On Getting a Seat on the Subway

I'm at a point in this pregnancy where of course I would like your seat. But believe me, I've been conditioned not to expect you to get up. Because people don't get up. They pretend not to see you, they nose their way further into a book or a newspaper, they feign sleep. A friend who has never been pregnant once asked, why don't you just ask someone for a seat? The problem with this is partly, who do you single out to ask? Not that long ago, an old lady got on a train where I was already seated, holding my purse in my lap, which happened to cover my belly. She stared me down with an intense evil eye, clearly demanding that I move; I looked her straight in the face and said, "I'm 6 months pregnant; maybe someone else will give up their seat." The young woman next to me sighed dramatically and stomped across the car; even this indirect call for volunteers was a clear breach of the silent etiquette of subways.

The only time I have ever actually made a direct request, a seat had opened up and I asked the woman about to take it if I might have it instead (this seemed like an acceptable loop hole because I was asking her to give up something she didn't yet have.) Ironically enough, it turned out she was pregnant too, just not that obviously so. She insisted I take the seat, believing I was more pregnant and therefore, I suppose, more deserving. I said to her "it shouldn't be that difficult to get two, huh?" but no one got the hint; somehow my comment did not manage to shame a single person on that train.

Why am I reporting all of this now? I guess because I had two somewhat parallel subway experiences today on my commute to and from work that got me thinking. When I was pregnant with Clio, I began to see some patterns when it came to generosity towards the visibly pregnant, and at the risk of being accused of sounding sexist, racist, and ageist, I'm going to recount them here. Middle aged women, any race, are the most likely to give up their seats, presumably because they've been there and they can relate. Next come Hispanic men, followed closely by black men. My theory on this is that family, and particularly motherhood, is more revered in Latin American and African American culture- black and Hispanic men are also the most likely to say "god bless you" and "congratulations," unsolicited, on the street. Women in their 20s are highly unlikely to help you out, and teenaged boys, well, forget it. Immigrant Chinese and Orthodox Jews fight it out for the absolute least likely to get up, beaten out by just one demographic: white American men.

That's right. In my unofficial little study, which comprises some 300+ subway rides over two pregnancies (and I'm really only counting months 6 through 9/10; before 6 months there is a lot of understandable nervousness that maybe that pregnant-looking woman is just fat), I have never, not once, been offered a seat by a white man of any age, unless he turned out to be a German or Australian tourist. Until today. (As an aside, Dave never takes a seat in a crowded train in the first place; if he did, I know for a fact that he would get up for the pregnant crowd. Call him the exception that proves the rule.)

This morning a very nice, 40-year old journalist gave up his seat for me, an operation which required him to gather up several papers, a notebook, some pens, and a coffee, and balance all of this while he stood. Once I was settled, he said, "you know, I always look around for a minute to test how long it will take for anyone to offer." Glad that someone else (and someone on the other side of the equation) is taking an informal survey of his own, I asked how long it takes, in his experience. His response? "I don't know. I'm always the first. Or the only."

I wish I could have asked him if he had come to any conclusions on the demography of subway generosity, but the subway itself is kind of not the place to have that conversation, so I'm left to my own devices to think through this burning question:

Why don't white men jump for pregnant women?

Do they really, truly, not see us? Is it some kind of post-feminist backlash? My own dear husband, who may kill me for writing this here, has been known to abstain from special treatment in his efforts to keep all things equal. (When we recently had a trunk full of returns to Home Depot, including a boxed medicine cabinet that weighed roughly 50 pounds, I had to ask him, point blank, if he really thought that I was the best candidate to take on this particular errand. In another example, I remember distinctly being 9 months pregnant with Clio and heading to Costco, where nothing weighs less than 50 pounds, all by myself.) To be fair, I recognize there's a damned-if-they-do, damned-if-they-don't aspect of the whole notion of special treatment: I, for one, protest at work because my colleagues won't let me lift anything at all.

If I was braver, I might have answered this question on my ride home. A twenty-something blond-haired blue-eyed guy, good looking, grabbed a seat out from under me as I got on the train. As he sat, he saw me, but gravity, inertia, or a sense of entitlement planted his but right in that seat. A middle-aged woman directly across from him got up for me, and I gratefully accepted. When I sat, I deliberately caught his eye and raised my eyebrow as if to say, Do you think this worked out right?

You know what? He looked right back at me, and ultimately I was the one who looked away.

Maybe it is all more loaded than it seems, and my own sense of entitlement is what's out of whack. Maybe it is too much to ask for special treatment, just because my body is hard at work growing another human being, even if it looks like I'm just standing there, reading my book.