Will the Childless Have Children in the Afterlife?
“In my belief system, there is comfort in knowing that you will be able to have children in the life to come,” he said as he leaned back in his brown faux-leather chair. “If you never have children in this life, you will have them then.”
I stared at him, speechless.
What on earth does one say to that?
He went on to ask me if we had considered continuing ovulation-boosting medication or if we might pursue artificial insemination.
“No,” I answered. “The emotional toll is too high. We have decided that we want to move forward in our life without children.”
He shook his head sorrowfully and bent over the keyboard.
The context: I visited my family doctor to ask him for a prescription for birth control medication to help regulate my irregular menstrual cycles.
I did not expect him to push back against my husband’s and my decision to accept a childless life.
His faith background is LDS (Latter-Day Saints), where children and childbearing are highly prioritized due to the elevated spiritual nature of women and prenatal children. There are many who follow the LDS faith and way of life where I live in Southern Alberta; I should have considered how his beliefs would impact our interaction, but I didn’t.
The entire conversation left me feeling shaken, like everything my husband and I have experienced over the past five years is insignificant and somehow we were making the “wrong” choice by accepting our childless life.
And while this conversation left me feeling upset, angry, and misunderstood,
my purpose here is not to angrily tear apart LDS beliefs, but to consider the deeper beliefs undergirding our conversation.
I’m not an expert on LDS beliefs, not by a long shot. But I did a little bit of research into what the LDS church believes about children, childbearing, birth control, and the connections to salvation and eschatology. Here are a few easily-found quotes that describe the importance of childbearing in the LDS church:
The Church of the Latter-Day Saints of Jesus Christ’s Handbook 2 (as quoted on FAIR Latter-Day Saints) says, “It is the privilege of married couples who are able to bear children to provide mortal bodies for the spirit children of God, whom they are then responsible to nurture and rear.”
While the LDS Church does not forbid birth control, it does place great emphasis on families and the commandment to “be fruitful and multiply.”
Blogger Heather Farrell writes, “Women are ‘saviors’ to men by the fact that they give them life and nurture them towards the light of Christ. By conceiving, creating and bearing mortal bodies women make it possible for God’s children to start on their mortal journey and have the opportunity to become perfected. Without women there would be no gateway into this world and no opportunity for progress or exaltation.”
The blog post aims to illustrate the equality of women by ascribing to Eve “a saving power equal but opposite to Adam’s saving power.”
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints’ website emphatically states, “Families are central to God’s plan.” Its subheading reads: “God made it pretty clear that families are important when he created Adam and Eve. The Holy Bible calls them “man and … wife” (Genesis 2:25), and the first commandment God gave them was to have children (see Genesis 1:28).”
While their emphasis on families as the building blocks of society is admirable in a culture where many families are torn apart by abuse, divorce, or other circumstances, I can’t help but feel like this statement intentionally excludes all those who do not fit the “nuclear family” mould.
FAIR Latter-Day Saints says, “Latter-day Saint belief is that “spirit children” only receive a physical body upon being born on earth.”
That is, all children who are born on earth were previously “spirit children” in the spirit realm begotten by the Heavenly Father and Heavenly Mother. On conception, a child takes physical form in the “temple” of their mothers before being born as babies.
Childbearing holds a preeminent place in the lives of LDS families, particularly in the role and purpose of women. Children are sacred, holy beings. Of this, there is no doubt within the LDS church.
However, their theology of childbearing in the afterlife is unclear, though a reported eyewitness of the spirit world stated that people were organized into family units in the afterlife (“Spirit World,” Church of Jesus Christ Manual). Whether this referred to family members who had died and entered heaven (the spirit world) after death or family members born after death is unsure.
Clearly, my doctor believed in childbearing after death, or at least that my “spirit children” (the children I ought to have in this life) would be present in the afterlife.
Something within me fundamentally writhed against this claim.
All the way home, I wrestled with feelings of anger, indignation, and shame.
Why?
Why should a doctor’s beliefs (or anyone’s beliefs, for that matter) impact me so much?
What bothers me about his claim is that it places preeminence on children and families.
It says, “You are lesser than those who can bear children.”
It says, “What a shame. Sure, it’s not your fault, but you’ll miss out on the spiritual blessings of childbearing and childrearing.”
It made me feel like I was choosing the wrong thing having decided to give up the pursuit of having children.
I know many wonderful LDS folks and they’re all hardworking, kind, stable people with wonderful families.
But theologically, this claim that mothers give birth to spirit children and that all will be made whole (which is defined as having borne [many] children) in the afterlife says that the only thing that matters, for a woman, is childbearing.
It makes an idol out of children.
It says that children are what matter most in life, both here and then.
Christian theology says otherwise. For the Christian, what matters most is following in the footsteps of Jesus, wherever he leads - even if it means never bearing children.
The purpose of life is not bound up in my marital or childbearing status. Our Christian life is bigger, broader, than that.
The purpose of life is to follow Jesus wherever he leads.
I was angry with my doctor because his comments made me feel like the choice my husband and I had made for our health and well-being was somehow wrong or wicked.
He could not comprehend that we could have peace and a fulfilling life without children.
Many people don’t understand this, not just those in the LDS church. Those of my own cultural background (Mennonites) and my husband’s (Hutterites) and even those who have grown up in a “standard” Christian church that told them that the Christian life is about marriage and family…
Friends, all of these have made children their God.
I’m not saying that family and children are not important. Not at all. Children are so precious and truly are a gift from God.
But they are a gift, not a right.
The tendency to overemphasize children at the expense of any sort of alternate life is, quite simply, idolatry.
People matter whether they have children or not.
Whether they have spouses or not.
Whether they have houses or jobs, or not.
Whether they are neurodivergent, physically disabled, mentally unwell, or not.
Black lives matter.
Every child matters.
“God created man in his own image; he created him in the image of God; he created them male and female.” (Gen. 1:27, CSB)
The Christian life says that all people matter. Unfortunately, we have elevated far too many over the rest.
So will the childless have children in the afterlife?
That, my friends, is the wrong question.
Your life matters now while you don’t have children. Don’t put all your hopes in the life beyond.
Your life matters now.
And, here’s the kicker:
God doesn’t love you any less for not having children. Your life is not less valuable than those who have children.
Follow Jesus. Follow him with all your heart and soul, your time and money, your passions, gifts, and talents. Follow him with all you have and go live your life, whatever it looks like.
Live, knowing that he has created you to follow his ways - in love and justice in all you do. This is a good life. It’s not what I expected, but it is good.
