Read an interesting op-ed piece in the NZ Herald earlier this week, in which the idea was proposed that one of the “greatest threats” to marital happiness is a “child-centred marriage”.

The more I thought about this proposition the more I realized just how woefully deficient and selfish such a notion really is.

Basically, at it’s heart, what such an ideology is proposing is that parents should view catering to the well being of the very children they are responsible for bringing into existence as the “greatest threat” to their own personal happiness.

We all know that mums and dads need regular time alone together to nurture their relationship, but to suggest that parents who devote themselves to loving their children above and beyond the call of duty are engaging in one of the “greatest threats” to their marriage is just selfish nonsense.

This sort of attitude really speaks to one of the great cultural confusions of our time – the notion that our rights and freedoms should be detached from responsibilities.

This is the very attitude which underpins so much abortion in this country – many people now believe that they shouldn’t have to be responsible for the very children that their sexual choices have brought into existence, or that children are a threat to their personal happiness.

All the talk of bodily autonomy and ‘freedom of choice’ is really little more than an attempt to get around the fact that what’s really going on here is that people simply don’t want to be responsible for the children than their sexual choices are responsible for bringing into existence – everyone wants to be sexually liberated, but no one wants to be sexually responsible.

The reality is that for many people abortion is simply a grave abdication of the parental responsibilities that began the moment they made a baby as a result of the baby-making act they willingly opted to participate in.

No, children aren’t a threat to our happiness, instead they are one of the greatest joys we can ever experience as human beings, and a self-sacrificial devotion to our children is one of the most important paths to emotional maturity and growth that we can ever walk.