What should a couple do if they have a good reason to avoid having a child?
A married couple can engage in marital intimacy during the naturally infertile times in a womans cycle, or after child-bearing years, without violating the meaning of marital intercourse in any way. This is the principle behind natural family planning (NFP). Natural methods of family planning involve fertility education that enables couples to cooperate with the body as God designed it. What is natural family planning? Natural family planning is a general name for the methods of family planning that are based on a womans menstrual cycle. A man is fertile throughout his life, while a woman is fertile for only a few days each cycle during the child-bearing years. Some believe that NFP involves using a calendar to predict the fertile time. That is not what NFP is today. A woman experiences clear, observable signs indicating when she is fertile and when she is infertile. Learning to observe and understand these signs is at the heart of education in natural family planning. When a couple de
