You Can Encourage Americans to Have More Kids and Still Be Honest About What That Means

Note: This post was sent exclusively to paid subscribers on March 28. Soon after I published it, the singer Chappell Roan went viral by saying all of the parents she knows are miserable. So it seems like a good idea to unlock this post!

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Last year I wrote a short post about the opportunity for witness that Christians have, given the fact that modern, secular life isn’t really that great. Here’s where I landed the discussion:

Part of the evangelical witness right now should be to point out that modern life stinks. Its technology makes us lonely. Its sexuality makes us empty. Its psychotherapy makes us self-obsessed. Many people are on the brink of oblivion, held back in some cases only by medication or political identity. We struggle to articulate why we should continue to live. Evangelicals should jump in here.

We should jump in to say that technology is not community, and that the human person is not a simulated consciousness but a divinely designed creature which needs the physical world and the physical people that populate it. We should say that friendship doesn’t mean followership.

We should jump in to say that sex is not porn, that consent is not enough, and that marriage is not a straitjacket. We should say that if having as much sex as you want with whomever you want was key to self-fulfillment, our world would look much different. We should say that men need women to be women, and women need men to be men, and both need each other.

This does, however, need a caveat. Yes, cultural apologetics means deconstructing the disappointments and suffering that many people in the post-Christian West are experiencing. But in that task, there may be a temptation to sound appealing to unbelievers by simply flipping their felt problems by 180 degrees. This would mean pointing out that modern life stinks, but over-promising the power of Christianity to make it better.

There are at least two ways to over-promise here. The first way is the way most readers of this newsletter know is bad: prosperity gospel, health-and-wealth, Paula-White-is-the-one-female-preacher-Christian Nationalists-are-OK-with type stuff. "Become a Christian and you’ll get promoted, you’ll get the hot spouse, you’ll get the life you always wanted.” I don’t think I have a huge readership in the sectors of evangelicalism that would openly endorse this. But it bears mentioning anyway: This is bad and those who peddle it should feel bad (and repent).

The second way, however, is something I suspect is already going on with more doctrinally orthodox evangelicals. The second way to over-promise the benefits of Christianity to a garbage modern existence is to play down the very real sacrifies that Christian love calls us to. In our eagerness to apply the medicine of Christianity to the ills of loneliness, disillusionment, and despair, there is a very real threat that we are dishonest with ourselves and with others about just how medicinal Christianity can feel.

The big example I have in mind is having and raising children. In our current cultural moment, a lot of people are deciding to skip starting a family. This is sometimes blamed on the economy, sometimes on climate change, but the better explanation is that wealth, mobility, and shifts in gender roles constitute a massive plausibility structure for a childfree life. However, deliberate childlessness has risen almost parallel with stunning levels of loneliness and anxiety. As lifestyles have become more independent from family life, with its obligations, stresses, and its intrinsically conservatizing effects, they’ve also become more prone to self-referential despair.

Christians are noticing this. And the messaging has, appropriately, been something like, “Taste and see.” Christians and those on the Right have been pumping out features, essays, podcasts, and more, encouraging modern people that there are depths of joy and meaning they can find through caring for kids.

I count myself firmly among this group. My wife and I welcomed our firstborn just 14 months after our wedding. We now have three beautiful children, and we thank God daily for his kindness and grace to us. The lines have fallen for us in very pleasant places.

But it’s also true that having kids is hard.

I don’t think Christians eager to promote family life should stumble over that statement. For one thing, it’s just true. Raising children is difficult. There are genuinely valuable things that raising children takes away from you, sometimes for a season, sometimes forever. Late last year, my wife and I had to hold on to sanity while our toddler badly regressed in his sleep. That’s a banal example of a temporary season, but it’s very real.

As children get older, there are educational and spiritual choices that take money, time, effort, and stress. None of this goes away for the parent, ever. It changes forms over time. But to have children at all means to chain yourself, in a very real sense, to someone else, someone with no power or agency to help you in the beginning and an enormous amount of power to break your heart later.

Choosing children means not choosing other things. There’s a reason that Time Magazine cover looks like a self-care ad. Calm, relaxation, peace and quiet—those are exactly the kind of things that get axed most quickly in a life with little humans. Financially, the sacrifices are massive; there are lots of people whose purchasing power would be increased tenfold, perhaps even a hundredfold, if it weren’t for all the stuff they have to provide their children.

And, to be clear, there’s no cheat code out of this. I’ve sometimes seen people make the argument that parenting is actually quite easy and inexpensive, once you divest yourself of certain cultural expectations. Punish disobedience quickly and severely, and it won’t be hard. Refuse to buy new toys, and it won’t be expensive. This is, respectfully, delusional. Strictness and austerity do not magically relieve your brain or your heart from the burden of raising kids (and I suspect that people chasing relief through these means end up worse off than they would be otherwise).

There is no relief from the burden. Once you are a parent, it’s not coming off. You walk heavier. You rarely run. Your kids will bring forth tears and anger you didn’t know you had in you. They will trigger shame and worry you’re not sure you can hold up under. They will take more than they seem to give. And there will be days you can’t pretend otherwise.

And…that’s OK. Because, somehow, some way, in defiance of modern life’s math, it’s worth it. Because the sacrifices of love are always worth it. Laying down one’s life isn’t just a hobby for the extremely pious or extremely desperate. It’s the reality at the center of the universe. The days of sleeplessness, of cleaning up vomit, of discipline without results, of worry and heartache, of intrusion and limitation—those days come together in the shape of a cross. And the cross is where love lives. In fact, it’s the only place love lives.

I could go on and on about kids are worth it. It would be my joy to do that. But that’s not really what I’m getting at here. My point is this: Christians should not fudge the truth about sacrificial love. We should be realistic about the reasons that modern people skip children. Before immediately twisting our faces and calling them selfish, we should acknowledge how much, especially in a society like ours, a life of self-focus, a life of financial plenty, a life of travel and luxury and adventure sounds amazing. It sounds like what we were made for. In the moments where parents are fortunate enough to steal away for a dinner or overnight, the allure of a life without the pressure of downward attention is obvious. We get it. God gets it, too.

Cultural apologetics can say these true things and still call on people to escape the prison of self. There’s no point in worrying that if we’re too honest about the sacrifices of parenting, people will be dissuaded. I happen to think that many modern people are afflicted by fear as much or maybe more than selfishness. They are averse to a life of love out of a terror that such a life will strip them bare and give them nothing in return. The best antidote to that fear is to listen to people who live the life of love say, “Yes, it’s hard, but you won’t believe what lies on the other side. I’ve seen what you fear, and it’s real, but it doesn’t compare to everything I was given.”