G
gardenswithkids
Guest
The term “Providentialism” end with it that “ism” that implies it’s a philosophy. We don’t say “NFPism” or “contraceptionism”. Some have suggested other acronyms, and I don’t like those either. Double negatives in “Not Trying to Not Avoid” and such sounds confusing. Perhaps it’s best to describe it as you did with something like “living as man and wife without attempting to either conceive or avoid conception.”
The title of this thread doesn’t match with these newer questions of yours. Just letting things happen without trying to either avoid or conceive doesn’t equate with having a “large family on purpose”. I know you already have a large-ish family Zelie, but some may end up with no children or only one or two children while using the same approach. The average family size before the wide scale use of contraception was about 5 children, (I forget where I found that stat, but it goes back to family size from the early part of the twentieth century.) Five children isn’t exactly small, but it’s not huge either. People seem to think that if they didn’t actively try to prevent pregnancy, everyone would have a dozen or more children! Few do.
I believe you are creating a false dichotomy in some of these questions. It’s almost as if part of you may think marital relations are perhaps somehow wrong. “Vicious?” Um, not unless there’s something weird going on. A spouse who is unwilling to abstain under normal circumstances when they are alone together, but who is willing to take care of any children that may result might be neither particularly generous nor vicious. He might just be a man (or woman) who struggles with the kind of thing people have struggled with for eons and who has found a spouse who helps elevate his/her sexual desires into the proper setting within Holy Matrimony.
We’re all called to be saints, but most of us are merely average people. Not everyone wants to monitor fertility closely; I dare say, most people don’t. Some do because they have to. But some situations make monitoring a woman’s fertility particularly difficult, and avoiding pregnancy with NFP in some situations may require extended abstinence. Monitoring the return of fertility during breastfeeding and monitoring fertility around menopause are two examples of such times. At times when a woman may be less fertile but not necessarily infertile, couples may decide to “throw caution to the wind” and stop worrying about pregnancy one way or the other. Or they may even do that when they expect she’s still highly fertile. In any case, I found it rather freeing. An “unplanned” family? How incredibly counter-cultural! from this culture’s perspective. I can see why some must think this is a new idea embraced by only the young. (I feel ten years younger just writing about it!) And yet, how very normal and utterly average through the course of human history.
If a couple decides that they don’t want to worry about pregnancy one way or the other at the moment, it doesn’t mean they will automatically have a large family. Children are a gift from God. Their family may grow or He may not give them any more even if they aren’t trying to avoid pregnancy. Or some other situation(s) may happen in their lives that will call them to re-consider using NFP to avoid future pregnancy.
We don’t always know what God has planned for our future. In fact, we rarely know. We guess. We plan. We try to discern. Eventually, we discover His plans for us as our lives unfold.
) the increased risk of miscarriage and, to a point, birth defects after 40 will probably make me want to avoid more carefully at that point. I’m not sure that I could handle a child with serious birth defects well right now in my late 20s; the idea of increasing the risk of having a child who will need heavy-duty long-term-care when I’m in my 60s really scares me. (For context, while in high school I worked extensively with a boy who was both severely autistic and very mentally retarded, so I have some idea of what that involves.)