Tag: We Want a Child

Roundup: Infertility, Miscarriage, and Infant Loss in Film and TV Week

Children of Men (2006)

The “Plague” of Infertility in Alfonso Cuarón’s Children of Men by Carleen Tibbetts

Women can’t get pregnant anymore and nobody knows why. This the central lamentation in Alfonso Cuaron’s 2006 dystopian film Children of Men, based on P.D. James’s novel. Set in England in the year 2027, this is the story of the human race entering its final phase. Cuaron brings us into Orwellian territory in which nations worldwide have fallen as a result of war, disease, and famine. Britain remains a sort of lucrative last bastion in these end times and people across the globe are scrambling to get in.

 Sarah from Inside (2007)

Inside: French Pregnant Body Horror at Its Finest by Deirdre Crimmins

Horror films have a unique way of showcasing exactly what we fear, but they often do so in a subtle way. While is it goes without saying that ax-wielding maniacs are to be feared, these films often slyly expose the issues that our society is too shy to deal with head on. In the 2007 French horror film Inside (directed by Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury), fertility, reproduction, and infant loss are dealt with in a refreshingly direct and uncompromisingly bloody outcome, with no room for subtlety.

Robin in How I Met Your Mother

How I Met Your Mother: One of the Few TV Shows to Explore a Childfree Life for Women by Megan Kearns

HIMYM suffers many gender problems. Yes, it infuriated me Lily received so much backlash when she went to LA to pursue her dream of an art career. Almost everything Barney says or does – his sexist stereotypes, objectification of women, and fat-shaming – pisses me off. And yes, it bugs me that Robin’s unconventional female personality of Scotch drinking, hockey loving, cigar smoking and gun ownership has been pinned on her father raising her as a boy…even going so far as to name her Robin Charles Scherbatsky, Jr. But the show hasn’t fallen into the sexist trap that a woman isn’t a “real” woman without a baby.

Buffy comics, Season 9

Buffy Season 9: Sci-Fi Pregnancies and the Story that Almost Was by Pauline Holdsworth

Nikki Wood—New York punk slayer and the mother of ex-Sunnydale High principal Robin Wood—had been absent from the Buffyverse for a long time. So it’s a bit of a surprise when she shows up in the opening scenes of “On Your Own,” the second volume of the Season 9 Buffy the Vampire Slayer comic books. She’s being held off the edge of a tall building by the throat, pumped full of sedatives that have taken away her powers for a Council-mandated rite of passage. She’s pregnant.

Peekaboo: Still born. Still loved

Stillbirth. Still Ignored by Debbie Howard [Trigger Warning]

I completed my short drama Peekaboo nearly two years ago, but I started writing it about three years before that. I had two friends who had experienced baby loss, one to miscarriage and one who had given her baby up for adoption. I had a dream one night that merged these two stories together; this was the beginning of Peekaboo, which is about a couple who has lost three babies to stillbirth. I wrote a first draft of the script then started researching in great detail as I developed the script. I was shocked to discover that hardly anything had been made about this subject before.
Tell Me You Love Me (2007)

Infertility and Miscarriage in HBO’s Tell Me You Love Me by Stephanie Rogers

Perhaps what I found interesting, and even important, especially as a woman starting to understand how feminism fit into my life in a practical way, were the gender dynamics at play in Palek and Carolyn’s pregnancy struggles. Throughout the ten-episode arc, Carolyn basically treats Palek as a sperm donor, and his complaints about the lack of intimacy in their relationship stem from that—he wants feeling and emotion attached to making love with his wife; yet Carolyn sees that as unimportant, often demanding that he provide her with sex whenever she asks for it.

Kee, played by Clare-Hope Ashitey

The Exploitation of Women in Alfonso Cuarón’s Children of Men by Amanda Rodriguez

Children of Men‘s depiction of women as props, tools, symbols, or cardboard underscores the notion that women’s true purpose is reproduction, and when women can’t reproduce, they’re not only useless, but society itself collapses under the burden of their neglect of duty. Despite many of the intriguing themes this film explores (including a scathing denouncement of the treatment of immigrants), Children of Men ends up falling in line with its mainstream contemporaries to assert that women are merely bodies, that a woman’s value lies in her ability to reproduce, and that she has and should have no control over that body or that ability to reproduce.

Jennifer Garner as Vanessa Loring in Juno

Vanessa Loring: Pathetic or Plausible? A Matter of Perception by Talia Liben Yarmush

What really hit me was Jennifer Garner’s character, Vanessa. In past viewings of the movie, the hopeful adoptive mother seemed somewhat desperate. Her overly enthusiastic smile. The fact that Juno’s snarky remarks would fly past her with barely any recognition. Her obsessive questioning and controlling perfectionism. When saying goodbye after meeting for the first time, Vanessa asks Juno how likely she is to go through with the adoption, and Juno says, nonchalantly, that she is going to do it. “How sure would you say you are? Like, would you say you’re 80% sure, or 90% sure?” Vanessa pushes. She was more than desperate, really. She was pathetic. She seemed to be written for the purpose of added comic relief. But as my friends laughed at her on screen, I felt sad, and angry.

We Want a Child (1949)

The Power of Portrayal: Infertility, Reproductive Choice and Reproduction in We Want a Child by Leigh Kolb

The frank discussion about infertility, abortion, prenatal care and adoption make this film noteworthy. It feels quite remarkable to watch characters discuss the range of emotions surrounding these subjects. The film isn’t a masterpiece, and it moves quickly and relies on some common tropes surrounding the topic of infertility and adoption, but some of the dialogue is striking in its honesty and timelessness.

Ronnie from Eastenders

The Characterization of Bereaved Mothers: Are We Getting It Right? by Angela Smith

Ironically, script submissions are often invited by TV and film producers with the emphasis on creating strong female characters. However, soap writers seem all too eager to completely and utterly smash these women down to the point of no return. It’s one thing to cleverly show different sides to their personality, but to completely destroy a useful and inspirational character is unnecessary and sadistic.

Yerma (1999)

Yerma: The Pain, Heartbreak and Destruction of Infertility and Patriarchy by Leigh Kolb

Yerma’s words about the deep, miserable feelings surrounding infertility are poignant and heartbreakingly accurate. While much is going on in this film worth discussing–the patriarchal culture that arranges marriages and ties a woman’s worth solely to her ability to have children, obviously, and the immediate blame of the woman when a couple can’t conceive–Yerma’s struggle with infertility is one of the most accurate portrayals of that grief that I’ve ever seen.

A mother makes a difference.

How a Flatliners Ad During a Movie Showing Made This Woman Walk Out by Pandora Diane MacMillan

I think this was one of the very first film showings that included a special, movie-only commercial meant to promote a new line of Levi’s jeans. The new line was apparently to be called “Flatliners,” yes, a promotional tie-in with that film, with the association that Flatliner Jeans would make the wearer look slim and “flat.” They also apparently thought it would be cute, hip, and hilarious to display the young male wearer of said jeans as DEAD and FLATLINED and to have someone jumpstart the person’s heart with defibrillators(!).

Days of Our Lives

Days of Our Lives: Punishing Nicole’s Fetus by Janyce Denise Glasper

Days of Our Lives writers appeared to be Nicole’s biggest adversaries, judgmentally weaving a “how can we top that last terrible heartbreak for this evil woman who committed paltry crimes at best?” Horrific enough that she went through the tragedy of losing a baby once, but to push her into repeating that trauma in an astonishingly grotesque manner seemed much uncalled for and heinous. They made an example of out this Mary Magdalene pariah, promising miraculous motherhood twice and ripping it from her grasp, a condemnation for her tumultuously stormy past.

Away We Go (2009)

Away We Go: Infertility and the Indie Film by LD Anderson

I found Tom and Munch to be hurtful caricatures of infertile couples. I understand that the desire to have children of one’s own loins is very natural, and that the inability to do so can be extremely painful. However, I would dare say that society’s insistence on considering adoption second-rate, and its complete failure to recognize childless couples as families, makes it far more painful than it has to be.

I can tell you that the first theme, miscarriage, is shown in only seconds, and it is a scene that will remain with you throughout the entire film. In thirty seconds, this animated family film is able to portray the loss in such a visceral way that even if you have never had an experience like it, you will be brought to tears. And I can tell you that the second theme, living childfree, is complicated and filled with mixed emotions.

“You are not alone in this.”

Empty Wombs and Blank Screens: The Absence of Infertility and Pregnancy Loss in Media by Leigh Kolb

I try to rationalize why portrayals of infertility and pregnancy loss are so rare. Where is the action, a scriptwriting professor scribbled in my margins when I had too much internal dialogue or a conversation between female friends. There’s not much action in infertility. The struggle is literally and figuratively inside. 
But then I realize I’m just making excuses for Hollywood. Infertility and pregnancy loss are rich with story-line possibilities. The very nature of these tragedies is in lock-step with literary conflicts and archetypes. (Wo)man vs. self? Check. (Wo)man vs. nature? Check. Journey/quest? Check. Unhealable wound? Check.
But now that she has lost her son, Daenerys decides she will take the Iron Throne herself and rule the Seven Kingdoms. Now that all the men in her life – her husband, son and brother – have died, she now claims the throne for her own. Dany becomes the metaphorical phoenix rising from the ashes, purging the last vestiges of her former timid self to transition into her life as a powerful leader…The Mother of Dragons cares for the dragons as if they were her own babies…Yet it is the loss of her son that enables Daenerys to envision herself in the role of leader. No longer is she supporting a man to be a great leader. She has become that leader.

Previously appeared at Bitch Flicks:
Feminist Flashback: Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? by Megan Kearns (first published on June 14, 2011)
Movie Review: Baby Mama by Amber Leab (first published on October 23, 2008)

Reproduction & Abortion Week: Mother and Child by Candice Frederick (first published on April 25, 2012)

What to Expect When You’re Expecting: Unexpected Gem by Robin Hitchcock (first published on October 12, 2012)

The Power of Portrayal: Infertility, Reproductive Choice and Reproduction in ‘We Want a Child’

Movie poster for We Want a Child



Written by Leigh Kolb for our theme week on Infertility, Miscarriage, and Infant Loss.

The 1949 Danish film We Want a Child (Vi vil ha’ et barn) deals with abortion, failed adoption, infertility, detailed fertility and prenatal care and childbirth.
Depictions of any of these subjects are few and far between in modern film and television, so the fact that a feature film was made so long ago is remarkable in itself. We Want a Child offers a frank portrayal of the emotions involved in trying to build a family.  
The film opens with Else and Lief’s wedding. The audience is introduced to a happy bride (who is just doing the church wedding–“veil and everything”–because her mother wants her to) and her playful new husband. 
At the celebratory dinner reception, Else’s Uncle Hans toasts the new couple and the unity of the family “up through a new generation.” 
Next the audience sees Uncle Hans–a bit of a buffoon–riding his bike over to Else’s house to check on her. “No news?” he says. “No news,” she says. “I don’t want you asking me each week.”
Clearly, the family is waiting for an announcement of Else and Lief’s pregnancy, and Else is already tiring of the requests.
“Two years have gone by…” is superimposed on the screen, and the uncle walks in again. Else is polishing silver, visibly upset, and Hans notes that it’s their two-year anniversary. A puppy walks into the room, and he’s shocked: “You got a dog?” 
“I know perfectly well you don’t like to discuss it,” he says, “but why don’t you have kids?”
Else says she wants to enjoy their youth, and that they don’t want children right now. She quickly breaks down, though, and says, “I’m beginning to think I can’t have a child.” Uncle Hans, without judgment, encourages her to see a doctor. 
Later Else asks Lief if he wants a baby. “Doesn’t every man?” he says, playfully. She cries and hugs him, saying “What if we can’t have a baby? Maybe I can’t have any.”  
Their relationship is portrayed as equitable and loving; they joke and laugh and seem to be deeply in love. When she expresses her fears, he doesn’t belittle her or act uncomfortable. Since the threat of infertility often wreaks havoc in relationships, the depiction of Lief and Else’s relationship throughout the film is refreshing.
Else does visit the doctor, and tells him she’s afraid she can’t have any babies. He asks about her menstruation and rattles off a list of other health questions. He says, “I suppose we don’t have to consider abortion.” Else answers, “Yes, we have to.”

Else confides in the doctor that she’s had an abortion. He judges, but quickly moves on to helping her.

The doctor takes his glasses off and pauses. She says that it had been an operation a few years ago, and he notes that it was “a criminal abortion.” (Abortion in Denmark was legalized in 1973.)
He stands up, and Else pleads with him, saying she knew it was wrong, but it was during the war and her fiance (now husband) had to go underground. The doctor is judgmental (saying that she “preferred to kill her child” instead of looking for help), but it’s not nearly as damning as one would expect from the time. He goes on to tell her that it might be the reason she hasn’t conceived, and that sometimes abortion causes scar tissue in the fallopian tubes. He tells her they will take x-rays and run some tests.
As Else is leaving the doctor’s office, her friend Jytte is coming in. She’s become pregnant by the married man she’s having an affair with, and he wants nothing to do with her or a baby. Jytte goes in to talk to the doctor, and is clearly upset and unsure of what she wants to do. The doctor urges her to not have an abortion, lest she “deny motherhood” and ruin her chances to have a child in the future after going to a “quack” to have her “body mutilated.” He promises her it’s not as hopeless as she thinks, and she promises to think over it–but not before snapping that a woman should be able to make her own decisions. 
After these scenes, the harsh judgment surrounding abortion–which at the time was a criminal act and wouldn’t have been a safe medical procedure, so conversations about it in a feature film could only go so far–ends.

As Else leaves the doctor’s office, a mother is struggling and Else offers to hold her baby for her. The way she looks at the child is full of love and deep longing.

Jytte decides against having an abortion (even though her lover wants her to).
The doctor shows Else her x-rays–one of her tubes is blocked, but the other side is open. “You have a chance, you can become pregnant,” he says. “You must hope.” He encourages her to tell her husband.
While Else is at the doctor, Lief has befriended a neighbor child, and their interactions are sweet. The bond shows that when a couple wants children but cannot have them, they often still “parent” in other ways, whether it’s a neighbor child, or a dog, or both, in their case.
Else comes home, resolved to tell Lief about her abortion.
“Lief, can you forgive me?” she cries.

He says it’s his fault, but she responds,

“It’s what we wanted, both of us. I should have told you long ago.”

“Don’t worry, darling, we’re together,” he says.

When Lief speaks with Uncle Hans about the fact that “we’ll have to get used to the idea that it’ll be only two” of them, alone, he adds that “the doctor gave her hope, but what else can he say?”
“It’s completely idiotic in a world like ours to want my own children… yet I want them,” Lief says.
Else soothes herself by thinking that they are enjoying their youth. They get a puppy. Lief befriends and mentors the neighbor child. Lief grapples with the fact that it feels selfish to desire biological children, but acknowledges the deep urge. The way the couple deals with and speaks about their infertility is truthful and realistic.
Uncle Hans sees an opportunity, and tells Jytte he knows of a young couple who would like to adopt a baby, and that she can stay with him (since if she becomes visibly pregnant she’ll lose her job and room).
Things seem to be falling in place. The next scene is Lief and the neighbor boy carrying a bassinet upstairs to the nursery. Else’s mother visits, and is rude and dismissive when Lief tells her that Else is visiting their new daughter. “Why on earth are you adopting?” she asks, and he tries to explain that they can’t have one themselves. 
Lief goes to the clinic, flowers in hand, to see Jytte and his new daughter. Else steps out of the room, visibly upset. “She said she couldn’t do it,” she says. “She can’t go through with the adoption.” 
While she’s upset, Else tells him that they shouldn’t be angry. Lief gives the flowers to the nurse to give Jytte. 
At this moment, we see the most tension between Else and Lief. He says he needs to go back to work, and he coldly leaves after saying goodbye. Else is left alone. The scene is harshly realistic.
Back at home, Else’s mother is condemning adoption and Jytte, but Else softly tells her, “You can’t blame her for not wanting to give up her baby.” She quickly runs from the room and gets sick.
Her mother smiles, knowing what the nausea signifies.
Else is excited when she puts the pieces together, but nervous: “I’m more afraid that it isn’t true, or if it is true, it won’t be a healthy child.” Her mother assures her that worrying is part of being a mother. The fear involved with becoming pregnant after infertility is palpable. 
Else goes back to the doctor, and he confirms her pregnancy. He asks her about rickets, scarlet fever, hereditary diseases, venereal diseases and he listens to her heart and checks her back.

Else weeps with joy when the doctor confirms her pregnancy.

“We have to be careful now that we have a responsibility for a new little citizen,” he says. When she asks if he thinks it’s a girl, he says, “Male? Female? It’s a human.”
This segment of the film feels a bit like an educational video for prenatal care–he explains all of the blood tests he’s taking (including testing her rhesus type so they can take care of her properly if it’s negative). Her scenes with the doctor are clearly meant to be instructional to viewers.
Else goes home, and coyly tells Lief that she is “expecting something.” They are both elated.

Else and Lief celebrate the news.

Her pregnancy progresses normally, and Else wakes up in the middle of the night feeling pain. (The dog, not forgotten, is fully grown in a bed by Else and Lief’s bed.) She and Lief rush to the clinic, and the midwife tells Lief, “Kiss your wife goodbye, we’ll call you when it’s over.” He begs to stay, but the midwife assures him that they’ve “no need” for him. They walk away, and Lief stands alone, staring. He walks home (where he continues to pace and call the clinic for updates). 
Else is given anesthesia via inhalation, and the doctor tells her that she’ll “go to sleep, wake up and it will be over and done with.” This is most likely ether, as the drugs that induced Twilight Sleep were intravenous. 
She wakes up, and a nurse hands her a beautiful girl, while Lief stands beside her. “Well, we made it,” he says. They are both beaming. 
The baby sneezes (baby human and baby animal sneezes are certainly evolution’s way of causing women to spontaneously ovulate), and the film is over.
While there are a couple of moments in the film that will undoubtedly make a pro-choice feminist cringe, the fact that Else is still fertile even though she had an abortion is what’s important. If the film had truly been wholly anti-abortion, she would not have been able to go on and conceive and have a happy ending. Aside from the doctor’s comments (and of course he was acting as a medical and moral authority of the time), Else and Lief are united–and both recognize that an abortion is what they both wanted at the time–and she is not punished. At the time the film was celebrated in some circles for its clear anti-abortion message, but the fact remains that Else is not infertile. Her husband isn’t angry that she had an abortion. Everything turns out just fine.
Jytte isn’t punished for her decisions, either. She seems to have a mutually beneficial life at Uncle Hans’s house. Else’s forgiving response to the adoption falling through assures the audience that we are not to be angry with Jytte, either.

Lief visits Else and their new daughter at the clinic.

The frank discussion about infertility, abortion, prenatal care and adoption make this film noteworthy. It feels quite remarkable to watch characters discuss the range of emotions surrounding these subjects. The film isn’t a masterpiece, and it moves quickly and relies on some common tropes surrounding the topic of infertility and adoption, but some of the dialogue is striking in its honesty and timelessness. 
The struggles that infertile couples face in 2013–the fear and guilt that you’ve done something wrong, the desire to have a biological child, the risk of adoption falling through, facing a marriage without children–are no different than they were almost 75 years ago. These struggles, however, are rarely represented on screen. The experience of viewing characters who deal with these life events feels meaningful and important. We shouldn’t have to dig so far and so hard to find them.
* * *
One of the reasons this film dealt so well with these subjects was no doubt its director, Alice O’Fredericks (she directed it with Lau Lauritzen). O’Fredericks was a prolific writer and producer–she wrote 38 screenplays and directed 72 films. Many of her films focused on women’s stories and women’s rights. The Copenhagen International Film Festival annually awards a female director with the Alice Award, named after O’Fredericks. 
Alice O’Fredericks, Danish writer, director and actor

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Leigh Kolb is a composition, literature and journalism instructor at a community college in rural Missouri.