Birth

Tuesday

Bridget Phetasy

PSA: have kids young!

"Why do I feel like I got hit by a bus?” I ask my husband first thing upon opening my eyes. “Because we have a two-year-old — and we’re eighty,” he says. “I was told kids keep you young,” I say to no one. My husband is already gone, making coffee. We aren’t eighty, but there are days that it feels like it. In 2022, for the first time ever, the median age of a first-time mother in the United States hit the ripe old age of thirty. I was forty-three when I had my daughter and, let me tell you, there is a reason we are biologically wired to have kids in our youth. Having kids is a young person’s game. You’re made aware of this the minute you get pregnant if you’re over the age of thirty-five.

kids

Sunday

Birdie Hall

My initiation into breastfeeding

The most fastidious of us prepare for the marathon of our first labor and birth, but still fail to wrap our minds around the unpredictable onslaught of intense sensations that breastfeeding brings. I knew that only a genuine catastrophe would prevent me from birthing my baby at home with a midwife, and I didn’t leave the prospect of using formula as a feasible outcome in any possible world. Despite this, I had no idea that my initiation into breastfeeding would amount to psychospiritual martyrdom. The distinctively American cultural complaint that nursing women (or “chest-feeders” as we are now called) must not discuss the importance of breastfeeding from fear of offending formula users need not apply here, but the benefits of breastfeeding are numerous.

breastfeeding

Friday

Ericka Andersen

Anti-surrogacy activists are looking out for the kids

Conservative commentator Guy Benson and his husband recently announced the arrival of a new baby, born via surrogate. Controversy erupted when they tweeted out the news. Last year, when Dave Rubin, another conservative commentator, and his husband announced they would have two surrogate babies, there was a similar flare-up. Surrogacy is the only way a male couple can biologically become parents, but the practice is increasingly questioned due to moral and ethical concerns surrounding the industry and the rights of children. Now, the issue is dividing conservatives who have recently found common ground against things like radical transgender ideology. Some immediately conclude that critics of surrogacy harbor bias against gay families.

surrogacy

Thursday

Frank Young

Anxiety is killing parenthood

From our UK edition

Britain is on a slow descent to oblivion. Scotland is even closer to the abyss, with a birth rate of just 1.29, well below the UK’s sub-replacement level of 1.65. It turns out the answer to the West Lothian question is that West Lothian will disappear. Doomsday demography should matter, but Whitehall is in no way prepared to deal with it. New research published this week found that mental illness in early adulthood could account for up to 60 per cent of future childlessness. A generation too worried to have children spells disaster for countries that need to support ageing societies. Researchers looking at the populations of Sweden and Finland have drawn a link between dozens of mental health disorders and later childlessness.

Friday

Colin Brazier

Britain’s Covid baby bust is bleak news

From our UK edition

These are lean times for hospitality and retail. But at least pubs and shops have their champions, popping up on our television channels and radio stations. The squeaky wheel gets the oil, or in this case, taxpayer-funded grants. Where, though, are the voices raised for another activity – also struggling before lockdown – and now facing its own unprecedented crash. Who cares about babies? Truly, births need a push. Predictions of a boom in coronababies were way, way off. Britain, in common with many other developed nations, is experiencing a sharp new slump in fertility, the full extent of which remains unclear. If our neighbours are anything to go by, we are in for an epidemic of empty cradles. The number of babies born in France is down by 13 per cent.

Saturday

Colin Brazier

What does the trans debate mean for widowers like me?

From our UK edition

I once asked a hospice nurse to describe her job and was surprised when she likened it to midwifery. 'There are two days,' she said, 'which aren’t the full 24 hours. The day you are born, and the day you die.' Uncertainty, fear and waiting. Having been at my late-wife’s deathbed – and at her side as she gave birth to our children – I can see the analogy. But why, when it comes to the language of inclusivity, is death excluded? Or, as the Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals NHS Trust, asserted recently 'there is currently biological essentialism and transphobia present within elements of mainstream birth narratives and discourse'.  Why stop at births? This is a hospital we’re talking about. Lives don’t just start there.