Neuropsychologist Nacho Calderón Castro offers this article to Exaudi readers.

There are few things in life that are more subject to the gratuitous and unsolicited opinions of others than the number of children a couple has.

Recently, some childless friends told me they were convinced that after asking “What’s your name?” the most common question is “How many children do you have?” If the answer, as in their case, is “We don’t have children,” a whole series of questions, comments, and opinions, always impertinent, begins, making it extremely difficult to establish a worthwhile relationship with the person asking.

If a couple has a child, there’s no shortage of people who, after a while, ask the stupid question, “Aren’t you going for a couple?” As if the children were parakeets or civil guards.

When you have two children, it seems like everyone else is calm. You’ve fulfilled the socially (and stupidly) acceptable standard, and no one questions you about why you don’t have more or why you didn’t keep just one. It’s as good a choice as any other, and it also has the added benefit of avoiding unpleasant questions from the neighborhood.

When I told a neighbor that my wife and I were expecting our third child, he asked me:

“You’ll stop soon, won’t you?”

Obviously, he didn’t know me well enough to know what my reaction might be.

My answer was blunt:

“The number of children we’re going to have is the most intimate decision my wife and I can make, and obviously I wasn’t going to discuss it with you.”

Boom! Right in the mouth.

He was puzzled, perhaps even annoyed. Well, I trust he wouldn’t say something impertinent like that to anyone else again.

Years later, while shopping at Carrefour, my wife accidentally bumped her shopping cart into that of another woman who was surprised to see her with three such small children so close together (they were three, four, and five years old).

“You have three!” he said, “and so close together!”

To which my wife happily remarked: “And I’m waiting for the fourth!”

“Four?! You’re not from Opus Dei, are you?!” he said without blushing.

Fortunately, I wasn’t there to answer it.

These are just a couple of examples of the many impertinences we have to endure, those of us married couples who, exercising our freedom, decide to have more than two children.

The question “aren’t you Opus Dei?” denotes a complete lack of religious culture (and, of course, a complete lack of education). I could have asked: “aren’t you in the Neocatechumenal Way?” or “aren’t you in the Focolare Movement?” or “aren’t you in the Catholic Action Movement?” or “aren’t you in the Marriage of Our Lady?” or “aren’t you in the Secular Institute of Notre Dame de Vie?” or “aren’t you in the Lay Missionaries of Charity?”

I apologize to the hundreds of movements and charisms that enrich the Church today for not having mentioned them, but my memory doesn’t allow for more.

In the United States, since the percentage of Catholics is small, and they aren’t very cultured (let alone religious) they summarize their vision much more simply. Those of us who have more than three children are called “good Catholics.” The stupidity is sublime. As if not having children or having three or fewer implies a lack of quality in the faith, or vice versa. I insist, a simplicity.

But let’s analyze this simplistic view that many people have of living with faith.

So if I have three, four, or more children, it must be because “the Pope says you can’t use condoms.” Take a loquat! Now it turns out we have the Pope in bed.

Fine. For the sake of argument, let’s admit it’s true. Let’s admit that, in an act of freedom—not submission—my wife and I decided not to use artificial birth control methods. We decided not to alter her natural hormone levels by taking a pill, nor to place a plastic separating our skin, nor to insert a device into her vagina (IUD), nor to alter perfectly functional and healthy physiological functions through tubal ligation or a vasectomy. Because in this way, we consistently live out our faith in God as the beginning and end of our lives and our marriage.

What’s the opposite option? Ah! The option is that if we hadn’t had that faith in God or hadn’t understood that option as the appropriate means to live out our faith, we would have used one of the aforementioned methods to have fewer children. How many fewer? Again, to keep the discussion simple, let’s say one fewer.

Specifically, it means that if we had not lived our faith in God as we do, my daughter Teresa would never have been born.

Oh…!

I confess that just thinking about it makes me feel a deep emptiness and my hair stands on end.

And what is the profit?

What would have been the advantage if my daughter Teresa had not been born?

Offhand, I imagine – without knowing specific figures – but I suppose between 6,000 and 12,000 euros per year.

And would that have been worth it? I assure you, neither that nor that number multiplied by infinity would have made my life better without my daughter Teresa.

Is there another possible advantage? Would we have had more time for ourselves? Sure, but so what? Not a single minute, not a lifetime, would have satisfied the joy of being Teresa’s father.

I’ve always thought that if I hadn’t had four children, or even if I hadn’t gotten married, I would have been a much more prolific writer, I would have learned much more about neuropsychology, and I would have been more useful to my patients. I’m sure I would have also spent a lot more time lying around wasting time, watching TV, and maybe even playing a sport (I doubt it). But so what? Are any of those benefits, which they undoubtedly are, comparable to just one of my children or my marriage?

If it were true that we have four children because of how we live our faith, then I can say, “Blessed faith!” Even if I were to realize upon dying that God doesn’t exist, and that everything I’ve believed in was a mere fantasy, faith would have already given me much more than anything else in life could have offered: it would have given me my fourth daughter, and who knows, maybe a third as well.

I could conclude this article by comparing my way of living with the alternative society proposes. I could judge how one lives without faith, or without allowing faith to inform every decision in one’s life. Likewise, I could say:

What is the alternative?

What if, instead of faith, my professional/employment situation determines when to start having children and how many children to have? Should I have two or at most three children and then allow chemistry or mechanics to interfere with my marital/sexual/family life, in short – with my LIFE?

“It was an option, but then my life would have been much poorer and much worse spent.”

If I were to write that, and worse still, if I were to think about it, I would have fallen into what I criticize: I would have judged how each person lives their life and I would have interfered in the privacy of others.

Yes, let no one doubt that living the Catholic faith the way we do has allowed us to have four children and enjoy an enormously rich and magnificently well-spent life. And if each of my children, from the first to the last, weren’t a sufficient gift, I have the greatest of all, the greatest of my riches: I have faith in God and the awareness of His love.