Last month I wrote a post called “Planning For Parenthood”. Basically in this post I was advocating couples, especially young couples even in the early stages of dating, to begin talking about and preparing for parenthood as early as possible. Far too many couples go into marriage without giving much thought to children or assuming their spouse agrees with their parenting philosophies without actually having a discussion.
Several ladies said they enjoyed the post but they were still unsure as to what kind of things would be important to discuss or how how to prepare.
So today I’d like to give you a list of 20 important questions to ask each other when preparing for children.
This is NOT an exhaustive list and please keep in mind that you may need to taylor the questions a little. The main point of this post is to give you a few good starter questions to hopefully encourage a healthy pre-parent (and preferably pre-marriage) discussion.
1.) What is your understanding of God’s view on children and how does this line up with Scripture?
2.) How many children do you see yourself having and why?
3.) What are your views on “family planning” in the context of abortion?
4.) What do you believe about birth control medications and why?
5.) What is your heart on the topic of adoption?
6.) What type of parenting philosophy did your parents have? What did you like about this/what would you do differently?
7.) What forms of discipline do you understand to be biblical?
8.) What type of education would you like your children to have and why? (Public school, private school, homeschool?)
9.) What are some mainstream trends in
our culture that you do NOT want for your future children or you’re unsure about? (massive media consumption, food and health choice, vaccinations etc….)
10.) What is the preferred plan for home/work responsibilities? Will both parents work? If so, how often?
11.) Are you financially prepared for a “surprise blessing”?
12.) How do you feel about extra curricular activities (sports, music, art classes etc…)?
13.) How do you plan to build strong relationships within the family?
14.) What role do you foresee grandparents and other family members playing in regards to your children’s lives?
15.) What types of dating/relationship standards do you want to instill in your children at a young age?
16.) Who do you feel is the best person to inform your children about God’s gift of sex (parents, teachers, Christian books etc…)? About what age should this be done?
17.) Do you plan to send your children to classes such as children’s church and youth group or will you plan to have them worship beside you?
18.) How do you plan to present higher education (should all children go to college or is there room for diversity?) and who will plan to fund this education (parents, children, other options etc..)?
19.) What is your ultimate goal as far as training children?
20.) How do you purpose to keep your priorities (God, spouse, children, others) in order?
Again, this list is not complete but I do hope that it will serve to create good, healthy discussion. You might not know all the answers right now but talking about the options as early on as possible will be so helpful!
Remember children are one of God’s greatest blessing to a couple but these blessings require much attention and preparation. Don’t let time slip away from you. Prepare NOW for children!
