The Spiritual Part of Babymaking

In telling about his harrowing journey to Ethiopia to adopt four children, Motte Brown talks about the challenges (that's putting it mildly) that he, and his wife Beth, encountered along the way. The details brought tears to my eyes as I imagined what it must have been like to endure everything from lost luggage, to formula and diaper shortages, to the near death of one of their nine-month-old twins. But as bad as all those visible hardships were, what really struck me about the 3-part-post was the trauma of the invisible:

With the benefit of hindsight, I now know I was too cavalier about the "Are you ready?" question. I expected it to be painful. But not so much that we would question the very decision we made to adopt. That is where we were. And that is exactly where I believe Satan planned for us to be. John Piper has a sermon on the power God allows Satan in this world.

The fact that Satan has such power in the world should give a kind of seriousness to our lives which unbelievers don't have. It ought not to make us paranoid or fearful, but sober and earnest in our prayers and persistently conscious of needing God's power. When the enemy is supernatural, so must the weapons be.

The enemy was undoubtedly not happy about a loving Christian family saving the lives of four children, both physically, and by God's grace, spiritually. They saved them through adoption. But aren't Christian couples who conceive and bear children and then, according to Ephesians 6, bring them up in the training of the Lord doing the same thing? When believers conceive new life and plan to become parents for God's glory, they are no less in need of spiritual protection than the Browns were in Ethiopia.

Whether you're thinking about starting your family, already pregnant with your first baby, or like us, in the midst of raising your kids already born, it's important to follow Paul's urging, later in that same chapter in Ephesians, to:

Put on the full armor of God so that you can take your stand against the devil's schemes. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand. (Ephesians 6:10-18)

A Conversation with Todd and Angie Smith

Last Friday I had the pleasure of interviewing Todd and Angie Smith (of Selah and Bring the Rain fame). They were at Focus on the Family for the monthly chapel service and agreed to give 30 minutes to the Boundless Show.

When we went into the studio, I was praying I'd be able to make it through the conversation without crying. Theirs is a story of great loss, as well as miraculous intervention--it's near impossible to read and hear about it without tearing up. We had a candid conversation about their fourth daughter Audrey Caroline, who died just two-and-a-half hours after she was born.

Thankfully, in addition to being a fantastic storyteller, Angie's hilarious. So we laughed a lot, too. And Todd sang for us live. It's an engaging, entertaining and encouraging show, especially for anyone dealing with the disappointments and setbacks of trying to start or grow their family.

Angie's blog is wildly popular, striking a chord with women all over the world. Through the telling of their story, they've been able to minister to countless thousands. After hearing them, I think you'll understand why. You can listen here.

Wall Street Journal: Babies are Human Capital

The editorial page of the Wall Street Journal made an eloquent connection between Nancy Pelosi's contraception policy and the population bust in Europe and Asia:

Ms. Pelosi's remarks ignore the importance of human capital, which is the ultimate resource. Fewer babies would move the U.S. in the demographic direction of Europe and Asia. On the Continent, birth rates already are effectively zero, and economists are predicting labor shortages in the years ahead. In Japan, where the population is aging very fast, workers are now encouraged to go home early and procreate. Japan is projected to lose 21% of its population by 2050.

The age and growth rate of a nation help determine its economic prosperity. A smaller workforce can result in less overall economic output. Without enough younger workers to replace retirees, health and pension costs can become debilitating. And when domestic markets shrink, so does capital investment. Whatever one's views on taxpayer subsidies for contraception, as economic stimulus the idea is loopy.

Japan Encourages Workers to Have Babies as Economic Stimulus

While Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi encourages fewer babies to stimulate the American economy, Japan is doing the opposite. According to a CNN report today, Japanese workers are actually being encouraged to go home and multiply:

Japan is in the midst of an unprecedented recession, so corporations are being asked to work toward fixing another major problem: the country's low birthrate.

At 1.34, the birthrate is well below the 2.0 needed to maintain Japan's population, according to the country's Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare.

Keidanren, Japan's largest business group, with 1,300 major international corporations as members, has issued a plea to its members to let workers go home early to spend time with their families and help Japan with its pressing social problem.

I find Japan's approach to be an odd intersection between government and the bedroom, but it's the kind of thing that's happening in other countries such as Singapore, Italy, Romania, Russia and numerous other places in Europe and Asia. The great irony is that many of these nations are left to make awkward governmental pleas for fertility as a reversal to decades of promoting the same anti-baby policies that Pelosi is advocating in the United States.  It's almost as if Pelosi wants one of the last industrial nations with a relatively healthy fertility rate to "catch up" with the rest of the world.

Pelosi Blames Babies for Economic Woes

A mother of five, grandmother of six believes she's found the cure to what ails our sluggish economy: more contraception. In her defense of adding birth control funding to the economic "stimulus" plan, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi said on This Week with George Stephanopoulos,

Well, the family planning services reduce cost. They reduce cost. The states are in terrible fiscal budget crises now and part of what we do for children's health, education and some of those elements are to help the states meet their financial needs. One of those - one of the initiatives you mentioned, the contraception, will reduce costs to the states and to the federal government.

Yes, there's a lot of bad news about babies being born outside of marriage. And yes, those out-of-wedlock births do cause a strain on state budgets. But Pelosi's proposed solution to that problem is straight from the Planned Parenthood playbook. And it's no solution at all.

In a 2005 column in The Washington Post, Economist Robert J. Samuelson explained why the opposite is true:

It’s hard to be a great power if your population is shriveling. Europe as we know it is going out of business. … Western Europe’s population grows dramatically grayer, projects the U.S. Census Bureau. Now about one-sixth of the population is 65 and older. By 2030, that could be one-fourth and by 2050, almost one-third.

According to information from the Demographic Winter documentary,

By the mid-point of this century, 16% of the world’s population will be over 65. By 2040, there will be 400 million elderly Chinese.

If present low birthrates persist, the European Union estimates there will be a continent-wide shortfall of 20 million workers by 2030.

Who will operate the factories and farms in the Europe of the future? Who will develop the natural resources? Where will Russia find the soldiers to guard the frontiers of the largest nation on Earth?

Who will care for a graying population? A burgeoning elderly population combined with a shrinking work force will lead to a train-wreck for state pension systems.

This only skims the surface of the way demographic decline will change the face of civilization. Even the environment will be adversely impacted. With severely strained public budgets, developed nations will no longer be willing to shoulder the costs of industrial clean-up or a reduction of CO2 emissions.

Pelosi's "solution" to our economic "crisis" will have the opposite effect. But even that's not the worst of it. In her striving to bolster our contraceptive culture, she's willing to deny millions of women the very choice that has brought her the most joy. She is the same woman who once proclaimed, "Nothing in my life will ever, ever compare to being a mom."

We've seen this before. Hostility toward babies born in less than ideal circumstances. It's the mindset of Pharaoh. The mindset of Herod. And to what end? If Pelosi's plan succeeds, who won't be born?

Encouraging the Blessing of Children

Listen to Russell Moore interview Steve on the Albert Mohler show about the challenges and opposition to having babies. It's not an ideal time or culture for starting a family. But then it never has been. Listen  here. 

Do Christians view children and families as a blessing from the Lord? Or have we, like the culture around us, bought into the idea that children are just another ‘lifestyle option’ for married couples? On today’s program, guest host Russell Moore welcomes Steve Watters to the program. Steve and Candice Watters are the authors of Start Your Family: Inspiration for Having Babies.

Green Babies

Is having babies incompatible with being a good steward of the planet? Writing on the Web site Eco Child's Play, Jamie Ervin says no. In her post "Why Environmentalism Should not be a Factor in Family Planning," she disagrees with those who have what she calls a “save the earth, don’t breed” mentality. "IMO," she writes, "this mentality places a greater emphasis on animal rights and earth over HUMAN LIFE and Family."

Well said.

Instead of advocating baby reductions, Jamie encourages people who care about the planet to have green babies.

I believe that we should be the people raising MORE CHILDREN. By the very nature of parenting, I am raising children who are conscious of the impact of everything they do on the earth. They CARE about conservation and reducing consumption.

I didn't wander through the site enough to see what gets covered under the tagline of "green parenting for non-toxic, healthy homes," but I found much to appreciate. Even though the commenters on the blog disagreed, Jamie is insightful to see care for the earth as compatible with having a family, and babies as a source for renewal instead of a threat.

Random Celebrity Comments about Having Babies

"Never will a time come when the most marvelous recent invention is as marvelous as a newborn baby." Carl Sandburg

"It's like everything's fresh and new. Life becomes like looking through a child's eyes. As parents, you have an opportunity to see things fresh again." TobyMac

"Everything changed for me when she was born. Everything. You understand why wars are fought, you understand why men want to own land, you understand why women are so smart, because they have to be... It really did turn my life upside down." Bono (on the birth of his first child)

"There are some exceptional individuals who are able to reach for the sublime by making music, painting pictures--or playing baseball, but for ordinary mortals like myself, it's often a child who helps us 'touch the face of God.'" Sylvia Ann Hewlett

"It is no small thing when they who are so fresh from God, love us." Charles Dickens

"Babies are always more trouble than you thought--and more wonderful." Charles Osgood

"[Parenting] is a journey fraught with potential pain and disappointment, but also unspeakable joy and satisfaction." Dr. James Dobson

Bluebabies, Strawbabies and other Good Words

One of my favorite things about a child just learning to talk is the creative way they pronounce words. Most recently, it was our 2-year-old reaching out for the pints of blueberries I'd gotten on sale at the grocery store. "Bluebabies, bluebabies!" he demanded. Not sure what he was after, I looked to see him up on his tip-toes, reaching for the precious fruit. I gave him a few. Not enough. A few more. Still no good. He ate the entire package. At least they're full of anti-oxidants. That's what I tried to remember when, a few hours later, the bluebabies had done their work on his diaper.

Bluebabies. Strawbabies. Raspbabies. That's what he likes to eat just before we say "good might" for the evening and take him upstairs to "Rock!" and sing "Twinkle." Precious.

Of course once they start talking, they rarely stop. Except at night when (if) they're asleep.

Kids Don't Fit (Easily)

I used to think I could "fit" kids into my life. You know, my perfectly ordered, and orderly, life. I even wrote articles about it. Now, four kids later, I've had to do a few reality checks. I'm the one doing most of the fitting these days (not into my old jeans, mind you. It took nine months to outgrow them, surely I'm due more than two months to get back to where I started).

Thankfully, words online can be rethought and revisited. Last week Boundless published my new and revised vision for how we can make room in our lives for babies.

Rethinking the Pill

Carl Djerassi is having second thoughts about the pill. That's not so unusual. Lots of couples start out their marriage using it and later decide to toss it in exchange for the possibility that sex might lead to conception. But Djerassi's different. He's the guy who invented the pill. More accurately, Djerassi is the Austrian chemist who co-created the earliest version of it. With the benefit of hindsight, he's dismayed at the way his version of contraception has made it possible to disconnect sex and children. Not to mention the way Austria's populaion is plummeting. Now he's on a mission to help Austrians who "freely contracept ... wake up" to the downside of their actions.

Apparently it's not enough to "enjoy their schnitzels while leaving the rest of the world to get on with it."

Exactly.

The Big Gap

The promise of "planned parenthood" gives the impression that a man and woman have a great amount of control over family building. While there is quite a lot couples can do to control not having children, the implied promise that a planned approach can help couples have the number of children that's right for them has proven disappointing. A variety of contraceptive approaches now help couples not have more children than they planned on, but the perception of complete control is increasingly leaving more couples having children at a rate below what they intended. Only 2 percent of the respondents to a World Values Survey said they didn't want to have any children, but current demographics show 20 percent of couples ending up without children. Additionally, 3 percent of survey respondents said they only wanted one child while 16 percent of couples end up limited to having one child.

We've know numerous couples who've faced the disappointment of this gap and wish they had been more intentional about their approach. While planning how not to have a houseful of kids, they ended up falling short of the kids they hoped they could have.

Financial Crash Simplifies Approach to Babies

We're still finding out what exactly happened to the American economy last fall (2008) and what the ramifications are for our day-to-day lives. Writing in the Wall Street Journal this weekend, Peggy Noonan (former speechwriter for Ronald Reagan) made an interesting observation about a change in attitudes toward babies:

...everything changed in 2008. A new economic era, begun by a terrible and still barely fathomable crash, is here, and many of us sense deep down that things will never be the same, that the past quarter-century's fabulous abundance—it was the richest time in the history of man—is over. Novelists of our time will, one hopes, attempt to catch what just passed and is passing, try to capture what it was and keep it for history, as F. Scott Fitzgerald caught the Roaring Twenties, as Thackeray did England's 19th century in "Vanity Fair," as Tom Wolfe did the beginning of the age of abundance, in "Bonfire of the Vanities."

I offer in a spirit of encouragement a free image, or observation. At a certain point in the '00s, I began to notice, on the east side of Manhattan, that the 3-week-old infants, out for the first time in their sleek black Mercedes-like strollers, were amazingly, almost alarmingly, perfect. Perfect round heads, huge perfect eyes, none of the dents, bruises and imperfections that are normal and that tend to accompany birth. I would ask friends: Why are babies perfect now, how did that happen? The answers were the usual: a healthy, well-fed populace, etc. Then a friend said: "These are the children of the scheduled C-sections of the affluent. They are scooped out, perfect." They were little superbabies whose handsome, investment banking, asset-bundling, financial-instrument-creating parents commanded even Nature.

But the death of Lehman Brothers was "the day Wall Street died," as the Journal put it this week, and the day the great abundance did, essentially, too. That is a very big thing to happen in a single year. The proper attitude with which to approach the new reality? Consider it "a nudge from God," a priest said this week. Consider him to be telling us what's important and what's not, what you need and what you don't, what—who—can be relied on, and can't.

Getting Your Marriage Healthy for Starting a Family

Starting a family will stretch a marriage.  That stretching has the potential to deepen the purpose and sweeten the friendship of your marriage.  Having a baby, however, isn't the magic solution to turning a bad marriage into a good one.  If you've been struggling with your spouse, we want to recommend a book that our publisher is releasing the same day that our book comes out.  It's called The Marriage Turnaround and it was written by Mitch Temple, a friend and colleague at Focus on the Family. Here's a description of the book from his Website:

Most marriage books and speakers address the topic of marriage problems from a reactive standpoint -- symptoms rather than root causes. The emphasis seems to be on changing behavior without getting to the thinking, mindset and beliefs driving the behavior. Yet most destructive patterns in marriage stem from destructive myths, thinking and attitudes.

Common myths in marriage today include: "I can change my spouse ..." "My marriage is about meeting needs ..." "As long as we are happy ..." "We can't have a successful marriage ..." "It doesn't matter how we treat each other...."

Such distorted thinking destroys good marriages.

The Marriage Turnaround takes a fresh, practical, humorous approach in tackling marriage thinking, attitude and behavior problems. Whether you are about to be married, just married or been married for years, the insights based on over 25 years of experience and wisdom will benefit you and your spouse.

Mitch frequently makes the point that one of the best things parents can give kids is a healthy relationship with their spouse.  We believe Mitch's book is a great resource for that purpose.

Partial Nesting

Our idea of a nest took shape a few months after we got married when we read an article in Time magazine called the “Young and the Nested.” It described millions of couples our age who were settling down—leaving their slacker Generation X attitudes behind in order to decorate homes, have dinner parties, and do similar big people stuff. “Weary of kicking up their heels, they have turned to settling in with the same zeal they once gave barhopping,” the author wrote. “Nesting means you get to trade a crazy public space for a place where you can define who you are,” a couple from St. Louis, Mo., told the writer.

Ann Clurman, a partner at Yankelovich’s MONITOR generational study, offered some perspective on what motivated Gen Xers to nest: “They are the first generation to be scheduled from their earliest play dates; to view school, even grade school, as a ruthless competition; to enter the work force unsure of where they’re going but clear enough that the destination is the top. And now they’re rebelling in their own way--not in the streets but back to hearth and home.”

We saw ourselves in the cultural trend that article captured. Not that we ever had a wild streak to settle down from, but that our desire for hearth and home was part of a larger movement. We had context for our longing to channel the restless energy of our single years into an effort to make a home for ourselves in the world. The term “nesters’ stuck with us as something more descriptive than any generational label.

While the “Young and the Nested” article had much to say about the quest for hearth and home among young couples, a primary focus of the story was the growth and youthful re-orientation of the nesting industry. It described how 20-somethings were embracing hardware and kitchenware stores that had previously targeted older customers. Places like Pottery Barn, Restoration Hardware, Williams Sonoma, and Crate and Barrel gave our generation visions of a nest that looked a lot more like the ones our grandparents and great-grandparents knew than the odd nesting stuff we knew from the 70s and 80s. Buying into that vision of a more traditional craftsman period, we spent a lot of time in upscale showrooms buying candles and sconces, mirrors and kitchenware, lamps and rugs, desks and occasional tables.

Around that time, we found a description of real nest building that reminded us a lot of our approach back then. Consider how the male and female common tailorbirds split up their work: “Nest building for the Common Tailorbird is a job undertaken by the female. The male can be seen escorting the female on her material collection rounds.” The description continued in something of a Martha Stewart tone:

The ‘cover’ of the nest is formed by the female who meticulously pierces an equal number of holes on each leaf edge with her finely pointed bill as a needle. Spider silk or fine grass serves as thread. Stitching back and forth through the holes, the bird joins each leaf seam together. Fine strands of grass are used to weave the cup nest inside the folded leaf. Once that is completed, feathers and other materials are used to line the inside of the nest to keep the nestlings warm.

The big glaring difference between the common tailorbird and us is that our nest building wasn’t quite so focused on “nestlings.” We were pursuing hearth and home, but the vision we were chasing was more centered around the stuff of the nest than on its original purpose. A bird watcher would find it strange to see two birds create an exquisite nest and then never lay eggs in it. But that’s what we were doing. We were making a beautiful nest, but we weren’t having any nestlings.