Hi, Dr. Craig. Thank you for your contributions to Christian theology and philosophy.

I am interested in pursuing a PhD in philosophy and teaching, God

willing, at some point in the future. However, my wife and I are also prayerfully considering

having children. I have concerns that having children will make further education or career

changes difficult. I have a few questions for you. One, in your experience, if you have experienced

it or know others who have, how did you balance raising children and pursuing higher education?

What advice would you give, if recommended at all? Two, how did you handle your personal spiritual

life, prayer, scripture reading, etc. With developing your children's

spiritual life and family devotional time. Three, how did you maintain a life of constant learning

and writing papers, books while raising children? How did you find, make the time? I appreciate any

feedback. Thank you again for your help. Sergio, United States.

I'm glad that you asked me simply to share my personal experience, Sergio, rather than to give advice.

The decision to start a family while pursuing graduate studies is certainly an enormous choice. Jan and I decided to

delay starting a family until my graduate studies in philosophy and theology were completed.

So our daughter, charity, was not born until our 10th wedding anniversary. I'm so glad that we

waited. Neither Jan nor I've felt the compulsion to start a family, and we were very happy

together. Having no children gave us enormous flexibility to move about during my doctoral studies in England and Germany.

Not only did being alone together enable me to focus on my studies, but it also gave us the opportunity to get to know each other better and build our relationship before the disruption

of children entered the scene. By the time we had charity, I had a full-time job as a professor

at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School and so could provide for my family.

That being said, I agree with those who say that the decision to have children rests ultimately

with the wife. If your wife really wants to have children now, then you should not deny her that privilege.

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