Is there a limit to the number of chidren a catholic should have?

[Daniel_Marsh]

Last night on Gray’s whatever, there was a catholic lady who was having her 7th child and wanted her tubes tied without her husband knowing. The clear purpose of the show was to make catholic doctrine look unreasonable.

So, I am wondering if there is guidelines as to how many children a catholic family should have, and if having ones tubes tied once they reached that limit is acceptable. If that option is not acceptable what is?

 

[Em_in_FL]

Last night on Gray’s whatever, there was a catholic lady who was having her 7th child and wanted her tubes tied without her husband knowing. The clear purpose of the show was to make catholic doctrine look unreasonable.

So, I am wondering if there is guidelines as to how many children a catholic family should have, and if having ones tubes tied once they reached that limit is acceptable. If that option is not acceptable what is?

Natural Family Planning…

The point of Catholic doctrine isn’t that couples should just have as many children as they are physically capable of… it’s that children are a GIFT of MARRIAGE and that sex within marriage should be OPEN to LIFE…
That doesn’t mean that you can’t CHOOSE to REFRAIN from having sex during certain fertile phases of the woman’s cycle.

The twisted thinking is that couples can just have sex whenever they want without the consequence of having children…

NFP allows you to make that “open to life choice” before having sex in the first place.

 

[jmcrae]

So, I am wondering if there is guidelines as to how many children a catholic family should have, and if having ones tubes tied once they reached that limit is acceptable.

There is no limit to the number of children that a Catholic family (or any family, for that matter) can have. They can have as many children as God sends them.

Scripture repeats over and over again that children are a blessing. We should not feel “oppressed” if for some reason God sends us more children than other people in our neighborhood.

It is not acceptable to have your tubes tied, or to do anything that violates your body and your ability to have children. Being feminine is not a disease - femininity does not require a pill to cure it, and it certainly doesn’t require an operation to remove it.

If that option is not acceptable what is?

If there is a good reason why the family should not have more children, at least temporarily (this is something that the family has to decide together - it’s not up to one person to arbitrarily decide without telling anyone), then the mother and father can use Natural Family Planning, or else they can simply abstain altogether from sex during the period of time when they should not be having children.

Circumstances do change over time - just because you are poor today doesn’t mean you will be poor forever - and it may happen that you once again become able to welcome more children into your life. That’s why radical solutions are a bad idea - not to mention the immorality of having an operation done on your body or medications pumped into your body at a time when it is functioning exactly as God designed it to function.

 

[T.A.Stobie_SFO]

Nope. Each one is a gift of love from a loving God. Even adopted ones.

 

[Liberian]

Daniel,

I think the official answer is “as many as you can responsibly raise.” I should add, though, that the wife having her tubes tied without her husband’s knowledge is NOT the answer to her desires; on top of everything else, it introduces an element of deceit into their marriage and destroys the openness.

• Liberian

 

[hasikelee]

There are two issues to address:

Caring for children and how many children to raise

And the couple’s unity and conflict resolution.

If the woman in the show was so unhappy and her husband not working with her to the point of trying to sneak behind his back to permanently harm her body, that is obviously a different issue from the number of kids a person wants. This scenario could happen with any couple, for one kid, two kids or ten.

As Catholics, we are called to be open to life, not to purposely kill ourselves having tons of kids. And in a Catholic marriage, the husband and wife are supposed to be as Christ and the Church, bound together by endless harmony and love.

 

[estesbob]

Last night on Gray’s whatever, there was a catholic lady who was having her 7th child and wanted her tubes tied without her husband knowing. The clear purpose of the show was to make catholic doctrine look unreasonable.

So, I am wondering if there is guidelines as to how many children a catholic family should have, and if having ones tubes tied once they reached that limit is acceptable. If that option is not acceptable what is?

Not one more or one less than God wants them to have.

 

[David_Zampino]

Last night on Gray’s whatever, there was a catholic lady who was having her 7th child and wanted her tubes tied without her husband knowing. The clear purpose of the show was to make catholic doctrine look unreasonable.

So, I am wondering if there is guidelines as to how many children a catholic family should have, and if having ones tubes tied once they reached that limit is acceptable. If that option is not acceptable what is?

One might reasonably suggest that if the woman wishes to deceive her husband on such a matter – that there are OTHER, more serious problems in the marriage!!!

 

[puzzleannie]

So, I am wondering if there is guidelines as to how many children a catholic family should have, and if having ones tubes tied once they reached that limit is acceptable. If that option is not acceptable what is?

yes there is a limit on how many children each couple should have, but it is different for every family, and it is set by God.

 

[1ke]

Last night on Gray’s whatever, there was a catholic lady who was having her 7th child and wanted her tubes tied without her husband knowing. The clear purpose of the show was to make catholic doctrine look unreasonable.

Typical

So, I am wondering if there is guidelines as to how many children a catholic family should have,

No. We are called to be generous according to our means.

and if having ones tubes tied once they reached that limit is acceptable.

No. Sterilization is always gravely wrong.

If that option is not acceptable what is?

If one wishes to space/postpone children for a time or indefinitely, then natural family planning (periodic continence) is acceptable.

 

[LindaS]

I think that part of the problem is that we don’t want to abstain! If I want to have sex with my spouse, I should be able to have it! It’s the whole instant gratification thing rearing its ugly head. Nobody has the right to tell me I can’t have sex when I want it! We have developed into a very self-centered society. What I want when I want it isd our motto. How horrible that someone should ask me to delay my gratification! Who do they think they are?!

Peace,
Linda

BTW I hope you recognize that this is intended to be sarcastic, not serious! I know that sarcasm doesn’t always come across on the net.

 

[BlestOne]

Linda,
I got the sarcasm…and I’m not the brightest bulb in the pack! Anyway, I think you have it right. We are living in an entitlement society, I deserve to be happy and carefree, therefore any means are acceptable to acheive my goal. The problem with this mentality is that it is not conducive to raising a Christian family or being in a sacramental marriage. People need to trust God more and let him decide how many bundles of joy a couple should have. I am personally dismayed because I have been trying for a year and it looks like I am just too old to have any more. I have had 4 children and I currently have 3 living and 1 step, there is so much more love to share here and I would welcome more children but if it isn’t God’s plan, then so be it…I wouldn’t change it for the world because God’s plans are always better than my own! Same goes the other way, why not trust that God knows what is right for a family? He knows so much more than we do…

Personally, I am sick of these attacks on the family by hollywood and the media! Who are they to say that everyone should just have their 2.11 kids and after that we should do whatever it takes to stop, including lying to our spouses. I had a doctor even tell me that he thought that women should manditorily have their tubes tied after the second child…I kicked him out of the exam room and had him banned from seeing me (I was pregnant with number 2 and 3 at the time). How dare he play God with my life!!!
Just once I want to see the media portray a perfectly happy big family like that family with 16 kids in a good light and openly admire them for answering God’s call in their lives. Instead they treat them like oddities and religious zealots.

 

[Skribilo]

As many as one can give proper care to.

 

[pilchard]

37 .

 

[LilyM]

Linda,
I got the sarcasm…and I’m not the brightest bulb in the pack! Anyway, I think you have it right. We are living in an entitlement society, I deserve to be happy and carefree, therefore any means are acceptable to acheive my goal. The problem with this mentality is that it is not conducive to raising a Christian family or being in a sacramental marriage. People need to trust God more and let him decide how many bundles of joy a couple should have. I am personally dismayed because I have been trying for a year and it looks like I am just too old to have any more. I have had 4 children and I currently have 3 living and 1 step, there is so much more love to share here and I would welcome more children but if it isn’t God’s plan, then so be it…I wouldn’t change it for the world because God’s plans are always better than my own! Same goes the other way, why not trust that God knows what is right for a family? He knows so much more than we do…

Personally, I am sick of these attacks on the family by hollywood and the media! Who are they to say that everyone should just have their 2.11 kids and after that we should do whatever it takes to stop, including lying to our spouses. I had a doctor even tell me that he thought that women should manditorily have their tubes tied after the second child…I kicked him out of the exam room and had him banned from seeing me (I was pregnant with number 2 and 3 at the time). How dare he play God with my life!!!
Just once I want to see the media portray a perfectly happy big family like that family with 16 kids in a good light and openly admire them for answering God’s call in their lives. Instead they treat them like oddities and religious zealots.

Perhaps adoption may be in your future? Or fostering?

 

[BlestOne]

Perhaps adoption may be in your future? Or fostering?

Did I forget to mention I have fostered 18 girls and 1 boy? Adoption is an option as well as fostering, but I am thinking of my DH who only has 1 natural child. He oo’s and ah’s at babies more than I do!

 

[buffalo]

As many as you are gifted with. A woman that breast feeds normally will have somewhere between 4 and 12 children.

 

[valient_Lucy]

Last night on Gray’s whatever, there was a catholic lady who was having her 7th child and wanted her tubes tied without her husband knowing. The clear purpose of the show was to make catholic doctrine look unreasonable.

So, I am wondering if there is guidelines as to how many children a catholic family should have, and if having ones tubes tied once they reached that limit is acceptable. If that option is not acceptable what is?

There’s no set number of children either must have or a limit to the number of children they can have. The married couple must determine this through prayer and discernment, taking into account their personal, familial, medical, and economic situation.
Any attempt to sterilize one of the spouses is a sin and unacceptable in the Catholic Faith. Catholics are encouraged to use Natural Family Planning, NFP, to determine the wife’s fertile period, and to abstain from sex during this period when the couple has decided not to have a child at that time.
Ideally, imo, couples should routinely discuss whether or not it is a good time to have another child or not, perhaps even every month. But I’m not married yet, , so I can’t speak from personal experience.
But there’s no rule that a couple must have 8 children, or can’t have any more than 8 children. Each couple must use prayer, and their God-given good judgement, as well as their knowledge of the woman’s fertillity, to determine whether or not to have another child.

 

[buffalo]

There’s no set number of children either must have or a limit to the number of children they can have. The married couple must determine this through prayer and discernment, taking into account their personal, familial, medical, and economic situation.
Any attempt to sterilize one of the spouses is a sin and unacceptable in the Catholic Faith. Catholics are encouraged to use Natural Family Planning, NFP, to determine the wife’s fertile period, and to abstain from sex during this period when the couple has decided not to have a child at that time.
Ideally, imo, couples should routinely discuss whether or not it is a good time to have another child or not, perhaps even every month. But I’m not married yet, , so I can’t speak from personal experience.
But there’s no rule that a couple must have 8 children, or can’t have any more than 8 children. Each couple must use prayer, and their God-given good judgement, as well as their knowledge of the woman’s fertillity, to determine whether or not to have another child.

…and a properly formed conscience not a conscience of convenience.

 

[wcknight]

The record for number of kids is around 63 !!! . That must be one heck of a family reunion.

I come from a large family and I love kids. I would love to have 20 or 30. My wife comes from a very small family (only two including her) and she has settled for 3 and that is what we have.