Ten Conversations That Can Better Inform Your Family Planning Process
Check out our conversation about this topic with Lindsay, Meg, and Sarai from the Holy Ghosting Podcast on this week's episode of Sexvangelicals.
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This week on Sexvangelicals, we’re talking with the amazing Lindsay, Meg, and Sarai from the Holy Ghosting Podcast about making intentional decisions to move into parenthood.
One of the key features of the Evangelical, Mormon, and Pentecostal systems that Julia and I study is the expectation that people will move into parenthood, rather than a choice. The more that something becomes an expectation, the less likely a couple is to have intentional, collaborative conversations about how they want to practice or explore the topic, be that parenting, sexuality, or division of labor (among other things).
Julia and I have spent a lot of time and energy over the last three years discussing how we want to move into parenthood. In our case, infertility has forced us into having these conversations, although we also want to do better in our current relationship than we did in our former relationships, in which decisions were much more informed by gender roles and Evangelical expectations. After all, disability (if you want to fit infertility into that category) forces couples to have intentional conversations because their bodies work differently than “conventional wisdom”.
If you and your partner are exploring having children, or if you’re considering moving into parenthood as a single person, we wanted to share ten conversations that you can have to make a more informed decision about if and how you want to move into childrearing.
To help us, we’re using the research of Dr. Elyssa Klann, currently at Towson University, and Dr. Joel Wong, professor of psychology at the University of Indiana. (Wong is also the co-editor of the excellent primer The Psychology of Men and Masculinities.) In 2020, they wrote the article “A Pregnancy Decision-Making Model: Psychological, Relational, and Cultural Factors Affecting Unintended Pregnancy”, published in the summer edition of the Psychology of Women Quarterly.
While Klann and Wong talk specifically about pregnancy, it’s important to remember that pregnancy is either a complicated technological option, such as for folks pursuing IVF or artificial insemination, or to be pursued by someone else, such as for folks who pursue adoption, like us, or surrogacy. I’ll still be referring to their model as the “Pregnancy Decision-Making Model”, because someone will be pregnant in order for the child to be born. I just wanted to make that caveat for potential parents whose family expansion won’t come as a result of a pregnancy from parent who has a uterus.
The Pregnancy Decision-Making Model breaks conversations down into three categories:
The evaluation of capital. What are the resources that a person/couple has available to them to navigate a variety of outcomes?
The evaluation of values. What are the moral and ethical attitudes towards the options that a person/couple has to expand their family?
The evaluation of narratives. How does the potential expansion of family correspond with the person/couple’s life vision and cultural ideas around pregnancy and family planning?
I’ll frame the ten conversations that Klann and Wong suggest in the form of questions that can help guide these conversations.
Partner presence. Will there be one or two people co-raising this child? What are the expectations of both partners in the parenting process? What is the current quality of the relationship? And what will the couple do to invest in the quality of their relationship both during and after the pregnancy?
Social support. Who do you want to include in the village that helps you raise your child? What roles do you want these people (i.e. grandparents, best friends) to play, and how do you want to communicate that to them? Who are people who may want to be included in that village but you don’t want to include, likely due to some level of irresponsibility on that person’s part (i.e. a grandparent with substance use issues)?
Income level and stability. How much money do you and your partner make? How stable are these sources of income? What is the potential for earning, and what are the risks with pursuing the highest earning potential? What is the cost of living in your neighborhood, and how does family planning impact geographical location? Klann and Wong use 2017 statistics to remind us that it costs an average of $250,000 to raise a child from birth to age 18. Those numbers have only increased in the last seven years.
Health conditions. What are potential health conditions that might impact the pregnancy (i.e. epilepsy, preeclampsia, or gestational diabetes)? How might experiences with trauma (i.e. sexual abuse) and residual mental health challenges impact the pregnancy process? (This has been a big conversation for us.) What relational and medical support does the pregnant person need to navigate these health conditions?
Abortion values. What are our positions on abortion? What are the sources that inform our positions on abortion? What is our accessibility to medically accurate information about abortion? (More on that in item 10.) What are the scenarios in which we would consider ending a pregnancy? What options do we have for navigating the potential health of the pregnancy, such as intense uterine or vaginal bleeding, the discovery of a genetic disorder within the fetus, or the determination of a deceased fetus?
Adoption values. What are our positions on adoption? What scenarios would encourage me/us to choose adoption over a biological pregnancy? What scenarios would encourage me/us to choose to give the child up for adoption? What are the cultural messages that might inform these positions?
Childbearing and parenting values. How does my culture and community treat pregnant people? How do I want/expect to be treated as a pregnant person? What are five characteristics that I want my child to have by the time they’re 18? What are the similarities and differences between me and my partner? How can we use these values to inform the ways that we communicate with and shape our child? What is it like to have a child while my country is at war, or in the midst of climate change? (Those questions were posed by Klann and Wong.)
Life trajectory narratives. What is it about this particular time in your life that makes you consider pregnancy, and what role might age, community of origin, and disability play in this? What are the career aspirations of each parent? What are the educational aspirations of each parent? What adjustments and/or sacrifices to career and education might each partner have to make in order to move into parenthood? What role does the family planning decisions of other people in your community make on your own family planning process?
Intersectional cultural narratives. What are the dominant cultural scripts about pregnancy, based on race, nationality, community, sexual orientation, age, marital status, and a whole host of other factors? If you don’t fit into the dominant discourse, what are potential areas of discrimination that you might experience along the way (i.e. ageism, homophobia)? How do you and your partner want to support each other when you experience those forms of discrimination? What are versions of internalized stigma (Klann/Wong’s language) that might exist? Klann and Wong give the example of the shame that comes with living in poverty or being unmarried and living in a community that values marriage. How do you want to communicate those concerns with your partner?
Barriers to access. What are the legal restrictions in our states and municipalities that might limit my/our options? What information do I access that misrepresents or falsely reports the process of pregnancy, abortion, and/or adoption? Who are those voices, and how do I/we want to engage with them? What are the sources that I have access to that accurately describes the process of pregnancy? How much does it cost to deliver a child in my/our community, and what do I/we need to do to generate those funds? Where is my nearest hospital, women’s health center, and/or abortion clinic? What is my plan for accessing them, and to what extent can I access them?
Successful relationships have intentional conversations about the processes and goals that are important to each person. For those of you who are interested in expanding your family at some point, we hope this article can be helpful for you.
Family planning is (hopefully) a long-term process, and we invite you to take 15 or 30 minutes to tackle one or two of these questions at a time. If you or your partner is unable or unwilling to have these conversations in a collaborative way, that is likely a sign that expanding your family in this context is especially risky. While we hope that both partners would consider couples therapy as a support system for these conversations, we also recognize that this may signal the end of the road for this partnership, and open the door to a host of grief, pain, and anger.
If you’d like additional assistance in practicing these conversations with your partner, Julia and I would love to help, either through our own therapeutic services (for those who live in Massachusetts), or by connecting you with a trusted relationship therapist in your own community. Email us at sexvangelicals@gmail.com for more info.
Let’s heal together!
Jeremiah and Julia