{"id":1632,"date":"2008-06-29T17:02:08","date_gmt":"2008-06-29T22:02:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=1632"},"modified":"2010-11-23T23:54:36","modified_gmt":"2010-11-24T04:54:36","slug":"equating-motherhood-and-military-service","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2008\/06\/29\/equating-motherhood-and-military-service\/","title":{"rendered":"Equating Motherhood and Military Service"},"content":{"rendered":"

Pro- and anti-natal policies are those that encourage and discourage childbearing respectively.\u00a0 There’s an excellent article in the New York Times today<\/a> about pro-natal efforts in Europe.\u00a0 The population is falling there due to a low birth rate.<\/p>\n

One of the things they mentioned in the article was the Third Reich “Mother’s Cross” (I found this one here<\/a>).\u00a0 Women who had four children were awarded a bronze medal, women who had six a silver, and women who had eight a gold.\u00a0(This was a eugenic strategy, of course; an effort to increase the birthrate for pure, white people.)\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I think one of the most fascinating things about this medal is not so much the pro-natal, or even eugenic story, but the explicit linking of military service with motherhood.\u00a0 There are plenty of good arguments to make that being a mother is a service to the nation just like military service.\u00a0 After all, as is recognized in Europe, if women stop having babies, eventually there will be no nation at all.\u00a0 Also, being a mother involves sacrificing yourself, taking time out of the labor force and, indeed, risking your life and health.\u00a0 (Ann Crittenden makes this argument in The Price of Motherhood<\/a>.)\u00a0 Of course, in the U.S. we don’t value motherhood the way we value military service.\u00a0\u00a0 And, sigh, we are awarded no medals for bringing new human beings into existence.\u00a0 We do, however, have pro-natalist policy.\u00a0 The fact that we get a tax write-off for every child we have is a direct economic incentive to reproduce.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Pro- and anti-natal policies are those that encourage and discourage childbearing respectively.\u00a0 There’s an excellent article in the New York Times today about pro-natal efforts in Europe.\u00a0 The population is falling there due to a low birth rate. One of the things they mentioned in the article was the Third Reich “Mother’s Cross” (I found […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[55,2102,2088,2110,253,272,1777,276,304,309],"class_list":["post-1632","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-gender","tag-gender-history","tag-gender-marriagefamily","tag-gender-nationalismpatriotism","tag-history","tag-marriagefamily","tag-nation-germany","tag-nationalismpatriotism","tag-the-state","tag-warmilitary"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1632","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1632"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1632\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29538,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1632\/revisions\/29538"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1632"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1632"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1632"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}