I’m not going to return to substantive blogging, but I’m going to experiment with doing occasional link posts, and posts that are composed entirely of quotes. Like this post.
Miller’s study is based on interviews with 61 girls from a variety of racial and ethnic backgrounds with a known history of intimate partner violence living in the poorest neighborhoods in Boston. The analysis included 53 girls between the ages of 15 and 20 who reported being sexually active and involved in relationships that included recurring patterns of physical, sexual or emotional abuse from a male partner. Twenty-six percent of these girls reported that their partners were actively trying to get them pregnant by manipulating condom use, sabotaging birth control use and making explicit statements about wanting them to become pregnant.
“We were floored by what these girls told us,” Miller recalled. “You think of forced sex as an aspect of abusive relationships, but this takes that abuse a step further to reproductive control of a young woman’s body.”
Despite the small sample size, Miller describes the current study as a critically important first step toward understanding the nuances of control in intimate relationships and its role in teen pregnancy.
“Our study suggests that those providing care, especially reproductive care, to adolescent girls need to ask questions that reveal the complexities of partner violence, specifically whether a partner is actively trying to get her pregnant when she doesn’t want to be,” Miller said. “Historically, assessments in clinical settings have focused on physical and sexual violence — and for good reasons. However, our data argues for including questions, for instance, about whether a boyfriend is flushing birth control pills down the toilet or saying he used a condom when he didn’t. And pregnancy prevention programs should include discussions about reproductive control as a form of abuse in relationships.”
At the risk of stating the blindingly obvious, this is an absolutely logical result of the fetishization of fecundity by the right wing in this country. This attitude by young men is a feature of the spread of fundamentalism, not a bug.
My bordering-on-abusive ex-boyfriend used to beg me to marry him and have his kids, like, right now. This started after we began to have serious problems in our relationship. It really creeped me out.
I wish that this surprised me, but it doesn’t. That said, I am glad that it is receiving attention.
In my late teens my boyfriend (who in hindsight I realize was quite emotionally abusive) would try to ‘forget’ to wear a condom, or ‘struggle’ to put it on properly anytime something important to me would happen (ex when I won a scholarship, when I received a job offer, or when I had the opportunity to travel).
I always called him on it, but didn’t think that anyone would believe me if I told them (the stereotype being women who ‘trap’ men through pregnancy).
Abusive personalities will do most anything for control.
hm. i don’t think it has that much to do with “the fetishization of fecundity by the right wing” (i like how you put that, btw). i think it works across the board for left-leaning abusive men, too. it has more to do with power struggles in the relationship than voting politics. having a baby generally cements a relationship in ways that were open before – or, at the very least, it changes the relationship permanently. and, in cases where abuse is involved, i would assume to the detriment of the women.
You’re right, of course. I was referring more to the atmosphere of anti-choice (I’m loath to repeat my alliterative construction because it’d be too cutesy) that has been spread by the right wing lo these many years, especially in the Bush era. Doesn’t mean “liberal” men are any less likely to buy into the bullshit, although one would hope.
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it’s disgusting, but not totally suprising. I think fathima hit the nail right on the head saying that it’s about trying to artificially cement a relationship, in other words about trying to make it much more difficult for the woman to leave the abuser.
I don’t have them at hand, but I’ve seen a number of studies showing that the more economically independent a woman is the more likely she is to leave an abusive relationship. It’s one of the main reasons divorce rates have climbed so high in recent years, as women’s income has grown closer to parity with men’s they’ve become less financially dependant and more likely to get out of abusive and unhappy marriages. What’s more, that correlation holds up in every country where it’s been studied. Babies are damn expensive, so for an abusive bastard knocking a girl up can be an extremely effective way to trap her and keep her from leaving.
and, as far as auguste’s point, i don’t know if we can blame the republicans for this, but it sure as hell doesn’t help when they’re trying to pass laws requiring women to get permission from the fetus’s father-to-be before having an abortion. (i saw a blog post about that here: http://guerillawomentn.blogspot.com/2007/08/women-must-get-permission-from-men-for.html)
Talk about a culture of control…
Damn. That’s just depressing. Combine this with the number of teen-aged girls who get pregnant out of their own insanity instead of somebody else’s, and it’s a wonder that the crazy people haven’t bred the sane folks out of existence.
I have worked with women who are victims of domestic abuse. Men who abuse frequently (but by no means always) are deeply insecure and do not believe that they would be their partner’s choice if she had one. It is extremely logical that they would do everything within their power to make sure that she does not have a choice. A pregnant woman has fewer choices than one who is not pregnant. I think this study is worthwhile in documenting why it is that many women who seek abortion are not pregnant “by choice” even if they were not raped. However, I am a little puzzled that someone who worked with abused women would be floored by this finding.
Me too. It was remarked upon in The Women’s Room what, 35 years ago? Hasn’t this always (since the birth of feminism) been directly tied in with women’s reproductive choice?
It doesn’t surprise me that an insecure man would do this, nor, for that matter, that an insecure woman would get pregnant to try to keep her man. Nor is it shocking that the latter gets way more attention than the former.
In my late teens I had a boyfriend who was convinced, so he told me, that we were destined to have a child who would be the second coming of Christ. (I swear to God, as it were, I am not making this up.) He was never abusive, but talk about insecure and manipulative. He got away with it, at least to the extent that I didn’t instantly leave him, only because I was if anything even more insecure at the time. Luckily I was also smart enough to know that pregnancy at that point in my life would not have been a good career move.
“it’s a wonder that the crazy people haven’t bred the sane folks out of existence.”
This is a very racist, classist, and otherwise horrid comment — which, at the same time, contains no argument of substance. You are out of line here.
I’ll cop to “offensive” – too much time on Fark has dulled my sense of taste. Not sure about “classist” since we all know that abusive attitudes know no class. But racist? I never mentioned race.
Elitist, maybe. I’ll admit it was tasteless, offensive, and elitist. I just get depressed that people with such vicious attitudes find so many nasty reasons (like the one in this thread) to create more children, rather than actually wanting to share their lives with a child.
” just get depressed that people with such vicious attitudes find so many nasty reasons (like the one in this thread) to create more children, rather than actually wanting to share their lives with a child.”
Then why the hell did you bring voluntary teenage mothers into it?
It’s not elitist, except in that it’s clear from your comments that you think you’re better than they are. You aren’t.
So you think that teenaged pregnancy is a sane and responsible action when it occurs in the absence of an abuser?
This article is about teenaged girls being coerced into pregancy. I would think that any teenaged pregnancy is universally considered a “bad thing”, and if it’s deliberate, then somebody is making a drastic and selfish (and in this case, cruel) mistake.
And yes, I think that I made better decisions when I was a teenager. Hence my elitist attitude.
Yes, I think teenagers who get pregnant in the absence of an abuser can be making a sane decision.
Your suggestion that women who get pregnant as teenagers are equivalent to men who try to force pregnancy on women to control them, and further your suggestion that women who get pregnant as teenagers are a “crazy” that might “outbreed” those of you who didn’t is a social darwinist statement underpinned by racism and classism associated with the stereotype of who those teenage mothers are.
This subject is closed for discussion. If you ever bring it up again in this thread or any other thread where it is unrelated, your ass will be banned so fast you won’t even have time to squeal about how your sane, good-decision making skills deserve better.
This, btw, is your last “stop being an asshole” warning.
I thought (s)he was just making a side reference to Idiocracy.
Idiocracy was ill-conceived for the same reasons.
I experienced this myself. When I met my ex, he never wanted to use condoms. (He did want me to use the ‘morning after pill’ I admit. I was quite young and stupid and became pregnant. For the next 4 years, I was with him for the sake of the baby, suffering the most horrific abuse. His ‘reason’ for abusing me? Because I ‘trapped’ him through pregnancy. Although all I’d been doing since the pregnancy was begging him to let me leave, but he’d threatened to kill me, the baby, and my entire family if I ever attempted it, and I really believed him. I had no friends, phone, or internet for information as if he caught me calling anyone he would become extremely angry, and he burned all my address books in front of me, and changed our phone number constantly. I couldn’t help but wonder at times if instead of me trapping him it hadn’t been the other way around? Good news is I’ve been single three years now, live on the opposite side of the country, and will never be trapped again! I just wish I’d had more information when I really needed it.
When I met my soon to be husband, that was the first thing out of his mouth;
babies. He wanted me to get pregnant and have babies instantly. My first
was born a year and two months after the wedding, my second was bonr a
year and two months later.
I realised, two years into this marriage that pregnancy was his method of
control.
I got out because I was very brave, his second wife was not. She had five
children for him, and when she wasn’t pregnant, he’d beat her. It took her
fifteen years to appreciate what pregnancy means to an abusive man….
ownership.
When you are pregnant with his child you are clearly owned by him, as if
you’ve been branded.
I have experienced this myself, when i told my abusive boyfriend in an emotional rage that i was leaving him and it was over, he wouldn’t have it. We had sex and i know he tried to get me pregnant, he was talking about kids i don’t remember if it was right before or after sex. Leaving him was the best thing ever, although now he’s threatening to cut my face. I really do live in fear, but have no idea where he’s at, he’s on the run. Do you think he really is going to do that or just a way of scaring me?
You know, nothing surprises me to read anymore. However, it would make sense to the mind of a sick jerk. As a male, I just don’t see how one could hurt the person that they love. I just don’t see how someone could do that.
The concept that pregnancy means the father “owns” the mother really woke something up in me. That sounds so correct – and at the same time, so wrong. In my opinion, no person“belongs” to anyone else. Ever. Period.