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Life
Last night I was watching an episode of Red Oaks, well, re-watching since we’re being honest here. The main character, David, bumps into one of his mom’s friends, who is pregnant. He asks, “Can I?” since he wants to touch her belly. She replies, “Of course.”
Why does David want to touch that pregnant belly? And why does she so readily consent? Surely he would not ask and she would not agree to this rather intimate contact under other circumstances. After all, they hardly know each other.
The more astute (or should I say woke) among you see where I’m going here. There’s life in that belly and we all have a stake in it. Historically, children have been a sort of public property* in the sense that everyone feels some responsibility and care for children even if they belong to strangers. Yet somehow these beings are not given the most basic human right before they exit the womb. Even animals are better protected from suffering. This and related contradictions will have to be resolved someday. On a personal note, I admit without hesitation or embarrassment that my own views on this matter have changed over the years, in no small measure because of posts and comments here on Ricochet.
I have to wonder if it’s still ok to ask a pregnant woman if you can touch her belly. My guess is no — not that I would ever be so bold.
That’s too bad. There’s Life in there.
*I stole this from Judith Martin, aka Miss Manners in her book Miss Manners’ Guide to Rearing Perfect Children, which was published in the 1980s — coincidentally it’s the decade in which Red Oaks is set.
Published in General
Again, I’m stating We are all responsible for the culture in which the children are raised, not monetarily. If We are all to be monetarily responsible for everyone else’s kids, then ,hell, let’s just have the “government” issue the kid a check for a million bucks after Mom pushes Them out to cover Their expenses until They’re an adult. That would be cheaper than what We are doing now.
I’m so glad that I’ve got to meet you and Annefy. You are both full of life and with that comes a very loving nature.
There are a lot of other ways to be responsible than those you listed. And as for monetary support, I know of families in which grandpa and grandma helped out monetarily (as well as in other ways). I’ve know of families in which other extended family members helped out. (Our current form of government makes that sort of thing very difficult.) And there are many, many examples of people accepting some of the responsibility for the behavior of other people’s kids, reprimanding them and encouraging them where it is helpful. That is a more specific responsibility than responsibility for “the culture.”
I think you’re talking about legal responsibility for child support. But the term responsibility covers a lot more than legal responsibility.
When I was first pregnant with son #1 a friend gave husband great advice : when she puts your hand on her belly and asks if you feel it, just say yes. Otherwise you’ll be up all night waiting for the next kick.
I feel like beating a dead horse this morning and adding some examples.
In Buffalo Bird Woman’s Garden (an oral history recorded by a University of Minnesota anthropologist), Buffalo Bird Woman often refers to her mothers (plural). Her father was still living into her adulthood, but her birth mother had died when she was very young. But there were other women in the same household who she called her mothers. They took on the role of mother to her. (Her father’s household was one that was better off economically than most of the others in the same village; another time I may write about this income inequality among the 19th century Hidatsa.)
When I mentioned this to Mrs. R it didn’t seem all that strange to her, because when she was little she thought she had two mothers. She was a shy, passive kid when she was little, but ended up in an argument about it with her first grade teacher, who tried to tell her that one of those women wasn’t really her mother. Mrs R’s mother had given birth to her relatively late in life, and she had a lot of medical problems in the first few years after giving birth, such that one of Mrs R’s aunt had a big role in raising her. The relationship was very much mother-daughter. One of the aunt’s birth sons died recently, and the obituary listed Mrs R as a surviving sibling (though with a note saying she was “like” a sister.)
Another example of responsibility for other people’s children was found in the German Lutheran community. When infants are baptized, they have “sponsors” who speak for the child. (Some people might say Godparents, but that isn’t the term we used.) Usually the parents choose similarly-aged relatives or close friends to ask to be sponsors, and the sponsors are supposed to consider the matter very carefully because it implies that they share responsibility for the spiritual upbringing of the child. And if the parents die, they will take on the material parental responsibility. I don’t think they take that possibility as seriously now as in the past, because of lower death rates among parental-age adults and because we have state social welfare systems that are supposed to help out and determine custody, etc. So people now tend to treat the matter as a ceremonial honor, but at the baptism of some of my siblings and some of our own children, the real sponsors lived far away and couldn’t come to the ceremony, so friends in the church were asked to be stand-ins for them.
The system is becoming a vestige of an earlier age, but enough remains to be a reminder of a time when the state mattered less and the family and community mattered more and shared more of the responsibility of child-rearing.
The harm came when the aging hippies commandeered this idea. When they speak of “a village,” they mean the global village or a central government. They pervert and destroy everything they touch.
Gigolo?
I have a post in my head I was thinking of not writing, but it dovetails so well with this, I just might have to do it.
Well, my wife doesn’t pay me.
While we may all have some sense of responsibility to keep an eye out for children – if a parent is distracted and you see their child wander into a busy street, do you just walk away thinking the parents should have paid better attention? If so you are a moral cretan – only the state can intervene to disrupt parental rights. If you try, its called kidnapping.
It’s polite, but I never held it against someone for forgetting to ask. It’s a miracle, and people want to be a part. Lucky for me, I was an avid reader of Erma Bombeck. Long before she died she listed all the things she would do over. One was enjoying her pregnancies and realizing it was an opportunity to assist in one of God’s miracles.
Not everyone gets the chance and I always welcomed anyone who wanted to be a part. Pregnancy and motherhood can be a lonely business. The more the merrier.
When I was pregnant with son #1 I was travelling a lot with a co-worker from New Delhi. He had a lovely, distinctive Indian accent. When son #1 was about a month old, I went to a pediatrician who had the same accent. Baby’s head turned and looked at the doc as soon as he started talking. And son #1’s expression was “Dude! Where the heck have you been??”
Son #1 thinks the story is funny. New Delhi guy teared up when I told him.
Oh, now you’ve done it, given every craving liberal male politician and Hollywood producer an out for touching women’s belly’s.
Get a lawyer quick.
And TV hostes.
That was a literal L – O – L.
That’s true. What drives it? Why is it so important to them? Some say radical feminist equality, others the whole notion of individual human dignity so that it’s fundamental to totalitarian ideologies. I’ve never understood. I can understand a lukewarm fear of extending constitutional protections to the fetus, or fear of an illegal abortions business, but to allow abortion to hold center stage, to be the foundation of everything else?
I think you misinterpret drlorentz’s intent.
There is a significant difference in the people of a community taking an interest in, and even some responsibility for the raising of their community’s children, and what HRC meant by “it takes a village.”
When I was kid, I knew full well that if I acted poorly anywhere in my little town, I might be scolded by an adult or reported to my mother, which was far worse. I also knew that if my life was threatened, or if I was doing something foolishly dangerous, any adult in my proximity would likely step in to help. That’s what communities do. The welfare of a community’s children was based on common decency, not on “who screwed who.”
That is a far cry (the opposite, in fact) from HRC’s imagined utopia, where the government dictates how every child should be raised.
The only way I can analyze this is to watch the reactions on the left to abortion. Even incrementalism in law is fought tooth and nail. They had to give up all pretense of decency on this subject when they started allowing 2nd term and then 3rd term abortions — followed by support of partial birth “abortions.” And finally to make it absolutely crystal clear their motivation we have Obama as the most extreme major politician of history on this subject in his support for infant born alive legislation.
The obvious thing is that this is a bedrock issue for them in their view of civilization. It is a foundational issue for their notion of what progress means in the term progressive.
Also, it’s important to note that the left is in de facto control of this country and this subject proves it. If each of these issues above were voted on they would fail every time.
Yeah, well, too bad. That’s a chance I’ll take. And when I had small children, I hoped someone else would have done the same for me.
Me, too.
Exactly. As a widowed mother-of-four, I would have been screwed (you know, metaphorically, not Jimmy Carter-style) if the Village hadn’t pitched in. The difference is that it was an actual village. There was a woman who, driving past my son when he was out walking the dog in -10 degree cold (“I’ve got mittens, Mom! Of course I’ve got mittens!”) that his fingers had turned white. She stopped the car, hopped out, told him to put his hands in his armpits and run home. I still don’t know who that woman was, but I love her.
By the way: if your child gets frostbite, give him/her a baby aspirin (or make him lick a grown up one). Apparently it helps.
Also: the going-out-without-mittens thing is cured pretty thoroughly by the experience of what it’s like when those white fingers come back to life.
Exactly right. I was surprised to get pushback on this here, of all places.
I’m surrounded by hardcore pro-choicers in real life. Ricochet is the only place I feel at liberty to express an opposing view. Any attempt would be, and has been, met with disbelief or invective. How is this topic no longer open for discussion in politically mixed company?
I predict that at some point in the not-too-distant future, civilized people will look back upon our current abortion practices the way we now view slavery: “How could they?”
I’ve made this same point to pro-choicers. At some point it will end, whether through technology or morality, and when it does…
This is so foreign to me. If we had a lefty in the office, he would be mocked constantly.
What a sweet thing to say. Thank you.
Or demographic wave. One’s ideas can’t inherit the world if one produces no heirs.
A sobering and insightful observation.
Mrs. iWe was HUGE when pregnant. 4 months looked like 9 on most women. By the last month she could not both sit in the driver’s seat and reach the steering wheel. (She carried kids in front, like a lance, and most of our runts were over 10 pounds.)
So she got more than her share of this. One VP in a business meeting said he simply could not resist touching her stomach. She was stunned – but marshalled enough fortitude to help him resist. Even this was not as bad as one friend who, when my wife sat down, invited her little kids to come over and feel the baby in my wife’s tummy. You could see the hackles from across the room.
One woman came up to Mrs. iWe in a shopping mall, asked her how many months she was, and then proclaimed, “I never gained so much weight when I was pregnant.”
I adore babies, but I have no urge to reach out and touch their expectant mothers.
We are a highly tactile family. But my wife does not feel that being pregnant gives other people license to violate her personal space.
I guess you missed that whole part about asking permission first and how it’s polite to ask, eh?
It never ceases to amaze me how some folks seize on some tangential point that wasn’t even made. For example, one person thought I was advocating the state control of child rearing. Some project their own fears onto everything.