There are longings that do not shout. They sit quietly in the heart, growing deeper with time. The desire to nurture a child is often one of them. It is not merely the wish to hold a baby or to answer to the name of parent; it is the yearning to guide a life, to pour care into another human being, and to watch a spirit unfold under one’s protection. When this longing meets delay, uncertainty, or impossibility, the questions that arise are rarely simple.
In such moments, parenthood ceases to be a biological matter alone. It enters a moral and almost spiritual terrain. Surrogacy and adoption come into view not merely as solutions, but as paths that invite careful examination of intention, patience, and responsibility.
A child, rightly understood, is not an entitlement. A child is a gift. Gifts arrive by grace, not by insistence. They are not owned, designed, or secured; they are entrusted. This understanding alters the inner posture from which parenthood is approached. It shifts the focus from possession to responsibility, from fulfilment to service.
Adoption speaks powerfully into this posture. It receives a life already present in the world and says yes without condition. It does not ask for resemblance or continuity. It asks only for readiness to love. In doing so, it quietly challenges the part of us that seeks ourselves in another. It raises an unspoken question: can love remain whole without likeness?
Surrogacy, especially as it is ethically and medically practised today, brings greater complexity. For clarity, this reflection refers only to ethically guided surrogacy arrangements involving assisted reproduction. This includes cases where the intended mother’s fertilised egg is carried by a surrogate (gestational surrogacy) or where an externally fertilised embryo created using eggs and sperm from the intended parents or donors is carried by a surrogate, always with full consent, medical oversight, and legal protection. It does not concern arrangements involving sexual relations outside the marital bond. When practised with care, dignity, informed consent, and legal protection for all involved, surrogacy can be ordered and humane. Yet even here, deeper questions remain. Is the desire shaped by reverence for life, or by the need to preserve identity and lineage? Is it an act of trust, or an attempt to control what life has withheld?
Objections are often raised that such processes are “unnatural.” This concern deserves to be acknowledged rather than dismissed. Many feel that assisted reproduction interferes with the natural order and risks reducing life to a product of technique. Yet history shows that several medical interventions once viewed with suspicion-blood transfusion being one example, are today widely accepted and have saved countless lives. Over time, careful practice, evidence, and ethical reflection have helped societies distinguish between misuse and responsible application.
Notably, decades of medical research and lived experience indicate that children born through IVF and ethically regulated surrogacy are, in overwhelming majority, physically, emotionally, and cognitively comparable to those conceived naturally. They grow, learn, love, struggle, and flourish like any other children. This does not settle the moral question entirely, but it does remind us that the worth and dignity of a child are never diminished by the circumstances of conception.
These questions are not new. Scripture records moments when human longing sought resolution, and the consequences that followed. One such account is that of Sarah and Hagar. Sarah, unable to conceive, offered her servant Hagar to Abraham so that a child might be born through her. The arrangement appeared practical and culturally acceptable at the time. Yet once Hagar conceived, the household was unsettled. Pride, resentment, displacement, and sorrow followed. The human arrangement left wounds that echoed across generations. The narrative does not condemn the desire for a child; it quietly reveals the cost of impatience and the strain that arises when human will moves ahead of inner clarity and spiritual guidance.
Another account unfolds in the household of Jacob. Through a sequence of competing arrangements involving his wives and their maidservants, children were born in abundance. Yet the household became marked by rivalry, jealousy, and deep emotional fracture. The increase of offspring did not bring peace. The children themselves bore the imprint of a divided home. Again, the narrative offers no sermon; it offers consequence. Human solutions achieved results, but not harmony.
These accounts show us that the central question is not whether life can be brought forth, but whether the inner ground from which the desire arises is ordered, patient, and humble.
Modern conversations echo these ancient tensions. Some couples wrestle with whether love requires genetic connection. Others find themselves divided, one longing for continuity through DNA, the other drawn to the openness of adoption. In such struggles, surface disagreement often conceals something deeper: questions of identity, fear of loss, or hope for self-extension. None of these make a person unworthy. They simply ask to be faced honestly.
The financial aspect of surrogacy introduces further moral weight. Compensation may be lawful and freely agreed, yet the heart must remain attentive. Is another person’s body approached with reverence, or quietly reduced to utility? Is gratitude present, or only transaction? These are questions no contract can finally answer.
Legal realities also vary widely. Some countries prohibit surrogacy outright; others permit it under strict regulation; still others operate in legal silence. In Nigeria, the practice is not expressly prohibited, but there is no comprehensive legal framework governing it, leaving parties in a space of uncertainty. This legal ambiguity does not determine moral rightness or wrongness, but it underscores the need for caution, transparency, and conscience-driven decisions.
At this point, the deeper purpose of parenthood itself comes into view. Through the high spiritual enlightenment accessible to us in this age, we are reminded that bringing children into the world is never meant to serve personal ambition, lineage, or self-gratification. It is, rather, an invitation to nurture life with reverence, responsibility, and love that transcends the self. It exists to provide opportunity for human spirits to incarnate, mature, shed faults, and advance inwardly. Parenthood, then, is not about building an earthly extension of oneself, but about preparing a space where growth, responsibility, and spiritual development can unfold. When children are raised primarily to satisfy parental wishes, pride, or unexamined longing, the opportunity entrusted through them is diminished.
Seen this way, the moral worth of parenthood does not rest solely in the path chosen. It rests in intention, reverence, and responsibility. Where love seeks to give without clinging, to receive without entitlement, and to serve without self-promotion, blessing finds room to unfold. Where desire hardens into insistence, even noble longings can quietly lose their alignment.
This reflection is not offered to instruct or to correct. It is offered to invite stillness and inner reflection, allowing decisions to arise from clarity, attuned to higher guidance, rather than from haste. Parenthood, in any form, is not merely about welcoming a child; it is about recognising why that child is welcomed, and whether the heart is prepared to honour the purpose of that trust.
Before choosing a path, it may help to sit quietly with a different question: not what do I desire, but what is being asked of me? If a child were entrusted to my care not to fulfil my longing, but to foster character, responsibility, and inner spiritual growth, would my willingness remain unchanged? In all such matters, we are ultimately guided not by trends, pressure, or fear, but by inner conviction. In such stillness, and in listening to the inner voice, intention often reveals itself more truthfully than intellectual reasoning ever can.
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