On Twitter yesterday one of the Twits* said “forget birth control pills. The real liberator of women was the washing machine.” I may be paraphrasing slightly, but that was the gist. And I was irate. Irate enough to write a blog post on Saturday.
Because I know the person who came up with this half-witty remark thought they were being cute. But there were so very many ignorant, anti-woman, anti-family things about that statement that I was seething.
First off, let’s start with the basic truth that this day in age babies are wonderful and wanted and welcome. That’s a bit of a change from 150 years ago–even 100 years ago. Back then, for most women “having sex” invariably meant “having babies”. Which meant that you ended up pregnant a lot of the time. Pregnant in a time when giving birth was a lot more risky for your health. Pregnant in a time before prenatal vitamins, ultrasounds, fetal monitors, ready blood transfusions. Pregnant in a time before doctors knew about the benefits of washing hands between deliveries, a time when dying in childbirth was a heavy statistical probability.
Assuming you lived through the pregnancy (which could have been your first or your ninth) and your baby lived through the delivery, you had to find a way to feed her and clothe her. If you were lucky enough to live on a piece of land that you owned or had permission to work that meant you could grow the food yourself. If you lived crowded in a city you had to buy from wherever you could. Keep in mind this was also before the FDA. You’d have to get your food from a market where flies swarmed on the meat and the vegetables were dirty with soil and fertilizer. Fertilizer made from feces. And no matter where you lived you most likely made all the clothes for your baby yourself. Every new baby was an exponential increase in the amount of work the mother would have to do. And she would have to do most of it while pregnant with yet another baby in many cases.
Before you get a wrong idea in your head let me assure you that I love the idea of babies, of big families (like the one I come from). I’m not one to think we should stop having babies altogether or that babies are a curse. I do think they are a blessing. But I am not ignorant enough to assume that a baby is just a cute accessory that requires no pain, no work and no food. So I think it is a very good thing that there is birth control that prevents conception.**
Compare that to a washing machine. Something that, yes, does save time and effort. But let us go back to that baby. The washing machine will clean the clothes more easily but will it make the clothes? Feed the baby? Ensure a healthy pregnancy, uneventful delivery and living child who makes it to her third birthday without dying?
And let us also examine the more insidious hidden idea (boy was I glad Rachel caught it too.) The idea that the laundry is the “woman’s work” and that she is liberated by having a machine to do some of her job. A healthy family is one where all parties share the workload as best they can. Washing machines are a family convenience, not merely a “woman’s tool”. My husband does the bulk of our laundry, actually. He’d scoff if you told him the washer and dryer were as liberating as the pill. Because he’d tell you just how much harder he would have to work to pay for all those babies. The pill liberates men by keeping their responsibilities managable. Even in a family where the mother is the breadwinner the father still has obligations which only increase along with the number of children. It helps families by making sure that the parents can have as many children as they can afford.
There is just no contest between a time-saving device and a life-altering medical choice.
**still no fan of those methods of birth control which terminate a pregnancy.
*yes. I meant it this way.
Just Another Pretty Farce 
Glad you wrote about this. “babies are wonderful and wanted and welcome” – I would still even qualify that to “for some people, some of the time,” because I think it’s clear that even with technological/medical advances, they are not wonderful and wanted and welcome for many people at particular times.
“birth control which terminate a pregnancy” – wondering which you would consider to fall into this group; there are a few which theoretically could but are not proven to, and it also depends on your definitions (since a fertilized, nonimplanted egg is not medically considered a pregnancy).
Nitpicking aside, I think you’re exactly right, and am glad to see your comments here and on Twitter.
“birth control which terminates a pregnancy”: IUDs, abortifacents like Methotrexate, D&C, saline termination, vacuum termination.
I’m still not sure where I fall ethically on those methods which don’t prevent egg release but do create a hostile uterus. Because although chemical pregnancy (a fertilised egg prior to implantation) is not a functional pregnancy I think it comes closer than, say, a random sperm just floating around. For my pro-life self I’m pretty much “begins at conception” which means, to my mind, “when egg and sperm successfully connect”. This is why, ethically, I refused fertility treatments like In Vitro fertilisation.
Now, I know logically that until implantation (which something like only 23% of fertilised eggs accomplish) it’s not a functional pregnancy. But to my mind, if I define life as beginning at conception and I allow conditions under which conception might occur then I owe it to Life to let things take their course. So as long as there are methods out there which keep the little eggos in the wrapper or the little sperm in a latex baggie–or unable to cross the Vas Deferens bridge–then those are the ones I am ethically comfortable with.
babies are wonderful and wanted and welcome” – I would still even qualify that to “for some people, some of the time,”
Ah yes. Good qualifier. I should have put that in there. In my personal frame of reference I’ve always accepted that I’d take a baby any time it was on offer. Then when God stopped offering I eventually moved on. So I’m not automatically as attuned to most people having to reckon with unwanted pregnancy. Ironic.
Oh no. a hot button for me. The Pill liberates men to indulge themselves without the God ordained consequences of children. The pill also STOPS a fertilized egg (known in the pro-life community as a BABY) from implanting. This is not the pill’s first line of attack, but on the chance that something slips through, this is the final act of “the pill”. I could go on and on. However, children are a blessing and debt is a curse. We reject/manage blessings and apply for curses!?? Makes no sense. His children will never be begging for bread. The same God who is the Author of life, will provide for that life. And what we say we can and can’t “afford” is by all historical accounts, ridiculous. He gives children for HIS glory. Period. They are not accessories or emotional fulfillers for their parents. Malachi says He made them one because He desires Godly offspring. ALL decisions on reproduction should be made with one question in mind. Does this bring glory to the Father.
Piper, The pill actually prevents the body from releasing any eggs at all. Thus there are no eggs to be fertilised.
You may be thinking of “the morning after pill” or an IUD. Both of which do prevent implantation.
The pill doesn’t ALWAYS prevent your eggs from releasing. Ask your doctor. I have spoken to five different OB/GYN’s about this and they unanimously agreed that it doesn’t ALWAYS stop the egg, but certainly prevents the fertilized egg from implanting should one slip through and get fertilized.
It’s a ridiculous analogy. Oral contraceptives and the dissemination of accurate knowledge about how to use them has been as instrumental as unions to the expansion of the post-war middle class. It’s no accident that attacks on both have accompanied its erosion. My husband and I, who take great pleasure in raising a happy family, also appreciate the ability to support our family and have the time to educate and enjoy our kid in relative economic security. (That’s a privilege that my dirt-poor grandparents, with a total of 24 kids between them, didn’t have.)
If we were talking liberating purely mechanical technologies for women in the last 150 years, the automobile wins, hands down. Ruth Schwartz Cohen explain how washing machines and other home hygiene devices actually created “more work for mother.” Likewise, Katherine Jellison notes that rural women rarely got access to washers because the money they made from their egg operations were taken by their husbands to spend on “more important stuff” (meaning stuff to mechanize and speed up their own labor, like tractors).
It was a ridiculous comparison.
I will say that birth control and abortion on demand reordered society in a way we still haven’t quite worked out, so I give people a lot of leeway in discussing these matters. It’s hard to be perfectly, clinically logical when the ground is constantly shifting beneath your feet.
I will also add this: the inverse to what you say in this post is true. One of the contributing factors in the upheaval we’re seeing in Europe is that a couple of generations ago, they stopped making new Greeks, Italians, Brits, etc, and kept behaving as if they were.
And the US is losing its optimism and getting dangerously close to continuing that trend. Right now, we’re just above demographic replacement level. Barely.
One final thing: yes, a baby represented more work, but long term, it represented more help. Even for the mom, if the baby was a girl.
“One final thing: yes, a baby represented more work, but long term, it represented more help.” – I feel like there was some discussion of this in comments in the last year or so, but can’t remember where/who. Bridgett, was that you at B’s? About whether the “children as extra farmhands” ever really balanced out how we think? Would be interested in that again if so.
Can I just say that I really really really HATE the term “abortion on demand”? Because, to be frank, it makes it sound like people are having abortions at the same rate they’re ordering videos from Comcast.
Yes, I’m pro-life. Adamantly–in spite of what Ned thinks. But as a pro-life person I’ve made it my mission to be as aware as possible what goes on in a woman’s mind and life that lead her to make that choice. If you understand people and their dilemmas you’ve got a lot more of a chance to reach them and help to meet their truest needs. And I have to say that while I’ve encountered a few people who are glib about abortions they’ve had, most of the women I know who have contemplated and/or completed an abortion experience were going through some major difficulties physically, emotionally, financially or some combination of the three. It’s never the relaxed sort of drive-through spontaneous choice that that “Abortion on Demand” phrase implies.
Abortion is also far less available than that phrase implies. Many hospitals refuse to allow doctors to perform the procedures. It’s also harder–much harder–to find a doctor to terminate a pregnancy that one assumes. For most women seeking pregnancy termination there are still difficulties. Not that I mind. I just find it ironic that now that abortion is legal it is harder to get an abortion in many locales than it was before. I liken legalised abortion to what may happen if drugs are legal. With the back-alley outlets largely driven out of business by the more attractive clinical options there are mathematically fewer places to go.
One of the contributing factors in the upheaval we’re seeing in Europe is that a couple of generations ago, they stopped making new Greeks, Italians, Brits, etc, and kept behaving as if they were.
I have a lot of trouble with this increasingly-popular argument. I see it used in a lot of places as a sort of short-hand for “ZOMG! We’re running out of white people!” To say that Western Europe and the United Kingdom are struggling under a lack of population growth is a vaaaaast oversimplification that conveniently forgets things like limitation of natural resources, geographical and topographical limits, political oppression and corruption. As long as Europe has as many separate countries with separate governments, as little arable land and as much mountainous terrain as they’ve got now, Europe is going to struggle. That’s why all those dictators sound so attractive, why people liked the idea of the Holy Roman Empire, Napoleon, HItler. Europe is being crippled more by nationalism and geography than anything else. And even that statement is an oversimplification.
This is probably an oversimplification, but a fertilized egg on its own is not medically considered a baby because a fertilized egg that doesn’t implant properly in the uterus has no chance of ever becoming a baby. As you mention, there is obviously a different perspective from many who oppose abortion and some forms of birth control, but many fertilized eggs never implant and are simply passed from the body, without any chance of ever becoming a “baby.” Considering a fertilized egg a “baby” means that every time a woman has her period, she has to consider that she may be passing an undetectable baby with zero potential to ever be born a human.
Obviously people disagree about whether children are always or ever a blessing (which requires acknowledging that different people have different needs, resources, capabilities, and sense of their own purpose), the nature of birth control (and hypoothetical vs. proven mechanisms of action), and whether there is even such an entity as a Christian or other God which must inform these discussions (which also requires acknowledging the differing beliefs of different people other than oneself), but there is a physiological reason that nonimplanted fertilized eggs are not counted as pregnancies/babies. Not that I expect that to sway anyone.
Katherine, I’ll stop derailing your nice post now, but I think the attitude that children are always welcome and women should simply accept as many as God offers plays into this notion that a washing machine is more useful to women than birth control.
(note: that’s a response to pipercurtin, as I failed to use the “reply” option, and Bridgett’s and Slarti’s comments appeared while I was writing)
I mean, I realize it’s easier to shoot twits out your ass, but women’s historians have been writing about just this subject for 40 years and if you’re playing at being a public intellectual, it’s sort of a duty to inform yourself before you opine. By the way, the go-to historian of the Pill and its social effects on women is Andrea Tone, author of Devices and Desires: A History of Contraceptives in America. The Nashville Public Library can surely inter-library loan you a copy, Mr. Hurtt.
My assumption was that the folks doing the opining had absolutely NO idea that there are indeed many historians who have spent their professional lives studying this very issue. I base that assumption on the fact that these were the same people who spent the first week of January complaining about fat people showing up in their gym and the rest of the year making stunningly ignorant slams against everyone not of their particular demographic.
Rachel, historically, the idea that babies cumulatively represented “more help” for rural southern women in the 19th c did not really work out. Boys continued to stay at home, close at hand, eating, needing nursing, needing washing — and working for dad. Girls, as they became of age, were hired out to neighboring houses for wages — and their dad collected their wages to reinvest in buying land to endow their sons. Likewise, during the 19th c, the rural southern marital age for women dropped. Girls left home and got married nearly as soon as they were old enough to have any appreciably helpful skills around the house. (Leaving a houseful of older boys/men and young kids.) So…whither all that help for mama?
[…] – like whether “life begins at conception” – but a comment thread at Kat Coble’s* made me want to revisit an issue when a commenter all-caps declared a fertilized egg to be […]
Perhaps remembering that this was before refrigeration is more important than keeping “in mind this was also before the FDA.” And, really, it detracts from your point that technology and innovation — including the pill and other forms of contraception — are usually liberating because they enable more choice (and time-saving devices enable choice, too).
Who knows? Maybe THIS is the next big step:
The quest for a male contraceptive: effective methods & real choices’d mean fewer unwanted children & fewer abortions: http://bit.ly/lwlNr9
The Pill liberates men to indulge themselves without the God ordained consequences of children.
That’s the most disturbing thing I’ve heard in a long time. Children are the punishment for sex? Totally leaving aside what that implies about God… You are one messed up person.
Doubtful that is what was meant- rather, simply that according to that person, sex is supposed to be about reproduction, and birth control methods take that away. The point being, it denies them the need for responsibility in caring for the child that would otherwise result.
It might be worth baring in mind that (s)he focuses on the men however- it could be argued that men have been “indulging themselves” and not caring less about the consequences for generations, whereas women have been left to deal with the pregnancy, and “holding the baby” afterwards. Perhaps the Pill “liberated” women to be able to do this as well, but from a conservative Christian viewpoint, being liberated to fornicate is still being liberated to sin, as marriage was God’s design for sexual relations in a deeper spiritual sense. But at least it removed the terribly unfair double standard that would once have persisted.
[…] – like whether “life begins at conception” – but a comment thread at Kat Coble’s* made me want to revisit an issue when a commenter all-caps declared a fertilized egg to be […]
[…] – like whether “life begins at conception” – but a comment thread at Kat Coble’s* made me want to revisit an issue when a commenter all-caps declared a fertilized egg to be […]
The argument in this article barely seems to make much sense at times- largely from trying to compare the time before and after the introduction of birth control pills as if it were thedifference between 150 years ago and the present time. Neglecting, of course, the fact that “the Pill” has perhpas ony been around for roughly 50 years, and neglecting the fact that at least some of the medical advances stated, would actually have taken place in the rest of the time. Even if there was no “Pill” many further advances could still have taken place, so to suppose it is solely responsible for womens difficulties in pregnancy beingaverted, is far from the case.
It also neglects the fact that it is not the only form of birth control. Now I do understand, however, that it’s one of the few forms that neither depend on the male partner nor need to be fitted by a doctor- so the woman herself has direct control over her fertility. Though in the context of a loving marriage (the Christian ideal), it’s hard to see how much of a difference this would make- as presumably family planning would be a mutual decision which would involve both partners respecting each others’ wishes. Of course we do not live in an ideal world, though, and that is not the only context for sex or reproduction. But it does mean the Pill is not the only reason people are not being saddled with 10 kids.
And considering washing of clothes as “woman’s work” being a fallacy? Hardly, given the context. If we go back to the early 20th century situation where the husband was the breadwinner and the wife kept the house, often this would have been the case, and from all I’ve heard in those days it was long, hard work which could easily take a full day. The washing machine, and particularly the automatic washing machine, perhaps did a lot to stop this being the case- you could then hold down a full-time job and leave the machine to do most of the hard work, a lot more quickly. It not only allowed a would-be male breadwinner holding down a full-time job to do such a task, but in theory could (with help from additional technology easing tasks) leave more time for a woman to not need to spend all her time at home, and perhaps take up employment herself.
Nevertheless, an interesting article with some good points. And can I easily agree the washing machine, in an of itself, is more liberating than the Pill? It seems hardly that simplistic.