After they were married (and only after...) they got down to having children quick as they could and were praised for it.
Our parents became supporters of birth control once they realized there wasn't any more room for children in the family station wagons, and this was in the days before car seats for infants and toddlers, or even seat belts.
Buying back-to-school clothes was also pretty awful. Our choices as children were extremely limited, no name-brand fashions, and younger siblings wore a lot of hand-me-downs, nevertheless my dad's Sears card still wouldn't be paid off by Christmas.
We ate simple. We shared bedrooms and bathrooms. We ran out of hot water.
My mom is a "choose life" sort but taught my siblings and I about sex and birth control before it mattered to us. She was also prepared that some of us might bring accidental babies home, which none of us did because we all knew about dirty diapers, etc., and it was bad enough sharing rooms with siblings. (I was changing the diapers of siblings when I was ten.)
Among all my wife's and my siblings we haven't had many biological children, zero, one, two, or three, the overall average less than two, and none we weren't well prepared to support.
My wife and I had a Big Catholic Wedding, along with the mandatory Engagement Encounter beforehand. At the Engagement Encounter there was an earnest married couple to explain natural family planning as accepted by the Church. They faced a tough crowd. I may have noticed some eyes rolling and couples whispering to one another with bemused expressions.
Any thoughtful person will comprehend there are already too many people on earth, so many people that we are destroying the natural environment of this planet, such that honest and realistic sex education and easy access to birth control is a necessity.
Any thoughtful person can also see beyond "God instituted marriage when He created Eve for Adam." LGBT exist, they have always existed, and their committed relationships deserve to be respected and celebrated the same as anyone else.
If you're looking for people with abusive sexual relationships and/or horrible marriages you'll find them within authoritarian fundamentalist religious institutions.
Something most people don't understand about the Catholic Church is that it's not a monolithic institution, it can be authoritarian in authoritarian communities, and liberal in liberal communities. In Mexico it is very Mexican, in Ireland it is very Irish. The same is true even within the U.S.A.. Fascist communities have fascist churches, liberal communities have liberal churches.
My mom is a California Governor Jerry Brown sort of Catholic intellectual, but she's been at war with the authoritarian misogynistic aspects of the church her entire adult life.
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