Reply to Tim Carney in the Post: The Ideal Number of Kids is Four (at a minimum)

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Reply to "Tim Carney in the Post: The Ideal Number of Kids is Four (at a minimum)"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I do home health caregiving and have cared for disabled women from midlife to very elder years. I’ve seen a lot of prolapsing uteri in my years - it’s amazing the pelvic floor issues many mothers endure for decades as one of the prices of motherhood. Women who don’t have the issues have often no idea and little compassion for what other women suffer with.

The more awful stuff I’ve seen over the years, the happier I’ve been about skipping that rodeo and not risking my pelvic floor, risking urinary and fecal continence, impaired sexual function, chronic pain/neuropathy, etc.

I guess I understand why nobody tells young women this stuff either in health class or in the ladies coffee klatsch. Who wants to talk about the horrors that can happen and which can persist for a lifetime? Many more women might choose not.[/quote]

I think it's good to talk about the impact of pregnancy and childbirth on women's bodies. It's real and gets largely ignored in the way many aspects of women's health get ignored, and that can make it an unpleasant surprise for women, or a source of shame and embarrassment. It should be neither.

That said, talking about these things using words like "horrors" or acting like these things are grotesque or that women are permanently ruined by childbirth does not actually help. It swings too far in the other direction -- the goal should not be to try and scare women out of having kids. We need to talk about these aspects of pregnancy/childbirth in order to help women understand these are normal, and to get the medical community to provide better treatments and support to women. If you do not want children, I fully support you in that choice. But many women *do* want children. Trying to scare them straight by acting like the common, normal consequences to childbirth are a disgusting outcome to be avoided at all costs is not as feminist as you seem to think it is.[/quote]

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