A few weeks
before she passed away, my Great Aunt Mil contributed to one of our Benevolent
recipients. She chose to help someone who has seven children living at home
with her. Aunt Mil was glad to give and glad to help, but as she did so, she
said (in her 95-year-old pithy way): “Seven kids. I don’t see how she’ll ever
get ahead.”
When we
hear or read about the allegorical welfare mom (or welfare queen, depending on
your source), she often has a great number of children – a brood, if you will. She is, of course,
hyperbole, as are her numerous children. This Mother’s Day weekend, however, I
found myself thinking about this allegorical figure in a different light.
On
Mother’s Day I got to sleep in, celebrate with my kids and all that. Later that
day I sat down to write for today’s blog and my mind kept going back to a piece
of research I read recently and some trends we’re seeing among the recipients
on the Benevolent site.
We
launched the Benevolent site only this past December, but as early as March, I
started to see a thread of connection I hadn’t anticipated. It seemed to me
that of the women who posted their needs to the Benevolent site, those who
described having fled and survived domestic violence had more children than
those who did not report a history of domestic violence.
Of course
as we seek to help the mother who has escaped and overcome domestic violence to
thrive, we do not and should not ask whether the number of children she has a connection to victimization. This
started me wondering, though - was this a real trend, and if so, why? I started looking for research to help
me understand what I thought I might be seeing.
I found
some articles and papers that described the ways in which abusers undermine a
woman’s control over her fertility choices. These included interference with
contraception (making holes in condoms, discarding a woman’s contraceptive
pills or devices), sexual assault, and more. (Black, 2011) But this article posed no
quantitative analysis to indicate how prevalent this was.
Another
article summed up the scholarly research on the connections between unintended
pregnancy and domestic violence. This one told me more. I discovered that in
one U.S. study, “almost 70% of women reporting physical violence had unwanted and/or
mistimed pregnancies,” and women with unwanted pregnancies were 4.1 times more
likely to have been physically abused “than women with intended pregnancies
before adjusting for other variables.” (Gazmararian et al.,
1995)
Again, not
clear causality, but certainly an arresting correlation. The author of this
article explained: “The association between intimate partner violence and
unintended pregnancy implies an intergenerational cycle in which unintended
childbearing in abusive households can lead to repeated cycles of violence and
unintended pregnancy.” (Pallitto
et al, 2005)
What is
clear is that the more children a mother has, the harder it will be for her to protect
them, provide for them, and promote their education, simply by virtue of
numbers.
Aunt Mil
had a point. If there is any causality – whether widespread or even sporadic –
between intimate violence and unintended pregnancy, then I want to take this
moment – this Mother’s Day moment – to express my immense respect for those
women who fiercely love, protect, support, and nurture children whose existence
they had not planned or intended.
As a mother
who held complete control over when and how I would choose to try to conceive,
I concede all maternal kudos today and award them all to those mothers who
protected their children, brought them to safety, fought to rebuild and thrive,
and fight on today as they raise children they pray will never repeat the
violence of their mutual past.
- megan kashner, founder & ceo
Benevolent - www.benevolent.net
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