Several women I know are pregnant right now. This should be a joyous experience, and mostly it has been despite the physical symptoms that are no picnic, but one thing that’s causing all these women some grief is:
You.
You, the friend, family member or random asshole in the grocery store who feels the need to advise them on what they should eat, do, wear, be around or name their offspring. You, the person who hassles them with all the horror stories of all the pregnancies you’ve ever heard of third person, let alone experienced. You tell yourself, “Oh, I’m being so helpful – five points to me on the scoreboard of life!” but really, you’re just being a smug turd and using this woman as an object to bolster your own ego. You need to shut right up, and failing that, our society needs to accept that if a pregnant woman stuffs a very smelly sock down your throat, it’s not that her hormones are acting up: it’s that you are being an asshole and objectifying this woman.
Unless you have solid reasons to suspect this woman isn’t under a doctor’s care at all or is smoking pounds of crack or something equally drastic, shut up. Do not think to yourself, “She’s buying brie cheese and cat food – clearly, her doctor is a quack or she’s ignoring the doctor’s advice, so I, a mid-level manager in a factory, should immediately dispense second-hand medical advice in the interest of saving not one but two lives!” And here we get to the real reason why you feel the urge to intervene if you think a pregnant woman’s being exposed to cat turds: it’s a two-for-the-price-of-one dime store hero act. You go home and tell yourself you’ve saved a baby and some vessel-thing it was in, so YAY YOU!
Except not. This is how the ego works: it lies to you to get its way without interference from your conscience or common sense. All you’ve really done is contribute further to her stress levels which, ironically, is not so good for the health of her or the baby. You haven’t helped anybody. You’ve actually done some harm, and if you’d engaged your empathy before using her, you might have noticed her discomfort.
Why, oh, why is the mean old feminist being so mean to you? Well, let’s talk about that.
- When a woman gets pregnant, a lot of people around her lose sight of the fact she’s a human being. She becomes an object/event, and people limit their discourse with her to the topic of her pregnancy. Suddenly, everything she does twenty-four hours a day is supposed to be about the baby. She disappears from the equation. A woman’s brain does not hibernate for nine months because there’s a baby inside her. If you don’t think she deserves consideration as a human, then at least be aware that an “incubator” who’s stressed and unhappy is not an optimal environment for the developing new life you actually value. Doctors understand this: that’s why they aim to keep both the woman and the developing baby as healthy and comfortable as possible.
- Pregnant women are not “crazy” because their hormones go all funky. In fact, pregnancy has a stabilizing effect on several mental illnesses. Pregnant women only appear “crazy” to you because they are suddenly being subjected to harassment like they’ve probably never experienced before, but you have the privilege of not realizing this (and yes, even if you are a formerly pregnant woman yourself, that doesn’t mean you realized how badly you were being treated before passing on the same behaviors). They’re under tremendous stress, because there’s all sorts of contradictory information about what they should do to ensure their baby’s well-being, and they’re doing their best, and they know if anything goes wrong, not only will they worry like crazy, but they know they have to look forward to assholes like you sitting in judgment…
- …because that’s what it’s really about for you. It’s about feeling superior.
“But but but,” you say, aghast at my terrible attitude, “I really just want to help! I don’t feel superior! Well, I mean, obviously I know something she doesn’t so I feel better informed, perhaps, but not superior, per se.”
My response follows. Observing that someone is pregnant and giving them unsolicited advice about it is a lot like observing someone has a really fantastic secondary sexual characteristic and giving them unsolicited comments about it. What you are saying is, “I’m monitoring your body for you. As a representative of your overlords, I have to tell you, here’s what we think of your body and what you are doing with it.”
Not only do you not know everything, but neither do doctors. Different doctors make different recommendations to pregnant women regarding diet and activity. Different countries tend to give contradictory advice. Who died and made you S/He Who Knows What You Should Really Do When You’re Pregnant?
You need to realize that this behavior is actually all about you. It’s about your need to feel special, your need to participate in what’s none of your business, your need to connect with someone (and your discovery that pregnant women are easy targets). Get over it.
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But really, isn’t almost all social intercourse just about using people as sounding boards to show off how great you are? I think I know about, maybe five people I have actual conversations with. Every one else I just talk to because I like the way I sound.
Sam L.(Quote) (Reply)
What about smoking while pregnant? That’s probably the only moment when I have to make myself not say something; everything else I think a pregnant woman knows and can decide for herself. If she drinks a glass of wine, I think it’s possibly the only glass of wine in a month or the whole pregnancy, and if not, she probably knows what she’s doing. But with a cigarette, I always think that if she smokes one, she smokes ten or twenty a day.
So far, I don’t think I ever said something, but I always wanted to.
The Other Patrick(Quote) (Reply)
Never mind the baby. If she smokes around *me* she’s getting a complaint.
I’ve noticed this with bare feet: when people say something about my bare feet, they don’t seem to realize that they are just one of many commenters, and it gets really old really fast. Being pregnant and getting that all the time would be so much worse.
Anemone(Quote) (Reply)
I don’t feel superior! Well, I mean, obviously I know something she doesn’t so I feel better informed
How do you know? Just because she’s not reading a pregnancy how-to right now doesn’t mean she hasn’t informed herself.
SunlessNick(Quote) (Reply)
@Anemone: Well, I regard that as a separate issue, because in such a case I’m either in a bar or an apartment where smoking is expressly allowed, or is expressly forbidden. In the first case, I know what I got into when I came there, and in the second, anyone smoking can expect to be told not to. And if we’re outside, there’s still a difference between “would you mind smoking in the other direction and a few steps away from me?” and “Do you really want to endanger your kid?”
The Other Patrick(Quote) (Reply)
Amen. And I think it’s a fairly clear sign of how dehumanized people think pregnant women should be, that your first comment is someone explaining the circumstances under which he thinks it’s okay to lecture a pregnant woman (if I see you bossing a pregnant woman around once a day, I know you’re bossing every pregnant woman you see! Heck, probably most of the women of any kind that you see!)
Sara(Quote) (Reply)
Patrick, I would tend to assume the pregnant smoking woman has heard that OMG SMOKING IS EVIL YOU WILL DIE DIE DIE since it’s kind of hard to avoid having heard that the last couple of decades. Now, I have actually known pregnant women who were advised to cut down on their cigarettes rather than quit, because the stress of quitting could be bad for the baby. I have no idea if that’s sound advice – doctors frequently dispense half-baked ideas that turn out to be horseshit. It’s also possible she knows she shouldn’t be smoking but just doesn’t care. But again, what business is it of mine?
Do you tell men to quit smoking? Deeply hidden studies have shown that whatever men imbibe up to 5 years before contributing a sperm to a zygote can compromise the genetics of the zygote, yet no one wags their finger at married men who are sucking down beer in what might turn out to be part of a 5 year window before becoming a father. Because that study got buried FAST – no one wanted to blame fathers for birth defects, oh, no. Woman-blaming is far more popular.
Jennifer Kesler(Quote) (Reply)
As a woman with a baby: So. Goddamned. True. And it never ends! Never! Now that I have brought my sweet little boy into the world, it seems that every aspect of my and his lives are up for scrutiny. His size. His eating habits. His facial expressions!
For instance, my child doesn’t really like it when strangers get all up in his face, so when people he doesn’t know try to be all, “cootchie-coorchie-coo” with him, he just stares at them. And then, I get the, “He’s such a serious baby! Why doesn’t he smile?” (I’m always tempted to answer, “Oh, he smiles. At people he LIKES.”) He’s also thin. Tall, but thin. He’s incredibly active, he eats very well, he’s ahead developmentally on a few things, and his doctor is perfectly fine with his size. And yet, family, friends, and even random strangers seem to think I am simply not feeding him enough. (I worry enough about my son as it is, thank you. I do not need other people giving me the impression that he’s malnourished.)
I think I made a comment at some point on an earlier thread that I wasn’t aware of the fact that my pregnancy suddenly turned my body into public property. However, your statement that a pregnant woman goes from being a “person” to a “baby vessel” is an even better descriptor of what a pregnant woman goes through. At one point, my mother-in-law fussed at her dog for “staring at baby,’ (in my general direction, while I was still pregnant. I wasn’t even sure the dog was looking at my stomach, but unless the creature had x-ray vision, he was only looking at me. That didn’t matter, however, because all I was was an incubator. (This, also, has unfortunately not ended for me, at least in the eyes of my mother-in-law. Now that I have borne one child, she is all set for me to become a vessel for the next, which, by the way, she “requests” will be a girl.)
I know I’ve been guilty of giving pregnant women unsolicited advice, especially right after my son was born. I justified it by saying that I was just trying to share what worked for me, but every woman, and every pregnancy, is different. Just because it worked for me, doesn’t mean that anything I’ve been through will help anybody else. In fact, sometimes it hurts, not only by making the mother more stressed, but also by creating false expectations. (Just because I did X and everything was fine, doesn’t mean the same will apply to another woman, and vice versa. A woman should trust her own doctor, so long as she’s found a doctor she feels she can trust.)
(Such a long one! Sorry! This one brought up LOTS of very strong feelings!)
mana g(Quote) (Reply)
And I concur that asking someone to stop fouling your breathing air with their cigarettes is different from criticizing a pregnant woman for her choice to smoke.
Jennifer Kesler(Quote) (Reply)
Mana G, thanks for sharing all of that. It was totally relevant and interesting, especially for anyone who’s not personally experienced that (or who never will).
Jennifer Kesler(Quote) (Reply)
Jennifer, can you post a link to that study? I’ve never heard of it before, and now I’m all a-curious. Not that I ever plan on having kids, but if I ever change my mind on that, this sounds like the sort of thing I should know about.
DSimon(Quote) (Reply)
Sorry, DSimon, it was reported in the back of Omni magazine in the late 80s, and I have never, ever been able to find it elsewhere. Like I said, it was buried hardcore. I never even found anything saying it had been discredited, which is always a possibility with studies.
Alongside it was the study where they took women on BC pills and women not on BC pills, and gave them t-shirts drenched in male sweat to sniff. Some of the t-shirts were from male relatives, others were from strangers. The women were asked which ones smelled more attractive to them, and the women on BC picked their relatives while the women not on BC picked strangers. This was taken to suggest that BC turns our histocompatibility recognition stuff backwards and causes women on BC to lust after relatives, or something. THIS study reappeared in a class I took in college and later on the news. But the one suggesting men who want to father kids have any responsibilities other than financial? Disappeared like someone the CIA didn’t want to hear from again.
Actually, this is as close as I can get, but it doesn’t mention how long you need to clean yourself out. It talks about 74 day cycles, but isn’t clear on whether that’s enough time to mitigate the effects:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2008/feb/19/health.drugsandalcohol
Jennifer Kesler(Quote) (Reply)
One of my sisters, well into a pregnancy with twins, started dreading leaving her house, because people would stare and comment and point and touch. And she was huge, mind you. She’s a tiny woman and carrying two 6 lb babies (she had them at 8 months, so you can imagine how much bigger they could have been!) showed a lot, but jeez.
It was exactly like you said – like she wasn’t a person anymore. The worst were the stares, because I witnessed quite a few of them were full of derision/disdain. I could never figure that out, and confess I wasn’t sure it was true until I saw it for myself.
sbg(Quote) (Reply)
I’m glad you felt it was useful, Jennifer Kesler! I felt like I was just ranting! sbg, I remember the stares, some of them seeming to be outright angry, as I got closer to my due date. I could never figure out WHY some people would glare at me like that. Was it because of my size? I am also petite, so I ended up being just HUGE by the time my son was born. So was it just fat-shaming? Was it because of the fact that I look so young that I was mistaken for a pregnant teen? (And therefore, I suppose, deserved to be glared at, I say sarcastically.) Was it for simply daring to take my very pregnant body out of the house? I know some people, as the time grew nearer to my due date, would gaze at me in alarm, as if they felt that I would begin having my baby at any moment. (“TV-labor” does not occur for most women. Trust me, it can take a WHILE to get that baby out of there.) I could never figure it out, either.
mana g(Quote) (Reply)
I witnessed quite a few of them were full of derision/disdain.
What the fuck?? I can’t imagine why anyone would feel the need to do that. That’s really sick.
Jennifer Kesler(Quote) (Reply)
Hear hear! What I hate the most I think is the “oh you silly hormonal thing” treatment. Suddenly all our ideas and beliefs and feelings are moot or blamed on hormones if the other person doesn’t agree. Just a few weeks into my most recent pregnancy my husband and I had a go around about money, which is not terribly common for us, but I feel it was a reasonable discussion. Then I get the “OMG you are soooooo hormonal” bit from him and wow, did that ever end that. He certainly got an earful then! (This of course applies to a lesser degree with the “har har are you pms’ing?” quips)
Stassja(Quote) (Reply)
THIS!!!!!!!
It is really annoying that everyone under the sun is now telling me what to do with my body and what I shouldn’t be doing about my body. I’m having a hard enough time with my wicked strong morning sickness, but every time I turn around I am either guilted that I haven’t been able to eat like I should despite the fact that I have a medical condition preventing me, or I’m told what little I can manage to keep down is bad for me and will hurt my unborn child.
AmyMcCabe(Quote) (Reply)
I’m making my blog entry about drinking juice public for this. Yes, I got yelled at for drinking cran-grape juice the other day. Too bad she wasn’t around earlier in the day for my veggie sushi. It would have probably given her a heart attack.
AmyMcCabe(Quote) (Reply)
I witnessed quite a few of them were full of derision/disdain
Wow. I have been trying to prepare myself for strangers groping at me, but I didn’t realize random people will be hating me for no reason too. What fun! /sarcasm
AmyMcCabe(Quote) (Reply)
Jenn, yeah – that’s why I wasn’t quite sure my sister’s radar wasn’t affected by the fact she was growing increasingly, physically uncomfortable. But, nope. She might as well have been pond scum.
AmyMcCabe, I think maybe it had more to do with the fact that she was very, very, very big. My sister’s barely 5’1″ and with two good-sized babies in there, she was much larger than she was with her first child.
And, no, I’ve never quite figured out why that was seen as bad.
sbg(Quote) (Reply)
I could never figure out WHY some people would glare at me like that. Was it because of my size? I am also petite, so I ended up being just HUGE by the time my son was born. So was it just fat-shaming? Was it because of the fact that I look so young that I was mistaken for a pregnant teen? (And therefore, I suppose, deserved to be glared at, I say sarcastically.) Was it for simply daring to take my very pregnant body out of the house? I know some people, as the time grew nearer to my due date, would gaze at me in alarm, as if they felt that I would begin having my baby at any moment.
You should never have to wonder why, because it should not happen. Alas, more often than not, people suck.
That last bit made me giggle, imagining people thinking, “OH NO SHE’S GONNA HAVE A BABY ON MY FEET RIGHT HERE AT THE WALMART! DANGER, DANGER!”
sbg(Quote) (Reply)
I really liked this post! Very thought-provoking.
Especially:
“You tell yourself, ‘Oh, I’m being so helpful – five points to me on the scoreboard of life!’ but really, you’re just being a smug turd and using this woman as an object to bolster your own ego.”
and
“You need to realize that this behavior is actually all about you. It’s about your need to feel special, your need to participate in what’s none of your business, your need to connect with someone . . .”
But, perhaps touching on what Sam L. mentioned, couldn’t a lot of this apply to other social interactions? Especially with regard to other people whom others may deem ‘voiceless’ – the underprivileged, people of color, people with disabilities, so many others that inspire others to campaign on their behalf, for their own good.
For example, a little modification of your points and they can still be similarly valid:
– When a woman gets pregnant, a lot of people around her lose sight of the fact she’s a human being.
– When a person is a person of color, a lot of people around her lose sight of the fact that she’s a human being.
– Pregnant women are not “crazy” because their hormones go all funky
– People of Color are not “crazy” because their culture or beliefs may be different
One could even make parallels between this “stop reproving to other people what they should/shouldn’t do just to feel better about yourself” and the recent embroglio about women writing slash fiction (so sorry if you understandably just wanted this matter to die and stay dead): the general impression I got out of it was that many people who were not gay men who write male slash were not going to just say “Sorry about all the appropriation! We’ll stop now!” but were bringing up the subject (ad nauseum) as a way to declare “See! My privilege is not blind!” and “I’m hip to the Gay Issues!” as ways of making themselves feel better about their privilege and their fiction. Then they took it a step further and started admonishing all around fandom that we need more femmeslash and het and good female and PoC characters, smugly tut-tutting all the TV shows and other fiction that have too many of those apparently intrinsically deplorable white men.
Jack(Quote) (Reply)
Jack, what you’re describing is objectification, and that’s how I classified the pregnancy treatment, so yes, it’s analogous to a lot of social issues.
– People of Color are not “crazy” because their culture or beliefs may be different
Even better and more analogous to my original point:
People of Color are not “crazy” when they say you are behaving in a racist manner – they are simply observing that which your privilege shields you from having to recognize.
Jennifer Kesler(Quote) (Reply)
Ugh, I get enough of this public body-shaming just by daring to be fat in public. I can only imagine how much worse it would be if the busybodies could justify it by “thinking of the children.”
lilacsigil(Quote) (Reply)
Don’t advise pregnant women unless you’re a doctor
And if you are a doctor, still don’t advise pregnant women except in the specific case where you are seeing them as part of your job and the advice you are giving is relevant and appropriate to the context in which you are interacting with them.
I don’t know what it’s like in the US, but here in the UK I’d advise all pregnant women to wear ear protection when near medical staff to defend against the constant barrage of unsolicited, dogmatic advice.
Dom Camus(Quote) (Reply)
Bear in mind, that I can speak only for my experience in Germany (and to some part for Soviet Union). I have often heard people in my family and at work say, that Germany is becoming a child-hating society. For example: It is easier to find a landlord who accepts a petholder than a family with little children (which is both said to be quite difficult). It is practically impossible for a woman to go back to full time work once she had a child, not only because there a no jobs with convenient working hours (my experience is that only an office-job has these), but also because not every area provides full-time childcare, most of these are parttime and if you are lucky enough to have your child enrolled in a kindergarten that has the possibility to extend these hours, you have to fight other parents nail and tooth for a place and you have to pay an extra fee. Politicians begin to promote additional taxes/statutory insurances directed only at childless population (I know only that there is a difference in nursing care insurance, but remember vaguely there were also others. Personally I think it is stupid. Give me a job that pays enough to support a single parent with child without bordering on the social welfare minimum and I’ll be happy to oblige.) In most of places I lived neighbors were often griping about families with children (because they were loud; because they were constantly running the stairs up and down, because the clothesline were always full…) These might be a part of an explanation to what mana and sbg told. To put it bluntly: My own freedom and comfort matters more then societal needs or your wish of a child. And you daring to show up in public pregnant reminds me that I’ll have to pay for it, financially or otherwise.
Elee(Quote) (Reply)
Elee: A friend of mine did her master’s thesis on families and part-time jobs in the Netherlands, and up to this day I’m amazed at how different Germany treats this topic. Basically, if you want to get a child, you should be prepared to stop working – unless you’re a teacher, which is part of the reason I’m becoming a teacher, in case I father a child, I’d be glad to stay home.
It often seems to me you’re either 100% in the mother’s brigade or 100% against it.Ugh.
The Other Patrick(Quote) (Reply)
Oh, and thanks for the post and this discussion, as it seems no matter how “far” I think I am, I still have ways to go, and this was at least partly a blind spot for me. Now I find myself thinking about it and hopefully becoming better. Thanks.
The Other Patrick(Quote) (Reply)
Re: Germany. That’s surprising to me. I thought all countries were obsessed with replicating their citizens.
I actually thought I was fairly hostile to the idea of pregnancy and babies before I read this thread. I think we fetishize motherhood, parenthood and babies in a way that promotes pumping out loads of babies with little concern for their quality of life. I think people frequently have kids not because they’re really thought it over, but because “it’s what you do, isn’t it?” and that appalls me. And I think the US often rewards irresponsible, self-centered parents and asks childfree people and responsible parents to pick up their slack, and that’s all sick.
I also think if the species went extinct, these things happen and it would probably be the best thing we could do for the rest of the planet, and so I often shock people who assume I’ll agree when they point out the importance of preventing extinction by keeping up birth rates.
But how on EARTH could any of that translate into having specific negative feelings about the pregnancy of a stranger, whose life situation is completely unknown to me? I seriously can’t fathom it.
Jennifer Kesler(Quote) (Reply)
But, perhaps touching on what Sam L. mentioned, couldn’t a lot of this apply to other social interactions? Especially with regard to other people whom others may deem ‘voiceless’ – the underprivileged, people of color, people with disabilities, so many others that inspire others to campaign on their behalf, for their own good.
I notice it a lot with mental illness.
SunlessNick(Quote) (Reply)
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