Bumpaholics

Women seemingly “addicted” to being pregnant.

In a recent article for Women’s Health, Martha Brockenbrough introducedthe term bumpaholic to describe women who “may like being pregnant a little too much”:

Having babies isn’t addictive in the way that alcohol and narcotics can be. But bumpaholics feel compelled to procreate for many of the same reasons that substance abusers turn to booze or drugs.

“Women who are obsessed with being pregnant are literally filling an emptiness inside of them, just as alcoholics and drug addicts use substances to fill a psychological void,” says Beverly Hills psychiatrist Carole Lieberman, M. D. Every one of us at some point encounters this void, adds New York family therapist Bonnie Eaker Weil, PhD, author of Financial Infidelity. “You want to have a purpose in this world. You want to feel less lonely.”

According to Brockenbrough, CDC data show that more than a quarter of the 4.3 million babies born in 2007 were born to women having their third or fourth child. She did however note that “not all women with lots of children are bumpaholics.”