Apparently there still are many among us who believe women are for the singular purpose making babies. I’m betting there are many among us who are old enough to remember when “boys will be boys” and “girls will be chaste.” Sex was to be enjoyed by the former, but employed only for making babies by the latter.
I know a couple who nearly divorced because they could not make a baby. Failure to conceive, whether it was his fault or hers (making him the butt of jokes from his friends, and her the recipient of sympathy from hers) cause deep pain within many marriages.
There was some research done in the 1990s that showed a significant percentage of lesser-educated young woman having babies because it was “something they were capable of accomplishing.” (I know someone who deliberately executed a version of that “because I can” idea.)
In both cases, women had been taught their responsibility. And the amazing thing is that it has been a sin to enjoying doing what is done to make babies, but a source of responsibility and pride to birth the baby thus created.
When I was coming into the baby-making phase of human boyhood (though still too young to quite understand how it would happen) a girl from our village suddenly dropped out of school and disappeared. No one ever said aloud the reason, thus emphasizing the shame at the root of her departure.
Boys were boys and girls were sinners who were not allowed even to admit enjoying the act that was intended, for procreation. (Although boys who were proven to have gotten a girl “in a family way” often were the target of varying pressure to “do the right thing.”)
Hence the widespread abortion industry that left many young women physically and mentally scarred.
One would think by now we humans would get over such shenanigans, but alas we humans, who are amazingly capable of advancing computers and other machinery; fellow humans, not so much.
And now some of among us have taken to denigrating one of the presidential candidates, and other women, for not having given birth at all.
In a land which loudly proclaims freedom of religion as one of its founding tenets, it’s a little surprising certain members of a minority of our community would still be allowed, much less encouraged, to inflict such abuse on our offspring.
Text & images ©2024 John Messeder. John is an award-winning environmental storyteller, nemophilist and social anthropologist, and lives in Gettysburg, PA. He may be contacted at john@johnmesseder.com