From within the walls of a bleak Nazi prison cell, German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote words of joy and wisdom to his niece and her soon-to-be husband in May 1943.
“Marriage is more than your love for each other,” Bonhoeffer wrote at the conclusion of his letter. “It has a higher dignity and power, for it is God’s holy ordinance, through which He wills to perpetuate the human race till the end of time.
“In your love you see only your two selves in the world,” he added, “but in marriage you are a link in the chain of the generations, which God causes to come and to pass away to His glory, and calls into His kingdom.”
With these words, Bonhoeffer captured a truth worth remembering – namely, that one of the greatest blessings and primary purposes of marriage is parenthood. For decades, our culture has glorified death instead of life, insisting on the so-called “right” to abortion, rather than praising the benefits and blessings of parenthood. For too long, our culture has disregarded the sanctity and value of marriage and parenthood, persuading young men and women to find purpose instead through the excitement of romance and the fulfillment of careers.
For such reasons, parenthood “is increasingly countercultural” in Italy, Chiara Lamberti wrote last fall in WORLD Magazine.
“Italy has been suffering a ‘demographic winter’ for many years,” Lamberti writes, “but 2022 marked a record: New births did not even reach the 400,000 mark, the lowest number since the unification of Italy in 1861.
“It’s a trend across Europe, where birthrates are in free-fall, especially in southern countries like Malta and Spain. France is the outlier. Its fertility rate is the highest, and the government has invested heavily in pro-parenthood policies. Nevertheless, Eurostat predicts 190,000 fewer births across the European Union by 2030. Italy has the third-worst decline among the 27 EU countries. The average number of children per woman of child-bearing age has been below 1.5 for more than 35 years. In 2022, it reached a low of 1.24, far below the average of 2.1 needed for adequate generational replacement. In 2022, 393,000 more people died than were born.”
In China, 11.1 million people died last year, while only 9 million were born. Compared to the previous year, the population fell by 2.1 million in 2023. China ended its “one child policy” in 2015, but new efforts to incentivize childbearing have been unproductive so far. Chinese leaders are perhaps finding it harder than expected to reverse attitudes and worldviews shaped for decades by a culture of death.
“All over the world, birth rates have collapsed, and we face the prospect of a shrinking population,” Robert Whaples wrote last year in National Review. “Over two-thirds of the world’s population lives in countries with birth rates below replacement, including India, China, the U.S., Brazil, and all of Europe. The United Nations projects that the global population will peak near the end of the century, but many demographers now expect that to occur much sooner — perhaps as early as 2050.”
As global statistics reveal the effects of modern society’s culture of death and disregard for parenthood, it is worth remembering the value that Scripture places on parenthood.
It struck me a few years ago that most of God’s people in Scripture were not called to glorious ministries or bountiful careers. Instead, they were called simply to parenthood. From Adam and Eve, to Abraham and Sarah, to Isaac and Rebekah, to Jacob and Leah and to many of the other biblical saints – their greatest contributions to God’s kingdom consisted in having children and teaching them to love God.
In fact, their hope for salvation depended upon parenthood – since God promised the birth of a child who would someday defeat sin and Satan (Gen 3:15) and bless all nations (Gen 12:1-3). It’s no surprise that, in the New Testament, Matthew’s Gospel account begins with a genealogy – a description, to borrow Bonhoeffer’s phrase, of the biblical “chain of the generations” leading up to the birth of our Savior.
The words of Psalm 127 offer much needed wisdom for our own times. The Psalm begins by warning us about the futility of striving, apart from God, for success and stability and safety. “Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain. Unless the Lord watches over the city, the watchman stays awake in vain” (v. 1, ESV). But the Psalm ends with a tribute to parenthood: “Behold, children are a heritage from the Lord, the fruit of the womb a reward” (v. 3, ESV).
Though the impact of our own strivings in this world may quickly vanish, who’s to say what God Himself will achieve for His glory in coming years, decades and centuries through His gift of parenthood? As the Psalmist says elsewhere, “One generation will declare Your works to the next and will proclaim Your mighty acts” (Psalm 145:4, CSB).