Legitimate reason to postpone pregnancy?

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My husband and I have been married for almost 2.5 years, and after a really difficult second year of marriage, things are going fantastically and we have discussed having a child. We are both ready and excited about it, but our concern is our finances. For two recent college grads, we are doing very well but have a lot of student loan debt plus we are working on trying to pay off some other debt right now as well. One huge thing for me is that when we do have a baby, I absolutely do not want someone else to raise my child. I want to be a stay at home mom and right now, we need my income even though my husband makes significantly more than I do.

That said, my question is this: is postponing a pregnancy until we can afford for me to stay home full time to raise the child a legitimate reason? Or would the church rather we have children even if it means both of us working and enrolling the child in daycare? It might take another 2-3 years of paying off student/other loans before it becomes feasible for me to stay home.

Any answers will be helpful, so thanks in advance! 🙂
 
No here can really answer that question for you. We don’t know how much you owe, or how much you think your husband needs to make for you to be able to stay at home. 🤷

If you are worried about having a new car every year and you go on expensive vacations as well, maybe your priorities are a bit messed up. :o

But, if the money you owe is from school debt. And you have laid out a plan to pay it off. Maybe you are on the right track. 👍

The best thing to do, is to pray about it. Then talk to your pastor.
 
Exactly, It all depends on your situation. The tough thing is, it would be easy to postpone and postpone until you’re set in a no-kids lifestyle, and then it might be harder. Having children involves sacrifice. Two years might be doable, if you can focus, as Dave Ramsey or one of those financial counselors says.
I have done it both ways, stayed home with my first two, then worked during my 2nd two children’s infancy. I much preferred staying home. Although if you’re someone who gets bored with Mr Rogers, Sesame Street, finger painting and walks to the park, you might want to work part time to maintain your sanity.
 
kelseyl said:
My husband and I have been married for almost 2.5 years, and after a really difficult second year of marriage, things are going fantastically and we have discussed having a child. We are both ready and excited about it, but our concern is our finances. For two recent college grads, we are doing very well but have a lot of student loan debt plus we are working on trying to pay off some other debt right now as well. One huge thing for me is that when we do have a baby, I absolutely do not want someone else to raise my child. I want to be a stay at home mom and right now, we need my income even though my husband makes significantly more than I do.

That said, my question is this: is postponing a pregnancy until we can afford for me to stay home full time to raise the child a legitimate reason? Or would the church rather we have children even if it means both of us working and enrolling the child in daycare? It might take another 2-3 years of paying off student/other loans before it becomes feasible for me to stay home.

Any answers will be helpful, so thanks in advance! 🙂
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I guess only you can really answer this question but I think most people would say there is never a “right time” for children - and remember it doesn’t always happen right away.

Good luck !
 
What is legitimate for one couple may not be for another. There are no set rules on what constitutes a “serious” reason to avoid pregnancy because there are way too many factors that make every couple different. Pray about it and talk to a priest if you are still confused about what would constitute a serious reason in your marriage.
 
Good for you that you are making sure that your use of NFP is for a serious reason. As others have stated, it is really only a decision you can make for yourselves. I suggest setting up a meeting with someone you trust, a priest, or an older person from Church. Give them all of the relevant information: how much you owe, what your lifestyle is like, what your spending habits are, how much you earn, etc.

One point though: you were both willing to go into debt for college educations but now you are unwilling to postpone the repayment of your debt to bring a new child into the world?
 
kelseyl said:
My husband and I have been married for almost 2.5 years, and after a really difficult second year of marriage, things are going fantastically and we have discussed having a child. We are both ready and excited about it, but our concern is our finances. For two recent college grads, we are doing very well but have a lot of student loan debt plus we are working on trying to pay off some other debt right now as well. One huge thing for me is that when we do have a baby, I absolutely do not want someone else to raise my child. I want to be a stay at home mom and right now, we need my income even though my husband makes significantly more than I do.

That said, my question is this: is postponing a pregnancy until we can afford for me to stay home full time to raise the child a legitimate reason? Or would the church rather we have children even if it means both of us working and enrolling the child in daycare? It might take another 2-3 years of paying off student/other loans before it becomes feasible for me to stay home.

Any answers will be helpful, so thanks in advance! 🙂
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I can’t speak for just what is right for you, only in general terms. That said, in general terms:
Yes, I believe postponing pregnancy early in marriage, for a short period of time, in order to not put the baby in daycare, could be a legitimate decision. For me, daycare would be a last resort, a truly last resort. I would give up just about anything else before putting my child in daycare. So yes I would postpone pregnancy for a finite period of time in order to be able to afford to be home with my baby. And paying off the loans is admirable, and it is understandable to want to be free of debt before you have children - after all, debt can really overwhelm a family. But having actually done that (we postponed pregnancy to pay off debt), and looking back on it years later, I would do things differently if I had it to do over again. If it were me, and I were doing it again, I would want to get pregnant sooner. But rather than considering daycare I would try to find a way to make myself financially ready sooner. Can you reduce your current standard of living, so that you can pay off your debt sooner? Do you own a home already? If you're renting, can you find a cheaper place to live? Eat out less? Eat more cheaply? Sell one of your cars? Cut up your credit cards now?etc... Or could you stretch out your debt repayment plan significantly enough so that your payments are lower and can be handled by one salary? Could you or your husband (or both) get a second job for a short period of time, and put all of the extra money into paying off the debt? Keep in mind too, that just because you stop postponing pregnancy, doesn't necessarily mean that you will immediately get pregnant. It doesn't always go as you plan, and as you get older (~27 being the typical peak), fertility declines. So I would encourage you to really brainstorm ways to become financially stable on your husband's salary sooner than you thought you could.
 
Hi OP! My husband and I found ourselves in a very similar position to you. We have a scary amount of student loan debt but after 2 years of marriage we were really ready to start having kids. I finally had to make the choice that I would rather put my kids in daycare (because I’d have to keep working) than to keep postponing having kids for another few years. It will break my heart when the time comes, but it’s better to have kids in daycare then to have no kids at all, right?

Anyway. we have been trying to get pregnant for more than year now and so we’re going to have to start fertility testing. I am thanking God that we didn’t wait longer to start trying or I wouldn’t even know there was a problem. We are young and healthy so we never expected to have problems. Moral of the story is that it’s God timing for everything even when we think we’re in control. Really the best thing you can do is pray daily with your husband. You’ll know when you know the right thing to do. Prayers for you!
 
My husband and I planned to postpone pregnancy when we first got married for this very reason. We couldn’t afford to live on just my husband’s income and wanted to wait to have kids until I could stay home or work part-time. As it turned out, I got unexpectedly pregnant anyway 3 months after we got married. I had to go back to work full-time when the baby was 3 months old, and it was AWFUL. My first day back at work I had a knot in my stomach all day long. I missed her horribly. She also wasn’t sleeping well, so neither was I, and I was getting sick all the time. I was getting monthly colds. I also had shingles - an extremely painful rash that happens when your immunity goes way down and is normally only seen in elderly people. Oh, and I had mono, too.

I wouldn’t trade our daughter for anything, but I really, really wish we could have somehow had the same daughter several years down the road when we were more financially secure. I would not wish my experience with going back to work on anyone. Getting unexpectedly pregnant only confirmed that we really, truly did have serious reasons to avoid pregnancy!!

That said, only you and your husband can decide if this is a good reason to avoid pregnancy for you. Some people in your situation will decide to try for kids anyway, and that’s fine. Maybe you’ll be able to handle being a working mother better than I did. I am just saying that avoiding pregnancy until we could afford to have me cut back on work was definitely a serious reason, for us. Some people on this board will always, always, always say you should have another baby, unless you’re dying, so keep that in mind.
 
I also have to address these points:
If you are worried about having a new car every year and you go on expensive vacations as well, maybe your priorities are a bit messed up.
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I guarantee you no one who bothers with NFP is doing this.
You were both willing to go into debt for college educations but now you are unwilling to postpone the repayment of your debt to bring a new child into the world?
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This doesn’t make any sense. It is very difficult to graduate from college without debt, and a college degree is often necessary to support a family. I graduated from college without debt, but I graduated in 2002, before the tuition bubble really took off, and I had parents who could pay for it. Not everyone is so lucky.
 
Thank you everyone for the responses! I’ve been meaning for a couple of days to respond, but have been very busy with other things going on and haven’t had a chance until now. My husband and I are definitely going to pray on it and we’re going to try to schedule a meeting with our priest next week, which will help. I think I may have been slightly misunderstood (probably because I didn’t explain well) when I wrote the OP, so I wanted to clarify that the intention isn’t to pay off all of our student loans (because that would take far longer than 2-3 years) but to pay off a couple of the lower balance ones and hopefully get rid of all of our credit card debt, which - comparatively - isn’t that much.

I did want to respond to this comment as well:
One point though: you were both willing to go into debt for college educations but now you are unwilling to postpone the repayment of your debt to bring a new child into the world?
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I guess I just don’t understand. In order to get a decent job, you need a college degree. In order to go to college, I had no option but to take out loans - as did my husband (even though we both had some scholarships). Why would I postpone the repayment of loans to bring a child into the world when there are limited options and strict time limits for postponing loans that we can afford to pay now, especially when we may need to postpone them later for other reasons? Is there a connection I’m missing?
 
kelseyl said:
My husband and I have been married for almost 2.5 years, and after a really difficult second year of marriage, things are going fantastically and we have discussed having a child. We are both ready and excited about it, but our concern is our finances. For two recent college grads, we are doing very well but have a lot of student loan debt plus we are working on trying to pay off some other debt right now as well. One huge thing for me is that when we do have a baby, I absolutely do not want someone else to raise my child. I want to be a stay at home mom and right now, we need my income even though my husband makes significantly more than I do.

That said, my question is this: is postponing a pregnancy until we can afford for me to stay home full time to raise the child a legitimate reason? Or would the church rather we have children even if it means both of us working and enrolling the child in daycare? It might take another 2-3 years of paying off student/other loans before it becomes feasible for me to stay home.

Any answers will be helpful, so thanks in advance! 🙂
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I love hearing about a couple open to life!! There is no better gift you can give your future child than being raised at home by his/her own mother. It’s not something that child forgets easily. (based on my own experience - I’m a senior in highschool and I have been homeschooled my entire life).

Just make sure you don’t fall into the trap of postponing and postponing because there isn’t enough money - there never is enough money 😃 There will always be financial needs in your life.
 
kelseyl said:
I guess I just don’t understand. In order to get a decent job, you need a college degree. In order to go to college, I had no option but to take out loans - as did my husband (even though we both had some scholarships). Why would I postpone the repayment of loans to bring a child into the world when there are limited options and strict time limits for postponing loans that we can afford to pay now, especially when we may need to postpone them later for other reasons? Is there a connection I’m missing?
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No, You aren’t missing anything. It makes sense to get a degree, if you plan to work. And it makes sense to repay that loan before you have children.

I use NFP, and have for a long time. But due to a permanent medical condition. So, at this point there isn’t a lot of prayer to decide whether or not we will continue to use it.

When you are using NFP for the short term, it might be a good idea to set a date to revisit the reason you are using it.
 
kelseyl said:
I did want to respond to this comment as well:

I guess I just don’t understand. In order to get a decent job, you need a college degree. In order to go to college, I had no option but to take out loans - as did my husband (even though we both had some scholarships). Why would I postpone the repayment of loans to bring a child into the world when there are limited options and strict time limits for postponing loans that we can afford to pay now, especially when we may need to postpone them later for other reasons? Is there a connection I’m missing?
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I apologize. Take my comment with a grain of salt since I was never in that position personally. I married at around 28, earned good, and never had debt.

Still, I wonder how Mexicans, Filipinos, Nigerians, etc would answer the question.
 
sainthumbert said:
I apologize. Take my comment with a grain of salt since I was never in that position personally. I married at around 28, earned good, and never had debt.

Still, I wonder how Mexicans, Filipinos, Nigerians, etc would answer the question.
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You don’t think that Mexicans, Filipinos and Nigerians would opt to get a formal education if that meant a higher standard of living, and doing that before they had children? 🤷
 
maryjk said:
You don’t think that Mexicans, Filipinos and Nigerians would opt to get a formal education if that meant a higher standard of living, and doing that before they had children? 🤷
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No, I am saying that there are probably large numbers of married couples in these countries who never even have the opportunity to go to college, save for the future, or live a middle class life. I am saying that the couples don’t even have the luxury of worrying about paying off student loans. Many probably earn their daily bread on a daily basis but in these countries the family sizes are generally very large.
 
sainthumbert said:
Originally Posted by maryjk
You don’t think that Mexicans, Filipinos and Nigerians would opt to get a formal education if that meant a higher standard of living, and doing that before they had children?
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More than likely – in that type of country – the couples don’t have information on NFP and or its a type of “machismo” culture – where no matter what-- the wife has to be available to meet the “needs” of the husband. This results in a large number of children.
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Walking_Home said:
More than likely – in that type of country – the couples don’t have information on NFP and or its a type of “machismo” culture – where no matter what-- the wife has to be available to meet the “needs” of the husband. This results in a large number of children.
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Wow, more than likely ignorance or machismo? Is is that difficult to believe that people in these countries can actually be generous and trusting in God?
 
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