NASB)

Don’t hasten to accuse

We can find no place in the Bible where God imposes us to conceive and to give birth to a certain number of children. And then, there are many factors to decide the number of children in a family, and there are many who want them, but can’t have them. Nevertheless, the number of children is a thing decided by parents and no one has the right to step in, so that it may happen for him/her to accuse exactly those who need comfort. There are many couples who can not have children.

In these last days, people tend to disconsider those who have many children. Now I and my wife are with a couple who have risen 5 children. How blessed these people are. But, while we were eating, this couple told us how often they were mocked by others because they had many children.

When my wife was pregnant with the third child, there were even some women from church who said: “Why do you need him?” This brought us much grief. After all, the child God gave us and who is such a great blessing and joy for us all now, was not going to eat at their table, but at ours.

Regarding the biblical perspective about contraception, I have published an article and I invite you to read it.

I have also published an article where I presented what God says about abortion.

Translated by Felicia Djugostran