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Mary Angelica's avatar

I feel like missing in a lot of NFP discussions and hardships related to parenting is two things:

1. The role of the husband. I'm in a large facebook group centered around NFP, and one of the biggest issues is differences in sex drives. In several cases, the woman might have a higher drive than the man, and would like to have children while the man does not.. but in many cases, where the woman is more hesitant to have more children (particularly due to health issues, post partum, etc.), the husband has a higher drive and the wife can feel pressured. Navigating NFP post partum is tricky to begin with, but it's near impossible for the woman to get her bearings straight if the man is constantly wanting sex. I wonder to what extent the cases you heard from women who had several pregnancies in a row were due to sexual pressure, and I know of women who lost their faith after situations like these.

I became aware of these realities through my own personal experience as a married woman using NFP. Oddly enough, I have found more solace in traditional formulations of the end of sex being primarily about children, and secondarily about the bonding of the couple, rather than it having two ends without any hierarchy between them, because it takes into account the stakes involved, especially for us women. The popular ToB takes that emphasize the bonding may be in response to a Manichaean view of sex, but I wonder to what extent it overcorrects.

2. Atomization and evolutionary mismatch: Everywhere you read in the bible, children are seen as automatic blessings, but discourse today views children as a high risk danger. Rewarding? Sure, but something the couple have to prepare for to ridiculous lengths. In earlier days, kids easily became a part of the home economy, but today kids are seen as expenses up through their early twenties. Back then, infant mortality was also very high, but today in the first world, thanks to modern medicine, it's very rare for a kid to die once he is born. It seems like our drives are adapted to having many children, but many children were both a necessity and to beat the odds of mortality while being of lesser cost and far more easily integratable into family life. We also lived in thicker community, so it's not like the responsibility of the children only fell to the two parents. Even assuming a sexual heteronormativity, this heteronormativity tends today to be a childless one; Our societies are not geared towards this sexual reality all that well.

When the emphasis on sexual morality is primarily on NFP as a way of life, particularly for women, when things go bad, we start looking for answers as if the problem is with individual dynamics. Both "you weren't using the method correctly" and "you need to embrace the suffering," but also to certain extent the conclusion that the Church is just wrong on sexual ethics, follow from this limited scope. And this is a problem because it assumes our atomized way of living is normal. I wonder to what extent a partial correction would involve integrating the Church's historic sexual teaching with her social teaching. Maybe contraception is wrong, and we must recourse to NFP if we avoid children for just reasons... ok. But isn't it bad that we are structured socially in a way that is very badly adapted to kids? With few people we could really call true friends, split from family, etc? With work that barely provides living wage, and most homes being centers for consumption rather than production? A lot of my thoughts on this came from the takes from the Spiritual Friendship crowd.

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Emily Appert's avatar

I loved the way you included St. Gianna. I am a hard working Catholic mom and her story of running her own practice and being a lifelong learner are so important to me and all you ever hear about is her DEATH. She had three children and a job and a husband and a life. I also teach in a Catholic school and our religion book erroneously claims she refused all medical procedures. My understanding is she did everything available to save both herself and the baby, which seems a more prolife stance than passively dying when you could fight for both. Thanks for this article and the online conversation that sparked it.

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