should I publish my vague post at George Orwell?
supreme-leader-stoat
do it
So apparently he was very anti-birth control (which yeah I guess I am too, as I am Catholic and all) but he also was critical of periodic abstinence which reminded me of how and why the methods of NFP were made in the first place:
Breastfeeding was being replaced by formula and disrupted by misogynistic workplace environments at the turn of the Century, resulting in a sudden surge of hyperfertility that negatively affected women and families.
And I don’t mean “Big families are bad!”, I mean, “Conceiving a baby shortly after you gave birth” is bad. You can space kids far apart and still get a big family, all without physically and mentally harming mothers and their prematurely-weaned babies in the process. Women need over a year at a MINIMUM before conceiving again, and babies need to be nursed for two years AT A MINIMUM before weaning. Even then, many children are not ready for weaning until they are three or four, and that gives them a LOT of mental, physical, and emotional development during that time.
Because even periodic abstinence is unacceptable for some people (whether personally within their own marriage, or socially as a political/religious belief), then they have to understand that the only alternative to protect women and families is LACTATIONAL AMNORRHEA – aka, childspacing through breastfeeding on demand.
I just want them to understand that in order to be consistent with their worldview, that they should promote lactational amnorrhea as the chosen, God-given child-spacer, and work to make it the norm again for ALL families, whether the mother works or is a housewife. This means getting involved in women’s welfare movements to improve women’s rights as mothers at school, in the workplace, or at home, and to also fight against outdated birth and postpartum practices that hurt families.
They need to understand and uplift the natural biology of the woman – not just that she ovulates and can become pregnant from sex, but that her body was designed in such a way so as to safely space children a few years apart to the benefit of her health and that of her whole family.
God made it a norm for women to space children for a reason. And until lactational amnorrhea is a cultural and biological norm again, then we need to rely on periodic abstinence to mimic the natural spacing as seen in traditional, breastfeeding families – the way God designed before intentional childspacing was even a theory.
Motherhood is not martyrdom, so let’s not expect non-lactating women to open their legs for their husbands, have one baby a year, and fall apart from it, for a false understanding of marital holiness or social rebellion. The poor can have kids, they have a right to have kids, but they also deserve to understand and use lactational amnorrhea *successfully* to do so without breaking themselves. Child-spacing isn’t evil, but harming families IS.
I’m sorry, I don’t understand what lactational amnorrhea is, or what is its benefit from abstinence.
basically lack of periods from sex, because nursing on demand suppresses the ovulation hormones and induces a natural, normal infertility. Sex can be random and not purposely planned around ovulation, as the nursing itself prevents pregnancy naturally. If the couple never uses any method of family planning, and breastfeed every child on demand and beyond the first year, then they can expect to have a new baby once every 2-5 years or so.
I’d love to see this studied more. This hasn’t worked for me with either of my two children despite doing everything I’m supposed to. And even tandem feeding the second time.
I did read one theory that all the hormones in meat is why so many women even when the follow all the rules still get their periods back quickly.
