curlcoat, how many instances of people going baby-ballistic are we talking about here? In your OP, your language intimates that it is inevitable that anyone, at the mere mention of a pregnancy, is going to be overjoyed regardless of the circumstances:
You don’t talk about ‘some’ people…and I know your language skills are otherwise fine, so excluding the word ‘some’ generally entails that ‘all’ people are included in your description.
Your notion of baby-crazed outsiders is not a phenomenon I’m familiar with, so I wonder about the people you are gleaning your data from. You mentioned a whole shitload of Facebook and messageboard support for the mad woman who birthed eight kids…why do you care? Do you spend all your waking hours reading crap like that just so that you can work up a decent mouth-froth to spew spittle and vitriol here?
Easily led? Oh for gawd’s sakes…is there any possibility that your friend maybe changed her mind because she fell in love with her baby and chose to keep him/her voluntarily? Do you think women are so stupid and gullible that they always succumb to family pressure and don’t have a mind of their own?? If she was so adamant to give her child up for adoption (and with you cheering her on from the sidelines) what was stopping her?
Yeah, I would. Because regardless of her intentions to keep the baby or otherwise, the arrival of a new being is a pretty special thing in my book. Babies are grand little critters and pregnancies that are welcomed need celebrating: they bring some new shit to this world and stop our collective boredom with our otherwise mundane and pointless lives.
I recently read the non-fiction book Random Family, which deals with the day to day lives of a group of extremely poor people in New York.
It is almost stereotypical, but it is filled with 15 and 16 year-olds getting pregnant, with no money and no hope of a future. Then, more babies come, leading to one girl at 24(?) having 5 children with four different fathers, all of which are dead or in jail, living on welfare, battling rats falling on them in the shower, common sexual abuse of the children, etc. The parents of these girls are messed up themselves, with drug and spousal abuse and every sort of inner city.
Now, I had read this book (others in the same vein) with a goal of getting a new perspective on problems like this. But, the book drove me crazy, and made me angry and less sympathetic than ever. Why? Because every time someone got pregnant, it was celebrated as if it was their first baby/grandchild.
I cannot celebrate young girls with no hope, getting themselves pregnant, over and over again, with no thought for the continuing horror those kids would have to endure. And then, even though some make it out, most of those same kids would continue to perpetuate the cycle.
Babies born in those circumstances should not be celebrated, ever. I get that their lives are so bad, so sad, that a new baby gives them something to rejoice about. But the lack of vision about what those children mean for their practical lives, and the kinds of lives they’re condemming those kids to… I say abortion is always the better answer.
I always assume that, since it’s been announced, congratulations are in order. Unless it’s a close friend who bursts into tears as she’s telling me. My response then would depend upon her circumstances.
Even if I think the mother-to-be’s timing is crap, I still congratulate her; it’s not my place to chide people about their choices. Hell, I even congratulate acquaintances on an upcoming marriage which I am sure will end in divorce.
Being poor is not a life of unending horror, hardly worth living. It can be tough, for sure. But it’s not inherently less meaningful or fulfilling than your own life. The poor do not live some sort of subhuman existence. Mostly, they are like you but broker. Other than that it’s basically the same allotment of hopes, fears, joys, and setbacks, just with more material challenges. This is true in places much poor than the US, and it’s true here where our poverty is amazingly low on things like infectious disease, dirty water, lack of toilets and undernourishment.
Now, being sexually abused or having drug-abusing parents is a problem. This is true, rich or poor. Watch a few episodes of Intervention on Hulu. It’s mostly middle class families that look on the outside like they are perfect. Middle class families have their secrets, to. You can’t tell by a paycheck if someone is a violent drunk or going to rape their children in the night. So how do you propose to know whose birth is a tragedy?
As I sit here a week before receiving my master’s degree in International Development, with a well-paid job in DC that does some real good, I ask myself- should my birth have been mourned as a funeral? Why would you ever imply that a child is “doomed” to have a meaningless life? Why would you ever look at a baby and decide, right off the bat, that they will not have a good life? What good would it have done me if I had heard that? If that I had been aware of how many people held that set of assumptions about me before I was old enough to have ever even done anything.
Poverty is hard. Sometimes astonishingly hard. But many of us are here in the US because our ancestors were so poor that they thought it was a good idea to go to some strange unknown place where they had absolutely nothing- across the Rio Grande, across the Atlantic, across the Pacific- and try to find some way to get out of that poverty. Humanity has spent most of existence poor, diseased, unstable and hungry. Yet we created symphonies. We wrote books. We told folktales and played fiddles. We went on voyages, we cooked wonderful meals, and we kept on giving birth to the new generation, giving them our hopes for a better life-- and it worked! If you are reading this, you are living a life your great, great, great, great grandmother would think was pretty close to actual heaven. And I’m sure, somewhere in the world, some oil baron is looking down on you, thinking how crappy and miserable your life must be, with your endless toils in cubicles, your relentless fall into growing old and ugly without even a little bit of plastic surgery to ward it off, your silly marriages to women who could never even model in magazines and men who are growing bald, your pathetic vacations to crowded boring Disneyworld, your weak slow mass produced car that is half plastic and your paperboard house. I’m sure you really don’t give a fuck if he thinks your life is too miserable to justify bringing a child into it.
What you have been reading about, I see everyday at my downtown shop. It is a real problem in poor communities and it’s utterly depressing. I recommend abortions a lot and tell the mothers they are “giving it back to the angels”. Poor people who have succeed have done so INSPITE of poverty not BECAUSE of it because in a capitalistic society it does take money to do anything. In response to curlcoat’s question I think a lot of people in the anti-abortion movement encourage the every pregnancy should be celebrated meme because it allows for the creation of a permanent underclass.
That is just my perception of it. It is the extremely rare woman, IME, who doesn’t go gaga when she finds out a relative or close friend is pregnant.
Outsiders? You mean other than the father and mother, or other than family or what?
:rolleyes: For one thing, I haven’t spewed anything at all, I did what is known as asking a question. Next, I spend as few of my waking hours reading about babies as possible, but the Octomom train wreck was scarily fascinating, so at first I didn’t skip over posts/stories on that subject. I do now because I’m tired of the fact she still has all of those kids and we are supporting them, when at least the last eight could have gone to responsible deserving homes. And finally, I mentioned her here in the context of an obviously really bad idea pregnancy and how even there a goodly number of people supported her decisions (yes, plural) to have children she couldn’t afford to raise.
Old Friend wasn’t ever adamant about anything, hence easily led. She did contact an adoption agency before she went to Christmas, but didn’t follow up when she got home because her mother wanted her to keep the baby (essentially her words). So, two months before she gave birth and could have fallen in love with the baby, she changed her mind due to family pressure. I don’t think she ever did “fall in love” with her - as I said, she was an adequate mother but that was about it. As for me cheering her on, hardly. I stayed out of it except as she wanted to talk about it because, get this, it was none of my business.
So I guess you are one of those that I wonder about. No matter what the circumstances the baby will be born into, you think all pregnancies should be welcomed and celebrated? Yet you claim to love babies? Those two things do not go together for me. And it doesn’t seem you would have much consideration for your daughter if you are welcoming and celebrating her condition without consideration for how she feels about it.
Sorry to hear that your life is boring, mundane and pointless without a baby in it.
You must know very different women than I do, because I don’t think I know anyone who regularly goes ‘gaga’ over pregnant ladies.
People are happy and supportive when someone is pregnant and they seem to be happy about it. Only an asshole would tell someone that their pregnancy was a bad idea if it was clear that the woman is genuinely pleased about it, no matter what the circumstances surrounding the pregnancy are. Now, if the woman is faking being happy (or in the case of your friend, somehow never manages to get around to telling those close to her that she wants to get rid of the baby), then the people around her are going to respond to what is being presented to them. Which is that she is really does want to be pregnant. They’re not mind readers.
If someone tells me that they’re getting married, I smile and congratulate them, even if I happen to think that their chosen mate is a giant loser and their marriage will fall apart. Because it’s not my place to do anything else unless they are a very close friend or family member, and they’ve obviously made their choice. When a woman announces pregnancy, as others have said, the assumption is usually that they have also made their choice or they wouldn’t be announcing it to everyone. So people smile and congratulate them, and yes, sometimes do things like throw baby showers or buy gifts or talk about names. I don’t know if that is what you consider ‘going gaga’, but that is as much as I’ve ever seen anyone do.
My oldest sister was born (I believe) when my mother was 30. My youngest brother was born when my mother was 43. Littler Bro is the healthiest one in the family.
I’m pregnant (26 weeks). I have not so far encountered any behavior that I would describe as “gaga” or “baby-ballistic” from anyone I’ve talked about my pregnancy with. Happy, yes. But not gaga or baby-ballistic.
When my SO’s brother and sister-in-law got pregnant with their second child and their marriage was on severely rocky ground, no one was happy. Everyone knew the child was only to fulfill the “2 children” desire of the mother and it was not going to be happy.
But what on god’s earth were we supposed to do? She was bound and determined to bring a new life into this world, and so we celebrated a new birth.
As to the other, yes, I have seen women go insane with baby craze. I mean, whole events grind to a halt because there is a BABY in the room. That’s definitely baby-gaga. I’ll be standing over by the guys, waiting impatiently for the baby craziness to be over, but it takes forever.
As a “well over the age of 30” parent of 3 healthy kids, I can confirm that it has become extremely unsafe for my wife and I. In fact, just yesterday, I took a baseball in the nuts and this morning my wife got headbutted while asleep in bed.
Wow… you’ve just emphasized the importance of Fighting Ignorance … and why it’s taking so long.
Though I agree with the rest of your post, this is just wrong. I had three kids by teh time I was 25, and yeah they really do need a lot. The poorer you are, the harder it is, regardless what your support system is (unless they’re giving you money). Also, if you had a kid at 19, they’d be 13 now. Also known as “the hard part.”
Thank you for quoting even sven as I missed the part where “a nice room and a good school and nice things” would be considered “extras” for a child. No wonder so many people have babies when they have so little to give them…
And, to the very few of you who actually addressed my question, thank you - I still don’t get why, as Anaamika said, baby-gaga exists in cases when a pregnancy is a bad idea but at least we had an interesting discussion. To the rest of you, who insisted baby-gaga doesn’t exist, or assumed that I was saying anything at all to those involved in the pregnancy much less anything negative, or assumed an “announcement” must mean the woman wants to be pregnant - well, part of fighting ignorance is not inserting your bias into something someone else says. If you honestly wish to be involved in this discussion (tho it seems to have run its course) please read the OP and try to stay on point, without wandering off into things you assume or want to believe.
Somewhere out there, there is someone who is ready to have kids. They have just the right of money to give them every advantage in life without spoiling them. They have enough free time to give them the best, most loving childcare, while also having absolutely perfect mental health and never getting overwhelmed, frustrated, or bored with parenthood. They have an equally capable partner who is absolutely dedicated to contributing everything they have to the kid (without hovering, of course). They are in a top notch school district, but one that is happily free of the cliques and divisions that can make children miserable. Their house is perfectly situated in whatever environment is statistically correlated with high-performing children.
That person is ready to have kids. The rest of us have to work with what we’ve got, which will probably be less than ideal in a million ways. My mom was poor, but she had amazing support. We ate home cooked meals with my grandparents every night, my uncle drove me to school and watched me after school. My great-grandmother took me out to JC Pennys every year for school clothes and supplies. On weekends I’d spend time with my other uncle and cousins while my mom did her homework. It wasn’t ideal, we lacked a lot, but it clearly worked. And even if I hadn’t have “gotten out,” does that mean that my life still wouldn’t have been valuable? Isn’t everyone’s life a success if they make a net positive contribution to society, pay their taxes, are reasonably happy and have things that give their life meaning?
If I had kids now, I’d have more money, but I’d never have that level of support. As I get older, different options close off. I have student loans, so I don’t have the option like my mother did to work part time when my child is an infant, which puts me on the hook for childcare. My industry is on the East Coast, so I will not be able to move in right next to my closest family members like my mother did. My job keeps me in the city, so I won’t be able to move to a kid-friendly neighborhood like the one I grew up in, meaning I’m going to be doing playdates and Gymboree or whatever to keep my child socially engaged.
My friends have the perfect life- beautiful marriage between high school sweethearts, loved and cared for child who is a ray of sunshine, great job with amazing benefits and more than enough money to be comfortable, and really everything you’d ever want to give that child and advantage in life. And their child’s life has been turned upside down because an unanticipated war broke out and they had to evacuate into a temporary situation with no idea when their happy family will be in a stable situation.
Anything can happen. But underlying my point is that all of us- my mom, me, my friends, have been, will be or are great parents because of the love and support they have to offer their kids. Compare this to my friend who is a high-end realtor from an extremely well positioned family, who lives in a beautiful penthouse apartment. Great situation to have kids, right? Well, not if you have raging mental disorders, your marriage is falling apart, your husband is a drug abuser and your family is entrenched in some sick family dynamics. Those things don’t make it to the company picnic or the Christmas newsletter.
But you’d say “congrats” to her, right, because she appears on the surface to have “what it takes” to be a good mom, while you’d tell my mom that she’d probably be better off aborting, even if she actually had it in her to be a great mom.
No one is asking for ideal, but to assume that your support system is going to help you raise any children you have is incredibly selfish. Whether or not you could be a “great mom” is immaterial if you go into it assuming that others are going to help you by committing their time and money because you need those things, not because they want to.
Deciding to have children is nothing more than giving into one’s desire to do so (except for those few who are more or less forced into it), and to do it knowing you wouldn’t be able to support them on your own is just the height of selfish irresponsibility.
In your mom’s day, she didn’t have the choices that women have now, so using her for an example is immaterial. Exercise your choices responsibly, and realize that no one is entitled to everything they want. You apparently have chosen college and a career away from your family and must live in the city, so it may be that you will never be in the position to properly have children. Attempting to wedge them in somehow because you want them is unfair to everyone.
(And no, I don’t think a beautiful penthouse apartment is a great situation to have children in.)
I agree. When I quit smoking, I went to see my doctor and he asked me, “Do you think now is a good time to quit?” I told him that it was never a good time to quit smoking, so I might as well get started. That doesn’t mean it won’t be harder ore asier at different times.
I would say “congratulations” regardless. I assume a woman who is telling me she’s going to have a baby has decided to have a baby, and understands what she’s getting into.
In most cases the girl don’t plan for pregnancy. In others, they do.
Either way, most family and friends congratulate the girl because they don’t have the black heart to say “Why are you pregnant?!? Why did you have sex at young age!! What was going through your head!”
IMHO, I hope for the best for a pregnant woman, no matter what thw circumstances. I will usually not comment at all. I just hope their life isn’t ruined.
To be pregnant before eighteen… @.@ I’ll never understand.
