Childbirth Porn

Interesting. I am almost entirely unqualified to comment, except to note that the probably apocryphal friend isn’t always, as I was an 1.5 hour birth (at home, unexpected, a couple of weeks premature). That’s first contraction to end game. My sister was fast too, but they were ready for it then.

As someone who’s pregnant from her first, I have a very different experience. Before I was pregnant, I knew hardly any detailed stories about pregnancy and childbirth. Now I now (too?) many. And I’ve heard from other people who felt that once pregnant they became part of a ‘secret society’ of people who only share there stories only with other parents (to be). Since many non-parents (both men and women) tend to be not interested or even irritated by all these child-focused stories, and do not want to hear about them, it isn’t odd at all that parents (to be) share their stories mainly with their peers.

I don’t think that my husband has heard many fewer stories than I did. And apart from the purely physical exercises I do not think he will be much better prepared for the childbirth than I am. However, it surely depends on the kind of “circles” you’re situated in. Tonight at an information evening about breastfeeding he was the only man (and it was indeed useful for him to attend that, and I’m glad we share the same knowledge on this issue now). But attending such events and asking about such stories is a choice all men can make or not make – if they would want to have all the information and hear all those stories, I don’t think they would have the excuse that you’re offering them for not being there at childbirth. The question from the other side, of course, is whether women would tell them these stories. In our (admittedly quite androgynous and gender egalitarian) circles, they do. But then perhaps our neighbourhood in the Netherlands might not be like your home in Ireland…

Aye yeah but come on. Surely to God one doesn’t have to be Robert Bly to think that part of being a man is a certain willingness to step up to the mark when honour calls and in the general scheme of things, if a woman’s vagina in childbirth is the most queasy-making thing you’re ever called upon to face, then you’re actually having a pretty easy life. It’s not so much the not wanting to be present, it’s the not doing it anyway because asked, or whining about it after the fact.

This conversation reminds me that I read some years ago that Ernest Hemingway had a pathological fear of pregnant women. Once he was invited to dinner at Luis Bunuel’s house, and when they entered the dining room to see Bunuel’s 8-month-pregnant wife, Hemingway stopped short and said, “Do we have to eat with her?”

While I love some of his writing, I find this story to be deeply comic.

well I wouldn’t put it that strongly but if I were in that situation myself I’d try to keep it out of the papers.

I think number 4 has it right – it’s one manifestation of a much larger problem with bodies in general. Might also happen to be a sweet, loving, considerate man with an unfortunate upbringing. I do have some sympathy for anyone discovering suddenly and dramaticaly that they have this problem, but I am awfully glad that the social solution is no longer “hide childbirth at all costs” but “get some therapy to help you get over this.”

Besides, since parents aren’t supposed to have sex for 3-6 weeks after birth, and no unprotected sex for much longer, a little ‘turn-off’ is probably a net benefit.

What a fing crock. Vivian sheds a little light. Thanks Vivian!

D^2 when you have spent 40 hours with a knotted gut waiting and worrying and have watched a little alien come out screaming in a pile of dangerous and disgusting crap from your screaming bleeding wife then you can talk your BS. Until then zip it.

(And it is a pile of dangerous and disgusting crap. Very dangerous.)

Maria,

My wife did not have a C-section either time or an epidural. When you have watched the single best person in the world writhe in absolute agony for hours on end perhaps an epidural or a cesarean doesn’t sound that bad.

(Actually, she took my advice and took the newbane(bad spelling), so it wasn’t that bad.)

After birth and breast-feeding it is probably best for a man to be a little turned off. Insert your evolutionary sociology jokes about glib observations about evolutionary sociology or glib observations about evolutionary sociology here.

Not too mention the endless hours and love required to feed the new person.

Soon enough a good husband will turn to his slightly bigger and less taut but still gorgeous wife and his thoughts will turn to real porn.

Nothing to do with the topic at hand but you all should really link to The Poor Man Institute for Freedom and Democracy and a Pony. It’s the funniest thing EVER. No joke. And it’s partly inspired by Belle.

What’s interesting is how quickly this changed.
My sisters are older than I am, they had their babies in the 1970s and ’80s, and at the time there was no thought that their husbands should be present at the delivery. Heck, had it occurred to them to ask to be present, they most likely would have been refused.

My wife and I had our kids in the ’90s, and at the time there was no thought that I should be absent from the delivery.

It’s an interesting (and surprisingly rapid) cultural shift.
It reversed within a generation – and I can see where an older man might not yet be whole-heartedly with the program.

That said, it’s what Ray and Dsquared said above:
“this is what you sign up to when you get married and decide to have a kid – you help however you can and you’re there when you’re needed” and “part of being a man is a certain willingness to step up to the mark when honour calls”.

Without joining in the pile-on of the squeamish, I will say that watching the birth did change my attitude toward my wife: she earned even more of my respect.

I think that most of what we’ve learned from this thread is that the New York Times is becoming a parody of a good newspaper.

“this is what you sign up to when you get married and decide to have a kid”

Only if one feel’s compelled to conform to an arbitrary cultural shift.

I’m unmarried, but my brother lovingly filmed the births of his first daughter and son. They were harrowing to watch: suddenly the head bursts though and the rest of the body dribbles after.

Then the doctor picks it up, checks it out, cleans it up, and then it’s everybody’s baby: so cute, so dear, so precious.

From that I take away a tenth of a percent of a clue about child-bearing.

I think the guys who aren’t there miss out.

“Being there when your wife needs you” /= “conforming to some arbitrary cultural shift”
If she doesn’t want you there, fine, but if she does then that’s where you should be. I can assure you, its a lot scarier and more painful for her.

Daniel, of course she cares about these men’s arousal responses, or at least she cares enough to write about their “oddly-easily-quenched future sexual desires.” Why Belle thinks she’s in a position to tell people what is and is not a healthy sexual response is beyond me.

In your posts, you keep focusing — perhaps appropriately — on getting these men to stop publicly complaining. But Belle is clearly telling these guys that they’re jerks — or, to quote her directly, “assholes” — for not being as attracted to their wives after witnessthe ing the birth as they were before. That’s an absurd position for her to adopt, and also one that shows zero understanding of just how strange and uncontrollable genuine sexual desire is.

There’s a strain of chivalry here fighting a more contemporary desire for male recognition. The chivalrous response is, no matter what, your duty is clear and it doesn’t involve whining.

Trouble is the article (unread by me) seems to have been about an subconscious response and thus falls outside any volitional or normative considerations.

I too am fascinated by the amount of heat in much of this debate. What’s driving the animus? The response of the men is characterised as one of feeling that their sexdrive has been violated. What if the issue is about a real and unwilled diminution of libido? Could not our reaction be, oh well, shit happens in real life, but interesting isn’t it?

Either way the nature of the denunciations here and at Belle’s is of more interest than the phenomenon itself. ott

full disclosure – I was smilarly affected – I had about twelve months of occasional unbidden images of the scalpel/episiotomy time – I eventually desensitised myself or else they faded naturally – either way I never mentioned it to anybody and do not consider it a problem that I would ever have needed to burden the world with- but will own up to it here in the interests of science!

I am aware that by exposing these feelings some men may capitalise upon them to justify selfishness or neglect, so I can see that it may be better for the topic not to have arisen – but in this world now nothing remains unknown.

dsquared;

You are just making stuff up so you can spin this story to fit your prejudices. No-one in the story said anything about people not witnessing the births of their children. They just said it subsequently made it difficult for them to be attracted to their wives. (Though there is a suggestion they should try to say near the head of the bed.)

The analogy isn’t someone not seeing their spouse who had been in a car crash. It’s seeing their spouse had been in a car crash, and subsequently made it difficult for them to be attracted to them afterwards. I really can’t see why these people shouldn’t have some sympathy. I think it’s odd that your response has been to slag them off for reluctantly talking to a doctor about their mental heath issues.

Sexual desire may be strange and wonderful, but come on…
If Mr A feels less desire for his wife after she saves someone’s life in a restaurant, what then?
If Mr B is turned off when his wife learns how to drive, what then?
If Mr C thinks some of the magic has gone now that his wife is no longer confined to a wheelchair, what then?
Its all subconscious, so no blame should attach and we should all be sympathetic, right?

You are just making stuff up

No I’m not; I’m paraphrasing and analogising to the last paragraph (the conclusion) of the NYT article. It’s not just reporting a few case studies where one might think “christ what a wimp but poor chap”; he’s suggesting that men’s revulsion for the genitalia of women who have given birth is a problem sufficiently widespread enough to be worth considering changing your birth plan over, and that it’s a problem specifically for women to think about. In retrospect, I wasn’t nearly harsh enough.

I still don’t understand what Daniel is actually arguing. I can see being “grown up” about it in the sense of not bitching about publicly (although I thought the men in the article were talking to a therapist, not a reporter). But, to put it bluntly, you can’t control what your penis does. It either gets hard or it doesn’t, and if having seen your wife gives birth affects how hard your penis gets later, then that’s it. You can’t tell your genitals to grow up.

(to expand on the above, it is appropriate to describe people in this situation as, say, cowardly or unmanly or whatever, precisely because it is not appropriate to have a presumption that they are speaking in good faith. There might be some small proportion of them who have a genuine physical or mental illness which means that if they ever see a bloody vagina, they are forever cursed with impotence, and these people deserve sympathy. However, the majority of people in this situation, it seems to me, are actually just aesthetically “put off” the idea of sex with their wives after childbirth. This is more likely to be a result of cognitive beliefs and value judgements of theirs, which are the proper object of criticism.

By way of analogy, let’s say that while carrying out genealogical research, Fred discovers that his wife Betty had a black grandparent, and finds that he can no longer bring himself to have sex with her now that he knows she is not the English rose of his dreams. Tough luck on poor old Fred, but also what a racist bastard. I think the analogy’s pretty direct).

I agree that the analogy is direct, and that seems like the right way of putting it: you think the cognitive beliefs and values that drive these men’s libidos are screwed up and worthy of attack. That is, their libidos are, in some sense, morally reprehensible (in the way, presumably, those of pedophiles are).

I think you’re absolutely wrong, and that it is incomparably worse to be sexually turned-off by race than by witnessing childbirth. But I think you’re right to frame the critique the way you do, as a matter of objective values.

why is it incomparably worse to be turned off by race than by witnessing childbirth? is it more the fault of the woman that she is pregnant than it is the fault of the mixed-race woman that she is mixed-race? or is it –perhaps– less the fault of the latter mixed race person, in that she had no control over her own conception, while the woman giving birth has –ex hypothesi–consented to conception? perhaps it is equally the fault of the “disgusted” father that the woman in question is giving birth? look, no one says he has to be down there between the legs taking pictures. is it too much to ask that he be willing to be there during delivery and hold his partner’s hand, if that is what she wants? without the invidious suggestion that he will never fuck her again because she has a gross vagina? also, kiss my grits.

Without presuming to speak for Belle, is it your notion that she gives a monkey’s what kind of arousal responses “men” in general have? Speaking for myself, I’m pretty sure I’d settle for them just shutting up about it.

Of course she cares – that’s what her entire essay is about. She is clearly threatened by the revelation that some men might find their mates less attractive sexually, after those mates give birth.

Well, both of my wife’s deliveries were “easy” ones–with the second, she gave birth after being in the hospital only about half an hour. Both times were were back home later the same day with the kid sitting on the sofa watching football on TV and eating take-out Chinese food (it became a mini-ritual).

But even straightforward deliveries are, well…it’s a violent process and babies come out slimy and smelly. Witnessing it all didn’t put me off sex, but I can understand how it might have that effect on some. Blaming these guys for feelings over which they have no control seems ridiculous. When did sneering at people who experience psychological problems because they won’t shut up and stop whining become acceptable in progressive circles? I mean, I know they’re men and all and, therefore, inherently less deserving of sympathy. But even so — sheesh.

Ah, this is still going, I see.

Quoth D-Squared: I think the analogy’s pretty direct

I think the analogy is quite absurd and borderline offensive. It’s like comparing someone who faints at the sight of blood to someone who suffers from Negrophobia. If you seriously think these constitute moral equivalents, you’re either reading way too much into people’s reactions to bodily fluids or you’re way too flippant about the importance of racism. Neither reflects well on your capacity to judge who is or isn’t being an “asshole” in this instance.

I have to agree with Dan, here. Belle’s show of insecurity isn’t doing her any favours in the “asshole” sweepstakes by comparison with her targets.