You haven’t addressed your thoughts on women who have multiple children with no means of support, either monetary or otherwise. I’ve been poor with a baby, and even with family support, I missed where it was all magic and rainbows. It was more about very hard work, introspection and responsibility.
And there’s less people like me than like those teenage girls in the inner city.
Teenage girls in the inner city probably have it better than others. Being in the city almost always means easier access to services–childcare, employment, transportation. I’d hate to be rural poor and have something as mundane as my car go on the fritz. What does one do in this situation? Walk twenty miles and still arrive to work on time?
Anaamika was talking about people going gaga over babies. Your OP was about people going gaga over pregnant ladies. Those are two fairly separate things - yes, some people like babies, just like some people like puppies. But I’ve never known anyone who is especially enamoured of pregnant people.
I think I missed the memo- are there people for whom having babies is not about very hard work, introspection and responsibility? Are there people for whom having kids really is all magic and rainbows?
Money can make a lot of things easier, but money is not magic (at least, not at the levels that define “poor” and “middle class’” in the US- which are usually more about comfort than matters of life and death.) Many of the challenges to raising children are things that money doesn’t really help at all…having to develop emotional maturity, a changing relationship with your partner, having to budget your time and deal with the end of “me time,” dealing with behavior problems, being a positive role model, making difficult decisions, etc. Every parent from the homeless to teen to Donald Trump is going to deal with these, and I see no evidence that money makes a difference in these kinds of moral challenges. Plenty of rich folks raised fucked up kids.
Another set of challenges is things that money can change in quality but not in foundation. You still have to buy clothes for the kid, be it five outfits at Old Navy or 30 at Nordstroms. You have to feed the kid on what is probably a tight schedule, be it Taco Bell drive through or the fancy salad bar at Whole Foods. THe $5000 rent is due on the same day of the month as the $500 rent. Very, very few Americans are below basic sustenance. So while money makes things nicer, a two year old doesn’t need a mansion. They don’t care if their child seat is in a second hand Escort of an Esculade. After a kid’s bedroom has room for the bed and toy chest, you hit the point of diminishing returns. It wouldn’t actually make their lives better in quality to live in a room the size of a bowling ally.
There is another subset where money makes an actually difference- access to quality childcare, in the upper levels, access to education, scheduling to some degree (you can pay for grocery deliveries, etc.) ability to live in a secure area…
But again, managing these is often a matter of maturity and intentions, rather than a pure function of money. A fucked up parent will fuck you up no matter how rich they are. A great parent will do a great job, even while they struggle. And you can’t easily tell which is which.
(And yes, having multiple children with no means of support is usually a bad idea. So is having a kid in a rocky marriage, or having a kid when you have a drug or alcohol dependency, or having kids when you work a 70 hour work week, or any on of the millions of things people rich and poor do that screws up their kids.)
That is perhaps a mistake, since it seems that any teen or pre-teen who becomes pregnant and decides to have the baby is very unlikely to understand what she (and everyone around her) is getting into.
This is also not just about those who tell you she is going to have a baby, it is also about those who are noticeably pregnant but haven’t said anything, yet people are still all excited.
I hope you are not of the belief that such a situation is common, since most people have lives they couldn’t drop to help support someone elses baby. Especially if they don’t live in the area.
Too true.
OK, I am of the impression that the reason people go gaga over pregnancy is because it is going to produce a baby. Is this not true?
So then you can think of many reasons why a pregnancy would be a bad idea and not something to be celebrated.
(And before the usual suspects jump in here, note there is a big difference between celebration and berating someone. :rolleyes:)
Well, since I’ve never seen someone go gaga over a pregnant lady, I couldn’t tell you whether that’s true or not. But commonly people who like babies, like babies. They’re not just randomly excited by pregnancy. And while they might congratulate a pregnant person, and maybe even buy gifts or throw a shower, that does not mean they are going ‘gaga’. You said that:
Are you now changing this to ‘it is the rare woman who doesn’t go gaga when she sees a baby’? Because I really think that’s different. And while I still don’t think that’s particularly true, there certainly are people who are really into babies. And people who like babies act happy about all babies, because those babies already exist and telling the mother that they should have aborted or adopted out is pointless and cruel, so why point out that having a baby might have been a bad idea? Nobody ‘insisted that baby-gaga doesn’t exist’, as you claim, they just said that pregnancy-gaga doesn’t exist.
They’re definitely different. It’s like saying “why do people like to look at doghouses?”, when you actually mean “why do people like puppies so much?”
You forgot the “IME” & “relative or close friend” - in my experience, it has been the rare woman who doesn’t go gaga when she she finds out a relative or close friend is pregnant. Now whether or not that is because she is pre-gagaing over a baby, I don’t know
None of this has anything to do with what I have asked or said. However, if those people really do like babies, how can they be happy if it is in a bad situation?
I don’t think anyone has said that either, but if they have apparently they just haven’t seen it.
That doesn’t fit. Closer would be “why do people get excited when they hear a friend is getting a puppy” & “why do people like puppies so much?” but then that goes along with what I think is true - for most people, pregnancy=baby, so they get almost as excited about a pregnancy as they do about the actual baby. Tho some seem to be more excited about someone elses pregnancy because it isn’t any work for them, whereas a baby might be.
This is one of those “Internet Aspergers” arguments. It’s true that there is very little that money can provide that can’t be compensated for with effort. I can’t deny that.
The thing is all that effort is, well, a lot of effort. And that effort has effects. Marriages/relationships don’t exist in a vacuum. All that effort and stress undermine the stability of partner relationships. Money can’t buy happiness, but it does let you pick your misery.
I’m going through this right now. A young woman I know at work is pregnant. I don’t know her well. She didn’t tell any of us until she was into her second tri. When she announced it, she announced it with enough information for us to know how to react “yeah, at first I was just really scared, but now I’m pretty excited.” And so we said “congratulations.” Everyone knows this is Not A Good Idea, but we will do what we can to be supportive. She’s had some successive conversations - she knows that she is not choosing an easy path, she is scared. And the rest of us - older, had our kids much later - agree, and we are offering her what advice we can and what help we can within the parameters of her decision and our rather distant relationship. We aren’t painting her a pretty unrealistic picture, but it also not our place to say “wow, what a fuck up.” That would be rude.
So, perhaps when you are seeing people go gaga over pregnancies, at least a few of them are making “oh, how nice” noises to be polite. And, perhaps, we have enough respect for the person who is pregnant not to be patronizing and tell them what they likely know - and if they don’t know it, it probably isn’t because they haven’t heard it.
I share your confusion. A friend of mine recently described how her 19 year old niece’s life is a complete mess – on serious psychotherapy drugs, boyfriend openly cheating on her while he continues to live with her, several suicide attempts, etc.
A few weeks after, she excitedly announced that her niece was pregnant. Why in god’s name would she be excited over this?
Call me socially inept, but I made no excited noises. After confirming that she intended to have the child, my only comment was that she must truly be insane.
I’m in the “So, are you happy about it?” reply camp.
I admit that I can be a horrible person on this front. When my never-been-married sister told me that she was expecting her fourth child, my response was “You do know what’s causing that, don’t you?”
Curlcoat, you seem to have this idea that emotions are a zero sum game–that people being excited and “gaga” means that they aren’t also scared and upset and angry. It’s quite possible to be all of those things at once, and out of the set, I’m most likely to show “excited” to an outsider.
Furthermore, when we are talking about a relative or close friend, people are excited because there family is growing. That’s a really neat thing. When my sister was pregnant (A “good idea” pregnancy by any metric) I wasn’t excited because my sister was having a daughter, I was excited because I was having a niece. I’m as committed and as loyal to my niece as I am to my sister: more so in some ways, because she’s young and defenseless.
If my older sister got pregnant, that would be a “bad idea” pregnancy. And I would be angry and scared and worried. But I’d also be thrilled to be getting a new person in the family, and out of loyalty to that new person, I wouldn’t bad talk their very existence casually to outsiders.
I rather doubt that folks who are scared/upset or angry look or act like those who are only excited and gaga.
Its a really neat thing when, per above, your niece’s life is a complete mess – on serious psychotherapy drugs, boyfriend openly cheating on her while he continues to live with her, several suicide attempts, etc. and then she gets pregnant? Why would it be a neat thing for her to have a child at that time and how could this be a neat thing for the family?
Who is doing that?
I don’t know why, but I learned that someone was pregnant before her mother did. Said preggy lady had 4 kids already, with different fathers. When I dropped in in conversation, the mother asked “How did that happen?!?!” My fat mouth opened and I said “You have 5 kids, if you haven’t figured it out by now, you need to go to the library.”
They cut me out of their lives. Which was a good thing, they just used me for money and car rides because I felt sorry for them.
I’m trying very hard, and I can’t recall a single pregnant person who didn’t, at some point during those ten months, have mixed feelings *herself *about the pregnancy. Even planned, wanted, tried-to-conceive pregnancies carry moments of sheer panic and doubt and worry.
Yes, it’s entirely possible to be feeling, “Yay, baby!” and “Holy shit, my life will never be the same!” and “Squee! Look at that cute little pair of shoes how do they even make them that small?!” and “I’m going to die in childbirth, I just know it,” and “Woo-hoo, my cousin’s pregnant too, our babies can play together and love each other!” and “Crap, I think I’m making a huge mistake…” ALL AT THE SAME TIME.
So if a person can feel all those things (and more) about her own pregnancy, I see no reason why someone can’t feel all those things (and more) about the pregnancy of a loved one. It’s possible to be very very worried that this is going to be a life changing event, and maybe not in a good way, and also smile and love the baby to be.
Then you’re just flat out wrong, and I’m not sure further discussion is going to go anywhere unless you can open your mind to that possibility.
Humans are animals - particularly social animals. We evolved to be very, very good at lying and hiding those feelings we consider socially inappropriate, so the other humans in our tribe like us and share their berries with us. Yes, we can hide anxiety and anger very well.
Yes, yes they do. As WhyNot points out, we are very good as a species at cloaking our emotions.
I don’t think you fully understand that babies aren’t just babies, they are people. Once they exist, they are full-fledged members of the family. If you can’t imagine any inherent pleasure in discovering or anticipating a new family member, I don’t know how to describe it to you. This doesn’t diminish the fear/anxiety/dread/regret that one might well also feel, but mixed in with it is a certain joy, as well. I might be nothing but angry at the parent(s) of the new person, but towards the new person, there’s going to be a measure of joy and love.
You are the outsider in these situations. When someone is telling you about their new family member, they are only going to let you see the positive emotions so as not to give the impression that they wish a member of their family didn’t exist.
It sounds to me like you don’t know the joy of the big extended family. It’s like discovering you have a cousin or an uncle you never knew about. The more members, the more interconnections and hence the more love and support. I myself have a huge extended family. Lots and lots of aunts, uncles, and cousins. Any of us would help anyone else, no questions asked.
I am talking just about early on, when it is first announced, and only those around the pregnant woman, not the woman herself.
Um, OK. You are right and I’m wrong. No way that I could be right about the emotions I am seeing in these people.
We animals are also evolved to be very, very good to read thru false feelings and seeing what someone is really feeling. Tends to be a defense mechanism. It also seems illogical for someone who is angry/scared/upset because their daughter or niece is pregnant at a bad time is going to hide their feelings by imposing a shower, presents, etc on the pregnant daughter or niece, or actively talk her into keeping the baby.
I don’t think you fully understand what I am getting at here. Let’s see how far apart we are - do you feel there is ever a time when a pregnancy is a bad idea, and the subsequent baby will not be a good thing?
Also, are you really capable of completely ignoring any surrounding issues and just focusing on the baby to be?
Well, for one thing, I am not “talking badly” to anyone, which I have made very clear at least once in this thread. For another, I believe I have also been very clear that what I hear from the pregnant girl and/or her family is not just the positive. Did you read the story above about my friend who found out she was five or so months pregnant and was going to adopt the baby out until her mother got ahold of her? There were no positive emotions in that situation from her, just her crazy mother.
And that is really great, but the other side of the coin are folks like me, who does have a big extended family of narrow minded bigots who fortunately live over 1000 miles away. Not everyone has a great family that is happy to jump in and support yet another bad idea baby - these days it would seem logical that such families would be in the minority given how the economy is going and how people tend to move around a lot. Yet the response to pregnancies that come at a bad time, or to women who have proved they don’t rate as decent mothers, or to people who can’t afford to give a child even the basics tend to be exactly the same as those pregnancies where the resulting baby will have a good chance at at least a decent life. That is what I don’t get - apparently people are so blinded by baby mania that anything other than the actual fact of a baby existing isn’t considered. It is very odd to me.
What is a “decent life?” 13% of American over 25 do not have high school degrees. Only 30% of Americans over 25 have a Bachelor’s. 48% of Americans make less than 25k a year, and 75% make less than 50k. The American upper middle class with a good school, a nice house in the suburbs, and a college fund is relatively rare even in America. On a global scale, it’s a vanishingly small portion of the world. In historical context, it’s a lifestyle that is so statistically marginal that it basically didn’t happen, with only the tiniest handful of humans ever have been able to see.
Are those really the only people with “decent lives”? Do you really see the guy who works at Best Buy and think “Man, what a shame, his life has no meaning because he’s a renter and his kid goes to a normal public school.”?