QOTD: Avoiding Pregnancy

September 1, 2012

QOTD: Avoiding Pregnancy

[M]ost American women spend the majority of their lives trying not to get pregnant. According to the Guttmacher Institute, by the time a woman with two children is in her mid-40s, she will have spent only ﬁve years trying to become pregnant, being pregnant or in a postpartum period. So to avoid getting pregnant, she would have have to refrain from sex or use contraception for 25 years. That’s a long part of life and a lot of effort to avoid parenthood. – Washington Post

I’ve never been pregnant. I realize many miscarriages happen in the first few weeks, so I might have been pregnant without realizing it. Perhaps “To my knowledge I’ve never been pregnant” would be more factual. But. I have used condoms, taken the pill, used spemicide. More recently the man of the house decided to be sterilized, and I’m fine with that.

I chose to avoid pregnancy and I succeeded. It’s possible that I’m not very fertile – I don’t know my fertility status, really, because I never tried to conceive. It helped that I had money for contraceptives, especially before my state required insurers to cover birth control; it helped that I waited to have sex until I was legally of age. I chose contraception and it worked for me.

If my life had gone differently I might have chosen to conceive. If contraception had been less effective or affordable for me, I might have had an abortion. The thing I’m glad of was that it was a choice. Having children does not have to be a given.

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DayInTheLife, Feminism, Sex

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Living 400lbs

I blog about what it’s like to be live life at about 400lbs. :)

14 responses to “QOTD: Avoiding Pregnancy”

Addie

September 1, 2012 at 9:49 am

Amen! I am so tired of hearing why don’t you have kids…don’t you want kids! I am a 37 ye old woman who is proud to be in a decade long childless relationship. Neither of us have kids. He and I are both happy and content. We are best friends…and do not need children to solidify or validate us.

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Noel Lynne Figart

September 1, 2012 at 10:54 am

It’s a lot of why I got an IUD.

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1. Living 400lbs
  
  September 2, 2012 at 3:42 pm
  
  Yes. Definitely easier than getting tubes tied, too.
  
  Reply
Eselle

September 1, 2012 at 4:16 pm

Choice is what it is all about. If somone wants kids, great. If not, also great. There shouldn’t be pressure to reproduce.

I never had kids. I knew from an early age that I wasn’t cut out to be a mother. I’ve wondered a few times what it might have been like to have children simply because I never did. However, I don’t regret my choice now that I can’t have kids. I see myself as child-free not childless.

If you don’t want kids then that’s

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Eselle

September 1, 2012 at 4:18 pm

I’ve been having problems with the reply boxes in WordPress lately… sorry.

If you don’t want to have kids, you shouldn’t be forced to nor feel badly if you don’t choose to. Those who say you sholuld are not the ones who would have to raise them, so they have no say.

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skye

September 2, 2012 at 12:59 am

Most members of my Tribe are child-free and I support them! Seriously, if one does not want to be a parent, one probably should not be. I have two sons and one step-son and love being a mom but I totally get why some women don’t want to be. It changes everything and it can make one’s romantic relationship(s) more difficult to maintain. Choice is a beautiful – and liberating – thing :-)

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wendyrg

September 2, 2012 at 9:08 am

I am ferociously pro-choice. Having children should always be a personal decision.

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Clara

September 2, 2012 at 9:47 am

Even though I’m about to have a kid in less than a month, I have always been extremely pro-choice. I hate that our society has a nasty tendency to look down on women who don’t “give their husbands/ boyfriends kids” (especially when it’s worded like that) or women who even (le gasp!!) stay un-partnered or partner with another woman.

We are not baby machines, thank you very much.

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Mulberry

September 3, 2012 at 1:10 pm

“A lot of effort to avoid parenthood”? Has anyone pointed out that this is minuscule compared to the effort it takes to be a decent parent?

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1. fatcarriesflavor
  
  September 4, 2012 at 4:47 pm
  
  WTF? Why would they? What has one got to do with the other, except possibly that the effort involved in parenting is one of the reasons people make the effort to avoid pregnancy? I think you’ve missed the point.
  
  Reply
  1. Kay
    
    September 15, 2012 at 6:52 pm
    
    Lol, I think you missed the point. Mulberry is saying that if it seems like a lot of trouble to avoid becoming a parent then compare that to actually being a parent because that’s way more to deal with.
    
    Reply
    1. fatcarriesflavor
      
      September 15, 2012 at 10:41 pm
      
      LOL, I think you missed MY point. Because I got that, oddly enough. I just don’t think it’s relevant. At all. OMG PARENTING IS HARD has nothing to do with the effort necessary to prevent pregnancy, except that parenting being hard is one of the reasons people put in the effort to prevent pregnancy. This is really very simple.
      
      Reply
Sue Newbould

September 20, 2012 at 6:12 am

I have mixed feelings about this. Thirty years ago we were told I was too fat to have children because it was dangerous at my weight. Now I know that was silly and I think I knew it then too but I accepted it. My husband and I didn’t need children to make our lives complete so maybe that gave us a convenient cover story for those nosy friends and relatives who asked why they weren’t hearing the pitter patter of little feet. As if it was any of their business!

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Annie

December 8, 2013 at 2:51 pm

I was afraid of having kids because of what I endured as a child. I wasn’t sure what kind of mom I’d be. I was afraid because of my weight. Every doctor has stories about how you can’t have a healthy pregnancy being obese. (Complete bs, btw. I lost weight during my pregnancies because I ate more consciously. No complications until delivery, when it was discovered that my pelvic bone was malformed. I had to have c-sections with them all-but that had nothing to do with obesity.) I was told that I couldn’t have kids. Birth control is actually what made it possible for me to have children. I have a condition called PCOS. Before birth control(bc), I had unpredictable periods. Afterwards my periods were predictable. We had unprotected sex for 2 years on bc. Never in my life would I have predicted it. We got pregnant without even trying. A couple years later-pregnant again. A couple more years after that-you guessed it, pregnant again. I went to school to be an information technology person. I got my Bachelor’s of Science in Business. Majored in MIS. I had to give up on that dream because of the kids. My husband had a good job, so I stayed at home because being a stay at home mom is cheaper than having daycare. There aren’t many IT jobs where I live. Pretty much job minimum wage stuff. Nothing that would make putting the kids in daycare worth it. Not sure if I want some stranger watching my kids anyway. Motherhood is difficult. I can’t imagine how single ladies do it, or how ladies with bad guys do it. Sometimes I regret not giving the kids away. You’re not allowed to feel that way as a mother. People say that you’re evil for feeling that way. You’re evil if you fantasize about leaving. I don’t hate my kids in any way. I mostly have those feelings for them. Their friends may make fun of them because they have a fat mom. Maybe I’m not cuddling with them enough, or giving them enough hugs and kisses because I didn’t learn that growing up. Maybe my kids don’t know how to dress correctly or practice good hygiene, again because I wasn’t taught that. My daughter will never learn the intricacies of putting I make-up because I don’t know how. Sometimes I wish that someone more worthy, experienced, and comfortable with being a mom would swoop in and steal my husband and kids away. I try, but I still feel like I fail miserably. I can’t tell if having kids was the right decision or not for anyone else, but I can say that I didn’t really know until after I had them. Still don’t know… Kind of a live one day at a time thing. For me, they were a lot more work than expected. It’s not that bad. I just worry a lot. I used to not be a worrying type of person. That changed as soon as I became mommy. Sometimes the screaming and fighting gets to me. I just remind myself that they won’t be young forever, put on a calm face, and tell them to stop it. If they don’t, in the time-out they go. I’m pro-choice, but as an individual, I can definitely say abortion is not for me… Even if I was raped. I felt life growing. I know what they can be. I’m not going to judge people for aborting though because I also know the other side. How difficult it is to be mom. I didn’t have supportive family. No mom, grandma, aunts, etc. It was all significant other and me. I wish that a female relative would have come over and given me a break while so was working… Nope… It was all on me. So, I know what it’s like not to have a support group. Wish that the pro-life people could see that, instead of being judgmental asses. That whole cow thing is ridiculous, btw… Women should be made to carry a dead fetus until term because cows do it. All because they don’t want to make any exceptions to their anti-abortion laws. I see infanticide in nature, and they say it’s evil. Cats have been known to consume their kittens. Abortion is kinder than that by a long shot.

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