"I see it almost like an extension of the beauty studio, where being proactive about your reproduction and longevity just seems like an act of self-care.”
To be honest, this sounds horrible to me. It seems to me, as a society, if there is a choice between a natural process and an artificial (possibly industrialized, normed) process, we go for the latter. I can't understand why we do not have any respect at all for natural processes - the process of creating new humans; the process of caring them when they are babies and toddlers - the process of building long-lasting communities - the process of learning to accept our bodies - this is not nothing. These are fundamental, basic processes that shape what it means to be human and that shape each and every one of us.
Sure, these processes are natural, meaning there can be hickups and drawbacks and sometimes failure - but we as a society seem to overlook that there are hickups and drawbacks and failure with artificial processes, too.
In another life, I was raising a baby and toddler while working in a fulltime job - time is such a valuable resource when parenting small children and I just didn't have it and so everybody got hurt. And now I can't unsee the damage done by artificial processes; why can't everybody see them?
I watched the Pitt debate (was hoping to attend in person but the protests made it hard to take the bus in). You were by far the best part of it, although I was pleasantly surprised by how serious both debaters were!
Thanks for the link. I'm only just catching up with my reading and noticed, with great surprise, my name here! I love how you apply the idea of beholding to beholding the person you are debating.
Thanks for highlighting these Leah! As Melanie Bettinelli highlighted Makoto Fujimura, if anyone is interested I would heartily recommend his new (ish) book “Art + Faith: A Theology of Making”. I read it last year and it resonated.
As they consider timing childbirth, I suspect that many women don't think much about arithmetic, specifically the ages of their prospective children's grandparents. Children and energetic grandparents can develop close bonds, and parents often appreciate help from the older generation. Similarly, parents tend to find friendship among the parents of their children's schoolmates and teammates. If the playmates' moms and dads are old enough to BE one's children, the generation gap may well lead to polite distance rather than easy camaraderie.
My mom was more the usual age, and my dad muuuuuch older, and they both did very well by us. My dad was someone who was so *energized* by children that, even in the last year of his life, he'd have surges of energy for peekaboo, even when generally weak. And we benefited a lot from both our parents being teachers—a lot of my classmates saw their younger but lawyer/doctor/investments dads a lot less.
That being said, being a mom is a lot of hard physical work, and I'm glad I'm not older than I am. And birth is a *huge* athletic endeavor. I don't worry about getting back a pre-baby body, but I exercise to be strong and to build up muscle and endurance for a next labor!
I thought the same thing after reading “The Future of Fertility,” as well as the nascent blindness about the challenges of parenting at an advanced age by choice (I throw in a small caveat here for people like myself; I’m 41, my husband is 51, and we are still open to more children beyond our seven living blessings, who range in age from 2 to nearly 15). Caring for a newborn and toddler, for instance, is very different at 26 than at 39, and I have to work hard to pace myself (I’m very healthy, thank the Lord). And I know what pregnancy, L & D, and postpartum recovery are like--I can’t imagine experiencing them for the first time now. I agree that the article views the natural (ie: non-invasive) fertility process for women as a series of obstacles to be overcome rather than as a cohesive design. Maternal caregiving only begins with pregnancy (and often before, with pre-prenatal care), and the physical demands continue for a long time (moms of teens waiting up at night, anyone?).
This is something we are NEVER told. I had my first child at twenty (far too early) and my second child at forty (almost too late). My first child had the benefit of very fit, young grandparents; my second child knows them at a time when they are in their seventies and she is likely to lose them before she turns 25. And we as her parents won't be around to support her as much as my parents were able to support me and my first child. When my daughter is thirty, I will be seventy, and possible not as fit as I am now. And her children might not know their grandparents for a very long time, either.
It's really heartbreaking, if you think of it, such a loss of love and support across generations. I think schools and youth services should put much more emphasis on how - and when - people can grow strong families.
"fyi you can’t get out of having duties to other people’s children by not having children, you have to have never been a child yourself"
Great tweet. I've always believed this and acted accordingly. It'd be really nice if some of the Christians who've told me that I'm worse than useless because I don't have children would recognize it. For these people, it doesn't matter if you deliberately and lovingly invest in the lives of children -- you're still worse than useless if you don't have your own.
I'm so sorry for that Gina. There's no excuse for that from *anyone,* but particularly not from Christians. Christ offered His life in total self-gift for those whom He loved. He didn't have to be a father to be the pattern for human life. And the Church is sustained by those who have chosen consecrated religious life to make their whole life a gift in that way.
It's harder when singleness isn't chosen, but the life of Christ is a testament that there is no love *wasted* in singleness, just a stinginess in us in not receiving the gifts you have to share.
Thanks, Haley. I appreciate that. It's not just me, either, it's a lot of childless women. And I bring it up here because it works directly against what Leah's advocating -- the encouraging of all adults to care for and invest in children. It makes it really difficult for us to do that when we're being pushed away. So everybody loses.
Your Substack posts on Richard Reeves was fantastic! I wish we could have a national conversation on boys that was more than just “hold them back” - as I mentioned in the article, boys seem just as *ready* to learn as girls, but their preferences about how to do so seem (on average) different. I’ve heard from a lot of homeschool moms that their boys like to learn while moving, prefer listening to reading, and expressing what they’ve learned orally rather than through writing. This is not-of course-to say “one size fits all.” Lots of little girls also like to move around. But I would love to see more emphasis on adapting classrooms to all these learning styles, and I fear standardized testing is part of the barrier....
Yep. Homeschool mom of 15 years here. I allowed all my kids to jump on a trampoline, lie on the floor, do jumping jacks, draw while listening, whatever they needed to "keep busy" while working on memory work or listening to me. I also allowed as much movement as I could when I was in a classroom, and I agree with you that these need adapting.
I love the metaphor of kintsugi - and I love your brief reflection on beholding those who disagree and starting from a place of love and generosity. I would be very interested in reading a longer reflection on the Pitt debate set in this framing. How could the metaphor of kintsugi be applied to our national moment?
I so deeply hope that we will come through this current fracturing stronger than ever, full of more love and respect for each other and our pluralistic society. But right now there is so much hatred being enshrined into law - so much brokenness. And fundamental disagreement about what is broken. What shape do the the pieces form? What does beautiful repair consist of?
For me, it starts with curiosity. When I see someone I oppose, I try to find out what perceived good they are trying to protect from me. They may be wrong about whether that perceived good *is* good or whether I really pose a danger to it. But when I start with that question, there's something I need to receive *from* my enemy, that will force me to know and see them more clearly, and to see them as someone who loves a perceived good, rather than just opposing mine.
I’d love to read you applying that exercise to the Pitt situation. What good do you see the protesters defending? What good do you see coming from Knowles’ position of “eradicating transgenderism” through state violence?
I think Knowles and the protestors have more common ground along one axis than either Knowles do with Polumbo. Because the basic claim that they're both making is that the claim about whether people can be in the wrong body is a BIG truth claim, and it isn't something that quite works with passive toleration.
People who are trans don't want to be tolerated in a "you're wrong but I'll humor you" kind of way—the claim is that the person who tries to avoid lying but also giving offense by e.g. avoiding pronouns in speech is being discriminatory and violent, because not assenting is contradicting (true, mostly).
Both Knowles and the protestors think the truth really matters here, and the goal is for everyone to wind up on the same side (but they disagree fiercely on what is true). Polumbo says it's a low stakes, live and let live issue, and that a society can integrate wildly different theories of gender and identity by just agreeing to disagree.
The protestors and Knowles also agree (as he said in the debate) that if the trans truth claim is true, children should *definitely* transition (and Polumbo's compromise of transition only for adults splits the baby in a relatively incoherent way). So we can't quite take a safe middle course—getting the question wrong is guaranteed to result in massive injustice, so the question is how we test the conflicting truth claims.
I would very much dispute that characterization of the protesters. I think most trans folks don't particularly care if everyone supports their transition or believes their truth claim, as long as it doesn't mean being denied service, or denied jobs, or denied housing, or other very real acts of violence.
Now, do most protesters also want to create a culture where trans kids can freely express their identity without fear for their wellbeing - absolutely. And does that include *most* people recognizing that trans people have always existed and always will exist, sure! But I haven't heard a single protester saying that people who don't believe that truth claim should be banned by the state in any way for that belief. Now, if you want to act on that belief in a way that is an act of violence to another human being, trans or suspected of being trans - that is another story.
I’ve certainly been part of communities where people pay attention to whether you’re eliding pronouns and argued that people who do should be kicked out of the rpg space, because they were condoning violence by not actively affirming.
I don’t think there’s a direct link between not using pronouns you don’t believe and violence, but I do think that people (rightly) aren’t asking to be humored in a preference but to be acknowledged as who they are. But that means pushing to get people to affirm things they do not believe and to make the case that to live alongside you they must change their mind.
Oh! I’ve been part of similar spaces. But I haven’t heard a protester say there should be a legal ban on people eliding pronouns from existing in our society. Which is a very massive difference between the protesters and the Right. One is about social pressure, the other involves state / legal enforcement.
"When I hold both those truths in my hands at once— that the world continues to be immensely cruel and that it is such a blessing that so many people want to change it— I am left with only one conclusion: We must not take any of this momentum for granted. If we want a better world, we need to make our movements the kind of places that, as adrienne maree brown put it in We Will Not Cancel Us, “people come running towards… expecting that they will be welcomed, flawed and whole.”
“the fix is paring off parts of the natural process”
Are you passing negative judgment on women who experience fertility issues (of any age) and wish to go about conceiving beyond some simple fertility timing method? I have many friends who’ve had issues and work with their doctor to help conceive because “the natural process” was not working, and now have children because of breakthroughs in medical science
What I find very off putting in the doctors profiled is that they aren't just trying to treat infertility, but to make fertility and parenting *small* enough to be non-competitive with working life. Egg freezing, IVG, and IVF are *partially* for infertility but also intended to make fertility indefinitely deferrable. There's a reason the big tech companies are happy to pay for egg freezing—they want more of people's youngest, most active years and give what's left over to their families.
While I agree to some extent with the last point about tech companies wanting to pay for egg freezing (the availability of that offering is still quite rare, Facebook aside), the premise of what your comment seems to me to be is that these technologies are:
1) derived from a demand by corporations, not women
2) not desired by women experiencing fertility issues at any age, even so-called early childbearing years
3) not for women who are having children later for any non-career-related reasons.
I’ve got a family friend who just gave birth to her second child in her 40s entirely thanks to IVF. She’d met her husband only a few years ago, and this had nothing to do with her career, it’s just how love ultimately chose her, not any conscious choice of deferral.
Yes, and this is DAMAGING to individuals, children, family and society as a whole. You can't have a family and fit it around two full-time jobs and a complete worklife. Everybody will get hurt in the process, unless the family is very wealthy and can outsource much of the care work involved.
"I see it almost like an extension of the beauty studio, where being proactive about your reproduction and longevity just seems like an act of self-care.”
To be honest, this sounds horrible to me. It seems to me, as a society, if there is a choice between a natural process and an artificial (possibly industrialized, normed) process, we go for the latter. I can't understand why we do not have any respect at all for natural processes - the process of creating new humans; the process of caring them when they are babies and toddlers - the process of building long-lasting communities - the process of learning to accept our bodies - this is not nothing. These are fundamental, basic processes that shape what it means to be human and that shape each and every one of us.
Sure, these processes are natural, meaning there can be hickups and drawbacks and sometimes failure - but we as a society seem to overlook that there are hickups and drawbacks and failure with artificial processes, too.
In another life, I was raising a baby and toddler while working in a fulltime job - time is such a valuable resource when parenting small children and I just didn't have it and so everybody got hurt. And now I can't unsee the damage done by artificial processes; why can't everybody see them?
I watched the Pitt debate (was hoping to attend in person but the protests made it hard to take the bus in). You were by far the best part of it, although I was pleasantly surprised by how serious both debaters were!
Thanks for the link. I'm only just catching up with my reading and noticed, with great surprise, my name here! I love how you apply the idea of beholding to beholding the person you are debating.
I always love your posts.
Thanks for highlighting these Leah! As Melanie Bettinelli highlighted Makoto Fujimura, if anyone is interested I would heartily recommend his new (ish) book “Art + Faith: A Theology of Making”. I read it last year and it resonated.
Thank you for the recommend. I was thrilled to see that the audiobook is currently free with my audible membership. Adding it to my reading queue!
Ah! It turns out I only responded to you in my mind. But I wanted to thank you for your powerful reflection. Let me know what you think of the book!
As they consider timing childbirth, I suspect that many women don't think much about arithmetic, specifically the ages of their prospective children's grandparents. Children and energetic grandparents can develop close bonds, and parents often appreciate help from the older generation. Similarly, parents tend to find friendship among the parents of their children's schoolmates and teammates. If the playmates' moms and dads are old enough to BE one's children, the generation gap may well lead to polite distance rather than easy camaraderie.
My mom was more the usual age, and my dad muuuuuch older, and they both did very well by us. My dad was someone who was so *energized* by children that, even in the last year of his life, he'd have surges of energy for peekaboo, even when generally weak. And we benefited a lot from both our parents being teachers—a lot of my classmates saw their younger but lawyer/doctor/investments dads a lot less.
That being said, being a mom is a lot of hard physical work, and I'm glad I'm not older than I am. And birth is a *huge* athletic endeavor. I don't worry about getting back a pre-baby body, but I exercise to be strong and to build up muscle and endurance for a next labor!
I thought the same thing after reading “The Future of Fertility,” as well as the nascent blindness about the challenges of parenting at an advanced age by choice (I throw in a small caveat here for people like myself; I’m 41, my husband is 51, and we are still open to more children beyond our seven living blessings, who range in age from 2 to nearly 15). Caring for a newborn and toddler, for instance, is very different at 26 than at 39, and I have to work hard to pace myself (I’m very healthy, thank the Lord). And I know what pregnancy, L & D, and postpartum recovery are like--I can’t imagine experiencing them for the first time now. I agree that the article views the natural (ie: non-invasive) fertility process for women as a series of obstacles to be overcome rather than as a cohesive design. Maternal caregiving only begins with pregnancy (and often before, with pre-prenatal care), and the physical demands continue for a long time (moms of teens waiting up at night, anyone?).
This is something we are NEVER told. I had my first child at twenty (far too early) and my second child at forty (almost too late). My first child had the benefit of very fit, young grandparents; my second child knows them at a time when they are in their seventies and she is likely to lose them before she turns 25. And we as her parents won't be around to support her as much as my parents were able to support me and my first child. When my daughter is thirty, I will be seventy, and possible not as fit as I am now. And her children might not know their grandparents for a very long time, either.
It's really heartbreaking, if you think of it, such a loss of love and support across generations. I think schools and youth services should put much more emphasis on how - and when - people can grow strong families.
"fyi you can’t get out of having duties to other people’s children by not having children, you have to have never been a child yourself"
Great tweet. I've always believed this and acted accordingly. It'd be really nice if some of the Christians who've told me that I'm worse than useless because I don't have children would recognize it. For these people, it doesn't matter if you deliberately and lovingly invest in the lives of children -- you're still worse than useless if you don't have your own.
I'm so sorry for that Gina. There's no excuse for that from *anyone,* but particularly not from Christians. Christ offered His life in total self-gift for those whom He loved. He didn't have to be a father to be the pattern for human life. And the Church is sustained by those who have chosen consecrated religious life to make their whole life a gift in that way.
It's harder when singleness isn't chosen, but the life of Christ is a testament that there is no love *wasted* in singleness, just a stinginess in us in not receiving the gifts you have to share.
Thank you -- that is really beautifully put!
I am very, very sorry you had to experience that response from people.
I'm sorry you've experienced that, Gina.
Thanks, Haley. I appreciate that. It's not just me, either, it's a lot of childless women. And I bring it up here because it works directly against what Leah's advocating -- the encouraging of all adults to care for and invest in children. It makes it really difficult for us to do that when we're being pushed away. So everybody loses.
Your Substack posts on Richard Reeves was fantastic! I wish we could have a national conversation on boys that was more than just “hold them back” - as I mentioned in the article, boys seem just as *ready* to learn as girls, but their preferences about how to do so seem (on average) different. I’ve heard from a lot of homeschool moms that their boys like to learn while moving, prefer listening to reading, and expressing what they’ve learned orally rather than through writing. This is not-of course-to say “one size fits all.” Lots of little girls also like to move around. But I would love to see more emphasis on adapting classrooms to all these learning styles, and I fear standardized testing is part of the barrier....
Yep. Homeschool mom of 15 years here. I allowed all my kids to jump on a trampoline, lie on the floor, do jumping jacks, draw while listening, whatever they needed to "keep busy" while working on memory work or listening to me. I also allowed as much movement as I could when I was in a classroom, and I agree with you that these need adapting.
So beautiful! Thanks for sharing this.
I love the metaphor of kintsugi - and I love your brief reflection on beholding those who disagree and starting from a place of love and generosity. I would be very interested in reading a longer reflection on the Pitt debate set in this framing. How could the metaphor of kintsugi be applied to our national moment?
I so deeply hope that we will come through this current fracturing stronger than ever, full of more love and respect for each other and our pluralistic society. But right now there is so much hatred being enshrined into law - so much brokenness. And fundamental disagreement about what is broken. What shape do the the pieces form? What does beautiful repair consist of?
For me, it starts with curiosity. When I see someone I oppose, I try to find out what perceived good they are trying to protect from me. They may be wrong about whether that perceived good *is* good or whether I really pose a danger to it. But when I start with that question, there's something I need to receive *from* my enemy, that will force me to know and see them more clearly, and to see them as someone who loves a perceived good, rather than just opposing mine.
I’d love to read you applying that exercise to the Pitt situation. What good do you see the protesters defending? What good do you see coming from Knowles’ position of “eradicating transgenderism” through state violence?
I think Knowles and the protestors have more common ground along one axis than either Knowles do with Polumbo. Because the basic claim that they're both making is that the claim about whether people can be in the wrong body is a BIG truth claim, and it isn't something that quite works with passive toleration.
People who are trans don't want to be tolerated in a "you're wrong but I'll humor you" kind of way—the claim is that the person who tries to avoid lying but also giving offense by e.g. avoiding pronouns in speech is being discriminatory and violent, because not assenting is contradicting (true, mostly).
Both Knowles and the protestors think the truth really matters here, and the goal is for everyone to wind up on the same side (but they disagree fiercely on what is true). Polumbo says it's a low stakes, live and let live issue, and that a society can integrate wildly different theories of gender and identity by just agreeing to disagree.
The protestors and Knowles also agree (as he said in the debate) that if the trans truth claim is true, children should *definitely* transition (and Polumbo's compromise of transition only for adults splits the baby in a relatively incoherent way). So we can't quite take a safe middle course—getting the question wrong is guaranteed to result in massive injustice, so the question is how we test the conflicting truth claims.
I would very much dispute that characterization of the protesters. I think most trans folks don't particularly care if everyone supports their transition or believes their truth claim, as long as it doesn't mean being denied service, or denied jobs, or denied housing, or other very real acts of violence.
Now, do most protesters also want to create a culture where trans kids can freely express their identity without fear for their wellbeing - absolutely. And does that include *most* people recognizing that trans people have always existed and always will exist, sure! But I haven't heard a single protester saying that people who don't believe that truth claim should be banned by the state in any way for that belief. Now, if you want to act on that belief in a way that is an act of violence to another human being, trans or suspected of being trans - that is another story.
I think saying 'we don't want people to do us harm' is very much the opposite of creating vigilante groups patrolling women's bathrooms and public calls for trans eradication. Not really a 'like' or parallel case. Here's a great recent piece by Parker Molloy that gets into much of this: https://www.readtpa.com/p/a-wapo-poll-found-that-significant?utm_source=profile&utm_medium=reader2
I’ve certainly been part of communities where people pay attention to whether you’re eliding pronouns and argued that people who do should be kicked out of the rpg space, because they were condoning violence by not actively affirming.
I don’t think there’s a direct link between not using pronouns you don’t believe and violence, but I do think that people (rightly) aren’t asking to be humored in a preference but to be acknowledged as who they are. But that means pushing to get people to affirm things they do not believe and to make the case that to live alongside you they must change their mind.
Oh! I’ve been part of similar spaces. But I haven’t heard a protester say there should be a legal ban on people eliding pronouns from existing in our society. Which is a very massive difference between the protesters and the Right. One is about social pressure, the other involves state / legal enforcement.
One reading in this vein for inspiration:
"When I hold both those truths in my hands at once— that the world continues to be immensely cruel and that it is such a blessing that so many people want to change it— I am left with only one conclusion: We must not take any of this momentum for granted. If we want a better world, we need to make our movements the kind of places that, as adrienne maree brown put it in We Will Not Cancel Us, “people come running towards… expecting that they will be welcomed, flawed and whole.”
https://substack.com/inbox/post/116569059
“the fix is paring off parts of the natural process”
Are you passing negative judgment on women who experience fertility issues (of any age) and wish to go about conceiving beyond some simple fertility timing method? I have many friends who’ve had issues and work with their doctor to help conceive because “the natural process” was not working, and now have children because of breakthroughs in medical science
What I find very off putting in the doctors profiled is that they aren't just trying to treat infertility, but to make fertility and parenting *small* enough to be non-competitive with working life. Egg freezing, IVG, and IVF are *partially* for infertility but also intended to make fertility indefinitely deferrable. There's a reason the big tech companies are happy to pay for egg freezing—they want more of people's youngest, most active years and give what's left over to their families.
While I agree to some extent with the last point about tech companies wanting to pay for egg freezing (the availability of that offering is still quite rare, Facebook aside), the premise of what your comment seems to me to be is that these technologies are:
1) derived from a demand by corporations, not women
2) not desired by women experiencing fertility issues at any age, even so-called early childbearing years
3) not for women who are having children later for any non-career-related reasons.
I’ve got a family friend who just gave birth to her second child in her 40s entirely thanks to IVF. She’d met her husband only a few years ago, and this had nothing to do with her career, it’s just how love ultimately chose her, not any conscious choice of deferral.
Yes, and this is DAMAGING to individuals, children, family and society as a whole. You can't have a family and fit it around two full-time jobs and a complete worklife. Everybody will get hurt in the process, unless the family is very wealthy and can outsource much of the care work involved.