Big Familes and NFP

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ohne

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Hello,

Just a hypothetical situation I have been wondering about.

A couple marries in their early/mid twenties. Lets say the husband is 24 and the wife is 23.

They both desire a big family and don’t use any form of artificial contraception, or even NFP.

Assume they both have “normal” fertility and have sex at a “normal” frequency.

How many children would the wife be likely to give birth to?
 
ohne said:
Hello,

Just a hypothetical situation I have been wondering about.

A couple marries in their early/mid twenties. Lets say the husband is 24 and the wife is 23.

They both desire a big family and don’t use any form of artificial contraception, or even NFP.

Assume they both have “normal” fertility and have sex at a “normal” frequency.

How many children would the wife be likely to give birth to?
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They will probably have about four children. By the fifth pregnancy they will realize they no longer have the resources, time or energy to raise it so they go to the abortion clinic and kill their fifth child.

So my answer is 4.
 
Perhaps I should have said that they are Catholics so they wouldn’t do that!!!
 
ohne said:
Hello,

Just a hypothetical situation I have been wondering about.

A couple marries in their early/mid twenties. Lets say the husband is 24 and the wife is 23.

They both desire a big family and don’t use any form of artificial contraception, or even NFP.

Assume they both have “normal” fertility and have sex at a “normal” frequency.

How many children would the wife be likely to give birth to?
Click to expand...
I would say about 8 to 14 assuming the woman stays healthy. I know of two families that have never used any NFP to space their children and one has 12 and the other 14.
 
ohne said:
Perhaps I should have said that they are Catholics so they wouldn’t do that!!!
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Don’t be naive. I KNOW catholics who have done it. Get to know people. What people proclaim to be is FAR away of who they really are when no one is watching.
 
DavidChrist said:
Don’t be naive. I KNOW catholics who have done it. Get to know people. What people proclaim to be is FAR away of who they really are when no one is watching.
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They are devout enough Catholics to not practice birth control. I really doubt they are going to take the Church seriously on contraception, and then ignore the ban on murder. 🤷
 
joseph123 said:
They are devout enough Catholics to not practice birth control. I really doubt they are going to take the Church seriously on contraception, and then ignore the ban on murder. 🤷
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People who don’t practice birth control are those living on rural farms. They usually have as many children that is possible. That usually is anywhere between 9-17 children.

How many Catholic devouts do you know with 9-17 children? They are practicing controlled birth. You don’t know because when was the last time you asked a devout Catholic couple if they used contraception?
 
I have friends from Catholic families of 10+ children so I seriously doubt whether their parents would be practicing any form of artificial birth control.

It’s only a very small proportion of the total population of western countries that doesn’t use artificial birth control these days, although many devout Catholics don’t and you cannot achieve holiness through marriage whilst practicing artificial birth control!

There is no way I would marry someone who thought it was ok to use artificial contraception.
 
Obviously, we cannot know what people do in their bedrooms, but there are plenty of ‘devout’ Catholics that don’t use artificial birth control and have enough love in their family to accept all children as gifts from God and not abort them.

Now, my answer to the original post. I would assume that if the couple was Catholic ‘enough’ to want a large family and not use artificial forms of birth control, I also assume that couple would want to breastfeed their children if at all possible. Breastfeeding does space babies. Lets say your fertility returns after a year of nursing as exclusively as possible. Then your babies would be 21-24 months apart, probably. Then, lets assume the woman has this ‘normal’ fertility until she’s 40. [You can talk to many doctors and they will generally tell you that fertility changes throughout a woman’s life (duh) and the decrease starts around 32, then another change at 35, 40, and 45. The only thing ‘normal’ is that no woman is ‘normal.’] That being said, a 23 year old might have 17 years or about 204 months of fertility. If the babies are spaced 21-24 months apart because of breastfeeding, I would say about 8-10 children.

This family is very generous and will be given all the grace needed to raise this family. However, if at anytime the couple wants to space the children further or decides that another child would be irresponsible because of financial, emotional, etc problems, the CCC requires us to do the responsible thing and use periodic abstinence, ie NFP, to avoid pregnancy. The Church is very clear that it does not want families to have as many children as they possibly can during their fertile years, but instead want families to welcome new additions as gifts from God and wants couples to prayerfully discern how many children is right for their family. Whether 1 or 15, a couple needs to discern if they should be avoid pregnancy every month. Re-evaluation definitely needs to be done very often based on the needs of the family at the time. One thing is certain, though, you cannot predict everything that will happen in your life and you cannot expect to definitely know when you get married how many children God will want you to welcome into your lives.

God Bless,
laomath
 
It’s an interesting question. The average length of infertility while practicing ecological breastfeeding is 15 months (if I remember correctly). Add that to the 9 months of pregnancy and an average of 3 months between return of fertility and pregnancy and you get 27 months between babies. Assume the average age of menopause at 50, and the woman is likely to give birth to 12 children.

But “normal” fertility varies so much that there is no way of knowing. Most women will experience at least one miscarriage, probably more, if they have 27 childbearing years without birth control. Fertility declines as we age, so as this couple enters their 40s, the space between their children will likely increase. And in the end, only God knows how many children each couple will have.

BTW, this question was so interesting to me because I was 23 when I had my first child (I was 21 when we got married, but we used ABC for the first 6 months of our marriage – we were not Catholic – and NFP for a year after that.) We have 2 living children and have had 2 miscarriages. This is the first month since my first was conceived that we have used NFP to avoid a pregnancy. I am 28 now. I guess that means I’m on pace for 11-12 kids (50-28=22*12=264/27=9.77+my 2 kids= 11 or 12 total). Don’t tell DH! I’m not sure he could handle THAT idea!
 
There is also the issue of miscarriage. ( not sure about statistics?) Not all pregnancies go to term. You do not always get to bring your baby home.
 
(Edited) Many devout Catholic families don’t use contraception and farming has very little to do with it.

BTW, the Catholic Church isn’t agains “controlling births” as long as the couple has a valid reason and use a licit method of spacing births (fertility awareness methods). The Church is against people changing the marital embrace into a non-procreative event–that means not being naturally ordered toward life (ie Contra-ception).

To be honest, we can’t know whether a couple is using fertility awareness methods, contraception or are infertile and it is rude to ask. We must speak the truth about contraception and hope people listen.
 
caro_c said:
There is also the issue of miscarriage. ( not sure about statistics?) Not all pregnancies go to term. You do not always get to bring your baby home.
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Exactly. And fertility’s not something you can count on.Things happen.
Infertility’s been increasing.It’s not something we can ever take for granted.
 
If the couple were us - that’d be 7, 2 less than I actually have because of the ages you gave, We had our first 2 at ages 21 and 22.

And we weren’t catholic and we didn’t live rurally and abortion never even remotely crossed our minds with any of them.

That said, that’s just us.

We’ve had several miscarriages. And it took us a bit over a year to even get pregnant with the first baby. For another couple, they might have more m/c or take longer to conceive or get more infertile time between pregnancies with their bf-ing than I do/did. And for many women their fertility is low by their early 30s, so they might not have had as long a child bearing time as me already.

The average is between 4 and 6 though, if averages matter to anyone.
ETA: there is a difference between not using any thing to control births and “having as many as possible”. Only with our 6th did we ever actively try to get pregnant (we used NFP to see peak fertility). I’m sure there’s more we could have done to try to have more children (such as not bf-ing at all and such), but it was never our goal to have as many as possible. Just to accept whoever God sent.
 
The 8-10 children guess doesn’t take into account decreasing fertility (not INfertility, just age-related decreasing fertility)… babies will probably naturally be spread out MORE as the mother ages.
There are also statistics surrounding the chances of getting pregnant in any one month, so the assumption that she gets pregnant immediately after BF infertility goes away isn’t accurate there either.

LOTS of assumptions must go into making any guesses.
 
It really, really depends.

Breastfeeding would be the main factor in determining spacing. If the mother didn’t breastfeed, she could probably expect a child every 1-1.5 years, not accounting for miscarriages.

If she did breastfeed, her return of fertility could really vary. My cycle didn’t return until my son was 17months old, and I nursed him until 2. Of course, my fertility apparently still has returned (I’m not sure if that is still from breastfeeding or secondary infertility), but we’ve been actively trying 8 months. Others return to fertility much more quickly, but the average is 14 months if ecologically breastfeeding.

I’d say it’s a pretty big range, anywhere from 6-15.
 
Isn’t it true that a woman’s fertility declines as she enters her thirties? So I would expect children to be more widely spaced apart once the mother passed the age of 30.
 
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