Two things have been in the news that speaks volumes about attitudes toward pregnancy. During negotiations of the American Health Care Act of 2017, Rep. John Shimkus (R-Ill.) expressed dislike for the part of the Affordable Care Act that requires insurance plans to cover maternity care. This means men also end up purchasing insurance plans that cover these services, even if they don’t need them. Around the same time that Shimkus brought that issue back to light, a study was published that stated 52 percent of men don’t believe they have ever benefited from women having access to birth control.
Both of these incidents point toward a common phenomenon surrounding pregnancy; the placement of blame solely on women, despite men’s involvement in pregnancy. By suggesting that men should not be required to pay into insurance plans that cover maternity care, Shimkus is representing the idea that once a pregnancy has begun, the responsibility is on women to pay for the necessary care.
People who don’t necessarily need a certain service paying for insurance that covers it anyway isn’t unusual. In fact, it is the basis of insurance as an institution. Healthy people paying for insurance plans is what allows sick people to have their care paid for by insurance. Someone who never uses their insurance benefits but continues to pay for them is why someone with cancer can afford their treatment. Yes, men may be paying for maternity care that they don’t need, but women pay for insurance plans that cover prostate exams and Viagra, neither of which they need. Saying that men shouldn’t have to pay for maternity services perpetuates the idea that women are solely responsible for pregnancy care. This perception continues after pregnancy and contributes to the idea that most other parts of raising a child are traditionally considered the mother’s job.
The fact that 52 percent of men don’t think they have benefitted from birth control is also problematic. Of course, some of the men surveyed may not be sexually active, or may not be sexually active with women. But odds are, at least some of the men surveyed have definitely benefitted from their female partners being able to access birth control. Any man of reproductive age, who is having sex with women who are also of reproductive age, benefits from access to birth control. Even if condoms are used every time, both parties are still benefitting from other types of birth control. Condoms break, they are only 99 percent effective, and accidents happen. Maybe the men who don’t think they have benefitted from birth control don’t understand how faulty condoms can be. Or maybe they don’t believe they would be negatively impacted by an unwanted or unexpected pregnancy, placing the responsibility again on the shoulders of the woman.
Things like these need to be recognized as more than just harmless, though annoying, comments by an out of touch representative or responses to a survey. They are the result of, and a way to, perpetuate cultural ideas about what a man’s responsibility is and what a woman’s responsibility is. The only way these stigmas are going to be changed is if instances like these are recognized for what they are, and remembered after the initial irritation wears off.
