The biblical stories of barren women highlight the serious problem of childlessness in the ancient world. Infertility meant no child to love, to help with daily work, to provide for you in the afterlife, or to inherit land, money, or goods. Most important, without children there would be no one to replace the current generation. For a woman not to have any children posed a problem, both for herself and her husband. Couples navigated fertility issues in a number of ways, some of which were more reliable than others: prayer, magical practices, adoption, surrogacy, and at times a second […]
