PARIS writes:

I would like your opinion on my situation. I’m 35 years old, and have three kids. I’ve always felt like I was meant to have two more. I always feel, whether it be in taking pictures or sitting on our living room couch, that there is this empty spot left for this child or children that I was supposed to have.

My youngest is now 10. And I feel like I’ve been in mourning for at least five years over not having more kids. I still have “baby fever” so to speak. My husband didn’t want more kids after last one because we didn’t have much money then and he was attending school. We were also on food stamps. Now ten years later, our income has more than doubled (financially we’re probably middle class), and we are not on any government assistance, yet husband still doesn’t want any more kids. I feel so horrible.

I love being a mom and a housewife. I homeschool my kids and am always craving a home full of more children of my own to teach and have crafts with. Husband thinks we are too old and won’t be able to handle it but I know I’ll regret not having more. My oldest is already going to be 17.

So I ask you, what can I do to convince my husband to have more children? It’s fear in his way but now I wonder if he just questions my parenting. I told him I’ll do everything with new baby. I already feel like I do it all anyway. I just feel like a home full of kids is a happy and fulfilling home.

Any advice to convince him? I don’t want this resentment to form.

Laura writes:

Thank you for your confidence in my advice.

It’s nice that you have strong motherly instincts and find great pleasure in caring for your children. Those are beautiful and precious qualities. But that strong maternal drive is not the primary reason why it is wrong, gravely wrong, for you and your husband to use birth control. You both have a moral obligation to accept all the children God sends you. Even if you didn’t enjoy having children, even if you were a lousy mother, which I’m sure you are not, you would be obligated by your marriage to accept them and not do anything to prevent having more. After all, God created you. He created your children. He creates the order of the universe. You owe Him everything for what He has already given you. You wouldn’t love children as much as you do if He had not given you this maternal disposition.

If you want more children or fewer children, take it up with God, but don’t do anything that prevents conception. To use contraception is “to usurp the right of God, who alone has the power to say who should be born and who should not.” You say you want two more, but it’s not for you to place an order. Just accept all. To do otherwise is sinful.

I think you should 1) Work on your own spiritual life (see some good talks here) and pray more. 2) Explain to your husband again and again that if you both trust in God, He will take care of you. If your husband is worried about money, that’s understandable but he should ask God for help and for the grace to handle whatever occurs. Why does he have so little confidence and trust? Insist with him that it is wrong for you to use contraception. How does he know that things won’t actually be worse for you financially if you don’t have more children? Neither of you have any obligation to pay for college educations for your children. Remind him of that. 3) Bear in mind that both you and your husband (and all of us) have been formed by a culture that does not understand this issue. Contraception should be illegal, but it’s widely promoted. This should temper your resentment toward him. Continue to talk to your husband and don’t give up. Let him know that your marital happiness is gravely threatened.

I have no magic cure. Be persistent and hopeful. Pray for your husband every day.

— Comments —

A female reader writes:

It seems that Paris is using birth control, which I assume is the Pill, though I could certainly be wrong. I wonder if she could bolster her argument in trying to convince her husband that using contraception is immoral–I do hope she’s convinced!–by mentioning that the Pill is very harmful to women’s health, as it contains synthetic hormones that don’t correspond to our biochemistry. It is my belief that this is just another way that God shows us the Natural Law.

Dr. Lara Briden runs a website in large part to educate women about the dangers of hormonal birth control. Unfortunately, she advocates other contraceptive methods like condoms and the copper IUD. But otherwise the information is helpful.

“The Pill switches off estradiol and progesterone, and replaces them with the pseudo-hormone drugs ethinylestradiol, levonorgestrel, and drospirenone. They’re only vaguely like hormones. They do not have the same molecular structure as human hormones, and they do not have the same benefits.”

If she’s using another form of contraception, like implants, there’s information about the harm of those as well.  See her posts here (ignore the opening commentary) and here.

June 15, 2018

Laura writes:

I should clarify two things.

Firstly, when I said contraception should be illegal, I meant the sale of contraception — not the use of it.

Secondly, if Paris and her husband faced serious obstacles to having children — extreme financial hardship or illness — then these would be reasons to practice abstinence. That would be the right solution.

I would like to give authoritative sources for this from moral theologians and Church teachings, but those will have to wait for another time.

Alan A. writes:

I’m a 55-year-old man. My youngest is 24. I would have liked more. As I was a Protestant at the time, I had a vasectomy performed, as the doctor informed my wife and I, that another pregnancy would most likely result in the death of my wife. Her complications from the last pregnancy were severe. She spent the last month on bedrest. She had two prior births, and both had gone well, but this one was 10 years after the last of the two previous.

Even now, as a Catholic convert, I don’t know if I would have handled it much differently. I’d have not gotten the vasectomy, but the fear for my wife’s health, was (and still is) very real. They were difficult decisions at the time, and my feelings about the matter are still, almost a quarter century later, conflicted. My wife’s health has gotten steadily worse in the last 24 years. We rely on much prayer, and the grace of the Lord for her continued survival. Our Son is a strong, college graduate, with a fiancée and a plan for his life. So the Lord has rewarded us.

Should we have risked her life in order to have more children? I don’t know. The Faithful would tell me to put the whole question in the Lord’s Hands.

They’d be correct, but as a Baptist then, it was still subject to much reflection and discussion, as well as much prayer. I do not know if I could have watched my wife suffer, if a potential next pregnancy, had caused her to die bringing a new life into the world.

It will be said, rightly, that there are no guarantees in this life. All we could do, is make the best decision we could with the information we had at the time.

As for Paris, I would advise her to focus on the children she does have. If the youngest is already ten, then her window to form the child will close in less than five years. Raising children you have about 10-15 years of strong influence over the child, depending on how willful (headstrong) a child is and family dynamics. After the age of 15 you are a resource and example (for Wisdom, Leadership, Guidance & Money), more than a Shaper. Also she mentions that she has three children. In today’s world, the odds of grandchildren making an appearance from her oldest are rising rapidly. I’d counsel that turning her questions about more children over to God, and appreciating the three she has been given would possibly be more productive. Lastly as a parent who has children with a ten-year age gap, that raising a family with that kind of split is an experience that is both rewarding and frustrating in equal measures. I would not trade it for anything, but at the time, the lived experience was not always fun. Middle school and toddlers are a heady, but potent, mix.

Laura writes:

Thank you for your comments.

I am saddened by the dire situation your wife experienced, but it was unusual and it’s the kind of case in which abstinence or periodic abstinence is appropriate. [Artificial sterilization is wrong, always and for whatever purpose.]

Children are shaped by siblings as well. For the sake of her own salvation, her marriage and her whole family, Paris should work hard to persuade her husband that they should go natural — unless there is a serious problem such as great financial hardship or an extremely chaotic household, in which case she should advocate total or periodic abstinence.

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