BaBies shape our souls
would be enough for them, 16 percent find themselves limited to one.
Even though couples marry later today and need more time to finish their
Babies require great care-especially as they emerge into toddlers, kids education and kick off their careers, their window of natural fertility
and then teenagers. The parenting enterprise is not for the faint of heart. It remains fixed. Women today are surprised to find that their fertility begins
is grueling at many levels. This can be intimidating for many couples that its decline when they're in their late twenties, accelerates its drop when
don't feel very mature yet. But it's in committing to the needs of a new life they're in their mid-thirties and plummets when they're in their forties.
that couples are stretched into greater maturity. Children shape our souls A couple's age also affects their ability to keep up with children. While
like few other things in life, conditioning us to be more other-centered and couples that wait later to get started might have more money in their bank
to take a longer view of life. account, they're more likely to find themselves exhausted by parenting
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much quicker than younger parents are. This is also true for grandparents.
Children need grandparents who can get down on the floor to play with
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them ... and still be able to get back up.
Many couples reading today's headlines are convinced that this world is
too crazy to bring children into it. And you can't blame them. Trying to raise
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a child in our current culture can feel like trying to raise a flower in the crack m
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of a New York City sidewalk. But while fear and anxiety are a natural Marriage therapists today often seek to correct the myth that having a
emotion for would-be parents, the choice to have a baby is an enduring baby will make a couple happier. They point out correctly that babies add
and courageous encounter with hope. tremendous new stress to a marriage and aren't a good prescription for
In his book The Mystery of Children, Mike Mason describes babies as turning a bad marriage into a good one. What couples don't hear enough,
"renewers, groundbreakers and world-shakers, bearers of new seed, however, is that letting their love spill over into a new life can give them a
heralds of a new age." Instead of letting the problems around us frighten fresh sense of purpose within their marriage. Parenting will require couples
us from having children, we should appreciate the potential new life brings to adjust expectations about their sex life, their sleep patterns and their
for fixing those problems. ability to take off on last minute dates. But the parenting mission can
the timing of BaBies matters
mature and sweeten a marriage over the years when a couple commits to
send their love into the next generation.
Extended life spans and fertility technology give couples the sense they
can put off starting a family. The World Values Survey, however, reveals a
Maybe 2009 will be your year.
growing gap between desire and reality when it comes to having children.
While only 2 percent of couples say they don't want children, 20 percent of Steve Watter, director of Family Formation at Focus on the Family, and his wife, Candice,
couples end up childless. And while 3 percent of couples say one child
are the authors of STARTYOURFAMILY: INSPIRATIONFORHAVINGBABIES.
startyourfamily.com
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