April challenge: What if my baby is a squib?

[nineveh_uk]

Title: An extract from The Witch’s Guide to Pregnancy, Birth, and Baby Care, by Alarica Rosier. Chapter Nine: What if my Baby is a Squib?
Author: nineveh_uk
Rating: PG
Length: 1900 words
Summary: "I found this book engaging, informative, and frank. The chapter on "What if my baby is a Squib?" is particularly valuable for the responsible mother seeking full

Comments

[shiv5468]

Very chilling. So much delicately hinted at.

[nineveh_uk]

Well, one wouldn't want to be vulgar and risk affecting sales...

[baruchan]

Creepy. It's a very scary piece, if one were to read between the lines.

[nineveh_uk]

The lines are certainly far apart in places.

[themolesmother]

*Shivers*

So reasonable, so well-meaning, and so wrong.

Great work!

MM

[nineveh_uk]

I am puzzled. Surely you don't think Madam Rosier is anything other than a sensible woman seeking to help families in a difficult situation by making sure they are fully informed? >:-)

[tacky_tramp]

No one named Rosier could ever be evil!

[tree_and_leaf]

There's nothing more sinister than nasty things being hinted at in atone that assumes this is what Any Sensible Person Would Do. Not tomention the fact that Ministry policy seems to be enabling infanticide.

Incidentally, do we deduce that the Longbottoms didn't hold with the Germanically named test (since they thought Neville was a Squib until his uncle dropped him out of a window), and that therefore it's associated with people of the Death-eating persuasion? - of course, I'm not sure that the Longbottoms impromtu attempts to test Neville were any more acceptable, really.

[tree_and_leaf]

Of course, the parallels with past attitudes to disabled children are even more disturbing!

[conuly]

Past and present attitudes, you mean.

[nineveh_uk]

Don’t hold with it, don’t understand it, performed it privately and incorrectly, or make the common confusion of magical ability not manifesting itself in the expected ways (especially after trauma) with magical ability not being there. Take your pick. I think K & H (H was in fact Danish) actually intended their test to do good - or at least reduce the numbers of unnecessary deaths due to accidental arson.

The Ministry policy doesn't enable infanticide! It protects children by not bringing them to the attention of dangerous non-human magical creatures known to seek out and steal little ones. Of course, some still get through, despite the most careful precautions...

[dolorous_ett]

Quite a piece - was going to use some word of praise like "little gem" before realising how utterly inappropriate it sounded!

A classic of smug, banal, institutionalised unpleasantness. All the little details - the we-know-best-dear advice against rearing it as a human being, the "fulfilling" contributions to life they can make, referring always to the squib as "it", the inexplicable danger period just before you actually have to register the child...

And of course the ringing endorsement by someone called Medea!

[nineveh_uk]

Medea's a lovely name! Like Jocasta, Cressida, and Jezebel.

(In some ways I’m in favour of “it” being an appropriate pronoun for little babies, mostly in reaction to exclusively blue/pink outfits in the shops and tiny girls with their ears pierced, but I don’t think A. Rosier approaches things from quite the same perspective.)

[dolorous_ett]

Ah, but they are not little boys and girls but squibs...

[nineveh_uk]

And it's important that we face up to this reality sooner rather than later and not let sentiment blind us to the inevitable harsh truth.