I scanned the thread, very interesting.
One thing that stood out, without me reading too deeply, that won’t happen until kiddos are sleeping, was the brief discussion of education of children. One poster maintained that wasn’t a legitimate reason for postponing pregnancy, based upon Pius XII’s address to the midwives. But it seems to me, that standard isn’t necessarily available now. The need to homeschool didn’t exist at the time of Pius’ address. And the duty to properly educate your children can be effected by how many there are.
There’s a lot of food for thought that the laity really needs to have addresses.
That is a very good, very valid observation. We've homeschooled for 13 years now, but we only have three. My wife has her degree in elementary education, but our kids were 80-90% self taught once they were solid readers.
Honestly, we know a lot of large homeschooling families, and the older children often end up being a major help to the parents in the education of the younger ones. And lots of homeschoolers take more than 18 years to complete a tough curriculum like Seton.
I guess I'm just saying there are advantages of large families that are often overlooked in a culture diametrically opposed to large families.