Natural Family Planning for "Serious" Reasons

[pensmama87]

FWIW, I think a lot of the scenarios posted here about intentionally large or “no planning” families are really, really unlikely, too. But I think that’s kind of the point. Unless you’re in it, you really don’t know, and speculation just hurts.

If a couple was talking to me and said, “Oh yeah, NFP is awesome, now I don’t have to use the Pill anymore,” I’ve got a fantastic opening to share how amazing our bodies are - almost as if by design. Saying, or even just thinking, “Well this is just another manifestation of their secular selfishness,” strikes me as not very effective for evangelization, KWIM?

Or if they talk about their fears for finances, or health, or what have you, I can offer support for that. People with a secular worldview who don’t use contraception are already outliers. Finding common ground with them would be really important, even if their concerns come strictly from that perspective. Some of you had the benefit of growing up knowing about sacrificial love and being prepared to practice that in a way very different than the mainstream. A person who’s only begun to consider that does not need to be pooh poohed.

As I said earlier, too, we’re all called to sacrifice in different ways. The Church encompasses a lot of spiritualities and charisms and all give glory to God. Why wouldn’t we also see that at work in our families?

The motivations we have to examine are our own. That’s why I gave the initial advice I did to the OP, who’s not married and has a lot of stuff to work through before she would be ready.

 

[Xantippe]

FWIW, I think a lot of the scenarios posted here about intentionally large or “no planning” families are really, really unlikely, too. But I think that’s kind of the point. Unless you’re in it, you really don’t know, and speculation just hurts.

If a couple was talking to me and said, “Oh yeah, NFP is awesome, now I don’t have to use the Pill anymore,” I’ve got a fantastic opening to share how amazing our bodies are - almost as if by design. Saying, or even just thinking, “Well this is just another manifestation of their secular selfishness,” strikes me as not very effective for evangelization, KWIM?

Or if they talk about their fears for finances, or health, or what have you, I can offer support for that. People with a secular worldview who don’t use contraception are already outliers. Finding common ground with them would be really important, even if their concerns come strictly from that perspective. Some of you had the benefit of growing up knowing about sacrificial love and being prepared to practice that in a way very different than the mainstream. A person who’s only begun to consider that does not need to be pooh poohed.

As I said earlier, too, we’re all called to sacrifice in different ways. The Church encompasses a lot of spiritualities and charisms and all give glory to God. Why wouldn’t we also see that at work in our families?

The motivations we have to examine are our own. That’s why I gave the initial advice I did to the OP, who’s not married and has a lot of stuff to work through before she would be ready.

Right.

 

[Xantippe]

I** think that the Catholic teachings on human sexuality and NFP really go hand in hand.

Why is contraception wrong? It isn’t wrong just because it prevents pregnancy. It is wrong because it corrupts the actual sex act.**

A few posts back it was discussed on how “crunchy” people were practicing NFP.

When we Catholics practice NFP, we have guidelines that go hand in hand with teachings on chastity. Abstinance must be chaste.

So if the couple is using NFP and being chaste in all other ways, and attending Mass and the Sacraments, it isn’t the same as the “crunchy” couple who have no problems with activities that aren’t licit.

So when you remove actually sinful actions from the table (sins against the 6th commandment) you end up with just the motivation for using NFP. Selfishness isn’t really a sin. It’s an attitude that causes us to do sinful things.

Say for example a wife is eating ice-cream and doesn’t share with the husband. That’s a small example of selfish. Say the same wife buys herself fancy designer clothes and then gets her husband clothes from the second hand store. That’s a bigger example of selfish.

When we practice our Catholic faith, by staying in grace, by attending mass, and the sacraments, God helps us control our selfishness.

Y

Yes.

 

[pensmama87]

Well, I’ve certainly seen enough threads on CAF where a CAFer presents serious reasons and then various people argue that those reasons aren’t possibly serious.

I am quite hardened at this point that some people on CAF are never going to say, “Wow, that sounds rough. That is very serious” but will instead argue (at great length) that it isn’t a big deal, they themselves had babies under the exact same circumstances or worse (in fact multiple babies), and kwitcherwhining.

This is not, needless to say, a glowing example of Christian charity.

Regulars on CAF, especially on this forum, know that if there’s a thread on saving money or budgeting that I am on it, and probably a super frequent poster. I’ve had a lot of experience with penny pinching, and especially since I grew up in a house where financial planning was not really done, I’m very eager to share what I’ve learned. I don’t want people to despair in tough times.

One thing I fear sometimes, though, is that in my zeal for sharing a lot of info, is that I might come off as smug or condescending, because in posts that take minutes to read I’m sharing several years’ worth of acquired knowledge and practice. It can make it sound like “Poof! Easy peasy,” when it was anything but.

I think we need to be cautious about a kind of “flattening” of our experiences, and remember that our starting points can be very, very different.

 

[TCEL]

I think babies are easy–or at least my babies are. (Setting aside Middle Kid’s colic.) You feed them one thing and they’re always happy with it, you can dress them however you choose, and when it’s time to go somewhere, you just grab the baby and stick him or her in the stroller or car seat, when you strap them into a stroller they stay strapped in, it’s (relatively) easy to fly with them, they’re generally well-behaved at Mass, they don’t really care where they sleep. Easy peasy.

(Just coming out of toddlerhood/early preschoolerhood here.)

That’s awesome, and I hope to share your endurance! I value my sleep. One year, the sleep deprivation combined with trying to modestly fix up the junky home was rugged. At least with the two-year old, I currently get some sleep, and he can intermittently entertain himself, and is learning some semblance of waiting.

 

[LundyLund]

If both partners are selfish with the same motives it becomes easier to use nfp wrongly. Just taking the stretch mark example, if the woman didn’t want them and the man didn’t ever want to see them then there is a high level of selfishness that would find itself in nfp.

The trend I’m noticing in nfp in general is an uptick in the crunchy crowd using it more. Non catholic earthy types, many of whom would use it for reasons a catholic couple might not accept as serious, and yet they choose this method as a natural birth control.

Good point. Some very nice benefits of NFP that, taken alone, might not be just: “I don’t want the side effects of hormones.” “I don’t want the increased risk of breast cancer.” “I don’t want big pharma making money off my body.”

 

[Xantippe]

That’s awesome, and I hope to share your endurance! I value my sleep. One year, the sleep deprivation combined with trying to modestly fix up the junky home was rugged. At least with the two-year old, I currently get some sleep, and he can intermittently entertain himself, and is learning some semblance of waiting.

The sleep-deprived mommies are going to hunt me down for saying this, but my babies are also very good sleepers (as babies go).

I find the baby year very easy, but 1.5-4 very rough.

 

[RPRPsych]

The sleep-deprived mommies are going to hunt me down for saying this, but my babies are also very good sleepers (as babies go).

I find the baby year very easy, but 1.5-4 very rough.

Sounds like the opposite of RPR Junior!

 

[LundyLund]

This is not aimed at anyone in particular. Why do people think it is their business to judge the size of other people’s families?

Well said. Just this morning, I was reading Matthew 7:1-5. How easy we forget Jesus’ admonition about judging others.

 

[Xantippe]

The Church teaches that spouses may space births with Natural Family Planning for “serious” reasons.
*
"Serious motives, such as those which not rarely arise from medical, eugenic, economic and social so-called “indications,” may exempt husband and wife from the obligatory, positive debt for a long period or even for the entire period of matrimonial life.”*— Pope Pius XII in his “Address to the Italian Catholic Union of Midwives” in 1951

**Maybe it’s just me, but medical, eugenic, economic, and social reasons seems to pretty much cover all the reasons a couple might choose to use NFP. ** So what are some of the non-serious reasons a couple might choose to use NFP for that are forbidden by the Church?

Going back to the OP, I think the OP has a point.

The breadth of the categories given (“medical, eugenic, economic and social”) suggests that the Church has a fairly generous understanding of what “serious reasons” mean.

The stuff that one hears online (about NFP only being almost never acceptable) just isn’t official Church teaching.

 

[SusanneT]

I think that NFP is becoming increasingly common because more and more Christian couples are coming to realise that contraception is a sin, that it is against God’s plan for marriage, more and more Christian women are concluding that hormonal birth control potentially leads to abortion and more still even secular women that it is in-healthy. All to the good, though not strictly relevant to the argument !

 

[Xantippe]

“I don’t want to have kids yet because I want to travel the world and live a bit.” Would probably qualify as a non-serious reason.

Do you know the old joke about the different answers to “can I smoke while praying?” and “can I pray while smoking?”

It’s here under the heading “the right question.”

ignatianspirituality.com/dotmagis-blog/more-jesuit-jokes

I suspect that even the situation you describe is subject to that same problem. While abstractly, it might be wrong to avoid pregnancy in order to travel the world and live it up, more concretely, it wouldn’t be wrong to avoid pregnancy if you were living in Central America during the Zika scare or travelling or working in an area with poor medical care. To give an example, when I was in the Peace Corps, their rule was that they would end the service of any volunteer who was more than 3 months pregnant–under those circumstances, a Catholic married couple would either need to practice NFP or accept not being able to serve as Peace Corps volunteers.

I think “travel” gets a very bad rap on CAF as an example of clearly frivolous spending, but (as TPCWife was suggesting), once one throws in a bit more detail, any particular trip might be quite a good thing. For example, my sister’s husband’s family lives in Germany, while sister’s family lives mostly in the US. If the kids are going to see their grandparents and aunts and uncles, somebody is going to need to get on a plane. We have to do the same thing in our nuclear family for the kids to see their grandparents, aunts and uncles, and cousins. I prioritize this, as my grandparents are in their 90s now.

On the other hand, our oldest is 14, and yet the kids have never seen the country where their daddy was born and spent his early childhood or met anybody on that side of the family aside from my husband’s parents and sister. Likewise, there are a lot of old friends that I would love to see and introduce to my kids, but it isn’t currently feasible–but if I were to see them, somebody would have to travel.

My husband and I traveled to Poland to meet his family the year after we got married (a few years before our oldest was born). Had we not done that trip, I would never have met his grandmothers (as they died a few years later) and he would never have seen his grandmothers again in this life.

 

[kptrs]

I’m sorry if I offended you. Perhaps my “you are a man” comment was unwarranted.

But honestly, no, you still do not get to decide what constitutes a moral reason to use NFP, and neither does anyone else. You yourself said that a proper reason to use NFP is within the prudential judgment of the couple. If the Church doesn’t lay out specific examples for everyone to follow, how can you? The reason most people on this thread have not laid out specific examples is that it’s not for us to do for someone else. If the OP asked for specific examples, the answer is “THERE ARE NONE and you and your spouse must discern prayerfully for yourselves.”

 

[Xantippe]

I have a lot of issues with that list and I think there’s a very good chapter in Simcha Fisher’s NFP book that talks about the very individual nature of these choices.

If a couple already has a child or children, and their marital relationship is suffering from lack of opportunities to spend time as a couple, then lack of free time could indeed be a serious issue. (For example, a lot of women with postpartum issues need to be away from the baby at least a little or they go bonkers–their need for free time can be literally a matter of life and death.)

Our youngest is a big 4-year-old and I haven’t been on an evening date with my husband in going on 1.5+ years. The last time, MIL was in town, we had 90 minutes, and we went to Lowes and got frozen yogurt and then hurried home. Woohoo! The last time we got an actual sitter and went out was 2+ years ago and we went to a movie. We have literally never had an opportunity to leave our kids and go for an overnight trip. We’re coming up on our 20th anniversary in the next year or so, and while the in-laws have agreed to take the kids so we can take some nights away, my husband is afraid that they won’t be up to it. (All the grandmas and grandpas live 2,000 miles away.) We’re doing more or less OK here, but a lot of people’s marriages would really be suffering under the same circumstances.

It isn’t unusual for people to lose all of their friends when they have a baby before the rest of their social circle. It’s common to have to completely rebuild one’s social life from the ground up when starting to have children. That’s a big deal because human relationships are a big deal. (I was just googling “losing friends when you” and google helpfully finished that for me “become a mom.” Google knows all about this.)

“Inopportune timing” could be a whole lot of serious things.

People who have psychiatric issues (OCD or whatever) could easily have serious problems with dealing with bodily functions. I’m sure you’ve also noticed how many young mothers on the forum are NUTS–anxious, paranoid, socially isolated, etc. With any luck, they’ll pull out of it and lead normal lives, but new motherhood is psychologically very dangerous–a lot of weird and scary stuff happens and some women never get back on an even keel.

I just feel like that list does not give enough weight to the individual and psychological issues involved. There’s a reason that no authoritative church document has chosen to go to that level of detail.

We are talking about very serious levels of sexual abstinence–as people have said before, spouses with normal appetites will not be able to stick to it unless there is a serious motivation.

 

[Xantippe]

Another thing about social stuff–in the modern world, becoming a parent can be a ticket right out of the adult world, particularly for mothers.

You go from talking to adults every day at work and having friends to perhaps talking to at most a single adult (your husband) in the evening. And maybe you have half the money you used to.

Obviously, there is a life on the other side, but it’s a different one, and it usually has to be created from scratch (unless one is very lucky and has friends or relatives doing the same thing). It’s like emigrating from the country of your birth, leaving almost everything behind. It’s not surprising that a lot of people are daunted by the journey and want to wait until they can do it with friends.

 

[Bookcat]

The Church teaches that spouses may space births with Natural Family Planning for “serious” reasons.
*
"Serious motives, such as those which not rarely arise from medical, eugenic, economic and social so-called “indications,” may exempt husband and wife from the obligatory, positive debt for a long period or even for the entire period of matrimonial life.”*— Pope Pius XII in his “Address to the Italian Catholic Union of Midwives” in 1951

Maybe it’s just me, but medical, eugenic, economic, and social reasons seems to pretty much cover all the reasons a couple might choose to use NFP. So what are some of the non-serious reasons a couple might choose to use NFP for that are forbidden by the Church?

Some examples could be perhaps:

They do not want children or more
They want to just travel.
They want to have luxury.
They want 5 cars
They want lots of money for themselves
They do not want to bother with more of them pesky kids
They want to have rich vacations
They want to spend more money on themselves
etc

Compendium issued by Pope Benedict XVI

497. When is it moral to regulate births?

2368-2369
2399

The regulation of births, which is an aspect of responsible fatherhood and motherhood, is objectively morally acceptable when it is pursued by the spouses without external pressure; when it is practiced not out of selfishness but for serious reasons; and with methods that conform to the objective criteria of morality, that is, periodic continence and use of the infertile periods.

**498. What are immoral means of birth control?
**
2370-2372

Every action - for example, direct sterilization or contraception - is intrinsically immoral which (either in anticipation of the conjugal act, in its accomplishment or in the development of its natural consequences) proposes, as an end or as a means, to hinder procreation.

vatican.va/archive/compendium_ccc/documents/archive_2005_compendium-ccc_en.html

 

[Xantippe]

Bookcat,

I have to quibble about this one: “They want to send more money on themselves.”

I think that it might in fact be a very reasonable and proper thing to want to spend more money on yourself. I know that at our house, direct and indirect kid expenses and college savings probably account for 80% of household spending.

I would, in fact, like to spend more on myself, and that’s not terribly wicked of me–it’s just a recognition that I too am a human being with needs, and some of those needs get neglected because we want to do stuff for the kids.

 

[Bookcat]

Bookcat,

I have to quibble about this one: “They want to spend more money on themselves.”

I was meaning there - as outlined in the Compendium.

Selfishness.

 

[UbiCaritas]

I have a lot of issues with that list and I think there’s a very good chapter in Simcha Fisher’s NFP book that talks about the very individual nature of these choices.

If a couple already has a child or children, and their marital relationship is suffering from lack of opportunities to spend time as a couple, then lack of free time could indeed be a serious issue. (For example, a lot of women with postpartum issues need to be away from the baby at least a little or they go bonkers–their need for free time can be literally a matter of life and death.)

It isn’t unusual for people to lose all of their friends when they have a baby before the rest of their social circle. It’s common to have to completely rebuild one’s social life from the ground up when starting to have children. That’s a big deal because human relationships are a big deal. (I was just googling “losing friends when you” and google helpfully finished that for me “become a mom.” Google knows all about this.)

“Inopportune timing” could be a whole lot of serious things.

People who have psychiatric issues (OCD or whatever) could easily have serious problems with dealing with bodily functions. I’m sure you’ve also noticed how many young mothers on the forum are NUTS–anxious, paranoid, socially isolated, etc. With any luck, they’ll pull out of it and lead normal lives, but new motherhood is psychologically very dangerous–a lot of weird and scary stuff happens and some women never get back on an even keel.

(snipped for length)

Pretty much this.

Fear of bodily fluids sounds a bit silly, until you’re in the throws of severe, untreated postpartum depression (think spending all day long daydreaming about ways to kill yourself) and the baby has just thrown up for the seventh time that day, and this time it’s her evening bottle which you had to fight for 45 minutes to get her to drink, and now she’s going to be up multiple times tonight because she’ll be hungry, and ooooh, bonus points, you get to scrub sour milk out of the carpet and upholstered chair.

Then one more person producing relatively uncontrollable bodily fluids sounds like the absolute, positively last straw.

When DD was born, I posted some on here about how hard it was. I had moved here when we got married, had literally no friends closer that 4 hours away, and he was using our only car to go to work, so I was stuck at the house because there was nothing in walking distance. I couldn’t even go see the doctor for some pretty serious problems because DH couldn’t take off of work, and I couldn’t manage to wrangle DD and I out of the house at a really early time in the morning so I could drive him to work–she took forever to eat, one messed-up nap meant being up all night, and so forth. I’d spend most days doing some combination of lying on the floor and sobbing, worrying that I’d accidentally lock my daughter in the oven while cooking dinner (yes, I know this sounds insane–I was insane!), and obsessively cleaning the living room because I was sure that if she encountered any dust or dirt or cat hair while playing on the floor, it might have some sort of deadly mold toxin on it or something.

We aren’t meant to parent in a vacuum, but our society pretty much sets us up to do exactly that. Not that things were all rosy and perfect back in the days of having ten kids in a one-room cottage (infant mortality! Maternal mortality! Tuberculosis!), but from a social perspective, having your kids in a village where your mom, grandmother, five sisters, eight cousins, and countless childhood friends all lived and worked and raised their own kids had to be easier than getting chucked in the deep end with no help or support.

 

[Bookcat]

Bookcat,

I have to quibble about this one: “They want to send more money on themselves.”

I think that it might in fact be a very reasonable and proper thing to want to spend more money on yourself. I know that at our house, direct and indirect kid expenses and college savings probably account for 80% of household spending.

I would, in fact, like to spend more on myself, and that’s not terribly wicked of me–it’s just a recognition that I too am a human being with needs, and some of those needs get neglected because we want to do stuff for the kids.

Again the word selfishness is helpful there in the Compendium.

In general though I would not say that wanting to spend more on oneself is a serious reason to avoid another child via NFP.

I always want more books…but I was not to forgo my second or third born …for lots of books.

As important as books are.