Is having a baby really a great achievement?

In my social circle, pregnancy announcements tend to be accompanied by an underground discussion around how long it took the said female to get pregnant. The general premise being the less time it took, the more fertile she is and the better shape she must be in.

A regular at a pub I worked in loved nothing more than regaling anyone who would listen about how easy she found giving birth. To prove her point she came in for a pint the very same day she had her 4th child, leaving the baby at home with a sitter.

The other day, new mum Natalie Cassidy was greeted on TV’s Loose Women with such congratulations and ‘well done you’ gushing it was as if she had written the program of her son’s entire genetic code and sculpted his physique out of Plasticine.

A friend of mine recently told me that she wanted to have a late baby. I asked her why, as she is already a mother of two and does not currently have a partner. Her answer? ‘Because I think my body can cope with it.’

I’m sorry, but is having a baby really a great achievement that anyone can personally take credit for?

It’s simply nature isn’t it?

The reality is most females are born with the ability to reproduce. Why not go around shouting ‘I have an eye’, using it to compete with other women, to show how strong your body is, and as a means of gaining praise?

There are some women who are in prime condition – young, healthy, fit – yet for one reason or another they cannot have babies. Should we berate them as vigorously as the Loose Women congratulated Natalie?

Drug addicts and alcoholics can have healthy babies. Women have given birth while clinically obese, suffering from cancer and in their 60s.

Those who can have babies easily are fortunate yes, some more than they know, but they are hardly heroes.

In many ways it’s the women who think long and hard about their decision to have a baby – some deciding it’s not right for them, a route not often understood in society – who are the most heroic; Or those who desperately want children but can’t for one reason or another, who learn to accept their situation and continue on in a different path in life, as Kylie seems to be doing at the moment.

Posted 07:19 PM on Wed Feb 02 2011

By Barbie

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