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Something About Natural Family Planning

Something About Natural Family Planning

Last updated on: July 29, 2017 at 12:32 am by Mary Pezzulo

Something About Natural Family Planning 2017-07-29T00:32:59-04:00 Mary Pezzulo

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Apparently I have once again missed Natural Family Planning Awareness Week, the happiest week of the whole year. I don’t know how to celebrate anyway. Put up a fertility pole and sing Creighton Carols, I guess. Or put some buns in the oven. Or at least write a blog post.

If you want a beautiful meditation by an NFP instructor, you should go and read my friend Sarah Babbs’s gorgeous litany. I can’t top that. If you want a lamentation about motherhood in general, I’ve written those.

What can I say about Natural Family Planning? It’s one of those topics that’s supposed to be intriguing but leaves me completely cold. This is no reflection on NFP. I also can’t get excited about the Fourteenth Doctor being female.

What is Natural Family Planning, anyway?

Natural Family Planning is a practice of tracking a woman’s fertility signs, so that she can plan accordingly if she likes. NFP is something you can do, if you’re Catholic. You can also do it if you’re not Catholic, if you want to. There are reasons you might like to. But because of what Catholics believe about sex and fertility, our faith has rules against birth control. NFP is one of the things that is allowed, for us. No one has to do it. You could be a providentialist or something. A lot of Catholics use one or another form of Natural Family Planning, not only to space births but also to help them conceive or to notice symptoms of hormonal issues so they can be more easily treated. There are many reasons why you might want to use NFP.

One thing you must never do with Natural Family Planning, is idolize it.

Despite what you’ve heard, NFP cannot save your marriage. It’s not a precious tool to help couples bond and grow stronger, anymore than any other irritating task couples do regularly is. It’s not an aphrodisiac that makes four-days-after-peak-day sex the absolute best sex ever, way better than that nasty pagan contracepted sex members of other religions have whenever they please. Some people will tell you it is, but it’s not. For some, nothing kills the mood quite like having to schedule your sexual intercourse days in advance.

Also, despite what you’ve heard, NFP cannot cure illnesses. I’ve seen people act like it does. The way some Catholics talk about NFP, you’d think it could cure endometriosis and PCOS, solve infertility forever, cure vaginal dryness and pop a prolapsed uterus back into place. It doesn’t work that way. If someone tells you she’s taking birth control pills because it’s the only way that she can control the agonizing pain of endometriosis, chances are she’s telling the truth and the last thing she needs is someone proselytizing her about Natural Family Planning. NFP can’t fix that. Leave her alone.

Natural Family Planning is not a panacea. It’s something you can do to help avoid a pregnancy you have just reason to avoid, or to help you conceive through pinpointing when you’re fertile, or to help you know if there’s certain things wrong with your body. That’s just about it.

Another thing you must not do with NFP, is use it as a cudgel to beat up other families.

If you choose to use Natural Family Planning to avoid a pregnancy, fine. That’s something you can do. You must not tell a woman who has very closely spaced pregnancies that she’s doing it wrong, and for the sake of your soul you mustn’t judge her quietly either. If you choose not to use NFP and just get pregnant as often as you can, fine. That’s something you can do. You must not tell a woman who uses NFP that she’s not being Catholic enough, and for the sake of your soul you mustn’t judge her quietly either.

You certainly mustn’t gossip under the disguise of asinine prayer requests. People in Catholic circles know exactly what I’m talking about here. It sounds like “Pray for so-and-so, I’m afraid she might be on birth control” or “pray for such-and-such, I’m afraid she’s using NFP with the contraceptive mentality rather than trusting in the Lord,” or “Pray for this lady, I think she doesn’t understand she’s allowed to use NFP.” You mustn’t make prayer requests like that, and if you hear them being made you should come out and say “That’s gossip. Stop it.”

Natural Family Planning is not a group event that the whole church community gets to meddle with. It’s something a woman can use to track her fertility and plan accordingly if she wishes. It’s something that a couple can do to help avoid a pregnancy they have just reason to avoid. And whether their reason is truly just is between that couple and the Lord. It’s not up to the smug mother of twelve who marches her children to Mass daily. It’s not up to the crunchy couple at the church social with three kids exactly two years apart. It’s not up to the pious old lady who screeches at you for only having one baby. It’s not up to Mommy Bloggers of any kind, or to a mother of one whose health makes pregnancy iffy and who happens to have a Patheos blog. It’s no one’s business except the actual couple using or not using NFP.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to get those buns out of the oven before they burn.

(image via Pixabay)

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