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MomaMary8
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Thank you! I can’t tell you how excited my kids are, especially the older ones
You are in my prayers!
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You are in my prayers!
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gardenswithkids
Guest
It seems that you believe chastity is something that can be purchased for money. Our Church offers us hope–and it’s not without price but it’s not bought with money. Look at a crucifix. There’s the price of chastity. That’s our ideal. We pick up our crosses, and we follow our Crucified Lord.
When reality fails to match the ideals, that doesn’t mean the ideals are wrong. Difficult doesn’t mean wrong. In this society, chastity is often difficult for the middle-class and wealthy, as well as for the poor. How do we address it? Personally, I don’t exactly know what to do about the challenges of chastity in this society, but the best thing I can think of for myself and my own family is pick up my own cross and follow Jesus.
Before hitting reply, I looked at one of your previous threads. It sounds like you are newly back to practicing the faith and you have come a long way in transforming your life! Congratulations and welcome back! We’re glad to have you!
In reading another thread of yours, it also sounds to me like you may have a tendency to let worries about your future ability to follow Church teachings get in the way of your faith life right now. Please realize, God gives us the graces we need, usually closer to the time when we need them and not years in advance. Right now, you don’t need the graces necessary to raise a large family in poverty because you’re not there. You may never be. People often seem to presume that God is going to give every couple a huge family if they don’t do something to stop Him like using contraception, but fertility and children are gifts that He doesn’t give to everyone. Don’t worry about this situation for yourself right now. You asked how the Church can possible address these serious situations so I’ll tell you–we are the Church, and we all help each other when we live a life of chastity and grace. Do your part with what you have right now, not what you may or may not have in the future. Worries about your future chastity may be a stumbling block to your present day chastity. Pray and and make yourself available to the Sacrament of Confession when needed. The Sacraments are sources of His grace, as is prayer and reading of the scripture. God is good. We can trust Him to give us the graces we need, but we have to ask and do our part and not let worries about the future get in our way of following Jesus today.
Here are some words from Jesus found in Matthew 5 33-34 “Set your hearts on his kingdom first, and on God’s saving justice, and all these other things will be given you as well. So do not worry about tomorrow: tomorrow will take care of itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.”
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jlc2k2
Guest
I will say this. The times my husband and I have had to abstain the longest had nothing to do with finances and choosing to use contraception would not have prevented the abstinence. The longest stretch was most of the third trimester of my twin pregnancy when I was on pelvic rest followed by the 6 week pp period. The second longest stretch was while DH was at boot camp. The third longest was during my recent miscarriage that took several weeks to be resolved.
So the Church hypothetically embracing contraception would still not eliminate reasons for Catholic married couples to practice sexual self control. But I can say that those long stretches were easier for me to handle because we had practice at regularly having to say no when we wanted to say yes. (Though I won’t speak for my husband on that count.
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So the Church hypothetically embracing contraception would still not eliminate reasons for Catholic married couples to practice sexual self control. But I can say that those long stretches were easier for me to handle because we had practice at regularly having to say no when we wanted to say yes. (Though I won’t speak for my husband on that count.
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Xantippe
Guest
That’s an excellent point. The longest abstinence we’ve seen was due to the following: postpartum recovery (3X), post-miscarriage recovery (1X), second trimester pelvic rest with subchorionic hematoma (1X) and NFP oddness during weaning (1X–but 5 months). (Several of those happened within a fairly short time, too–I had all four types of events happen within one 15 month period.)
This wasn’t primarily anything to do with economics–it was either a question of medical safety (doctor’s orders) or not wanting to get pregnant while simultaneously caring for a new infant (particularly after having had two bad pregnancies in a row).
While it’s true that good family resources can make a larger family easier, there are many other good reasons other than economic to want to space or avoid pregnancies.
I read it, thanks.
I agree; in the U.S. today there’s a safety net.
On the one hand one could say, 12 children - not a problem; there are after all programs (food, clothing, housing, etc.) to take care of that family if it needs it.
But is that really the way someone would want their children to live?
I’d rather be able to help my kids to live comfortably.
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Xantippe
Guest
Right, me too.
But I was responding to the OP, who was envisioning the large poor US Catholic family literally going hungry, and I think it’s important to point out that that’s not going to happen if the family applies for the relevant programs.
Obviously, being poor in the US is not a cake walk–but starvation is not the primary issue. Poor educational prospects and bad neighborhoods are a much bigger problem–you can get a box of corn flakes at a food pantry, but you can’t go there to get a good school, solid peer group, or safe streets for your children.
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MomaMary8
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I’m sorry, but I’m not understanding this comment. Could you expand, please. Thank you.
I’ll be glad to.
In the U.S. today there is a “safety net.”
Families today are rarely if ever Depression-area poor (no food, beat-up clothes, living in the street). There are programs out there to assure that they get the bare essentials (food, clothing, shelter). I’m a Catholic and I fully support that.
But that still doesn’t make the 12-child family the ideal. It may have been, a hundred years ago in rural America, when you needed many hands to work on the family farm.
My uncle (mentioned earlier) had five children. He was able to help his kids out and provide more than the minimum.
Senior class trip? Not a problem; I’ll pay for it.
Want to go to college? Not a problem; go to the college of your choice and I’ll pay for it so you won’t go through all kinds of inconvenience to pay for it.
Buying a house? Not a problem; here’s the money for the down payment. Just pay it back when you can; that’s all I ask.
And with 12 kids instead of 5 it might not have been possible to help out to the same extent.
It might be better to have five children and live comfortably than to have 12 and live like poor people.
And that’s great.
And I totally agree; income level is not as important as my Catholic faith or belief in God.
I agree with this as well.
Now that you mention it, the biggest disadvantages I had growing up low-class were nonmonetary.
It wasn’t not going to Disney World that hurt; it was a lack of adult role models, in addition to the school system, and the peer crowd
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Xantippe
Guest
Signit, is your uncle still available to adopt a 40-year-old woman?
More seriously, here are some thoughts:
- Senior trips have gotten CRAZY. When I was in high school 25+ years ago, the senior trip was a local day trip to some hot springs. It could not possibly have cost more than $50 for transportation, meals and admission. Fast forward to the present, and the local suburban public school is doing senior trips to Europe. Ditto our kids’ private school–we’ve been quoted $3500 for the senior trip. We’re going to try to do it but we’ve informed our kids that they need to save up and we’ve put our 8th (!) grader on a savings program. The current calculation is that our 8th grader needs to bank nearly $80 every month to pull that off. (Nobody at school seems to have noticed that there’s this thing called “college” after senior year.) And this extends further down the economic scale than you would think–one of my cleaning ladies mentioned that her high schooler son was doing one of these trips. (I have no idea how that was going to work–but maybe she only had one kid or their fundraising system is amazing.)
- Even people that are fairly high income with small families can’t do “the college of your choice” thing anymore with college costs reaching $60k a year. It’s actually typical for high income families to steer children toward their state colleges, as a lot of private colleges have Robin Hood-style funding schemes. The Robin Hood system at private colleges can work to the advantage of larger, poorer families.
- Peer group is huge. Our kids go to a small private Protestant school in a Southern state. Certain things are just taken for granted that weren’t when I was in a rural public school in the North. Everybody at school goes to church, everybody is planning to go to college, pretty much everybody has involved, concerned, smart parents. Every time I have a CAF discussion where somebody is telling me that we should have a larger family and pull our kids out of private school to make it work I’m all NOPE NOPE NOPE. When you have a good peer group for your kids, you want to hold onto it.
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MomaMary8
Guest
I think you nailed it on the head with what I have bolded. Family size doesn’t matter. There is no “ideal” that we should strive for, but rather an openness to God’s will in all matters of our lives. For some, that means no kids, some, two, some of us get to have a big bunch
. May we all put God first in our parenting.
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MomaMary8
Guest
Just a correction:
The Robin Hood system at private colleges can work to the advantage of poorer families.
Our family size means squat when it comes to financial aid, grants, etc. We own a business so we get zilch. We also get no extra deduction for the last few kids…Uncle Sam puts a limit on that as well. We send our kids to junior colleges then to their choice to cut down on expenses.
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Xantippe
Guest
Bummer.
But doesn’t it come into play a bit when you have multiple children in college at the same time?
I was just looking up the interaction between assets and financial aid and it sounds like a lot depends on which financial aid form is used by a particular college.
“For example, you don’t have to list a $2 million family-owned small business when applying for college aid on the FAFSA, but you do on the CSS Profile.”
forbes.com/sites/troyonink/2014/02/14/how-assets-hurt-college-aid-eligibility-on-fafsa-and-css-profile/
(It’s been years ago, but my parents did the FAFSA and I got fairly substantial financial aid from a private college despite the fact that my parents had a fair amount of farm land.)
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MomaMary8
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We haven’t seen the benefit yet…but that may come. They do consider private tuition to grade & high schools, but we do public and homeschool. The amount of aid we would get by enrolling 7 kids in private school would never match the expense of the tuition. I think there is a myth that large family = financial aid. I’m not complaining. We live very comfortably and we watch our budget like any family. I just wanted to bust a myth out there.
A few quick comments:
In my day, too, the “senior class trip” might have been a one-day bus trip to the beach.
With the cost being what it is now, there is no way someone in his position today would be able to pay it all.
And in my small town public school system you had the ones who were more interested in slacking off.
Agreed.
In my day, too, the “senior class trip” might have been a one-day bus trip to the beach.
Of course, my uncle was paying for college for his kids 30+ years ago when the cost was much smaller as a portion of family income.
With the cost being what it is now, there is no way someone in his position today would be able to pay it all.
Absolutely.
And in my small town public school system you had the ones who were more interested in slacking off.
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1990Domer
Guest
And your family is in mine! I will say a special prayer to Our Lady and light a candle at mass tonight for a healthy and smooth pregnancy!Thank you! I can’t tell you how excited my kids are, especially the older ones
You are in my prayers!
God bless!
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ThePCWife
Guest
Regardless of the intentions of the original thread starter, I find it really interesting that the response is so welfarist regarding large families. It’s not “marry a guy with really strong economic prospects and live frugally if you want to balance material and physical issues with having a lot of children”, but rather “welfare is easy to get! everyone around you will be happy to provide all the random stuff your large family will need!”
Whatever happened to “marry well” or “Johnny if you want ten kids maybe consider being a CPA”?
We do not have a large family by conservative Christian standards, but we may very well end up with one and we would not even have the children we do have if not for my marrying well. We would probably be childless or have a single child, because of health issues too expensive to fix on a poverty-level income when standard treatments for them are pain meds and pitying looks and because marrying a decent-earning unbeliever would have been likely to mean a limit on family size even with the higher income. (Marrying well isn’t just about income, after all).
The village is expensive to replace. And it’s great that some people can still have it, it’s very reassuring and gives me hope when I have periods of great despair. But the blanket assumption that it will be there is one that doesn’t mesh with the current social reality, even in heavily Catholic parts of the country.
And some might be called to model the widow with the two coins, but others are called to provide the income that allows someone to pay the widow two coins. I get the impression that some here feel making money above a pittance is “materialistic and selfish”, but that it’s fine to benefit from other, presumably less holy people doing so (money to pay for welfare, food to donate to food banks, extra clothes to give away).
Whatever happened to “marry well” or “Johnny if you want ten kids maybe consider being a CPA”?
We do not have a large family by conservative Christian standards, but we may very well end up with one and we would not even have the children we do have if not for my marrying well. We would probably be childless or have a single child, because of health issues too expensive to fix on a poverty-level income when standard treatments for them are pain meds and pitying looks and because marrying a decent-earning unbeliever would have been likely to mean a limit on family size even with the higher income. (Marrying well isn’t just about income, after all).
The village is expensive to replace. And it’s great that some people can still have it, it’s very reassuring and gives me hope when I have periods of great despair. But the blanket assumption that it will be there is one that doesn’t mesh with the current social reality, even in heavily Catholic parts of the country.
And some might be called to model the widow with the two coins, but others are called to provide the income that allows someone to pay the widow two coins. I get the impression that some here feel making money above a pittance is “materialistic and selfish”, but that it’s fine to benefit from other, presumably less holy people doing so (money to pay for welfare, food to donate to food banks, extra clothes to give away).
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Xantippe
Guest
There is that.
Here’s what’s going on (at least for me) with regard to the welfare issues.
I grew up in the standard conservative Protestant view that it is a very, very wicked thing to take government support. There were only two biggish (5 kid and 10 kid) families in my family’s church that I recall, and they were both on government support. My whole extended family saw that as incredibly shameful and my parents raised a family of three children very minimally at least until my teens and with no health insurance whatsoever at any point. (But at the same time, I now realize that my parents were on the receiving end of a certain amount of discreet extended family welfare–grandma bought us a LOT of shoes.)
Now that I have a family of my own, a fair amount of parenting experience, the opportunity to reflect on my own childhood, and I’ve read a bit more about how exactly a lot of large lower-middle income families manage without food stamps, I no longer think that taking government support is the worst thing ever. I now reserve that place for people who don’t feed their children adequately, or who commit medical, dental or other forms of neglect or abuse.
So, here’s my personal flow chart on family size, poverty and welfare:
- I think that couples should aim for a family size that they can actually feed and care for adequately.
- But if a couple winds up with a family that they can’t feed on their own, they should feed them, even if that involves food stamps.
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pensmama87
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maryjk
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I agree.
But I would add, if a family ends up falling under number 2, adding children to the mix should be done with great caution.
Meaning, I knew a family that moved in with his parents. They were sleeping the living room, the 2 kids in the guest room . In the first month of living there, the wife became pregnant. Sorry, but if my condo had been foreclosed on and I had to move in with my parents, and I couldn’t feed my kids, don’t know that sex, in the living room would have been on my agenda.
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