Title: Cravings
Drabble: #6
TK's prompt: Baby
Randomly selected pairing: Jyoushiro
Disclaimer: I don't own Digimon.
Notes: Thank you, Mr Watson, for all the disgusting, if probably false, things you told us in our Physics lessons about childbirth. And yes, I do think it's probably better to be a man.
Jyou is dubious but intrigued when Koushiro states that it's better to be a man than to be a woman. He asks how he came to that conclusion, and Koushiro clears his throat.
Firstly, men have the biological advantage of being physically stronger than women. While this isn't always the case, it's generally acknowledged and accepted.
Secondly, research and multiple surveys conducted by experts suggest that men, in general, earn higher salaries than women. This, of course, depends on which jobs the man and the woman are doing at the time. We'll assume, for the purpose of the explanation, that they're doing the same job.
But the bulk of Koushiro's reasoning is to do with babies.
Personally, Jyou has never been a huge fan of babies. He's probably allergic to them or something; they always make him need to sneeze.
This, Koushiro says, is exactly his point. Women have to spend a lot more time around babies than men do, to breast-feed them for example. Not to mention the nine months during which woman and baby will be joined to one another.
Yes, women have to put up with pregnancy too. They are forced to eat twice as much as they usually do, usually with cravings for the strangest things. Some women will then become depressed because of the weight they gain, even though it's only natural.
Jyou says that his mother got cravings for ice cubes.
Koushiro, being adopted, doesn't know what his own mother craved for during her pregnancy. But he knows about birth; it's been in many biology textbooks he has read. It's apparently so painful that it becomes a sort of repressed memory for a lot of women. Even when the child has been born, there's a lot of residue (things like dirt and blood) left in the womb which will have to come out sooner or later.
Jyou can't help but cringe.
Finally, though, Koushiro tells him the most important reason. It's better to be a man because if Koushiro wasn't a man, Jyou wouldn't have wanted to be with him.