Prejudice, Women and Girls, Pregnancy

"A child is better off raised by an unrelated married couple than by her own parents if her mother is single at the time she is born."

"A child is better off raised by an older person than by her young mother."

"A child is better off with wealth than with her own mother or father."

Prejudice against women by men

Prejudice against women by men. The prejudicial attitudes of our patriarchal society against women become most obvious when a single woman or teenager becomes pregnant. It still seems it is the woman's duty to handle both pregnancy prevention and pregnancy, so the male will not have to be bothered with either pregnancy prevention or with supporting or raising his child.

If the woman gets an abortion, then everything is fine for the male. But for those women whose pregnancy results in birth, then the mothers are all too often pressured to hand their son or daughter over to some unrelated person who wants to adopt a baby. In some segments of society, the only time the mother may be permitted to consider keeping her child is if the baby is not healthy and perfect - if her baby is "unadoptable".

Prejudice against women by women

Prejudice against women by women. Adoption frequently serves to benefit women - the women who benefit are females hoping to adopt. Many of the women who hope to adopt are career women - women who have put career achievement and their own interests first and waited too long to reproduce.

In other words, femisists are often the oppressors of other women. They favor discrimination and stigma against single mothers because they stand to benefit. They may promote single motherhood for a single woman who wants to adopt - but they will not protect the rights of a single woman to reproduce naturally and then raise her own child.

The status of women in a society may be partially determined by the percentage of women who have their babies adopted-out.

Prejudice against women - single mothers as a minority

Single mothers as a minority. Where minorities are concerned, pregnant single women are one minority that is still downtrodden and invisible. They face daunting violence - in the form of adoption agencies, lawyers and individuals who all sanctioned by society in taking the mother's child. To promote the idea that their children should be removed from them, single mothers are sterotypically thought of as being drug users or simply uninterested in raising their children. Churches consider them "sinners" who need "redemption" through child removal. Even today many people referred to single mothers as "unwed" as if they were less than human.

Those who promote the removal of infants from their mothers are like the school bully who steals a smaller child's lunch. They rationalize that the mothers are being relieved of a "burden" as though their sons and daughters are only some sort of tumor. Many are well aware that the mothers suffer terribly when their children are taken and that mothers are affected the rest of their lives. Natural mothers whose children are adopted-out are more likely to commit suicide.

Prejudice against women is an integral part of the policies of many churches. Prejudice against women is also an integral part of social policy -- put forth by a mostly male or career-woman congress -- in the United States.

Single women who give birth - especially teenagers - are often used as a scapegoat. Kicking around unmarried mothers is a national pastime. Such prejudices are cruel. Taking a mother's child is cruel and unusual punishment for the "crime" of giving birth.

"Birthmother's Day" Celebrations - Celebrating "birthmotherhood" is celebrating the oppression of single moms.

Next: Prejudice, Unwed Mothers and Teenage Parents

A free race cannot be born of slave mothers. -- Margaret Sanger

The use of 'religion' as an excuse to repress the freedom of expression and to deny human rights is not confined to any country or time. -- Margaret Atwood

The prejudices of ignorance are more easily removed than the prejudices of interest; the first are blindly adopted, the second willfully preferred. -- Bancroft.

"Prejudice is a great time saver. You can form opinions without having to get the facts." -- E.B. White

It is never too late to give up our prejudices. ~Henry David Thoreau