u/IcyCarob7241

Even after leaving the church I had these vague feelings that the Catholic Church had a lot of wisdom about sexual teachings and fear that since I wasn’t following them it would ruin my marriage.

Well, a few situations have made me so incredibly grateful not to be Catholic. They also made me realize how ridiculous it is for sex rules to be made up by the people who supposedly never have sex and who never have families.

Intimacy: Like many couples post childbirth- when my husband and I tried  PIV sex it was too painful initially. But other kinds of sex were great and very enjoyable for both of us. However, if the penis doesn’t ejaculate in the vagina during sex, the whole act is perverted -according to some ancient guys. I am so glad not to have that pressure to basically do nothing or full throttle. I hate to think how many Catholic women have sex ruined for them because it’s associated with pain and white knuckling through it instead of seeing what their body can handle and slowly restarting intimacy / enjoying sex together without the pressure of doing it a specific way.

Reading a post on the Catholic subreddit (EDIT: initially linked a post but removed link once I learned you’re not supposed to include) made me so sad & frustrated because the woman was not Catholic during her first pregnancy and had a positive experience restarting intimacy postpartum, but is wondering what she can do now that she’s Catholic. One of the things she says that I found to be spot on is: “I'm really struggling to find adequate answers or explanations for what to do in more specific circumstances regarding sexual intimacy, as pretty much everything that pops up online is just explaining the general rules around sex rather than getting into the nitty-gritty of real life.” This is because the rules were made up by people who were never pregnant!!! All of the answers to this are basically “yeah same, it sucks, there must be something we’re missing.”

Family Planning: I had an emergency c-section, and although we plan to have another baby the risks of uterine rupture decrease significantly if you wait a specified amount of time to get pregnant again. The NFP stuff gets really complicated with breastfeeding. I read a super depressing post in the Catholic subreddit where a lady had had 5 c-sections and her doctor begged her not to get pregnant again as her chance of death was so high. She had been trying to do NFP for years but the last 2 babies were unplanned (& very high risk) pregnancies. The answer from all the Catholic people was basically “that’s rough, sorry about that. Just don’t have sex till you go through menopause. There were several comment saying things like “Mary and Joseph never had sex, priests never have sex, offer it up, it’s difficult but you can do it.” I was legitimately horrified by this lady’s situation. Somehow it would be better for her marriage if they just didn’t have sex for 5+ years, than if the husband just got a vasectomy???

I have mostly male coworkers and colleagues in my field, and when I got pregnant I heard so many variations of “I mean, there is only so much the dad can do” or “I mean, what can dads really do for a baby?”

Sometimes it was in an off handed way, sometimes it was as an add on to why they didn’t take all their paternity, sometimes it was in a recognition of the hard work of moms.

Well, my little one is almost a month old and what I have come to realize is that the answer to the question “what can dads really do for a baby?” is …. basically everything a Mom can do!!!!!!

With the exception of breastfeeding my husband has done all the same things I have. Changing diapers, calming / swaddling / getting up with a fussy baby, dealing with all the housework. Heck, he’s even fed the baby a bottle I pumped as back up in the middle of the night to spare me the extra wake up.

I’m now wondering what all of these guys were talking about. Are they truly oblivious to all the things that need to be done? Are their wives so particular about every detail that they feel disempowered from caring for the baby? (this is the impression I’ve gotten from one or two guys), Are they not capable of basic tasks like putting clothes on a baby? Am I missing something that I should be doing that only moms can do? Is the work going to get more “mom heavy” as the baby gets older?

I’m curious of other parents’ takes because I probably got some variation of that comment from 15 different guys who are dads.