The Seven Sorrows of Homeschooling Mothers

This talk by a FSSP priest contains much food for thought and had me oscillating between tears of laughter and tears of sad recognition: any home educating mother will find something to relate to, and I think this deserves to be more widely shared.

Surviving home education

“No school today for this lot?” The woman behind the counter peers curiously at my children. “Nope,” I sigh, “not today, not any day...” and taking my change I head out the door with my little brood behind me. I'm usually far more patient – honestly I am – but we are still 30 minutes from Seamus Heaney's grave in County Derry and have been driving for almost three hours in the rain. Today isn't the day to explain to every stranger perplexed by the sight of free range children during school hours how wonderful home education is: we're too busy living it.

Heaney's grave, Bellaghy, Co. Derry

At Heaney's grave, shared with his parents and brother Christopher, we read “Mid Term Break” (about his baby brother's death and funeral) and pray a Rosary in Latin for the repose of all their souls, ending with a sung Salve Regina. Heaney loved Latin: famously, his last words to his wife, by text message, were "Noli timere". Other visitors to the grave, local men who were Heaney's contemporaries, join in with our Rosary and thank us afterwards for praying., apparently very few people do. After signing the book of condolence in the church, St Mary's Bellaghy, we drive due North toward the coast, pausing briefly at Bushmills to consider the science of distillation, before arriving at the Giant's Causeway – a World Heritage Site and natural wonder of volcanic basalt eroded into astonishing hexagonal columns like a giant three dimensional honeycomb. In addition to the fascinating hands-on geology, we learn about the kelp industry, about Irish mythology and that you get more soaked standing on the Antrim coast in a blowing gale than you do by plunging into a swimming pool. Fish and chips a little further around the coast, then a long drive back in the dark, home to our holiday cottage. A good day.

Giant's Causeway, Co. Antrim

Not every home education day is an adventure. For each day like yesterday, there's one where my children drive each other (and me) crazy. Where the house is a mess, where someone has fed playdough to the cat; where the dog has chewed the eyepiece of one of the microscopes, and we can't find the answer key for the Latin workbook.

That's when the September not-back-to-school doubts start to creep in. Will my children suffer or benefit from the choices that we, their parents make? Will they end up illiterate / happy / unemployable / holy / overspecialised / expert / only fit for employment in a circus? Are we doing the right thing? Can any parent ever answer that question with 100% certitude?

Then the Angelus bell chimes. The rhythm of daily life masters us gently and our family prayer leads to calm and resolution as I hand my fears over to Sede sapientiae – Our Lady, Seat of Wisdom to whom we've consecrated our home education undertaking.

Nothing is perfect – no school, no home, no family. In choosing to home educate we do two things: the first is take full responsibility for our children's education, for better or for worse; and the second is to place our hopes and fears into Our Lady's hands. But really, no matter where or with whom their children spend their weekday hours, these are two things that every Catholic parent, as first and primary educator,should do. We are in the business of educating souls: Sede sapientiae, ora pro nobis!

A version of this piece first appeared in Catholic Family News

 

A testimony to self-sacrifice, unconditional maternal love, and utter trust in God

The story of Chiara Petrillo's selfless love for her unborn child and trust in God which led her to delay treatment for an aggressive cancer in order to protect her unborn baby is one of the most inspiring testimonies to maternal love and abandonment of self to God's will that I've ever read. It is all the more poignant for the fact that this was Chiara's third child: her two previous much loved babies, David and Maria, had both been severely disabled and had each died shortly after birth. In both cases she had been pressured to abort the babies but had refused.

You can read her story here, here and here and there's a lovely montage of her life on YouTube (above - in Italian only, but it's easy to catch the drift).

Chiara's baby Francisco was born on the 30th of May 2011. Chiara lived to see his first birthday, and nurture him through his first year. She died on June 13th  2012, and was buried in Rome on June 21st.

Eternal Rest grant unto her O Lord, and May Perpetual Light shine upon her.

Can we blame liberal nuns for the Gates' Foundation's "philanthropy of death"?

The excellent Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute has started a campaign to raise awareness of a "Family planning summit" to be hosted by Melinda Gates in London in a few weeks time. The summit is co-sponsored by International Planned Parenthood Federation (the world's largest abortion provider) and the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) (slogan - apparently intended without irony: "Population matters"). Pro-lifers have applied to register at the summit in order to provide a counter-voice to the dominant pro-abortion, pro-population control, pro-contraception agenda, but have been refused entry. As a result, C-Fam have started a petition attached to an "Open letter to Melinda Gates"  on http://2-melinda-gates.org/ which I have signed and would encourage readers to consider doing the same. 


The letter raises many pertinent issues, including asking whether the summit will consider support for healthy childbirth programs. For me this is crucial - so much money and effort is spent on contraception and abortion services under the umbrella "women's health" when the Cinderella services - midwifery, neonatology,  ante- post- and peri-natal care are barely given any consideration. When pregnancy and childbirth are dangerous simply for want of cheap sterilisation equipment or vitamins or simple equipment like pinards / fetoscopes or simply more trained birth attendants, women may be far more easily seduced into believing that abortion is their "only" option. 

A pinard is cheap and as effective as ultrasound for ante- and peri-natal  foetal monitoring
Photo credit: "Midwifery Elective Adventure"

I visited the Bill and Melinda Gates' foundation website and read Melinda Gates' address to TED xChange 2012: The Big Picture  which is described on its website as "a platform for sharing game-changing ideas [for] solving the world’s biggest problems? Climate change, global poverty, the AIDS/HIV crisis — solving these problems will demand big thinking and unprecedented international cooperation. ... and the world is invited to join the conversation." Presumably this invitation isn't extended to pro-lifers.


Melinda Gates' speech gave me some insight into her background: on the subject of contraception she says that while she considers herself to be "a practicing Catholic" she believes that "we can insist that all people have the opportunity to learn about contraceptives and have access to the full variety of methods. I think the goal here is really clear: universal access to birth control that women want. And for that to happen, it means that both rich and poor governments alike must make contraception a total priority."


Now when third world women talk about wanting opportunities, I don't think that they're thinking about  the "opportunity to learn about contraceptives". But Gates' talk is subtle, if illogical - she gives examples of  "happy endings" stories of  poor women who started up businesses, or managed to educate their children privately, because (she suggests) they restricted their family size. I wonder whether she talked to elderly people in countries with low birthrates - China, Italy - about the impact on their lives of having only had one child. I wonder also about the changes to human relationships in a society where the majority of people are the willful first-borns. Historically most political and military leaders have been first-born or only children. Parents with larger families will understand why almost immediately. Second, and particularly subsequent siblings have a different perspective on life; are more likely to be team players. A healthy society needs foot-soldiers and farmers as well as generals.

Here's the telling bit: Melinda Gates' had a Catholic Education. Or should I say a "Catholic" education. Referring to the religious sisters who educated her, she says: "you know, the nuns who taught me were incredibly progressive. And I hope that they’ll be very proud of me for living out what they taught us about social justice" [emphasis mine].

So can we blame this whole sorry debacle on liberal nuns?

Are confused leftist nuns to blame?

Most depressing of all was the slogan on the Bill and Melinda Gates' Foundation website: "ALL LIVES HAVE EQUAL VALUE". Yeah right - tell that to the millions of babies who'll never be born thanks to the Foundation's "philanthropy".  For an organisation deeply involved in contraception and abortion behind the "womens' health" smokescreen, that really is a slogan FAIL.

Sign the "Open Letter To Melinda Gates" petition now!

Bohemian Catholic

While this blog is on a bit of a hiatus (in part as I recover from being thrown from my horse and with a bruised tailbone can't sit comfortably for long enough to blog!) why not go and read LizzieBoo's story of an unconventional, but not so unusual, Catholic childhood... and her before and after story of reconversion: "My very own Groundhog Day". Stirring stuff.

before: "is this ok for church?"

The only thing worse than a gypsy is a Catholic gypsy...

French Gypsies at Lourdes: Catholicism is part of their identity even though they may feel excluded from the mainstream Church (photo: Iglisia Descalza)

...at least that appears to be the gist of a rather bizarre article by Germaine Greer in Saturday's Telegraph. It's an oddly written opinion piece that veers from extreme nimbyism at having travellers living in her village to evoking warm fuzzy images of "nomadic peoples". One of the worst things about the travellers that we have here in the UK, the article suggests, is that they're Catholic. My comments are in bold.

How diverse are British nomads? They include English Romanichal and New Age Travellers and Roma refugees from eastern Europe, but the largest group is the Irish Travellers. These are not only Irish; they are also Roman Catholic. This is not the same as being simply Irish Catholic (we can, apparently, tolerate "cultural Catholics" as they're no different from the rest of us) : the travellers are more Catholic than other Irishmen and women (Ack! More Catholic! Than the Irish! As in they might actually BE Catholic). Traveller women have no sex before marriage (Oh the horror! And how bad for the contraceptive/abortion industry: think of the economy!) , marry young within the community (This is a problem? Why?), and bear more children than any other women in Europe (I say hooray for them! Germaine clearly sees this as A Bad Thing).
The highest value in traveller society is the family (what's wrong with that?), and the honour of the family resides in its women (wasn't it Archbishop Fulton Sheen that said that the value of a society can be measured by its womenfolk? So the travellers are in good company)....
Prolonged contact with the more relaxed mores of the host community carries a high risk for traveller families, who dread their children becoming involved in under-age drinking, experimentation with drugs and casual sex. (That would be true of many of us who don't want our children to adopt the normative behavior of the sewer; I'm with the travellers here as are most parents I know). When travellers are housed by local authorities it is invariably in the kinds of housing estates where all these are rife (well a caravan in a field looks like a good option then, doesn't it?)

Greer gives some anecdotal evidence which largely amounts to Why She Does Not Like Travellers But Is Too Liberal to Say So. She relates feeling "uneasy" when visiting a traveller site:

One day an official letter for a Mr King was delivered at my house, and I took the opportunity to visit the encampment. I drove past the piles of rubbish which were all we neighbours got to see and found myself in a compound swept clear of every speck of mud, surrounded by caravans that sparkled in the afternoon sun. The only people I saw were children, who formed a solid phalanx between me and the caravans.
“Does Mr King live here?’ I asked.
The children did not respond. Their faces were closed and blank. I showed them the letter and asked if I should leave it with them. They neither moved nor spoke.
There was something familiar about the whole situation, the size and shape of the compound overlooked by the invisible mothers in their caravans and the implacable mien of the guardian children. For a while I couldn’t place it and then I realised that I could have been in a Rajasthani village.

Oooh, not a Rajasthani village, the sort of place where people have better things to do than read tripe books by Germaine Greer. And what's with the "invisible mothers in their caravans" - how unbelievably patronising! How denigrating of motherhood.  How does she know that they aren't all at the supermarket, or enjoying a cup of tea and a laugh while looking after their babies, or happily making their family's lunch. Should they have dropped everything and rushed out to greet the important feminist academic? Or perhaps they should all be at work, their babies in second rate substitute childcare. As for the "implacable guardian children", well, I reckon that Germaine doesn't have a lot of contact with children. Round our way she'd likely find herself escorted by a phalanx of stony-faced warriors, and would count herself lucky if she wasn't tied to a tree "Just-William" style if she let herself onto our land without invitation. Face it, Germaine, an elderly scary lady brandishing an envelope and speaking in clipped antipodean tones is hardly going to put a group of children at their ease. Why, who knows, maybe they'd read your books and were too scared to speak.

Germaine Greer argued in Sex and Destiny (1985) that the nuclear family was a bad environment in which to raise children. Her criticism of British/Irish Travellers appears to be rooted in a morbid distrust of the natural family augmented by  a profound anti-Catholicism. In this article she gives a series of unsubstantiated "facts" (e.g. "traveller women have twice the rate of miscarriage as the UK average" - this without being able to specify how many travellers  are in the UK) pointing the the "obvious" conclusion that it would be in the travellers' own best interests to be brought into the mainstream. Then the children could be sexualised at a young age, the babies born out of wedlock, the mothers could all go out to work full-time, families could break down and they'd be just like the dysfunctional moral sewer of mainstream British society . You'd like that, wouldn't you, Germaine? That the Travellers value family, chastity and children irritates you no end. I'm sorry to tell you that that's exactly what some of us admire in them; that and the fact that they -- and we -- will out breed your sterile feminist intelligentsia with joy and alacrity. And that's the real reason that you're worried, isn't it?

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Praying for your children's future spouses and their families

I first saw this suggested years ago on a Catholic email list and thought it was a lovely idea. 

Think about it: somewhere in the world there is a child who will marry one of your children. That child has a family. Someday your paths will all cross, but only Our Lord knows the day and the hour.

Pray for their faith, health, safety and well being as well as that of their families.

And if your child is called to the religious life, I'm sure the prayers for his/her spouse will not be wasted: Our Lord will have seen that one coming long before you did!

Prayer for the Family - Pope John Paul II 

Lord God, from you every family in heaven and on earth takes its name.

Father, you are Love and Life.

Through your Son, Jesus Christ, born of woman, and through the Holy Spirit, fountain of divine charity, grant that every family on earth may become for each successive generation a true shrine of life and love.

Grant that your grace may guide the thoughts and actions of husbands and wives for the good of their families and of all the families in the world.

Grant that the young may find in the family solid support for their human dignity and for their growth in truth and love.

Grant that love, strengthened by the grace of the sacrament of
marriage, may prove mightier than all the weakness and trials through which our families sometimes pass.

Through the intercession of the Holy Family of Nazareth,
grant that the Church may fruitfully carry out her worldwide mission in the family and through the family.

Through Christ our Lord, who is the Way, the Truth and the Life
for ever and ever.
Amen.+

Countercultural family life

Picture credit: A Catholic Notebook

A post about Distinctive Catholic Markers on Father Ray Blake's blog got me thinking, not only about those visible things that set us aside as Catholics, but also those small matters of attitude that are so different from mainstream thought as to be truly counter cultural. One that I've mused on a lot in recent months is the idea of vocation as opposed to "career" for our children.

When I was growing up there was a lot of talk about exams and achievements that were expected, and later on stuff about careers but nothing at all about vocation. No sense that I needed God in order to make sense of what I should be doing with my life. It's probably not surprising that I made a bit of a hash of things: Oh I got the academic laurels and had the glittering career all right, but I squandered more than a decade of my life living a life that was fairly spiritually empty, never sure what I should be doing, constantly trying to fill a God shaped hole, and looking in all the wrong places. I can only say that it's thanks to the workings of the Holy Spirit that I didn't continue barreling down the wrong path.

Clearly the Holy Spirit works in ways that we can not even begin to understand. A very holy priest friend of ours came from an unlikely background: one parent a lapsed Catholic, the other an atheist. The children brought up without even a cursory reference to God. Siblings all went into the hard sciences and are not believers, but the eldest became a priest. How? Briefly - a blinding flash of a conversion in his late teens, followed by a baptism and the sacraments. The atheist father said he'd accept his son becoming a Catholic "as long as you don't become a priest". Not many years later, the son entered the seminary and the rest is, as they say, history.

But this is really the exception to the rule. It's difficult to underestimate the importance of Catholic families who encourage their children to think about their vocation from an early age, so that those children can take on board the idea that God has a plan for each of us, and that our role in life is to try to discern what He wants us to do, and how He wants us to use the talents that we have been given. This applies to the married vocation as much as religious vocations. Thinking about the idea of "vocation" at all is, I think, a very Catholic thing; the idea that we need to discern what God wants us to do with our lives.


One common problem is that many people in their late teens and early twenties tend to take themselves very seriously (it goes with the territory, it's a phase), and if they haven't had a serious spiritual grounding, been given a good sense of perspective,  can lose their way very easily in the mire of post-adolescent egotism and cargo-cult spirituality. If,  on the other hand, we've understood from a young age  that we have a role in God's plan, that we have God-given gifts, talents and skill that we need to use to their best potential in order to fulfill God's work, then we are handed a lifeline during the post-adolescent years.

So the family is crucial is vital in providing a perspective that counters that of Society, but the message needs to be imbibed at the breast so to speak, not introduced in adolescence. A child who knows from the time he can lisp his first prayers that God made him to know him, love him and serve him in this life and to be happy with him forever in the next will not find it incongruous at the age of seven or eight to start considering what God's plan for him might be. This groundwork means that the "conversation" is already open by the time that adolescence beckons.

Don't ask me how we do it -- those lucky enough to have been brought up in faith filled families have a template to use; the rest of us simply do our best and muddle through with the information, advice and help we have. And we pray. A lot. Ideally as a family. And we pester people too: so please don't be offended if you're a never-lapsed cradle Catholic and a nosy woman starts asking you about what you think your parents did right. I'm not just being nosy, I'm just trying to add to the sum of my knowledge in order to give my children the best shot at keeping it Catholic as they get older. I don't think that it's rocket science - the things that seem to make the most difference are (in no order): having a father as well as a mother who is a practising Catholic, seeing your father pray, praying as a family, having Catholic friends, having Catholic family friends, having a good understanding of the Faith... Please add to my list in the combox if you can.

NFP or Fertility Awareness? Time for a rethink?

I've always been uncomfortable with the "planning" aspect of so-called "Natural Family Planning". It struck me years ago that surely "planning" is the last thing that we as Catholics should be doing with our families -- either God gives us children, or He doesn't.  Planning jars with an attitude of unconditional openness to new life. We shouldn't schedule children in between jobs, or degrees, or at a convenient time. Of course there is the dispensation that NFP can licitly be used to delay the potential conception of a child for "grave reasons", and this is often stated in support of the NFP-as-Catholic-contraception point of view. But surely truly "grave reasons" are rare. I imagine that very few families encounter genuinely "grave" reasons to avoid another pregnancy. I don't reckon that "we can't afford another set of private school fees" (I'm not making that up) or even "we only have one/two/three bedrooms"  counts as a "grave reason". God provides. Often not in the ways that we imagine that we need provision, or in the ways that we would choose, but He provides what we need. Remember the birds of the air and the lilies of the field in Matthew 6.

Much is often made of a couple being "ready" for the responsibility of parenthood. This usually means that they're settled, both gainfully and securely employed, have reasonable financial resources (savings, pensions, etc.) to draw upon, have access to a strong support network of paid (nannies, cleaners) or unpaid (grandparents, neighbours) help. How unrealistic is that?  There's also the unarticulated sense that "ready" for parenthood means that you've had some "me time" (or "us time" for a couple) before complicating life with the pesky and messy reality of children. A sense that once you get your ducks lined up -- home, finances, support, have had all the "me time/ us time" needed -- then, and only then, will a couple be "ready" to have children.

I have news for anyone who believes this. Nobody is ever entirely ready to have children. Nobody. The "right time" to have a baby is the day your baby arrives, and you need to embrace it and accept that your life has changed forever: unimaginably, wonderfully.  Don't even get me started on the "having a baby needn't change your life" brigade. There's something seriously wrong if having a baby doesn't change your life. It's one of the few things that you'll ever do that is, literally, life changing. Embrace it. Move on. Thank God for the great gift that each new life is. But whatever happens, don't wait for the "right time" -- it will never arrive. The same goes for subsequent children. You'll never be ready, trust me, but you'll love them when they arrive and, with God's help, will cope with whatever comes your way.

So if the "right" time to have your baby is when your baby arrives, what's all the guff about being "ready"? Why the pressure to wait? I once  took the headmaster of a Catholic primary school to task about this at a meeting, asking how the advice he'd just given (to parents, as part of a demonstration of what the school was planning to teach in a sex-education course)  which was that it was important NOT to have a baby before having stable employment, savings, and preferably having bought a house (!)  could be squared with Catholic teaching. He backtracked and said that, in fact, he and his wife hadn't done any of this -- they married at university, lived on a shoestring with young children, and so forth -- but that he felt that it was the school's role to teach children about responsible parenting. Ahem.

My discomfort with the "planning" aspect of NFP was amplified several years ago when I met a young married Catholic couple on a pilgrimage. They had recently had their first child, and were interested in learning about NFP, largely because they had been told that they ought to. They had been directed to the local branch of the Family Planning Association who apparently had somebody who could teach them about NFP. The wife confided that she felt profoundly uncomfortable going into a building belonging to an organisation that provided abortion referrals, emergency "contraception", and so forth, but hadn't been able to find anywhere else nearby. As it turned out, the venue was too off putting, and they only ever went once. I don't know if they ever managed to find another NFP instructor.

So let's get to the nitty gritty. What is "NFP" about? Is it an acceptable form of "pro-life" contraception, or is it not?  On its own, NFP is essentially a tool box of knowledge -- in and of itself it is morally neutral: it is how we choose to use this knowledge that makes it licit or illicit. I think the truth is that it is often implicitly "marketed" as "Catholic contraception", perhaps as an attempt to appeal to couples currently using artificial means of contraception in the hope that they'll change to a morally "better" method. I think that this conversion from artificial contraception to NFP-used-as-contraception it is often seen as the "least bad" scenario, the most "realistic" if you will. This is simply wrong.  The notion of "planning" denotes the same sort of "control" that artificial contraception promotes. Not ready for a baby:? Don't worry about it, just avoid your danger days and -- hey -- no pesky infants to worry about.

It may be semantics, but what we say often guides our actions and our thoughts. Even if we teach "Natural Family Planning" in the best conscience, the fact that we're calling it "family planning" makes it (to my mind at least) unsound from a Catholic perspective. We're on a slippery slope to thinking that we can control the show, or, if not control it, then at least stack the odds against having a baby / another baby. This is utterly at odds with being open to the gift of new life.

There are benefits to understanding the fertility that God has blessed us with, but that's why I prefer the term "fertility awareness" to NFP which has a ring of contraception-by-stealth about it. "Fertility awareness" is a more accurate and more acceptable label: one that is open to life. By calling the various observational practises under the NFP umbrella "fertility awareness" we're simply stating the fact that we're aware of our fertility, not that we're trying to control, sideline, or otherwise distort the natural order. We're not  using the contraceptive mentality of "control" and "planning". There are very good licit reasons for a woman to be aware of her fertility signs - increasing the chances of conception, being aware of changes that flag occult medical problems at an early stage (e.g. ovarian cancer, cysts, fibroids:  all things with very subtle symptoms that are better treated sooner rather than later); being aware of and therefore better able to manage the menopause, and so forth.. Being aware of her fertility signs also means that a woman can be aware of a return to fertility after a baby, or have a better understanding about why she and her husband are not conceiving (the length of various parts of the cycle can indicate particular problems; for example, a short luteal phase, which would make it difficult or impossible for a fertilised egg to implant, usually indicates subnormal levels of progesterone). Understanding these little things mean that couples can self-help, or at least understand the sort of help they need to seek.

Thinking about it from this perspective, should "fertility awareness" be a female only domain? That's the next instalment. Watch this space.

Are you a Mary or a Martha?

I'm naturally more of a Mary, but God in his wisdom has given me a more Martha-like role to play. 

I grew up a creature of the intellect and spirit, and managed to reach my late twenties without knowing how to change a baby's nappy, bake a cake, or even keep a houseplant alive. I was good with animals -- always had been -- but not much good at anything else that didn't involve brain-work. I was thoroughly undomesticated.

The first meal I ever made for the man who became my husband was a green pepper sandwich. Yes, you read that right. He was utterly bemused, not sure whether I was absolutely hopeless in the kitchen, or whether thinly sliced green-pepper on granary bread was a sophisticated delicacy that he'd yet to come across. I was 21 and had no idea how to make a sandwich. None. But I had some bread, and a green pepper in my fridge, and a green-pepper sandwich seemed perfectly logical to me at the time. And no, there was no butter on it.

I was the woman who would break out into a sweat if she saw someone approaching her with a baby, lest they try to encourage me to actually hold it. Holding a baby always resulted in the baby screaming and me handing the baby back with a grimace as pronounced as the one on the tiny wailing face in my arms.

I was most comfortable in international academic conferences, in late-night intellectual debates over port in smoky MCRs, in later years in boardrooms, thriving on competing and winning in a male-dominated industry. I'm not sure if I was the nicest person, though, nor whether I was even a little bit happy. 

I said earlier that as a child I'd been a creature of the intellect and of the spirit. This was true until my teens when a lack of spiritual formation lead that aspect of my life to become sidelined by all the things that the world (and my nearest and dearest) told me were important: academic success, a good career, and subliminally the message was that if I was clever and successful then I'd be lovable as well. I was profoundly religious as a young child, particularly in the years after my first communion. I think my family found it a little embarrassing, and hoped I'd get over this stage quickly. I was told that I shouldn't practise saying Mass as I couldn't be a priest, but if I wanted to be religious I could be a nun. When I asked what this entailed, I got a woolly answer ("um, don't know... lots of praying") which didn't appeal to the 9 year old me. I've often wondered if things would have been different if I'd had some spiritual formation at that stage in my life. God only knows.

Oh I rebelled against the high-achieving expectations -- who didn't in their late teens? But the "rebellion" was of the pre-scripted kind. Nihilism, despair, feminism, drugs and rock-and-roll ... a gentle roll down the slope of agnosticism. I wore black, I pierced my nose, I shaved my head, I wore combat boots. Oooh, how very rebellious I was! I read Lautréamont and Jerzy Kosiński and was convinced that mankind was evil and doomed. I thought religion was the opiate of the masses. I thought I was so much cleverer than everyone else. I didn't realise quite what a silly sheep I was.

My conversion came not as a thunderbolt, but as a whisper. A gentle call: persistent, loving. Somehow we began going to Mass, at first occasionally, then more regularly. By the time we were married we were properly back in the fold, but still heading towards the Church's living beating heart, still making up time for all the years we strayed, still learning all the catechisis we missed. 

And now? Well we still have several thousand books in the house, most of which are still in boxes from our last move. My life circles around four lovely little people and my husband through whom I've gained an insight into God's unconditional love; five chickens, three rabbits, two cats, a pair of fancy mice and another pair of fancy rats, and two tanks of tropical fish complete the household. I feed and nurture all of  these creatures; God has given me the job of looking after them. I've actually become a reasonably good cook -- cakes, soups, stews, jam, bread -- I can tackle it, and it will taste good, unlike that green pepper sandwich of twenty years ago. I can more or less keep order in our home, grow a fair bit of our own food, wrangle a sewing machine well enough to whizz up angel costumes when required or, more prosaically, mend clothes. My intellect and education are being put to better use than I ever could have imagined, educating my own children. I've often wondered why in the eyes of the world it would be OK if I had continued teaching undergraduates - other people's children - at university, but it's a "waste of all that education" when I teach my own. Funny that.

One of my uncles was very sporty and a real outdoorsman in his youth. Then in his mid-20s he was struck down with a debilitating disease that put a stop to all of his physical pursuits. A couple of decades later, I was looking through old photos with him. I asked him how he felt about not being able to mountain-climb and cycle and water-ski. He was glad, he said. He felt that his illness and disability had opened doors that he'd previously not known had existed. A world of art and music and culture more than filled the void left by his sporting activities, and he felt certain that had he not been so "unfortunate" he would never have gained the rich life that he lead. 

And so, I'm a reluctant Martha but not so reluctant that I don't rejoice in my apple harvest, dote on my chickens, gain a real creative buzz from cooking and baking, and cherish the time that I spend with my family. I've found a great joy in service - this is something utterly novel to me as it isn't something that I saw modelled as a child. Small tasks, done lovingly, give great satisfaction. In my "Martha" role I've gained more riches than I ever thought would be possible, and God has given me a happiness that I never dared to hope for in my youth. The girl who used to need 9 hours sleep is now the woman who loves it when her toddler sneaks into her bed at 6 in the morning,  giggling to himself as he takes her face in his fat little hands and plants a big wet kiss exclaiming "Mummy I LOVE you!" 

There is a part of me that longs for order and silence and peace on days that are noisy and chaotic. That longs for mental stimulation on days when laundry and nappy changes seem overwhelming. That fantasises about entering an enclosed order and living a cloistered life of prayer and contemplation. But that isn't my life, and, to be honest, I'm not sure that the reality would suit me. I still read copiously when I can, think far too much, and find as much time for personal prayer as I can in a day that rotates around the needs of others. This blog is just one escape valve for my mutterings. My life has taught me to share -- something I managed not to learn as a child -- and to put the needs of others first. Like my uncle who found new life in his changed life, I'm thriving as a Martha; God took me out of my comfort zone and threw a lifetime's worth of challenges at me, and in so doing opened up spiritual, emotional and intellectual dimensions that I'd never imagined existed. Nurturing my own babies has given me a tiny glimmer of insight into God's boundless love for us all, and family life has taken me from a lost soul who felt that she had to achieve worldly glory in order to be lovable to a contented wife and mother who is beginning to understand that her Saviour's love is boundless and unconditional.

The elephant in the room: breastfeeding and NFP

This post isn't about NFP pros and cons, it's about whether political correctness or perhaps ignorance is making us approach fertility awareness in an unscientific way. It's also about whether our approach, in the way that it ignores and therefore inadvertently subverts the natural order is, in some way morally flawed.

Amongst other things I'm a trained and qualified lay breastfeeding counsellor. I've racked up enough clinical hours in a voluntary capacity over the past nine or so years to qualify to sit the IBCLC certification, normally reserved for medical professionals. I only mention this to point out that, apart from my other areas of interest [(doctoral dissertation (literature) and professional life (IT), and hobbies (small mammal colour genetics)]  breastfeeding is my specialist subject. Even though I'm no longer active as a counsellor, the journal Breastfeeding Abstracts still drops onto my doorstep every quarter: it's fascinating stuff.

But what does this have to do with NFP? I'm asked this a lot when I get onto my breastfeeding and NFP hobby horse. Breastfeeding is just one of many parenting choices that some mothers make, right? Natural family planning is something completely separate, right? Wrong.

I first got thinking about the relationship between breastfeeding and Catholic mothering about six years ago when I was helping a mother who was having difficulties nursing her third child. She had nursed her first two easily but things were more complicated with the third and, having been failed by the NHS, she had sought out help from a breastfeeding charity. She was about my age and over the next few weeks we had some interesting conversations. One of the reasons that she was determined to nurse her baby was because she was a Muslim and, as she told me, "breastfeeding is an important part of our religion". Always competitive, I bounced back, "and part of mine too" while thinking "erm, exactly why did I say that?".

I had been reading a fair bit about the Theology of the Body at the time, and was convinced that Blessed Pope John Paul II's definition of self-giving was a perfect illustration of the nursing relationship. Around the same time I read "Breastfeeding and Catholic Motherhood" and saw that Sheila Kippley had explicitly drawn the same conclusion. More importantly, I accepted the necessity of openness to new life as a fundamental aspect of Catholic belief, but saw an inherent contradiction in the absence of any discussion about breastfeeding as part of the same conversation.

A few years earlier our diocese had held a consultation to find out how to make parishes more family-friendly (or at least that's how it was presented to us in the parish we were in at the time). My husband and I and our then only child went to the meeting along with a friend and her husband and toddler of a similar age. When asked what the parish could do for families we all asked to have a Billings or other NFP counsellor accessible to the parish. What we were eventually given, was a "ministry of welcome" which was as much use as... well, chocolate teapot metaphors in the combox please. This "consultation" got me thinking about NFP in the parish context and comparing the families who wanted it and their reasons for wanting it with those mothers I'd been working with as a breastfeeding counsellor. The families in the parish were often afraid of having a second (or subsequent) child too soon after a first; on the other hand, many of the mothers I knew through my breastfeeding work were keen to have another baby sooner rather than later and were looking for help in ways to increase their fertility. The difference was that the latter group were often breastfeeding in a biologically normal manner: that is to say for a biologically rather than culturally normal length of time (>=2 years). The mothers in the parish group were almost all either using artificial milk, the cultural norm, or mixed feeding, and/or weaning within the first year. They had a rapid return to full fertility and often had a second or subsequent baby before nature would have allowed had natural law been followed. At that time the cultural norm was a maximum of six months (anything else was seen as a bit wacky), encouraged by the NHS, against all scientific evidence which pointed (and still points) towards a minimum of two years nursing (WHO guidelines). A comment I read many years ago (I don't remember where) that really struck me was that the only thing that the Vatican and the World Health Organisation have ever wholly agreed on is breastfeeding.

This is about following Natural Law. God's perfect plan for families includes breastfeeding. Breastfeeding is nature's way of spacing babies. It's nature's way of ensuring that the mother's body had had time to recover, that the nursing baby is strong enough and mature enough to deal with a sibling, that everyone has had time to catch their breath between births. Research shows that for European women, with natural duration breastfeeding (i.e. nursing a baby for a natural amount of time) menstruation returns (on average) between 13 and 15 months post-partum (depending on the study). Even if a mother was to conceive on her first visible cycle, she would have a minimum gap of almost two years between her babies. However if she's still nursing her toddler several times a day as nature intended, her fertility will probably be reduced for several more months. Thus many mothers who are committed to natural duration breastfeeding find that they actually need to change their nursing pattern (dropping an early morning feed works wonders) or even wean their child in order to conceive their next baby. These women allow breastfeeding to maintain a subfertile period of months (sometimes years), allowing nature to space their babies. Yet in Catholic parishes, we're teaching people how to avoid their fertile period while not talking about breastfeeding at all. We are creating, or at least condoning, an artificial rupture with the natural order. Why?

Breastfeeding is a hot topic: feminists see it as a way for flat-earthers to chain women to domestic slavery. "We won't be equal with men," they argue, "until we're able to share parenting equally". As a sociological construct, the concept of "sharing parenting equally" might just be able to pass muster, but from a scientific perspective it's an utter nonsense. There is nothing equal about parenting -- men and women have differentiated roles that should be embraced not ignored. Some social conservatives  appear to see breastfeeding as some sort of feminista statement, and I've read more than one unpleasant comment associating breastfeeding with "feminazis" over the years. Breastfeeding isn't a feminist issue. It's shouldn't be an "issue" of any kind. It's simply what mothers with babies do in order to feed them, stimulate the development of their neural pathways, widen their dental arch, provide immunological support to an immature system,  and kick-start the endocrine system. And that's just (some of) what it does for the baby; there are profound physical effects on the mother as well: positively impacting behaviour, emotions, and fertility.

So it's not all about the food. This means that we can wipe the "breast vs bottle" arguments from the slate. Research over the past decade or so has proven what mothers have instinctively known for millennia: there's more to breastfeeding than food. The "first milk" or colostrum is not a milk at all, but a secretion that kick-starts the endocrine system: this is why babies who miss out on this precious fluid in the first days of life have a considerably raised risk of developing diabetes later on in life. The immunological benefits of breastfeeding are better known, as are the decreased risk of allergies. Less well known is the benefit to dentition -- breastfeeding in the second year of life is nature's way of widening the dental arch, thereby decreasing the chance of overcrowded and misaligned teeth. Did you ever wonder why more and more people have misaligned teeth and need braces? It's not simply down to vanity. One American dentist did, and he did a massive retrospective study of orthodontic patients, finding a direct correlation between not being breastfed  and needing dental work for malocclusion. Braces and expensive orthodontics were not in God's plan, but breastfeeding for the first couple of years clearly was. Then there's the neural pathway development: the skin-to-skin contact facilitated by the nursing relationship is the primary mechanism stimulating the development of neural pathways in the early weeks of life; this is part of “building the brain” outside the womb, creating the ability for a wide range of emotional responses. I could go on, but this post isn't about the wonders of breastfeeding, it's about why we, as Catholics, don't include this vital aspect of fertility in our fertility education.

Clearly humans can survive without being breastfed. I'm not arguing that point. I wasn't breastfed, and I'm still reasonably intelligent, relatively sane, and if not glowing with health, at least I'm still alive. This isn't about bare minimum: if we Catholics believed that bare minimum was good enough we'd hand out condoms and tell teens to only use them if they really really can't do otherwise. But we know that's wrong. What is just as wrong is subverting the natural order and calling it “Natural family planning”.

But what about those women who can't / won't / dont' want to breastfeed. I have no patience with “won't” and “don't want to”. You have a baby and you don't want to feed it as God intended: tough. I bet you don't fancy changing nappies, being woken up twelve times a night, and cleaning projectile vomit out of your hair either, but you'll have to do it at some point  (or possibly several) as a parent. As for those who “can't” -- well, that's different. Fewer than 1% of mothers have a medical problem that makes breastfeeding impossible; these can be either physical (mastectomy) or endocrinological/hormonal affecting milk production.

 Many of us have neighbours / mothers / sisters / friends who have been “unable” to breastfeed because they have been told that they don't have enough milk, aren't producing enough milk, will never produce enough milk. It is far more likely that they were not supported properly, and were attended to by people with an incomplete knowledge of lactation than that they fall into the <1% with a physical impairment. Having spent years dealing with the fall-out from women discharged from hospital or by community midwives, I think that learning and support are the two things that would make a big difference to breastfeeding success. It is my perception (and I have nothing but my own experience to back this up) that a greater proportion of Catholic mothers breastfeed (for some length of time) than among the population at large. There is a huge potential support network of mother-to-mother help available. Another option would be to co-opt existing breastfeeding support agencies like La Leche League into NFP programmes and to provide free helpline numbers at a parish level (La Leche League is an international single-issue organisation providing breastfeeding support set up by seven Catholic women and their Catholic GP in 1956. It was named after a shrine to Our Lady. Whilst having no relationship with the Catholic Church, there is nothing in the organistion's beliefs that contradicts Catholic teaching - it exists simply to support and provide information to mothers who wish to breastfeed and takes no stand on other issues).

So what does this all have to do with the Catholic Church? Well, if we believe that God created us in His likeness, and that the natural order is a good thing, then we should seek to maintain that natural order. This means encouraging breastfeeding as part of NFP programmes or, better yet, treating it as the norm within the context of family fertility awareness teaching. Breastfeeding might be natural, but it is a learned skill, and over the past few generations we've seen a complete rupture with the past in terms of mothering particularly with regard to breastfeeding.  Marriage preparation and NFP classes should be scientifically as well as morally coherent. They should emphasise the whole picture with regard to fertility, not just the “contracept-or-not” bit thereby allowing parents-to-be to see and understand the whole big beautiful picture of procreation that God has given us.

Pictures from the Breastfeeding Art Gallery with thanks

UPDATE (5th August 2011): More on NFP here