ANSWERED: Do Husbands Have Right That Wives Bear Children?

[pinkworld]

assalamu `alaykum wa rahmatullah
I have tried to search the Sunni Path site for this one, because I thought that I had seen the issue discussed there. However, I can't even seem to bring up the article about the woman whose husband demands of her to produce a son, and she has had several daughters so far without bearing a son. Any help in this will be appreciated. Barakallahu fikum.

[Saleel]

:salam:

Could you clarify the question a bit :insh:? Are you asking if the husband can force his wife to become pregnant and have more children even if she does not wish to bear anymore children herself?

:salam:

[Zain121]

the woman whose husband demands of her to produce a son, and she has had several daughters so far without bearing a son. Any help in this will be appreciated. Barakallahu fikum.

As Salaamu Alaykum,

Are you trying to say that is a Husband able to tell a wife to bear a male child whereas the women has been only producing females?

If this is the Question, then the answers seems a little obvious.

Nevertheless, please clarify the question a little more as brother saleel said.

Jazakalla.

Wasalaam

[pinkworld]

wa `alaykum assalam wa rahmatullah
I am trying to find the answer to a situation where a husband tries to impose childbearing on one of two: 1) a woman who either doesn't have children yet or only has one or two; and 2) a woman who feels overburdened with the sheer amount of children that she has in her care. The gender of the children is inconsequential. The only reason that I mentioned it is because in one of the posts on Sunni Path, it happened to have been a factor in the case of the question that was posed.

[UmmHamza]

Asalaamu alaykum,

Funny how men for centuries have blamed the gender of their children on their wives as if they did something wrong to cause it... heheh... That's why Henry VIII kept getting remarried...

I have never run across anything in reference to forcing a woman to keep having children to have a male child. I don't think I would ever run across this in Islam as boys and girls are both are supposed to be valued in the same way to muslims. Now, I do think you can find information regarding the possibility of divorce if either the wife or the husband is incapable of reproducing.

The brother in question should follow the example of our Prophet, peace be upon him, who had all girls and was satisfied with it, masha'allah.

UmmHamza

[Zain121]

As Salaamu Alaykum,

If the topic is regarding a man asking his wife to bear a male child then is should be pondered over dearly.

It has come in the narrations of the prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wa Sallam, that a child is born resembling either parent depending on which spouse is dominant.

So seeing it this way, i think the husband is more at fault that he aint dominant.

Wallahu A'lam (Allah Knows Best)

Wasalaam

[Saleel]

:salam:

Perhaps this is going slighty off-topic but it may be interesting to know that the default gender of a foetus is always female, only later on does it perhaps under go masculinisation. And in addition, all too often today we get men complain to their wives that they keep having baby girls (not that it's a valid complaint at all) and essentially blame the wife for it. Well in fact it's the father who is "responsible" for the gender of the baby. Females posses two X chromosomes, i.e. XX. Males posess one X and one Y, i.e. XY. The mother can therefore only pass on X chromosomes - never a Y. It is up to the father to contribute either the second X chromosone (thereby giving a baby girl) or a Y chromosome (male). If a couple keep having baby girls, it's due to the father repeatedly contributing X rather than Y chromosomes - the mother is absolutely blameless!

Khair... that's an entirely different topic, since in the original question gender is not being asked about.

:salam:

[UmmHamza]

Asalaamu alaykum,

Thank you for saying it Saleel... I was trying to avoid flaming, but the thought of this was on the tip of my tongue/finger. :cheesygri It is entirely related to the original question as it is asking whether or not the husband has the right to force reproduction on his wife to produce a male child and in Islam, there is no preference for a gender, but for righteous children. Ameen.

UmmHamza

[Saleel]

:salam:

In that case, might I just add that at birth, baby girls are approximately 2 weeks more developed physically and intellectually than baby boys :)

Anyway... can a husband force his wife to have children... waiting for the Ulema to answer :insh:.

:salam:

[salman]

Sallamu Alaikum

This question was asked recently on Sunnipath, cant find it anymore :S

[eTeacher]

I am not a writer and I hate writing formally so please bear with my English.

First of all, let me start off with a short preamble:

Scholars do not want females to be always pregnant and barefooted all day in the kitchen. : )

In a famous Hadith, we are advised to marry those females who can have children because the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihe Wasallam will boast about the huge number of his followers. We have been advised to procreate. Now where do we stop? After one or two children? Like the people of the west or the east or whoever. Once they have one or two children, they don't want to have anymore children. Islamically, you can't stop having children permanently. You could practice contraception temporarily, but not permanently.

With that, I am going to try to discuss the aspect of where a woman who doesn't have children yet or only has one or two.

There are soo many scenarios here that unless a person comes with a specific scenario, it's hard to give a general answer.

Why does she not want to bear children? If she has no valid reason, then I would doubt that she would be allowed to say no especially when she has no children or only one or two and especially when the husband wants to have more children. On a different aspect of this point, some females have complained that their (mean) husbands have said things like, "You wanted to have children, so you take care of them", to them.

This question should be sent to sunnipath.com or maybe Brother Zain can request his teacher Mufti Muhammad to answer it.

If a person can't have children after one or two kids, then the parents are not to be blamed for it because Allah gives however many children He wishes. But if a person intentionally wants to stop having children for ever, then that is contrary to the spirit of Islam. If she has too many all at once, or doesn't want too many all at once because she wont be able to give enough time to all of them, she should practice contraception till she can give adequate time to all of them.

2) a woman who feels overburdened with the sheer amount of children that she has in her care.

Like I mentioned before, if she has too many right now and is overburdened, then she can practice contraception till the kids are a bit old. Now what age is that? It should be left to the mother or the parents.

I know it's not easy to bring up kids especially when they are young. My little boy Rayhan aged 3 just sent a 4 year old girl the other day to the hospital by hitting her with a bat :( She is her cousin and had to get a couple of stitches. She is fine now. I don't know where we went wrong?...sniff...sniff...That's not the same Rayhan who is in the following link: http://nazim.photosite.com/Rayhan/RayahSF.html
He is not as pious as he looks. : )

So, yeah....it's hard to bring up kids especially when there is only the mother in the house. She can only be at one place at a time. On a side note, my parents have seven children. I wonder sometimes how my mother brought us up especially since there are five boys. But today, all the children are grown up mentally/intellectually except moi. Like I have to give her the props. I don't know how she did it especially when she had no other relatives of hers or my dads to help her out. And today? Alhamdulillah she is as fit as a fiddle! And alhamdulillah...she has six scholars (youngest brother has 3 years left) as her offspring including one mufti and five hafizes. Now if she decided that I only want one or two kids and that's it, then she would have lost out tremendously Aakhirat wise.

About the issue of gender, when there are only females and the husband wants males.... Maybe I can understand where the husband is coming from. Without being biased towards any gender, but there are economical reasons why people want boys especially if they only have girls. Some of the reasons are that when the children are married off, the girl usually leaves the parents and moves in with her husband's family. What a huge sacrifice she and her parents are making! So if the parents only have girls, then they are scared that when they get old, they will have no one to fall back on. They will go through the 'empty nest syndrome'. Another reason is, when the parents get old, they expect the child to take care of them financially because they can't work anymore. But if the children are only females, then that's gonna be hard because she has left them and is living with someone else. It's not because the husbands hate female children or something like that. Actually it's for the benefit of both of them. If they have more than one male, then they can rotate houses and not constantly burden one male child when they grow old. Parents rarely live with their daughters when they become old.

But nowadays with both the spouses working, don't be surprised if the children send their parents off to old people's homes/nursing homes. If the families are larger, it won’t be a big burden only on one family. That's why it's good to have larger than only two kids families.

Recently there was a question on Sunnipath about a female who was utterly exhausted because of her children and it was affecting her worship. You can read my reply to her question by clicking on the following link. It will prove to be a good read Insha Allah. The link:

http://www.sunnipath.com/resources/Questions/qa00003965.aspx

But the important thing is that, this whole discussion should be decided amicably by both the spouses. This is not something which we go and find out and say to our spouse that here take this.... because then obviously one will be right and the other will be wrong and then one will feel upset about it. The spouses should sit down and discuss it together and try to come up with a compromise.

Brother Zain, it would be appreciated if you could request Mufti Muhammad to answer the fiqh aspect of this question.

That's my $0.02 on the issue. This is a nice discussion.

Allah knows best

btw...that picture of Rayhan is only online. I don't have his picture on paper or whatever....just wanted to clear that up for some ppl

[Zain121]

As Salaamu Alaykum,

Insha-allah i will ask Mufti Sahib to have a look at the question for us, but for the benefit of the person asking the question, i feel as though if there was a specific scenario, as mentioned by eTeacher, then the question would have a definite answer. For all we know, the women could have health issues and is unable to bear another child, or she could be risking her life in the process. Allah knows best.

So insha-allah, if this question has a scenario, it woudl be great to have a bit of depth on the situation.

Wasalaam.

[eTeacher]

Would like to add that nowadays the condition of Muslims living in the west are changing ever so drastically in this sense that it's so hard to say that this is the norm of Muslims. Back home in Muslim countries, only the males would work. After marriage, the boys would stay with their fathers. The divorce rate was almost 0%. But in the last couple of decades, things are changing so fast all across the world and you can't predict what's gonna happen with the Muslims in the next twenty or thirty years.


Nowadays, after marriage, the sons usually move out for good because there are times when parents just don't know how to treat their kids and many other issues. And since females are working, it's very hard to both work and bring up kids and many other issues. Previously, to have five or six kids in a family was not rare. But nowadays, I would say that that is a thing of the past amongt the Muslim families in which both the spouses are working. Females are graduating from Universities. Many times they have huge loans to pay off. So they start working. They have to get established at their workplace. And by the time they have their first kid, she is nearly thirty. Is that the norm now? I really don't know. Maybe others could expound on it. It's up for discussion. Previously, by the time a female was thirty, she would already have 3 kids usually if not more. Once I heard this radio program of females who were in their fourties regretting not having children at all or only one or two. They thought that when we get older we will have children, but then biologically, it just wasn't possible. Where am I taking this discussion?.......ah!...sorry for rambling on....the point is...the family condition of the muslims are not like the way they were in the past....and the question arises that does the husband have the right to force the wife to bear children if the she does not want to bear them.

Maybe Mufti Muhammad can give an answer on the assumption that she is perfectly healthy and she does not want to have children. Because obviously, if she has a reason, then most likely she will not have to. But the assumption is that, she has no reason not to have children and let's just say it's her preferance that she does not want to have any children in her life. In this scenario, is a husband allowed to force her to have children? We can also take the other side of the coin as well and ask that if the husband does not want to have children and the wife does, is he doing something wrong Islamically? In the case where one of the spouses do not want children and the other does, can the one who wants children ask for a divorce? And if she is a female, can she ask the scholars to nullify her marriage if she wants children and he does not? The aspect of procreation in Islam, is that Fardh or is it Wajib or is it Mustahab?

I'm outta here.....
salam

[Raeesa]

Just a quick comment about the gender.
The "empty nest syndrome" does make sense, however i guess theres a difference between being unhappy with a daughter and still being grateful for the blessing even if she is a daughter.

[pinkworld]

:bism:
:salam:
For wont of a specific example, one might consider a potential case as follows:

A woman had experienced physical and emotional abuse at the hands of an adult female while she was a developing child. As she matured into her teens, she had failed experiences babysitting children, one after another, in which she always found herself reacting too harshly to the children, even harming them. By her high school years, she had already prepared herself mentally to not have children of her own, given her previous experiences and known tendencies toward abusing children in her care. When she becomes adult, she will be expected to bear and raise her own children; and on account of this, she experiences much anguish over the possibility of getting married.

This could be presented if general explanations seem to have been exhausted. The reason for the presentation of this scenario is beause it applies to at least six of my father's children, as well as most of the children and youth in my home region. Some have taken various medications for emotional or mental disorders in their youths and as adults. Obviously, some come out just fine as parents, but some have expressed serious concerns over the potential of becoming parents to their own children.