ext_6760 ([identity profile] cheshire23.livejournal.com) wrote in [personal profile] mamagotcha 2007-12-16 06:07 pm (UTC)

I doubt that anyone who could be reading this would be among the disadvantaged families I'm wondering about.

Perhaps not, but they might be the children of such families. They might have, at one point, been lumped in the same bucket with the "disadvantaged families" because they received Medicaid and because one of the couple was diagnosed with a mental illness. They might have a baby with "failure to thrive" (and all that implies) written in the medical records, and gone through the continual anxiety of being guilty until proven innocent by virtue of the baby actually having a physical medical condition after all. (They might wonder, deep down, if the only reason they weren't seen with even more suspicion was that they were Caucasian and married to each other,or on the other hand seen with more suspicion because they voluntarily lived in a "black" neighborhood.) They might have a family member who died young that they suspect but cannot prove WAS a shaken baby (due to the combined symptoms of blindness, severe mental retardation, and inability to walk - this was my husband's twin sister).

If you make it about "those disadvantaged families", I venture to say that you might want to consider your stereotyping and the potential of class (or even racial and religious) bias. I'm reminded of a particularly nasty social worker I went to see when I had just finished graduate school with honors, had a job offer in hand, and couldn't afford security and first month's rent on an apartment. She informed me that I shouldn't search the Internet for apartments because "the Internet is for intelligent people!" (In other words, intelligent = rich, or at least not in financial crisis.) She also wanted to know what physical disability prevented my husband from working to earn the money for the move, when he had just gotten out of the psych ER for the second time that year due to suicidal ideation. Apparently psychiatric disabilities aren't valid in her world.

I do think that there is too much fear surrounding childbirth, but I also think, at a societal level, that there is too much fear surrounding parenting at all, and that is affecting people's birth choices. I think that most people see two options - have an unintended or semi-intended baby before you turn 20, or wait until you are at least 25 (probably 30-33), "established", married, "successful" dual-career or one person making LOTS of money so the other can stay home, in a house, no other debt, blahblahblah...and if you can't do that you can't parent successfully. I think it is a matter of the consumer culture playing havoc with reasonable expectations.

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