i think everyone needs to adopt “i didnt say it was good, i said i liked it” into their vocabulary right now. it did me wonders
“i want to show my friends the media i enjoy but its not considered good so i wont” is such a bad thought process. i once made my friends watch my favourite childhood movie with me which has a 1% rating on rotten tomatoes and i cackled with glee as they groaned in agony for an hour and a half. but yknow what? thats what friends are for.
Nothing sparked this, but as I am continually researching more into midwifery and women’s health, this is something I wanted to put out there for those debating the “right time” to have a kid. Any legal age from 18 to menopause is perfectly doable for women, but there are some misconceptions that people spread about teen and young adult fertility/pregnancy that I want to correct:
Before the age of 25, the major bones of the two hipbones (illium) of a woman’s pelvis is bonded together by cartilage. They do not fuse into bone until the midtwenties. In pregnancy for those under that age, mothers will need proper chiropractic care or other support, or face a lot of pain otherwise. This can be an obstacle if the mother has no health insurance, needs to work a lot on her feet, etc. We can help by advocating for better work environments, but sometimes this can not be avoided.
The woman’s menstrual cycle (and thus her fertility health) does not fully mature until 12 years after her first period. 5-7 years are for regulating estrogen (to ovulate regularly), and the last few years allow for progesterone production to optimize (the hormone produced after ovulation, that causes many health problems if not at proper levels). So if a girl has her period at, say, 8 years old, she will not have a mature hormonal cycle until she is 20 years old. Even then, starting your period that young is considered abnormal (12-14 is the normal average), and premature menstruation is a societal health concern that can increase a girl’s risk of breast cancer and other problems.
A woman’s fertility truly “peaks” around her late twenties. Even then, her fertility declines afterwards but very slowly so. It does not up and vanish after some arbitrary due date. Assuming a woman has no underlying conditions such as PCOS or endo (or is receiving helpful treatment for it if she does), and also assuming that she is living a healthy lifestyle and diet, she can still become pregnant even into her early forties. Each woman’s fertility and health is a unique case, and should be treated as such by her family and care provider when discussing family planning.
Much of the “infertility” crisis that “older” women are facing can be prevented and addressed through sufficient fertility awareness education, as well as targeting reproductive health issues when the woman is still a teen or young woman. If a woman in her thirties has endometriosis that her doctors never diagnosed until she began to try for a baby, it was her untreated endo that caused infertility, not her “selfish” motive to have a career first and delay childbearing. Women need better healthcare, not undue pressure to have kids when they are not ready. Obviously infertility is real and some women will need higher tech involvement to combat it, but I am merely saying that much of that use can be avoided (and save people MUCH money and emotional turmoil) with proper sex education and support.
Teen mothers are more likely to experience complications. Part of this is due to mistreatment and bias in the medical system, so addressing and remedying that through proper social awareness and support, such as hiring a doula, can help lower those complications; but it doesn’t help when you have a shitty OBGYN when your body is clearly struggling, and they refuse to give you an epidural, or to take your postpartum depression seriously. Teen mothers deserve our full support to keep themselves and their babies healthy, but we also have a duty to not mislead girls about their health and spread falsehoods about teen pregnancy.
It’s true that “no one is ever ready for parenthood”, but that doesn’t mean you jump into it without proper discernment and preparation. There are parenting classes, support groups, and even books that can help a person decide when and how to have kids, rather than force them to jump into it blindly and irresponsibly. Childrearing – from conception through pregnancy to birth throughout childhood – is a full time job, and one that needs to be respected as such. Women and men alike have a right to discern whether they should have children, and to be open to research and common sense knowledge about when the time is “right” for them. Pushing people to have kids when they are not fully mature or educated is unhelpful, and in some cases, can even be dangerous.
If someone is 18-24 years of age, they have every right to plan a family as a legal adult, I am not saying that no one in that age group should avoid having kids. But these people should do so with the full knowledge of the risks and drawbacks of doing so, and be prepared to handle them if they come up as a problem. I happily had my first pregnancy at 19 and do not regret it, but I do regret not knowing the things I know now. Had I known, my pregnancy and health experience would have been MUCH better, and prevented unneeded medical trauma that had occurred. The issues I faced were “normal” for a very young parent, but could have been lessened greatly has I simply been informed about it and knew about my options. This is something that the “teens are at their most fertile ever!!!” crowds do not ever talk about.
With all that said, people need to stop glamorizing teen fertility and pregnancy (the pre-18 kind). Not only is it setting these girls up to be vulnerable to toxic creeps/relationships, but giving false information about their health can prevent them from fully advocating for their options when pregnancy does occur (planned or unplanned). Teens CAN have a safe pregnancy, but only when they and their support team are fully informed of the facts; even then, the pregnancy should not occur in the first place, and I only share this tidbit here to make sure that I don’t demonize teen pregnancy when trying to prevent it’s romanticization.
Pregnancy and fertility should be respected as biological norms, as well as noble responsibilities, for women and girls, men and boys, instead of something that is hated and feared – and we can only do that once we share factual truth, instead of pedo-induced, psuedoscientific fantasy. Knowledge is Power, and it can help women safely plan their families at any age, or to take care of themselves properly should it happen too soon.
References for further reading:
Spiritual Midwifery by Ina May Gaskin
Taking Charge of Your Fertility by Toni Weschler
babycenter.org
factsaboutfertility.org
naturalwomanhood.org
americanpregnancy.org
larabriden.com
midwiferytoday.com
Don’t let yourself be scaremongered into having children before you’re fully ready, physically and emotionally. If you want to give birth before you’re 25, that’s your choice as an adult, but be informed and prepared that you’re more likely to have risks and complications that young.
Waiting until at least your mid to late 20′s when your hips are fully formed is the safest and healthiest option for both the mother and baby.
OP doesn’t mention it, but complications during pregnancy and childbirth is globally the number one cause of death for teenage girls age 15-19. This is because most teenage girl’s bodies are just not developed enough to be prepared for the stress and pressure pregnancy and childbirth puts on their bodies. These girls shouldn’t be demonized for their pregnancy because if a pregnancy happens that young it’s because of a failure of her education system’s sex ed programs (or complete lack thereof), lack of access to contraceptives or lack of access to abortion, or because she was pressured or coerced into unprotected sex by her partner who didn’t care about her safety and wellbeing, or sexual assault. But to reiterate OP, even though these girls shouldn’t be blamed or demonized for their teenage pregnancy and they should instead be given support and resources, those pregnancies should not be happening in the first place. I’m tired of grown ass men trying to justify being creeps to teenage girls as ‘biology because teenage girls are at their most fertile’ when that’s just dead wrong because most teenage girls are not ready physically or emotionally to reproduce, and reproducing at that age is often deadly.
It’s a general pattern that the more developed a country is, the later women have their first birth. That’s because delaying childbirth when possible has a lot of advantages for both the parents and the child, but especially for the mother. Women are still expected to do the hyper majority of childcare (hopefully that can change and someday childcare will be equally shared between parents, but right now women are still expected to do most or all of the work) so having children early is also more likely to disrupt a woman’s chances at education or starting a career if she’s suffering from having less time and energy because of having to take care of a baby. Maybe this is exactly why under patriarchy women are pressured and scaremongered into having kids young before they’re fully ready physically or emotionally. This is why being allowed to delay childbirth until education is finished and a career is successfully established is an important gender equality issue. Women are more likely to rise to high paying careers and positions of power when they’re able to delay childbirth.
Not only that but women losing fertility or having a higher risk of birth defects in their 30′s is also a scaremongering exaggeration. It’s true that your risk of birth defects rises in your late 30′s and early 40′s, but it rises from 0.8% in your 20′s to about 1.8% in your late 30′s and 40′s, meaning chances of birth defects are still pretty slim even in your late 30s and into your 40′s. But you still hear it everywhere that your chances of birth defects double because they’re trying to scaremonger you into having kids young, while it’s true that your chances double, what they’re conveniently leaving out is that they double from a tiny and marginal fraction of a chance, to a slightly less tiny but still marginal fraction of a chance. Giving birth in your late 30′s and into your 40′s is still perfectly safe and healthy.
However, it’s really important to mention that women are actually technically considered ‘of childbearing age’ into their mid 50′s. I will say that after your mid 40′s it probably does get riskier and harder because you have a higher chance of miscarriage at that age, but the average healthy cis woman is classified as ‘of child bearing age’ until her mid 50′s. This is because you actually can get pregnant all the way up until the end of menopause. A lot of women think they lose their fertility as soon as menopause starts, but they actually can still get pregnant during menopause and until menopause finishes. This is one of the reasons why the rate of abortions for middle aged women is so high, because they assume their fertility just up and vanishes as soon as they hit their 40′s or as soon as they had the first sign of menopause, and that’s often not the case. So as a heads up, you should still be using contraceptives until you are completely finished with menopause.
The /gardening subreddit is actually full of hippie anti-plastic anti-lawn freaks (affectionate) and I find it enjoyable and I saw a nine-word horror story I thought tumblr would enjoy
The emotion in this photo
IF YOU NEED TO GET RID OF MINT, USE OTHER PLANTS IN THE MINT FAMILY!!!
Related plants like lavender, sage, and thyme are immune to mint’s phytotoxins and will crowd out the mint. Rosemary is my favorite mint-killer since it grows fast and wide (regular pruning helps it cover more area).
These plants are perennials, but they are likely to die after a season since mint can harbor root rot that will affect other Lamiaceae but not mint (or plants outside the family). Leave the plant waste to provide soil cover, the mint rhizomes may still be dormant (but will die out soon). The spring after your mint-killers die, you should get some colonizing vegetation. Once those plants fully take root, you’re good to plant whatever your heart desires in the soil!
IF YOU NEED TO GET
RID OF MINT, USE OTHER PLANTS
IN THE MINT FAMILY!!!
Beep boop! I look for accidental haiku posts. Sometimes I mess up.
Just realized that the reason I love making friends on tumblr is because it’s exactly how you make friends on the playground as a six year old. No, I don’t know their name but they love mermaids too and built this awesome sand castle. No, I don’t know their age but their imaginary cheetah is friends with mine. You like this show? You like this character?? You can sing the theme song really loud??? Here is a flower crown. Here is a juice box. You can share my time and I might never see you again but part of you stays in my soul forever. In my mind we’re still on the swing set and the sky is blue and nothing will ever be wrong again.
Frankly, the reason I don’t post very much about my disability situation is because every time I complain about the difficulty of finding suitable assistive devices, I have to deal with a swarm of dipshits rocking up in the notes convinced that they’ve solved the problem after five minutes on Google. Y'all know who you are.
A couple of pro tips:
If a physically disabled person remarks on a problem of any description that they’ve clearly been dealing with for many years, suggesting that you’ve come up with a magic-bullet solution after a whole thirty seconds of thought is presumptuous at best; and
With respect to assistive devices in particular, consumer fraud is rampant in this area, and the overwhelming majority of assistive devices for sale that you’re likely to find with a cursory Google search are almost certainly making false claims about their features, applications, and in many cases even basic information like “what size is it” or “what material is it made of”; this is, of course, something you’d already know if you were even remotely qualified to be offering advice.
having a child has taught me that every toddler is completely justified in their frustrations and tantrums because learning how to do something you have literally never encountered or heard of before is insane. and being expected to be completely calm in the face of this constant barrage of overwhelming information is doubly insane.
i got charlie a sticker activity book and it occurred to me i have to TEACH someone how to unpeel stickers. it’s SKILL that requires DEXTERITY and FINE MOTOR ABILITY. i thought it was obvious that you have to curl the page a little bit to create a break in the cut so the sticker comes up.
obviously a fucking BABY wouldn’t know that because they have no background experience to inform their thought process. OBVIOUSLY. and OBVIOUSLY the LITERAL BABY wouldn’t get it right the first few times. it would OBVIOUSLY take practice. lots of it.
i hate this feeling. it’s so obvious. why are children treated so badly when they’re learning everything for the first fucking time. why do people treat children so horribly and expect so much. they’re brand new. why didn’t i get the same grace i give to my child? why did no one have patience for me? why, when it’s this easy?
In before I start seeing people bitching about rainbow capitalism MY favorite rainbow capitalism story is about Subaru. Yes the Japanese car company.
In the nineties, they were struggling. They were competing with a dozen other companies targeting the main demographic at the time: white men ages 18-35, especially after a failed luxury car launch with a new ad agency. “What we need is to focus on niche demographics,” they decided, and then focused on people who enjoyed the outdoors. The Subaru was excellent at driving on dirt roads that many other vehicles couldn’t at the time, so it was perfect for all those off-road campers; they started making all-wheel drive standard in all their cars to help with that. And the people who wanted cars to go do outdoor stuff? Lesbians.
Okay. Of course it wasn’t only lesbians buying Subarus. They’re on the list with educators, health-care professionals, and IT people. But the point is, this Japanese car company interviewed this strange demographic (single, female head of household) and realized one important factor: They were lesbians. They liked to be able to use the cars to go do outdoorsy stuff, and they liked that they could use the cars to haul stuff rather than a big truck or van. Subaru had a choice to make then. They had four other demographics they could market to, after all–the educators, the health-care professionals, IT professionals, and straight outdoorsy couples. Their company didn’t hinge on this one “problematic” demographic.
And they decided “fuck it,” and marketed to lesbians anyway. This included offering benefits to American gay and lesbian employees for their domestic partners, so it didn’t look like a cash grab. (This was not a problem. They already offered those in Canada.)
Yes, there was some backlash. They got letters from a grassroots group accusing them of promoting homosexuality, and every letter said they’d no longer be buying from Subaru. “You didn’t buy from us before, either,” Subaru realized, and ignored them. It helped that the team really cared about the plan, and that they had many straight allies to back them up. There was also some initial backlash when Subaru hired women to play a lesbian couple in the commercial, but they quickly found that lesbians preferred more subtlety; “XENA LVR” on a license plate, or bumper stickers with the names of popular LGBTQ+ destinations, or taglines of “Get out. Stay out.” that could be used for the outdoors–or the closet.
Subaru said “We see you. We support you.” They sponsored Pride parades and partnered with Rainbow Card and hired
Martina Navratilova
as spokeswoman. They put their money where their mouth is and went into it whole hog. In a time where companies did not want to take our money, Subaru said, “Why not? They’re people who drive.” And that was groundbreaking.
It wasn’t blatant, it was cheeky and pretty low key, but really really effective. It played into the “if you know you know” vibe in exactly the right way.
It’s amazing what Musk is doing to drive Twitter into the ground rather than admit that he made a mistake. He is a grown ass man throwing a tantrum like a child because he grew up with too much money. He hasn’t earned anything - money, respect, etc. And him trying to be like an early 00s edgelord about it is even more ridiculous.
Not just because he is rich. Ive met so many men in my adult life that will rather suffer harsh consequences than admit they were wrong. It’s shocking and even kind of sad.
YEP… it’s a combination of a guy like that plus the fact that he unfortunately has the influence and money to spend to make it everyone’s problem. It’s not even the first time he’s messed up.
But for a very simple and fun (in the “this is ridiculous, are you fucking kidding me” version of the word “fun”) way to take a look is this timeline. Thank you Visual Capitalist for this lovely infographic… from 2017. This isn’t even caught up to his most recent blunders.
