So nonpregnant women everywhere will be scamming them and sitting their butts down wherever they please. -- Rebecca Traister

Doesn't a falling population mean a wide-open job market and higher wages and cheaper housing and smaller classroom sizes and less pollution and so on...

The Tokyo subway is so crowded that the very idea of anyone else even being able to read a badge about someone being pregnant, having a migraine, or whatever, never mind being in a position to offer a seat, is just silly.

(Up-front disclosure: I've never been a mom, never wanted to be.) The greater society does seem to have a "fetish" or obsession with pregnancy (in all its trimesters) these days. On the one hand, it is refreshing that some moms and dads are more open about expressing their love for their children. For example, I like seeing one of my brothers-in-law hugging his early-teenage son and telling him he loves him. On the other, one can't help but feel we're treating pregnancy as either a handicap or something that requires the involved individual be put on a pedestal.

I've seen "pregnant moms only"-designed parking spots at supermarkets and even at a gym near me (suburbia)...right next to the handicapped spots. I'm all for the handicapped spots--I've even called the police on able-bodied jacka$$es who take those spots out of ignorance and laziness. (Boy, do most of those folks get pissy! One tried to run me over. Perhaps they do have a disability after all...)

If a woman's pregnancy constitutes a handicap, and I understand some do, then let them get temporary handicapped tags. But to coddle women just because they're pregnant seems ridiculous, whether here or in Tokyo, particularly when there are people every day who are often more deserving of consideration.

P.S. If I'm a little cranky today, it's because I'm facing the very immediate possibility of putting to sleep a very dear 17-year-old boy with cancer, who happens to be a cat (at least in this life).

Yes, some Japanese women will be "scamming" the T-shirts, just as some people in America use fake ID's to get into bars, fake backstage passes so they can get up-close-and-personal with celebrities, fake handicap stickers or license plates so they can commandeer the best parking slots at the mall. It's called "the lesser part of human nature" and it's universal.

BTW...whatever happened to the "Baby on Board" maternity T-shirts that were all the rage in the 70s and 80s???

When I was in Japan a year or so ago, it disturbed me that people don't give up their seats for pregnant women or women carrying small children. In such a polite society, how can this be? It was explained to me that if I do something nice for you, you are expected to do something nice for me. If I give up my seat to a pregnant woman or woman carrying a child, I am demanding that she give me something in return. Naturally, it's considered rude to do such a thing, so everyone looks away and tries not to notice.

Before this issue was explained to me, I had many times tried to offer my seat to such a woman, and was confused when the woman would adamantly refuse and become obviously embarrassed and flustered. A pin declaring a pregnancy, at this point, is not going to help.

on the radio this morning. They interviewed a Japanese journalist, who said that the Tokyo commute is "absolute hell." Many people commute an hour or more each way, and the trains are so packed that people are literally squashed up against each other. The commute can be hard on men. So it's not that pregnant women are excessively fragile, but that the commute is particularly difficult. She specifically said that she had been on the London Underground and, I think, the New York subway, and the commutes at rush hour just weren't comparable. The idea behind the badges was that it's often awkward to ask someone if she is pregnant, because if she isn't, you've just offended her a lot, and pregnant women may feel uncomfortable asking someone to give up their seat. She said the idea was to take some of the awkwardness out of the exchange. I don't think pregnant women need special parking spaces, because pregnancy isn't a handicap. But, I think the program is an interesting idea, and I'm looking forward to seeing how it works out.

I've never seen a pregnant-women-only parking space.

I *have*, however, seen spaces reserved for pregnant women *and* people with infants.

By the time you are pregnant enough that you feel you can take a pregnant-only parking space without incurring dirty looks, you really are handicapped. It's not just that you're fat; your body is totally out of balance, you quite likely no longer fit into your shoes, and walking long distances is very uncomfortable in the summer and outright dangerous if there's ice on the ground, since you can't see it. Actual fat people have had time to adapt to the new shape of their body; only pregnancy makes you gain 30 pounds in the course of four months and put it *all* on in the front of your body. (And yes, I am aware that many people do not gain that much, but I'd rather reserve one or two spots for the people who need it anyway; it does little harm.)

People with infants *do* need the spots. Infants don't walk and they're usually somewhere between 10 and 25 pounds. Strollers are great, but if you're going to get a cart you can't use your stroller, so you have to walk with your baby (and possibly a heavy infant car seat) to the nearest cart corral, which in many stores is actually the store itself.

I wouldn't recommend getting temporary handicapped tags for being pregnant, because so many more people arepregnant than handicapped, it's going to put a terrible burden on the system. And being pregnant is *not* as bad as being wheelchair-bound. I prefer to see a small number of spaces reserved for pregnant women and people with infants, and the regular laws covering the actual handicapped. (I might also note that I have only seen this feature at big-box stores which market themselves to families; you aren't going to see pregnant women spots at Home Depot anytime soon, although if pregnant women are involved in a home renovation project to prepare for the new arrival they damn well *need* spots at Home Depot.)