It seems the Church today dosnt mind if Catholics think it’s up to them and not God how many blessing they receive. That lead me to say that may be the reason there are very few large families in our churches today… If you disagree, fine. I am not offended and I enjoy hearing you all try to explain your position.
I feel like there have been one or two threads on this subject on CAF in the past. How about looking at the old threads?
There are a lot of reasons that there are fewer large families today than in the past. I feel like this ground has been gone over adequately, but briefly:
–couples being older when they get married
–expensive real estate in many parts of the country
–medical care being more expensive
Total medical costs for a typical family of four are now nearly $25k, with the family’s portion being $10k a year.
–There are a lot of issues with US K-12 education. Catholic K-12 education is much more expensive today than it was during the heyday of large Catholic families. Furthermore, a lot of practicing Catholics and other Americans have (often valid) concerns about the safety and wholesomeness of their public school.
–What about homeschooling? somebody is going to say. Here’s a big problem–those big family Catholic moms of yesteryear did
not homeschool, hence expecting homeschoolers of today to have large families, or expecting large families to homeschool effectively is not realistic (at least not as a social norm). There’s a reason why there was such a rush toward creating public and parochial schools in the US–namely that overworked mothers and fathers of large families were not up to doing the job by themselves.
– The labor market for unskilled workers in the US isn’t what it was in 1955. A person with a high school education in 2017 and without either a college degree or a skilled trade is going to have trouble supporting a family of any size today, let alone a large family. Low-income people in the US are less likely to marry, less likely to go to church, more likely to have children outside of marriage, and are more likely to divorce if they do get married. Combine these facts together, and there are some very valid (dare I say, “serious”?) reasons to think that loving parents need to put some effort into making sure that their teens acquire a college education and/or a trade.
–Furthermore, job security is way down compared to 1955.
So, yes, there are one or two factors other than NFP hype that are putting downward pressure on US family size.
