IF PREGNANT WOMEN RULED

When I read about Spain’s new defense minister being seven months pregnant I started thinking what if all the leaders in the world were with child.

If all the world leaders were pregnant, what a summit meeting we might have. A regular hormonal convergence, heavy on the oxytocin, that hormone of love and bonding that comes on strong in pregnancy. Turns women into nesters.
That’s what the world needs now. More nesters at the top.

I watched Carme Chacon, the first woman to head the armed forces in Spain, her stylish white maternity top fluttering over her third trimester belly, inspecting the troops and wondered what it would be like if all the people in power were pregnant.
I think priorities would be different if those in charge had their own vested interest growing under their blouse to remind them what they’re doing to the world.
To begin with, they’d all have one major thing in common. Pregnant women, no matter where they come from, speak the same language. They pray for the same outcome. They don’t need an ingenuine lecture on family values. Their hearts and minds and aching backs all are pointed to the future.

They get very emotional over anything dealing with children. Pack the UN with pregnant leaders and show them photos of desperate toddlers scrambling for bits of rice on a dirt floor and I bet they’d come up with a way to fix world hunger.
A group of leaders, soon to produce the next generation, would not take kindly to a trumped-up war. No more mothers throwing themselves on small coffins. No more little kids caught in a firefight. Take half that military budget and shift it into health and education.

Full of hopes and dreams, they would certainly demand to know what’s wrong in a world that causes some babies to grow up to hate and kill and wrap themselves in explosives.
Were they to hear of one nation committing genocide on another maybe they would march in like mother bears and make them stop. No matter whose trade agreement it threatened.

I know. We have no proof that if women ran the world we’d not still be dealing with hunger and a poisoned environment and one senseless war after another. But with men in charge it’s pretty clear that’s what we’re getting.
If pregnant women ruled we would be baby-proofing the planet. Fixing the blackened skies and fouled rivers. The world would pay attention to a bunch of riled-up mothers saying, “Clean up this mess before I count to 10.”

Among the pregnant and powerful, negotiations would be serene and calm. No red-faced screaming, no grand-standing, no macho boasting. No late night deal-making over cigars and whiskey. Pregnant women require more sleep and maybe some ice cream to get through the day. They try to avoid stress and conflict. At the same time they are good at sticking to business and could march through an agenda as fast as they could paper over a wall with birds and butterflies.

If pregnant women ran the world there would be safer toys, better child care, mandatory paternity leave and more bathrooms. If pregnant women were in charge there’d be fewer guns lying around.

And why not? Pregnant women believe in miracles.
As for the prospect of someone waking them at 3 in the morning with a crisis?
Not a big deal.

susan swartz
www.juicytomatoes.com

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