Fierce Love...Unplanned?

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 

The word to spread is...

If you’re wanting to spread the word about Benevolent, here’s the word to spread:

“Starting in mid-November, you and I will have the opportunity to connect directly with individuals who are facing hurdles, opportunities and challenges, and who are open to receiving our help as they strive to overcome and succeed. There will be a new platform, www.benevolent.net and it will be our chance to make a difference, one to one.”

Here’s how we’re getting there…

Next week, the Benevolent team will start our work in nonprofits across the Chicago community, talking with staff members and clients of local social service organizations. We’ll be listening to the stories of individuals living on very low incomes, each one facing a hurdle on his or her path to stability and greater success. We’re looking forward to sharing some of these stories in future blogs and on the pilot of our website.

In these initial weeks of our work in the “field,” we’ll be capturing the stories of people at a moment of need or opportunity in their lives, through our partners at the Cara Program, the Community Counseling Centers of Chicago (C-4), Family Focus, and Bethel New Life. As our work unfolds, we’ll extend to other nonprofits in other neighborhoods across our area. We’re aiming to get our site up, with several dozen individuals represented and ready for help, by mid-November. When that happens, our members’ stories will speak for themselves.

Why here? We chose Chicago as our pilot site for many reasons, the first of which is that Chicago is our home – both professionally and personally. We’ve built strong partnerships with these first few organizations and their staffs, people who believe in our mission and the work we are gearing up to do. At Bethel, for example, the leaders and staff would happily have helped us fuel the pilot site with the needs of fifty, one hundred, two hundred clients and families currently served by their various programs.

This tells us a great deal. That the need is great and immediate: individuals living on very low incomes are striving for more for themselves and their families, and they need their community – us – to help them realize their goals and dreams. That the nonprofits who know their communities’ needs in the greatest depth are excited to introduce a new resource into the mix, one which will help their clients voice their own stories. That people are seeking connection, affirmation and dignity in their work and in their lives.

What we’ll find out in the coming weeks is how best to provide a meeting ground between people who need help surmounting specific obstacles and others who want to help steady them on their paths, in a way that is within their reach to do. We will find out what resonates and what doesn’t; what the snags are, and how we can overcome them. We’ll come closer to our goal of getting help and support to people at critical moments in their lives.

We’re glad to have you along with us for this journey and to explore these new steps together. As we do, we hope you’ll start to spread the word about this pilot across your networks.

- Megan Kashner, Founder & CEO