By now, many of us are aware that Bristol Palin, Sarah Palin’s teenage daughter, is pregnant. You probably have listened to the media pundits trying to spin this in several different directions.
Some are gleefully rubbing their hands together, expressing overwhelming euphoria. Senator Obama issued a statement saying, “I think people’s families are off-limits, and people’s children are especially off-limits. This shouldn’t be part of our politics. It has no relevance to Gov. Palin’s performance as governor or her potential performance as a vice president.” He specifically denied that his campaign had anything to do with the information becoming public.
Most of the debate on Bristol’s pregnancy deals with whether or not her mother Sarah is responsible, because of her public insistence that abstinence education is what we need to be teaching our children. Some see this as proof that preaching abstinence to our children is a failure, as clearly this approach did not stop the Alaskan governor’s daughter from deciding on her own to engage in sex. Others feel that Sarah Palin is not responsible, because a parent can only control a child’s behaviour to a certain degree. Some claim that the whole debate is irrelevant because it is a family matter. Here you have three opinions on one pregnancy.
It astounds me that people believe that they have the right to even enter into discussion on what another does with their body. It seems that in our post-feminist world, women’s reproduction is still something that is open for social discipline. I find it interesting that no one considered for a moment, that pregnancy could have been an active choice for this young woman. Immediately we assume that birth control failed, that she lacked morals, or that her closed-minded harpy of a mother did not engage in conversations with her regarding sex and sexuality. We claim to acknowledge the autonomy of women and yet motherhood as a conscious decision never once entered the debate.
Yet motherhood cannot be considered an entirely active decision simply because the female body is policed. Though we claim to honour motherhood in this society the opposite is quite true. The number of people using this pregnancy as a tactic to shame Bristol, and her mother Sarah, speak volumes about how we understand motherhood. Unless you conceive within a socially prescribed manner (read: lawfully married) the act of giving life is something to be ashamed of. We have not moved far from sending out daughters across the country to hide a pregnancy.
The stigma of unplanned pregnancy is never attached to the father. The male in this situation is guilt free, as he, of course, is just doing what is natural. This has much to do with the fact that femininity has been entrusted with the guardianship of sexuality. Each year, young girls across the United States get dressed in their finest and pledge their virginity to their fathers. The family vagina must be kept pure at all costs because socially we have decided that it is a symbol of honour. That women have the same sexual desires as men is simply not something that we can countenance, because to do so would place women on an equal level with men.
Though Bristol is going to have a difficult time having this child in the public spotlight, there are many issues that she will not face. If Bristol lived in Harlem, and her name were Latifah, this conversation would take a very different tone. That Bristol is a child of privilege, and is white, will forestall the questions of who is going to pay for raising this child. If Bristol were a Latina, there would be cracks about whether the baby was conceived to drain the limited social safety net and achieve US citizenship
Race and class will protect Bristol from the attacks that poor Black and Latina women face on a daily basis when they decide to become mothers. She will not have to negotiate social services trying desperately to get pre-natal care. She will not be looked upon as a social leech, or a raving whore. The aforementioned are labels that are attached to WOC. She will not lay awake at night wondering where the money to raise this child is going to come from.
Bristol can count on her race to ensure that she is treated with dignity when she must deal with the medical establishment. In the end it will be decided that while her identity is spoiled, it is only temporarily so. She will marry and become just another respectable white woman that has had a baby. In time people will forget that she had the temerity to become pregnant outside of wedlock, as she performs the socially prescribed activities of motherhood. Her whiteness will ensure that she is forgiven, as all are well aware that there is a “shortage” of white babies being born.
This is because the babies that matter are white. The newborn white infant does not usually languish waiting to be adopted. He or she is desired and praised. The fact that Bristol has fulfilled her biological destiny, and produced a white child to help maintain white hegemony, will, in the end, endear her to society. After all what are white women for, if not too breed and raise perfect white babies to advance the race.
Bristol’s status as a despoiled identity will be difficult for her, but it is only temporary. We will pretend that we are having conversations about morality, while ignoring the real issues of race, class and gender in our understanding of motherhood. In the end she will emerge reborn and reconstituted, a tribute to what white women are meant to do – breed.