ROLE OF PARENTS AND MARRIED LIFE
Marriage and marital love are inherently geared toward childbearing and education. Children are the
ultimate gift of marriage and contribute significantly to their parents' well-being. The God Who stated,
"It is not good for man to be alone" (Gen. 2:18) and "Who formed man from the beginning male and
female" (Matthew 19:4), wanting to share with man a specific participation in His own creative work,
blessed male and female, saying, "Increase and multiply" (Gen. 1:28). As a result, while not dismissing
the other reasons of marriage, the actual practice of conjugal love, and the entire meaning of the family
life that comes from it, have one goal: that the couple be ready with sturdy hearts to participate with
the Creator's and Savior's love. Who, day by day, will grow and enhance His own family through them.
Parents should see the responsibility of imparting human life and training those to whom it has been
transferred as their appropriate role. They should recognize that by doing so, they are cooperating with
God the Creator's love and, in a sense, the interpreters of that love. As a result, they will carry out their
mission with human and Christian responsibility, and with submissive regard for God, they will make
decisions by collective counsel and effort. Let them consider their own well-being as well as the wellbeing of their children, both those who have already been born and those who will be born in the
future. For this accounting, they must take into consideration both the material and spiritual conditions
of the times, as well as their own personal situation. Finally, they should consider the interests of the
family unit, temporal society, and the Church itself. In the eyes of God, only the parents and no one else
should make this decision. Spouses, however, should be conscious that they cannot behave arbitrarily,
but must always be directed by a conscience diligently obedient to the divine law itself, and should be
docile toward the Church's teaching office, which legitimately interprets that law in the light of the
Gospel. That divine rule discloses and safeguards the essential significance of marital love, propelling it
toward a fully human completion. Thus, by believing in divine Providence and refining the spirit of
sacrifice, married Christians adore the Creator and strive toward fulfillment in Christ when they acquit
themselves of the obligation to procreate with a kind human and Christian sense of responsibility.
Among the spouses who fulfill their God-given responsibility in this manner, those who endeavor to
raise even a somewhat big family with a valiant heart and smart and common consideration deserve
special notice.
Marriage, to be sure, is not instituted solely for procreation; rather, its very nature as an unbreakable
compact between persons, as well as the welfare of the children, both demand that the spouses' mutual
love be embodied in a rightly ordered manner, that it grow and ripen. As a result, marriage persists as a
whole way of life and communion of life, and it retains its value and indissolubility even when, despite
the couple's often intense desire, offspring are lacking.