The Weakness of The Term: “We’re Pregnant"

Language is the battle ground that must be won if you will win the minds of unsuspecting people. We often too easily fall into using new phrases and terms without actually thinking where they have come from and what they mean - even if we think we know what we mean by that language.

 The term: “We’re pregnant” has been born (no pun intended!) and now become common parlance in an age that has been subjected to an egalitarian, gender neutralizing, emasculating, de-feminizing ideology - an ideology contrary to God’s design for the sexes and the water in which we all swim today. 

 Note the progression over time from “My wife is with child”, to “Mary is pregnant” to “We’re expecting” to “We’re having a baby” to “We’re pregnant”. Change is gradual and subtle. That’s why so many of us didn’t see this one coming and now don’t even wince at the term.

 Yet a man impregnates a woman. Not the other way around. Neither is it a mutual action. He gives her his sperm and it fertilizes her egg. It’s a one-way action. She then becomes pregnant not him. The physical gestation now happens outside of the man and inside of the woman. Her body grows the baby. Her hormones surge. Her shape changes. She goes through the labour and births the child. 

 But this culture seeks to make all things equal and has flatness and oneness as its aim, (even absurdly saying that a man can have a baby by changing gender!). This means the phrase “We’re pregnant" is seen as a triumph for the empathetic, emotionally connected modern man. These are men who “get women” and eagerly embrace equality of parenthood. These are men who will take the recently invented “paternity leave” so that their wives can carry on working as they “share the load of parenting” and let her continue with her career. These are men who sometimes become “stay at home dads” and see no distinction in gender roles rooted in the creation of man, male and female.

There is nothing wrong at all with the idea of men showing empathy with their wives and sharing the load of parenting. Fathers need to be present and active in the lives of their children. But as fathers not mothers. There is a difference in the role. A man’s creation role is to work outside of the home in order to protect and provide for his wife and child inside of the home (Gen. 2:7). It is good, of course, that a man wants to enter into marriage and fatherhood. We're glad to see that in this age, and thankful for men who want to be husbands and fathers. But our language matters. The term, “We’re pregnant” simply serves to flatten the distinctions between the sexes.

 That a wife is pregnant is a huge part of her great creation role. Her particular curse in the fall is even applied in the pain of childbirth (Gen. 3:16). Eve is the “mother of all living” (Gen. 3: 20). Woman is the one with the unique role of childbearing - not the man. The angel, Gabriel, came to Mary, not Joseph. Mary was pregnant and gave birth to Jesus. Joseph didn’t. Jesus was born of a woman, not a man (Gal. 4:4). This is vital to his incarnation which is crucial for his work of redemption. So, just as “we’re pregnant” emasculates, even feminizes a man, it actually de-feminizes a woman. Therefore, both the glory and uniqueness of manhood and womanhood, fatherhood and motherhood, are subtly undermined by the term, “We’re pregnant”.

 No, you’re not both pregnant. You are if you’re the women. But if you’re the man you now need to get to work to provide for this woman and child.