Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!orion.oac.uci.edu!ucivax!gateway From: jan@orc.olivetti.COM (Jan Parcel) Newsgroups: soc.feminism Subject: Re: Giving up one's child (was Re: birth control failure?) Message-ID: <9106230128.AA08839@Todi.ORC.Olivetti.Com> Date: 24 Jun 91 17:01:59 GMT References: <49657@ricerca.UUCP> <1991Jun12.143557.22596@panix.uucp> <9106212337.AA15912@felix.Metaphor.COM> Reply-To: jan@orc.olivetti.com Followup-To: soc.feminism Lines: 96 Approved: tittle@ics.uci.edu Nntp-Posting-Host: alexandre-dumas.ics.uci.edu In article <9106212337.AA15912@felix.Metaphor.COM> falcao@felix.metaphor.com (Ronnie Falcao) writes: >My experience watching other women become mothers is that a >strong attachment to the fetus/baby develops along with the >pregnancy, rather than bursting into full bloom upon conception. >So it makes sense to me that a pregnant woman's feelings about a >two-month fetus would be different from those for a baby that >she's carried to term and labored to deliver. When I was about 18, I met a psychic (she said) girl about my age who said teachers of hers did an interesting research project. They assigned people who could see auras to follow pregnant women and see what they could see. They said an assortment of souls flirted with the mother for the first 3 months or so, then one entered the foetus, anytime from 0-4 months. If the woman was REALLY opposed to having a child, the soul had to wait until birth to enter. And if the father was around the mother a lot, then he was a factor in the process. Now, this is hardly scientifically or, for others, even religiously acceptable, but I find it a good metaphor for my experience. With my first child, I felt physically pregnant but not like a mother-to-be until one day, 3+ months along, when I suddenly fell asleep all day, and when I woke up, the baby was moving and I felt like there were 2 people in my body. With my second, I had been trying unsuccessfully to conceive for about 2 years, and I went to the doctor, who explained what I was doing wrong timing-wise, and zap! Pregnant again. But this time, I knew THAT MORNING (from conception) that I was pregnant, and I was able to confirm it with a thermometer the following morning, and I felt like a mother-to-be from those two days. It later turned out I had complications which could have killed the baby anytime after conception, and when she got out of the hospital at 5 days old (3 days after I got home), the doc said she was medically impossible, but enjoy. I felt she was "there" from conception because otherwise, she wouldn't have made it. I also know women who have had abortions who felt that the foetus DID have a soul, who came in a dream to cry and say goodbye and we'll try again another time. These women were crushed by their decisions but still needed to do it that way. So, I would have to say that these experiences are NOT all common to all women, in fact, in my case, the experience was not even the same from pregnancy to pregnancy. >Aside from direct experience of pregnancy, why is it that more >men than women retain a child's fantasy about all women's desire >to have babies and selflessly nurture them? Those of us who face >the possibility of actually being the one to do the conceiving, >bearing, delivering and rearing perhaps achieve a more realistic >notion of what's involved. Everybody retains fantasies until reality hits. Then the lucky ones wake up. I don't know anybody who is not still fighting to get out of or stay in an inappropriate left-over childhood fantasy of one sort or another. >Men are never faced with the possibility of conceiving, bearing >or delivering a baby, so it's harder for them to imagine >themselves in that situation. Some sympathetic men may be able >to imagine it themselves, and others are willing to listen to >women's feelings rather than projecting their own feelings onto >women. These men would probably be in a better position to >understand why a woman would not be troubled with terminating a >pregnancy that didn't end the life of the fetus/child. I'd be troubled as all hell. There are likely other women that would be thrilled, esp. if the decision was mad for health reasons. This is *such* an individual thing. I think "walk a mile in my shoes" is a good idea for both genders, and I wish they could find a way to teach it in school. Sometimes, it is only that people never learn how to listen for the other person's experience. I've always thought if I were a man I would have womb envy. And I'm a woman who always thought I wouldn't want kids, and who fights with my 2 all the time. This is one reason why I think feminists are going to have to learn to listen to men when they talk about fathers' rights, and more choice for men. (Not necessarily Hillel's(TM) exactly, but certainly something at least halfway there from what we have now.) How would most feminists feel if the law said the father could take the baby at birth and decide to keep it himself, asking for child support and denying the mother visitation, or give it up for adoption and there's nothing we could do? I *do* think a lot more men than women were, in the past, socialized to ignore or take improper care of kids, but that is changing fast, and stereotyping ALL men based on the worst case, even if such men seemed uncomfortably common in the past, is as bad as the worst that Western society has done to women in my lifetime, at least. ~~~ jan@orc.olivetti.com or jan@oas.olivetti.com ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ We must worship Universal Consciousness as each of the 5 genders in turn if we wish to be fully open to Yr glory. -- St. Xyphlb of Alpha III