Politics of
baby-making

by KRISTIAN GRAVENOR

My wife’s having a baby. Next week. The one after. Maybe sooner. Any day. Any minute. Two babies in fact. The shouting and bleeding and baby extraction could start any time. Consider me freaked.

One might blame me for her state, being too shy to buy condoms at the pharmacy from chatty female cashiers with hopefully protruding nipples. But that’s only part of it. I’ve long had an extreme urge to breed that once led me to frequently bask in an enduring teenage daydream of leaving my genetic mark on a polygamous Third World village by impregnating a thousand tribal women.

Now fantasy is gone and wife’s doing her regular stuff with 10 pounds of babies in her belly. It’s an impressive sight. At night she’s aches and groans and generally a victim of the unmanoeuvrability that comes with carrying around the biggest belly ever. Twins, a girl and boy. Kids number three and four. Names, minivan, baby room, all needed fast.

To help those as sadly clueless as I once was in the fathering department, I offer the following insights, views and the usual suspicions of dark conspiracy to share about baby-making.

The actual sport of giving birth is horrendously nerve-wracking, particularly for the first time. Get the woman to the hospital and stay calm. Hold her hand and nod and try not to freak out too much as she undergoes the unfathomable. Women seem able to withstand the madness because they’re doped up on natural hormones throughout their pregnancy that makes them dreamy and happy. They’re presumably in the hands of competent professionals.

Once the kiddies grow, don’t swear in front of them, don’t toss them in the air to make them giggle. Live in the same house. Push ’em on the swings if required. Try to feed and clothe them.

The political part of baby-making is less joyous. For one, some might subtly suggest that you only consider reproducing with a person from what they say is your group. The implication is that breeding with somebody of a slightly different ethnic background is a bad thing, even though scientific evidence stresses the advantages of human genetic biodiversity.

Proponents of community inbreeding have even invented a set of prejudicial terminology. The pseudo-scientific “miscegenation” was concocted to tar the notion of blacks and whites having babies together as part of a political hoax to discredit Abe Lincoln in 1863. “Interracial” suggests one partner isn’t of the human race. A “mulatto” is a horse. “Biracial” sounds like bisexual. “Mixed” as in mixed up. None of these terms are necessary.

Those who refuse to consider dating somebody from a different ethnicity than their own (statistically, Asian men and black women are the most reluctant to date members of other groups) harm themselves by eliminating what could be their best potential suitors. So the next time you’re out being charming and social, consider it your appointed duty to get friendly with somebody with a different shade of skin, if for no other reason than to remind each other that there are legitimate breeding options that one’s church elders mightn’t have proposed.

Another bizarre recent baby-making myth is the current faddish orthodoxy that suggests that you must wait until you’re 35, have $42,000 in RRSPs and some degree of office cubicle tyranny before you can consider starting a family. Indeed, do an Internet search on the term “teen pregnancy” and you’ll see it mentioned with Ebola, gonorrhea and swine flu. Okay, 13 isn’t a great age to have a baby, but there’s nothing wrong with giving birth at 18. The anti-youth replication movement reeks of condescension and strikes me as a cynical government plot to cut welfare spending, as they assume all young people with kids will end up on welfare.

I’d undoubtedly be more irate about such issues right now if I wasn’t more immediately concerned with getting a baby stroller, more car seats and a truckload of pampers. :