Monstrous mothers: media representations of post-menopausal pregnancy

Afterimage, Sept-Oct, 1997 by Angela Wall

In recent coverage of post-menopausal women whose bodies have gestated a fetus to term, the media has played an important role in determining how we come to understand something as seemingly "natural" for women as pregnancy when it occurs in the "unnatural" bodies of post-menopausal women. Given that scientific discourse relies heavily on universal terms like "nature," these news stories query the meaning of scientifically defined concepts. In turn, the premises upon which these scientific concepts are based themselves challenge static terms like "nature" and the "natural," revealing them as cultural constructs that serve a particular purpose in establishing and maintaining a specific cultural relationship to what is in fact a medically mediated biological process.(1)

In these cases of assisted reproduction in postmenopausal women, however, the "naturalness" of the biological process is under question. Media coverage of this form of assisted reproduction is highly illustrative of this, simultaneously reminding us of what is "natural" (the visual strangeness of a post-menopausal pregnant body reminds us of what a "real" pregnant body should look like), while reflecting the constructedness of the "natural" (menopause marks the natural end of the reproductive life cycle of the female body, yet if postmenopausal pregnancy is not natural how is a postmenopausal body able to gestate a fetus to term?). Thus, when a woman of 63 years gives birth, most initial media responses seem to privilege voices that cry out against the "unnaturalness" of assisted reproduction, while simultaneously fixating upon perverse cultural expectations about the aging body.

Media accounts of these "perverse pregnancies" have inevitably turned to the experts of medical science for clarification. However, as the subsequent stories reveal, these experts are unable to offer reassuring words to allay the fear of post-menopausal pregnancies. Instead, medical authority is portrayed as existing in a state of debate. For many doctors, cases of in vitro fertilization in postmenopausal women are another example of medical science "going too far"; interfering in the biological aging process of the body, they "border on the Frankenstein syndrome." Other doctors, however, believe that in vitro fertilization enables medical science to align the biological function of the body with the changing needs of postmenopausal women.

Is this a monster story, then, or a medical marvel? In that this story shows us the medical establishment divided among itself, we are also treated to a story about the confusion of medical certainty; by falling back on established structures of support that are no longer viable, media coverage of assisted reproduction inevitably contributes to the breakdown of scientific authority. Given that this issue is so contentious, we should consider this as a moment of mediated confusion wherein the diverse needs of women are at odds with a system of social, medical, and cultural - not to mention natural - practices.

But amid this confusion, we need to read these moments for the ways they make available different options for women. For example, some women, particularly poor women of color, have often been positioned as post-menopausal mothers: first to the children of affluent white women, and more recently to their grandchildren in the current "epidemic" of teen pregnancies. As a result, assessments of the dangers of assisted reproduction as well as celebrations of its liberatory potential need to be closely scrutinized in terms of not only who has access to such technologies, but to the extent to which such technology simply reproduces traditional positions for women of differing ages and ethnic backgrounds.

The various cultural configurations of assisted reproduction and the aging body require an assessment of how the technology used to enable pregnancy in postmenopausal women was first represented. This inevitably involves looking at the mainstream media stories that initially represented these cases. As mentioned earlier, such stories are rife with popular anxieties about the possibility of a new generation of "senior-citizen" mothers. Along with these anxieties emerge ethical conflicts regarding the well-being of children born to aging women and questions concerning the regulation of and access to these technologies. A snapshot example from mainstream popular culture of dominant cultural sensibilities about aging and pregnancy is captured in the 1995 comedy Father of the Bride-Part II. This film, like many other characterizations of "granny-moms," depicts sensibilities directly connected to shifts in the boundaries of what counts as "natural."

Father of the Bride-Part II offers a highly traditional position on the issue of reproduction for older women, and presents it in a way that neatly circumvents many of the contentions that make the emergence of assisted technology for post-menopausal women so challenging to medical constructions of the natural biological body. In short, established cultural conventions enable the film to mediate questions of aging, motherhood, pregnancy and what is natural in ways that remain normative. Diane Keaton plays Nina Banks, the menopausal mother of two who discovers she is about to become a grandmother. The news prompts a small mid-life crisis for her husband, George, played by Steve Martin. He insists they are not old enough to become grandparents and turns to his body for verification - he dyes his hair, changes his look and makes love with his wife spontaneously on the kitchen floor. The film assumes we all know that grandfathers don't look or act like this. George's youthfulness is verified when Nina's emotional symptoms of fatigue are diagnosed not as menopause, but as pregnancy. He responds to the news by crying out "people our age don't have kids." "The National Inquirer will have a field day," he shrieks, "with headlines such as 'Grandmother Has Baby.'" He reminds Nina with increasing alarm that they'll be close to 70 when the child graduates from college. In this way the film raises many of the anxieties and concerns frequently associated with pregnancies in older women, anxieties and concerns grounded in the unnaturalness of such pregnancies.