Apparently, Baby Bunching Is a Thing

By Joy Pullmann

I had no idea there was a name for our inability to schedule conception, which has resulted in three babies in four years. But, apparently, there is. It's even trademarked, and there's a book coming. It's called "baby bunching."

According to other women I chat with, older women will often go deliberately for baby bunching because they have fewer good years of fertility left and they want to get kids in while they can. Some want to get the birthing years over with, which I am quite sympathetic to (I'm playing with the idea of "four by 30" but I hate pregnancy so much we'll see if we make it...or, which is more likely, if we continue to have children constantly despite my hoped-for 30-year cutoff). Other, less-organized people like me, keep having these kids during what are obviously highly fertile years, and we won't kill them, so we love them instead.

Not a War on Women, but a War on Mothers

By Joy Pullmann

An extremely well-spoken coalition of women descended on the U.S. Capitol Thursday to make some incisive statements. The contraceptive mandate that forces businesses and health insurers to pay for every woman's contraception and sterilization choices was the reason they showed up, but their comments touched on other things that matter to women, as well. For one (from World Magazine's coverage of the event):

“There’s no war on women, there’s a war on mothers,” said Washington attorney Cynthia Wood in fiery remarks that sparked cheers from the crowd.

And

“I’m tired of our government making it very difficult to stand up for the things that are good and true,” said Mary Ellen Barringer, a consultant for non-profit groups from Maryland. “I can’t send my son on a field trip without filling out all kinds of paperwork, yet teens have access to products and services that lead to all kinds of risky behavior—with no parental consent.”

NFP and teamwork

not empowering

By Mary C. Tillotson

It always surprises me when I find yet another person who is totally shocked to find out that there’s some actual science behind Natural Family Planning. Women bleed for a few days every month for most of their adult life and nobody bothered to wonder why? The article I saw most recently insisted that, while there was legitimate science to NFP, “The Catholic Church’s official stance condemning contraception is, in my view, dubious and disempowering to women.”

Taken out of context, NFP is disempowering. I’m envisioning college parties where women only attend if they’re in Phase 3 (infertile), high school girls encouraged to keep track of their physical symptoms, and, when they’re fertile, say “catch me next week!” to their teenage boyfriends. Despite being way more fertile than women (compare the number of gametes average men and women produce), men get to have sex whenever they can find a phase 3 woman; women are confined to certain days out of their cycle. Disempowering to women? Absolutely. Men obviously have the upper hand.

But NFP isn’t just another form of birth control.