Catholic Laywomen’s Natural Family Planning across Three Generations

The story of Humanae Vitae in American Catholic history is often told as clerical authority trumping lay experience. Histories of this document’s reception emphasize that the vast majority of Catholic women simply ignored the papal teaching against contraception and filled their prescriptions for the birth control pill. However, there is also an under-told history of lay Catholic women who have embraced the teachings and ideologies of Humanae Vitae; they practice what has become known as Natural Family Planning (NFP). This chapter tells part of that history. These women create and maintain a strong network of women teaching other women how to track their cycles, pay attention to mucus patterns, and foster intimacy with their spouses outside of sexual contact. This chapter examines the brief, but dense, history of that network through three generations of laywomen’s work within NFP. Taken together, their lives illustrate the creative ways laywomen navigate within and around both cultural and Catholic commitments as they manage family planning in light of Humanae Vitae.