My husband and I are expecting our third child, due to join us in about a month.

Life is full, a little stressful, often mundane, and infinitely more purposeful and joyful than it would be without our kids. I’m tired a lot of the time, but that’s a small price to pay in exchange for my daughter’s unbelievable sense of humor, the weight of my son on my chest when he snuggles after his nap, and the rolls and kicks I feel in my abdomen as I write.

I didn’t get to start having kids until I was of what doctors call “advanced maternal age,” but unlike many of my generation, I hadn’t put it off on purpose. Despite my best efforts to marry and start a family right out of college, I didn’t meet my husband until I was 33.

I credit God with bringing him into my life at the right time even as I also blame American culture for how long it took to find a man who shared my values and beliefs (who was also interested in me).

I’ll be the first to admit that motherhood knocked me for a loop. I had always assumed parenting would come naturally to me; that my upbringing would sufficiently inform and prepare me to raise, discipline, and love my kids.

As it turns out, like most parents, I’ve felt like I’m just figuring it out as I go most of the time, especially with my iron-willed force of nature of a five-year-old. Almost every day with her is challenging, and sometimes I will say to God under my breath, “I’m clearly not supposed to be her mom. Someone else could do this better.”

But I spent nine months getting to know her before she even took her first breath and she is so obviously our kid that there’s no escaping the truth.

Nothing has sanctified me more than motherhood and, as anyone who has been a believer for any length of time can tell you, sanctification is usually unpleasant. In fact, I think the better word for this part of my life is “refinement.” As in, being thrown into a fire until all the impurities or flaws are burned off.

That’s actually been the hardest thing to endure on this motherhood journey – coming face to face with my sin and flaws. But just when it would be easy to feel like that is cruelty with no purpose, I remember that conviction is a mercy.

Romans 2:4 says, “God’s kindness is meant to lead you to repentance.” In other words, the discomfort of conviction and confession is evidence of God’s love in our lives. The discomfort we feel when our kids push our buttons and we sin against them is a road sign that points us to our need of a savior.

But in a culture that prizes radical self-expression, shouting, “Treat yo self!”, “You do you, boo!”, “You only live once (YOLO)!”, and other ridiculous “affirmations,” it shouldn’t come as a surprise that kids are increasingly viewed as obstacles to living our best lives. And for some who do choose to procreate, those kids are treated as a means to an end, not ends in themselves; as accessories, not legacies.

I’ve worked pretty hard to remove the influence of what some call “toxic mommy culture” from my life and my social media feed, but it doesn’t take long to find Instagram posts from moms who disdain their kids and their calling to mother them.

They might think they’re being funny when they find a witty way to complain about them, but they’re revealing a deeper issue: they don’t believe this work is ultimate.

They don’t understand they’re forming someone else’s character.

They don’t see in their precious kids the image of God.

I’m also seeing more content lately from “DINKs,” or “double income, no kids.” These are couples, married or cohabiting, who brag about their carefree lives that they claim are possible because they are unencumbered by children. Similarly, there’s a growing “childfree” movement on TikTok and other platforms. The majority of the posts I’ve seen are boastful and condescending, and sadly, they’re gaining a following, with millions of views and thousands of positive comments.

And is it any wonder?

The poison fruit of feminism has undermined and in some places completely dismantled what is needed for women, families, and children to thrive. From fights for “equal rights” to the erasure of women by the transgender moment and nearly fifty years of Roe, a good portion of our nation has been stewing in anti-child waters for most of, if not all of their lives.

Especially for the growing number of men and women who are not members of a faith community (chiefly the Abrahamic faiths, which all prize family and children), what reason could there be to willingly “saddle” oneself with the financial, emotional, physical, and logistical costs of raising kids?

If everything is viewed through the lens of “What’s in it for me?” parenthood likely won’t seem like an investment worth making.

Now, many know firsthand the joy that having and raising children brings. From priceless memories of first steps to having loved ones around you as you age, many people understand the good that parenthood yields. And for a long while, that plus societal expectation was enough to keep our nation’s fertility rate at replacement level.

But now, in the aftermath of cultural earthquakes like the sexual revolution and the COVID-19 pandemic (to name just two from the last century), more and more Americans seem to be living somewhere between apathy and hostility towards the way things have always been. As a result, we are losing the societal goods that come from stable, healthy families that raise the next generation to be responsible members of society.

And we may in fact be courting extinction.

A fraction of this skepticism might be healthy. After all, we shouldn’t sleepwalk into things as serious as marriage and parenthood simply because they are expected of us. But as any married person can attest, even when you think you know what marriage is, you don’t really know until you’ve been married for a while.

The same is true of parenthood, and of any of the good/hard things in life – if we knew everything that was to come, many of us would never take the plunge because, taken all at once, it would seem too hard.

It’s hardwired into us to avoid pain, and sometimes that’s a good thing since it keeps us from injury or death. But when our privilege makes it possible to avoid even the tiniest hint of inconvenience (streaming services and delivery options for everything we could ever want, I’m looking at you), we risk seeing everything hard as bad, and self-sacrifice as weakness.

But as the lives of Jesus and many other heroes of the faith living and dead demonstrate, death to self is the key to abundance.

That’s where another acronym, HINTSTAB, comes in. One of my favorite social media follows, whose account cuts against rampant toxic mommy content, is a Christian mom of ten named Abbie Halberstadt (@m.is.for.mama). She’s written two books on biblical motherhood, one of which is called Hard is Not the Same Thing as Bad. She also uses that phrase as a hashtag on her posts, shortened to #HINTSTAB.

I won’t go so far as to say that this phrase has changed everything about my motherhood, but it certainly has offered a welcome perspective shift rooted in truth.

DINKs may be having a lot of fun right now, but their dogs and the stamps in their passports can’t hold their hands (in youth or old age) or contribute to the growth of their character.

Toxic mommies might be able to blow off some steam by being snarky on social media, but it won’t soothe the ache in their chests when their minds replay their failures as they fall asleep.

A nation may boast wealth and power, but those things won’t supply the human capital to support its elderly and ensure the future of the nation itself.

I’ll admit I struggle with anxiety over whether I’m doing a good enough job raising my kids. Motherhood is by no means easy.

But hard is not the same thing as bad, and nothing worth having comes easily. The quickest way to turn my anxiety into joy and my selfishness into humility is to remember that my children are not truly mine.

They are “a heritage from the Lord” (Psalm 127:3), gifts I’ve been given to steward and not use or devalue, no matter what’s trending on Instagram.