How is it possible to use NFP "selfishly?"

[sdeco]

I posted this on another thread, but I wanted to post it here so I could get more responses.

I keep hearing how it’s possible to use NFP “selfishly,” but I don’t understand how that’s even possible. First of all, charting is really annoying. It involves meticulous observation of signs, recording the signs, and interpreting them. Sometimes it is very difficult to interpret fertility signs. So many things affect it - diet, medications, stress, etc. Sometimes you have to modify your diet and go to pretty great lengths to get clear signs. It’s much harder than just putting on a condom or taking a pill.

Secondly, it involves abstinence, which is a sacrifice. Sometimes it involves a LOT of abstinence when signs are difficult to read. Unless there is some other problem in the marriage, most couples will want to have sex.

I just can’t envision a situation where someone would go through the hassle of charting and the sacrifice of abstinence if they didn’t have a serious reason to avoid pregnancy. It just seems to me that if they are willing to go through all that, a serious reason is a given. If they didn’t have a serious reason, they wouldn’t bother. They would either have a baby or use contraception.

Can someone explain to me how it is possible to use NFP selfishly?

 

[Kelfa28]

I totally agree with you.

I’m convinced that the people who think that you can use NFP selfishly have never actually used it.

It’s not the charting that gets to me. That was the easy part. We figured out my cycles within a month and never had an issue charting.

It was abstaining that was a real challenge. When you’re fertile you know it and your husband knows it too.

My husband would ask far more frequently when I was in my fertile 10-12 day stretch. It was really hard abstaining sometimes. It was even harder during my peak day. I remember a morning where we woke up earlier then my daughter and he had the day off. He just had this look on his face and I had to tell him…no we can’t right now, nor can we for another 3 days after peak day.

It’s even tougher when you want to be intimate too.

In conclusion…I don’t get how people can say you can use NFP selfishly or that it’s “Catholic birth control” otherwise more people would be inclined to actually use it. Being on a contraceptive is much easier because you never have to abstain. No one wants to abstain…even for a short period of time.

I’m dreading the next few years. We used NFP successfully for a year between our two kids…but we have just reasons to postpone another pregnancy and we are looking at a long haul of using NFP. I know it’s going to be tough and I’m not looking forward to it.

 

[The_Bucket]

It’s a hypothetical that is more damaging than it is useful. You could argue that saying “NFP could be used selfishly” and explaining how is a good way to underscore the selflessness involved, but I think it just becomes too convoluted.

I cannot for the life of me think of a way that NFP practiced properly could be used for selfish reasons. I can, however, think of how total abstinence can be used selfishly. You see that in some of the “sexless marriage” threads. But NFP? No. That really makes no sense, especially when you consider that the time that both spouses will really want to, ahem, physically connect is precisely the time they cannot without risking pregnancy. That’s sacrifice right there and really undercuts the argument that it can be used selfishly on a practical level.

 

[maryjk]

Is it possible? I guess. Is it likely? Not a chance.

I have found that most people that think couples use NFP selfishly or have a “contraceptive mentality,” are people that have never used NFP long term.

 

[EasterJoy]

Just because something is very hard and is used for good motives most of the time does not mean it cannot be used with the wrong motives. I have had friends say, “you know, we avoided at this time, we avoided at this time, and frankly, looking back on our lives, I wonder if we weren’t lacking in generosity. I wonder if we avoided too much.” So it is theoretically possible for someone who actually used NFP to look back on her life and wonder if she and her husband always used it with motives as generous as they could have been. I was also told by a priest when learning NFP that it is not OK to use NFP as nothing other than chemical- and device-free contraception. The motive and the situation does matter, in the eyes of the Church.

Having said that, my first reaction to your question was this: This is the kind of question that healthy people ask, like “how could anyone ever want to kill themselves?” I mean that if your use of NFP is rooted in a marriage that has the generosity required of Christian spouses and parents as its foundation, it may well be beyond your imagination how anyone could ever use NFP with unhealthy or ungiving attitude. In your world, then, it may be beyond the realm of imagination…very possible, absolutely.

 

[Joe_5859]

There are those on the internet that vastly overstate this possibility. It is usually accompanied by the phrase “using NFP with a contraceptive mentality.”

That said, even good things can be used selfishly. I think it’s a good practice for a couple to frequently evaluate their reasons for postponing for this reason. We human beings are prone to selfishness and are adept at rationalization. But we also need to guard against scrupulosity as though only danger of death or danger of total abject poverty were sufficient reasons to postpone for even the shortest lengths of time.

 

[Em_in_FL]

I agree it seems REALLY improbable!!!

But I get that it’s not impossible… *theoretically, *I could see it happening…

 

[maryjk]

I agree it seems REALLY improbable!!!

But I get that it’s not impossible… *theoretically, *I could see it happening…

That is the thing, isn’t it.

Because *theoretically * it is possible, those that use NFP have to be constantly on the defense about using NFP.

Why? I find it amazing that people will endlessly question someone using NFP, but seem to give those that use ABC a pass. Honestly, I will look at someone’s posting history and notice that they jump onto any thread that mentions NFP. But nary a word about ABC.

 

[Alan55]

As a form of contraception, some would argue that limiting the size of your family is “selfish” unless you have “serious” reasons to do so. Moreover, there are those who define “serious” very narrowly, interpreting it to mean something like “grave”. I don’t agree with such arguments, but I have faced them on this website.

 

[maryjk]

I’m dreading the next few years. We used NFP successfully for a year between our two kids…but we have just reasons to postpone another pregnancy and we are looking at a long haul of using NFP. I know it’s going to be tough and I’m not looking forward to it.

There are a number of us on this forum that have successfully used NFP to avoid pregnancy. And we have done it long term. Ten years for me.

PM me if you want to talk.

OR start a thread, we will come out of the woodwork.

 

[maryjk]

This is a really good blog post about NFP and why the Church doesn’t make a list.

I just found it again, but plan on using it when someone questions the reasons allowed by the Church.

patheos.com/blogs/simchafisher/2011/03/23/why-doesnt-the-church-just-make-a-list/

But why doesn’t the Church give some specific examples of what qualifies as a just reason? Well, one problem is that my just reason is not necessarily the same as your just reason.

For instance, we could say, “Severe economic instability is a good reason to postpone pregnancy.” But …

Woman A grew up deathly poor, and fully expected to die before she hit age 40.  Her husband is disabled and often out of work, and sometimes they have to scramble for the rent on their tiny house — but this is routine and tolerable for them, and causes no turmoil.  With help from friends and government programs, they are raising happy, healthy children on $25,000 a year.

Woman B grew up wealthy, has always generously endowed Crisis Pregnancy Centers in her town, and always hoped to have a large family of her own.  But a catastrophe struck, she went bankrupt, and has to sell everything and move into a tiny house and live on $25,000 a year.  They’re still reeling from the shock of what their life has become, and are trying to learn how to accept help, rather than giving it.

Woman C lives a tiny house and live on $25,000 a year, which her husband manages thriftily, so no one is deprived.  But she makes him sleep on the couch until he agrees to quit his job at the library  so he can make more money and they can catch up with their fancy friends next door, who go to Rio every March.

Woman D recently quit her high-paying job so she can stay home and have babies.  They now live on her husband’s salary of $25,ooo a year and can hardly wait to fill their tiny new house with children.

You see? Objectively, the circumstances are the same, and “severe economic instability” describes all four. But their attitude toward having another baby right then would be entirely different. It’s not enough to say, “Lilies of the field and so on. We must trust God.” That’s not asking much from women A, but it’s asking heroism from woman B.

 

[Em_in_FL]

That is the thing, isn’t it.

Because *theoretically * it is possible, those that use NFP have to be constantly on the defense about using NFP.

Why? I find it amazing that people will endlessly question someone using NFP, but seem to give those that use ABC a pass. Honestly, I will look at someone’s posting history and notice that they jump onto any thread that mentions NFP. But nary a word about ABC.

There are two parts to the “responsible parenthood” story… the “means” and the “ends”.

The “means” is the HOW… NFP is the ONLY allowable form of avoiding conception, period. ABC is always immoral.
The “ends” is the WHY… the end goal of avoiding conception - is it done for selfish reasons?

Both are discussed in the Catechism, and *both *are necessary for the use to be moral.

 

[Kelfa28]

There are a number of us on this forum that have successfully used NFP to avoid pregnancy. And we have done it long term. Ten years for me.

PM me if you want to talk.

OR start a thread, we will come out of the woodwork.

Thanks!

I will. Right now I’m just happy I’m pregnant because it’s not a worry as of now. But I remember how hard it was just making it to one year of using STM before we made the decision to try for number two.

 

[Mary_Gail_36]

In my own opinion:

I would say most people who use NFP are doing so because they are Catholic.

So along with trying to be obedient to the Church in this 1 issue, they are probably going to Mass, and receiving the sacraments, and trying to remain in a state of grace.

I think God helps them and guides them.

I read this piece from maryjk’s post taken from Simcha Fischer:

Woman C lives a tiny house and live on $25,000 a year, which her husband manages thriftily, so no one is deprived. But she makes him sleep on the couch until he agrees to quit his job at the library so he can make more money and they can catch up with their fancy friends next door, who go to Rio every March.

This is a great example of being selfish. This wife isn’t being selfish to being open to more children. She is being selfish towards her husband in many ways.

Notice the woman in the scenario wants the fancy life and trips to Rio, more than she wants her husband. She didn’t just decide no more kids. She decided no more husband, until he improves to her standards.

 

[gardenswithkids]

Just because something is very hard and is used for good motives most of the time does not mean it cannot be used with the wrong motives. I have had friends say, “you know, we avoided at this time, we avoided at this time, and frankly, looking back on our lives, I wonder if we weren’t lacking in generosity. I wonder if we avoided too much.” So it is theoretically possible for someone who actually used NFP to look back on her life and wonder if she and her husband always used it with motives as generous as they could have been. I was also told by a priest when learning NFP that it is not OK to use NFP as nothing other than chemical- and device-free contraception. The motive and the situation does matter, in the eyes of the Church.

Having said that, my first reaction to your question was this: This is the kind of question that healthy people ask, like “how could anyone ever want to kill themselves?” I mean that if your use of NFP is rooted in a marriage that has the generosity required of Christian spouses and parents as its foundation, it may well be beyond your imagination how anyone could ever use NFP with unhealthy or ungiving attitude. In your world, then, it may be beyond the realm of imagination…very possible, absolutely.

I thought the same thing. Just because something is hard to abuse doesn’t mean it can’t be abused.
As to your second paragraph, it probably says something about me and my tendency towards selfishness that I can think of lots of ways in which NFP can be used selfishly. Not wanting to get pregnant because of a fear of stretch marks and weight gain, not wanting another child because the couple wants to spend money on frivolous things, etc. Then there’s the situations where couples use NFP to avoid but one or both don’t remain chaste during the fertile time. Just because a couple uses NFP doesn’t mean that they are willing to follow Church teachings. They might be trying for a spacing between pregnancies and avoiding artificial hormones but have the intention of getting sterilized or using artificial contraception after they reach their desired number of children. Of course, that doesn’t mean that they will stay in the same place. I do think that the difficulty helps provides a sort of “safety mechanism” against long term abuse, but it can still be abused.

Of course, the Church tells us to examine our own motives for wanting to avoid pregnancy and additional children, and prayerfully discuss the matter with our spouses and God. The Church doesn’t tell us to examine other people’s motives and gossip. What one couple might see as selfish reasons might be perfectly acceptable reasons for another couple in different circumstances and with different backgrounds.

 

[EasterJoy]

I thought the same thing. Just because something is hard to abuse doesn’t mean it can’t be abused.
As to your second paragraph, it probably says something about me and my tendency towards selfishness that I can think of lots of ways in which NFP can be used selfishly. Not wanting to get pregnant because of a fear of stretch marks and weight gain, not wanting another child because the couple wants to spend money on frivolous things, etc. Then there’s the situations where couples use NFP to avoid but one or both don’t remain chaste during the fertile time. Just because a couple uses NFP doesn’t mean that they are willing to follow Church teachings. They might be trying for a spacing between pregnancies and avoiding artificial hormones but have the intention of getting sterilized or using artificial contraception after they reach their desired number of children. Of course, that doesn’t mean that they will stay in the same place. I do think that the difficulty helps provides a sort of “safety mechanism” against long term abuse, but it can still be abused.

Of course, the Church tells us to examine our own motives for wanting to avoid pregnancy and additional children, and prayerfully discuss the matter with our spouses and God. The Church doesn’t tell us to examine other people’s motives and gossip. What one couple might see as selfish reasons might be perfectly acceptable reasons for another couple in different circumstances and with different backgrounds.

A lot of people who use NFP to space births really wish they had the money and stamina to have an unlimited number of children. They use NFP and take on all of that trouble because, well, they don’t. They’ve been forced to say, “We’d love to welcome more, but right now we ought not.” I think if a couple like that were asked about using NFP selfishly, it would be a real head-scratcher for them, and I wouldn’t find their incredulity hard to believe at all. Plus there are the people who would like more children that they have, who have only ever used NFP to help them to get pregnant, and they would find it hard to believe someone would go through that trouble for selfish reasons, too. After all, if your reasons are truly selfish, contraception is not hard to come by. Therefore, to go through that trouble with a mentality that is essentially contraceptive, while not impossible by any means, is something that not everyone is going to understand. That’s all I’m saying.

 

[mwncheesehead]

It was abstaining that was a real challenge. When you’re fertile you know it and your husband knows it too.

My husband would ask far more frequently when I was in my fertile 10-12 day stretch. It was really hard abstaining sometimes. It was even harder during my peak day. I remember a morning where we woke up earlier then my daughter and he had the day off. He just had this look on his face and I had to tell him…no we can’t right now, nor can we for another 3 days after peak day.

It’s even tougher when you want to be intimate too.

Kelfa, this is exactly our situation and I could have written this myself! That situation actually happened with my wife and I this summer. I had the morning off, our two youngun’s were at the aunt and uncles, she looked so desireable to me, and it was the perfect morning for intimacy. She apparently was on her peak day and it was a no-can-do. It doesn’t seem normal but that’s the situation.

 

[agapewolf]

Kelfa, this is exactly our situation and I could have written this myself! That situation actually happened with my wife and I this summer. I had the morning off, our two youngun’s were at the aunt and uncles, she looked so desireable to me, and it was the perfect morning for intimacy. She apparently was on her peak day and it was a no-can-do. It doesn’t seem normal but that’s the situation.

The difficulty here can be eased a bit (not entirely, but a bit) with a change in the way you practice. If your husband was charting with you, doing the interpreting, then the knowledge of where you are is there,…all the time. There isn’t getting hopes up then being disappointed, and even more so, you aren’t the gatekeeper.

 

[Maxirad]

Michael Voris brought up NFP in a recent episode of The Vortex.

 

[Rau]

The intellectual “headache” this topic gives me is the implication that there is a kind of spectrum which defines the potential number of children a couple could have.

At one end is “selfish”, which for the sake of this discussion means (I guess) "You could have handled more (financially, and in other ways), but you choose not to because you decided to limit the call on your time/finances/etc. that children involve.

The other end of the spectrum (by implication), is “generous”, and involves you having as many children as you can handle.

It then follows (by virtue of the labels “selfish” and “generous” - that this is a good versus bad spectrum, and consequently more (dare I say “lots”) of children is deemed intrinsically good. From this follows an implication that all kinds of trade-offs should be considered so as to permit more children - eg. live in a lower cost area, take lower pressure jobs, etc. etc. I can understand the merits of foregoing something to help another (eg. Charity, etc.), but it’s just not so obvious to me that foregoing something in order to add the Xth child to a family is the best choice one could make. Would giving to Charity be better, or adopting, or…?

We read posts from some amazing parents who remark that they have 9 or 12 children and that they look forward to whatever may come in future; and often they remark they have always felt this way (maybe they came from a large family?) Now I truly marvel at folk who feel that way; they are remarkable in many ways. But it has never seemed a likely course for me, and I can’t reduce the reason down to a selfish vs. generous nature.