How do you respond when you want more children and your husband doesn’t?
Mostly, prayer and fasting. When that doesn’t work, switch it around to fasting and prayer.
(added for clarity: My husband and I have been on the same page here for many years now. But after the birth of our second child, for about three years, we weren’t. This post is about those years).
This is very hard for a man as the provider. I know that is hard for many women, too, but I don’t really struggle in this area. I’m far from perfect, but this just happens to be an area that isn’t my battleground. I generally find it easy enough to trust God to provide financially. However, I need to remember that while it’s very easy for me to say that I trust God to provide, my husband’s thinking, “Yes, but through me, and God tells me I’m worse than an infidel if I don’t provide for my own.” So I think it’s important not to pressure them too much on this point. As somebody once said, “A man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still.”
I think we need to guard ourselves against convincing our men intellectually before their hearts have caught up with them, if that makes sense.
For myself, the one form of birth control I can accept without seriously violating my conscience is that form which is the man’s sole responsibility , and so I was able to say to my husband, years ago when we were in the same place, “I’m the one who feels uncomfortable about birth control, you’re the one who wants it, so wouldn’t it be fair for you to take responsibility for preventing the pregnancy that I want and you do not?” It was a gentle discussion, and he agreed. I do not know what I would have done if he’d have refused.
This issue is slightly more complicated in that in order to, as I *think*, choose God’s best here, two people have to agree that this is God’s best, you know? You can obey your conscience about what is God’s best in other areas all by yourself, whether your husband agrees or not. New meaning to the two become one, yes?
Although, thinking about it, further, this is just the most intimate example. I can think of other areas after all where both parties in a marriage must agree with one another-
I know it’s so hard, especially on this issue, but I really do think this has to be a decision that the husband completely owns himself and is fully invested in, more so than perhaps any other issue, because if he’s not it will niggle away at him every time there are financial difficulties however slight, and can become an unseen parasite, depleting the health of the marriage from deep within and damaging relationships between husband and wife and father and children.
For me, a request that he make himself responsible for the birth control he desired instead of relying on me for any other form of birth control, many quiet prayers and much fasting while reconciling myself to quiet, willing submission were the best approaches. I don’t say it was easy, and I don’t know how long I could have continued this had my husband not eventually changed his mind.
It’s important, too, to be sure you are not just praying for your husband to see the light, you are praying for the health of your marriage, your family. Spend at least as much time praying over your own attitude as you do asking God to change your husband’s mind.
Visit the other Four Moms and see what they have to say!
Raising Olives, married 15 years, mama to 11, homeschooling graduate herself-
Connie at Smockity Frocks, married 25 years, mom to 8. We were blog buddies for a year or two before we realized that we had very dear mutual friends in real life. How cool is that?!
Kim at Life in a Shoe, homeschool grad, mama to a family of 13
Me, DeputyHeadmistress and former Zookeeper (I gave up keeping a zoo when coyotes and coons killed our chickens) of this blog, The Common Room and our cooking blog, The Common Kitchen; married 30 years, mom to seven plus unofficial foster mom to two little boys, Mama-in-Law to two, and Grandmama to four blessings under 3, with number 5 on the way, and yes we are very proud.=)
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101 Answers to the Summertime, “Mom, I’m Bored” Blues; help your kids use their free time creatively and productively. Give them ideas that will help them use their time and energy to create, to learn, to grow- to contribute. This is not your average ‘keep the kids out of your hair’ book.
Required Poems for Reading and Memorizing (annotated); Charming collection of older poems that you and the kids just might love.
Ten Low-Carb Snacks and Quick Meals Okay, actually, there’s a little more than ten, and they aren’t merely low-carb, they are also sugar-free, grain-free, gluten free. NOT dairy-free.
4 Comments
I appreciate SO much the way you live out your faith and then describe how that looks for the edification of so many of us. You are such a blessing to your readers. Thank you for this post.
Very difficult topic. I appreciate the sensitivity with which you have written it.
Without going into a lot of detail — not intending to, anyway, but who knows what my comment will look like when it’s done
— I’ll say that in the 26 years that my husband and I have been married, we were on the same page as each other about this topic until about four years ago.
We used birth control to space our first three children, and had pretty much decided we were “done” after the third one, but hadn’t taken permanent measures to end our childbearing. Then around our 14th anniversary, with the children being ages 10, 7, and 3, the Lord turned our hearts (both of us around the same time, amazingly), and we decided we wouldn’t try to prevent any more children if God wanted to give us more.
I was 37 and my husband 41 at that time. Well, long story a little shorter, we were blessed with five more pregnancies (three more children with us and two in heaven following 1st-trimester miscarriages). And then something happened that I never expected.
Around the time that our sixth child was born (shortly after I had turned 45) we began to understand that the many challenges our fifth child had were much more deep-seated than we had thought, and life began to get very difficult. Homeschooling four children, having a special-needs three-year-old, and caring for an infant on top of that became almost impossible. It all wore me down something terrible.
When my fertility resumed 18 months after the birth of our sixth child, my husband, in his love and concern for me in the difficult time I had coping with family life as it was, wanted to go back to preventing children. He really thought it would be too much for me.
It was challenging, to say the least, to submit to him, even knowing that his decision stemmed from love for me. I wanted to trust God that if having more children really was too much for me, that God himself would close my womb. I really thought we would be continuing to keep the possibility of childbearing until menopause open.
My prayer during these four years since my husband made that decision has been that if God didn’t turn my husband’s heart back to welcoming more children into our home, that He would take away my desire to have more.
And that is what He has done. I am 50 years old now, not through menopause yet, but I can see pregnant women and moms with new babies and not feel the anguished twinge anymore that I did in the early years following my husband’s decision. I do finally now feel that we are one again in unity of mind. I learned to trust his decisions, knowing the motivation of his heart (and he learned to trust me, too, as I was the one determining when I was fertile and when I was “safe”).
God brought us together closer than I would have imagined by virtue of the challenges we have faced. I’ve found peace in being on the same page with my husband, and our family is the better for it.
I think you are so right, DHM, when you remind us to pray for the health of our marriages and families, and about our own attitudes, not just to pray that God would change our husband’s hearts. Unity and harmony between husband and wife bring blessing and peace to the whole family.
Thank you for sharing this. (And thank you to the Headmistress for covering this topic so beautifully.) We are at a point where my husband does not want any more and is “preventing” as described here. I want to beg God to change him, but instead I try to pray for unity between us. It encourages me to hear from others who are a little farther down the road.
I had to learn these lessons the hard way and fought kicking and screaming. Thankfully I too have a very patient husband. I wish I’d talked to you about this five years ago.