That's bananas. "Any child is a gift" and "vasectomies being popular" aren't mutually exclusive. I have a lot of kids and I reached a point where I'd had enough. I love them all so deeply and if my wife said to me tomorrow that she was pregnant well then I would love that child dearly. I love kids.
Still....No more child tho plz. ✂️
There's a cautionary tale that does the rounds in our family about my auntie who somehow (now remember we're talking 1950's aggressively Catholic Ireland here) ended up having a conversation with her priest where she somehow implied that herself and her husband avoided sex around ovulation. From recollection it was during confession.
Priest says "no bueno". She says "okiedokie".
Nine kids. Nine. My mother is still angry about it and she's very, very old.
That makes me think of a story of my wife's uncle who was an, apparently somewhat heretical, Irish priest. Effectively telling a parishioner who was pregnant and would not be able to be able to support another child, nor any health complications that might arise, that if the local bishop was so concerned that she carry the child to term, maybe said bishop should be the one to take responsibility for the care of the child.
Not sure when for certain but likely 70s or 80s Ireland.
That priest was not speaking based on the Church's beliefs, then. Natural family planning has been largely accepted by the Church for centuries, and the Pope more formally said it was ok in the early 50s. You just have to be ok if it leads to children anyway.
“Haha remember when women didn’t have a choice when their husbands wanted intercourse? And abortion was illegal? And so the woman was forced to birth as many children as her husband wanted?”
And half of them could die before reaching teenager. Which is mainly what accounted for that low average life expectancy. So you needed to have backups.
I still don't understand how so many people used to be able to afford having so many children, but not nowadays. Was child-rearing just less expensive back in the days?
Parents weren't giving their kids a gilded childhood. Children worked. Having more children meant more help with the farming, housework, etc., and/or they could work in coal mines, as chimney sweeps, etc. And also most kids didn't go to college back then and got married off young, so the parents had less financial burden. Plus the cost of living was a looooot more reasonable in comparison to the average household's income.
Also, once the first girl is old enough (like 6) she can take care of the other kids so you don't really have to do anything except to keep making them.