A video in full color of the fetus in-utero as memorabilia for the parents feels so totally unnecessary. While the discussion on protecting the health of the woman and her baby is very much in order, isn't there also the issue of the unborn's privacy and right to have some peace ?
I look at the fetus being a victim of the parent's reckless hedonism which does not bode well for the postpartum future. These are probably the same parents that will take the show on the road outfitted exclusively in designer labels and flaunt them like they would their material goods.
The act of a father filming child birth to me is equally repugnant. It would take a man completely dispassionate about the pain of a woman to be able to do that. What is surprising that most women do not view it as such - we have been conditioned to believe that child birth is a magic moment and that the man in our lives is doing us a favor by recording the event in full color for us and perpetuity. Having bonded in physical pain as much as in pleasure, having felt her pain in his heart and soul is truer, higher magic to me.
An expat desi friend and I were discussing what it means to return to India when you have cobbled together a life in a foreign country no matter how flawed and imperfect. We have both spent over a decade outside India and have kids who were born abroad and have spent very little time back home. Returning "home" is something a lot of new immigrants like L and myself think about. We want very much for that to be an option because a full assimilation into our country of domicile is likely never going to happen. L has visited India more often than I have and has a much better pulse on what's going on there. For me the strongest drag force working against my desire to return home is my experience of life as a woman in India. I neither want to live that suffocatingly sheltered existence myself nor subject J to it. The freedom, independence and safety I have had in here in suburban America was not even something I knew I could expect to have in India. I never knew what it felt t...
Comments
Priya.
Priya.
You provoke me to make yet another of my infamous broad brush generalizations with that data on the 4th child :-) Sensitivity in men is most not enough to overcome their basic instincts.
hey hc.
sorry to sound a lil confused, but jeez , are we still in the caves. I thought women had more control of their bodies and the decision of wether and when to have a baby. Is it back to a man's basic instincts.
Do enlighten me.
We may technically be out of the caves but sometimes the in the mind we still dwell right there.
A woman can be coerced emotionally or as a result of financial dependence to bear bore children than she cares to.
I have a number of girl-friends in this country who did not want to have a second child but went on to have one because of one or both reasons.
A child who does not get a warm welcome from both parents is indeed very unfortunate. There are many such kids around. My heart goes out to them.
I dont think anyone can really overcome those basic instincts HC...not men, not women. It's what constitutes us!!
Good read, as always...enjoyed the exercise!! ;-)