Should Pregnant Women Eat More Seafood?

So asks a headline in the New York Times, but some similar question is always a perennial favorite. Should pregnant women eat more, eat less, eat something else, have maybe a drink a day as the British do or none as American society would have it, do some kind of exercise or another, lift anything, do too many stairs, or yadda, yadda, yadda.

A woman gets pregnant and she stops being an individual adult in many people's eyes.

Strangers pester her with advice out of the blue. People may feel free to reach out and touch her stomach like it's become public property. If she's doing something that doesn't meet with the standards of whomever happens to be watching, she's may be publicly reprimanded in ways that other adults would never be. Experiments have demonstrated that pregnant women are perceived almost universally to be less competent at whatever they're doing, perhaps the root cause of all this 'benevolent' micromanagement and invasion of personal space.

So society is always there with the helpful admonishment, because she's become accountable to everyone. Somehow.

Then she'll have her baby, and the questions change, with criticisms and suggestions becoming less paternalistic and more withering. For example, the baby had better not inconvenience anyone by crying, or she's clearly a bad mom. Adults out in public oughtn't to have to put up with crying babies. Ever. That's for their mom to put up with by herself. At home. Because chicks really dig having the company of no one besides an infant whose vocabulary consists of burps and earsplitting wails. If dad puts up with it though, he's a hero.

The baby had better not inconvenience anyone else by being hungry, either. Because if mom breastfeeds, well, that's just disgusting. And no one should have to see it. Ewww. Even if it prevents the infant making very loud noises that no one really wants to listen to. She should only do that at home. By herself. Or maybe with other mothers, who are also at home. Why can't she bottlefeed, already? Or pump? Or, if she does bottlefeed, why doesn't she care about her baby enough to breastfeed?

The public asks a lot of very sharp questions of women who take on the responsibility of having a child, and also makes sure to ask them not to bother anyone else while they're doing it. But maybe society should be asking other questions about pregnant women and new mothers. Like, maybe, these: Should pregnant women be at greater risk for being murdered? Should pregnant women, or mothers and young children, get better access to healthcare and nutritious food? Should pregnant women and female-headed households be disproportionately likely to live in poverty? Should society penalize moms in the workplace? Should society re-evaluate a control fetish over women's bodies that often forces them to choose between normal human desires and realizing their independent potential?

Motherhood isn't a hobby. It isn't a luxury. It isn't abnormal, freakish, or unsightly. It isn't easy. None of that's news, or it shouldn't be. But it's treated at various times as though it's all those things. Treated that way, talked about that way, with lectures and patronizing finger wags. If it's talked about at all.

Want more women to vote? It could help if these issues weren't swept away as unsightly.

For L and D, two mothers that are among the most competent people I know.

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