Can it really be sinful to be married to someone you love, yet deliberately remain childless?

That's the only conclusion to be drawn from the suggestion by the Bishop of Rochester that married couples who don't have children are "self-indulgent" and defying the will of God.

It's hardly a message designed to put more bums on pews in the country's sparsely attended Anglican churches, is it? More likely it will drive more people away to be told, by the Rt Rev Michael Nazir-Ali, that having children is a fundamental duty of married couples and "not an optional extra".

What a confusing signal to send out to those many couples who have formalised their relationship and strengthened their commitment to each other through marriage, yet have decided for various reasons that producing and rearing children is not for them.

Is he suggesting that if that's the case, they shouldn't have got married? Would he prefer them to "live in sin"?

There is a whole range of reasons why people choose not to have children. Economic necessity is one. Earning a living is hard these days, and putting a roof over your head is a costly business increasingly requiring two incomes.

For some couples, handing over the daytime care of their children to a full-time childminder when maternity leave ends is a perfectly acceptable option. However, others don't much care for the idea and, given that the alternative might be for one to stop work and the family to move dramatically down the housing market, prefer to deny themselves children.

Others believe that the "gift of life" is a misnomer, given the terrifyingly uncertain state of the world, and can't face the worry or the guilt that comes with having a stake in the next generation.

Some simply don't like children enough to want their lives to be thrown into long-term chaos by them - because, there's no denying, they do turn your life upside down and don't let you straighten it up for a great many years.

And still others are, indeed, as self-indulgent as the Bishop claims they are, wanting to enjoy the good life they are able to provide for themselves without having to share it with any offspring. Those people surely should be commended for remaining childless. A resented child with self-centred parents is likely to be a troubled child.

As to the Bishop's question, posed in an interview with a national newspaper this week: "If couples don't have children, who will look after them when they are older?"

We don't have children to provide us with carers in our old age. Our children owe us nothing and we owe them everything. They were brought into the world without anyone asking their permission. The obligation is entirely one-sided.

If we are lucky, when we grow old they will keep an eye on us because they love us and like us. But if they don't, we can't grumble (although we probably will).

Children can be a glorious blessing on a marriage, and bring a great deal of joy. But they can also break their parents' hearts. They are a lifelong commitment not to be entered into lightly - and certainly not on the say-so of a Bishop who would do better to take a rather different tack.

He should be advising those people, married or not, who are unable for various reasons to give children a fair chance in life not to have any. And surely he should be promoting a Church view not that couples who are married should have children, but that couples who have children should be married.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.