Multiple births and hypocrisy

Public womb #239487235.. oh, wait, I mean a woman who recently had octuplets is the target of a round of pearl-clutching because she didn't have a gazillion children in the approved way. Instead of having child after child while preaching Christian Quiverfull values and letting a man prove his virility by getting her pregnant each time, a young woman apparently used fertility treatment which resulted in eight embryos that all survived to be born. And now people are looking into every detail of her life so that they can heap their judgment onto her. She "already has" six kids! The family filed for bankruptcy! Where did the money come from? ZOMG THERE IS AN IRAQI IN THE FAMILY.

The difference between how the media has treated this woman and how they portray a family like the Duggars is stunning.

For example, take a look at this media coverage of the Duggars:

The Discovery Health channel has an entire television show devoted to the Duggars, and on the website you can "Name that Duggar!" and leave well wishes for the newest baby.

MSNBC has an article that is positively glowing, in which they quote Ann Curry referring to the family as "very traditional, even old-fashioned."

Of course, the Duggars are still targetted for ridicule and derision, but the mainstream media has, for the most part, embraced them.

Not so the mother of the octuplets.

Zuzu posted about the octuplets after I'd started writing this, and she has some very interesting things to say, as well:

The problem is, we’re not supposed to judge women who want to have lots of children, we’re supposed to look at every birth as a “miracle” and as desirable, we’re supposed to ooh and ahh over the vast medical team assembled for the delivery, we’re supposed to find it heartwarming that government resources are used during a massive disaster to save frozen embryos rather than finding and rescuing real live people, we’re supposed to say that isn’t it great that she was pro-life, had a choice, and refused a selective reduction that would have resulted in fewer, but healthier, and possibly full-term babies.

I think that looking at the issue from the point of view of what pressures are put on women and how a subset of women respond (and whether that is healthy for all involved or not) is not the same as judging women. It's important to point out the hypocrisy of the culture that sentimentalizes babies and multiple births, but condemns women who don't give birth in perfect circumstances.

Julie Shapiro at Feminist Law Professors also puts this in the larger context of whose right to parent is questioned.

And finally, I find it simply amazing that a woman could find a doctor willing to implant several embryos in a fairly young woman with six children, yet it is nearly impossible for a woman of the same age or younger to find a doctor willing to perform a tubal ligation.