childbearing: the physical bearing of children
Childbearing names the plain physical reality of a woman bearing and giving birth to children. It is an abstract word for the whole process, not a single birth or a particular child, and outside the Bible it turns up mostly in ancient writing about biology and medicine.
The writer of 1 Timothy uses a matching verb a few chapters later, telling younger widows to marry, bear children, and manage a household (1 Timothy 5:14). There it plainly means ordinary childbearing as part of family life, and that everyday sense is what the word carries.
The reason this word is famous is not what it means but the sentence it sits in. 1 Timothy 2:15 says a woman will be saved through childbearing, and how that promise works has been argued for centuries. The debate is about the surrounding words (the little word the in front of it, the future-tense will be saved, and a sudden shift from she to they), not about the meaning of childbearing itself. Those competing readings are recorded on the verse below.
How τεκνογονία functions in the promise of 1 Timothy 2:15 that a woman will be saved through childbearing. All sides agree the noun's ordinary sense is the bearing of children, confirmed by the cognate verb at 1 Timothy 5:14; the disagreement is over its referent and force here, driven by the definite article, the future passive σωθήσεται, and the shift from a singular to a plural verb.
- majorityOrdinary, physical childbearing, affirmed against the Ephesian teachers who forbade marriage (1 Timothy 4:3); being saved is understood as final salvation, and the sentence reassures Christian women that the normal experience of motherhood is no obstacle to it.; I. Howard Marshall, The Pastoral Epistles, ICC (1999) 469-70; Philip H. Towner, The Letters to Timothy and Titus, NICNT (2006) 232-35; William D. Mounce, Pastoral Epistles, WBC 46 (2000) 143-47
- minorityChildbearing standing, by a figure of speech, for the whole God-ordained domestic role of women, with salvation understood spiritually.; Douglas J. Moo, '1 Timothy 2:11-15: Meaning and Significance,' Trinity Journal 1 (1980) 62-83; Thomas R. Schreiner, in Women in the Church (1995)
- minorityThe Childbearing as one particular birth, Mary bearing the promised offspring of Genesis 3:15 (the protoevangelium reading), with the definite article pointing to that single event.; George W. Knight III, The Pastoral Epistles, NIGTC (1992) 143-49; Ben Witherington III, Letters and Homilies for Hellenized Christians, vol. 1 (2006); Philip B. Payne, Man and Woman, One in Christ (2009)
- minorityBeing kept safe through the physical dangers of labor, with saved in its common sense of rescue, read against the high maternal mortality of the Greco-Roman world and the Ephesian cult of Artemis as the midwife who brings women safely through birth.; Moyer V. Hubbard, 'Kept Safe Through Childbearing,' JETS 55/4 (2012) 743-62; Sandra L. Glahn, Nobody's Mother (IVP Academic, 2023)