In a world not quite like our own, there existed a most unusual custom. Young women, when seeking marriage partners, had but one non-negotiable demand: their future husbands must already have children of their own. Not children from previous marriages, mind you, but children they had somehow—impossibly—brought into the world themselves.
“But how can we possibly have our own children?” the young men would cry out in despair. “It’s biologically impossible!”
The young women would merely shrug and say, “Figure it out. We need to know you’re capable of producing children before we commit.”
And so began the great charade. Desperate young men would secretly adopt children from orphanages, then emerge from lengthy “retreats” in remote locations, cradling infants and telling elaborate tales of miraculous male births. They would hire nurses to verify their stories and elderly women to swear they had witnessed the unprecedented events.
Some men went to extraordinary lengths, wearing prosthetic bellies for months and staging fake pregnancies. Others claimed they had discovered rare herbs that enabled male childbearing. The more creative ones spoke of experimental medical procedures or divine intervention.
The women, of course, knew it was all pretense. Yet they insisted on maintaining this bizarre requirement, claiming it was the only way to ensure their future husbands would be good fathers.
One day, a wise elder gathered the young women of the village and spoke to them: “Do you not see the absurdity of demanding something that can only be achieved through deception? Just as a man cannot bear children alone, true family prosperity rarely springs from a single source. When an intelligent man and woman join forces, combining their strengths and working together, they create something greater than either could achieve alone—be it wealth, wisdom, or family harmony.”
The young women listened and began to understand. They saw how their impossible demand had created a society built on elaborate lies, much like demanding that young men possess great wealth before marriage ignored the potential of what two people might build together over time.
Gradually, the custom faded. Young couples began to focus on their compatible values, shared dreams, and willingness to work together. And in time, they discovered that the true miracle of family life—whether measured in children or in prosperity—lay not in what each person brought to the marriage, but in what they created together.
See also: Fertility & Virility