NFP marketing, is promoting it right?

[PaulinVA]

My wife is post-menopausal, so I’ve been through about 25 years of NFP before it was no longer needed. We conceived using NFP and avoided using NFP.

I resented people telling me when to have babies or that I was too selfish or wasn’t holy enough because of the size of my family (four kids, three living). It is what it is. Do you think it’s easy learning to master your sex life over decades?

Please, people, don’t project your own financial acumen, acceptance of a certain level of uncertainty, job skill, or other factors onto other people. Let everyone make their own decision. It’s their decision, not yours.

With so much going on in the world, it seems like you could be doing other things with your time than being the conception police.

 

[Xantippe]

Wrong. I’m 25 and have been here since I was 19 with zero experience. I’ve received promotions.

That’s surprising.

However, I do have to point out that if you are 25, there are a lot of parenting expenses that you can’t have aged into yet. For example, you can’t have had a lot of time to have much experience with school/education issues.

 

[omgriley]

–how old are they?

–how many kids do they have?

–how are their marriages doing?

–do they have good health insurance?

–what are they doing about school for their kids?

–are their kids going to be able to follow the same path?

–do they have good support from family?

Also, I have to point out that student loans are the sort of thing where you might only feel the pain after the wife quits her job to be home with the baby, or after the couple starts having to pay for daycare. I have a friend in her 30s who wound up with substantial student loans (some was a mistake, but she didn’t have good guidance), and while they eventually paid off her loan with a windfall, the debt caused her a lot of budgetary pain for a number of years.

(Side story–she told her husband that she almost wished she hadn’t gone to college. He told her, but then we wouldn’t have gotten married. And ain’t that the truth.)

This has stopped being a question of whether attaining a college degree us serious enough to stop having children. What you’ve presented is a question of the family finances as a whole. Depending on the seriousness of the family’s financial situation, it might be well to practice NFP.

 

[UbiCaritas]

I’m not trying to be insulting. I’m being honest. DH has worked in finance since he graduated (early) with his master’s degree ten years ago. Trust me, getting that master’s wasn’t his idea of fun, but it was an important career step. The best I can figure is you’re working at some sort of tax prep place, or possibly a title loan facility, and that there’s a lot more to this story. I have never heard of anywhere that would hire even entry level white collar without a degree. (Again, I don’t think this is at all how is SHOULD be, just how it is, barring Dad running the company or something.)

 

[omgriley]

That’s surprising.

However, I do have to point out that if you are 25, there are a lot of parenting expenses that you can’t have aged into yet. For example, you can’t have had a lot of time to have much experience with school/education issues.

We have prepared for that too.

Even if we hadn’t, are you saying that it would be reasonable to abstain from having children until you’re certain that you can pay for their education?

 

[Xantippe]

Even if we hadn’t, are you saying that it would be reasonable to abstain from having children until you’re certain that you can pay for their education?

I’m just saying that life and parenthood are going to be a lot harder and more expensive than you expect, there are going to be problems you never even suspected the existence of, and that you don’t need to expend a lot of energy thinking about how other people are getting away with something with NFP, because there’s more than enough suffering to go around for everybody without going looking for it.

 

[Xantippe]

When I was a sweet young thing, I bought the idea that people who were the parents of “just” two children were lazy, selfish slackers.

Then I had two little children myself (one of them on the autism spectrum), and I started realizing that I had been very stupid.

 

[omgriley]

I’m not trying to be insulting. I’m being honest. DH has worked in finance since he graduated (early) with his master’s degree ten years ago. Trust me, getting that master’s wasn’t his idea of fun, but it was an important career step. The best I can figure is you’re working at some sort of tax prep place, or possibly a title loan facility, and that there’s a lot more to this story. I have never heard of anywhere that would hire even entry level white collar without a degree. (Again, I don’t think this is at all how is SHOULD be, just how it is, barring Dad running the company or something.)

Well I’m sorry but you’re just wrong. I do not work for tax consultants, or title officers. I’m not sure why you insist on there being “more to this story” than what I have told you. Many of my colleagues who work with me and for other companies are in the same position I am. It is quite possible to make a decent living without a college degree.

 

[TechieGuy]

Question for those who write about feeling judged about how many kids you have:

Why do you care what other people think?

Why not just tell those sorts of busibodies to mind their own business? Or just ignore them?

 

[omgriley]

I’m just saying that life and parenthood are going to be a lot harder and more expensive than you expect, there are going to be problems you never even suspected the existence of, and that you don’t need to expend a lot of energy thinking about how other people are getting away with something with NFP, because there’s more than enough suffering to go around for everybody without going looking for it.

You are misunderstanding my point. If parents or would-be parents are in a financial situation that would greatly stress their ability to raise a family, then they would be justified in holding off until they remedy the situation.

you don’t need to expend a lot of energy thinking about how other people are getting away with something with NFP, because there’s more than enough suffering to go around for everybody without going looking for it.

I’m not doing any of that. I didn’t start this thread, I simply stated the fact that promoting NFP as a sort of Catholic birth control for people who want to tell God how many children their going to have is wrong. NFP is the exception, not the rule.

 

[omgriley]

My wife is post-menopausal, so I’ve been through about 25 years of NFP before it was no longer needed. We conceived using NFP and avoided using NFP.

I resented people telling me when to have babies or that I was too selfish or wasn’t holy enough because of the size of my family (four kids, three living). It is what it is. Do you think it’s easy learning to master your sex life over decades?

Please, people, don’t project your own financial acumen, acceptance of a certain level of uncertainty, job skill, or other factors onto other people. Let everyone make their own decision. It’s their decision, not yours.

With so much going on in the world, it seems like you could be doing other things with your time than being the conception police.

Seems like a mildly inappropriate characterization of some people.

Might I ask what the reason for practicing NFP for 25 years was?

 

[Laura_N]

Well I’m sorry but you’re just wrong. I do not work for tax consultants, or title officers. I’m not sure why you insist on there being “more to this story” than what I have told you. Many of my colleagues who work with me and for other companies are in the same position I am. It is quite possible to make a decent living without a college degree.

In all fairness, saying you work in finance is a little vague. That could be any thing from a bank teller multi-millionaire investment banker. Decent living is also subjective. My husband and I made what we considered a “decent living” when we were first married 12 years ago, there’s no way we could live off of that now. We’re paying $1300/mo in child care alone for 2 kids. And before you say “stay home with them” My husband and I are self employees and it would cost $2500 a month to hire somebody to do my job. We literally make 2.5 times the amount of money we did when we were first married and that just covers living expenses and sometimes we can put a little extra in savings. And our kids are only 2 and 3 assuming we don’t have any more, which really isn’t too likely, just paying for them to go high school is going to run is about $20k a year between the 2 of them.

And yes, there’s plenty of successful people without degrees, I’m also one of them as well as my husband. But what you consider a decent living now may not actually be feasible once you actually have kids.

 

[omgriley]

In all fairness, saying you work in finance is a little vague. That could be any thing from a bank teller multi-millionaire investment banker. Decent living is also subjective. My husband and I made what we considered a “decent living” when we were first married 12 years ago, there’s no way we could live off of that now. We’re paying $1300/mo in child care alone for 2 kids. And before you say “stay home with them” My husband and I are self employees and it would cost $2500 a month to hire somebody to do my job. We literally make 2.5 times the amount of money we did when we were first married and that just covers living expenses and sometimes we can put a little extra in savings. And our kids are only 2 and 3 assuming we don’t have any more, which really isn’t too likely, just paying for them to go high school is going to run is about $20k a year between the 2 of them.

And yes, there’s plenty of successful people without degrees, I’m also one of them as well as my husband. But what you consider a decent living now may not actually be feasible once you actually have kids.

I meant to be vague, I’m not interested in letting the world of CAF know what I do for a living.

I don’t very much care what everyone’s individual situations are. As long as people are following the Church’s teaching on marriage and family planning, there’s no problem.

• Form a rightly ordered conscience according to the teachings of the Church.
• Follow that rightly ordered conscience if it presents you with a serious reason to abstain from having more children.

 

[TheLittleLady]

College degrees are not a guarantee of success or even of a job.

Heck, it is possible to get those degrees without college loans, DH and I both had full rides back in the day and I know young people graduating this spring who have full rides to Unis, Private Colleges, and everything in between.

Those are both separate threads.

Bottom line is to say “you are a bad Catholic for spacing or delaying children” is uninformed at best and smug at worst.

 

[Xantippe]

I’ve even seen certain rock solid Catholic apologists (who shall remain nameless) say that a young married couple who want to travel the world together could use NFP because romantic get-aways can help them grow closer spiritually so as to prepare them for parenthood.

About the travel example–isn’t this like the old joke about the smoking Jesuit? Here it is from somewhere on the internet.

“Two Jesuit novices both wanted a cigarette while they prayed. They decided to ask their superior for permission. The first asked, but was told no. A little while later he spotted his friend smoking. “Why did the superior allow you to smoke, but not me?” he asked. His friend replied, “Because you asked if you could smoke while you prayed, and I asked if I could pray while I smoked!””

To apply this to the world travel example, you think it’s bad to use NFP in order to travel. But to flip that, what if one used NFP because one was travelling/going to be travelling soon? Paid-for plane tickets, risk of stroke from air travel during pregnancy, zika, being far from one’s doctor or even English speaking doctors, vulnerability to listeria while pregnant, lack of adequate medical facilities, etc.–these are all good reasons to not try to achieve a pregnancy if one knows that one has long distance travel scheduled.

My husband and I did NFP for several years while he was finishing graduate school. At the time, we had a combined income of no more than $24k (and I hate to think what maternity coverage). My husband had a project in Poland (which is where he was born), and my in-laws funded us to both go to Europe for four weeks. We had a lovely trip Germany (where my sis was living with her German husband), saw a little of Vienna in transit, and spent the bulk of our trip in Poland, where my husband was doing some work, and we also saw my husband’s two grandmas and some other relatives, as well as some sight-seeing. My husband never saw his grandmothers again alive, and I believe it was probably three years until I saw my sister again.

The trip was 18 years ago and was one of a kind. I majored in Russian, was a Peace Corps volunteer in Russia back in the 1990s, and have a number of friends there to this day, but I haven’t been back in 20 years. It hasn’t wrecked my life, but back in the 90s, I had no idea then that the window of opportunity was closing. Our children’s needs are quite pressing right now, and probably will be for another 3-7 years. We’re coming up on our 20th anniversary now and I’ve been revising plans down and down. The way things are going, we’ll be lucky to get a babysitter and go out to dinner at an inexpensive restaurant. We have literally never had the opportunity to go anywhere overnight together without a kid in the last 15+ years.

So, looking from where I am today, I would never throw rocks at the young couple that wants to travel now, because this may be their only opportunity for the next 25+ years, and who knows what life has in store for them? They may wind up with a disabled child who needs round-the-clock care. You never know.

 

[Xantippe]

In all fairness, saying you work in finance is a little vague. That could be any thing from a bank teller multi-millionaire investment banker. Decent living is also subjective. My husband and I made what we considered a “decent living” when we were first married 12 years ago, there’s no way we could live off of that now. We’re paying $1300/mo in child care alone for 2 kids. And before you say “stay home with them” My husband and I are self employees and it would cost $2500 a month to hire somebody to do my job. We literally make 2.5 times the amount of money we did when we were first married and that just covers living expenses and sometimes we can put a little extra in savings. And our kids are only 2 and 3 assuming we don’t have any more, which really isn’t too likely, just paying for them to go high school is going to run is about $20k a year between the 2 of them.

And yes, there’s plenty of successful people without degrees, I’m also one of them as well as my husband. But what you consider a decent living now may not actually be feasible once you actually have kids.

Those are very good points, especially about how the family’s economic needs grow.

I’d also add that this applies to SAHM families, although somewhat different. Early on in a SAHM family, it’s possible to get by with very little in the way of cash expenses for kids. but the bigger kids get, the less feasible that is. Big kids get very expensive.

 

[PaulinVA]

Seems like a mildly inappropriate characterization of some people.

Yes, but a perfectly true characterization of other people.

Might I ask what the reason for practicing NFP for 25 years was?

I initially wanted to say that it was none of your business, but I’ll tell you a little. Remember, I said we used it to conceive and to avoid.

The kids are about three years apart. In that time we avoided and then used NFP to conceive.

Something the Church does not have a concept of is that, at a certain point, your family is built out. You’ve reached your kid limit. It could be because of medical conditions, financial or whatever. NFP is the alternative to total abstinence. I happen to like my wife and didn’t want to be totally abstinent.

 

[TheLittleLady]

NFP is the alternative to total abstinence.

So many people don’t get this.

 

[Laura_N]

That kid limit is also different for everyone. It might be 12 for one family and 2 For another and just because somebody’s limit is different from your doesn’t make you or them better/worse.

 

[omgriley]

Yes, but a perfectly true characterization of other people.

Hopefully no one on this thread.

I initially wanted to say that it was none of your business, but I’ll tell you a little. Remember, I said we used it to conceive and to avoid.

The kids are about three years apart. In that time we avoided and then used NFP to conceive.

Something the Church does not have a concept of is that, at a certain point, your family is built out. You’ve reached your kid limit. It could be because of medical conditions, financial or whatever. NFP is the alternative to total abstinence. I happen to like my wife and didn’t want to be totally abstinent.

Thanks for sharing. I know it was fully your prerogative to do so and I hope I haven’t pressured you into revealing more than you’re comfortable with.

I have to take issue with your claim that the Church “does not have a concept” of how the family works and the various stresses of raising a family. The Catholic Church is not some corporate institution run by out of touch suits (or collars) in an office building. It’s The Divine Institution, indeed, the Body of Christ on Earth. The constant moral teachings of the Church are from God Himself. You cannot say that God and His Church just “aren’t with the times.” That’s the very definition arrogance and ignorance.

I’m not very sure what “reached your kid limit” means, it seems vague to me. “Medical conditions,” sure. “financial,” sure. “or whatever…” Uhh, not so much. That seems to be the idea of one who wants to be in control, instead of letting God provide for your well-being and happiness.