Is it ok to choose NOT to have children?

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littlefield

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There is definitely a growing trend in society to opt out of having children. Couples, even some Catholic ones, go into marriage with this view in mind.

The explanation is almost always that they have never felt comfortable with children or around children. They have zero desire to care for a baby, toddler, child, teen. Being around other people’s children has only served to strengthen their position. They bristle at suggestions that they need only have their own child and then suddenly their views will change.

Is this allowed in the Catholic Church? What is the answer to those adults who claim they truly have problems (physical, psychological, emotional) with the idea of caring for children? One woman told me that being around little children made her feel ill. Another friend of mine (male) is so OCD he said that just wants to run away when kids around around, yet he loves the idea of a wife.
 
Yes, it is OK to choose to NOT have children. Each married couple must prayerfully decide if, how, and when they will have children. The key to a valid Catholic marriage is the willingness to submit to the will of G_D and accept what children are sent. Married couples are limited in the methods they use to limit and regulate fertility, including NFP and (where called for) abstinence.
 
Children can be delayed under certain circumstances, but if a couple goes into a marriage with the intention of never having children, then the marriage would be invalid.
 
In the Catholic tradition, it is ok to choose not to have children so long as you choose a life of celibacy (i.e. that is choosing not to be married).

Why is marriage so tightly linked with children? To answer that question, we have to look at the process of creating children. God could have chosen to create new people in any way that He wanted. He could have had us reproduce asexually, he could have have created new human beings as he chose, or he could even have had the stork brink the children. God chooses to bring children about through sex for two reasons. It mirrors the relationship of the trinity, where the love of the Father for the Son and the love of the Son for the Father begets the Holy Spirit. It also ensures that, ideally, each child is created out of love. Sex is the physical express of a love between two people, and so the resulting child is poetically the sign of the love between two people. There are exceptions of course: rape, accidental pregnancy,etc. But those are a product of sin rather than God’s design.

When Catholics married, we do so because we want to help God fulfill his plan for humanity. God wants to create people because by creating them he gives the opportunity for eternal union with God in Heaven. Out of His free will, God allows us to participate in that creation. To become married is essentially vowing to participate in God’s will in that particular way. Thus to get married without the intention of having children is a contradiction. One can’t both agree to help God bring new people into the world while simultaneously vowing never to do so. This, incidentally, is why same-sex couples will never be married in the Catholic Church. Their union, by virtue of their biology, is sterile. Consequently, they can’t possibly help God fulfill that particular aspect of God’s will (I am aware that same-sex couples have access to surrogacy among other things, but for reasons particular to that method the Church feels that this is not an appropriate way to produce a new human being).

You may point out that there are other reasons to be married. For example, what about the mutual emotional and spiritual support of both spouses? That’s certainly a part of marriage, but it is not the essence of marriage. Friends can do the same. What about sex? A few comments on that. Although NFP is about as effective as the barrier method with perfect use, statistically speaking it is almost inevitable that it will fail. What happens to the child then? Moreover, while Catholics may use NFP to space children for serious reasons, it is immoral for Catholic to use sex to avoid pregnancy for no reason.That would, after all, defeat the purpose of getting married in the first place.
 
Gia_B said:
Children can be delayed under certain circumstances, but if a couple goes into a marriage with the intention of never having children, then the marriage would be invalid.
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That is true AFAIK, but it should be noted that if a couple enters marriage knowing that it is physically impossible to have children (due to age or infertility), as long as they would welcome children if they were miraculously possible, the marriage is (assuming no other impediments) both valid and sacramental.

I believe there are complexities around needing to be physically able to consummate the marriage, but I’m not sure what they are exactly.

–Jen
 
MacBP said:
Although NFP is about as effective as the barrier method with perfect use, statistically speaking it is almost inevitable that it will fail.
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My dad, a doctor, used to describe the biggest failure point in NFP in six words: “Honey, my fertile period starts tomorrow.” Men have been known to rip through the zippers of their jeans upon hearing that.

And afterwards, when engaging in pillow talk, you realize that today is the 28th, not the 26th, and her fertile period started two days ago. Oops. And then the worst thing happens: nothing. The couple then starts getting sloppy in keeping to the schedule and such – nothing happened last month, we should be good this month – until suddenly, the strip turns blue.
 
littlefield said:
There is definitely a growing trend in society to opt out of having children. Couples, even some Catholic ones, go into marriage with this view in mind.

The explanation is almost always that they have never felt comfortable with children or around children. They have zero desire to care for a baby, toddler, child, teen. Being around other people’s children has only served to strengthen their position. They bristle at suggestions that they need only have their own child and then suddenly their views will change.

Is this allowed in the Catholic Church? What is the answer to those adults who claim they truly have problems (physical, psychological, emotional) with the idea of caring for children? One woman told me that being around little children made her feel ill. Another friend of mine (male) is so OCD he said that just wants to run away when kids around around, yet he loves the idea of a wife.
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Marriage is “is ordered by its nature to the good of the spouses and the procreation and education of offspring.” (Can. 1055 §1) Note that “AND” in there.

The internal consent of the mind is presumed to conform to the words and signs used in celebrating the marriage. If, however, either or both of the parties by a positive act of the will exclude marriage itself, some essential element of marriage, or some essential property of marriage, the party contracts invalidly. (Can. 1101 §1. & §2.)

Yet the vows ask this:
Will you accept children lovingly from God and bring them up according to the law of Christ and his Church? and the parties to be married are to say “I do.”

A Catholic couple who goes into marriage with no intention of welcoming children from God does so with the intention of excluding openness to children, an essential element of marriage. Therefore, they contract their marriage invalidly. If they do so knowingly, they don’t even contract their marriage in good faith, but are in effect attempting to deceive those who witness their vows.

If a couple goes into marriage with the intention of welcoming children but find after marriage that they have a serious reason to avoid children, they may do so if they do not resort to artificial birth control or sterilization to do it.
 
Gia_B said:
Children can be delayed under certain circumstances, but if a couple goes into a marriage with the intention of never having children, then the marriage would be invalid.
Click to expand...
This is the scenario I’m talking about. Where the couple decides beforehand they are not willing or able to be good parents, and so they take measures (sterilization, contraception) to avoid conceiving throughout the entire marriage.

To those couples, would the Church say “You are not called to be married” and ask them to remain single for life?
 
EasterJoy said:
If a couple goes into marriage with the intention of welcoming children but find after marriage that they have a serious reason to avoid children, they may do so if they do not resort to artificial birth control or sterilization to do it.
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Would you consider the reasons above to be serious or grave enough? (i.e. they dislike children tremendously and/or have real problems with the duties that motherhood/fatherhood entails)
 
littlefield said:
This is the scenario I’m talking about. Where the couple decides beforehand they are not willing or able to be good parents, and so they take measures (sterilization, contraception) to avoid conceiving throughout the entire marriage.

To those couples, would the Church say “You are not called to be married” and ask them to remain single for life?
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Well, sort of. This person would be expected to not engage in consummating the marriage, which would be a type of “statement” that children would be accepted. One can have a non-consummated marriage as Mary and Joseph did, but that is a special case about which I know very little.
 
littlefield said:
Would you consider the reasons above to be serious or grave enough? (i.e. they dislike children tremendously and/or have real problems with the duties that motherhood/fatherhood entails)
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It is not for me to decide what is serious or grave enough. Humanae Vitae does not even define that.

Some things are best left to individual members of the faithful and their pastors. The rest of us can’t offer much but very general directions, and (IMHO) would do well to remember that a lot more often than we do. Even a couple who has obtained pastoral direction for themselves should not presume to give the same advice to others. That would be like going to your doctor, getting a diagnosis, and then presuming to act as a physician for others whose symptoms seem simlar to yours.

In this situation, I’d tell a friend that this is a serious enough matter to warrant pastoral direction. Certainly a couple preparing for marriage ought to feel duty-bound to clarify their intentions, in order to make certain that their attitudes towards children do not constitute an impediment to a valid marriage. Were a couple to make me aware of such an attitude and an intention to hide their intention from the priest marrying them, I’d seek pastoral direction myself about whether I had a duty to inform the priest they were intending to deceive. I would think so, but I’d ask ahead. Once you take it upon yourself to disclose someone else’s business, you cannot undo what you disclose. It is better not to barge ahead without a professional pastoral opinion.
 
We are not required to bear children. Avoiding marriage is, in my mind, a perfectly valid means of remaining childfree. The Church forbids some methods of preventing children, for married couples, but we are allowed to stay unmarried.
 
i tend to find that those people who claim they don’t want children, especially because they “aren’t good with” or “comfortable” around them say so because they just don’t want to go through all of the pain and sacrifice involved with it, such as waking up four times a night to change or feed them and what else. it really is quite selfish in my opinion…
 
Gia_B said:
Children can be delayed under certain circumstances, but if a couple goes into a marriage with the intention of never having children, then the marriage would be invalid.
Click to expand...
How then would you explain an 80 year old couple getting married? You can not… your position in untenable.

It is up to the couple’s conscious to decide whether or not there are grave reasons why they should not have children. For instance, I know a couple where the wife has an immune system disorder where the wife’s body creates antibodies that attack and kill the baby. They chose not to have children. I defy anyone to present a reasonable argument that saying that this couple’s marriage is invalid.
 
littlefield said:
There is definitely a growing trend in society to opt out of having children. Couples, even some Catholic ones, go into marriage with this view in mind.

The explanation is almost always that they have never felt comfortable with children or around children. They have zero desire to care for a baby, toddler, child, teen. Being around other people’s children has only served to strengthen their position. They bristle at suggestions that they need only have their own child and then suddenly their views will change.

Is this allowed in the Catholic Church? What is the answer to those adults who claim they truly have problems (physical, psychological, emotional) with the idea of caring for children? One woman told me that being around little children made her feel ill. Another friend of mine (male) is so OCD he said that just wants to run away when kids around around, yet he loves the idea of a wife.
Click to expand...
Marriage is about kids thus to marry and to decide from the outset to not have kids is a grave perversion of the institution of marriage.
 
godisgood77 said:
How then would you explain an 80 year old couple getting married? You can not… your position in untenable.

It is up to the couple’s conscious to decide whether or not there are grave reasons why they should not have children. For instance, I know a couple where the wife has an immune system disorder where the wife’s body creates antibodies that attack and kill the baby. They chose not to have children. I defy anyone to present a reasonable argument that saying that this couple’s marriage is invalid.
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If the wife’s medical condition were to clear up and the serious need to avoid children were removed, would they be open to having children? One would think so. They are open to the possibility of children, then. They do not have to be unwilling to admit any reason whatsoever as a reason to avoid children for the time being. They do not have to have reason to believe that the time they will not have a reason to avoid children will ever come. They do not have to believe they are capable of pregnancy. They have to be open to children, if by some way of prudence God can provide them with that blessing.

That is quite different from going into marriage in flat denial that children *are *one of the goods of marriage or when the couple marries with the self-centered attitude that they don’t want to exert themselves or practice self-denial in order to take care of someone else in need. That is not a Christian mindset.
 
EasterJoy said:
If the wife’s medical condition were to clear up and the serious need to avoid children were removed, would they be open to having children? One would think so. They are open to the possibility of children, then. They do not have to be unwilling to admit any reason whatsoever as a reason to avoid children for the time being. They do not have to have reason to believe that the time they will not have a reason to avoid children will ever come. They do not have to believe they are capable of pregnancy. They have to be open to children, if by some way of prudence God can provide them with that blessing.

That is quite different from going into marriage in flat denial that children *are *one of the goods of marriage or when the couple marries with the self-centered attitude that they don’t want to exert themselves or practice self-denial in order to take care of someone else in need. That is not a Christian mindset.
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In the case of the wife with the auto immune issue… It is a permanent condition. He blood and her husbands are incompatible.

Children are a good of marriage. However, it does not necessarily follow that the husband and wife are self centered for not having children. It can certainly be that way for some, but definitely not all… Maybe not even the majority.

Further, marriage is a total self giving to ones spouse… Married couples exert themselves and deny themselves constantly… A totally Christian mindset… Absence of children does not negate that. There isn’t anything self centered about marriage
 
godisgood77 said:
In the case of the wife with the auto immune issue… It is a permanent condition. He blood and her husbands are incompatible.

Children are a good of marriage. However, it does not necessarily follow that the husband and wife are self centered for not having children. It can certainly be that way for some, but definitely not all… Maybe not even the majority.

Further, marriage is a total self giving to ones spouse… Married couples exert themselves and deny themselves constantly… A totally Christian mindset… Absence of children does not negate that. There isn’t anything self centered about marriage
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Your answer is far afield of the original question:
*…a growing trend in society to opt out of having children. Couples, even some Catholic ones, go into marriage with this view in mind.

The explanation is almost always that they have never felt comfortable with children or around children. They have zero desire to care for a baby, toddler, child, teen…

Is this allowed in the Catholic Church?*

The answer is “no, you may not go into marriage with the attitude that you WILL NOT welcome children because you have ZERO DESIRE to have any.”

The original question as it is initially stated has nothing to do with capacity, although capacity is touched on eventually. It has nothing to do with a situation that would* seem to make* children impossible or which would disqualify the parents for reasons outside their control. It has to do with rejecting the entire possibility of being willing to welcome the duties that come with parenthood because those duties are repugnant in and of themselves or because other people, during their childhoods, are repugnant to these “Christians” in and of themselves.

How do you reconcile this attitude with loving your neighbor as yourself, the second of the two non-negotiable great commandments upon which all other commandments are based, let alone with God’s plan in creating the marriage relationship and elevating it to a sacrament?!?
 
Muzhik said:
Yes, it is OK to choose to NOT have children. Each married couple must prayerfully decide if, how, and when they will have children. The key to a valid Catholic marriage is the willingness to submit to the will of G_D and accept what children are sent. Married couples are limited in the methods they use to limit and regulate fertility, including NFP and (where called for) abstinence.
Click to expand...
Prior to marriage, one may not adopt the position “I/we intend to avoid children throughout our marriage”, and then proceed to enter marriage. It is wrong to hold that firm position, yet proceed to marriage.

After marriage, the couple may take (licit) steps to defer children indefinitely with “good reason”. The couple needs to decide for themselves whether their reason is good.

People tend to marry later these days. I think it is not that uncommon for people (say, in their 40s) to take the view, including prior to marriage, “I/we are a bit old for children, so we plan not to have any”.
 
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