Procreation and Fertility

My sweet boy!!!

Having children is and can be a great joy in many people's lives. Many people have different questions about the things that they are dealing with-whether it is having kids or not being able to get pregnant. President Gordon B. Hinkley said "If you are married, you and your spouse should discuss your sacred responsibility to bring children into the world and nurture them in righteousness."
To start out, having children and babies is one of the biggest blessings and one of the best decisions a couple can make. Babies are a beautiful creation from our Father in Heaven. Deciding to have children with your spouse can be one of the most wonderful and joyous decisions to be made in a marriage. In The Church Handbook of Instructions, we are taught the following statement, "The decision as to how many children to have and when to have them is extremely intimate and private and should be left between the couple and the Lord. Church members should not judge one another in this matter." The word private is one that needs some discussion. When this decision is happening, it should be strictly between you, your spouse, and the Savior. In this sense, spouses should be careful in discussing these matters with others. Sometimes it is a temptation to discuss such matters more with a parent, sibling, or friend than with one's spouse. The principle in this is that family members should not pry, judge, nor interfere in a couple's decisions about the timing and the amount of children to be had.

My older brother Jacob with his son Oliver!

Elder Dallin H. Oaks counseled "How many children should a couple have? all they can care for! Of course, to care for children means more than simply giving them life. Children must be loved, nurtured, taught, fed, clothed, housed, and well started in their capacities to be good parents themselves." This is everything we need to be doing as parents, but we also have to do a little bit more than just these things.
Brother Homer Ellsworth, an LDS gynecologist, relates a Church president's experience of visiting his daughter, after her miscarriage. As a mother of eight children, in her forties, she asked him if she could stop having children now. He replied, "Don't ask me. That decision is between you, your husband, and your Father in Heaven." This father knows that he is a part of the important decision making process for his daughter and her husband.

From the very beginning of time, we have been commanded as children of God, to "be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it" (Genesis 1:28). Caring for and nurturing infants, toddlers, young children, and teenagers enables mothers and fathers to obtain greater "faith, hope, charity, and love" (D&C 4:5) as well as "virtue, knowledge, temperance, patience, brotherly kindness, godliness, humility, [and] diligence" (D&C 4:6).
There are a few different reasons that fertility rates could be dropping: decreasing economic value of children, a fear of overpopulation, government pressure, remaining childless, and a much wider usage of contraceptive. Because of these different things that are causing fertility rates to drop, there are also the consequences of low fertility rates. There is a higher depopulation rate, which means that this generation won't have the same amount of young people to take care of the elderly. Another consequence is the amount of aging people. The older a person gets, the harder it can be to get pregnant.
There are pros and cons to every decision and having children is the exact same way. There are pros to having children, but there are also cons to having children. There are potential individual and familial consequences, that affect more than just one person or group of people. Some consequences for a couple who forego the stage of having children, or maybe even having children later in their marriage, may see the affects in the stability and the satisfaction in their marriage. Married couples who choose to be childless possibly may be more likely to separate and divorce when marital satisfaction wanes. There is an idea about people who "stay together for the sake of the children". This idea is often found to be true.

My little Princess Lena-my sisters daughter

The consequences that we can see in children who grow up without brothers and sisters, cousins, aunts and uncles, without nieces and nephews have a less than optimal environment for development. Children who have grown up without these relationships, often times find themselves without a richer context in social development. "Compared to parents with three children, parents with one child might not allow their child to take the reasonable risks associated with learning about the world." (Wattenberg, B. J. (2004). Fewer: How the new demography of depopulation will shape our future. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee.)
The individual consequences that we can see is that choosing to remain childless can affect adult development. Erik Erikson's middle adulthood (approximately ages 35-65) psychosocial development, the required developmental task is generativity, or making meaningful contribution to the next generation. Generally, this is achieved through bearing and raising children.
The choice is yours. You choose whether you have children. It is between a husband and a wife. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints has some guidelines on using personal fertility control.
Remember to include your partner in your decisions, whether that is getting pregnant or waiting to have children.