What Happens To Pregnancy Privilege After The Baby Is Born?

I was benefitting from a phenomenon that doesn’t really have an exact name but could best be summed up as “pregnancy privilege.” Pregnancy privilege is essentially the respect and deference pregnant women are shown for carrying new life, whether by loved ones or even perfect strangers. But there’s a stark dissimilarity between how moms are treated during pregnancy and how they’re treated afterward. What happens to pregnancy privilege after the baby’s born?

All pregnancy privilege seems to disappear once your baby is actually born. Now, no one is rushing over to return your shopping cart for you at the store or to hand you something you’re reaching for on the highest shelf. In fact, almost everyone, from strangers on the internet to your great aunt from the silent generation, is discouraging you from taking your baby out in public. Everyone is quick to criticize everything you’re apparently doing wrong, but without offering any assistance. 

Exploring Pregnancy Privilege

As a woman who has experienced it firsthand, pregnancy privilege is gratifying. It’s comforting to feel like you’re being taken care of when you’re not at your most physically coordinated or sharpest state mentally speaking. It’s also nice to have strangers be kind and attentive to your needs.

Everyone is nicer. Strangers open doors for you and friends or even acquaintances constantly inquire after your health and the health of the baby. Family and friends throw you showers and gift you with everything you could possibly need for your baby. You get designated parking spots in public places and even priority boarding with certain airlines. People are more inclined to pick up things for you or help load things into your car. In one particular instance from my own pregnancy, I remember carrying two take-out bags out of a restaurant when a table of three middle-aged men left their own table of food and rushed to open the door and help me to my car. 

It’s generally acknowledged as part of the social contract that pregnant women are to be treated with politeness and respect.

Our culture, as flawed as it is, holds pregnant women in high esteem. We’ve put them on the cover of high-end publications and seen them headline the Super Bowl halftime show. It’s generally acknowledged as part of the social contract that pregnant women are to be treated with politeness and respect, for both the good of their health and their baby’s health. 

This can only be a good thing. While we often focus on the importance of physical health throughout pregnancy, including eating nutritionally balanced meals and engaging in moderate physical activity, mental health is just as important to a mom’s overall experience with childbearing. Anything that can lessen the mental load for a woman supporting both herself and her child should be freely and easily accessible to her. But the story is very different once the baby actually arrives.

Normalizing Casual Antinatalism

It’s fairly easy to observe that while we treat expecting mothers with respect, kindness, and understanding while they’re pregnant, all of that more or less vanishes once our kids are actually here.

For years now, at least in online spheres, there have been heated discussions about whether or not small children should even be allowed in public spaces. Moms who breastfeed are shamed online for feeding their children in public, and many of us have received wedding or party invitations to “child-free” events before.

Small children, specifically babies and toddlers, are the subject of impassioned, furious online tirades targeting their presence on planes and in restaurants, and in generally any other space that’s been somehow unofficially designated as “adults only.” One budget airline based in Asia has banned children under 12 from its so-called “quiet zones,” and a seafood restaurant in Nova Scotia announced it would no longer serve “small screaming children,” drawing the ire of many of its dedicated customers. Though private enterprises are entitled to make whatever policies they feel are necessary to the functioning of their business, these policies and others like them are directly contributing to the exclusion of kids from public spaces.

What we subliminally tell mothers and families as a whole when we ban them from public spaces is that not only are their families not welcome, but we don’t care about their health at all. Following the birth of a baby, every new mom has to relearn her schedule, routine, and even running errands in order to prioritize the best interests of her child. We know that the postpartum period is when moms can feel increasingly isolated and insulated in their struggles – being outside and out and about in public helps ground us in reality, gives us a sense of community with other people around, and helps acclimate your child to being outside the home.

Small kids aren’t well-behaved a majority of the time. They’re loud, noisy, and messy, and they can be annoying, and no one knows that better than their parents. But we don’t wholeheartedly advocate for banning adults, who can be just as rowdy and unpleasant, from public spaces as much as we do children – meaning that even while adults are welcome, we’re essentially telling them it would be more convenient and enjoyable for everyone else if their children were never born.

Pushing children out of one restaurant here and there won’t make a direct impact on parents, but this kind of messaging does contribute to a sort of casual attitude of antinatalism that our society is entirely too comfortable with. Not only do children belong in most public spaces as much as adults do, but this narrative fully buys into a misguided talking point pushed by the pro-choice movement: Kids ruin our independent, carefree lifestyles, and having them means you can never fly on an airplane, go on vacation, or go to a brewery ever again.

The Solution: Take Your Kids Out in Public

Child-free spaces advocate for parents leaving their children with babysitters or staying home altogether. But this take is extremely privileged in that it assumes all parents have quick and easy access to affordable, trustworthy childcare. Furthermore, kids learn social norms, how to treat others, and how to behave in public by being out in public, not by being at home. If anything, we should punish parents who fail to parent their children, not kids who don’t know any better.

I don’t suggest taking a baby to a movie theater or a toddler to a bar, but for the most part, public spaces like restaurants, parks, doctor’s offices, sports events, and your local grocery or big box stores present opportunities to teach children how to be well-behaved outside the comfort of their house. They also teach parents how to parent better (ideally) and other people how to be patient and accommodating. Everyone benefits. Every mom questions whether or not she can go out with her new baby or her gaggle of small children. Barring any common sense reason why you shouldn’t, the answer is usually yes. 

We treat mothers like they’re delicate and fragile when they’re pregnant, yet when they’re out with kids, we throw them to strangers both online and in real life for vitriol, criticism, and derision. We commend pregnant mothers as glowing embodiments of life and vitality, but once their children are here, they become sloppy individuals we accuse of letting themselves go if they’re not put-together and constantly presentable. Maybe we like the idea of a baby when it’s still in the womb, but once it’s a physical, inconvenient nuisance we couldn’t care less. 

We correct this imbalance by consistently advocating for mothers and their children – both born and unborn. Respect and understanding for moms shouldn’t continue through pregnancy and end once their children are here – if anything, our deference to mothers should only increase rather than vanish altogether.

Closing Thoughts

The discourse around reproduction today seems to mainly focus on a lack of science, contrived, bad-faith arguments, or blanketly labeling opposition as antiwoman. Antinatalism, even in the midst of a falling global birth rate, is viewed as the ethical and moral standpoint. 

Our society does whatever it can to reinforce the incorrect notion that children are unnecessary and inconvenient. We directly combat this narrative when we treat our pregnant mothers and new moms with respect, and when we treat all mothers everywhere else with patience and understanding.

Support our cause and help women reclaim their femininity by subscribing today.