Tag Archives: pregnancy

Pontianak

Nationality: Malaysia
Age: 22
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, California
Performance Date: April 21, 2014
Primary Language: Chinese
Language: English, Malay, Hokkien

Pontianak is a female ghost, or the Southeast Asian equivalent of the vampire. A woman could become a pontianak by committing suicide upon discovering that her husband is cheating on her, or if the woman dies during pregnancy. They live on banana trees, and there are many banana plantations in Malaysia and Indonesia. When I was a kid, my grandmother would warn me not to get too close to banana trees. Or don’t look up when you’re near a banana tree. They like to hang upside down too. I’ve never seen one and I haven’t known anyone who’s seen a pontianak, but they’re usually seen by village folks. Pontianak have long black hair, long fangs, and a white dress, and they usually haunt only men. They don’t suck blood like Western vampires do, but they suck out your organs.

—

The informant grew up hearing stories about the pontianak. The legend of this creature could be a reflection of expected gender roles in Malaysian and Indonesian societies, and also fertility and faithfulness.

Wedding Ring Test – Pregnancy Gender Predictor

Nationality: Chinese-American
Age: 51
Occupation: Manager
Residence: Shanghai, China
Performance Date: 4/20/13
Primary Language: Chinese
Language: English

Informant: “This is how you do it. Take a pin, needle, or wedding ring and attach it to a thread. Then you hold the dangling item over mom to be’s belly while she is lying down. If the needle or wedding ring swings in a circular motion, you will be having a girl. If it moves in a to and fro motion like a pendulum, you will be having a boy.”

Me: “Did you try it?”

Informant: “I did and it worked for me! But it’s just an old wives tale.”

Analysis: This is a very common thing to do when one is eager to know the gender of one’s baby. It was thought to originate in Italy, except instead of a wedding ring, they used needles on threads. Due to female roles back in time, needles and threads were more common in an expecting woman’s life than nowadays. Using the wedding ring as opposed to the thread was thought to originate in Ireland.

Pregnancy is one of those exciting events, and the gender prediction always arouses the curiosity of others. There are several “old wives tales” on predicting the gender of a baby, however some of them contradict each other. According to testimonials online, people will often end up with an even split of results -50% of the tests will predict a boy, and 50% will predict a girl. This suggests that there is little truth or evidence to support the effectiveness of the tests, which may be why the informant was skeptical to believe in it despite the fact that it worked for her.

“If you eat a double cherry when you’re pregnant, you’ll have twins.”

Nationality: Vietnamese-American
Age: 18
Occupation: Student
Residence: Garden Grove, California
Performance Date: Mar 2007
Primary Language: English
Language: Vietnamese

The informant, then twelve years old, first heard this phrase from her uncle, whose wife was pregnant at the time.  Her uncle and aunt were gathered with the family and announced their pregnancy.  Later after dinner, the family was eating cherries together and was discussing whether the baby would be a boy or a girl, when the topic of twins came up.  The informant’s uncle saw her aunt eating a double cherry and said, “Did you know that if you eat a double cherry while you’re pregnant, you’re going to have twins?”  My informant doesn’t really believe that this is true because she does not believe in superstitions, although it is a superstition that everyone in her family likes to joke about, because it also happened to come true.  Her aunt ended up giving birth to twin girls six months later.  This is why the informant likes to retell the tale, because it makes the superstition much more mysterious and believable when it actually comes true.

I believe this superstition is highly unlikely to be true because the events are completely separate, and that the informant’s story just happened by coincidence.  However, superstitions are always driven by the chance occurrences that happen to confirm them, making some people believe that they’re true while they may completely be random happenings.  I believe the informant tells the story only to joke around, poking fun when pregnant women are around.  The superstition is so seemingly arbitrary that people tend to believe that nobody could possibly create such a fantastical story up, so it must have some sort of truth behind it.  This is how the superstition of double cherries is spread and dispersed.

“Don’t eat spicy food when you’re pregnant.”

Informant: April Voong
Nationality: Chinese
Primary Language: English; Other Language: Cantonese
Age: 21
Occupation: Student
Residence: San Diego

“Don’t eat spicy food when you’re pregnant.”
April has heard this saying among her family members since she was a child, and she later found out that they believed eating spicy food during pregnancy would result in the birth of a hot-tempered child.
Many Asian cultures place emphasis on the type of food one must eat during pregnancy, since certain foods are considered to have qualities that influence the personality of the baby. In the case of April’s family, spicy food was believed to be the cause of short tempers; since the food itself is spicy, all the heat and sharpness of taste would be transferred over to the baby’s personality.

Saying – Boston, Massachusetts

Nationality: African-American
Age: 53
Occupation: Field Service Worker
Residence: Boston, MA
Performance Date: April 29, 2008
Primary Language: English

Saying: “Broke Her Leg”

Don told me he learned and understood the meaning of this saying when he was a young boy, when he was probably around ten years old. He learned the term in Boston, Massachusetts, but believes this term came from church mothers raised in southern states. He said the saying is used when a young girl becomes pregnant and is looked down upon by the women of the community. The pregnant girl would be “shipped off” away from her community, and the family members of the pregnant girl would tell the townspeople, “She broke her leg,” when they asked where the girl was. “She broke her leg” automatically implies that the unmarried girl became pregnant at a young age and was sent off to live somewhere else. Those who are not a part of the community would automatically assume that she broke her leg, but those who are aware of this term would know that the young girl is pregnant.

Don says that this saying tells a lot about how the acceptance of teen pregnancies has changed over the past 30-40 years. He said it was looked down upon to be a teen mother; society would not accept you, you were often shunned from the church, denied from jobs, and talked about at social events. However, he said nowadays you see Jamie Lynn Spears and films like Juno that are glorifying the practice of teen pregnancy. He stated there were less teen pregnancies when becoming pregnant at an early age was considered a social transgression.

I agree with Don’s interpretation of this saying and understand his logic behind the meaning. I believe that in the 21st century we have come to accept teen pregnancy as a norm. In some ways this can be a positive outlook because we are providing more resources of support to young pregnant teens. However, I do feel that our acceptance of teen pregnancy has given way to an increase in wedlock teen pregnancies because now society has accepted that teen pregnancy is inevitable and cannot completely be eliminated. Although this may be true, the problem lies is in the media and communities accepting teen pregnancy as a social norm. This certain belief may be fine if teen mothers could provide for their children, but in most cases teen mothers lack the responsibility and resources needed to take care of their babies. I can also see how this saying has the potential to become less used because of the shift of thinking that has caused American society to more so accept teenage pregnancy.