mara@cmcl2.NYU.EDU (Mara Chibnik) (06/12/91)
In article <49657@ricerca.UUCP> jan@oas.olivetti.COM writes: >Back to the adoption bit. I admire women who can give up a child for >adoption, but I suspect they're rare. > >[They are. One source noted that 3 percent of unwed mothers in the US >actually give up their child at birth. cf. _Abortion: The Clash of >Absolutes_ by Laurence H. Tribe. --CTM] > >I could no more do that than donate my heart at childbirth. Some >women who *did* give up children in the 40's and 50's have said they >never recovered. My kids told me they feel the same way the other day >when we were discussing "what to do if". I think some of the >stereotyping of men as irresponsible may come from a sort of >flabbergasted inability to understand some very loud men who make it >sound like this should be easy. Some years ago I was talking to a close (male) friend of mine about the likelihood that technology would soon do away with the argument that terminating a pregnancy meant ending the life of the fetus/child. I was quite surprised that he felt that most men would find this very troubling. Either, he thought, they'd want the kids themselves, or they'd want them to be raised by someone they knew about, or they'd want to know that the fetus had been destroyed. (His position on abortion was that it was a bad thing but that it should be legal; "Let people commit their own sins," is the way he put it.) I can imagine that it would be extremely hard for a woman to give up for adoption the child that she's borne. (It's obvious that this can be rough even on someone who chose to bear a child on behalf of someone else.) I'd be interested to hear how common people think my friend's feelings are. (Is this still germane to soc.feminism? Seems so to me, but I'll redirect if you think I should.) -- mara@panix.com Mara Chibnik mara@dorsai.com Life is too important to be taken seriously.
falcao@felix.metaphor.com (Ronnie Falcao) (06/22/91)
>Some years ago I was talking to a close (male) friend of mine about >the likelihood that technology would soon do away with the argument >that terminating a pregnancy meant ending the life of the >fetus/child. I was quite surprised that he felt that most men would >find this very troubling. Either, he thought, they'd want the kids >themselves, or they'd want them to be raised by someone they knew >about, or they'd want to know that the fetus had been destroyed. >(His position on abortion was that it was a bad thing but that it >should be legal; "Let people commit their own sins," is the way he >put it.) > -- >mara@panix.com Mara Chibnik mara@dorsai.com I've heard similar feelings from other men and, yes, I think an examination of this attitude is very germane to feminism. Here are my thoughts on factors that contribute to it: For most people, their first relationship with a woman is with their own mother. It's a basic human need to feel loved and wanted, so we all would like to believe both our parents very much wanted to conceive, bear, deliver and rear us. In mainstream American culture of the 50's and 60's, it seems that many of us had different expectations of our mothers and our fathers, so many children growing up during those times will feel an exaggerated need for their mother, in particular, to have wanted them. Since they want to believe they were wanted from even before their conception, they'll naturally assume they were wanted and loved even when they were a two-month old fetus, the age near which most abortions are performed. As children, we naturally extend our personal observations to apply to large categories of people, unless challenged with conflicting evidence. So we project these hopes of our own mother's feelings about us on to all women, assuming that every woman very much wants to have babies and shower them with selfless nurturing. Clinging to the fantasy that "all women long to bear children" is something you might expect of someone who has never voluntarily examined their attitudes or been presented with conflicting evidence. And it's also incongruous with the notion that a woman could easily part with a two-month fetus, not even caring to follow its development and growth. This attitude is very evident among the male leaders of the anti-abortion folks. They'll often mention their beliefs that every pregnant woman wants to carry the pregnancy to term and raise the child, but that evil abortion rights activists are convincing them to have an abortion. They ignore studies which show that relief is one of the most common feelings for a woman who's just had an abortion. My experience watching other women become mothers is that a strong attachment to the fetus/baby develops along with the pregnancy, rather than bursting into full bloom upon conception. So it makes sense to me that a pregnant woman's feelings about a two-month fetus would be different from those for a baby that she's carried to term and labored to deliver. Aside from direct experience of pregnancy, why is it that more men than women retain a child's fantasy about all women's desire to have babies and selflessly nurture them? Those of us who face the possibility of actually being the one to do the conceiving, bearing, delivering and rearing perhaps achieve a more realistic notion of what's involved. For women, the conflicting evidence may come very early. I grew up in a neighborhood with LOTS of large families, so most of the kids in the neighborhood were familiar with the details of pregnancy and delivery. Many girls among my friends declared that they were never going to have babies, based on what they knew they'd have to go through. Some women don't give much thought to the subject until they find themselves faced with an unwanted pregnancy, at which point they may be startled to find that they feel little or no attachment to the fetus and just want to get rid of it with as little fuss as possible. These women experience the fetus more as the parasite it is than the person it might become. Men are never faced with the possibility of conceiving, bearing or delivering a baby, so it's harder for them to imagine themselves in that situation. Some sympathetic men may be able to imagine it themselves, and others are willing to listen to women's feelings rather than projecting their own feelings onto women. These men would probably be in a better position to understand why a woman would not be troubled with terminating a pregnancy that didn't end the life of the fetus/child. Comments? - Ronnie Ronnie Falcao, Metaphor Computer Systems, Mountain View, CA falcao@metaphor.com What do you see said he I am not this body What do you see said he I am a spirit living within I did not choose this frame or this picture of me you see But I am living inside this time of this me - Judy Fjell, "Dance In The Moment"
jan@orc.olivetti.COM (Jan Parcel) (06/25/91)
In article <9106212337.AA15912@felix.Metaphor.COM> falcao@felix.metaphor.com (Ronnie Falcao) writes: >My experience watching other women become mothers is that a >strong attachment to the fetus/baby develops along with the >pregnancy, rather than bursting into full bloom upon conception. >So it makes sense to me that a pregnant woman's feelings about a >two-month fetus would be different from those for a baby that >she's carried to term and labored to deliver. When I was about 18, I met a psychic (she said) girl about my age who said teachers of hers did an interesting research project. They assigned people who could see auras to follow pregnant women and see what they could see. They said an assortment of souls flirted with the mother for the first 3 months or so, then one entered the foetus, anytime from 0-4 months. If the woman was REALLY opposed to having a child, the soul had to wait until birth to enter. And if the father was around the mother a lot, then he was a factor in the process. Now, this is hardly scientifically or, for others, even religiously acceptable, but I find it a good metaphor for my experience. With my first child, I felt physically pregnant but not like a mother-to-be until one day, 3+ months along, when I suddenly fell asleep all day, and when I woke up, the baby was moving and I felt like there were 2 people in my body. With my second, I had been trying unsuccessfully to conceive for about 2 years, and I went to the doctor, who explained what I was doing wrong timing-wise, and zap! Pregnant again. But this time, I knew THAT MORNING (from conception) that I was pregnant, and I was able to confirm it with a thermometer the following morning, and I felt like a mother-to-be from those two days. It later turned out I had complications which could have killed the baby anytime after conception, and when she got out of the hospital at 5 days old (3 days after I got home), the doc said she was medically impossible, but enjoy. I felt she was "there" from conception because otherwise, she wouldn't have made it. I also know women who have had abortions who felt that the foetus DID have a soul, who came in a dream to cry and say goodbye and we'll try again another time. These women were crushed by their decisions but still needed to do it that way. So, I would have to say that these experiences are NOT all common to all women, in fact, in my case, the experience was not even the same from pregnancy to pregnancy. >Aside from direct experience of pregnancy, why is it that more >men than women retain a child's fantasy about all women's desire >to have babies and selflessly nurture them? Those of us who face >the possibility of actually being the one to do the conceiving, >bearing, delivering and rearing perhaps achieve a more realistic >notion of what's involved. Everybody retains fantasies until reality hits. Then the lucky ones wake up. I don't know anybody who is not still fighting to get out of or stay in an inappropriate left-over childhood fantasy of one sort or another. >Men are never faced with the possibility of conceiving, bearing >or delivering a baby, so it's harder for them to imagine >themselves in that situation. Some sympathetic men may be able >to imagine it themselves, and others are willing to listen to >women's feelings rather than projecting their own feelings onto >women. These men would probably be in a better position to >understand why a woman would not be troubled with terminating a >pregnancy that didn't end the life of the fetus/child. I'd be troubled as all hell. There are likely other women that would be thrilled, esp. if the decision was mad for health reasons. This is *such* an individual thing. I think "walk a mile in my shoes" is a good idea for both genders, and I wish they could find a way to teach it in school. Sometimes, it is only that people never learn how to listen for the other person's experience. I've always thought if I were a man I would have womb envy. And I'm a woman who always thought I wouldn't want kids, and who fights with my 2 all the time. This is one reason why I think feminists are going to have to learn to listen to men when they talk about fathers' rights, and more choice for men. (Not necessarily Hillel's(TM) exactly, but certainly something at least halfway there from what we have now.) How would most feminists feel if the law said the father could take the baby at birth and decide to keep it himself, asking for child support and denying the mother visitation, or give it up for adoption and there's nothing we could do? I *do* think a lot more men than women were, in the past, socialized to ignore or take improper care of kids, but that is changing fast, and stereotyping ALL men based on the worst case, even if such men seemed uncomfortably common in the past, is as bad as the worst that Western society has done to women in my lifetime, at least. ~~~ jan@orc.olivetti.com or jan@oas.olivetti.com ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ We must worship Universal Consciousness as each of the 5 genders in turn if we wish to be fully open to Yr glory. -- St. Xyphlb of Alpha III