“More than 80% of mothers aged 18-55 are happy with their lives today, compared to 68% of women without children. And women who are marriedwith children are the happiest group of women, according to the most recent data from the 2022 General Social Survey. Moreover, mothers report markedly higher levels of meaning in their lives and less loneliness, compared to women without children.”
The article goes on to say…
“But the benefits of motherhood seem to extend beyond happiness. Recent research suggests that children are associated with an increased lifespan for women. Compared with childless women, mothers who reach the age of 60 have a 1.5-year longer life expectancy than their childless peers. What’s more: The evidence suggests that mothers are also markedly less likely to commit suicide. One study found that women who had children had about 60% lower odds of committing suicide, compared to childless peers. Having kids, it would seem, gives women something extra to live for.”
Ladies, the complaints that motherhood oppresses our freedom only confirm how utterly self-focused and childish we are (sin-laden lenses).
Is parenting difficult? Yes!
Do we often forgo what we want to do for relaxation and enjoyment in order to give our child attention? Yes!
But how often do we need similar things (help, attention, etc.) and desire others to respond with grace and kindness? Convicting, isn’t?
Both parenting and marriage force us to witness, in a verbal and real way, how far we fall short (Romans 3:23; 6).
Impatience — check!
Unkindness — check!
Unloving — check!
All of the things he we would put on t-shirts (“Be kind”) and paint upon corrugated signs in our yards (“Love is Love”) crumble under the weight of our inadequacies. And we don’t like to see our inadequacies…so let’s avoid the situations which make our frailties obvious.
Because if “love is love” then I don’t think that I want the type of love which comes from selfishness of the human heart. It’s not the same as God’s charitable (agapē) love!
But as we parent, we get to witness a love which sacrifices and gives! A love which points us upward to our Creator.
Y’all, we need God’s help to love well.
1 John 4
Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world. 2 By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, 3 and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you heard was coming and now is in the world already. 4 Little children, you are from God and have overcome them, for he who is in you is greater than he who is in the world. 5 They are from the world; therefore they speak from the world, and the world listens to them. 6 We are from God. Whoever knows God listens to us; whoever is not from God does not listen to us. By this we know the Spirit of truth and the spirit of error.
God Is Love
7 Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. 9 In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. 10 In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. 11 Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. 12 No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.
13 By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit. 14 And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. 15 Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God. 16 So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. 17 By this is love perfected with us, so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because as he is so also are we in this world. 18 There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love.19 We love because he first loved us. 20 If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. 21 And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother
Hold Fast Apologetics 