I periodically feel so fucking sad for women in history. I feel like birth control in countries where it is widely used has made women forget an aspect of male cruelty and sociopathy that is now less apparent (giving the illusion that men have improved when only women’s defences against men have)—the fact that for most of history men could live with a woman for decades and not care that they were slowly killing her with endless back-to-back pregnancies which not only resulted in early death more often than not, but also in a total smothering of the woman’s spirit and talents. I saw a quote by Anne Boyer the other day that called straight relationships for women “not only deadly, but deadening”—as I was reading Jill Lepore’s Book of Ages, a biography of Benjamin Franklin’s sister Jane, who was bright and loved reading and wrote some poetry, but had little time to make anything of her life in between her 12 pregnancies. Benjamin Franklin’s mother had 10 sons and 7 daughters. What could they possibly accomplish when their husbands kept impregnating them year after year after year throughout their entire adult life?
Charlotte Brontë eschewed marriage longer than most (writing to Ellen Nussey that she wished they could just set up a little cottage and live together) but she finally married at 38, became pregnant, and died before her 39th birthday. If she had married younger would Jane Eyre exist? I was reading that biography of Charity & Sylvia last month and comparing their life together in their little cottage to the life of their married female relatives, which was honestly hell on earth. One of Charity’s sisters had 18 children. Charity’s mother had 10 living ones, and probably some additional stillbirths. She gave birth to her first child age 19, in 1758, then to a pair of twins in 1760, then another child in 1761, another in 1763, another in 1765, another in 1767, another in 1769, another in 1771, another in 1774, another in 1777. Charity was the last child and her mother had been sick with tuberculosis for months when she became pregnant with her, and she died soon after giving birth.
I wish people would call this murder—this woman was murdered by her husband, like countless other women who do not ‘count’ as victims of male violence because straight sex is natural, pregnancy is natural, childbirth is natural. But when after 20 years of nonstop pregnancies this woman had tuberculosis and suffered from severe respiratory distress, severe weight loss, fever and exhaustion, and her husband impregnated her again, her death was expected. He must have known; he just didn’t care. This woman’s sister—Charity’s aunt—remained a spinster and outlived all of her married sisters by several decades, living well into her eighties. (Ironically, male doctors in her century asserted that sex with men was necessary for women’s health. The biographer quoted from a popular home health guide which said that old maids incurred grievous physical harm from a lack of sex with men.) And this aunt had the time and liberty to develop her skill for embroidery to such an extent that two museums still preserve her embroidered bed drapes. She accomplished something, she nurtured her talent and self. Her name was also Charity, and I find it interesting that Charity’s mother named her last daughter, whose pregnancy & birth killed her, after her childless, unmarried sister.
When I see women reblog my post about Sophia Tolstoy’s misery with her 13 children, adding comments like “thank god marriage is no longer synonymous with this”, I wonder if they realise that men have not magically become any kinder or more concerned about their female partner’s health and fulfillment, it’s just that women now have access to better ways of protecting themselves from their male partner’s indifference to their health and fulfillment.
A perspective of historical family sizes that people may not consider. “Oh, they had ten children” means someone was pregnant for 2,800 days = 400 weeks = ~90 months = 7.5 years which is longer than it takes to get a PhD in most disciplines…
This is a frustrating post because it takes a factually true occurrence - women before birth control often had large numbers of children and/or frequently died in childbirth - and uses that as a basis for ahistorical, hurtful, and dangerous ideology.
Did some men impregnate their wives repeatedly without caring if they lived or died? Certainly. But we also have numerous cases of men throughout history fearing for their wives in childbed and grieving them when they died. We have letters surviving where a husband writes to his wife that he is “deeply grieved and sorry” that they were not able to “escape” her falling pregnant again due to the risk to her health, and promises her he will pray for her to be delivered once more. We have so many epitaphs surviving from Ancient Greece and Rome for women, often explicitly lamenting her death in childbed, that these are among our best sources for reconstructing the lives of ordinary women in the ancient Mediterranean. Do these often show the biases of their time? Certainly. But many of them are also deeply personal and loving.
Clausa iacet lapidi coniunx pia cara Sabina. Artibus edocta superabat sola maritum vox ei grata fuit pulsabat pollice c(h)ordas. Set (sed) cito rapta silpi (silet). Encased in stone lies my virtuous and dear wife, Sabina. Skilled in the arts, she alone surpassed her husband. Her voice was dear: with her thumb she plucked the chords. But suddenly snatched away, she is silent.
Memoriae Publicies Septimines L(ucius) Sammonius Adiutor coniug(i) pientissim(a)e et animules amantissimes. Lucius Sammonius Adiutor [made this] for the memory of Publicia Septimia, most faithful wife and most beloved soul.
What could they possibly accomplish when their husbands kept impregnating year after year after year throughout their entire adult life?
Well… Margery Kempe had fourteen children, ran two businesses, dictated her spiritual autobiography despite being illiterate, sustained a lively and mystical spiritual life, successfully defended herself against multiple charges of heresy, and went on repeated pilgrimages to Italy, Germany, Jerusalem, and throughout England. Obviously she’s a bit of an extreme example, but life doesn’t stop when you’re pregnant. It’s an insult to pregnant people to suggest it does. Likewise, life doesn’t stop when you have children and are their main caretaker. It gets busy and exhausting as hell, yes. But to argue that motherhood inherently takes over your life to the exclusion of all else and crushes every spark of joy and intellectual exploration you will ever have is, surprise surprise, a deeply unfeminist idea.
…because straight sex is natural, pregnancy is natural, childbirth is natural.
They are. Bodily processes can be both natural and dangerous: it’s not a contradiction to say so. I’ll be the first to argue against the idea that childbirth is naturally safe and we should just let nature take its course, but natural? Of course they are.
…He must have known; he just didn’t care.
You… can’t know this. You have no way of knowing this. As a historian, I cannot emphasize enough how deeply unethical this line of “historical reasoning” is.
She [being childless] accomplished something. She nurtured her talent and herself.
Do I have to explain why, in 2021, it is so fucking dangerous and dehumanizing to imply that being a mother and “accomplish[ing] something” are mutually exclusive. Do I have to make a list for you of all the writers, artists, scientists, philosophers, and vivid, curious, dynamic mothers who lived full lives alongside and with their children? Who in many cases, found inspiration in their pregnancies and children? I won’t, you can go do that yourself.
To act like being a mother swallows up every other aspect of a woman’s life and intelligence is in fact a deeply patriarchal idea.
I am not denying that many women suffered and continue to suffer in pregnancy and childbirth throughout history. I am not denying that parenting is back-breaking, exhausting work, now and forever, and that it has a deeply gendered division when it comes to who sacrifices time and years to it. But that doesn’t mean that’s all it always is. There have been horrific husbands; there have been excellent, loving husbands and fathers. There have been women miserable from repeated childbearing; there have been women delighted to have a dozen or more children. Contrary to what some might think, it is possible to live under a patriarchal structure, see it and curse it and fight it for what it is, and still find happiness and fulfillment. You can’t strip away the agency and actual life experiences of women when it doesn’t fit your narrative of feminism.
Repainting history to turn all men into heartless villains and all childbearing women into passive baby-making machines isn’t the solution. It’s un-feminist. And it’s bad history.
Here, have one of my favorite articles on both the pressures and potential for enrichment that motherhood brings:
“Long before I had my first child, I had internalized the message that starting a family would be the end of the enjoyable aspects of my life.
The stories I heard about parenting — beginning with pregnancy and feeding — prepared me for a bleak reality, one of burden and reduced autonomy. Even when other parents congratulated me on my pregnancy, I sensed an unspoken ache of sympathy. Having a family was hard, the world seemed to say, but mothering was hardest.
Parenting is indeed hard. But it would be years before I realized that the real issue is how new parents, especially mothers, are hoodwinked into believing they must surrender their interests and identity the moment their baby is born and until they turn 18. And truthfully, I am still learning that it is society’s unrealistic expectations — on parents, children, and families — that nurture this lie and feed my own feelings of overwhelm and failed mothering.
…
[M]y children didn’t demand that I surrender my autonomy and place them at the center of my life. They didn’t ask that I settle for motherhood instead of going back to school or sharpening my craft as a writer. They certainly didn’t request that I shape them into beings who can seamlessly conform to a neoliberal culture of productivity and professionalism. They just wanted my love and nurturing, with no conditions of what that looked like.
…
These two free Black children weren’t locking me out of my dreams — they were the window to seeing what’s possible. Of course, it would be disingenuous to suggest they haven’t rattled my life and inspired many a corner cry session. I complain about how they inconvenience me, and I wonder if I should have tried to live more thoroughly before starting a family. But I’ve learned to distinguish which of these feelings are legitimate, or rooted in my own fear of failure or internalized unrealistic expectations.
It doesn’t fix the struggles of parenting. But it allows me to chase my goals without guilt. My children haven’t ended my life; they’ve given it to me.”
