meridian_rose

Introduction

For the purposes of this meta, 'babyfic' is, to me, a subset of the 'family' genre and possibly the 'romance' category, which is another culprit for what I want to talk about it. Babyfic occurs when a female character without children [or, somewhat more rarely, has grown-up children] gets pregnant. This is about why I abhor the majority of babyfic; because most of the time it's done badly, more often and more badly than romance - which is often also incredibly badly handled, especially where the female character is concerned.

I'm going to talk about why it irks me so much, how it's badly handled and also when it is done well [both in canon and fic] with multifandom examples, and why I find that it's overall the worst trope for a female character apart from being 'fridged'.
( for the childfree, the infertile childless, the trans-women, the asexuals and aromantics, most lesbians and many bisexuals [in terms of gender of partner chosen by writers] and single people everywhere it's a slap in the face, another reminder that they are not normal. Because every woman has to want and have a husband and a baby. )