But since we are not all needed to carry on the species, I don’t personally see any reason to continue to pressure women to be moms if they don’t want to be one.
just read that the 8 billionth person is expected to be born this November. Maybe we should all pitch in, and buy them a nice Tupperware set or something.
It's not necessarily as self-serving and limited as all that. Some people are just "hard wired" to want to nurture -- it's almost a driving biological and emotional drive, dare I say even a "spiritual" one. To want to take a helpless, vulnerable being and infuse it with high octane love and help it to develop into the very best version of itself it can be. Many people find this deeply satisfying and intensely creative.
Yes, in years past -- in societies with no underlying social benefit structure or in agricultural settings - -having many children may have played a practical part where you needed more hands in the field or someone to care for you when you got old. But you are eliminating the emotional side of things which often play a huge part for many parents and children who deeply love each other and want the best for each other. It's way too "reductive" to boil everything down to strictly self-serving needs.
@isabelle my POV on my earlier post was from an evolutionary and societal standpoint. Not from a personal standpoint.
I myself am a mother. And I get what you are saying that we are hardwired (to a point) to want to protect the cute/vulnerable young. But a squee for a cute baby is not the same as inflicting pressure on someone else to get pregnant and have a child.
My pondering was a look at why we as a society would have an interest in pressuring others to have children.
-- it's almost a driving biological and emotional drive, dare I say even a "spiritual" one. To want to take a helpless, vulnerable being and infuse it with high octane love and help it to develop into the very best version of itself it can be. Many people find this deeply satisfying and intensely creative.
That would more or less describe why I elected to have a child. I didn't do it to have someone to "love me", or to take care of me when I got old. In fact I was never particularly interested in babies. I just felt like it was my spiritual duty to have at least one, maybe two children. I waited until it was almost biologically too late. I had felt the spirit of my child buzzing around for several years; when I discontinued birth control he jumped at the chance and I was pregnant on the very first cycle-- even though I was over 40. I elected not to have a second child for a number of reasons-- number one being that I did not think I had it in me to do a great job of raising two children-- one was my limit, two would have shattered my mental health. My child is nearly a full adult and he is AWESOME in every way. I have a lot of accomplishments on my resume' but he is by far the best. I don't even know how such a damaged person as myself managed it. I really don't. But to this day I think raising him was one of my most important (if not *the* most important) duties in this incarnation.
Having said that---- had I gotten pregnant in college or even before age 30 I probably would have terminated. I was nowhere near spiritually or emotionally ready at that point. I think I would have ruined the poor child along with my own sanity.
Here is the latest from the Women Hating Party in North Carolina:
NC Bill 158 would make it legal to murder a pregnant woman who intends to get an abortion if you are “defending the life of a baby”
OK. Understood. I thought you were speaking personally. As you know, I certainly do not think ANYONE should be pressured into having/raising children if they are not interested in it. To be a good parent, to my mind, is like being a good gardener: it takes a specific skill set and commitment, it takes a strong desire to nurture seedlings to maximum full growth, many would say it even takes some passion...but not everyone finds gardening (or parenting) interesting. That fact should be acknowledged and respected! There are many ways humans can express themselves while on earth: not everyone is meant to become "a human gardener".
Your son sounds extraordinary and I love that you felt his soul buzzing around prior to your becoming pregnant. So beautiful!
In my case, I always knew one of the reasons I was put on earth was to become a parent...and I am convinced that my daughter was meant specifically for me. While at the orphanage I was allowed to "choose my own child" (this is highly unusual, long story behind it). There must have been at least 25-30 babies and toddlers there and most were not yet spoken for. I played with them all and thought they were all adorable...but I was waiting "to feel something special" b/c I respect my own intuition. I was beginning to despair! Finally, days later, an infant suddenly appeared whom I had not noticed before. I asked to feed her. She gulped down her bottle, sighed, burped and her tiny hand grasped my forefinger. At that exact moment, I felt a jolt of electricity go through me and I heard a certain, clear voice (in my head) say: "SHE's the one, SHE's the one". I had no doubt, I just knew. Fortunately, she was not yet spoken for. At that moment I knew I had found the daughter meant for me -- even though I had to travel across the globe to find her. It "felt right" then and "it feels right" now. We are a very good fit. We are both deeply blessed and we each know it.
So much is changing by the second (for the worse) and I can’t keep up. But I think in Missouri, a fetus is a person unless a pregnant woman wants a divorce, in which case it isn’t a person until the women gives birth.
Not sure if the fetus’s health rules over the mom’s health in that state.
I am currently trying to figure out how freaked out I should be if my just married Texas daughter suddenly finds herself pregnant . Will they force her to be on her death bed before for they allow for the removal of a non viable life from from her if there is a complication in her planned or unplanned required forced birth situation?
Would her doctor be tried for murder if they saved her life or murder if they don’t?
Also, which republicans from red states want to kill doctors for providing abortions? I can’t keep up anymore.
Also, it is actually against my religion to force me to carry a child if my life is at risk so who would I sue??
Next thing you know, red states will require tsa officials to get training to look for pregnant women during security image screenings and then force them into pregnant detention centers.
Not sure anymore how close that might come to reality.
Let me put your mind at ease to reiterate that if your daughter needs to get to CA for any type of reproductive health issue, I have room for you both here. I can help with transportation, with getting her to an appropriate clinic or hospital, and dealing with whatever program the state will have in place to secure both her personal and financial safety. I know she's in TX, but that's not so far from AZ, which is down the road from me. Both are a short plane ride (as you know flying here is probably a safer bet - many checkpoints between San Diego and Phoenix).
Don't worry, I got your backs.
In the meantime - tell her to get TSA Pre - those of us with that just go through regular metal detectors, not the image scanner. Takes a long time to process the application, so better to do it sooner rather than later.
MAGA Mothers against Greg Abbott will this resonate with voters?
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=8Sm-77iXC3k
Regards to all
Great ad, but at this point Texas may be a lost cause.
Here is the latest from the Women Hating Party in North Carolina:
NC Bill 158 would make it legal to murder a pregnant woman who intends to get an abortion if you are “defending the life of a baby”
This is beyond absurd. The fetus would also die, no? So then in that state wouldn't you be convicted of TWO murders??
@mistysue41 I want to point out that the mindset is more generalized. After my second child was born and things were relatively healthy, I knew that whatever happened, I could for sure take care of two kids. Now I was in my mid 20's by this point, so that's when I asked to get a vasectomy.
I had to argue to get it - not my GP but the person doing the procedure. I can be stubborn once I have made a decision, but I always wondered if people are talked out of it, and the consequences.
@April, funny that on pressure on kids. I made a point of celebrating the day my daughter was the same age as I was when she was born and did it again when she was the age I was when her brother was born. Basically, she knows there is 0 pressure on her from me to have children, but I do try to influence her in another way. I have brought her up that whatever rights she has, she has to use them fully because women in other parts of the world don't have them, yet need to be able to see them to know what is being kept from them. I phrase it much better with her, but I hope you get my point.
@unk-p the bill linked in that Twitter feed was from February 2021. It has already been put into committee death (they send bills like this to committee and they rarely come back out). If this were to have been taken up, it would have had to been done in the 2021 session.
I can relate. I have one brother (2 yrs younger) and both of us had endured an abusive father (manic bi-polar without medication). He didn't beat us but his temper tantrums and yelling and screaming almost every day left us less than desiring to have children, so neither of us ever did. That being said, I baby sat for others because I liked children. I loved kids and took jobs early on as teachers assistants, day camp counselors etc.
When my husband and I decided not to have children, (which we did not decide right away, it took us a couple years of being married to figure it out) everyone gave us the same lines that were mentioned in this post. I hated hearing how much I "would regret it". I didn't regret it, and it also doesn't mean I don't like children (which so many people assumed).
One of the reasons I jumped ship early on infertility treatments is that I share an abusive background with so many of you. My mother was unmedicated, bi-polar, borderline with narcissistic traits. I suffer from PTSD and depression. I didn't want to pass on those genetic predispositions.
My full brother, 2 years younger than me, and I used to joke that we did our best to raise her right, since she was never an "adult" when we were kids. This made both of us skeptical about having kids. We both never wanted more than 1. He went on to have 1 bio son, and I have my 1 adopted daughter (who also struggles with anxiety and depression, not ironically, but that's another story).
Fast forward to the last decade, and I have a half brother who is a kind soul. He married a woman who struggles with intractable depression, very much like my stepmother. Early on, they had said no kids for them, and I thought *whew* - good, now they won't pass that on. Then they decided to have just one kid, they had a son. They rehomed their cat "because having a kid is too much work we can't handle the cat anymore."A couple of years ago they decided to have a second child and had a daughter. (And I thought - wait, the cat was too much extra work but another kid isn't?). It's been a nightmare for my sister in law (and brother too). She really can't cope, and my brother has done his best but it's a lot to deal with. When the second child was born I went to their house to help out - I knew her postpartum was going to kick in strong like it did the first time. It did, and long story short, after a couple of weeks of living in that household I was so triggered that my hair was falling out, I got acne, I was retaining water, and I was getting (more) depressed.
When I see the kids, I can kind of see the roots of mental illness starting to grow in them, and intuitively I feel they will also struggle. Not that their parents are abusive or unkind, just that it is a tense household despite being loving, and the kids have to do the balancing act I am so familiar with in terms of having a mentally ill parent. And there's that strong genetic component and also financial worries. It breaks my heart.
So to me, their decision to have a second child in particular was a bit selfish, and frankly I'm not sure the marriage will survive long term. I opted to not have a bio child at one point after our daughter arrived (it was an early miscarriage, nevertheless I had to get a D&C, and then I made my husband get a vasectomy and got my tubes tied) - I knew I wouldn't be able to keep it together mentally.
But at least we all had choices.