I don’t have daughters but our church had a talk for the teens on abstinance and it included NFP. I asked my 15-year-old son if he had heard of NFP before that and he said he had. They didn’t teach details of NFP but they taught that contraceptive use was wrong. The whole message was very Catholic and it gave the impression that NFP is something everyone should learn before marriage. They need to hear that message repeatedly.
Now I have a question. Being the mother of sons, how do I go about teaching my kids about NFP? We used the “rhythm method” to avoid pregnancy and our first son was born less than a year later. We used NFP (What I read about taking temperature and watching for mucus, etc. Never formal training) to get pregnant with our second son and it eventually worked. However, we were 100% successful in avoiding other pregnancies using contraception and eventually a vasectomy before we understood the grave sin of contraception.
I’m not sure my husband even fully understands the church’s teachings as he wasn’t Catholic when he was sterilized and we aren’t required to have it reversed. He questions the teaching and seems to want to know why contraceptive use is wrong. I’m not very good at explaining to him. Any suggestions for those of us who are the only women in the family and don’t really feel comfortable discussing this?
