What "Rad Trads" Get Wrong About Child Spacing

“How many children do you have?”

“Eight,” the woman said proudly.

Everyone around me audibly gasped.

When my husband and I were in the process of becoming Catholic, we bounced back and forth between a Novus Ordo (NO) and Traditional Latin Mass (TLM) parish. Aside from the obvious differences, like the liturgy and the number of women wearing veils, the most striking difference between the two was the number of children in each family.

The NO parish (our home parish) was extremely family-friendly. It’s part of the reason we felt called there in the first place. The parish calendar frequently had events for families, they had a thriving children’s ministry, and we never felt anything but welcome when we attended Mass with our young, rather loud, children. If you attended the family Mass at this parish, you would see plenty of families with young children, but most families included less than four children — a relatively small number compared to the stereotypical Catholic family with eight, nine, or more.

Every year on Mother’s Day, our pastor gave out flowers to various groups of mothers (i.e., the newest mother, the most experienced mother, the mother of a priest), and one category was always the mother with the most children.

First, mothers with four or more children were asked to stand. Then five or more, and so on. One year, the woman left standing at the end of it all announced that she had eight children, and everyone around us audibly gasped.

At the time, it made me chuckle. If they had done a similar exercise at the TLM parish, more than half of the moms in the room would still be standing. When we attended the TLM, the parking lot was filled with minivans and 15-passenger vans (or the CAV as some like to call it).

In Mass, there were rows and rows of young couples, most with six or more children. The mother was usually holding her youngest baby in her arms (and often, visibly pregnant). Anyone who has attended a TLM or been a part of a TLM community may have had a similar experience.

You may say, “Well, it’s because the couples at a NO parish are using birth control.” I have heard many Catholics online reference a statistic about the difference in contraceptive use (and approval of contraceptive use) between those who attend the NO and those who attend the TLM.

According to the survey conducted by Fr. Donald Kloster, 2% of TLM-attending Catholics approved of contraception compared to 89% of NO-attending Catholics. There are certainly factors that make it problematic to compare these two populations, but, truthfully, I’m not interested in debating the faithfulness of couples based on which liturgy they attend.

Instead, my experience both in person and with various Catholics online, especially with those who refer to themselves as “traditional” Catholics, has made me realize that there is another reason why “trad” Catholics have so many children so close together. It’s a reason that concerns me because of the way it has impacted young Catholic couples in both TLM and NO communities.

I’ll admit, I always wanted to have a lot of children, even before becoming Catholic. When I was in high school, my friends would routinely joke that I was destined to grow up, get married, and have 10 kids. And while 10 specifically was never the goal (when my husband and I did get married at 23, we discussed having maybe 4 or 5 children), when I joined the Church and accepted the teaching of being open to life, a family as large as the one I used to joke about suddenly seemed like an actual possibility.

That being said, I had no problem and still have no problem with the idea of having a large family. In the culture we live in, what could be more counter-cultural than having a lot of kids and considering them all a blessing? It’s a beautiful testament to our Faith. But when we attended a TLM parish, it started to feel like the number of children was an indication of holiness. A larger family was better than a smaller one, right? And with a small family of only two children at the time, I felt like the odd one out.

Like many other women, I found myself believing the idea that, barring some circumstance that prevented you from having children, we were meant to have as many kids as possible. I found myself mentally counting the child-bearing years I had left, wondering how many we could realistically have.

During the process of becoming Catholic, I was working through a course to become a birth educator while also reading through Sheila Kippley’s work on ecological breastfeeding.

Since my husband and I started RCIA while I was newly postpartum with our second child (and we were in the midst of an extremely traumatic situation unrelated to the birth of our second), I needed a way to prevent pregnancy without having to learn a specific method of NFP.

Over the next two years, I not only practiced ecological breastfeeding myself but also spent hours and hours researching natural child spacing and talking about it online (despite being met with extreme hostility from certain groups of women every time I brought it up).

After reflecting on my research and the conversations that came from an unfortunate incident at the TLM parish we attended, I realized what was so problematic about TLM communities is that many (though not all) of the women believed that simply the state of being fertile meant that it was necessary for you to be pregnant, or at the very least, that it would be wrong to try and avoid pregnancy, whether you were newly postpartum or not.

It is a common point of contention when faithful Catholics are arguing with “rad trad” men or women online — the belief many of these men and women have that NFP is a sin or that using it to avoid pregnancy in any scenario is no different than contraceptive use, even though the Church is clear on this teaching. I don’t think all couples or even the majority of couples who attend TLM believe this, but I think those who do have been rather loud about it.

I’ve seen far too many Catholic men and women online assume ill intentions when another Catholic announces their use of NFP. And when the topic of preventing pregnancy postpartum comes up, usually in the context of being asked about birth control at a postpartum appointment, I have seen many women express, “Why should I avoid pregnancy?” and “Why is getting pregnant again such a bad thing?”

As women, our fertility is a beautiful thing. Children are indeed a blessing, no matter when they come. But there is an underlying belief in these “traditional” circles that anything other than letting babies come in God’s timing is against God’s design. My problem with this belief is that the way most of these women approach motherhood in the postpartum period is actually quite modern — and if we wanted to know how God designed our bodies and what our bodies were designed to do when it comes to fertility, we would have to remove modern luxuries from the equation.

Historically speaking, the average woman did not have 10 or more children, nor did she have her children less than one year apart. There are obviously numerous factors that have contributed to the fertility rates throughout history, but especially before the use of birth control and in communities where women do not use birth control, natural child spacing has been a major factor.

According to Our World in Data, in 1800, the average woman had between five and seven children. For American women, the number is slightly higher, with the average woman having an estimated seven to eight children. It was common for children to be spaced two to three years apart. Unfortunately, because the child mortality rates were so high, it was also common for parents to lose two or three of those children.

A lot of changes were happening during the 19th and 20th centuries. Although the first infant formula became available in 1865, formula became much more popular during the 1950s and 1960s. By the 1970s, breastfeeding rates in the U.S. had reached an all-time-low.

Despite the claims you will see online about breastfeeding and how it isn’t a reliable method of avoiding pregnancy, this is not actually true from a biological standpoint. Yes, it is definitely possible to get pregnant while you’re breastfeeding. It is also true that breastfeeding is meant to delay ovulation.

This happens because breastfeeding increases the prolactin in a woman’s body, and prolactin prevents the production of gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH), which controls the release of follicle-stimulating hormone (FSH) and luteinizing hormone (LH) (which are necessary for ovulation).

It’s true that breastfeeding has allowed women throughout history to naturally space their children. The reason why this isn’t always effective for modern women is the act of breastfeeding alone isn’t always enough to delay ovulation, and historically, women had much different breastfeeding habits.

Generally, the frequency of feeding is the most significant factor when it comes to how long ovulation is delayed. Methods that have proven to be effective involve strict standards about how often you nurse your baby. Ecological breastfeeding, for example, requires that you nurse your baby on demand and skip the pacifiers. The rapid decline of ecological breastfeeding in the 1900s led to children being spaced closer to one year apart.

Recently, Elena Bridgers, a science writer whose research focuses on hunter-gatherer societies, discussed how the frequency of breastfeeding in these societies was usually every 13 minutes. If you’re thinking to yourself, “That sounds exhausting!” — you’re right! It is. I’m not suggesting you have to breastfeed your baby every 13 minutes or that doing so somehow makes you a better mother or Catholic.

However, the underlying message here is that God designed a way for our bodies to delay ovulation postpartum, and that says something about what our bodies are meant to do. Our lifestyles are so different today than women hundreds or even thousands of years ago. Breastfeeding does still effectively delay ovulation for many women. (The effectiveness of the lactation amenorrhea method and ecological breastfeeding is well-researched and well-documented).

But even when breastfeeding doesn’t successfully delay ovulation, the belief that women should be having babies as close together as possible is not rooted in history or science — and if we are to trust in God’s design, it’s important to know that He designed our bodies to give us time to heal postpartum.

Anyone who has followed me online for a while knows my message to Catholic women is not that you need to use natural child spacing, but that you need to know it exists.

God’s design does not include you getting pregnant at six weeks postpartum, even though that may be possible. Why? Because your body needs time to heal.

Experts say it is best to wait at least 18 months after giving birth to try for another baby. (This is a general rule, and there are a lot of individual factors that can determine when a woman is ready to be pregnant again.) While there is an increase in the risk of things like premature birth and low birth weight when a woman gets pregnant too soon after giving birth, it also doesn’t give her enough time to heal or recover from the demands of pregnancy and breastfeeding, which can lead to nutrient depletion and other issues.

While there is certainly nothing immoral about having babies close together, there is also nothing immoral about allowing your body time to heal after giving birth, whether that happens naturally through breastfeeding or through the use of a method of NFP.

The holiness of your family has never been and never will be determined by the number of children you have or how close together they are.

The couple that has one child and then doesn’t have another child for years due to secondary infertility is not less holy than the family that got pregnant easily and had seven children. The family that has children with significant disabilities and has to pause on having children is no less holy than the family with five healthy, typical children.

And the family that simply spaces children naturally to provide ample time for healing to happen is no less holy than the family that has three children under 5.

As Catholics, we’re called to be open to life. But being open to life doesn’t mean neglecting our own health or having kids as close together as possible. Every teaching from the Church is meant for our good — and when we realize our bodies are designed to naturally space children, it is far easier to understand this particular teaching is not meant to harm us. Your healing is important. Time to heal postpartum isn’t a luxury; it’s a necessity. And God is always familiar with what we need.

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