Where are all the large Catholic families?

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Melchior said:
Other articles from that site;

“Problems with EWTN”
“Charismatic Movement Not From GOD”
“Opus Dei - Sectarians in disguise?”
“The differences between the True Mass and the New Mass”
“The Novus Ordo and Heresy”
“Is the New Mass Valid or Pleasing to God?”

I’d take some of what they say with a grain of salt.

Hard to take the site seriously.
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Well, its up to ever person to evaluate the correctness right?

I think there seems to be nothing wrong with the NFP article at a glance. People today have indeed come to think of NFP as an alternate form of contraception. This is why NFP has become somewhat of a running joke by those who advocate actual contraception i.e. “The church is against contraception but allows NFP”.

I think that article gives a good description of what the church actually allows when it refers to NFP.
 
I have read many of the posts on this subject and what bothers me the most is the judgemental mentality of so many posters.My daughter lost her only pregnancy to miscarriage after trying for eight years .Unlike losing a full term child miscarriage is often swept under the carpet and infertility is often ignored.She had to endure insulting comments from people with large families ,usually the men that they needed instruction on how to do"IT"right often with offers of personal instruction.Whose busines is it if my daughter is infertile ? /.God made her for a very good reason not to be the butt of ignorant hurtfull jokes from "good"Catholics fortunate enought to produce their own off spring.The Universal Church is made up of people from all around the world with different economies , cultures and customs.What might be a compelling reason to use NFP in one country might not be in another .Some countries are at war, some people living in refugee camps some people jobless, some starving .How dare anyone make judgments on thei r Catholicism based on the size of their families . The small mindedness and self righteousness of some of the posts leaves me reeling
 
jannes said:
I have read many of the posts on this subject and what bothers me the most is the judgemental mentality of so many posters.My daughter lost her only pregnancy to miscarriage after trying for eight years .Unlike losing a full term child miscarriage is often swept under the carpet and infertility is often ignored.She had to endure insulting comments from people with large families ,usually the men that they needed instruction on how to do"IT"right often with offers of personal instruction.Whose busines is it if my daughter is infertile ? /.God made her for a very good reason not to be the butt of ignorant hurtfull jokes from "good"Catholics fortunate enought to produce their own off spring.The Universal Church is made up of people from all around the world with different economies , cultures and customs.What might be a compelling reason to use NFP in one country might not be in another .Some countries are at war, some people living in refugee camps some people jobless, some starving .How dare anyone make judgments on thei r Catholicism based on the size of their families . The small mindedness and self righteousness of some of the posts leaves me reeling
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:clapping: Thank you.
 
jannes said:
I have read many of the posts on this subject and what bothers me the most is the judgemental mentality of so many posters.My daughter lost her only pregnancy to miscarriage after trying for eight years .Unlike losing a full term child miscarriage is often swept under the carpet and infertility is often ignored.She had to endure insulting comments from people with large families ,usually the men that they needed instruction on how to do"IT"right often with offers of personal instruction.Whose busines is it if my daughter is infertile ? /.God made her for a very good reason not to be the butt of ignorant hurtfull jokes from "good"Catholics fortunate enought to produce their own off spring.The Universal Church is made up of people from all around the world with different economies , cultures and customs.What might be a compelling reason to use NFP in one country might not be in another .Some countries are at war, some people living in refugee camps some people jobless, some starving .How dare anyone make judgments on thei r Catholicism based on the size of their families . The small mindedness and self righteousness of some of the posts leaves me reeling
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I don’t think anyone is proposing that we take out a record of “how many kids in family of so and so” and start building lists for who is Catholic and who is not.

I believe the motive/idea behind such threads as this is to draw attention to the overall mentality of Catholics. Today, the average Catholic family is small not out of a health condition but due to a serious issues regarding the understanding of marriage and children. That greater mentality has to change and it this mentality that is judged.

So your daughter, for all purposes, is not affected by the change of this mentality. In-fact, many people would not be able to sympathize with the actual problem your daughter is going through under the mentality of current society.
 
i_am_a_Catholic said:
I don’t think anyone is proposing that we take out a record of “how many kids in family of so and so” and start building lists for who is Catholic and who is not.

I believe the motive/idea behind such threads as this is to draw attention to the overall mentality of Catholics. Today, the average Catholic family is small not out of a health condition but due to a serious issues regarding the understanding of marriage and children. That greater mentality has to change and it this mentality that is judged.

So your daughter, for all purposes, is not affected by the change of this mentality. In-fact, many people would not be able to sympathize with the actual problem your daughter is going through under the mentality of current society.
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👍 If all of these small families were due to situations such as jannes’ daughter or to women with life threatening conditions that made pregnancy imprudent, we would have a much more serious problem as a society than just NFP. This would be an international health crisis.
 
Corki said:
👍 If all of these small families were due to situations such as jannes’ daughter or to women with life threatening conditions that made pregnancy imprudent, we would have a much more serious problem as a society than just NFP. This would be an international health crisis.
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The point is, it’s really no one’s business to be making speculations about another family based on the number of children that they have.
 
Debora123 said:
The point is, it’s really no one’s business to be making speculations about another family based on the number of children that they have.
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Of course no one should make speculations about any particular family. I was speaking of populations in general. If we have as a whole group of Catholics, a majority of families who are facing either life threatening medical conditions or inability to conceive/carry a child to term, it’s a community health problem. Healthy populations do not have that kind of systemic health problems.
 
Are they, perhaps, a myth or stereotype?

I mean, I realize families in past centuries tended to birth more children, but 1) there was higher infant mortality and 2) surely not every married couple had eight or twelve or twenty children. Is the “Catholics have huge families” notion just an accepted stereotype that may not have any factual basis?
 
adopted_heir said:
Are they, perhaps, a myth or stereotype?

I mean, I realize families in past centuries tended to birth more children, but 1) there was higher infant mortality and 2) surely not every married couple had eight or twelve or twenty children. Is the “Catholics have huge families” notion just an accepted stereotype that may not have any factual basis?
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There is a little of that. Twenty kids would have been an unusually large family in any century. But just look at 40 years ago. We weren’t facing high infant mortality and many Catholic families had 6 - 8 children. Growing up, my block had families of 9, 10, 12 and 14 kids - all Catholic families living in suburbia.

If you look at population statistics, the objective reasons that would limit family size, at least in an industrialized country such as the US - serious health conditions, late marriages, significant financial hardships - something seems to be missing. Either we have an epedemic of health conditions or Catholics are not generously welcoming children. With the advances in health care and treating infertility, and with a higher standard of living, without such an epidemic, you would expect average family size among Catholics to be rising. I don’t think it is.
 
Later marriage has a significant effect on family size. I married at 32 and didn’t think I would be able to have a large family. Thanks be to God, I have had 5 children in the 11 years that we’ve been married, but I’ve also had 2 miscarriages in the last 6 months, at the age of 43. It seems my time is coming to an end. Many women are not as lucky as I was and start to experience significant decline in fertility in the mid-30s.

Economic factors are significant and shouldn’t be dismissed easily. Gone are the days of piling everybody you can into the station wagon to get somewhere. If we have another child, we will have to buy a new vehicle. She’ll be our $15,000 baby. We’ll likely have to go from a 7 passenger mini-van that gets decent gas mileage to a Suburban or other large vehicle, which gets significantly less. That could increase our gas cost by 30 or 40 percent. Our suburban family life is very different than what it was even when I was a child. In the past, children could help out more, or at least be expected to earn money for their own “extras”. Now, paper routes are done by adults in cars, not a kid on a bike. Opportunities for kids younger than the mid-teens are almost non-existent. We’re barely making ends meet as it is, and our single (teacher) income and homeschooling lifestyle is hardly lavish. We would welcome another baby and will find a way to afford it, but many families simply cannot and we are not in a position to know all the details and make a judgement about their reason.

The decision to delay having more children (using NFP) is complex and serious and should be a matter between a couple, with solid advice from an orthodox priest who can help them with their situation. We cannot presume to know or understand the pressures that individual families face in making this decision.
 
What is a large catholic family according to your understanding of the " traditional catholic teaching " ? In your point of view, how do you define a large catholic family? What are your references, your documents?
 
fpt said:
What is a large catholic family according to your understanding of the " traditional catholic teaching " ? In your point of view, how do you define a large catholic family? What are your references, your documents?
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The couple is the ultimate identity only capable to decide for them what is the responsible procreation? The catholic church gives us the general laws in order to find the balance (the moderation, the moral, the social justice within the family and, the conjugal charity in order to decide to have babies or not).

The responsible procreation is a duty for the couple, but the theorical providentialism with its brothers and sisters – absolute procreationism, absolute natalism, quivefull movement, …etc, and small groups of catholics – is very wrong, dangerous, even if it looks like very good mentality, because they are in favor of the concept of " traditional family" with a lot of kids and with the housewife.

Be careful is my slogan. We have to stay prudent for finding out the fundamental elements of these movement in order to know if there are some incompatibilities with the natural moral law.

For example: The mormonism and the catholicism. On some points we are okay and any others are not in the same line.
 
Corki said:
Of course no one should make speculations about any particular family. I was speaking of populations in general. If we have as a whole group of Catholics, a majority of families who are facing either life threatening medical conditions or inability to conceive/carry a child to term, it’s a community health problem. Healthy populations do not have that kind of systemic health problems.
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I do think it’s possible that modern medicine picks up on more health risks than they used to. For example, C-sections are pretty common now. A doctor is more likely to realize and tell you if your uterus is getting dangerously thin to conceive another child. Women are also more likely to be diagnosed with heart conditions and other factors for high risk pregnancies. I think the risks were probably always there, but now we know.
 
Corki said:
There is a little of that. Twenty kids would have been an unusually large family in any century. But just look at 40 years ago. We weren’t facing high infant mortality and many Catholic families had 6 - 8 children. Growing up, my block had families of 9, 10, 12 and 14 kids - all Catholic families living in suburbia.

If you look at population statistics, the objective reasons that would limit family size, at least in an industrialized country such as the US - serious health conditions, late marriages, significant financial hardships - something seems to be missing. Either we have an epedemic of health conditions or Catholics are not generously welcoming children. With the advances in health care and treating infertility, and with a higher standard of living, without such an epidemic, you would expect average family size among Catholics to be rising. I don’t think it is.
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My Catholic mom comes from a family of 5 children. My non-Catholic dad comes from a farming family of 9. Those are not unusual numbers for the times.

I agree that there is something going on besides prayerful consideration by Catholic couples of true hardships or health concerns. The general idea in society of what a baby/child “needs” and what constitutes a hardship has changed over the years. Even a couple who is using NFP is probably not using the same criteria for limits or spacing that a couple in the early 21st centuary did.

I have a small family and so do my relatives. My children only have 4 cousins. When we gather the entire extended family, it is barely more people than some had in their birth families! :bighanky:
 
WingsOfEagles said:
I do think it’s possible that modern medicine picks up on more health risks than they used to. For example, C-sections are pretty common now. A doctor is more likely to realize and tell you if your uterus is getting dangerously thin to conceive another child. Women are also more likely to be diagnosed with heart conditions and other factors for high risk pregnancies. I think the risks were probably always there, but now we know.
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In France, there are alot of C-sections not because there are real medical issues, but because it is a mean for doctor to have better pay (an act of surgery with money in pocket of doctor) or because it is also a mean to avoid a judicial law suit if the baby has a minor problem during the natural childbirth.

In France, it seems to me that C-section is not seen like being a huge higher risk for the future pregnancies. There is a diffrence between France and the USA, it seems to me. May be, I make a misunderstanding, a mistake!!!

In conclusion, In France every woman can birth in the hospital without to pay a lot of money. The health care system is very different. The health insurance can not oblige to have a delay between two pregnancies, otherwise no insurance during the gap of time. In France, It is not licit.
 
fpt said:
In France, there are alot of C-sections not because there are real medical issues, but because it is a mean for doctor to have better pay (an act of surgery with money in pocket of doctor) or because it is also a mean to avoid a judicial law suit if the baby has a minor problem during the natural childbirth.

**In France, it seems to me that C-section is not seen like being a huge higher risk for the future pregnancies. There is a diffrence between France and the USA, it seems to me. May be, I make a misunderstanding, a mistake!!!
**
In conclusion, In France every woman can birth in the hospital without to pay a lot of money. The health care system is very different. The health insurance can not oblige to have a delay between two pregnancies, otherwise no insurance during the gap of time. In France, It is not licit.
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No, you read my statements correctly. This link from the Mayo Clinic (well-respected American Hospital) talks about it. The part about future pregnancies is on the last bullet.

mayoclinic.com/health/c-section/MY00214/DSECTION=risks
 
The legal system, the judicial system, the practice of legal lawsuits, the health care system (public insurance, private insurance), the imposed delay between two pregnancy in order to be taken in charge by the insurance , with a normal price (without surprime) or with strong suprime, the mentalities of doctors concerning these systems, the mentalities of wifes concerning these systems, the mentalities of husbands concerning these systems, thus the mentalities of couples of concerning these systems **have a big influence on the number of children in the family.

The same reasonning for the mentalities of priests concerning the pastoral approach of NFP, in function of the local zone. **
 
fpt said:
The legal system, the judicial system, the practice of legal lawsuits, the health care system (public insurance, private insurance), the imposed delay between two pregnancy in order to be taken in charge by the insurance , with a normal price (without surprime) or with strong suprime, the mentalities of doctors concerning these systems, the mentalities of wifes concerning these systems, the mentalities of husbands concerning these systems, thus the mentalities of couples of concerning these systems **have a big influence on the number of children in the family.

The same reasonning for the mentalities of priests concerning the pastoral approach of NFP, in function of the local zone. **
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Yes, it sounds like government laws in France might make using NFP to have a smaller family valid.
 
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