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NEW DELHI (WOMENSENEWS)--Chandini, 27, holds the hand of her 6-year-old daughter as she enters an in vitro fertilization center for a checkup.
"I had to change two buses to make it to here," she says in a hushed voice, smiling as she wipes the sweat off her forehead with her cotton sari.
Chandini says she became a surrogate mother to earn money for her family.
"I want a better life for my daughters," she says.
Her husband's earnings as a daily wage carpenter – around $80 a month – isn't enough to support their two daughters, so Chandini works as a housemaid and has become a surrogate. She's been promised almost $4,500 for carrying and delivering this fetus for a Canadian couple, who couldn't bear their own child.
09:54 PM on 8/03/2011
Europe is not dying. It is WAY overcrowded. They are SAVING themselves by having so few children, as there is not room for the people they already have.
Africa, with all the babies, is the place where people are dying en masse – from starvation, disease, rape, poverty, despair. Africa is dying. Europe, by contrast, is thriving.
Here in America, one of the wonderful things we stil have is open space. The last thing we need is a higher birth rate. Feminism is another sign of our progress and our ability to save ourselves from ourselves.
04:41 PM on 8/03/2011
You should be looking at the American population instead of the global population. We only have 4.5% of the worlds population and are only projected to hit 448 million by 2050. Our population density is not high, we have plenty of space, food, and water. Energy is a problem we can solve by then.
Compare population growth rates 2000-2010:
Europe had .8%, North America had 10% , Asia/South America/Oceana around 12-13%, Africa had 26% . As Africa develops that rate should go down. Europe for all it’s wealth is dying.
11:32 AM on 8/03/2011
Hm. In a way this is an issue with a shortening shelf life. In ’67 when I was born there were 3.5 billion and now, 44 years later, 7 billion. Child bearing is going to be come a true privilege, in no more than 2 generations.
12:12 PM on 8/03/2011
I don’t understand this need for "freedom" everyone has. With more freedom, comes more consequences, I’m afraid. I don’t see anything wrong or unnatural with becoming an adult at 18, or AT LEAST when you graduate from college. I had plenty of fun during college, but by the time I got done, I was pretty sick of partying. It’s so nice to come home and sit with my husband and watch the news, and I’m 27. I want to have kids before I’m 30–I always have–because we learned in Human Anatomy in 12th grade that after 30, it’s already significantly more problematic to have kids. There could be birth defects, it may take longer, there might be miscarriages. I think there’s a greater fear of growing up and being responsible than a fear of not have freedom and choices. We’re basically letting people get away with being completely ridiculous for an entire decade–their 20s. I don’t understand it; it’s just my opinion.
12:14 PM on 8/03/2011
I am surprised there is anyone in the US in 2011 who was unaware of reproductive science. I started taking the pill as a teenager in 1997 and i knew exactly what the reality was (and still is). If you are informed, there is no mysterious fertility snatching attached to using the pill.
07:01 PM on 8/03/2011
Feminism doesn’t take away her ability to think for herself either. She made the decision to put off having kids, and every woman should be able to make it for herself. Blaming feminisim is just an easy way to avoid taking responsibility for her own decisions. After all, blaming feminism for everything is the cool thing to do these days.
04:30 PM on 8/03/2011
She was not blaming the pill… She was blaming feminism:
"Confused, I rued the day I fell under feminism’s sway. How could I have been so naive? How could I have put off having children so late that I have possibly missed the opportunity to have children at all?"
09:30 AM on 8/04/2011
Sorry, let me be more specific. What is not always being shared is the fact that the pill may interfere with *ever* having children. If you take the pill (depo, etc…) long enough, or into a certain age range your body may never regain viable fertility. I know people who have had this happen and never knew the risks. It is common sense that if you take the pill you are putting off having a child. But as this article points out you may be putting it off permanently without ever being aware of that risk.
11:55 PM on 8/03/2011
I think it is pretty much common sense that if you take the pill you are putting off having a child. It is not marketed as anything other than birth control. When you get the prescription you are told straight up that you will have a 1% chance of getting pregnant. There is no mystery. This is an informed decision. Blaming feminism or the pill is absolving yourself of responsibility for making the decision.
04:30 PM on 8/03/2011
It’s not the pills fault. However, the pill is marketed as a panacea of choices and often women (and their husbands) are not told about this reality when they make the decision. Yes, you are absolutely right that women need to own their decisions, but they also have the right to make informed decisions and often that is not happening because the information is just not being put out there.
12:53 PM on 8/03/2011
So, it’s the pill’s fault, rather than the woman who opts to take them, and how she plans for her future?
It’s the pill’s fault for forcing women to explore all of life’s options and put off child-birth for the time being?
Say what?
The pill is not robbing anyone of anything. You choose to take it because you’re not ready to have a baby. It’s not like once you start taking the pill it erases your memory and you forget where babies come from and what you need to do to get one.
So basically some women wanted to exercise this freedom to live their lives without children, and then by the time they were ready, their fertility wasn’t what it used to be.
But that blame goes to a pill instead of the person who took the pill?
03:12 PM on 8/05/2011
I always wonder about people who say they never used birth control, and then they didn’t have a child until they were pretty far along in age(in this case 39? wow). What do do you do? not have sex? just randomly end up not hitting the fertile days? Explain???
06:04 PM on 8/03/2011
Infertility "later on" is a reality for ALL women, not only those who take the pill. I had three children within six years in my twenties and at that point made the decision to become infertile forever through the miracle of tubal ligation. My sister on the other hand, never used birth control, had her first child at age 39, rapidly followed by two more in the following three years. No IVF, no infertility treatments of any kind, no birth defects.
All women are different, and you shouldn’t feel pressured to become a mother until you’re ready. As a previous poster pointed out, some women are never fertile. Since most young women don’t get fertility work-ups prior to starting OCPs why would anyone assume the reason for infertility following pill-usage is because of the pill? Correlation isn’t causation.
12:59 PM on 8/03/2011
I don’t think there is every a "right time" to have children. If you wait for this right time you will likely watch it fly by you. This has largely been advertised with birth control though, side effects do include infertility later on. It’s one of those things that must be weighed prior to deciding to use birth control. At the same time, with the new law making birth control more readily available, society should weigh the thought that using birth control will benefit everyone, in the sense that for every 1 person who is financially better off and cannot have a child, there may be 5 low income people who should just not be having any more children who may have become infertile. There is a larger amount of people with low income having babies then there should be (and by this I mean non contributing members of society who do not necessarily want more children or have them for the wrong reason). I say it’s all a matter of a cost- benefit analysis. This is why using birth control is a very personal choice, but again one that should not be weighed lightly.
04:27 PM on 8/03/2011
Although I applaud adoption, and wish that more adults would consider it, there is nothing "simple" about what you describe. As a father I can tell you that realizing your dream of having your own children is rewarding in ways that nothing else is. As the friend of several people who are unable to create their own children I can also tell you that for many the inability to satisfy this most basic of human drives can be devastating. In some cases adoption can make the difference, and we should rejoice when that happens. In others, adopting when you can’t (or won’t) come to terms with your own grief over not creating life is the worst of all worlds. This isn’t going to the market and selecting "boy, girl, or none of the above". This is an immensely complex situation of emotions, capabilities (can you *afford* to adopt?) and legalities. Let’s not whitewash it, OK?
01:50 PM on 8/03/2011
Women who have gotten old enough to be infertile can simply adopt. There are some people who never are fertile, for a variety of reasons. Adoption gives you the option to parent, even if your ovaries are out of the game.
08:11 PM on 8/03/2011
When can I start getting those condoms free from the Pharmacy?
03:04 PM on 8/03/2011
Right, because covering the co-pay is so much more expensive than paying for a pregnancy!
02:24 PM on 8/03/2011
I’m just waiting for my monthly health insurance premium to rise.
01:27 PM on 8/04/2011
Better than suffering in agony every month, with the bonus of an ER visit and morphine...
03:36 PM on 8/03/2011
let’s not forget the other cost of letting all these lab-created hormones course through our veins each month: increased rates of reproductive cancers. nifty.
05:39 PM on 8/05/2011
Some women actually like children and have them voluntarily because they enjoy them.
08:20 PM on 8/04/2011
For me, there’s nothing special about the breeding – it’s not like getting pregnant is something unusual or clever or even necessarily intentional! – but the big deal is the massive changes and demands of pregnancy and parenting. I mean big deal as in major impact on a woman’s life. But I certainly agree about it not being reflective of one’s feminity, womanliness, completeness or anything else, save as one sees it for oneself.
11:40 AM on 8/04/2011
I’m not a woman so I may be very off-base, but what’s the big deal with having babies? I thought a tenet of feminism was that your femininity doesn’t depend on whether or not you are a mother, wife, Cosmo girl, etc.
03:34 PM on 8/04/2011
In my case, we can only afford the one kid we have for now so the pill helps. I’m 31 so if in a couple of years my husband does a little better (I’m a SAHM) then we can talk about going off the pill.
12:28 AM on 8/05/2011
I, for one, am very grateful to the pill.
The only thing I will be glad about is when I’m trying to have kids – later down the road – I can finally burn off these lbs.
The pill makes you retain a lot of weight, but it’s worth it!
Plus more ladies on the pill = less welfare moms!
Better for our economy!
08:10 AM on 8/05/2011
Yes, it’s a pay article, but the title is on the cover.
Anyway almost all studies show that intelligent people (present company excepted, perhaps) tend to be *less* sexually inhibited due to three main factors. 1) They are slightly less religious, among other potentially inhibiting ethical things. 2) They are much more sexually imaginative. 3) They tend to know a lot more sexually, and somewhat more people, i.e. to talk to about sex. It’s not due to inhibition on the men’s part.
Although smarter women apparently have lower sex drives, (e.g. 20% of female MIT students self reported masturbating http://www.gnxp.com/blog/2007/04/intercourse-and-intelligence.php), not so for men. Also besides generally higher frequencies of masturbating, intelligent men visited prostitutes more often. (http://www.halfsigma.com/2006/07/sex_drive_decre.html). It’s not due to sex drive on the men’s part.
On the men’s part, it is entirely the nerd factor, and nothing else. Women do not like smart men for sex.
12:59 AM on 8/05/2011
I think that smart people have always had less sex than the less smart ones. Generally, the smarter one is, the more inhibitions one has.
Glad to hear you both had a restful (and marvelous
vacation.
BTW, the link to PT does not work (at least does not show an article on the subject you mention).
12:30 AM on 8/05/2011
According to the current issue of Psychology Today and references
http://www.psychologytoday.com/magazine
smart people are having much less sex than dumb people in America, like half or less. For women, much of this effect can be attributed to hormonal birth control. For men it is undoubtedly the nerd factor, although one of the woman researchers assured readers that she tried to control for attractiveness in some unspecified manner.
03:27 PM on 8/05/2011
Anyone know how the research is coming on freezing eggs like sperm? A male friend of mine went into nuclear engineering, and some of the older guys suggested freezing his 25 year-young, low radiation sperm, rather than waiting for his tellomeres to frazzle down the line. He was not in a long term relationship, but thought he would want the choice later in life.
When can women have a similar choice?