I really really appreciate that this person went off and I TRULY do think this is a conversation that needs to be had more and more.
I am not going to reiterate or repeat anything they said above, but I want to share my personal feeling on a subtler aspect of this issue.
People don’t want to talk about pregnancy as a potentially dangerous and lifethreatening condition because many of them believe it is necessary for a full and meaningful life. Unfortunately, many many of the people who believe this are not also the people who would be carrying the baby.
Our social narratives are all largely amatonormative, and beneath that, bioessential. That is, they operate on a sort of supremacy of the body, as well as the nuclear family narrative. What this means is that most people are raised and pressured into believing that a) having a baby is a MUST for a meaningful life (hidden agenda: have someone to take care of you when you’re old bc amatonormative society isolates family units and ostracizes seniors) and b) it is the birthing of the child that gives this meaning- no other form of childcare is meaningful.
Now before I go on I am NOT JUDGING anyone’s life, desires or dreams, I am critiquing the social narratives that we are raised with.
Anyway that last bolded point is why there;s all the talk in the world about ‘starting a family’ via childbirth and an entire industry geared towards enhancing fertility when pregnancies are not forthcoming (and many many people who stress themselves out trying to have a baby, feeling guilty or broken because the social and relationship pressures to fulfill this ideal) meanwhile adoption continues to be seen as a third- not second option. Present, living children are less important than the ideal of childbirth forced on people.
And I say ‘forced’ because it is an expectation. It is an ever-present social narrative. And it goes hand in hand with the fact that it is seen as taboo or shameful to talk about pregnancy as difficult, dangerous, and not necessarily all sunshine and smiles.
Mothers are shamed for feeling less than joyful about this very dangerous experience, and by that others are also shamed for feeling averse or apprehensive about pregnancy. It is an intentionally created false narrative that plays into the hands of patriarchy- because a grand amount of this pressure and related apathy (”oh it’s not a big deal, it’s just pregnancy!” says someone who isn’t carrying the baby..) continues to allow men to pressure women into having children (”THEIR” children– unlike, say, an adopted child) just so they can feel the pride of having sired a child (even though their contribution is oh so genetically and energetically small).
If we talked more honestly about pregnancy and childbirth, we might have to validate the concerns and lifestyles of uterus-bearing people who were expected to want to become pregnant. Men might have to just back down and shut up about wanting to create ‘kids of their own’ through someone else’s body. We as a people might have to think twice about acting as if pregnancy is inherently positive when this society is not actually capable of offering healthy supportive pregnancies to most pregnant people because a society that treats poor and black people this badly as well as one that isolates families into these tiny units isn’t capable of giving pregnant people the considerable care and support they need at such a precarious time.
Pregnancy is pregnancy– that’s it. Things do not inherently mean anything aside from the meaning we assign to them–therefore pregnancy and childbirth are not inherently positive nor is it necessary for a meaningful life.
When we do not speak openly and honestly about pregnancy, we are not letting people make informed choices about their bodies; this is not informed consent.
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