NFP marketing, is promoting it right?

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That’s where the church needs to step in to help form consciences and teach couples how to be selfless and accept children from God. Not, “the first thing you need to know is how to avoid having them the Catholic way” wink, wink.

That was the reason I started this conversation. Not because I’m anti nfp; it’s the marketing of nfp that I think is off base. The church allows the use of it for serious reasons. Not so you can make sure a baby isn’t born at a “bad time”. If it’s used with that frame of mind; that is a contraceptive mentality. That mentality needs to be eraticated and not be promoted like I’ve seen from the backs of our churches, at the very least. A contraceptive mentality is dangerous and leads to sin. That is something the church should be talking about. Turning a blind eye on something that is or could be sinful is not what the Church should ever do.
 
“A bad time?”

Like when mom and baby will die if she gets pregnant?

Like when mom and dad are unemployed and going back to school?

Like when mom and dad need a car that will fit three car seats, and need to come up with 6-8 grand out of pocket for the birth?

Like when mom will descend further into postpartum depression if she gets pregnant again?

Those all sound like pretty good reasons to discern “hey, this may not be a good time for us to get pregnant” to me…
 
ByWhatAuthority said:
Not because I’m anti nfp; it’s the marketing of nfp that I think is off base. The church allows the use of it for serious reasons. Not so you can make sure a baby isn’t born at a “bad time”. If it’s used with that frame of mind; that is a contraceptive mentality.
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Well as far as I can tell, you’re just some guy with an opinion - why should we pay more attention to you than to the people in the Church hierarchy who say that it is up to the couple to decide how to use NFP?
 
One reason that a lot of families are smaller nowadays is that we have no real support in terms of social or family structure.

Case in point: we’ve had 4 pregnancies in 5 years of marriage. After both full-term pregnancies, I’ve gotten postpartum depression to the point of suicidal ideation. What does the Church say? Simultaneously, “Keep having all the babies!” and “Oh, you’re severely depressed? Not our problem. No, we won’t help you find a (paid! I was offering a good bit above the local standard, and just wanted help finding someone who wanted a part-time job!) caregiver so that you can go to prenatal appointments or to get your various both mental and physical postpartum issues dealt with. It’s selfish of you to even ask us for help. What? You’re going to use NFP to avoid for a while? Bad Catholic! Bad! Contraceptive mentality! No excuse is ever quite good enough to use NFP! If you just had more faith in God like Sally Jones, your uterus wouldn’t rupture and you wouldn’t get depressed!”

Then they wonder why people get their tubes tied and leave the Church. I won’t, mind you, because I’m here for the sacraments, but it would really be lovely if Catholics could put half the energy they put into deciding that other Catholics are Doing It Wrong into, say, the whole corporal works of mercy gig.
 
omgriley said:
No one should have to explain to people that “I’m just not ready yet”, “We want to travel the world first” and “I want to finish my college degree” are not serious reasons.
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You think that risking winding up with an unfinished college degree and five figures of student loans isn’t serious?

Wow.
 
This, though I’d make this one small addition: I think it’s extremely rare for NFP, by its nature, to be misused. NFP, used to avoid, is HARD. Avoiding via NFP is decidedly not fun, and involved not having sex with your spouse when you want it the most. That having been said, I don’t think it’s impossible for NFP to be misused. Any tool, and that’s what NFP is, can be. I just think it’s very rare for it to be misused because it’s so dang Not Fun to misuse it!
 
For context, my student loans had fairly low interest rates, and were in the low(ish) five figures. We’ll be paying almost $400/month on them for another 4.5 years yet. That’s rather a lot of money for most people!
 
ByWhatAuthority said:
Not, “just” anything goes and you decide if it’s a sin or not to over analyze your bodily fluids all the time to make sure you don’t accidentally conceive a baby because you have things to do and a baby right now would just cramp your style.
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I don’t think you understand how this works.
 
UbiCaritas said:
This, though I’d make this one small addition: I think it’s extremely rare for NFP, by its nature, to be misused. NFP, used to avoid, is HARD. Avoiding via NFP is decidedly not fun, and involved not having sex with your spouse when you want it the most. That having been said, I don’t think it’s impossible for NFP to be misused. Any tool, and that’s what NFP is, can be. I just think it’s very rare for it to be misused because it’s so dang Not Fun to misuse it!
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This! I always find it funny how people talk about using NFP being selfish. It takes a lot of sacrifice for both spouses for it to be effective, anybody who thinks it’s selfish has clearly never been in the situation where they needed to use it.

It could also be argued that having more children that you may or may not have the resources or mental well being to care for because you want to be able to have sex whenever you want is pretty darn selfish as well.
 
Xantippe said:
You think that risking winding up with an unfinished college degree and five figures of student loans isn’t serious?

Wow.
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Not serious enough to hold off on having children, no. I know plenty of couples who never finished college and their student loan debt isn’t hindering them from raising families.
 
I’m genuinely curious. What field is currently accepting candidates with only a high-school diploma or GED and paying a sufficient salary to raise a family on? The only area I can think of is the military, and that’s a starting salary of 20k/year. $400/month of student loans will knock out almost a quarter of that take-home pay, too.

ETA: 30-odd years ago, it was quite possible to get a very good job with only a high school diploma. One of DH’s former supervisors never went to college, but he’d also never get hired now without a master’s degree, as DH has. I don’t think things ought to be this way, mind you, but most companies haven’t consulted me. 😉
 
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I’m not sure who DH is…

In any event I work in finance, and I make well enough that I can support my family.
 
DH=Dear Husband.

Interesting. My husband works in finance, too. You can get hired for some positions with a bachelor’s degree nowadays, but a 20/30-something high school graduate with no degree of any kind simply isn’t getting hired in finance nowadays. Period. You might be in the age group I mentioned–ie, old enough to be DH’s or my parent–and have a sufficient amount of experience to be grandfathered in, but there is simply no way that you’re in my generation and got hired into a finance role with no prior experience.
 
UbiCaritas said:
This, though I’d make this one small addition: I think it’s extremely rare for NFP, by its nature, to be misused. NFP, used to avoid, is HARD. Avoiding via NFP is decidedly not fun, and involved not having sex with your spouse when you want it the most. That having been said, I don’t think it’s impossible for NFP to be misused. Any tool, and that’s what NFP is, can be. I just think it’s very rare for it to be misused because it’s so dang Not Fun to misuse it!
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“Fun” is subjective. It’s very easy to abuse NFP:

“We don’t want kids. Period.”
“We won’t use contraception.”
“We will use NFP.”

Voila, NFP abused.
 
“We’ll use NFP, and forgo having sex except for a few days a month.”

That’s pretty not fun if you care about your spouse.
 
omgriley said:
Not serious enough to hold off on having children, no. I know plenty of couples who never finished college and their student loan debt isn’t hindering them from raising families.
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Like UbiCaritas, I have a lot of questions:

–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.)
 
UbiCaritas said:
Interesting. My husband works in finance, too. You can get hired for some positions with a bachelor’s degree nowadays, but a 20/30-something high school graduate with no degree of any kind simply isn’t getting hired in finance nowadays. Period. You might be in the age group I mentioned–ie, old enough to be DH’s or my parent–and have a sufficient amount of experience to be grandfathered in, but there is simply no way that you’re in my generation and got hired into a finance role with no prior experience.
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Wrong. I’m 25 and have been here since I was 19 with zero experience. I’ve received promotions.

Stop with the “it’s not possible without a degree” stuff. It very much is.
 
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