When interviewing people for birth stories I drove the discussion more to the reasons for birth, the sequence of events preceding and following birth and other such inquiries on the unit I had.
My friend Izzy was born of Tom and Jackie, Tom whom I interviewed had Izzy in his thirties married Jackie after she was pregnant with his daughter. He decided to do this sequence because Tom and Jackie wanted for sure to have a child and with their age didn’t want to wait to get married; time was of the essence. The significance of the marriage was that Tom believed it was a “public proclamation” and a “right of passage”. Why Tom made the decision to have children was that he himself had a great experience as a child and that he wanted to give birth in order to share that experience he had and witness it all over again.
This new transition of becoming a married father meant “goodbye usual life”, “no more going to clubs, six-packs every night or any new girlfriends”. When the decision was made to make this family his life opened up. He assumed that he would always have five children as he himself was one of five children. While Jackie was pregnant and going through this physical experience of having an organism grow inside her he was by her side helping her when he could “you know it’s your child and you have a protective instinct”.
Often in our society child birth and marriage go hand in hand, this idea of having an official bond with someone and then from that “holy matrimony” creating a family. Marriage without the birth is often looked at with suspicion while the other way around it is shameful. When exploring one topic it is hard to avoid the other as they stand under the umbrella of family. Tom’s last comment showed the distinction of male and female roles with have some origin in the biological roles. That the Tom must be the caretaker or the nurse for Jackie as she is the one with a tumor, and she is going through a physical experience and thus carrying the heavier burden because of biological reasons. Tom then once to be active in the process so does what he can while the mother and fetus share a special connection.
What are the reasons for marriage and birth to be so interconnected in our society?
Can certain roles not be changes because of biological reasons?
Hey John,
ReplyDeleteI think that the first topic you'd like to explore further is a really interesting one (what are the reasons for marriage and birth to be so interconnected in our society?). Another thing that I liked was that in your response paragraph, you talked about society and then compared society's standards back to Tom and Jackie.
One thing I'd suggest is proofreading your work. There were a few minor grammar mistakes that you would have noticed i you'd combed through your work. Another benefit from proofreading is that you could probably see room for expansion and, by doing so, add some more "beauty" to your work.
Good Job!
Hi John!
ReplyDeleteThis was a great small interview with Tom, and on a topic that's personal and can be hard to boil down in a 100 word wrap-up. I liked two aspects of this interview-analysis. 1) You delved into a topic that not many parents are so willing to express: how their lives are going to change after having a kid--for the worse. Or at least, that was his initial thinking. Clearly, that has changed. And 2) the social expectations of a married couple with or without children, and vice versa, a unmarried couple having a baby and the stigmas that follow along.
I suggest that you look over your work, as there were some grammatical errors. Also, you touched briefly on Jackie's pregnancy as a tumor. It's true! Fetutes are parasites, it would be funny to explore that idea in juxtaposition to the "pregancy is beautiful!" idea.
John,
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed that your post was short and straight to the point. It's interesting that Tom views marriage and pregnancy as a 'rite of passage', perhaps it truly is the most basic of such displays of passage, because the act of procreation is so universal amongst organisms. Your comparison of a fetus to a tumor was slightly funny, in a dark sort of way, but fetuses tend not to kill their mothers... (most of the time). Thanks for the good read.
-Lucas
Hey John, I enjoyed reading this post and not just because I know Izzy and her family, although it was cool to see, at least partly, why and how Izzy came to exist. I think your best line would probably have to be, "Marriage without the birth is often looked at with suspicion while the other way around it is shameful" because i think it is concise,and a perceptive observation. I also feel like it is a good example of how your post as a whole talks about our cultural concepts of marriage,family, and gender roles and their implications, and possibly why they exist. You suggest the possibility of biology being an influence on, if not the reason for, some of the roles certain people play out in society, specifically gender roles. I wonder how much biology plays into how mothers and fathers interact with child birth or the raising of children. And I think a cross-cultural analysis of how mothers and fathers, or men and women in general,interact with child birth, marriage, and family would be interesting and insightful in terms of explaining if Tom and Jackie's experience is unique and culturally different from others or if there is at least some nugget of universality in their experiences with child birth and family life.
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