start a family It wasn’t This is an ideological choice, but it started to feel like such a choice during my first pregnancy.
I’m 24 years old, and I’ve been asked the same question over and over again by women, young and old, living in coastal cities: “Why wait until you’re 30?” You would think I was a child bride.
Conservatives should be wiser than minimizing or denying the cost to women of motherhood.
The way people talk to pregnant women about pregnancy is breathtaking. I don’t want to damage my body. I’ll never sleep again. Say goodbye to good times. These jabs hurt. Frustrated, and frankly feeling alone, I turned to the internet.
There I realized that traditional conservatives and outspoken midwives formed an unlikely Venn diagram. Both offered more openly positive and hopeful messages. In other words, women’s avoidance of childbirth was simply a matter of brainwashing by the media. Because of them, I have come to believe that my body was created for birth. I trust God for the rest. I knew I would be able to handle any challenges that came my way. In a sense I was right and so were they.But in my naivete I couldn’t imagine how it could happen difficult It may be difficult.
The culture of abortionist feminism creates mothers who view motherhood primarily as a consumer choice and treat women’s bodies more like machines than mothers. If you think this way about your children, you are depriving them of the resources they consume: your time, your energy, your youth, all of which could be devoted to your career. , you must be outraged that your children are consuming it. If all babies were “optional,” it would make perfect sense to subject their existence to a rigorous cost-benefit analysis.
Conservative Christian views offer an escape from this resentment by rightly refusing to reduce children to a kind of luxury that sacrifices women’s earning potential. Motherhood is a vocation that points to eternity and is a plan for relief from our suffering.
I place this basic worldview firmly in the realm of truth, without a shadow of a doubt. But in reality, especially for women of child-bearing age, the idea that suffering can only be overcome by gritting one’s teeth and surrendering to God can lend itself to a unique form of Pelagianism, in which women Begins to deny all earthly support to the body. And even their baby bodies.
Instead, they choose to view any mother’s challenges as spiritual rather than legitimate spiritual, material, or, of course, medical problems. My baby isn’t having any contractions? Clearly, mom has an “emotional block.” Will my girlfriend’s hair fall out if I breastfeed? You may want to address your “not wanting to suffer” feelings. God forbid I supplement with powdered milk. Recently, a friend of mine felt the chilling guilt of leaving her children in the hands of another caregiver for an hour to receive the diastasis recti treatment needed to safely transport her current and future children. He said he felt the emotion.
It is as if acknowledging that it is actually a treatable disease opens the door to all kinds of “secular” medical interventions and lukewarm living, and that all roads lead to abortion. This concern is understandable, but choosing life doesn’t automatically take you to a soft-focus realm where you cradle a toddler or offer sacrifices with a blissful smile. Pretending to be so risks alienating many would-be conservative women and undermining the pro-natalist movement from within.
Through fasting, enduring torture, and fighting to the death, there is an almost endless amount of Christian theological material on escaping from, transcending, and denying the body. Motherhood presents a different kind of challenge: listening to your body, nourishing it, and nurturing it. inside your body To a new life. In this more specific state, there is ample opportunity to sanctify suffering, but there is no need to ignore legitimate strategies for improving physical health as a mother.
And isn’t there something a little naive and utopian about the right’s view of motherhood as a blissful, noble sacrifice? Something a little…progressive? Conservatives should be wiser than minimizing or denying the cost to women of motherhood. God knows she’ll be willing to give until it hurts and then put in some effort to get her next generation over the finish line. But even the most selfless mother could use a little help from time to time.
