Hannah's Shame

“Hannah’s Shame”

Rev. Stephen Milton

Lawrence Park Community Church
Nov 17, 2024

Today’s scripture reading tells the story of Hannah, a childless woman. She lives a generation before the birth of King David. As was the custom back then, her husband was allowed to have a second wife. That wife was fertile and had borne many sons and daughters. Her husband loved her dearly, but it wasn’t enough. She felt shame at being unable to have children. At this time, all women were expected to have children, and lots of them. So, Hannah goes to offer a sacrifice and pray that she could have a child. As we heard, her prayers are answered, and she gives birth to Samuel. He will grow up to become a prophet, the man who helps God find David, who becomes King David (1 Samuel 16)

In many other pulpits around the world, this sermon would be about how wonderful it was that God blessed Hannah and gave her a child. They would say that having children is a woman’s greatest accomplishment, and therefore, all women should pray as Hannah did to have children. May God grant their wish. Now, I am a parent of three children, and stepparent to three. I have love being a parent. So, I see the value in people having children. But today, I would like to talk about parenting as a choice, not as a destiny or duty. Women who want to have children should have that choice, and I wish them well. But today I would like to talk about Hannah’s story as a tale of a woman who didn’t have a choice about whether she should be a mother. I want to suggest that her infertility wasn’t her biggest problem. Society was. 

Hannah doesn’t need a child to satisfy her husband. He loves her just the way she is. But she is living at a time when society expects women to have children. Infant mortality rates are very high – families need to have many children to keep the family line alive. So, women and men cast shame on infertile women. Hannah’s co-wife shames her. So would everyone else. Hannah’s biggest problem isn’t her infertility, but the shame society casts on her. 

Hannah prays for a child so she can be relieved of that shame. We should note that what she wants is to prove she can have a child. If God gives her a child, she will happily give it back to the priests later, while still a child. Hannah is not asking for a child so she can feel fulfilled as a woman, raising a child to adulthood. She doesn’t ask for that. What she wants is relief from the shame of infertility. Her story is not about the glories of motherhood, but about the burden of shame on childless women. 

What wisdom does Hannah’s story present for our age? Thanks to better health care, our infant mortality rates have plummeted. Families no longer need to have ten pregnancies to get five children to adulthood.

Indeed, throughout the world, birth rates have dropped since the 1960s. [1] When women get an education, and have access to work, they choose to have fewer children. 


 Many choose to have children later in life, in their late 20s and later.[2] They live childless for decades. Others choose not to have children at all. 

For a while, it seemed like our society had escaped the culture of shame that Hannah endured. In her time, an infertile woman was considered second class. For the past few decades, women have felt confident they could make their own choices about whether they were going to get married or have children. It seemed like the shame era was over.

But recently, it feels like the tide has turned. In places around the world, the dropping birth rate has led governments to worry that women are not having enough children. Some countries impose harsh measures to encourage fertility. Iran restricts abortion and birth control [3]. Saudi Arabian women are legally required to have sex with their husbands, on demand [4]. In Afghanistan, the Taliban government has stripped women of most of their human rights, including the right to higher education, so they can only stay home and raise families. Once again, women are the victim of state-sponsored policies to shame and coerce them into being mothers.

In the industrialized countries, the push to have children is less coercive. In Japan, women are given financial incentives to have children, including paying the hospital bill to have the baby, and monthly subsidies for every child in a family. [5] In Finland, one town is paying mothers $10,000 dollars per baby. [6] In Russia, the government is providing financial incentives for female students under 25 to have babies and offering free fertility testing to all women under 40[7]. At the same time, the government is discouraging women from having abortions.[8]

In Canada, we have not felt these same pressures. Our current federal government can see the falling birth rates, but until recently thought the answer was to increase immigration. The new policy of reducing immigration may lead our government to encourage fertility. Only time will tell. So far, our government has not used coercion or shame to encourage women to have more children.

But that may change. In the United States, the pressure to stay home and have children is rising. 

JD Vance
Vice President elect J.D. Vance denounced the single women of America as “childless cat ladies.” He has promoted a vision of America where real women live up to their full God-given potential by having children. 

Jordan Peterson
Jordan Peterson has claimed that women who decide not to have children are either deluded or immature.[9]. 


On the Internet, “Bro culture” denounces women who won’t marry and have children. On platforms like TikTok, men celebrate their stay-at-home girlfriends, and “trad wives.”  The repeal of abortion laws in many states is part of this drive to force women to raise the birthrate. Shame is back, and it is aimed at childless women.

Many of the people who denounce childless women are Christians. Both JD Vance and Jordan Peterson are Christians. Conservative Christians have long believed that the Bible calls on women to become mothers. They can find evidence for these attitudes in the Bible, especially the Hebrew Scriptures. Hannah’s story is just one of many where childless women are honoured by being blessed by fertility, often with a famous son like Samuel or Samson.[10]

The latest Christian push for women to have more children also draws on the New Testament for support. In some of Paul’s letters, he clearly tells married women that they are to serve their husbands. (Ephesians 5:22-3). 

22 Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord.23 For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Saviour.

That can sound like women should get married and obey their husband by having children. But Paul doesn’t say that. In another letter to the Corinthians, he discourages women from getting married and having children:

Now to the unmarried and the widows I say: It is good for them to stay unmarried, as I am. But if they cannot control themselves, they should marry, for it is better to marry than to burn with passion. (1 Cor 7:8-9). 

Paul wants people to devote themselves the Christ full-time. Marriage and having babies would be a distraction from that. If your spiritual devotion to Jesus is being undermined by sexual desire, then get married. But even within marriage, Paul suggests having sex as little as possible. (1 Cor 7:5) And should your partner die, he tells women, try to stay single. Paul very clearly makes a case for women staying single and childless. 

This emphasis on a single life for women was heeded by many in his time. His letters are full of references to single women and widows running homes where Christian’s worship. Later, these letters will be used to justify women living childless in convents. Nuns have played important roles in Christianity for over a thousand years. Here in Toronto, it was nuns who founded numerous hospitals like St Michael’s and St Joseph’s.[11] Christianity has always had a place for single childless women, right from the start. It was not considered shameful, but the ultimate sign of Christian devotion.[12]

But what if you don’t want to devote your life to Christ 24/7 in a convent? What if you just want to live a regular life as a childless Christian woman? If you are a follower of Jesus, I suggest that you watch and listen to what Jesus does in the Bible. At no time does Jesus tell women they must have children to be real women. Nor does he command them to obey their husbands. Jesus surrounds himself with single women. Mary Magdalene is his most devoted female disciple, and she is single and childless. Jesus loves hanging out with Mary and Martha at their home, but there is no evidence they were married or had children. Jesus loves children, that is clear, but he doesn’t suggest that every woman should have them. 

In the Gospel of John, the longest dialogue Jesus has with anyone is with the woman at the well (John 4).[13] The disciples have gone into town in Samaria to get some food. Jesus is at the well at noon when a woman walks up to get water. By the values of the day, Jesus shouldn’t speak to this Samaritan woman who is not a relative. But he does. He tells her he knows that she has had five husbands and is now living with a man who is not her husband. Children are never mentioned. If she had children, they would probably help her get the water from the well. This childless woman has a long discussion with Jesus. The gospel tells us that she hurries home to tell the people of her village that she has met the Messiah. She declares he has told her all about her life - but Jesus does not mention children. She is the evangelist of that town, bringing the good news of Christ. And she is childless. Jesus does not have a problem with that. She doesn’t ask to be given children, and Jesus doesn’t offer. She is fine, just as she is. [14]

In today’s scripture reading, Hannah felt deeply ashamed of her infertility. But we should note, God does not tell her to have a child. Instead, she is prompted by shame to ask for one, and God grants her wish. We live in a time when women have more freedom and should be able to choose whether they have children without the burden of shame from family, friends, or society. Let us remember Christ’s example. He loved all the women among his followers, including those who did not have children. He saw no fault, no lack in them. God is the source of love, and God loves us all, in whatever way we choose to share that love in our lives. Let us remember Hannah as a woman who might have made a very different choice had she lived in a society without shame for childless women. May she and all women know that they are loved by God, and they should be free to choose how they will live. Amen. 

[1] https://www.economicshelp.org/blog/166908/development/impact-of-falling-birth-rates/

[2] https://www.policyschool.ca/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/Social-Policy-Trends-Age-of-Mother-at-Childbearing-March-2024.pdf

[3] https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2022-09-14/iran-urging-people-have-kids-restricting-abortion-contraception

[4] https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/19/opinion/saudi-arabia-women-rights.html

[5] “Financial Aid for Childbirth and Childcare in Japan”

https://www.tokhimo.com/post/financial-aid-for-childbirth-and-childcare-in-japan-1#:~:text=Childbirth%20Lump%2DSum%20Allowance,-Hospital%20fees%20for&text=Every%20woman%20in%20Japan%20is,JPY%20500%2C000%20for%20each%20baby.

[6] https://www.weforum.org/stories/2020/02/europe-ageing-population-migration-birthrate/#:~:text=In%20the%20far%20north%20of,reverse%20the%20continent's%20falling%20birthrate.

[7] https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/russia-mothers-birth-rate-1.7327712

[8] https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2023/11/28/russia-limits-womens-access-to-abortion-citing-demographic-changes

[9] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7CX37F-ZFKU

[10] https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/barren-women-in-the-bible#:~:text=There%20are%20six%20barren%20women,of%20the%20prophet%20Elisha%20(2

[11] https://unityhealth.to/about-unity-health/who-we-are/#st-michaels-hospital

[12] Joanne M. Pierce, “Childless women − cat ladies or not − have long played key roles in the Catholic Church,” The Conversation, July 30, 2024. https://theconversation.com/childless-women-cat-ladies-or-not-have-long-played-key-roles-in-the-catholic-church-235483

[13] https://www.crivoice.org/WT-samaritan.html#:~:text=Yet%2C%20John%204%20never%20says,Gen%2011%3A30).

[14] https://www.crivoice.org/WT-samaritan.html#:~:text=Yet%2C%20John%204%20never%20says,Gen%2011%3A30).