For The Love of Motherhood
Introduction
This week has been a busy one, leaving me sadly very little time to spend time on podcasts or audiobooks. As I approach a very busy season of work in my role with my new employer. Most of my time this week was spent in meetings and training as we prepare for a massive project that will continue over the next couple of months, a project that I will be spearheading and coordinating to ensure it is completed by the established deadline. It’s a new challenge and one I face with excitement! In this season of life, I am embracing this bustling, busy, and stimulating period of work.
Currently, my weekends lack excitement, as I am not someone who enjoys the bar scene, nor weekends spent with a drink in hand. My current life stage and season are odd, and so I find myself looking forward to the weekdays far more than weekends. Some may consider this a bad thing, but I am simply grateful that I currently find myself in a work environment that allows for this excitement as I figure out my personal life. In this current stage of life, I am able to commit myself fully to the work at hand, and the lack of distraction has been something invigorating as it is allowing me to put my full attention to the tasks at hand. Tasks that are challenging me to think critically about operations and how to maximize efficiency.
With all that being said, I want to note that over the next few months, I may be able to produce fewer podcasts to share with you due to these work projects. My content may be more focused on my personal journey and what I’m learning through these projects. Thank you all for joining on this journey I hope you enjoy what I present to you today!
Mom Genes - Part 2
As I finished this fantastic book this week, I found myself really pondering the beauty and wonder of motherhood. Though I disagree with the evolutionary reasoning behind many of the book’s premises, the core message still remains Moms are awesome, motherhood is incredible, and they are irreplaceable! The incredible influence Moms have on the world. As I finished my journey through this book this week and I spent time discussing it with my own mother (who also read the book after I told her about it), here are some of the final takeaways and thoughts I was left with.
“I’m just a mom”
There is today in our culture a term that I find truly insulting to all Moms and young women who desire to be mothers. It is a phrase I have often heard uttered when a young woman, or mother for that matter, is asked, “ What do you do?” and she somewhat ashamedly says something along the lines of “I’m just a mom” or “I’m just a stay at home mom.”
I am the oldest of six children, and my mother did and does an incredible job of loving and nurturing her children, oftentimes to her own detriment. She loves her children with a fierce passion to rival any grizzly bear mama! With this being my childhood experience, I’ve always seen motherhood as something that can never be said to be a “Just” role. This book only reinforced this for me. Moms play an irreplaceable role in a developing child's life that can never be replaced by a nanny or any other caretaker! There is such an amazing bond that is developed between mother and child during pregnancy. This is something that should be cherished and encouraged, not villainized and pushed off as a save-it for later stage of life, only all too often that saving it for later means it never happens at all. A very interesting statistic I learned about a few weeks ago and one I may have shared before, but will share again.
For the first time in recorded history, there are 50.1% of women in the UK who are 30 years old or older without children.
Of those women, 10% chose not to have children
10% did not want children, and 80% were involuntarily childless, meaning they did not intend to be childless they just never got around to it.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the average age of first-time mothers in the United States has been increasing and is now 26.9 years old. However, the chances of having a child begin to decrease after the age of 30. Women in their 30s have a decreased likelihood of getting pregnant each month that they try, and the risk of infertility and complications during pregnancy and childbirth also increases. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) reports that at age 30, a woman's chance of conceiving each month is approximately 20%, but by age 40, it decreases to about 5%. While many women do conceive and have healthy pregnancies after the age of 30, the odds of doing so gradually decrease as they age.
More information can be found at ACOG.org
The lie of corporate America is that we need our moms in the workforce, and many employers will do anything to keep young women from becoming mothers, some going so far as to provide “reproductive healthcare,” i.e., abortion, and birth control. While other services may allow for mothers to have breast-pumping stations and or provide means to allow a young mother to ship/express deliver her breast milk to her child. This is what we call “empowerment” today. That a young woman can today ship her breast milk to her child so that her child can be taken care of by some stranger at a daycare. One of the most egregious examples of corporate America, in my view, is, that some employers will provide options to allow young women to freeze their eggs or to provide them even with surrogacy options so that these young women will not lose out on time at the office so that her career will not be affected by motherhood!
Statistics prove that many, if not most young women who become mothers will seek less demanding work hours or oftentimes will even drop out of the workforce entirely for the sake of their children. This is a threat to many employers who employ incredibly competent and capable women who excel in this brain economy of the twenty-first century, and so in the name of alleged “care,” they provide these young women with as many options as possible to keep them in the workforce and out of the home.
Now I want to be clear everyone has the right to choose to become a mother or not, and not everyone wants to become a mother. And if a young woman wants to focus on her career and not be a mother, I think she absolutely should be empowered to do so. The lie that I have an issue with is that somehow a career is more empowering and better than motherhood, that somehow being subject to an employer is somehow better than being subject to their child, their own flesh and blood.
There are today organizations and support groups that exist for women who are in their thirties and forties, who did pursue their careers at the cost of motherhood. These support groups focus on helping many women mourn and grieve the children they never had. This is, to me, truly sad because there is no turning back; there is no redo. The eggs they may have frozen at extraordinary cost have a very high likelihood of not producing children, and the complications that exist with pregnancy at this age are varied and often very risky to the woman’s health.
Again to the young woman who wants to pursue her career and become a mother, more power to you. Just make sure you inform yourself and understand that there is no going back. For me reading this book truly just gave me a greater appreciation for motherhood and the beauty and wonder of God’s design in this unique and beautiful role of bearing a child that a woman has. And as someone who hopes to one day become a father, this book has given me a greater resolve to do my best to create an environment that allows my one-day wife to thrive as a mother.
I hope you will all consider reading this book for yourselves!
Eggsploitation - Documentary
This week I took the time to watch the first of Jennifer Lahl's documentaries. This one focuses on the extraction process of a woman’s eggs and the resulting side effects. I really don’t have much to say or add except that it is eye-opening to see and understand how often the young women who become the targets of these industries are those who are least equipped to defend and protect themselves from exploitation by these companies.
As someone who once had a girlfriend who would often joke about wanting to sell her eggs so she could get rich, I found it incredibly insightful to see behind the curtain of these companies and the contracts that are often involved. Contracts that do not protect the women, only the companies.
This industry is today a 6.5 Billion dollar industry, and as things are currently trending with continued billboards advocating for surrogacy solutions, I can only imagine that this industry will only continue to grow and demand will continue to rise, and more young women will become the victims of these companies agenda and their desire to monetize motherhood and children. Creating yet another form of human trafficking, only in this case, it begins in the womb.
Counterintuitive Trends in the Link Between Premarital Sex and Marital Stability - Link Here
I was introduced to this article by the ever-delightful Brett Cooper of the Daily Wire, I’ll share her video below for those who would like to hear her take. The article was originally published in 2016, and its data from 2010.
The subject matter of this article discusses the relationship between divorce rates and the number of pre-marital sexual partners a woman has prior to marriage. The link between the two seemingly suggests that the greater the number of sexual partners, the higher the odds of divorce seemingly become. The article is a fascinating read, and only that I find very telling of our current cultural climate, where divorce is commonplace.
In 1950, 82% of the female population was married (out of nonwidows between the ages of 18 and 64). By 2000 this had declined to 62%. Adults now spend a smaller fraction of their lives married. In 1950 females spent about 88% of their life married as compared with 60% in 1995.
There is an endless number of factors that are contributing to this decline, but the promotion of promiscuity and the anti-stigmatization of it are leading factors. These days there is the “try it before you buy it” mindset that pushes many to cohabitate and make sure that they are “compatible.” Yet the data shows that those who practice these things oftentimes find themselves in less satisfying relationships and more prone to divorce.
There is also a growing consensus of men who are opting to avoid marriage entirely, as many deem it not worth the risk. There is a growing crowd of men online who is opting toward the MGTOW (Men Going Their Own Way) movement due to the fact that they believe that the system is rigged against them. I do believe this is an extremist position and one I do not agree with personally. But here is what I have seen and heard all my life growing up if I got married and then if a divorce does happen, I am liable to lose at least 50% of everything I own, I am liable to lose access to any children I may have fathered no matter the situation. I am very much a proponent of marriage, but many laws that exist today seem to reward divorce in some cases, and A quote a recently heard sums it up like this.
“Never sign a contract where one party is incentivized to break it”
Currently, divorce law does this
Now again, to be clear, I do not agree with the message here, but what I can say is it is hard to honestly say that it does not create a subconscious fear and hesitancy in the institution of marriage. There are innumerable factors playing into the current climate we find ourselves in.
For myself, at least, I can say by personal observation and studies into these subjects, I can fully understand why so many young people today are disillusioned and cynical by the thought of marriage. It has become an industry of its own in many ways. On the front end, millions are made in wedding venues and one-day ceremonies, and then on the back end, there are millions again to be made in divorce court. A system that, in its current form, does seem to favor one party more than the other. As seen in the podcast below.
The current cultural climate has created an environment where many men and women seem to see one another as adversaries rather than as companions. We have taken God out of our schools, and I think many have also taken God out of their marriages. There is much more I could say on this subject, but I will leave it there for now and for today.
What I Did this Week
Learning new systems and programs within my new job
Started a new class called “Python for Everyone”
Continuing to try and practice asking good questions.
(14 Days without alcohol)
Made some great progress on minimizing my screen time on my phone!
As ever, thank you one and all for joining me as I continue this public journey of pursuing purpose and seeking to learn and grow little by little each day! I hope you have enjoyed it and have found some food for thought. Please consider liking and Subscribing to my newsletter, as it allows me to grow my audience!
