As a new parent… No one tells you (especially if you’re a woman) just how bad pregnancy really is. My wife had a relatively mild pregnancy,: just baby butt in lungs making it hard to breathe, hard kicks in the side that can wake you up, too hot or too cold at the same temperature, absolutely nothing fits right, lots of swelling, nothing fits anymore and everything maternity related is super expensive and you will only wear it for a few months max, boobs hurt, back hurts, headaches, mood swings, nausea, baby kicking her asshole from the inside making it feel like her asshole would fall out, baby hiccups that will wake you up, can’t get comfortable laying down because you can’t back or stomach sleep and both sides have the bump needing support, can’t stay comfortable standing because your back and feet hurt from the weight, can’t get comfortable sitting because leaning back hurts your back and sitting up hurts your stomach/lungs, and every single tendon and ligament gets loose so random things will hurt or not work right.
We also didn’t get the fun sex-filled second trimester because her antidepressants killed her sex drive, so there were literally no up sides. Had our child 4 days ago, wife is much more comfortable except her boobs hurt all the time and our sleep (and the rest of our time) comes in 30 minute to 3 hour intervals with 5-30 minutes for feeding and diaper changes to separate them. It’s rough.
We love our new kid and don’t regret having her… but once she is old enough that my wife can handle her for a few days to a week I’ll be getting a vasectomy.
I remember clearly the first words out of my wife’s mouth as soon as she caught her breath after giving birth: “I’m never doing that again.”
And she hasn’t. That was ten years ago, and our kid is amazing, but I got that snip so she doesn’t have to do it again.
I get the feeling that pregnancy and reproduction are one clear area in which evolution is incomplete or has reached a compromised dead end in the case of human females.
It’s uncomfortable and disturbingly profound to talk about, and so a bit taboo, women are in all likelihood simply being fucked by biology and they’ll probably one of the first to benefit from the emergence of trans-human technological enhancement.
I mean, there isn’t much that can be done for it even with medical advancements. The hormone needed for loosening up the hips and abdomen can’t be concentrated there so it gets everything (back ligaments or whatever are the main one affected as well and is why their backs hurt relatively early in pregnancy, the ligaments are loose so they move more and need more effort to keep in place). Trouble breathing (swollen sinuses) and swollen arms/legs/hands/feet/etc is because the body needs a lot more blood, both for the baby and to prepare for some blood loss and recovery during birth. Nausea from some other fun hormones plus pressure on the stomach. Uncomfortable positioning is just an unfortunate side effect of having a large living being growing very quickly in the middle of the body without much place to put the other organs because of pesky bones.
Basically everything that happens in a pregnant woman’s body has a useful purpose in some way or area, there’s just no way to contain that effect to the places they need to be. Even weird things that seem like a bad evolutionary trait can be useful, like how newborn necks are super wiggly and fragile, and their heads being squishy. Both are needed so they can fit bend a bit and make it through the pelvis, not really a better way around that since there’s only so far the mothers body can do and still be functional
I’m not quite sure what the point is here.
My term was “compromised dead end” and I feel like your post basically goes through the details of this compromise, which is great, I’m just not clear on whether you have a broader point. And to be clear, I didn’t mean to suggest that there is no purpose to the difficulties of pregnancy. Just that a certain evolutionary path has been pursued that has arrived at a compromised state for the welfare of women.
As to whether it’s a “dead end”, as I speculated, is harder to address.
One could compare with the reproductive physiology of other animals. From what I’ve gathered, which could be incorrect, the menstrual cycle is odd and problematic in the case of humans compared to other mammals. I’d be interested in how true/false that is. Generally the menstrual cycle and its effects can be easily forgotten in conversations on this.
As for all of the details of pregnancy, human bipedalism seems to necessitate at least some of these compromises, which suggests that the female reproductive experience is essentially human. Still it’d be interesting to imagine whether other forms of anatomy are possible that both free up our hands for craft and technology without constraining the hips, however unfavourable it would have been for our evolution it may have been.
Yep. Got snipped in my mid 20s. Been a peaceful 25 years. Do not regret it at all.
The only surprising thing here is that people are surprised by this. Of course there are no regrets. The only reason people regret this is because popular culture keeps telling us that women is not a real women without kids. Get pass that BS and you’ll be fine without kids. You will also have more time, money and less stress.
The researchers found that 20.94% of the adult population in Michigan identify as childfree, meaning they do not have and do not want biological, step, or adopted children.
I skimmed the study and it looks like they did not differentiate between types of children (i.e. biological or not). One example question from the study: “Do you plan to have any biological or adopted children in the future?”
While not the point of the study, I wonder if there is a significant population that is interested only in adopted (or maybe step-)children. Especially given the recently reported rise in couples forgoing procreation for climate and/or “why would I bring a child into this shitty world” reasons, it would be interesting to learn if this population would be interested in raising non-biological children instead (the idea being they are not increasing the number of children in the world, but rather helping to care for the ones already here). Similarly not included in this study: people only interested in fostering children but not adopting (this can get murky however as sometimes fostering does lead to adoption, but usually not).
I’m child free by choice and would raise an adopted child like my own, but there are so many barriers to adoption.
57 year old man, never intended to not have kids, just never found someone that I wanted to have kids with. I guess it kind of worked out, I retired two years ago, and money isn’t really an issue, if I had kids I’d probably still be working.
Probably fewer people who regret not having kids than there are people regretting having them
Maybe, but people are really good at rationalizing their decisions, so I don’t know how much that even tells us.
Obviously the economic aspect is significant here in terms of the constraints on would be parents.
But I often wonder about how much the “modern” culture of parenting and its beliefs in a fairly full time committed always on parenting approach are worth discussing.
One critique I can imagine is that it’s part of the hyper individualism of modern western culture in which everything is pushed onto the solo responsibilities of individuals rather than emphasising the need and value of cooperative and community based approaches to getting things done.
In the case of parenting, from what I’ve seen, a cooperative approach evolves naturally out of necessity, but leverages extended family members rather than communities. In which case it makes sense that anyone without a functioning extended family just can’t reasonably have children.
Another critique is that do children really benefit from constant supervision from their parents or is this something that’s more about parents assuaging some cultural guilt around being good/bad parents?
Not just cultural guilt but fear of consequences. If you’re likely to get the authorities called on you for letting your kid go to the park down the street alone, or even play in your own front yard alone, it’s not really fair to say parents are choosing to be overly supervising
I’ve only been married for 28 years…we’re not ready for kids! #idiocracy
