In reading through a lot of these comments, it seems like most people are missing the point of your question. I am 23 and have been married for four months in the Church and am currently in my second trimester of our first child, so best believe I be thinking about this question!
In Catholic doctrine we know that children are a good, that they are a natural gift derived from a sacramental union and that God wants us to have children. While knowing this, I also know that people, maybe even my own child, will choose sin and even potentially hell. How am I as a parent to reconcile with this idea? How does God manage it, seeing as he wants us to have kids but he also knows who goes to hell?
It’s important to remember (for my own sanity as well lol) that God always desires our good and wants us to choose him. As parents, we have a huge range of influence and responsibility over our kids in which God can work through us to help our children make good choices. Even still, our child could choose hell–and this is where I try to practice trust in God. Because there is no way for us to know our child’s ultimate fate, our options are 1) become cynical about God and grapple with a question we can’t possibly know the answer to in this life or 2) simply trust him wholeheartedly in the same way that our own little child trusts us as his/her parents. That is super hard to do and feels dissatisfying. It’s like a cop out. Where’s the answer?? But we have to realize that we don’t get to know the answer, and in accepting that, we learn how valuable trust is to God and how at peace we feel when we place our worries with him instead of mulling over them in obsessive loops (like I tend to do lol).
One thing you mentioned as well was going to heaven while your kid goes to hell. I can’t imagine that either and it sounds awful from our earthly perspective. One explanation I have heard from the evangelists on Catholic Answers radio is that because heaven means we are constantly ensconced in the almighty love of God and have access to the beatific vision, we won’t need anything else. We will feel sorrow for the sins of the other people but we will also never want for anything with God and we’ll know that those people chose where they ended up, that everything God does is righteous and just. It’s hard to picture that on earth, which leads me back to the trust thing.
I’m going to suggest a book by my favorite saint: Story of a Soul by St. Therese of Lisieux. It’s short and simple but so so powerful. She and all her sisters became devout nuns and her parents are saints as well. This is an example of the family I wish to raise and a family that gives me hope for my children and for myself and my spouse in what we can achieve. Hopefully we will become saints too!
My husband and I took the big gamble and now we have to do our jobs as faithful parents as well as trust that God will guide us and our kids. I hope this was somewhat helpful! God bless you
