"The message: Having a successful career is nice and all, but don’t forget your true calling…Mom!"

Amen! While I will never understand the heartbreak of infertility that some women suffer through (as I have a goal of sterilization in my future) I definantly do not think that the baby-centric media is good for anyone!

There is more to a woman, any woman, than her ability to procreate, if she has that ability. I have a friend who is infertile and often has very depressed moments where she feels worthless or that she isn't a "real woman" and any society that perpetuates that sort of idea to the detriment of everyone else is horrifying!

Besides this, the fact that I am very often chastized for deciding to never have children is only fueled by this sort of baby-crazed society. I'm not a fan of social conditioning and if people want to choose to have children I think its wonderful for them, especially if they've taken the time to actually "think" about it and make the "decision" to have children instead of just doing it "just because."

Making pregnancy trendy really reaks of manipulation of women. What better way to get them out of the workforce, political sphere and into the home than to get them pregnant and make them thinks its the pennicle of anything they could ever do ever?

It's clever, in fact, to make such a trend out of bumps and babies - we need more white, godfearing offspring in the world, afterall, ... or do we?

Personally I have chosen not to have any children as well.However, I think it's invasive to have so much publicity focused on celebrities pregnancies-it becomes irritating and demonstrates not only Hollywood's sexism, but their obsession with women once they become pregnant. Like a women can't get the part she wants because of her looks or age-but yet ogmygawd-she's pregnant!

I found the 'white' part of Kates response rascist.

"I found the 'white' part of Kates response rascist."

I think you were supposed to, freewmn. I believe Kate was rehashing a possible motivation behind the baby-craziness.

Yes, freewmn, I appologize if the sarcasm wasn't blatantly clear.

I thought this was a great article. I found the shift from pregnancy-as-shame to pregnancy-as-revered-state particularly interesting.

I fully understood the sarcasm, but what I did not understand is the suspicion surrounding white people. It is either an assumption that white people can't stand other races, or that you are sick of seeing only white babies. Should color really matter?

It's not the white babies that are a problem. It's the white, anti-choice men. Example:
http://mediamatters.org/items/200605120006

I assure you (as a white woman) that this has nothing to do with the color of the skin. That was lame, showing one example of a statement by a white person does not prove your theory that apparently allll white people are all the same. However having that view is rascist. There are plenty of quotes of people of all different races that have been outright rascist, whether Arab, Jew, Black, ect. Are you saying only certain races can be rascist, and everyone else is immune to that apparently racial (rather than human) fallibility?

Just check out mecha.com whose motto is 'Everything for the race. Everything outside the race, nothing.'
Mecha exists on 90% of college and high school campuses. My University has one.I'm pissed. Yet we don't have a KKK, or a Nation of Islam. Mecha calls themselves the Mexican Nazis.

I'm a white woman, I'm certainly not racist towards white people.

There is an attitude that I am seeing and hearing more and more of lately in both people responding to my decision not to have children and in my interest in the subject globally.

There are published and publicized arguments that the fact that educated white women are having fewer children is a bad thing for various racist and inflammatory reasons. A well known Fox commentator had a widely circulated video about this issue (his name escapes me at the moment) and the comment, tacked in at the end of my post was what I was referencing because it seems to be a racist issue popping up more and more in my experience regarding whether or not to have children.

Ah yes, thank you Michelle, it was John Gibson that I was referencing.

I appologize Freewmn, it certainly wasn't an attack on white people, being one myself, but more an attack on that attitude (as I explained above)

I think the issue is that their is a fascination with white women being pregnant in the media that casts white preganancy as something to be desired. It's a commodity - an investment in our future. When do you hear about women of color being pregnant in the same light? When WOC are pregnant it's always protrayed in the media as a "problem"- especially in light of the current immigration debate.

God forbid we should ever honor women who choose to be mothers, or recognize they're doing something pretty cool with their bodies that has the potential to benefit a larger society.

I'm not a big fan of celebrity mags, period, but people who are surprised when pregnant celebs get coverage, why is this? Celebs get media coverage when they sleep, travel, eat out, or leave the house. So, their pregnancies are going to get the same attention. This shouldn't be a big surprise to anyone remotely media-savvy.

freewmn, the idea that MEChA is some kind of hate group has been thoroughly debunked as a right-wing smear. It's absolutely outrageous to compare them to the KKK or NOI.

It is not only individuals, professions or collectives like companies that have a mindset, but also societies and periods of history. For example, an era shaped by certain religious or ethical values is affected by the dominant thinking; an era is also shaped by predominant views of how right and wrong is established or by scientific theories. Science is a method in the quest for truth, yet itself is a particular approach. Within each period specific scientific paradigms dominate over others. For example, the long-established idea of holism, the idea that things are connected, was until recently sidetracked and reductionism was in the ascendancy.

The increased awareness of complexity has challenged this primacy, which is why in the political domain there is increased talk of joined-up, integrated and holistic thinking. Yet governments’ aim to foster joined-up thinking will only succeed if they forcefully challenge certain entrenched scientific hierarchies. The power of reductionism nevertheless lingers on as those at the height of their profession and with power were probably educated 20 or 30 years ago and so have had the reductionist mindset etched into them. We now know we need to look both at the parts and the whole together. Regretfully we always seem to be behind the times in realizing what is necessary.