I don’t want to write obsessively about this, so I promise this will be the last post for a while on the subject of people hating pregnant women. Still, I really want to share this.
There is a student I mentor who is the nicest, quietest, politest, gentlest creature in the universe. Let’s call her Jessica.
Jessica is one of the most brilliant students I’ve ever had but she is very shy and rarely speaks in class. This week, she had to be supervised in her teaching by a colleague who was in her last days of pregnancy. The colleague went into labor earlier than expected, and couldn’t make it to supervise Jessica. So Jessica wrote an extremely pissy email to the Chair, starting with the words, “I want to express my anger and disappointment.”
In all the years that I’ve known Jessica I would have never suspected her capable of this kind of annoyance for absolutely no reason. A year and a half ago, I also had to miss this type of supervision for a far less respectable reason than going into labor, and everything was fine. We simply rescheduled it.
One would think that when a hugely pregnant professor doesn’t show up for a fairly unimportant meeting, an appropriate reaction (from a female student, by the way) would be to express concern and wonder if everything is OK with the professor health-wise. However, this ultra-peaceful, quiet student erupted in “anger and disappointment,” emotions that I had no idea she was even capable of experiencing in a professional setting.
Somebody needs to study this phenomenon.
Clarissa's Blog 
The quiet ones are the worst!
All that repressed frustration. 🙂 She probably blew that day.
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If even such a quite, mild student goes into a fit of rage, what can one expect from others?
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It sounds like a very unusual story… Did you get to see the whole letter? Maybe there were other issues?
I never experienced what you are describing as “people hating pregnant women” .
I was pregnant through my last job – never experienced any negativity.
I worked for a major textile company as a Design Director . I’ve worked for 20 years . I had to hire and supervise artists, travel , meet with clients , oversee production – so I interacted with a lot of people. Honestly, never noticed any negativity towards pregnant women. If anything, I saw people trying to be helpful , supportive .
Are you sure it is a “phenomenon” and not some isolated cases?
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Yes, I’ve seen the letter. I’ve been corresponding with this student for years (as her mentor and her professor in several courses), and this is why I’m so shocked at this. She just erupted in a completely unexpected way for absolutely no reason.
“Honestly, never noticed any negativity towards pregnant women. If anything, I saw people trying to be helpful , supportive .”
– This is really good. This gives us all hope. 🙂
“Are you sure it is a “phenomenon” and not some isolated cases?”
– I’d really like to believe that. We all know how I never want to believe anything negative. I’m obviously not showing yet, so we will see what happens when I do start showing. Other women told me that people approached them in the street (complete strangers!) or in public toilets to give unsolicited advice. I’ll wait and see if this happens to me.
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I thought I’d get unsolicited advice too, but not so far, maybe because I’m mostly at work all the time rather than out and about!. I’ve been showing obviously for a couple of months now, but I basically just ignore the pregnancy at work for now (and sometimes even forget about it altogether).
One slightly strange things is that various colleagues have started to assume I’m no longer capable of taking the stairs (which I always do), but I am sure they are only trying to be considerate, and maybe in a couple more months time it might be true 😉
Best wishes with everything!
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Thank you!
When my sister was in the last days of pregnancy, I started helping her to get up and sit down and fussing around her. She had to remind me she was not an invalid and that I was creeping her out. 🙂 🙂 So I stopped.
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And the best of luck to you, too!!!!!!!
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Maybe it’s the woman-hating mantra of “mothers should be homemakers” that produces that kind of shit.
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Why Jessica had a problem to re-schedule her teaching supervision?
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Of course, it will be re-scheduled. She never even tried finding out what happened before complaining about her “anger and frustration.”
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And why she wanted to have this supervision absolutely today?
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That’s a mystery.
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It’s absolutely tied in with our Puritanical sexual mores. People with these values don’t feel like any accommodations have to be made for pregnant women and in fact, normal manners are often suspended. The reason being…. drumroll….. she had sex! Sexy sex! And she might have liked it! She does not need sympathy because (with rare exceptions of course) she chose to have sex and now she gets to deal with the consequences. This same attitude shows up in a lot of our public policy discussions as well.
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Go USA. By the way:
http://unsanesafe.blogspot.com.au/2013/03/these-apes-are-going-to-zimbabwe-too.html
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