I’ve been reading a lot of pregnancy and parenting magazines lately. The occasional piece of advice on what I can do now to make labour easier almost makes it worth wading through the rest: relentless pressure to buy Stuff and soft-focus images of a family life I know I can never achieve. Then I turn to the advice page and find a real slap in the face.
I’m six months pregnant and my partner refuses to be at the birth. I feel so let down – will I really have to go through labour on my own?
I’m not a trained advice columnist, but I do know a bit about how it feels to be facing labour without a partner’s full support. If this woman came to me for advice, I’d reassure her that she doesn’t need to go through it completely alone, but there’s something else it’s just as important for her to hear. She’s allowed to feel let down; she’s allowed to feel that her partner has left her to face what may well look like a terrifying ordeal with no support. If she hasn’t already done so, she should talk to her partner about how she feels – women often feel pressure to keep their feelings under wraps, to deny them in the interests of “avoiding conflict” or because asking to be listened to might be seen as “selfish”.
But what’s the first thing the trained advice columnist recommends? She suggests trying to see it from the partner’s point of view, followed by a string of reasons why fathers-to-be are afraid of labour. Some are valid, like the fear he’ll let his partner down by fainting when she needs him most; others less so, like the fear that witnessing the birth will put him off sex. All of them miss the point.
It makes no difference to this woman why her partner doesn’t want to be present. She’s the one going through labour, he won’t support her, she feels let down. That’s the problem she’s asked for advice about, and the advice to see things from his point of view is suspiciously close to telling her that her feelings aren’t as valid as his.
Chances are, she’s already tried to see it from his point of view. Women are schooled fairly hard at “seeing it from his point of view” – I managed to skip most of my female-socialisation modules, but empathy was one of the ones that stuck. A tendency to look for the other fellow’s motivations stood me in good stead when it came to creating characters in my novels, but it also led me to cut manipulative partners far more slack than they deserved and to make concessions to people who had no intention of making concessions in return.
Empathy is an essential ingredient in a healthy intimate relationship, but it has to come from both sides. If her partner tried looking at it from her point of view, he might behave differently. He might recognise that whatever fears he has about labour, hers are likely to be worse because it’s her body that’s involved. He might see that after everything she’s gone through already in the course of this pregnancy, supporting her during labour is the least he can do in return. And even if he concludes that he cannot face the delivery room, he can understand how let down she feels and possibly support her in other ways so she knows he’s still there for her.
But no. All these things are beyond him because he’s just a man. Men aren’t expected to show any empathy, especially not when there are women around to show enough for two. She has to see things from his point of view in order to relieve him of the burden of seeing things from hers.
When empathy is a one-way street, it becomes all about his feelings. He doesn’t want to be there when she gives birth, and she is expected to understand and respect that. She wants his support, but he is under no obligation to understand or respect that. In fact, she shouldn’t even mention how much she wants him there: “It’s better if you don’t put him under pressure.”
Why offer such lousy advice? I understand that the advice needs to concentrate on things the woman can do, rather than things her partner ought to be doing, but there’s still plenty of advice that can be offered that doesn’t involve making her feelings subordinate to his. Being honest about her feelings means risking conflict and cutting her losses to make birth plans that don’t include him may make him feel left out, but neither of these things will cause the same long-term harm as convincing herself that her feelings don’t matter and her only option is to understand and support his.
Or are women always responsible for looking after men’s feelings? Even when they’re pregnant, and even according to other women? If I wasn’t already a feminist, that would be enough to convert me.
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