Why I don't get along well with women

OK, not all women. Just a lot of them. I just feel so different, like an outsider.

I participate in an online board for women expecting babies in November 2005, and recently there was a thread about 'confessions', i.e. fess up about the things you've been doing that you shouldn't, or haven't been doing that you should.

Some of the examples that some women "confessed" to:

• I confess that I had a few sips of coke.
• I confess that I have still have Turkey sandwiches.. and some days I just CAN'T function through the afternoon without a Caffiene Coke jump ..
• wolfing down 2 chili and cheese dogs before DH could even finish half of his sandwich the other day.
• that Taco Bell, just the thought of it, always makes me want to hurl.
• ...I confess that I have given in and had Mcdonalds a few times lately.

Um. You had some coke? You had Mcdonalds? You didn't even have taco bell, but thinking of it makes you hurl? This is your confession? Your deepest, darkest secret? Dang, ladies, you're doing just fine!

I have McDonald's all the time. I also have up to two cans of diet pepsi a day, sometimes more, which I did throughout my first pregnancy as well. I don't consider these things to be bad. I have a fairly reasonable amount of calories in any given day and take my prenatal vitamin daily anyway. I have read up on the research about caffeine and pregnancy and feel comfortable with the amount I'm ingesting. Like much of what I do in life or related to being a parent or a mother, I make choices using a mixture of instinct, experience, advice from those I trust and research. What is wrong with our society that it has driven these women to feel ashamed of such minor "infractions"?

I am reminded of the "get ready for baby" class my husband and I took before our son was born two years ago. In about week four of the class we were asked to "Visualize what your perfect birth would look like." I'd been reading a lot about water births, so my visualization was of giving birth in a hot tub. I'm a fairly pragmatic person so when I visualized it, I went through in my head the things that would probably happen when the baby was born. The teacher went around the room and asked people questions about their visualizations, and she asked me about mine. "I thought about giving birth in a hot tub", I said. "What else was there?" she asked. I wasn't expecting a followup question so I stammered the truth: "Um... a lot of blood". The entire class broke up laughing as the teacher quickly moved on to the next person who made some comment about having an unmedicated birth  with lots of coordinated breathing and relaxation exercises which was much more in line with what the teacher wanted to talk about.

At the time, I was terribly embarrassed. I was convinced that the rest of the class thought of me as "the bloody one" from then on. But at the same time I didn't regret my statements as I felt I had been quite realistic about what was coming, rather than some first timers in the class who seemed to have these dreamy ideas about birth being a wonderful, glorious, spiritual experience where if you just tried hard enough, it wouldn't hurt. Not that that can't happen (at least, I've read a few accounts that claim that's how it was), but c'mon, what are the odds?

I had a similar approach to medication during the birth... I didn't have a specific goal of going without it or demanding it as soon as I arrived. I figured I'd make it as long as I wanted to without it, and then ask for the epidural when I wanted it. One of the pieces of information I used to choose this path was that I'd read that in the US, 98% of women in labor get an epidural. So I figured that the odds said I would probably end up having one. It just didn't bug me.

I used to wonder why some women got so defensive about their choices (whether those choices are cosleeping or crib sleeping, breastfeeding or formula, cry-it-out or not, etc etc) but then recently I've begun reading a larger selection of blogs where I hear stories from women on both sides of each issue who feel attacked for the choices they make.

It's one thing to choose not to cosleep or to choose to let your baby cry it out, it's quite another to tell anyone who chooses another path that their way is wrong. I've seen plenty of attacks on cry-it-out and formula feeding from very fervent attachment parents, but I hadn't realized that there was plenty of it the other way. Apparently there are lots of people in this country who consider cosleeping unnatural and go out of their way to tell people who choose cosleeping that it's wrong, or that a one-year-old can be too attached to his mother. What?? What is wrong with people? What happened to live and let live? Sheesh, just because I don't choose cribsleeping for my own kid or will offer moral support to a mom who wants to stop breastfeeding without trying to convince her she should keep going doesn't mean that I don't also fully support parents who choose differently.

If men could give birth, would they have similar wars? I doubt it. Men in general seem to be better at letting things roll off their back. Women seem to turn on each other so frequently. Even in groups of 'friends', some women talk about each other negatively behind their backs. I've done it myself. This is one of the reasons I've long been scared of having a girl, because I'm not sure how to raise her to have self confidence in this society.

[Update 5/2: Shenuts is so much more eloquent than I on this topic]

Comments

[Eric Lippert]

http://www.ironycentral.com/babymain.html

Unfortunately the article I wanted to point you at has been taken down as its been put into a book that they're, you know, trying to sell. Still, funny site, check it out.

The point of the particular article was this: consider a behaviour X that you're considering imposing or not imposing upon baby. Will either X or not-X clearly and unambiguously screw the kid up when they're, say, 30? If the answer is "dunno" then do whatever you damn well feel like.

For example: let baby play with big knives, yes or no? Since "yes" will clearly and unambiguously wind up with a dead or maimed 30-year-old, opt for no.

Teach baby to read, yes or no? "No" will clearly end up with a 30 year old unable to function in the modern world, so opt for "yes".

Bottle-feed, yes or no? cosleep, yes or no? glass of red wine every now and then, yes or no? Maybe these things have an effect, maybe they don't, but under no possible interpretation is one clearly and unambiguously better than the other. So pick one and what do you care what other people think? They don't know one way or the other either. They're just guessing too.

30 years from now you're not going to be like, damn, he's in an unhappy love affair, I guess I shouldn't have bottle fed him.

[Missy]

Well, KC, I'm with you. I don't know why everything has to be about taking sides, but it sure seems like there are a lot of women out there who believe that if you aren't doing what they think is right, you're doing things wrong. And I'm wondering how many female techies would disagree with you -- or maybe we're in this male-dominated field simply because we don't quite "get" most women. (and that's not to say that many of my best friends aren't women - they are - but most of them are techies too - even the ones I've had since high school!)

[ElizabethN]

I'm totally there with you, too. All my best friends are men, because I mostly just don't "get" women.

I did (mostly) cut out caffeine when I was pregnant, but it was more because if an opportunity presented itself to sleep, I didn't want anything getting in the way. :) I kept taking antidepressants, which I think probably have a higher risk factor than the occasional can of Coke, because I reviewed all the studies on my medication and decided that the risks were acceptably low.

Catawampus recently had a great post on a similar theme:
http://catawampus.typepad.com/catawampus/2005/04/defending_women.html

I have a little girl, and I'm already terrified about how to raise her to handle the backbiting of other girls. I dealt with it mostly by being utterly oblivious and just doing my own thing, but I don't know if I can count on that being true of her.

[Cynical Mom]

Eric: No worries, I read it all already... The story about the baby was an incredible comfort to me in my son's early days. I remember one quote in particular, about how his wife was looking forward to stopping breastfeeding at 7 months like most men look forward to an orgasm.

Missy: word!

Elizabeth: I read that post at the time, and loved it. Her husband later linked to it, and I ended up disagreeing with someone else in the comments (http://www.thezeroboss.com/mtc-zb.cgi?entry_id=4505).

Personally I find the psychology behind these debates fascinating, why people react the way they do, how seemingly normal people become raving bitches...

[Sarcastic Journalist]

I had the caffeine nazis get on me as well. I drank caffeine while pregnant (they told me it would make my baby "small") and had an 8 pound, 15 ounce 21 inch long beauty.

they can all "suck it."