Great post

With the caveat that I think any woman who can breastfeed should (though I refuse to dictate how often or for how long), I heartily agree with what you wrote here. Many of those who push certain parenting and birthing techniques with the admonition "do this or your kid will be a serial killer" seem to miss the point that 95% of ensuring social stability in your progeny is simply being lovingly present to your children. Yes, there are techniques and methods that have been shown to work, but those same techniques used by selfish, uninterested parents won't yield great results. Similarly, a lovingly present parent who doesn't have "the rules" down is not destined to raise a flock of degenerates.

I don't mean to denigrate those concerned parents who seek out strategies and methods: if something is known to work, why not use it? My distaste, rather is for those who reduce parenting to a program or a technique that can be mastered. Parenting is a relationship that develops organically, it is a loving response to the glorious revelation of God's love that is a child. Approaching this relationship with a "strategy" seems somewhat strange. Then again, I may just not be a rules person.

As for CCL, I read a witness to the glory of NFP in their newsletter once. It left my wife and I with the distinct impression that this woman was mistakenly foregoing seriously needed psychotherapy and marriage counseling by clinging to NFP as a cure-all for her and her husband's problems. NFP may have been working for them, but they had serious issues that were going to bubble over into trouble sooner or later. This was aparently a success story.

I feel I should add the disclaimer that I embrace and endorse the Church's teaching that periodic continence for the purpose of delaying conception can be a moral good. People always seem to question that when I say things like this. Indeed my wife and have had recourse to such natural spacing