The Over-Glorification of Child Birth
Getting pregnant and giving birth is something that is glorified in many countries. As with many things, the USA manages to take this glorification to the extreme. Women are portrayed as being "heroes" - as are many other people for similarly silly reasons - in America. What is heroic about getting pregnant and having a child? There are no special skills involved. The most primitive people to the filthiest animals are capable of procreating with the utmost ease, yet for some reason we are force fed ideas of how "special" this all supposedly is.
This is a natural process that has become supposedly almost painless. The majority of modern American women get drugged up to a state of near unconsciousness and have their babies c-sectioned out of them. This is heroic? Child birth has gotten almost to the point of having your wisdom teeth out.
Inevitably everyone wants to feel special for some reason, and women like to be made felt special because of something that almost all women are capable of without any special training, education, knowledge or skill. Sure, families are happy when they have a child and rightly so, but this does not make parents "heroes" for raising children. If they have a child they are expected to raise it, without having to be called heroes or some other over-glorified title.
Americans tend to call almost everyone who does something mildly helpful for someone else or something that is slightly difficult a "hero". We see this on the local and national news everyday, when someone helps a cat stuck in a tree or changes someones tire on the side of a road a hero, and the reporter inevitably asks them, "Do you feel like a hero?", to which the inevitable answer is "No, anyone would have done it." There you have it. Calling everyone a hero who does something slightly helpful takes away the recognition that real "heroes" should have, who actually do something to save someone's life.
Again, the cult of the glorification of child birth attempts to make the everyday, banal, and mundane things that people and animals do into something extraordinary, which it isn't. It is a natural function of animals - including us - just like eating, sleeping, yawning, drinking etc., but for some reason nobody has been called a hero for sleeping the recommended 7 hours a day. On the contrary, people tend to be glorified for being able to function on little sleep.
Having children is also claimed to be a "Gift from God," but this obviously only applies to those parents who want a child. To those who are expecting unexpectedly it's not much of a gift, quite the contrary. There are many children given up for adoption or simply abandoned in trash cans or at hospitals. Who was this a gift to? It leads those involved into life long feelings of guilt, depression and feelings of abandonment.
Again, child birth is great and everything, don't get me wrong. But what's wrong with keeping these things private instead of making a big public show of happiness for the whole idea of "child birth" in general being the best thing ever? It's like anything else, some people enjoy it, others don't and yet others are indifferent.
