To hold a child is to hold something you did not make and cannot keep. The Qur'an calls children a delight to the eyes and an adornment of this life, and it also names them a trust that will one day walk out of your hands. Both things stay true at once, and the mornings feel heavier for it.
These verses meet parents where the work actually happens: in the exhaustion, the whispered prayers, the fear of getting it wrong. They speak of gratitude owed and gratitude given, of a father like Luqman leaning close to counsel his son, of a childless man who begged God for a good line and was answered. Read them slowly when the house is finally quiet.
3:38 — There Zakariya called upon his Lord, saying, "My Lord, grant me from your presence good offspring. Indeed, you are the hearer of prayer."
25:74 — And those who say, "Our Lord, grant us joy of our eyes in our spouses and our offspring, and make us a model for the God-conscious."
46:15 — And we have enjoined upon the human being kindness toward his parents. His mother carried him through hardship and gave birth to him through hardship, and his bearing and weaning together is thirty months. Then, when he reaches his full strength and reaches forty years, he says, "My Lord, move me to be grateful for the blessing you have bestowed on me and on my parents, and to do righteous work that pleases you, and set right for me my offspring. I have turned to you in repentance, and I am one of those who surrender."
31:13 — And when Luqman said to his son, counseling him: "My dear son, ascribe no partner to God — to ascribe partners to him is a tremendous wrong."
66:6 — You who believe, guard yourselves and your families against a fire whose fuel is people and stones, over which stand angels, stern and severe, who do not disobey God in what he commands them and who do what they are commanded.
18:46 — Wealth and children are the adornment of this worldly life, but the enduring good deeds are better in your Lord's sight for reward and better as a foundation for hope.
14:40 — My Lord, make me one who establishes the prayer, and from my descendants as well. Our Lord, accept my supplication.
17:24 — And lower to them the wing of humility out of mercy, and say, "My Lord, have mercy on them, as they raised me when I was small."