Thinking about why ladies still get the short end of the stick: birth control

So I'm back at midwifery school and this semester our focus is primarily gynecology, which focuses primarily on birth control, everyone's favorite topic. We have this fabulous text book this semester called Contraceptive Technologies which has a picture on the front cover of a giant egg being swarmed by tiny little sperm...anyway, I've been just devouring the book.
Contraception is in the forefront of my thoughts lately, despite the fact that I haven't had a partner for about eight months now. Why am I thinking so much about contraception (besides the fact that I am a midwifery student,)? Well, I've been meeting a lot of young men lately who've opted to be sterilized, and that has opened a whole range of questions for myself, such as "what reasons do I have for wanting to be a parent?" "what reasons do I have for not wanting to be a parent?" "Why did I always assume, in my girlhood and young ladyhood, that I would just magically be a parent some day?" "Why didn't it even seem like a choice at many points in my life?" "Why did my mom start pressuring me for grandkids at the tender age of nineteen?" All of these questions and many more, have been constantly circling in the past few weeks.

I've been staying in a tent in the backyard of a couple, Robert and Rachel, who have chosen the path of never being parents. They are both in their mid-forties, Rachel was sterilized at 29 years old, and says she does not regret this decision. The older she got, she says, the less interested in parenting she became. I find, as I get older and my life becomes more and more interesting, as well as more and more complex, I am also feeling less and less inclined to parent. Also, my nannying experiences have taught me much about the demands of childrearing, and I'm not sure I'm up to the task. Also, I want to be a midwife who has no baggage of my own with birth, so I can be fully present with birthing women, and I feel that if I had a bad birth, or even a good birth, this might change how I deal with clients. Not to mention that I'd hate leaving my kids birthday party, for example, to attend a birth, which might last days and days and are completely unpredictable. Also, I see myself always being an activist, which can be a dangerous thing to be these days. I don't want my kids to have to come visit me in jail.

Next door to Robert and Rachel, is another childless couple around the same age, Norris and Theressa. Theressa occasionally seems to wish she had a child, but she takes delight in helping young people and kids in a variety of ways, teaching folks about herbs, gardening and wild edible plants. She says she really enjoys being available as the "cool auntie" type to many neighborhood kids/young adults. Rachel, too, plays an active role helping education neighborhood kids especially about gardening, and teaches gardening at an elementary school just down the street from her house. Other childless couples I know have so many amazing skills, hobbies and travel-adventures that people with kids just don't seem to have....some play exotic instruments, like the lute or the harp, some weave, some fix bikes, some regularly travel to Ireland or South America or wherever their hearts desire, some reenact midevil battles, some go to Burning Man every year, some teach college classes for fun, all are very interesting folks. Not everyone who choses not to have kids does so because of environmental reasons, but obviously, those are numerous considerations on their own.

Anyway, so this is something I've been thinking a lot about. That, and how much birth control options actually really suck. There are no good options out there, when you think about it. Hormonal options often have crazy side effects, like hair loss, loss of libido, (which might explain why people don't get pregnant on these options,) nausea, vomiting, heavy bleeding, weight gain, weight loss, and becoming addicted to carbs..weird I know, but something about large doses of progesterone can cause women to really crave massive amounts of carbs. Things like the IUD, that get put into the uterus, can puncture the uterus, cause irreversible scarring, can "migrate," and cause lots of pain and heavy bleeding. The diaphragm and cervical cap are inconvenient and can wreak the mood, as can condoms. The ring often falls out during sex, as does the diaphragm and the sponge, spermicide is messy and irritating to tissues, it is really weird to have a plastic implant under the skin releasing hormones all the time, the shot is used in prisons as "chemical castration," so that is really scary that it is also offered to women as birth control. Anyway, my point is, if this was an issue facing men, (I mean, if pregnancy was an issue facing men,) we'd have developed better methods of birth control by now. We can clone sheep, but we can't safely and effectively keep people who don't want to become pregnant from becoming pregnant? What is the deal with that?

And, as far as herbal birth control, like wild carrot seeds, well, they work for some people some of the time, but aren't usually nearly as effective as the scary, fake-hormonal types. And fertility awareness methods rely on abstaining from sex about eight days a month, which is really hard for some people (like me, when I am in a relationship, I have libido through the roof.)

So why not start developing birth control for men? Isn't it about time they started shouldering some of the responsibility with us ladies? Can we trust men to take a pill every day the way we ladies have had to do for many years, in some cases? I guess that is why I'm so proud of young men who do decide to get a vasectomy, because at least they are taking fertility responsibility. Bravo, you brave young men who aren't scared to really explore the idea of always being childless, and being ok with that! Bravo to young women who chose the same. Sometimes, I feel a little scared that only the really well-equipped folks to be parents are opting not to parent, but then, I see my classmate Lora, with her beautiful new baby on her lap in class, nursing away, and I think, "joy, there are some good, responsible people who are also choosing to parent in the world..."

I'm just not sure I'm going to be one of them,
Love ya,
Carrot

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