Must Know Facts About the Pill
The effectiveness of birth control pills depends entirely on how they are used. While the stated effectiveness is 96-99% in reality this rate is much lower, around 87%. Poor user habits are the reason for the discrepancy. Taking the Pill at different times of day, missing days or skipping pills all decrease the effectiveness.
From http://www.livestrong.com/article/210679-effectiveness-of-natural-family-planning-methods/
Calendar-Based Methods
With calendar-based methods, women count the days of their monthly cycles to estimate the most likely times for their infertile and fertile phases. As of 2010, the standard days method has largely replaced the oldest calendar-based "rhythm method."
Many women with regular monthly cycles between 26 and 32 days can practice the standard days method. Compared to the rhythm method, it has simpler rules, is easier to follow and thus is far less prone to user error, especially if practiced with a color-coded visual aid, such as CycleBeads. The effectiveness rate for correct and consistent use is over 95 percent and for actual practice 88 percent, compared to 91 percent versus 75 percent, respectively, for calendar rhythm.
The Calandar Method of natural family planning is what is taught by the Catholic Church and is every bit as effective at preventing unwanted pregnancy as the pill, and has none of the side effects that the pill has on womens health.
So, if the couple do not want to have children because of money issues, the good news is that there is an effective method to prevent pregnancy that costs NOTHING.
Our children are naturally spaced just by breastfeeding (hey, that’s free too!! The wonder of it!!!). My husband and I do not use any contraception and I still had an absence of fertility for 13 months (imagine that) and did not get pregnant until 19 months postpartum.
I think that’s why God gave us breastmilk to begin with. And Pope John Paul II always insisted mothers nurse their children until at least the age of 2.
That is false. The calendar method was around 50 years ago or so. Currently taught methods of Natural Family Planning include the Billings Ovulation Method, the Creighton Method, and the Sympto-Thermal Method. All of these involve the daily observation of one or several signs of fertility, and the teaching of all of them cautions couples who have serious reasons to avoid conceiving NOT to rely on cycle length as a sign, EVER.
If a website that's not simply presenting a historical curiousity is discussing Calendar Rhythm, I suspect a deliberate intention to conceal the effective methods of fertility awareness from potential readers.
http://www.ccli.org/