A parable for the totally clueless:

Mrs. Slocum walked the whole nineteen miles down from the mountain cabin that she shared with her husband and eighteen children to the settlement infirmary. She was heavily pregnant and about to deliver.

She had made this journey every year since she and her husband had married.

After she had the baby, the doctor wrapped the newborn child in a blanket and handed him to his mother.

"Well, Mrs. Slocum, that's number nineteen, right?" said the smiling doctor.

"Yup," responded the taciturn Mrs. Slocum.

"Then I guess we'll be seeing you again next year," remarked the doctor, as she prepared to leave for the nineteen mile trek back up the mountain.

"Nope!" said Mrs. Slocum.

"Oh?" said the doctor, "You're not going to have any more children?

"Nope!" said Mrs. Slocum. "We found out what was doin' it!"

=======

People do not fall in love and get married for the sole purpose of having children. They fall in love because they find each other sexually attractive (they're wired that way), because they like each other (which is a component of, but not quite the same as love), and because they take pleasure in each other's company and have sufficient interests and beliefs in common to want to spend their lives together. Sexual activity and the pleasure it gives is natural part of such a relationship. And children are a by-product of sexual activity.

That's nature's way of perpetuating the species. But perpetuating the species is not the responsibility of every, or any particular, married couple.

However—if having a brood of babies were the only reason for getting married, then why all the research into, and the large market for, reliable birth-control products? Why do married women sometimes get abortions? Why do married people sometimes go to great lengths to be able to indulging in sex without having children?

Although children can be a wonder and a delight, and are usually wanted by married couples, sharing a life together means far more than the desire to have children.

And some people, for one reason or another, cannot have children. Does this mean they should not be allowed to get married and share their lives?

Childless couples are not always bereft of children.   Often there are nieces and nephews, neighbor's children, children of friends. And it's not at all unheard of that a childless couple can be better friends to a child than his or her own parents!

Don Firth