Why do most people ignore the Church's teaching on contraception?

[pianistclare]

Exactly.

I know parents of large families on CAF don’t intend it to sound like this, but a lot of large-family boosterism here tends to come across as, “If only you were as holy as me, then you’d have a big family like me! It’s very easy to do–when you’re as holy as me!”

A few pages back, we had a father of five explaining that he didn’t even find it work to have five children.

I find that totally unrelatable.

Yup.
That’s the point of my post.
In spades.
I’m out.

 

[Xantippe]

With regard to the merits of planning versus not-planning, in our less-financially-responsible days, we’d put maybe $5 cash in the collection basket (on a good Sunday)–basically whatever small change we had.

We do MUCH better nowadays doing a monthly budget and planning giving on a monthly basis and writing actual checks.

I suspect that most people are the same–we all want to give generously, but if we don’t plan giving, it doesn’t happen.

 

[Rose71]

Am I missing something?

I thought we were discussing why most people ignore the Church’s teaching on contraception. I think this thread is going off on a tangent.

Since many baptised Catholics don’t attend Mass and receive little religious instruction at school, many since maybe the 1980s have grown up genuinely not really knowing or understanding the Church’s teaching.

Surely, addressing this problem is more important than arguing who amongst us (who do all pay head to the Church’s teaching) has the most ‘worthy’ life?

But while we’re off on the tangent my :twocents: is that I love seeing big families and I absolutely defend anybody’s right to have a big family, but I don’t jump to conclusions as to why other familes of smaller in size.

As a childless lady, I have on occasion felt quite hurt by comments from mothers who seem to think it is their place to ‘burst my bubble’ over the most trivial things. A few examples:

When I was single, I did my best to fill my time productively, in a way that utilised what I am good at and helped other people: I joined a search and rescue organisation and attended lots of fun practice weekends. On Mondays at work, when we chatted about what we’d been up to, there was always one Righteous Mother, who just had to adopt a pained expression and say, "of course, you couldn’t do that if you were a mum!"

It was often tempting to retailiate when she talked about all her children’s achievements and adventures by saying, “of course, you couldn’t do that if you weren’t **blessed **with children! At the moment, I am not blessed with a husband and children, so I am striving to fill my time with something else that gives back to society! I’m sorry you feel so resentful about the fact that I enjoyed my weekend!”

The other hurtful assumption was that (actually, I am still childless, so it still is) I had deliberately excluded children from my life in pursuit of a career and a fun, active life. As a Catholic, again, that’s not the choice! I failed to meet a suitable husband who respected my choice to abstain until marriage until I was almost past childbearing age. That, I believe, was God’s plan as it enabled me to do work that helped save lives and spend time visiting elderly relatives and friends that I would otherwise not have had time to do.

Of course being a parent teaches you more about life; adds a new dimension to life and hopefully helps you become a more giving and generous person - but - there are other paths to God too. Please don’t confuse recognising this fact with condoning artificial birth control because there are many parents and non-parents who do believe the Church’s teaching on ABC and have small families or no families.

 

[Regina7]

Am I missing something?

I thought we were discussing why most people ignore the Church’s teaching on contraception. I think this thread is going off on a tangent.

Since many baptised Catholics don’t attend Mass and receive little religious instruction at school, many since maybe the 1980s have grown up genuinely not really knowing or understanding the Church’s teaching.

Surely, addressing this problem is more important than arguing who amongst us (who do all pay head to the Church’s teaching) has the most ‘worthy’ life?

But while we’re off on the tangent my :twocents: is that I love seeing big families and I absolutely defend anybody’s right to have a big family, but I don’t jump to conclusions as to why other familes of smaller in size.

As a childless lady, I have on occasion felt quite hurt by comments from mothers who seem to think it is their place to ‘burst my bubble’ over the most trivial things. A few examples:

When I was single, I did my best to fill my time productively, in a way that utilised what I am good at and helped other people: I joined a search and rescue organisation and attended lots of fun practice weekends. On Mondays at work, when we chatted about what we’d been up to, there was always one Righteous Mother, who just had to adopt a pained expression and say, "of course, you couldn’t do that if you were a mum!"

It was often tempting to retailiate when she talked about all her children’s achievements and adventures by saying, “of course, you couldn’t do that if you weren’t **blessed **with children! At the moment, I am not blessed with a husband and children, so I am striving to fill my time with something else that gives back to society! I’m sorry you feel so resentful about the fact that I enjoyed my weekend!”

The other hurtful assumption was that (actually, I am still childless, so it still is) I had deliberately excluded children from my life in pursuit of a career and a fun, active life. As a Catholic, again, that’s not the choice! I failed to meet a suitable husband who respected my choice to abstain until marriage until I was almost past childbearing age. That, I believe, was God’s plan as it enabled me to do work that helped save lives and spend time visiting elderly relatives and friends that I would otherwise not have had time to do.

Of course being a parent teaches you more about life; adds a new dimension to life and hopefully helps you become a more giving and generous person - but - there are other paths to God too. Please don’t confuse recognising this fact with condoning artificial birth control because there are many parents and non-parents who do believe the Church’s teaching on ABC and have small families or no families.

It’s so frustrating. Every year, we go to a Catholic family conference, and every year, we have the smallest family. I seriously want to buy a shirt that says, “you may only see two children, but I’ve given birth to five…and I don’t use abc!”

 

[pensmama87]

Of course being a parent teaches you more about life; adds a new dimension to life and hopefully helps you become a more giving and generous person - but - there are other paths to God too. Please don’t confuse recognising this fact with condoning artificial birth control because there are many parents and non-parents who do believe the Church’s teaching on ABC and have small families or no families.

Yes!

If we are praying and open to God’s will, we have to trust that He is leading us to holiness even when the path is different than we expected, or different than our neighbor’s.

We recognize the existence of charisms and spiritualities. There’s many different religious orders. There can easily be different paths for the married (and the single) laity, too.

 

[Oneofthewomen]

As a childless (not by choice) woman, who has been married for 25 years, I think a better question would be
“Why do family/friends/perfect strangers feel that it’s OK to question/harass or otherwise engage anyone regarding their “reproductive” choices?”

To be perfectly honest, the hows & whys of my intimate life with my husband are no one else’s business. We know what the Church teaches and have done our best to follow it. Commentary from others is not needed.

 

[MomaMary8]

Exactly.

I know parents of large families on CAF don’t intend it to sound like this, but a lot of large-family boosterism here tends to come across as, “If only you were as holy as me, then you’d have a big family like me! It’s very easy to do–when you’re as holy as me!”

A few pages back, we had a father of five explaining that he didn’t even find it work to have five children.

I find that totally unrelatable.

But throwing out accusations that large families are claiming to be holier than thou is wrong. When I state being open in your spiritual life in one area will create openness in other areas of your spritiual life, I was accused of something I NEVER said. I saw this done to other posters as well. It’s reactionary and deffensive.

That father of five had just been accused of not knowing the hard work of three children so he then had to give a personal example of having 5 children and not feeling overwhelmed. You may not relate, but I could.

 

[Xantippe]

As a childless (not by choice) woman, who has been married for 25 years, I think a better question would be
“Why do family/friends/perfect strangers feel that it’s OK to question/harass or otherwise engage anyone regarding their “reproductive” choices?”

To be perfectly honest, the hows & whys of my intimate life with my husband are no one else’s business. We know what the Church teaches and have done our best to follow it. Commentary from others is not needed.

Yes.

 

[MomaMary8]

With regard to the merits of planning versus not-planning, in our less-financially-responsible days, we’d put maybe $5 cash in the collection basket (on a good Sunday)–basically whatever small change we had.

We do MUCH better nowadays doing a monthly budget and planning giving on a monthly basis and writing actual checks.

I suspect that most people are the same--we all want to give generously, but if we don’t plan giving, it doesn’t happen.

But we are not the same, are we?

 

[MarkInOregon]

Also, for the record, for about 7 straight years, our family gave 10% of net income away.

We aren’t quite hitting that right now, as my beloved grandparents are 90 and 94, and I am currently prioritizing flying our big kids and myself out to visit them every year. It was a tough call and my inner Pharisee still gives me twinges about it, but the poor you have always with you, but grandma and grandpa you don’t. I think we’re still hitting about 7 or 8%, though. I wish that I’d started prioritizing the grandparents earlier, as they are both visibly more frail than even just a few years ago.

Family resources are limited, and one has to prioritize–it isn’t possible to do literally every single good thing at the same time.

My husband would like us to give more than 10% once we have a couple of kids launched and I think that would be a very good thing.

This is largely superogatory. We do it because we think it’s a good thing and we are called to it, but we don’t think that every single Catholic family ought to do exactly the same thing. That said, there are a lot of verses in the NT about charitable giving that don’t get enough attention in our large-family-uber-alles CAF discussions–it’s often treated as if having another child or two were the ONLY moral issue affecting married Catholics.

Here’s a verse from 1 John 3 that I found a moment ago (there are easily dozens of others in the NT):

“But if any one has the world’s goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God’s love abide in him? 18 Little children, let us not love in word or speech but in deed and in truth.”

This is going to sound way liberal, but why is having a larger family something to smack our brothers and sisters about over and over again (and it’s never quite big enough), but we almost never see the same level of passion directed toward charitable giving? Why is it that the only duty is to raise a large nuclear family–there’s no weight allowed to extended family relationships, neighborhood, parish, or community?

I feel like St. John would be very puzzled by the emphasis.

I have to confess–I don’t ever feel like you read what I post or actually respond to it–it feels as if you respond to something I’m not saying. Oh well. I haven’t questioned anything you or your family are doing. I’m not questioning your charitable giving. I’m not questioning the size of your family. I’m not questioning how you spend your resources. My questions/concerns have been much more general than that and if I am questioning anything–it’s how I live. The question is directed as much at me as it is to everyone else. I’ve asked a general question–which boils down to what does it mean to or how does one live a truly Christian life? What does it mean to die to self? I am suggesting that we all reevaluate our motives, our actions, and how we live from time to time—kind of an examination of conscience if you like–I just don’t understand why you feel suggesting that is somehow an attack on you and what you are doing–it is not. If I am living a fairly comfortable life–have I really died to self? What is required? Am I fooling myself? I don’t think it hurts to ponder those questions–and to suggest we all ponder them–is not an attack on what you or anyone else is doing–it’s just a suggestion. If your response was that it was a terrible idea–well that I’d understand–I might disagree but I’d understand your response.

The verse you quoted from 1 John 3 is perfect and it speaks directly to what I’m saying, to my question. Perhaps the question is uncomfortable, perhaps you already ask it. It is a question I struggle with–how much of the worlds goods should I have? What is a wise use of those goods and of my talents? (For example: has my participation on this thread been a wise use of my time–I’m not sure it has, but here I am.) It is a question that I think we should all be asking ourselves–yet to suggest we ask it seems to be taken as an attack–and is often met with a list of things done. To suggest we ask the question isn’t to suggest that we do everything–no one can do that–it’s to suggest that we try to discern Gods will for our lives and to do that–what ever the area of our lives. To suggest that we reevaluate our serious reasons from time to time–is not to suggest that your family isn’t large enough–it’s simply a reminder that situations may change–perhaps earlier one didn’t have serious reasons but now one does or vise versa. You wouldn’t go to confession without an examination of conscience – I fail to see why suggesting the same thing in a broader general sense for our lives is so objectionable. Ideally our routine examination would do this for us, but I think we can fall into allowing the focus to become to narrow.

Perhaps charity is not given attention in the “large-family-uber-alles CAF discussion” because well there discussions about family size and not charity. I didn’t expect what I said to take us this far afield from the OP.

The peace of Christ,
Mark

 

[Xantippe]

But we are not the same, are we?

Right–which is why we shouldn’t all attempt to live cookie cutter lives.

 

[kptrs]

But throwing out accusations that large families are claiming to be holier than thou is wrong. When I state being open in your spiritual life in one area will create openness in other areas of your spritiual life, I was accused of something I NEVER said. I saw this done to other posters as well. It’s reactionary and deffensive.

That father of five had just been accused of not knowing the hard work of three children so he then had to give a personal example of having 5 children and not feeling overwhelmed. You may not relate, but I could.

It would be good if no one threw out accusations about anything, as it is certainly not the Christian way to treat one another. I’m not making excuses for those who get defensive toward those who advocate large families, but I think I do have a bit of understanding of where that defensiveness comes from.

As I said in Post #643, the “just reasons” line of Humanae Vitae can be easily misinterpreted to mean you can only limit your family size when you’re either on your death bed or are bankrupt. I know that’s not the correct interpretation, but it’s also not an outrageous one. Just as there are multiple interpretations of the Bible, there can be multiple interpretations of Church documents. There is only one correct interpretation of the Bible, but that’s not going to stop anyone from misinterpreting it and living accordingly. The same goes for Humanae Vitae.

This leads to the old stereotype that Catholics have huge families because they don’t believe in birth control and they think you have to have get pregnant every time you have sex, blah blah blah. It’s not true, but that’s not going to stop anyone from forming that stereotypical attitude towards Catholics.

Since it’s not true that you have to be bankrupt or on your death bed to use NFP to avoid pregnancy, and it’s also not true that Catholics believe you have to get pregnant every time you have sex, those who are using NFP for their own personal reasons, which are completely legitimate for them in their particular situation, it’s easy to have a general defensiveness toward anyone who is advocating having big families because that “crazy Catholics don’t believe in birth control and think they have to get pregnant every time they have sex” stereotype is so glaring. It almost feels like any Catholic who is advocating a large family is siding with those who think you have to get pregnant every time you have sex, etc. That is not true, of course, but that glaring stereotype has a tendency to dispose people to interpret any comment about having a large family as “We are doing the right thing by having as many kids as possible and you’re not”.

I’m not saying you have this attitude, MomaMary8. I’m just trying to shed some light on why people feel defensive in this area.

 

[jmjZelie]

Again, a different perspective. One’s “station in life” is often very fluid and I do not see class, income, education as the determining factor as to the number of children one should have. The word choice of necessary lends to the idea that there is a set number that one should have. Class, education, income, etc may be factors that influence one’s ability or willingness to be open to children, but that doesn’t make their station the determining factor of what a base number should be.

For me, my basic duty is to accept children as they come. There is no “set” number to achieve and then exceed in superogatory actions. A gift is not necessary. I see children as a blessing and a gift, and so the word necessary would never fit. One or ten, each is a gift…

You can really tell you are the oldest. My SIL has a much similar approach in life…plan, plan, plan. I am just a couple of years older than you and have quite a few years taking care of others, but I think by being the youngest in my family and the child doctors told my mother not to have, I have a very different outlook than you. Life is a gift. I am blessed to be here! I figure I may have 40 years more of it, so I will take care of it while I can. Can you tell I’m the youngest?

I am the oldest and I am married to an oldest, yet we share your perspective. I think the birth order thing is merely a coincidence.

 

[MarkInOregon]

When someone asks if we are called to come out of our “comfort zone” it is not a slam against small families and a victory dance for large families. It is an honest theological question, to which the answer is YES. Now how do we respond to the call out of our comfort zone? That is an individual matter, and one that should be examined frequently. Did I do “enough” today or did I do more?

Yes. Thank you for seeing that.

The peace of Christ,
Mark

 

[Hoosier_Daddy]

The thread is in danger of degenerating into two camps. Those who judge others for small families and those who use defense arguments to assuage thier guilt.

Most of us here know the others positions. Why rehash it now? Lets focus on contraception. That is the common enemy here. If family size is discussed that is certainly relevant. And we can discuss nfp as a concession to a world where planning is akin to holiness. But let’s move on…

 

[MarkInOregon]

The whole "comfort zone"offered by another poster basically feels like an unwarranted shot at Xantippe and couples discerning to delay or limit family size to me.

Should large families who have become comfortable with their decision to accept as many kids as god gives them look to move outside of their comfort zone and perhaps limit family size so that more resources can go toward those in need? I think if this was offered, it would feel like an attack on large families…no?

It wasn’t a shot–it was a question–and MammaMary8 saw it for what it was. In answer to your question regarding large families who have become comfortable in there decision (though that wasn’t really what I meant by comfort zone)–they too should always be questioning–discerning Gods will for them–so no I wouldn’t see it as an attack. Examining our lives, discerning Gods will --is not something we do once and then its done–check of the box on a form–its something we should do daily. If we are discerning Gods will then I expect we will be comfortable with out decisions, but I also expect that some decisions we make and are comfortable with will pull us out of our comfort zone as we grow in faith and love. It’s not a shot–why are we all looking to be so easily offended? Why do we all assume the worst motives in other posters?

The peace of Christ,
Mark

 

[Xantippe]

It wasn’t a shot–it was a question–and MammaMary8 saw it for what it was. In answer to your question regarding large families who have become comfortable in there decision (though that wasn’t really what I meant by comfort zone)–they too should always be questioning–discerning Gods will for them–so no I wouldn’t see it as an attack. Examining our lives, discerning Gods will --is not something we do once and then its done–check of the box on a form–its something we should do daily. If we are discerning Gods will then I expect we will be comfortable with out decisions, but I also expect that some decisions we make and are comfortable with will pull us out of our comfort zone as we grow in faith and love. It’s not a shot–why are we all looking to be so easily offended? Why do we all assume the worst motives in other posters?

The peace of Christ,
Mark

There are some issues where checking in periodically doesn’t make a lot of sense.

I’m only going to get older and sicker, the health risks to me are only going to increase with age, our genetic material is only going to get buggier with age, etc.

So, once one has decided that the risk level is unacceptable, there isn’t a lot of point in revisiting the issue (barring a very unusual situation–like losing all of one’s children in an accident).

 

[UbiCaritas]

Tangential-but-related:

I wonder how many big families who a) homeschool and b) have kids at appropriate academic levels through high school also have c) parents who aren’t miserable all the time?

Seriously, I know I’m thinking into the future here, but…

Right now, I have one near-two-year-old and one on the way. A dear friend whose parenting/marriage style I generally respect and look up to has a first-grader, a three-year-old, and a newborn.

Now, for background, I was homeschooled. The way I was homeschooled was, from 3rd to 5th grade or so (I was in a private school for K and 1st, then skipped 2nd), for my mother to hand me a stack of books and lessons to complete–daily assignments, if you will. This worked moderately well from an academic perspective, mostly because I knew I’d get hit a lot if I didn’t get the work done. However, I was miserable at having no one-on-one attention, and would deliberately “play dumb” in order to get it, even though it was inevitably negative.

Once 6th or 7th grade hit, she didn’t bother getting me history or science textbooks, and told me to teach myself pre-algebra (a total disaster, my math skill being minimal) and Latin. Still no supervision, so I ended up never really taking pre-algebra, which meant that high school math was a combination of a nightmare (the couple of classes I did take) and nonexistent (see the Algebra II homeschool co-op class in which we never had to turn in homework and assigned ourselves a grade…snort).

In fairness to her, she had a house to run and two part-time work-from-home jobs, plus a toddler.

My friend seems to be doing an excellent job in homeschooling the first grader: she’s doing 3-4 hours of one-on-one time with him every morning and working on reading, math, spelling, writing, vocabulary, intro to science concepts, and the like. Since he’s not reading fluently yet, he can’t just be handed a stack of worksheets and told to do them. The baby can be tucked into a carrier and fed as needed, no problems there. However, it’s absolute misery for the three-year-old, who spends most mornings crying behind a gate because she has no one to play with or talk to: Daddy’s working, big brother is doing school, and Mommy has to teach big brother.

My friend has had to give up her hobbies–no time for them anymore–and can’t even talk on the phone or spend time with her friends because of this schedule: mornings are school, afternoons are interacting with the poor three-year-old and doing the nonstop housework that comes with a houseful of small kids. We’re best friends, and have talked on the phone perhaps once in the last five months. Weekends are spent racing around doing errands because there’s no time during the week, especially when wrangling three small kids in a store at once.

I don’t have a newborn (yet) or a first grader, but I do have a toddler. DH and I initially wanted a big family; he still does, and I…sort of…still do. However, I remember back to my childhood, and how miserable I was at never having any help with school (Mom had no time) or any one-on-one time with Mom (in my 18 years of living at home, I remember spending an afternoon alone with her doing something fun exactly once). My toddler, almost 2, screams and cries if she’s awake and no one is playing with her. I’m barely caught up on chores most of the time, and there are some that rarely get done for sheer logistical reasons: if a toddler can undo baby gates and can’t understand “stay downstairs,” how do you safely vacuum the upstairs unless she’s asleep in bed, in which case you’d wake her? And bear in mind that the whole time I’m doing chores when she’s awake, she’s screaming and crying. I’ve already had to give up my hobbies (singing, cooking, most crafting, gaming) in order to get the errands and house maintenance stuff that needs to be done taken care of while DH is home so he can watch DD while I fix the inevitable breakdowns you get in a 40-year-old house, run errands, or do chores you can’t do with a toddler. Oh, and I need to fit in an hour’s workout into most days, too, lest I further up my risk of diabetes. In the summer, that means an extra shower every day. I’m generally able to get together with a friend for a few hours every couple of weeks, but know that that won’t be possible anymore once homeschooling starts.

Now throw in a newborn and 1-2 kids who need 3-4 hours of instruction per day each (I refuse to neglect my kids’ schooling the way mine was), and how on earth is anyone supposed to do all that? Seriously, how?!

And that, ladies and gents, is one way to go from, “I’m hoping for at least 6 kids!” to “We might be able to manage a third once the oldest is 9 or 10.”

 

[Thorolfr]

Here’s an interesting article on contraception and NFP from a year and a half ago by Fr. Peter Daly, pastor of St. John Vianney parish in Prince Frederick, Md., since 1994 (I’ve excerpted some parts below):

What does our parish do about contraception? We teach as the church teaches.

Are we having any significant impact? No.

Most couples in our parish, like couples in most parishes in the developed world, are certainly using artificial contraception. Practically every young family has two or three children. I doubt that they are practicing natural family planning.

How do we teach in regard to contraception?

Once a year or so, I try to preach on the topic. It is not easy. There are almost no Scripture readings that lend themselves to homilies against contraception. When I do preach on it, I try to keep the emphasis on the positive aspects of NFP than the negative of birth control as a sin.

Whenever people come in for marriage preparation, I give them a CD by Janet E. Smith titled, “Contraception, Why Not?” I also give them some brochures from Our Sunday Visitor and brochures from our family life office on NFP. I also encourage each couple to take a class in NFP. It is hard to “require” an NFP class because many couples live in different parts of the country, and often, they are in religiously mixed marriages. We also cover the church’s teaching in RCIA, adult education classes, and in the confirmation classes for youth.

There is very little awareness of the church’s view on artificial contraception, and engaged couples don’t really think that it is any of my business…

Our teaching isn’t having much of an effect on our people. I once asked a doctor in my parish, a very devout Catholic, what percentage of his Catholic patients were practicing some form of artificial birth control. “Do you think it is as high as 80 percent?” I asked. He thought for a moment and replied, **“No, more like 90 percent.”
**
As Bishop Robert Lynch from St. Petersburg, Fla., said back in February, on the matter of artificial contraception, “That train left the station long ago. Catholics have made up their minds and the sensus fidelium [the sense of the faithful] suggests the rejection of church teaching on this subject.”

Fr. Andrew Greely wrote in the 1970s that Humanae Vitae was the beginning of the wholesale erosion of lay respect for magisterial teaching. It is no longer true that when “Rome commands, America obeys.”

As a pastor, I have to say that the teaching of the magisterium on contraception does not seem to take into account the reality of most people’s lives.

While we pay lip service to the difficulties married couples encounter in living the church’s teaching, we don’t provide much of an answer. What are people supposed to do in difficult situations like the ones I have encountered in ministry?

What do I say to a mother of six children in her late 30s, who came to me once? She had chronic high blood pressure and diabetes. Her doctor told her that another pregnancy would be life threatening. Her periods were very irregular. What should she and her husband do? They also did not see how they could care for more children in their family, since her husband had recently lost his job. They were overwhelmed with trouble. Neither abstinence nor NFP seemed to be an answer. She clearly had a responsibility to her six children and her husband, as well as to an openness to life.

What do we say to women in abusive marriages? Leave your husband? Abstain from sex with him and risk his increased anger?

How can we tell families struggling with unemployment, mental illness, alcoholism, drug addiction, natural disasters, or other serious problems that they should risk another pregnancy?

Is it prudent for families facing long separations because of things like military service or deportation to have another child?

We don’t seem to have a good answer for the complex ethical struggles that beset our people. Our teaching, at times, seems inadequate. Even worse: At times, it seems insensitive. But we just continue on as before.

What does our parish do about contraception? We teach as the church teaches.

Are we having any significant impact? No.

ncronline.org/blogs/parish-diary/what-our-parish-does-about-contraception-and-family-planning

 

[Hoosier_Daddy]

Tangential-but-related:

I wonder how many big families who a) homeschool and b) have kids at appropriate academic levels through high school also have c) parents who aren’t miserable all the time?

Seriously, I know I’m thinking into the future here, but…

Right now, I have one near-two-year-old and one on the way. A dear friend whose parenting/marriage style I generally respect and look up to has a first-grader, a three-year-old, and a newborn.

Now, for background, I was homeschooled. The way I was homeschooled was, from 3rd to 5th grade or so (I was in a private school for K and 1st, then skipped 2nd), for my mother to hand me a stack of books and lessons to complete–daily assignments, if you will. This worked moderately well from an academic perspective, mostly because I knew I’d get hit a lot if I didn’t get the work done. However, I was miserable at having no one-on-one attention, and would deliberately “play dumb” in order to get it, even though it was inevitably negative.

Once 6th or 7th grade hit, she didn’t bother getting me history or science textbooks, and told me to teach myself pre-algebra (a total disaster, my math skill being minimal) and Latin. Still no supervision, so I ended up never really taking pre-algebra, which meant that high school math was a combination of a nightmare (the couple of classes I did take) and nonexistent (see the Algebra II homeschool co-op class in which we never had to turn in homework and assigned ourselves a grade…snort).

In fairness to her, she had a house to run and two part-time work-from-home jobs, plus a toddler.

My friend seems to be doing an excellent job in homeschooling the first grader: she’s doing 3-4 hours of one-on-one time with him every morning and working on reading, math, spelling, writing, vocabulary, intro to science concepts, and the like. Since he’s not reading fluently yet, he can’t just be handed a stack of worksheets and told to do them. The baby can be tucked into a carrier and fed as needed, no problems there. However, it’s absolute misery for the three-year-old, who spends most mornings crying behind a gate because she has no one to play with or talk to: Daddy’s working, big brother is doing school, and Mommy has to teach big brother.

My friend has had to give up her hobbies–no time for them anymore–and can’t even talk on the phone or spend time with her friends because of this schedule: mornings are school, afternoons are interacting with the poor three-year-old and doing the nonstop housework that comes with a houseful of small kids. We’re best friends, and have talked on the phone perhaps once in the last five months. Weekends are spent racing around doing errands because there’s no time during the week, especially when wrangling three small kids in a store at once.

I don’t have a newborn (yet) or a first grader, but I do have a toddler. DH and I initially wanted a big family; he still does, and I…sort of…still do. However, I remember back to my childhood, and how miserable I was at never having any help with school (Mom had no time) or any one-on-one time with Mom (in my 18 years of living at home, I remember spending an afternoon alone with her doing something fun exactly once). My toddler, almost 2, screams and cries if she’s awake and no one is playing with her. I’m barely caught up on chores most of the time, and there are some that rarely get done for sheer logistical reasons: if a toddler can undo baby gates and can’t understand “stay downstairs,” how do you safely vacuum the upstairs unless she’s asleep in bed, in which case you’d wake her? And bear in mind that the whole time I’m doing chores when she’s awake, she’s screaming and crying. I’ve already had to give up my hobbies (singing, cooking, most crafting, gaming) in order to get the errands and house maintenance stuff that needs to be done taken care of while DH is home so he can watch DD while I fix the inevitable breakdowns you get in a 40-year-old house, run errands, or do chores you can’t do with a toddler. Oh, and I need to fit in an hour’s workout into most days, too, lest I further up my risk of diabetes. In the summer, that means an extra shower every day. I’m generally able to get together with a friend for a few hours every couple of weeks, but know that that won’t be possible anymore once homeschooling starts.

Now throw in a newborn and 1-2 kids who need 3-4 hours of instruction per day each (I refuse to neglect my kids’ schooling the way mine was), and how on earth is anyone supposed to do all that? Seriously, how?!

And that, ladies and gents, is one way to go from, “I’m hoping for at least 6 kids!” to “We might be able to manage a third once the oldest is 9 or 10.”

Without getting too far into it. I have 5, 1 is a newborn. 3 are in school. We homeschool and my days are a great joy to me. I have plenty of time to post with you fine folks and do other things. Not to mention snuggles all day long. Is my day always easy? Nope but it is always a fun joyous thing for all of us. Perhaps it isn’t the size of the family you should consider but the quality of parent. We use seton and are incredibly pleased with the ease and quality. It is a tad expensive but…