This is a question people love to ask.
After we had our two daughters, Addie & Dani, it was easy to tell people we wanted to have another child. For starters, three kids isn’t considered too outrageous in our suburb where the average family has 2.5 children. Plus most of our friends knew that my husband, a rabid sports fan (and that is an understatement), had been dreaming of coaching a son in football since the moment we said “I do.”
But things changed a bit when our son, Charlie, came along. Without hesitation people would tell us, “Oh good, you got your boy, so you’re done now.”
Before I go further, I want to point out that I was never offended by these types of comments, but it did make me step back and think about our culture’s view on family planning - that’s it’s just one more thing we try to control to get what WE think is best.
That said, I did think it was funny that people assumed since we had children of both genders we were “done.” Even more ironic is that in our culture of “women’s choice” a lot of people didn’t even ask me what I thought.
What wasn’t always easy to explain during small talk at kids’ birthday parties or neighborhood get-togethers was that I knew there was one person missing in our family. I would look at my three children and see a hole that just had to be filled. The decision had nothing to do with finances or whether our house was big enough; it was almost as though the choice had been made for us.
Just a little over a year ago, Baby No.4, Beau, arrived. Now people don’t assume that we’re done. Now they ask, “Are you done having kids?”
For some people, this may be a black and white question. But as a couple practicing NFP, this is a question that is impossible to answer. Are we happy as a family of six? Yes. Does that mean we’re definitely done having kids? No.
Why?
Because we place our fertility in the hands of our Creator every month. Yes, modern methods of NFP are just as effective as birth control. But in the end we know that God is in control, not us. And we trust that His plan - whatever that may be - is greater than anything we can imagine.
So for now when people ask us, “Are you done having kids?” we just shrug our shoulders and simply say we don’t know.
What about you? How do you answer this question? We’d love to hear from you.
