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Status and age of women in marriage - TTW, Biblical Gender Roles and PP


Katzchen24

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@nausicaa, good points. I think part of the reasons for the drop in marriage age in the 1950s stemmed from post -WWII culture: people still recalled the war clearly, the economy had turned around after the immediate post-war slump, so people thought, “Things are pretty good now! Why wait?”

Regarding later marriages among non-royals in previous centuries: Not all commoners were impoverished peasants starving in ditches. People who didn’t own land could develop skilled trades and be admitted to guilds, earning and saving money in order to be in better financial shape for marriage. Surprisingly, being a milkmaid was a desirable and fairly lucrative career for a young woman.

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On 6/29/2019 at 12:52 PM, Howl said:

 

I find this intriguing! 

A Guttmacher study in 2012 found the following (from Washington Post): 

Quote

Data shows that 98 percent of sexually experienced women of child-bearing age and who identify themselves as Catholic have used a method of contraception other than natural family planning at some point in their lives.

Additionally, the same study found that 68% of Catholic women in the U.S who were sexually active and not post-partum, pregnant or trying to get pregnant, were using IUDs, the pill or they or their partners had been sterilized. Overall in the study, only 2% of women who identified as Catholic said they exclusively use NFP in place of contraception. 

On a more anecdotal level, aside from one family in my parish with 10 kids, most people have 1-4 well spaced children. The average is 2. Our religious education director has twins and no other children. The parish secretary has two sons who are three years apart. The parish's permanent deacon has three very well spaced children ( in the fall they will be college soph, 11th grade, 7th grade). These are the paid staff. 

The only people I have encountered in the Catholic church--here in a conservative deeply  red state-- who preach NFP enthusiastically fall into two categories: never married women who are not sexually active at all and post-menopausal women with a couple of well spaced children who had an epiphany about the evils of contraception late in life--you know, after it was no longer a concern for them. I have been lectured on the topic by people in both of those groups. It's hard to take them seriously. I know women who go through all the motions of NFP then use condoms as a fall back option to not have to worry about the abstinence periods and to be certain at times that they do not want to get pregnant. Note those women would not be included in the 68% cited by Guttmacher as they didn't include those using barrier methods in that stat. 

 The hierarchy, of course, is loud about it and very conservative loud voices publicly support them. But the rank and file goes about their business and plans families as they see fit. 

 

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We have the same anecdotal experience, especially who are the loudest, most vocal cheerleaders for NFP.  Also in conservative deeply red state.

I will add that in my experience a number of the never married/not sexually active NFP cheerleaders are also post menopausal.  Which means they may be sexually active now, but children are no longer a concern. Three of them I know of have steady, long term gentlemen friends. The kind of friends who frequently spend the night and with whom they vacation.

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4 hours ago, louisa05 said:

 The hierarchy, of course, is loud about it and very conservative loud voices publicly support them. But the rank and file goes about their business and plans families as they see fit. 

I grew up Catholic in a purple area but in a markedly conservative diocese (we were the second to last U.S. diocese to allow altar girls). Same exact experience with contraception. It was just sort of an open secret that everyone agreed we would never acknowledge. The largest family in my parish had four kids--spaced out over about 15 years. Even the super devout ladies who volunteered for everything had two or three kids. 

Honestly, you would have faced way more criticism if you had 13 underweight, unkempt kids that you expected everyone in the church to take care of a la JRod than if you were married but openly declared you didn't want children.

And I can recall my conservative, curmudgeonly, elderly parish priest giving impassioned homilies on the details of late-term abortion, watching too much television, adultery, fornication, and hoarding money, but nothing about birth control. Not once. Not even a dog whistle. 

Edited by nausicaa
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1 hour ago, Red Hair, Black Dress said:

We have the same anecdotal experience, especially who are the loudest, most vocal cheerleaders for NFP.  Also in conservative deeply red state.

I will add that in my experience a number of the never married/not sexually active NFP cheerleaders are also post menopausal.  Which means they may be sexually active now, but children are no longer a concern. Three of them I know of have steady, long term gentlemen friends. The kind of friends who frequently spend the night and with whom they vacation.

The NFP whackos I knew in Indiana were all early-mid 30's and had 3-4 kids. There were very few big families...the average was probably 4 kids, with a few families having 10-12 kids. The family with 10 kids, by the time the youngest was born, the oldest 2 were on their own. 

I got fixed...

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All my catholic girlfriends told me about the NFP part of their “counseling session” before marriage. They all laughed it off. 

There’s a doctor in my OBGYN’s practice that is supposed to be very knowledgeable about NFP and educates some of his clients on it. Of course I had no interest. 

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I find this fascinating, y'all! I keep thinking about the "Every Sperm Is Sacred" song from Monty Python's The Meaning of Life movie. 

My ex's mom actually asked her priest if it was OK to have sex after menopause, since (presumably) it would be for...fun?  Priest gave the OK.  Also, I don't even want to think about why her adult kids knew this. 

I really wish priests could write tell-all books about the things they hear in confession.

Edited by Howl
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American Catholics who don’t believe in birth control may be in the minority, but they are a very vocal and committed one. Just go to boards like Catholic Answers or Fish Eaters or various conservative Catholic mommy blogs and see what I mean. To a certain subset of Catholics, not using birth control is the real dividing line between “orthodox Catholics” and “cafeteria Catholics.” Unlike Protestant quiverfullers, who refuse to acknowledge negative emotions with having a lot of kids, anti BC Catholics will often admit to be being frustrated or not understanding the logic of the teaching, but conclude that the Church knows better and to just offer up their sufferings for the souls in purgatory. 

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12 minutes ago, Cleopatra7 said:

just offer up their sufferings for the souls in purgatory

This is one of the stupidest reasonings that the Church came up with to justify its hierarchies' sadism.

My relatives and acquaintances who are Catholics of the most bigoted flavours are utterly obsessed with pain and suffering, carrying the cross as they say. Ime it's an extremely unhealthy mechanism, it goes well beyond the necessity of finding an explanation for pain and suffering to make it more bearable. It becomes the suffering Olympics.

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Adding a little bit of personal experience--

My first job in my profession (1975) was at a large Catholic hospital. The employee health insurance plan covered contraception, including the birth control pill. There was a copay, as for regular prescriptions. That hospital is still in business and still covers contraception and allows tubal ligations and vasectomies to be performed.

After I went to a different place of employment, my OB/Gyn was still affiliated with and on staff at that hospital. Down the road a few years, I had my tubal ligation there (and, yes, it was on the official surgery schedule as what it was, not hidden).

My personal experience was Baptist. I didn't know of anybody who had bunches of kids. My mother's friends there all had limited their family size and pretty much spaced their kids. There were - maybe - two families that were larger. Nobody we knew opposed using contraception until - unfortunately - I was in a church where the pastor and several families turned out to be very involved with Gothard (whose name was never actually mentioned; this was pretty much hidden from the "official" church structure - but that's a whole different subject).

ETA - There is a different hospital city in the region that is Catholic. They have bought up many other hospitals. First thing they did/do is take away birth control coverage from the employee health plan. They have also fought the ACA very vigorously. I guess it varies greatly.

Edited by apple1
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1 hour ago, Cleopatra7 said:

To a certain subset of Catholics, not using birth control is the real dividing line between “orthodox Catholics” and “cafeteria Catholics.” 

Is there any type of overlap with continued bitterness and frothing over the the Latin Mass as the only legitimate mass?  

OK, so I had to google "Catholic + latin mass and cattle futures" because I can never remember her name and yes, it brought up Ann Barnhardt, Ms. Latin Mass is the Only Mass as the third return! 

Really, Ms. Barnhardt is so far beyond WTAF wingnut in so many categories that her web site is a very very deep rabbit hole, but I highly recommend it for that very reason. 

My sense is that she's super high in the raw intelligence category while simultaneously a totally batshit fanatic.  She videoed herself burning a Koran book marked with bacon, quit paying taxes and was foreclosed on, closed her successful financial business, yada yada.  Anyway, you can start here: about Ann Barnhardt

Not sure if she's ever married.  And, relevant to the recent thread drift, here's her take on sex/reproduction/divorce and it goes about like you'd expect:   barnhardt.biz/2017/02/

There are photos after the first part, so keep scrolling down past the photos to get to the meat of her rant. 

If you decide not to read it, I'd just like to point out that she is too extreme for the Tea Party and Teavangelicals.  At first they loved her and then slowly started backing away, because, let's face it, she's rabid. 

 

Edited by Howl
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11 hours ago, JermajestyDuggar said:

All my catholic girlfriends told me about the NFP part of their “counseling session” before marriage. They all laughed it off. 

There’s a doctor in my OBGYN’s practice that is supposed to be very knowledgeable about NFP and educates some of his clients on it. Of course I had no interest. 

Ours was literally 20 minutes out of six hour workshop. And the couple doing it talked more about using the tracking to get pregnant and admitted to sometimes using condoms as a back up. I actually know a lot of people, Protestants and non-religious included, who have used NFP to get pregnant. 

In our sessions with the priest, it never came up. In fact, nothing came up about sex at all. Not once. He looked at our FOCCUS results and there was not a lot to talk about. Then my SiL trooped herself to his office to tell him that I was the devil and she suspected that her brother was putting his relationship with me ahead of his relationship with her and that he (the priest) should stop the wedding from happening. Then we spent a lot of time on how to handle meddling in-laws. 

Edited by louisa05
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12 hours ago, nausicaa said:

(snip)

Honestly, you would have faced way more criticism if you had 13 underweight, unkempt kids that you expected everyone in the church to take care of a la JRod than if you were married but openly declared you didn't want children.

(snip)

I grew up in a very Catholic region. Upon entering secondary school aged 12, we all had to introduce each other to our classmates. One of our classmates said she had thirteen siblings. What??? The average in my class was 2 kids per family. There was definitely some contraception going on!

Spoilered, because I ended up writing a novel about judgement, prejudice and just how weird it can all get in small Catholic communities:

Spoiler

 

In a show of prejudice many parents told their kids not to play with her, because that family was clearly no good, totally irresponsible and probably Catholic fundies, indicating a lack of critical thinking skills! Within a week however, she had told the entire class that both her parents had kids from previous marriages and then had had two together. Oh, oops. The explanation that divorce was behind it all, was acceptable, in a twist that still boggles my mind. Suddenly, the parents were good people for bringing their respective broods together and creating a large happy family!

However, people kept on referring to my classmate's family as a reason for having only small number of kids. Three if you wanted to go all out. Four already took you into the realm of raised eyebrows. Unless, and here we go again, your youngest child was significantly younger than the three older ones. The "change of life child" was acceptable as a fourth.

As a man, if you had children past the age of fifty, the judgement was harsh. For one thing, you clearly hadn't married within your appropriate age group. For another, you were totally irresponsible, because you might die while your children were still young and your grandchildren might never know you. And people would call you a "rutting old goat" behind your back.

So, so much judgement in our small Catholic villages! But using contraception? That was the unspoken "correct" way for family planning, making you a responsible and respectable member of the community, by having only as many children as you could provide for and were socially acceptable. Words I often heard were: "The Vatican is far away and what do a bunch of celibate men know?"

It was a very strange mix of complete judgement and prejudice, deeply held faith, sparks of remarkable compassion and keeping up with the Joneses. Deeply Catholic, but please not too Catholic. Conservative, but please not too much. Traditional, but if it doesn't aid anyone, out of the window it goes.

 

 

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I admit, I was probably one of the virginal NFP proponents other people have talked about ?

But even then, I never quite got the theology behind it all: If birth control is evil, because you‘re supposed to leave family planning to god, wouldn‘t that include NFP to? I guess it‘s okay, because some amount of abstinence is involved. Obviously, it‘s all about people having sex for fun - can‘t have that. 

ETA: Now that I‘m  a happy childless spinster in my 40s, I know better then to lecture people on reproductive choices!

Edited by SrMaryEloquentia
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On 6/27/2019 at 11:32 PM, princessmahina said:

That post from BGR on marrying pubescent girls to adult men is one of the most repugnant things I’ve ever read. 

Seriously, I think the FBI needs to take his computer.

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1 hour ago, SrMaryEloquentia said:

I admit, I was probably one of the virginal NFP proponents other people have talked about ?

But even then, I never quite got the theology behind it all: If birth control is evil, because you‘re supposed to leave family planning to god, wouldn‘t that include NFP to? I guess it‘s okay, because some amount of abstinence is involved. Obviously, it‘s all about people having sex for fun - can‘t have that. 

ETA: Now that I‘m  a happy childless spinster in my 40s, I know better then to lecture people on reproductive choices!

Except the catechism and JPII's Theology of the Body both teach that sex is both unitive and procreative. The unitive part means that it is for pleasure which Theology of the Body absolutely includes. 

But I think that a lot of super conservative loud Catholics don't like to acknowledge that teaching. And the virginal NFP apostles I know (a couple of classmates from Catholic school) definitely don't like to talk about that part. 

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On 6/27/2019 at 8:48 PM, hollyfeller said:

The second reason highly intelligent and highly educated women are unattractive to most men is because intelligent and educated women, especially in our modern feminist culture, tend to be contentious with their husbands and they often shame their husbands.

Bolding mine.  And of course, the hilarious thing is.....who does alias Larry Solomon a.k.a. Biblical Gender Roles, a.k.a. Nerf Herder think made those women highly intelligent anyway???? YOU AREN'T CRITICIZING GOD'S CREATION ARE YOU LARRY.  I know you wouldn't do that. 

Edited by The Mother Dust
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I could never understand how BC was bad, but limiting sex to the times you were unlikely to conceive was permissible.(Apparently it’s because “God designed the female reproductive system that way.”)

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On 7/1/2019 at 9:53 AM, Howl said:

Is there any type of overlap with continued bitterness and frothing over the the Latin Mass as the only legitimate mass?  

Yes, because conservative and traditionalist Catholics perceive that the negative reaction to Humana Vitae (Pope Paul VI’s encyclical reaffirming the BC ban) to be a clear line in the sand that delineated when American Catholics stopped being obidient to the Church. The Latin Mass was also phased out completely at this time, and the liturgical experimentation that followed is often held responsible for the shift in values and practices

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3 hours ago, smittykins said:

I could never understand how BC was bad, but limiting sex to the times you were unlikely to conceive was permissible.(Apparently it’s because “God designed the female reproductive system that way.”)

Yeah, the Quiverfulls seem more consistent in this way (Sex is for babies! Make as many babies as possible!), even if the message is crazy. 

From a practical perspective, I appreciate that devout Catholics have a way to avoid a JRod situation--but saying "you can do this thing to prevent pregnancy but any other thing is a horrible sin" doesn't make much logical sense to me.

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26 minutes ago, nausicaa said:

Yeah, the Quiverfulls seem more consistent in this way (Sex is for babies! Make as many babies as possible!), even if the message is crazy. 

From a practical perspective, I appreciate that devout Catholics have a way to avoid a JRod situation--but saying "you can do this thing to prevent pregnancy but any other thing is a horrible sin" doesn't make much logical sense to me.

The logic is based on assumptions from Natural Law:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_law

The most simplified argument against BC is something like this:

P1 The purpose of sexual organs is procreation.

P2 Sexual activity unrelated to procreation is misusing the organs (ie not using them for their intended purpose).

C Contraception is wrong because it interferes with procreation, which is the natural use for one’s genitals.

One reason why the pill is singled out for particular censure by the Catholic Church is because of the perception that it makes the female body act in an “unnatural” fashion by making it think it is ovulating when it’s not. In comparison, a man using Viagra is not against natural law because the perception is that Viagra is helping the male anatomy do what is supposed to do. 

NFP is licit because of the concept of double effect: 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_double_effect

In other words, NFP is okay because it involves working with a woman’s pre existing fertility patterns, as the “safe days” would be that way regardless of any intent from either party. The point is that the couple is acting with the intent of being “open to life” during the conjugal act.

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9 hours ago, Cleopatra7 said:

TheThe point is that the couple is acting with the intent of being “open to life” during the conjugal act.

In other words, NFP is fine because it can fail quite easily. Because it's right and godly that women must live their sexuality in fear of unwanted pregnancies.

Btw I can somewhat understand the diffidence towards the pill, its mechanism isn't unproblematic for many women. What I'll never understand is the Church's objection to barrier methods, especially the condom. In this regard the Church shares a great deal of culpability for the AIDS epidemic and the spreading of STIs especially in Africa.

And the Church's only objection to condom is that it works and women can have sex without being scared of illnesses and unwanted pregnancies. That would make women own their sexuality and we can't have that.

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5 hours ago, laPapessaGiovanna said:

In other words, NFP is fine because it can fail quite easily. Because it's right and godly that women must live their sexuality in fear of unwanted pregnancies.

Btw I can somewhat understand the diffidence towards the pill, its mechanism isn't unproblematic for many women. What I'll never understand is the Church's objection to barrier methods, especially the condom. In this regard the Church shares a great deal of culpability for the AIDS epidemic and the spreading of STIs especially in Africa.

And the Church's only objection to condom is that it works and women can have sex without being scared of illnesses and unwanted pregnancies. That would make women own their sexuality and we can't have that.

To me it seems like the underlying message about being “open to life” is that there’s never a good reason to not want to be pregnant. Not maternal age, not rape, not economic or educational concerns, not because you want to focus on the children you already have. Being “open to life” is 24/7 state of mind that doesn’t care about the circumstances of the parents, especially the woman. These are some stories of women who were gung ho about NFP, until they realized the implications of it:

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/sickpilgrim/2018/05/you-are-not-alone-catholic-womens-real-life-experiences-of-nfp-part-viii/

https://womenintheology.org/category/women-speak-about-natural-family-planning/

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/sickpilgrim/2018/03/true-stories-trenches-womens-real-life-experiences-nfp/

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/sickpilgrim/2018/04/you-are-not-alone-catholic-womens-real-life-experiences-of-nfp-part-vii/

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11 hours ago, laPapessaGiovanna said:

(snip)

And the Church's only objection to condom is that it works and women can have sex without being scared of illnesses and unwanted pregnancies. That would make women own their sexuality and we can't have that.

That. And we can't have that!

Imagine: If the RCC ever achieved its goal of everyone being free of so-called sin.

Well, they'd be out of work.

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1 hour ago, samurai_sarah said:

That. And we can't have that!

Imagine: If the RCC ever achieved its goal of everyone being free of so-called sin.

Well, they'd be out of work.

Impossible. That's what original sin is for.

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