A reason not to have kids?

[justawhisper]

as i have said before, i am going through the motions to be officially catholic (starting RCIA in august, hopefully), and have been trying to live a Catholic lifestyle, etc…

my husband has schizophrenia running through his family, his grandma and uncles have it, we are pretty sure his dad has it, and over time, we are pretty sure he has it too. he has all the signs. he’s going into therapy soon to see what the problem is, get on medication to help with his syptoms, etc. he has said something about not wanting to have our own children, but he really really wants to adopt. iow, he still WANTS kids, he is just afraid of passing on his genetics to our children. im not looking into having children at the moment, we need to be able to provide a better quality of life for a child, at the time, i dont think we have the means (space, money, and other things). now would that be ok NOT to have kids, for fear of passing a mental disorder on like that? i would like to experience having my own child. im just not sure how the Church would feel about it us not having our own kids and procreating, or how a Catholic SHOULD handle this situation.

thank you!

 

[st_lucy]

First of all I would speak to a priest or a spiritual advisor about this.

My first thoughts are this. If you are simply waiting because you don’t have money, space etc for a child, you are waiting for all the wrong reasons. God provides. If we all looked at life this way none of us would ever have kids.

Second, I would not totally back off having kids because of genetics. God has plans for all of us, this is not something we should decide on. He and He alone knows what is best.

Just my two cents.

 

[justawhisper]

First of all I would speak to a priest or a spiritual advisor about this.

My first thoughts are this. If you are simply waiting because you don’t have money, space etc for a child, you are waiting for all the wrong reasons. God provides. If we all looked at life this way none of us would ever have kids.

Second, I would not totally back off having kids because of genetics. God has plans for all of us, this is not something we should decide on. He and He alone knows what is best.

Just my two cents.

you are right. those are not good reasons to postpone children. it still frightens me that i may not provide for that child like i would like to, but God does provide. i just dont want to go the welfare route to take care of myself and family DONT GET ME WRONG, im not saying i am above anyone for it, my family did depend on that for a while, when i was a child, but only briefly. that’s neither here nor there though. but thank you, for someone to tell me it’s not ok to wait for those reasons, i need to hear it. i have my family and a few in his that say we need to wait til we are more finacially stable before we even THINK about kids… though his step-mother (whom he is extremely close to) was dirt poor when she started having children…

as far as genetics go, i agree with you,and i do want to have children. when we went to talk to his (very Catholic) grandmother about it, she said he needed to speak to a dr. before we planned to have children. AND, like i told him, atleast we would know what was going on, and be able to treat it before it got out of hand, or surprised said child later on in life. we would already know it was a possibility. we’re just going to have to meet with a priest, so he can talk to us about this.

 

[Black_Jaque]

To say that the suffering caused by a genetic malady is greater than the joy of life and heaven probably offends God.

Go ahead. Have a bunch of kids. Get them all into Heaven. The rest is just worldly silliness.

 

[Verita]

No offense, but when people say things like “we need to be able to provide a better quality of life for a child, at the time, i dont think we have the means”, it usually means that what they really want is to not have to give up any of the luxuries they are accustomed to to have a child. That is a VERY bad reason.

When I had my daughter 4 years ago my husband was out of work. Our only income was from my full time job and our insurance was pathetic. We ended up paying medical bills for years. On top of that our daughter ended up having an allergic reaction to regular formula and we had to get the really expensive kind. But we had help. We got lots of support from family and the formula ended up being almost completely covered by the WIC program. It was still a struggle and we lived paycheck to paycheck, but my husband was able to be with me during my whole maternity leave and stay home with our daughter after I had to go back to work. And our daughter is utterly perfect in every way and I know that waiting would have meant we didn’t have her. She wouldn’t have been the entirely unique individual that she is. I would go through all the hardship again in a heart beat.

As far as the genetics… My husband’s family has a plethora of genetic conditions including some mental disorder. He himself has asthma because of it. But I shudder to think what would have happened if his father hadn’t wanted to have kids because of all the diseases they might get.

 

[justawhisper]

No offense, but when people say things like “we need to be able to provide a better quality of life for a child, at the time, i dont think we have the means”, it usually means that what they really want is to not have to give up any of the luxuries they are accustomed to to have a child. That is a VERY bad reason.

oh believe me, it would not mean giving up any of our luxuries! we’re living paycheck to paycheck, hand to mouth as it is. well, i suppose you could include having the internet and cable as a luxury… but as far as furthering that, no, i dont believe we have any luxuries to speak of, for the most part. nothing really money consuming. no partying, no additional cars (just the one that my husband drives-i dont even drive), nothing like that. so no offense taken. but along the lines of not wanting your current life and how you like to live it change, i totally agree, thats a poor reason to put it off.

When I had my daughter 4 years ago my husband was out of work. Our only income was from my full time job and our insurance was pathetic. We ended up paying medical bills for years. On top of that our daughter ended up having an allergic reaction to regular formula and we had to get the really expensive kind. But we had help. We got lots of support from family and the formula ended up being almost completely covered by the WIC program. It was still a struggle and we lived paycheck to paycheck, but my husband was able to be with me during my whole maternity leave and stay home with our daughter after I had to go back to work. And our daughter is utterly perfect in every way and I know that waiting would have meant we didn’t have her. She wouldn’t have been the entirely unique individual that she is. I would go through all the hardship again in a heart beat

As far as the genetics… My husband’s family has a plethora of genetic conditions including some mental disorder. He himself has asthma because of it. But I shudder to think what would have happened if his father hadn’t wanted to have kids because of all the diseases they might get. .

i get what you are saying here. it is just something that my husband is worried about, i am as well, but i am not nessicarily writing off the idea of having our own kids, believe me.

 

[ricmat]

I agree with the previous posters - don’t delay children due to financial circumstances.

So far as the “bad genes” issue, here’s an article that might be of interest.

When What Seems Broken is Perfect
lifeissues.net/writers/val/val_28trisomy13.html

 

[LittleDeb]

I agree with the previous posters - don’t delay children due to financial circumstances.

So far as the “bad genes” issue, here’s an article that might be of interest.

When What Seems Broken is Perfect
lifeissues.net/writers/val/val_28trisomy13.html

What an amazing story! Thank you for sharing.

To the OP, justawhisper, even if the chance of passing on a genetic disease is 100%, it is still up to God if He wants us to cooperate in the making of a human life.

Pray and trust. Pray and trust. Bring all of your sexuality to the foot of the cross and ask for His help in determining your family. Through Natural Family Planning, you will learn that while we can understand our signs of fertility, it is still all about God’s will. Conforming our will to God’s will, results in true joy.

I was told by many people that I should not have biological children because of all of my random health issues. Those who know me and love me, even some who don’t believe in God, advised me otherwise. They see me as a gift and my health issues as just one aspect of me. Knowing my health issues helped us to be proactive in helping our son overcome his health problems.

Oh, and the health trouble that annoys our son and the rest of us the most? It’s not the many severe possibly fatal allergies he inherited from me. It is having to constantly put medicine on his eczema. That he got from my husband’s side, the “never sick, healthy as a horse” side of the family.

Eczema and allergies in no way compare to schizophrenia, but there are no guarantees for or against any of them.

 

[Athanasiy]

I live in a small town , on the west of Ukraine.
The people in the mountains area have from 4 till 9 children.
Those areas are the areas of the Chronic Unemployments.
I can not imagine how they manage to survive, no means for the living, no social help, no chances to get the job there.
They definitely can not even think about the quality of life.
But many of them are opened and generous to help the others materially while they have many needs themselves.
I know what you guise call necessities we call it luxuries, and you are learned to respect yourselves , but I am sure that God Will Provide, just put your trust on Him.

Genetics is in Gods hands not in ours , God was also risking a lot when He decided to create us.

God Bless.

 

[MH84]

as i have said before, i am going through the motions to be officially catholic (starting RCIA in august, hopefully), and have been trying to live a Catholic lifestyle, etc…

my husband has schizophrenia running through his family, his grandma and uncles have it, we are pretty sure his dad has it, and over time, we are pretty sure he has it too. he has all the signs. he’s going into therapy soon to see what the problem is, get on medication to help with his syptoms, etc. he has said something about not wanting to have our own children, but he really really wants to adopt. iow, he still WANTS kids, he is just afraid of passing on his genetics to our children. im not looking into having children at the moment, we need to be able to provide a better quality of life for a child, at the time, i dont think we have the means (space, money, and other things). now would that be ok NOT to have kids, for fear of passing a mental disorder on like that? i would like to experience having my own child. im just not sure how the Church would feel about it us not having our own kids and procreating, or how a Catholic SHOULD handle this situation.

thank you!

I understand that as Catholics we can get into these situations and have to make decisions. I am not qualified to reply. But I have a question. Did you know about all this before you got married? If so, why did you not wait to get married until you were more sure about what to do?

 

[MariaGorettiGrl]

God works in strange and mysterious ways. Even if it seems like you’d have to go on welfare if you had even one child, amazing things can happen.

But no matter what you decide, to wait on children or to not have your own children at all, you need to not fall into the sins of using condoms or birth control or being steralized. Find Natural Family Planning classes through your parish. Being open to children even if you are hoping not to have one is part of letting God lead.

Trusting in God is only the most challenging and frightening and seemingly impossible things you will ever have to do in your lfie! But He really does know better than us and His plan is beyond any of our own petty dreams.

So pray, pray, pray! We here in the peanut gallery will be praying for you, too!

 

[justawhisper]

I understand that as Catholics we can get into these situations and have to make decisions. I am not qualified to reply. But I have a question. Did you know about all this before you got married? If so, why did you not wait to get married until you were more sure about what to do?

i did wait to get married-a little more than 5 years. as for knowing about all of this before hand, yes and no. i knew there was something wrong. we werent sure what it was, until we spoke to his grandmother after the fact. even if i had known the full extent, it wouldnt have affected my decision to marry him, i love him.

i dont think it has graduated to an extreme level yet, so theres still time to gain control over it.

we have been talking about this here and there, i told him exactly what everyone on here has said; this is God’s plan, if He wills it to be so, we’re having our own children. i didnt hear much of a protest to that. i think what his grandmother had said to us as we were leaving (“you need to talk to a doctor before you have children”) really bounced around in his head. she’s a devote catholic. maybe he just took it the wrong way. maybe she meant we needed to explore the realitys of this condition and know the signs, etc. i really should call and ask her what that was suppost to mean.

nothing was written in stone about kids. it was just something we were thinking about and we didnt know the answers. but thank you all for your replies