Patristics

“It is also unmanly and weak to shun living with a wife and children. For of that of which the loss is an evil, the possession is by all means a good; and this is the case with the rest of things. But the loss of children is, they say, among the chiefest evils; the possession of children is consequently a good thing; and if it be so, so also is marriage.” Clement of Alexandria, Stromata, 2:23, ANF 2:378