Preparation for NFP

Most couples start off their marriage ignorant of NFP, and its role in understanding, appreciating, and integrating their mutual fertility. Even if an engaged couple is fortunate enough to be introduced to NFP while preparing for marriage, it is often in a way that is so cursory, it is ineffective in changing the trajectory they are likely already on by that point.

Couples preparing for marriage deserve in-depth information on NFP, and the opportunity to learn it together. It is through the actual experience of their fertility through observing and charting her cycles, that a couple gains the confidence in NFP they need in order to embrace their fertility and forsake contraception.

But those months preceding marriage should not be their first or only introduction to NFP.

The truth is, by the time we are preparing for marriage, the many negative messages we have absorbed about fertility and NFP, impair our ability to hear the truth when it is presented. Probably our only exposure to the concept of “responsible parenthood” is the message that equates “responsible” with contraception. These messages impact us, often most significantly in ways we are not even mindful of.

I look back on my own NFP journey, using, teaching, and promoting it, and see how part of the process of embracing NFP is exposing, and discarding, the distorted messages brought to it, and profoundly re-orienting our understanding of sexuality, marriage, fertility, masculinity, femininity, babies and intimacy.

This process can be challenging and is lifelong. It does not begin—or end—with marriage preparation. It begins with our individual formation in the underlying principles as children, adolescents, and young adults. It is then explored together with our beloved in the concrete experience of learning NFP during engagement. It is eventually lived out over the years of growing together in marriage.

We must realize that an introduction to NFP as part of marriage preparation is but a very small piece of this formation. It is a crucial piece, but woefully inadequate, in and of itself, in equipping couples for this lifestyle.

Preparation begins, of course in the family. It is the lens through which we frame our views on marriage, and family. Are we providing families support and resources to assist in the formation of their children in the insights and values that will prepare them for embracing love and life through NFP when married?

We can begin by reflecting on the messages we convey to the families in our communities. Are children welcomed to church services? Is there support for those grieving a loss? Are large families appreciated as generous witnesses to life? Is the sanctity of life taught and modeled?

Do we provide formation on this topic for volunteers and staff? Certainly for those providing immediate preparation for marriage, but also for those impacting remote preparation through programs that serve families: RCIA, catechetical instruction, schools, youth ministry, adult formation, etc.

Are we forming our youth and their parents in Theology of the Body? Are we providing programs for parents and their teen/preteen children which facilitate bonding, teach about their beautifully and wonderfully made self, inspire authentic femininity and masculinity, and support chastity?

Are we providing opportunities, especially for young men, to sacrifice their own needs and wants in service of the other?

Do we create opportunities to build relationships with others of shared values?

Are NFP services available for the parents, to live out these principles themselves?

Growing up in families and communities that joyfully live these values, may be the single most important factor, in preparing couples to live them in their own marriages and families one day.