Hi, this is a subject that has been on my mind since I was about 2 years old and old enough to watch my mother have multiple miscarriages. This subject is why I do not have children of my own. I'm wondering if anyone else has witnessed or had a similar experience to me.

I have seen beautiful, fit, talented young women...who after Mormon marriage literally BREAK...in every way when they start to breed. I've seen women need massive surgeries, illness, depression, staying in bed for YEARS...I've seen the destruction of women when they start the Mormon breeding program. I've seen women have one child and then get pregnant with another a month later or less. I've seen women use pregnancy as an excuse to get out of having to get a job or work for a career. I've seen women keep getting pregnant when there was no money and no way to hope to help her children be successful in their adult lives. I've seen women browbeat their children into becoming Mormons.

Being and adopted child I never understood my mother's need to keep breeding. She had two healthy adopted children...but it wasn't enough and 11 miscarriages later and 2 live births, she fell and the floor in a screaming fit saying she was done. She terrified me.

I remember my seminary teacher's wife in HS CONSTANTLY ill from either pregnancy, or depression or miscarriage...really, really ill. She was one of MANY. I saw another woman in my ward who could not have been more than 28 who had 8 children so close that she completely messed up the nerves in her hips and she was almost crippled.

I DO NOT understand why when a woman the FIRST time has the realization that pregnancy is hard, difficult and causing so many mental/physical problems, that she does not stop, back right up and realize that her own health is more important than what any man or woman on this planet has to say.

I know in my HS there were girls that would have been amazing athletes, and any number of professional women. I get obviously the mind control, the expectation of women in the church to throw all of that away and just raise a family. But my god...when you are that woman who is bleeding and bleeding or you are suffering and suffering and suffering...what is it that keeps her from telling her husband to go get snipped and that whatever number of children she has from 0 to whatever...is ENOUGH! Does she not understand when she is sick and exhausted...she can't be a good mother to the ones she already has? My entire life up to about age 10 was me living with my mother having miscarriages...she was in bed, exhausted and sick almost the entire time. It made a HUGE impact on me and I didn't even know that the time that I had chosen not to have children because of it.

I thought family planning was...to have only as many children as you could afford and your body/mind could handle...not just having as much sex as possible and taking whatever "came". I just don't get it. But as the child watching it...I lived it and it was horrible. So many dead babies, so much sorrow. If I were a man...I would never put my wife through that. Sex to me has never been nor would it ever be that important to put my wife through that...and I've seen it over and over and over and over and over.

I don't know what a man is thinking when his wife has lost herself entirely and they just keep "trying". It's a concept lost on me and it scares me. It makes me feel like men deep in patriarchy love to keep the women down and if she is healthy and strong...she might threaten him with her strength and happiness. I don't know...thoughts?

The reason I mention this is because right now I'm living with some people in their 20's from Europe and they only have a couple of siblings if that and man, they are so different than the LDS families I grew up with. They are strong, independent, awake, alive and they love their parents. They have money and it's just night and day to me people who breed to love and nurture their kids and those that breed because the church told them to.

My mother also suffered many miscarriages. She had pregnancy induced lupus. When I was five she suffered through a difficult labor just to give birth to a baby girl she already knew was dead. My dad did a lot of things wrong in his life, but he did at least one thing right. He got himself snipped and never asked my mother to put herself through that again.

On the flip side, my sister-in-law has a medical condition that literally makes it life-threatening for her to simply be pregnant. Plus, she has suffered at least a dozen or more very early miscarriages over the course of her 6 year marriage, and yet she and my brother keep "trying." WTF?

I just wonder why a woman who knows the misery of physical pain and troubled pregnancy would agree to enter that again. I guess for a girl who did do the whole abstinence thing in YW's for her 6 years of indoctrination...what keeps that girl once she finds out she cannot go through a pregnancy without horrible effects...from just going..."I've gone the first 6 years of my life post puberty sex free, I can do it again". Or something of that sort. Heck there are tons of ways to enjoy sex without resulting in a pregnancy. I'm just scratching my head.

Nope. We're out of the cult. My wife is pregnant again too soon (conceived maybe 6 weeks after our first was born despite multiple methods of birth control) but this is her final pregnancy no matter what the outcome. She's having a c-section, so she'll have a tubal ligation. Otherwise I'd get snipped. We wanted two children, and with a bit of luck, that is what we'll end up with. A body can withstand only so much.

My brother tried to pressure his wife into having her seventh child about three years ago. She and her youngest two moved in with us (she visited the other children daily, and they came here as well) until he came to his senses. I took him to his appointment to get snipped when he got tired of being single.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/28/2015 11:13PM by scmd.

Yes, women who continued having C-sections when advised against it... It was almost like witnessing Viet Nam war stories, where women had to top each other in the pain and suffering dept.

WHY??? STOP!!! You are in control of your own body and reproduction! Was it a contest, who could have the most babies without death? Is Jesus going to pat you on the head?

My mother had too many children and clearly resented it (made that crystal clear).

Yes, over the years I have seen my share.

I think one of the measures that could help tremendously is in-depth education concerning pregnancy and how it affects a woman's body, plus parenting and child development. How does the saying go?---and ounce of prevention is worth....?

I think we also need to have education concerning the subject of what constitutes healthy behavior as apposed to unhealthy behavior so that youth are in a position to understand if they are being indoctrinated, verbally abused, sexually abused, emotionally abused etc. etc., and then have plans in place providing assistance to these young people.

Speaking for myself, I was in the dark about so many of these and other important issues. I grew up in a single home where my Mom did not even have her high school diploma when she was forced to separate finally from my alcoholic Dad and try to provide for five kids. She was so busy and so depressed, and did not possess the information in most areas to educate us kids, nor did she have the where-with-all to even try.

I think because of my home situation, I fell for the church/cult teaching that its true plan would bring happiness here on earth and forever. I really liked being around children I think because children give love so unconditionally which filled a big void in my life, and I wanted a big family. It really seems rather ironic and well, even stupid on my part, that with my home situation that I would desire this, but I did. So then, you put the two together, the kudos from the church to bring children into the world and my wanting a large family plus very, very little 'other'information that might enlighten and educate me, and you have a recipe for what happened to me and has happened to many women, especially back in the Dark Ages when I was having kids.

Not everyone is brainwashed into having more babies. I have a chronic musculoskeletal problem where I have pain that is random and widespread. During my first pregnancy I spent a good deal of time in physical therapy because my pelvic bones were just separating from each other. I had to push in an unusual position to protect my hips. I spent a month in pt for lingering pelvis problems when my first was one. Still planned and completed pregnancy number two. Even though I could hardly walk at the end. The doctor for the second didn't understand how fragile my hips were until I stopped - while pushing the baby out - to yell at her for pushing my leg too much. My hip hurt more than the 8lb plus baby in the birth canal! My kids are totally worth some temporary pain to me. Now my issues were not life threatening, and I've been lucky enough to avoid miscarriage or any really serious complications but just because pregnancy can be painful doesn't mean someone shouldn't have kids.