The Reproductive Olympics: How Television Guilts Women Into Motherhood

By Emily Carney

I am, at the time of writing this, in my early thirties, and I am enjoying a relatively snag-free life of teaching and writing. I happen to also be married to someone I have known for much of my adult life. However, to some people, these things are completely inconsequential.

Whenever I see people from my past, or even when I meet them for the first time, the topic eventually turns to: When are you having kids? I sheepishly attempt to steer the topic in another direction, but usually to no avail.

Then the talk turns to: Don’t you love your husband? Or even better (because I live in a particularly conservative area in the South): What would God think? I then try to deflect the question by adding, rather philosophically, that if God wants me to have children, He will do it on His own time. Usually the questioner then smiles snidely and walks away from me, ready to sink her child-hungry claws into another woman of a certain age.

In the last year or so, there has been a massive influx of television shows dedicated to people who have won many gold medals in the Reproductive Olympics. Each gold medal, I suppose, would be one of the many children who are products of multiple births. Off the top of my head I can rattle off at least three TV shows dedicated to tons of children: Jon and Kate Plus Eight, Table for 12, and 17 Kids and Counting. In addition, the “Octomom” (whose name I cannot remember, but honestly, who really gives a shit?) has become a rather self-aggrandizing “celebrity” due to her ghastly decision to have eight children in her uterus at one time.

I honestly worry about the effect these TV shows have on young women. While there is nothing inherently wrong with parenthood, these reality shows give a message that to be seen as a desirable wife/mother figure, you must push out as many babies as possible while maintaining a perfect sense of calm about the domestic discord having tons of kids may cause. Parenthood, from what I gather from various family members and friends who have kids, is not only very real, it’s often messy and not fit for TV. Not every mother can be a control freak like Kate from the aforementioned Jon and Kate Plus Eight; also, not every parent can afford the amount of help needed to take care of a massive brood of children. Every parent knows that even one child can be a somewhat overwhelming task, depleting one of sleep, dinner, and regular showers.

What perhaps disturbs me the most are the shows about super-multiple births, like all of the shows about quintuplets on the Discovery Health channel, and (once again!) the Jon and Kate show. These shows make having a litter of children at once seem like an easy, achievable task. The reality is that these births are incredibly dangerous to the health of the babies and the mother. Women who are perfectionists and “people-pleasers” might be negatively influenced by these shows to actually desire such a dangerous health situation.

Eight Is Enough

I won’t even go into the Octomom’s decision to have eight kids at once. I find her attempts to speak to the press “objectively” and her Michael Jackson-like penchant for extreme plastic surgery to be eccentric at best and totally fucked up at worst. She makes having 14 children seem like having a Barbie Playhouse, except these are real kids involved and not plastic dolls.

What if there was a TV show about women who couldn’t give a shit about having children? Of course, that wouldn’t fly with television executives. The women would be branded as being utterly selfish and shallow. However, I find any woman who chooses to capitalize upon her thousands of children to receive a large monetary fee to be just a bit selfish and shallow as well.

In a related note, I wish feminist Germaine Greer would do a show about all the abortions she has had; that would be some spectacular, riveting prime time shit! Hell, I’d watch it. I can even see the title now in bright, bedazzled Comic Sans: GERMAINE GREER MINUS EIGHT.

But I digress. My point is that women should have a right to choose how many children they have (even if it is one child, GASP) and when they should have them. I don’t think it’s terribly selfish at all for a woman to wait a few years to become mature enough to have a child; moreover, I don’t think children without siblings all grow up to be spoiled. I just wish these TV shows would stop guilting women about their reproductive choices. My own attitude towards childbearing is this: If I’m to have children, I’ll have them, but if I don’t, I don’t.