Society's View

Society's and their inappropriate "Norms"

My biggest struggle with my miscarriage has been society. The dominant culture who determine the "norms" that we must follow in order to survive in society, go against everything that I feel as woman who suffered a miscarriage.

The pain of miscarrying is so severe and unable to explain unless you have experienced it therefore, society cannot understand how to react to women who have gone through it. The dominant culture sympathizes for us but cannot empathize with us. Society says that we should feel sorry for those who experienced a miscarriage. The politically correct response is to apologize for the loss and offer support, a listening ear, and/or a shoulder to cry on. This politically correct response only lasts for a short time and after that society expects women to "get over it"

John DeFrain, Elaine Millspaugh and  Xiaolin Xie (1996) wrote:

The loss of a baby can have profound effects on parents and surviving siblings. It is common to      hear the loss minimized in our culture as "just a miscarriage," but the analysis of more than 4,000 pages of written testimony collected from 172 mothers and 21 fathers indicates that losing a baby due to miscarriage can be a devastating experience. Disturbing flashbacks and nightmares are common in the aftermath of the loss; a high percentage of both mothers and fathers report feelings that they thought they might be "going crazy"; 11.4% of the mothers said they had considered suicide as a result of the loss, and 1.8% did try to kill themselves. (abstract)

After a miscarriage women go through several stages of grief and the process of healing cannot be determined. Some women are able to jump back into their life and cope with the loss almost instantaneously; however, others as myself feel as if they will never recover from the loss of their child.

It is hard to jump back into a live that you do not feel is your own; however, the dominant society does not realize how difficult that process is. After a miscarriage women still feel that they are a mother without a child to take care of. From the day a women finds out she is pregnant until the sad day that she losses her child, a women has become a mother.

There is no word in the English language to describe a women who lost their baby. The only word that relates in miscarriage, the process of pregnancy loss, but there is no way to describe or identify how a women is identified after the miscarriage.

In the dominant society, there is a taboo associated with miscarriage. Women who suffered are forced to move on with their lives. Society recognizes miscarriage as a painful loss rather than women who have experienced a loss who need to talk. Before the Heal program and the blogs, there was no one for women to talk to.

When pregnant women talk to me about their pregnancy, they become appalled by the fact that I would try to talk to them about my experience; although, I did not have a baby, I did experience the first trimester of pregnancy and may even have advice.

The dominant culture only views women as mothers when they physically have a child. This is a pain that women struggle with every day. Mother's day is a hard day in this subculture because society says that we are not mothers; therefore, we should not celebrate this day.

The Subculture of miscarriage has contested the dominant culture's views through the blogs and Heal program created by and for women in this subculture. These practices have taken back women's right to grieve and talk about their miscarriage.

"Some say you are too painful to remember, I say you are too precious to forget."
(source unknown)