Abstract
Pronatalism—the social bias toward having children—is at the core of much violence against women. Its chief characteristic, and its moral Achilles heel, is that it undermines autonomous decision-making about childbearing. Together with its soulmates misogyny and geneticism, it harms children, male partners, and humanity as a whole, given the serious environmental challenges now facing us. But, of course, biology requires women to gestate offspring, and women are generally expected to be responsible for childrearing. Female gender roles incorporate these facts, and thus pronatalism’s negative impact on women—both their bodies and their lives—is of another order of magnitude. Yet, this state of affairs is so taken for granted that it is almost invisible, and is therefore especially hard to eradicate. Attempts to do so (anti-pronatalism) are also often erroneously confused with, and undermined by, negativism about having children (anti-natalism).
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Notes
- 1.
Gimenez, “Feminism,” 301ff.
- 2.
See Martha E. Gimenez, “Feminism, Pronatalism, and Motherhood,” in Joyce Trebilcot, ed., in Mothering (NJ: Rowman & Allenheld, 1984), 301. See also See Leta S. Hollingworth, “Social Devices for Impelling Women to Bear and Rear Children,” p. 28 pp. in Ellen Peck and Judith Senderowitz, eds., Pronatalism: The Myth of Mom & Apple Pie (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell and Company, 1974), and Judith Blake, “Coercive Pronatalism and American Population Policy,” also in Peck and Senderowitz. For more recent work on the topic, focusing on the autonomy issues, see especially Diana Tietjens Meyers, “The Rush to Motherhood: Pronatalist Discourse and Women’s Autonomy,” Signs 26, no. 3 (2001), 735–773. Members of despised minorities are often caught up in pronatalism, even if those in power would prefer that they not have children.
- 3.
Blake, ‘Coercive Pronatalism,” and, Meyers, “The Rush.”
- 4.
This distinction is not necessarily noticed in discussions. See, for example, the debate between Colin Hickey, Travis N. Rieder, and Jake Earl, “Population Engineering and the Fight Against Climate Change,” and Rebecca Kukla, “Whose Job Is It to Fight Climate Change? A Response to Hickey, Reider, and Earl,”, both in Social Theory and Practice 42, no. 4 (2016), 845–870 and 871–878. But at least this exchange does consider the role of pronatalism, unlike the more popular NPR interview with Rieder and Kukla. As far as I know, the first thinker who wrote about this is Kingsley Davis, in his groundbreaking “Population Policy: Will Current Programs Succeed? Science 158, no 3802 (1967), 730–739.
- 5.
RIP, the non-identity problem. There is now a large literature on the subject; see my “Loving Future People,” in Reproducing Persons: Issues in Feminist Bioethics (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1996), 69–74.
- 6.
There is evidence for corporate activities that threaten the environment human populations depend on, such as fossil fuel production and consumption, use of water resources as sewers, use of agricultural chemicals that threaten pollinators or poison workers and the failures of governments to control them.
- 7.
There is now good evidence that wealthy/powerful individuals don’t see environmental protection to be in their own interest. See Stephen Hawking, who has shrunk his estimate of our viable time on earth from 1000 years to 100 years. (Julia Zorthian, “Stephen Hawking Says Humans Have 100 Years to Move to Another Planet,” Time May 4, 2017 (http://time.com/4767595/stephen-hawking-100-years-new-planet/, accessed 07/06/2017).
- 8.
See Meghan Daum, Selfish, Shallow, and Self-Absorbed: Sixteen Writers on the Decision Not to Have Kids (NY: Picador, 2015). Difficult as good parenting is caring for aging parents may be harder.
- 9.
My own experience as a stepmother reinforced my understanding of this issue. (See my In Their Best Interest: The Case Against Equal Rights for Children (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1992). It took all my knowledge base and more to deal with the practical, emotional, and psychological issues that arose, most of which involved moral and political dimensions that I was relatively well-prepared for, given my areas of specialization in philosophy. Some of the issues were still impossible to resolve in a satisfying way.
- 10.
See, for example, Annily Campbell, Childfree and Sterilized: Women’s Decisions and Medical Responses, (London: Cassell, 1999), and Dianne Lalonde, “Regret, Shame, and Denials of Women’s Voluntary Sterilization,” Bioethics, 32, no. 5 (2018), 281–288; https://doi.org/10.1111/bioe.12431
- 11.
It is highly probable that if children were created only by those who have a desire for them and the required supports, there would be many fewer children. Given the miseries alluded to here, and population’s contribution to climate change, it is reasonable to believe that overall this would be a good thing.
- 12.
See, for example, Susan Sherwin and Ann Donchin on autonomy.
- 13.
Sari Botton, “My Biological Clock Can’t Tick Fast Enough,” The New York Times, October 28, 2016, https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/30/style/modern-love-my-biological-clock-cant-tick-fast-enough.html, accessed May 3, 2017.
- 14.
However, the number of women without children has been growing rapidly, for reasons not yet known.
- 15.
Hollingworth, p. 20. For an amusing contemporary version of this, see Amy Gray, “Anyone Shocked by Women Who Regret Motherhood isn’t Listening,” The Sydney Morning Herald, June 20, 2017 (http://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/life-and-relationships/parenting/anyone-shocked-by-women-who-regret-motherhood-isnt-listening-20170620-gwusj8.html, accessed July 6, 2017). See also Evie Kendal, Equal Opportunity and the Case for State Sponsored Ectogenesis (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), who describes in detail the physical, social, and economic burdens of pregnancy.
- 16.
See Viviana A. Zelizer, Pricing the Priceless Child: The Changing Social Value of Children (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985).
- 17.
Kendal. See also my “The Morality of New Reproductive Technologies,” (1987), and “What Can Progress in Reproductive Technology Mean for Women?” (1996), both reprinted in Reproducing Persons, pp. 171–181, and 75–87, respectively. But see Stephen Coleman, The Ethics of Artificial Uteruses: Implications for Reproduction and Abortion (Burlington, Vermont: Ashgate, 2004) for concerns about the possibility. The debate over surrogacy, or contract pregnancy, has changed somewhat. One recent sad story, Lindsey Bever, “Heart Transplant Recipient Dies Hours After Giving Birth,” The Washington Post, July 2, 2017.
- 18.
Infection, pre-eclampsia, fistula, and more.
- 19.
A recent study (EG Raymond and DA Grimes, “The Comparative Safety of Legal Induced Abortion and Childbirth in the United States,” Obstet Gynecol, 1119, no 2 part 1 (2012), 215–09) showed that 8.8 women per 100,000 died, vs. 0.6 women per 100,000 died because of abortions, so the risk of death is approximately 14 times more in pregnancy than in abortion. The situation is similar with morbidity. If cuts to healthcare for women is implemented, statistics for both can be expected to rise significantly.
- 20.
The U.S. maternal mortality rate compares unfavorably with other developed countries. According to the OECD, it is three times higher than the U.K., and some eight times that of the Netherlands, Norway, and Sweden. Between 2000 and 2014, it increased from 19 per 100,000 to 24 per 100,000. Clearly, much of it is preventable. (See Julia Belluz, “California Decided it was Tired of Women Bleeding to Death in Childbirth,” June 29, 2017, Vox.pdf (https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2017/6/29/15830970/women-health-care-maternal-mortality-rate accessed July 6, 2017).
- 21.
The figures range from 27% for New Hampshire to 67% for Arkansas. (“Births Financed by Medicaid,” KFF.org (https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2017/6/29/15830970/women-health-care-maternal-mortality-rate, accessed July 6, 2017).
- 22.
For disturbing information about patients’ failure to understand the implications of such treatments, see Donna Stewart, et al., “The Disconnect: Infertility Patients’ Information and the Role They Wish to Play in Decision Making,” Medscape Women’s Health, 6, no 4 (August 2001) http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/408947, accessed July 6, 2017. For a look at concerns about technologies, see my “Bioethics and the New Assisted Reproduction,” Encyclopedia of Life Sciences. Chichester, John Wiley and Sons, Ltd., updated 2014; http://www.els.net/.
- 23.
For instance, Ann Donchin, “Procreation, Power, and Personal Autonomy: Feminist Reflections, unfinished manuscript, 1985–2001” Scholarworks, accessed July 6, 2017, https://scholarworks.iupui.edu/handle/1805/7231. For an excellent analysis of the roles that pronatalism and geneticism play in women’s choices about assisted reproduction, see Angel Petropanagos, “Pronatalism, Geneticism, and ART,” IJFAB 10 no. 1 (2017), 119–147.
- 24.
It’s hard to believe, though, that this bill exists in the form reported on, given the many issues it raises, including constitutional ones.
- 25.
Susan Moller Okin, Justice, Gender, and the Family (NY: Basic Books,1989). See also, Kendal, pp. 14–18, and for more extended analyses, Ann Oakley, Woman’s Work: The Housewife, Past and Present (NY: Random House, 1976); Nancy Folbre, Who Pays for the Kids? Gender and the Structures of Constraint (London and NY: Routledge, 1994); Ann Crittenden, The Price of Motherhood: Why the Most Important Job in the World is Still the Least Valued (NY: Holt, 2002); and Linda R. Hirshman, Get to Work and Get a Life Before It’s Too Late (Penguin Publishing Group, 2007).
- 26.
Hollingworth, “Social Devices.”
- 27.
For a classic take on this, see Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique (NY: W.W. Norton & Co., 1963).
- 28.
It is worth noting that managing households is not simple even for privileged single women. Sheryl Sandberg, author of Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead, (NY: Random House, 2013). After the death of her husband, she writes: “Before, I did not quite get it. I did not really get how hard it is to succeed at work when you are overwhelmed at home....”
- 29.
Among the examples: its power over reproduction in Latin America, and, in the U.S. and elsewhere, its takeover of public hospitals, where it imposes its “pro-life” views on all who enter their doors.
- 30.
See Kathryn Joyce, Quiverfull: Inside the Christian Patriarchy Movement (Boston: Beacon Press, 2009).
- 31.
Although the LUG (Lesbian Until Graduation) may belie this!
- 32.
See, for example, Kristin Luker, Abortion & the Politics of Motherhood, and my “Abortion and the Argument from Convenience,” and “Abortion, Forced Labor, and War,” both in Reproducing Persons, (132–145 and 146–160, respectively); and “Babystrike!” Feminism and Families, ed. Hilde Lindemann Nelson (NY: Routledge, 1997).
- 33.
Susan J. Douglas and Meredith W. Michaels, The Mommy Myth: The Idealization of Motherhood and How It Has Undermined Women, (NY: Free Press, 2004).
- 34.
Jennifer Senior, All Joy and No Fun: The Paradox of Modern Parenthood (NY: HarperCollins Publishers, 2014), esp. chapter 4.
- 35.
See, for example, http://www.freerangekids.com/, accessed July 7, 2017.
- 36.
- 37.
Lionel Shriver, “Be Here Now Means Be Gone Later” in Daum, 77–96.
- 38.
Mill compares this with the old “argument from necessity” for the practice of impressing sailors. He comments: “First pay the sailors the honest value of their labour. When you have made it worth their while to serve you, as to work for other employers, you will have no more difficulty than others have in obtaining their services.” John Stuart Mill, The Subjection of Women, in The Basic Writings of John Stuart Mill, Random House Publishing Group, 2010), p. 151.
- 39.
Some can see through the cheap tricks. See Annalisa Coppolaro-Nowell, “Italy’s Fertility Day Posters Aren’t Just Sexist—They’re Echoes of a Fascist Past,” The Guardian, September 5, 2016. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/sep/05/italys-fertility-day-posters-sexist-echoes-of-fascist-past. Accessed July 7, 2017.
- 40.
See Pamela Druckerman, Bringing Up Bebe: One American Mother Discovers the Wisdom of French Parenting, (The Penguin Press, 2012).
- 41.
For a telling comment on the conditions for child-rearing in Australia see Gray, “Anyone Shocked.”
- 42.
See Vittorio Bufacchi, “Two Concepts of Violence,” Political Studies Review, 3 (2005), 194.
- 43.
John Harris, “The Marxist Conception of Violence,” Philosophy & Public Affairs, 3, no. 2 (1974), 192–220. Bufacchi, “Two Concepts,” 197–98.
- 44.
Johan Galtung, “Violence, Peace, and Peace Research,” Journal of Peace Research, 6, no. 3 (1969), 167–191.
- 45.
Pam Houston, “The Trouble with Having It All,” Daum, 163–185.
- 46.
Karen Kaplan, “Americans Keep Having Fewer Babies as U.S. Birthrates Hit Some Record Lows,” LA Times, June 17, 2017, at http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-us-birth-rate-20170630-htmlstory.html, accessed July 17, 2017.
- 47.
But also, see Meyers—the skills and practices necessary for autonomy can be more broadly nurtured by their parents and teachers.
- 48.
This is a state of affairs disadvantaged men can only aspire, too, of course. My position in no way precludes fighting for more equal opportunity for men as well.
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Purdy, L.M. (2019). Pronatalism Is Violence Against Women: The Role of Genetics. In: Teays, W. (eds) Analyzing Violence Against Women. Library of Public Policy and Public Administration, vol 12. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-05989-7_9
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