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Mandatory Motherhood: Difference between revisions
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Maybe she's been prophesied to be the mother of the [[Chosen One]] or [[The Messiah]], but she wants to [[Screw Destiny]] anyway. Or she's [[Apocalypse Maiden|prophesied to be the mother of]] [[The End of the World as We Know It]] and is ''desperate'' to [[Screw Destiny]].
Or maybe she's already pregnant with the kid she adamantly doesn't want
Whatever. She would rather not have children, but the law or the universe is doing its best to stop her, demanding she have children or else. (There must be a serious "or else" involved.) The law and the universe generally win these fights, but it still can be interesting to watch it go down.
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Contrast [[Convenient Miscarriage]], which is, of course, on the opposite end of the [[Law of Inverse Fertility]].
{{examples}}▼
▲{{examples}}
== Anime and Manga ==
* The Yuki-onna of ''[[Rosario + Vampire]]'' are required to marry at seventeen and start producing children immediately, due to the fact that the average Yuki-onna hits menopause before hitting thirty, leaving very little time for them to produce the next generation of a race that can't afford to have anyone not contribute to the long-term survival of the species. Mizore doesn't want to participate... at least, not with the guy her family picked for her (She makes it QUITE clear that she is willing to go through with this tradition using Tsukune instead).
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== Comic Books ==
* In ''[[Elf Quest]]'', nature decides when two elves are ready to have a child, and the elves aren't allowed to protest. This turns into a [[Mate or Die]] situation for several elves, most prominently Dewshine, who ''hates'' the mate that was chosen for her by destiny. But since [[Babies Make Everything Better]], she loves her child regardless.
** This trope actually gets
== Fan
* This is ubiquitous in [[Shipping]] fic. The happy couple ''will'' have kids, even if neither of them would ever want them in their canon personality and [[Mister Seahorse|even if neither of them has a womb]]. There's no such thing as contraception, and miscarriages only happen when [[Deus Angst Machina]] decrees it. And if abortion exists, we're generally treated to a tedious speech about how [[Good Girls Avoid Abortion]]
** A [[Fandom
* [[The Ikaris]] has an implied example. Due to three billion people dying in Second Impact, numerous countries implemented laws to loosen marriage conditions and discourage divorce to encourage family development and birthrates. Japan apparently never bothered to repeal them, due to being too busy trusting shadowy agencies to build giant robots to fight off alien monsters. Asuka angrily dubs Japan "the Las Vegas of Asia".
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* Subverted in Ursula Vernon's ''[[Black Dogs]]'', where a character is raped for the sake of producing a powerful heir, but she aborts the zygote and to ensure that it never happens again she sterilizes herself.
* ''The Iron Star'' has a thief who does ''not'' want to be a housewife or a mother or any kind of family woman. A Goddess overrules her (but the [[Arranged Marriage|husband the goddess chose for her]] agrees to make life luxurious for her).
* The ''[[Doctor Who]]'' novel ''The Eyeless'' takes place on a world where 99% of the population has been wiped out. The couple of hundred remaining survivors have worked out a plan for how many children each women must have in order for the species to survive long
** What happens if you refuse? Some extremely [[Unfortunate Implications]], there.
*** The society is portrayed as level headed and moral, as well as pragmatic so it's probably meant to be an unrealistic idea that the issue would be ''forced''. However in reality, who knows what could happen in such a situation.
* The ''[[Warrior Cats]]'' don't often touch on this but in ''Bluestar's Prophecy'', the title character is good with kits and raises her nephew after her sister's death but has no interest in having any of her own, {{spoiler|Although it doesn't work out this way in the end}}. Naturally one of the Clan elders tells her she needs to "live her own life" now that her sister's son is grown. [[Sarcasm Mode|Because in order to live your own life, you have to have and raise children]].
* Lois McMaster Bujold's ''[[Vorkosigan Saga]]'' has a particularly odd one. While there was always an element of
** Barrayar is still somewhat underpopulated even during Miles's young adulthood, and as his mother points out, traditionally the planet has had to struggle to maintain, let alone increase, its population. Plus the Vor are aristocracy, so it literally ''is'' mandatory for both men and women to have children if they want their line to continue. It's pretty much ingrained in the entire planet's society.
** True, but prior to the introduction of the uterine replicator a cultural space existed in which it was possible for a woman to acknowledge not ''wanting'' children, if only for the reason of pregnancy being dangerous to life and
*** On the other hand, the uterine replicator itself is an instrument of sexual empowerment. It's noted that the Traditionalist political party won't be able to shove the new Empress into a maternity ward; she can breed and heir and still be a dominant force in the politics of the empire. Lady Vorkosigan herself has a fierce devotion to the galactic reproductive technology itself as a delayed action social time bomb; a few decades of gender selection of offspring results in an acute shortage of eligible brides, and the girls and their families are able to pick and choose from the bachelors available. A man expecting the traditional child gestation that left Miles himself teratogenically crippled finds it night impossible to get hitched. It should also be pointed out that Cordelia Vorkosigan was born and raised on Beta Colony, where children are precious commodities requiring a license for even a single offspring; Cordelia's displays of genetic greed have less to do with Barrayar than with Beta Colony.
* Alluded to in Terry Pratchett's ''[[Nation]]''. It's not clear exactly how old Daphne is, but her own culture certainly considers her a child; the people of the Nation, however, have pretty much a response of 'what do you mean you've not had a kid yet?'
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== Live Action TV ==
* On ''[[Lost]]'', Claire Littleton, left pregnant after her boyfriend walks out on her, plans to give the baby up for adoption, but a fortune teller advises her to take flight 815, which ends up stranding her on the island, where there are no adoption agencies.
* In [[Battlestar Galactica
== Newspaper Comics ==
* One of the reasons Anthony is so despised in the ''[[For Better or For Worse]]'' fandom is the [[Unfortunate Implications|implied subtext]] that it was he who pressured his wife Thérèse into having a child that she didn't want by agreeing to be the primary care-giver, then reneging on the agreement just as Thérèse was going through postpartum depression. We are explicitly meant to see Thérèse as an unnatural monster for not wanting children in the first place (to the point where she
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* The first 17 of [[Shakespeare]]'s sonnets revolve around persuading a man that this applies to him.
{{quote|''Dear my love, you know,
''You had a father: let your son say so.'' }}
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* In ''[[Twelfth Night]]'', one argument used on Olivia.
{{quote|''Lady, you are the cruel'st she alive
''If you will lead these graces to the grave
''And leave the world no copy.'' }}
* In ''[[Much Ado About Nothing]]'' one argument used by Benedick on himself.
{{quote|''No! The world must be peopled. When I said I would die a bachelor, I did not think I should live till I were married.''}}
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==
* In ''[[Sinfest]]'', [
{{reflist}}
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[[Category:Women Are Delicate]]
[[Category:The Parent Trope]]
[[Category:Alliterative Trope Titles]]
[[Category:{{PAGENAME}}]]
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