Remember my blog "the case for settling" about the article "Marry Him: The Case for Settling for Mr. Good Enough" by Lori Gottleib? Well, I was reading an article called "The Vindication of Humanae Vitae" by Mary Eberstadt and the article was mentioned again.
Eberstadt's article is a very good one about the impact contraception has made in our society. I would recommend it! I just thought it was interesting that Gottleib's article showed up in it as well!
Perhaps the most compelling case made for traditional marriage lately was not on the cover of, say, Catholic World Report but in the devoutly secular Atlantic. The 2008 article “Marry Him!” by Lori Gottlieb—a single mother who conceived her only child with donor sperm rather than miss out on motherhood as she has on marriage—is a frank and excruciatingly personal look into some of the sexual revolution’s lonelier venues, including the creation of children by anonymous or absent sperm donors, the utter corrosiveness of taking a consumerist approach to romance, and the miserable effects of advancing age on one’s sexual marketability.
Gottlieb writes as one who played by all the feminist rules, only to realize too late that she’d been had. Beneath the zippy language, the article runs on an engine of mourning. Admitting how much she covets the husbands of her friends, if only for the wistful relief of having someone else help with the childcare, Gottlieb advises: “Those of us who choose not to settle in hopes of finding a soul mate later are almost like teenagers who believe they’re invulnerable to dying in a drunk-driving accident. We lose sight of our mortality. We forget that we, too, will age and become less alluring. And even if some men do find us engaging, and they’re ready to have a family, they’ll likely decide to marry someone younger with whom they can have their own biological children. Which is all the more reason to settle before settling is no longer an option.”
Eberstadt makes the point that younger Catholics are the generally ones who are more orthodox, wanting to follow the Church's teaching on contraception. She called us the "generation to grow up under divorce, widespread contraception, fatherless households, and all the other emancipatory fallout".
We have grown up with the effects of contraception. We have seen the hurt and pain caused in the lives of family and friends because of it. Unfortunately, because using contraception has been the norm, people my age also expect that it is good to use it. I have been asked more times than I care to remember if I am going to move in with Ryan or if we have sex. People are shocked when I say no. To use Christopher West's analogy, it is as if we have been driving around on flat tires, thinking that this is normal. Yet, when we realize the beautiful plan God has for us and begin to live life on full tires, we can't imagine how we ever thought flat tires were good and normal. Only in retrospect can we see the pain and damage caused by flat tires.
People that I have shared NFP with are generally very receptive. Of course I usually only talk about it when I hear people complain about how messed up the pill is making them. I thought that people would not want to hear about alternatives, but they do. Maybe deep down we realize that contraception is not the way God intended things to be.
It is a problem that we've really worked ourselves into. God is the only one who can change our hardened hearts.
God bless America! Show us the way.
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