Tayaway, I predicted that you would not agree with much of what Dotta and I said here. I agree that many men like B use pregnancy as a control strategy.
But IMO CC must have played a role in much of this otherwise she would have used birth control, told her parents she was pregnant, invited all parents to their wedding and not lied about the fact she was just going on a holiday, and so on. If she had been my daughter, there would be no way that she would not have confided in me and asked for advice. She would definitely have invited me to her wedding whether she was pregnant or not.
No man could pressure most women into becoming pregnant if they did not want to. It is very difficult to study when one has a baby. IMO C chose to have a baby rather than getting a job or going to university. Maybe she thought that she could be a stay at home mother and wife and not have to worry about work until L was older.
I am definitely not blaming CC for this tragedy but she made her choices.
The main problem, as I see it, she chose the wrong partner, did not know that he was a narcissist and that he would want to control her every movement.
She didn't choose to be a housewife, none of the evidence supports this opinion. She wanted to be a mother and a uni student. I agree that it's difficult to go to school when you've got a baby, especially if your partner doesn't support your decision. Did she even have a clue about this reality?
Many men do pressure women to get pregnant. They even lie, sabotaging condoms. There is also rape, which happens far more often then is reported. There are women who go on the pill and don't tell their partners, b/c in the moment, those men want babies and the women don't. There are so many men out there that want to knock up their partners, but society doesn't talk about it and instead promotes the stereotype of women as baby mama leeches.
We can't force our own assumptions on her, we can only work with the evidence provided.
"I am definitely not blaming C,... but..." "She didn't strangle herself, but..." The big old 'but' of polite victim blaming. Yes, she made choices, which she later tried to rectify by telling B she wanted a divorce and confiding in a ?therapist? that she wanted to leave him, put baby L in daycare, and go back to uni (more testimony she did not want to be a stay-at-home). C, B, their two families, her friends, his friends, their neighbors, his co-workers, the dominant patriarchal society, ... they all played a part in creating this tragedy, but the 'main problem' that finished it was a man who chose to strangle his teenaged wife to death.
