MrsDarwin writes eloquently about unexpected pregnancy.
Don't we feel sometimes, in the face of so much anti-child sentiment, that we have to keep smiling regardless of ambivalence we might feel about new pregnancies?
I've written a couple of posts trying to talk through some of my own issues with control, worries about having a larger family, and both times somebody picked them up and quoted them on a Catholic mom site and I got kind of slammed for what I said. At least I felt slammed. I mean, this comment appeared on Arwen's blog:
… the post plus the comment thread gave me hives. It's hard for me to put my finger on what it was. Perhaps the treatment of a family like an assembly line, where an increase in productivity goes along with improvements in efficiency in putting out the "product." Maybe it was the total sense of entitlement with which these good people were discussing their future children. Nary a "god willing", or an "if all goes well" in the lot. Maybe it was the fact that putatively religious people can discuss decisions about having children without one reference to prayerful discernment. Maybe it was the blatantly judgmental attitude pointed toward people with more closely spaced children–and the implication that they must be "cutting corners" somehow in the quality of their parenting. I guess that is one reason to be thankful for my infertility–I have been forced to accept that I am not in charge of this thing. God is! There is no perfect baby spacing, no perfect family size. One child is as perfect a number of children as three or ten. The one thing I do know is that if you are making the decision to please yourself only, then it's probably the wrong one.
and in another comment: Could you be any more condescending?
Well, I was trying to point out my own personal flaws in the post, and let me tell you, it's hard to express that there are choices you don't want to make without, apparently, offending people who have made those choices. I felt sick for a couple of days after that as I watched it percolate through St. Blog's. What did I do wrong? Was it forgetting to include the disclaimer at the beginning (MrsDarwin included hers, I noticed)? Clearly I didn't mention God enough.
It's too bad that kind of thing has to happen; it quashes some conversations that should be had, and also some public introspection that can help people work through their struggles. Like — you're not allowed to struggle with this issue, get over it before anyone sees you.
Felicitations to Darwin and MrsDarwin.
(A related post of mine from a year ago touched on this: We need to remember when we read other mothers' posts and comments about child spacing, NFP, and sex, that most of the women are writing with a degree of necessary self-censorship to protect the privacy of the husband-wife relationship. When we let those posts and comments affect us, we have to remember that we aren't seeing the whole story, and we shouldn't be seeing the whole story.)
Man, am I having formatting troubles this morning. What's up?
bearing blog 