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For me personally I imbibed the “pregnancy will ruin your life” message as a teen and wasn’t receptive to any counter programming for decades.
If your parents aren’t planting the seeds to make you desire a family, then the messaging you pick up elsewhere will dominate, and it’s almost all of the “pregnancy is a disaster” variety.
The post-college PMC corollary to this is _over_planning pregnancy. I've seen a number of friends over the past near decade have their first child, and the lead up to the pregnancy is this bizarre strategy consulting inspired plan. "As soon as (usually husband) makes VP, we'll move to (nice suburb) and (wife) will start to manage her work commitments so she can mostly operate from home. In Q2, we'll begin trying to conceive in earnest." It's hard not to see a eugenics-lite mindset. A pregnancy / child is another "project" on the PMC-life-success-progress meter.
Fortunately, a lot of this thinking evaporates once the child actually shows up and the parents find out how much they love being parents. If child number 2 comes along, the entire tenor changes. "(wife) is pregnant again. Hoping for a (girl/boy) this time." It's anec-data, but I've had a number of interesting conversations, especially with PMC fathers, that can be summarized as "If I knew how much more fulfilling fatherhood was than anything else, I would've started having kids way earlier." Anti-natal messaging really is one of the worst social biohazards of recent memory.
On the other side of the coin, those couples who just don't want to have kids for whatever reason have equally as intricate defense strategies ready to go for dinner parties. "Oh, well, with (husband or wife's) current case load, the time commitment is untenable, and (wife or husband) is also really taking on more responsibility at (something like FAANG or McKinsey). It's just a bad time right now, but we'll reassess next year maybe." It's the casual double speak of an overly refined PMC. I wouldn't mind if the response was as simple as "Yeah, we don't want kids." The "rational" defensive script comes across a somehow more insidious and spiteful. It's like a cover story for a double agent.
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