MiTHology (4.0)

TW: I am Catholic, and as such am opposed to birth control, IVF, surrogacy, abortion, etc., all of which I will mention in this post.

This should be an easy one, lol. This post is more of a vent than a reasoning/figuring out type of post like some of my other SITVs.

Some people – quite a lot of people out there, it seems – apparently think it’s unethical for parents past a certain age to have kids. Unethical! Wow.

As a mom, I’m on the older side myself: I gave birth to my first when I was 30, and have had two more since, and, God willing, would love to have even more. But now, I’m officially in the dreaded “Mid Thirties,” when, according to the Internet, fertility takes a nosedive, and women are basically used up and devoid of value (unless, of course, you’re very rich and can afford to make yourself look 20something still). Past the Mid-Thirties, you’d better get your tubes tied or be on a reliable birth control (if any man still wants to sleep with you, that is, which, good luck with that, grandma), because any kid of yours has a super high chance of being disabled or different, and we can’t have that; how inconvenient, how un-glamorous. That is the prevailing attitude online.

And IRL, too, it seems. At least where I live. I’m in a pretty “country” area where most new moms seem to be in the 18-25 age range. And no, I’m not shitting on young moms, and yes, I know, 18-25 is “peak fertility” so that is a good and normal thing that most moms are that age. Yay! I love that for them! All moms are equally deserving and valuable.

I do think it’s weird, though, that so many moms in this culture boast that they are/will be “done having kids by 30.” I guess the idea is, they want to be able to enjoy their late 40s/50s in freedom without having kids/teens to take care of, and they want to be still pretty spry when their grandkids are young. That’s all fair, and I can definitely see the advantages there; but are those really good enough reasons to close oneself off to potential life after your 30th birthday?

Also, the “fertility peaks before 25” statement is very much a vast generalization, for one thing. Some of us dealt with physical and mental health issues that killed our fertility In our teens and twenties, so much that we can literally count on two hands the number of menstrual periods we had between 14 and 29; some of us are actually way healthier and more fertile in our 30s, thank you very much. And for that matter, many of us older moms did not choose to be older moms. We would have loved to have kids in our 20s, but life did not happen that way, and we are just grateful to be moms at all. So thanks, Internet, for rubbing in our faces what we already know and regret and can’t change.

“But moms over 35 are more likely to miscarry or to have a baby with genetic conditions.” For one, there’s always a chance of miscarriage or pregnancy loss, which is tragic, so if you are not in a place to be able to cope with that, then you should probably not get pregnant right now.

As for genetic conditions: parenthood comes with risks. It can be hard. It is not guaranteed to be smooth sailing. You are not guaranteed to get the healthy, perfect babies you dreamed about when you were a little girl. If you are not open to difficulty, to tragedy, to hardship, to a thankless, unglamorous struggle, you should probably not get pregnant at this time. People really think kids are only worth having if they fit into our mental image of a picture-perfect life. If you would kill your child for having Downs, then parenthood is not for you.

And besides, the risk does go up, it’s true; but the risk is still minute. The fearmongering about “old moms” is really out of control.

Women have been having healthy babies in their late 30s and 40s since the dawn of humanity. The idea that we are morally obligated to get sterilized or go on birth control past a certain age, is so twisted! First of all because birth control is a moral evil and no one should be on it. (I know there are some exceptions for health conditions.) But even if it somehow weren’t, the idea that it’s “immoral” or “selfish” to have kids past a certain age, is absolutely false.

Obviously, the use of IVF and surrogacy are immoral — but a mom who naturally gets pregnant in her late 30s or 40s? There’s literally nothing selfish about her having that baby, in fact she is doing what she should. God designed women to be able to have children from teenage through almost 50. All of those years are equally natural and valid times to have a baby. If you conceived spontaneously, in the normal way, then guess what, you are fertile, you are in your childbearing years, you are able to have a baby; anyone who tells you otherwise is sorely misguided!

But what about the argument that old moms are being selfish because they’ll be too tired to be fun moms, or they won’t be around to see as much of their grandkids, or their kids will be forced to watch them age and die while said kids are still relatively young?

Sorry, but that’s just part of being a human in a family, isn’t it: people age, people die. Women are generally fertile from teens through almost 50, therefore, some kids are born to younger parents and some to older parents. Their experiences of their parents are likely to be different. (But not guaranteed. Some older parents are in great shape, live a long time, and are involved with their grandkids; some younger parents die young. Nothing is guaranteed. If you plan your whole life around avoiding pain and suffering, you’re going to have a really bad time (take it from me, I have a clinically diagnosed avoidant personality). Nothing is guaranteed.) So what? So what if one kid’s parents are older, as long as they are loved and raised well? Should that child have been prevented or aborted just because his parents aren’t running around him in circles in the yard, or don’t keep up with his music or slang, or because he will have to see them age or die while he’s still only in his twenties or thirties? Do those circumstances make his whole life a waste, would he be better off never having existed?

It’s pretty absurd thinking.

I mean if you think about it, the whole “I want to be done by 30” is, in fact, way more selfish than being open to life for as long as you can. So your free time/vacations/hobbies are more important to you than the potential children that you could be devoting yourself to? I’m not shaming anyone who loves their hobbies and vacations or whatever, but surely it’s clear how that is a more selfish choice than someone who could have chosen to enjoy their personal leisure time, but instead decided to give that time to their child.

So while initially I was pretty shook by all the negativity and stigma out there around “old moms,” and worried that I may have made a mistake, I have since realized that that negative buzz is all just another symptom of a very sick and massively deluded society. “Unethical”? For a married woman to get pregnant and have her child? People have such a bizarre idea of what “ethics” even is, these days!

Obviously I can understand preferring to have kids in your 20s. Being a young mom is more sexy, it’s glamorous, it looks more fun and people say you can “relate to your kids more” or whatever (although, I’m not here to be my kids’ bestie, I’m here to raise them). Teen moms are nowhere near as stigmatized as old moms, IMO – people like young people better in general. So I can understand preferring to have kids young, it being more fun at that age. I would have loved to be a young mom! But, let’s be real, every mom is just as much a mom as every other mom, regardless of age, and all pregnant ladies deserve our respect, not judgment. There’s no good reason to go on birth control or sterilize oneself after 30 or 35 (or ever, unless, again, you have some health condition that requires it for non-contraceptive purposes).

Okay, rant over. Leave old moms alone!

CW: Pro-life, anti-contraception content follows.

If you’re still here: cool, hi friend, you rock! now, listen, I am just a random layperson who overthinks everything, okay, and this is all just my opinion that I’ve arrived at after a lot of mulling and stewing and prayerfully considering. I’m not trying to teach anyone the actual Catholic faith. I am not a priest or theologian. Please look elsewhere for formal instruction!

The other day I saw a reel from a pro-lifer I follow, responding to the common “pro-choice” argument that women in poverty need access to abortion in order to prevent more children from being born into a life of poverty and misery. Her response was basically this: all humans, regardless of their financial status, are equally valuable. In our society we tend to believe rich people are more important, more worthy, but this is false. We are all created equal, & etc. Then, in the comments, the pro-aborts were clapping back with: “we never said anything about the child’s value! It’s precisely because that child has value that he doesn’t deserve to be born into a life of poverty!”

Which sounds fair – but the thing is (and this is the point which the pro-lifer didn’t bother to make in her response, and I’m not blaming her for that, because it ought to be an absolute no-brainer, and anyone with a sane POV of human life would simply already know this): that child already exists. He lives inside his mom for now, but he is a separate human from her, and his body is not hers. Should we be allowed to drive to poor neighborhoods and just shoot little children on sight because they are poor and don’t deserve to be trapped in that life? Is that a noble and charitable thing to do? Obviously not. You don’t kill a baby who already exists simply because their family is poor.

But should his parents have had sex in the first place? (Obviously I’m not talking about cases where the sex was non-consensual, as in that case it wasn’t the mom’s decision to be open to life. And obviously, even in that case it is immoral to kill the child, who already exists and it’s not his fault he was conceived in such a way, and a second tragedy would not rectify the first. But I’m not talking about abortion or about cases where it was not the mom’s choice to be open to life.) The question this problem brings us to is: is it okay for poor people to be open to life (i.e. have sex at all)? Should poor people reproduce? Is it ethical for people who are poor to grow their family?

I think it’s important here to consider the difference between not having much and being in a lot of debt. You can be poor and living paycheck to paycheck (net zero), but not hopelessly in debt (net deep in the negatives). But having a ton of debt that you’re unable to pay is a different problem. (I think it’s probably okay to have kids while in debt as long as you’re able to make timely payments.) We have a moral obligation to pay off our debts. If you can’t make payments on your debts at all, it might be unwise to get pregnant, because kids cost money and not paying your debts is a sin, so in that case you’d be choosing to sin. So, for the purposes of this post, I am talking about not those couples who are drowning in debt and unable to make payments, but those who simply don’t have a lot.

It goes without saying that birth control is off the table. It is always pure evil (when used for contraceptive purposes; I know some women take it for health conditions). It is the root of so much evil in our modern world, and no one should ever use it – however, NFP (or Natural Family Planning, if you’re not familiar) is, in extreme cases, acceptable. I don’t know if it’s ever a good idea, but at times it might be necessary, like if one of the parents is having serious health issues, or they need to space births for pressing medical reasons. Anyway, for the purposes of this little SITV post, I just wanna make it clear that birth control is not an option, but NFP might be. Is it? I’m not sure.

The best and most morally perfect way to approach family planning is to not plan. As married couples, we should trust God completely with our fertility. After all, He arranged the whole universe, from all the billions of galaxies down to the workings of all the subatomic particles and how they interact; why would I believe that He can do all that, but He can’t figure out my household, oh no, this is too tricky, I better step in and take over here!

I hear a lot of trad women online profess that they live this way. They are Radically Open to Life. NFP is birth control, they say, and therefore it’s not the way to go. They seem to even look down their noses at families who use NFP.

I must say, I kinda agree with those women. I think they are doing it the most perfect way. But I also think they probably have a lot of privilege. They talk about making sacrifices in order to make this lifestyle work, but, I think they are assuming that their level of financial strain, and their specific sacrifices, are exactly as much as any other family would have to endure and give up. I think these women are forgetting that some people out there have bigger financial problems, have debt, and/or have jobs that pay less than six figures. People (myself included) tend to assume their level of “poor” is the same as everyone else’s.

Some people out there aren’t even sure if they will be able to afford the next month’s electric bill. Some people need food stamps to afford groceries. Should these people also be Radically Open to Life?

You might argue that they shouldn’t have gotten married in the first place, if they’re that poor. You should go into a marriage materially and mentally prepared to take care of a family, because that is the purpose of marriage. That is true, and a good priest would probably discuss that with the couple in pre-marriage counseling; but that aside, we’re not talking about “woulda coulda shouldas” here. Plenty of people with troubled financial pasts get married. Maybe they are working hard to increase their income, to achieve financial security. Let’s assume that, for whatever reason, they got married even though they were poor. Maybe unwise, but not a sin, and does not in any way invalidate the marriage; there’s no rule anywhere in Church teaching that says a couple must have x amount of money to get married. So, therefore, it’s still a marriage, which means that the rule still applies, doesn’t it: be fruitful and multiply.

But how fruitful? Should they stop after one or two? Is a poor couple obligated to avoid pregnancy (via NFP, of course) until they are more secure?

I found a super compelling article that argues the contrary. It’s really hard to find anymore. It used to be up on the SSPX website, but for whatever reason it’s not anymore, but I found it on some old forum a while ago. It was written by a priest in the 1940s and it’s called Rhythm: The Unhappy Compromise, or something like that. I really recommend tracking it down if you’re as interested in this topic as I am. Basically this priest argues that even poverty is hardly ever a serious reason for a couple to avoid pregnancy.

Because, think about it: Our Lord was born into serious poverty. He was born in a barn! Those are the circumstances that God, the God of the universe, the great eternal I AM, chose to come into our world in. His family was poor, working class; they had no financial security. Similarly, think of all the great Saints who come from poverty. St. Bernadette, St. Maria Goretti, and others. The author of this article I’m talking about was, himself, one of about twelve or thirteen children from a very poor family.

Our culture really looks down on families who “have more kids than they can afford.” I think some parents out there make all the other ones look bad (my husband used to be a social worker, and he tells me that he would sometimes see moms who would do stuff like sell their children’s food stamps in order to buy a new Xbox, etc. – corrupt, evil, lazy behavior). Not all poor parents are lazy or irresponsible. Many of them are doing the best with what they have, and making hard sacrifices. Making sacrifices, and accepting humiliation of help in the form of government benefits, despite the associated stigma, in order to prioritize bringing new life into the world. Is that so bad? Shouldn’t that be a priority? After all, that is God’s command to married couples, isn’t it? And besides, isn’t life supremely good?

That’s the problem, I think: we as a society do not believe that human life is, in and of itself, good. We believe it’s good only if it serves others, if it doesn’t burden others, if it’s pleasant and comfortable for the individual and those around him. If it’s unpleasant or a burden, it’s bad and should be avoided. We as a society believe that pleasure is the most valuable thing, and that we don’t owe anyone else anything. We’re all islands, free to pursue our own happiness – fuck everyone else, they’re not my problem. This is a very sad and distorted worldview. Human life is always a good thing, and it’s not our place to decide who should live and who should not.

“So Mith, are you saying that a couple who’s lost their jobs and home and is living on the street, literally begging for food, with their eight children starving to death, should continue to be Radically Open to Life?” (Well, for one, this family should look into SNAP if they haven’t already. The US government tries not to let children starve to death. Also, any Catholic church, or pretty much any Christian church that they stumble into, will also help feed them.) But still: should a couple this poor remain open to life? (I mean, for one, where and how would they even have sex if they’re living on the street with eight kids, lol.) I think some circumstances are dire enough to permit postponing pregnancy – but still, wouldn’t it be an amazing expression of faith, if this couple said “we know God will provide” and continued to be open? What a heroic expression of trust, even to the point of apparent lunacy, like Abraham in the Old Testament! He knew that God would take care of him, even when God told him to kill his child, he trusted radically, he did something that looked absolutely insane and wrong– and, because of that, God came through for him. I think radical trust is a great thing in any circumstances.

Not everyone’s faith is that strong, though. We’re not all Old Testament heroes. We are afraid – understandably so. Times are tough. We are weak; God knows this about us, and loves us anyway. So if a couple lacks the degree of faith necessary to radically trust God with their fertility… well, obviously they can still be a good Catholic couple, provided that they are working on improving their faith. But I think the point is, we should all strive to have the kind of faith that trusts radically in God’s loving design.

“Well, then, Mith, why do anything at all? Why wake up and go to work? Why cook and clean, if God will just take care of everything for us? Should we all just sit back and do nothing and wait for His help?” Lol come on now, that’s not how this works. God helps those who help themselves. We plant the seeds in the ground, and we trust that if we water and weed, God will make them grow. In this analogy, using birth control or NFP would be like digging up the seed, trying to manipulate the sprout out of the shell with tweezers, make sure it’s going in the right direction, trying to nip the potentially-bad sprouts in the bud, etc. Doing all that’s just going to kill the plant.

So that’s why I think, even in cases of poverty, openness to life is always a good thing. That being said, I don’t think it’s cool to shame couples who use NFP for serious health-related or financial reasons. (Especially if you’re financially privileged and don’t have to worry about actually affording bills. “We might not get the newest iPhone or take a Disney vacation this year” are not serious sacrifices. These kinds of people have no right to look down their nose at NFP users; they can take several seats.) Humans are frail, and we can’t all be perfect all the time, especially under pressure. NFP is not good, but it’s certainly much less evil than birth control, and it can be a useful tool for couples in dire situations (who are constantly working on deepening their faith, of course).

Human life is always good, and it’s not only permissible, but good, to prioritize having kids over material comforts. Radical trust is good in conjunction with responsibility and hard work. I believe Dostoevesky wrote in The Idiot that “children are the wealth of the poor,” and I believe that is true. Kids are good. We should have more of them. Unless we have solid evidence that a parent is being irresponsible or abusive or lazy, let’s stop shaming and judging families who “have more kids than they can afford.”

Poverty is, needless to say, awful, and it’s truly the mark of a society that has failed. I think we should work on improving our society and caring for each other, rather than just reducing our numbers. Killing poor people (including babies) is not the way to end poverty, I mean, come on now.

Oh, and before you come at me with the “global overpopulation” card, please do some more research. The USCCB and NCR both have articles debunking this myth.

Sequel To This Post Now Available Here