On Getting Pregnant - Tuesday, February 15, 2011

Two comments, lifted out of context, from a story in Today’s Toronto Star – “ Woman alleges sexual discrimination in lawsuit against Toronto-based firm ”.

The phrase “getting pregnant” is loaded with overtones of the male chauvinistic outlook, and I don’t know enough about Ms Laskis’s case to comment on that, but I do know enough about humans to comment on phrases such as “…he hated working with female lawyers because they get pregnant and leave” and “That's why I hate working with women — because they just get pregnant and leave..”.

These two statements reflect on what we refer to as “life”.

Life for organisms, consists of replicating. Sexual replication requires two partners of opposite sexes, asexual replication requires either two or one partners.

For all creatures that replicate via eggs, one partner (and it is not always the female) has the task of nurturing the eggs, before and/or after they are hatched.

To put it crudely (bit not obscenely) I am a hatched egg.

When we focus on humans, it is the womb-man who bears the eggs, hosts the eggs, and nurtures the hatched eggs (with breast milk), and this takes time, time that is not then available for gathering berries or joining in the hunt.

‘Twas ever thus.

So why do we get upset when someone states the obvious – that pregnancy, in our society, takes some hours out of the 24?

Today’s corporate culture has invested mothers, and in many cases fathers, with maternity/paternity leave. It is a benefit stated up-front, and mothers and fathers make use of it.

Email notwithstanding, if you are not in the office building when Sheila gets her birthday cake, when the ceiling leaks, when the weirdo comes in, you will be missing out on some of the corporate culture.

You can’t have your cake and eat it too.

If either one of you spends time away from the office and focusing on nurturing a child, that is time you don’t have to focus on the office and the tasks at hand, and in that sense you are no different from the consultant who, comet-like, drifts into view, and then out of view again.

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