Okay this is going to be one of those posts that make feminists look bad.
I say that but only because I want to make it clear that this is my own personal opinion, and I recognise that it isn't very fair to men but I don't want this to be a 'FEMINISTS HATE TEH MENZZ!!!' argument. Hopefully it won't come out that way.
I want to talk about something that gets MRA's (Men's Rights Activists) all worked up, but that get's me worked up to... only for the opposite side of the argument.
Paternity, men's rights to children, shared custody and self determination in regards to reproduction and abortion.
My friend is pregnant. 16 weeks now, I can't tell you how exciting and overwhelming I think it is. Her boyfriend, loving partner of 4 years broke up with her a few weeks after she told him he was pregnant. His initial reaction was simply 'abort now, we'll have kids in a few years once we're ready.' This isn't a bad opinion, it's logical and fine, as long as it remains an opinion.
Psychology this year has taught me something about relationship and sex. Men are much, much more likely to have sex with multiple partners than women. The reason is biological and had a lot to do with reproduction. For men, beyond sex, it is a hands off experience. Men have little investment in the process. For them, the best chance to have their genes carried on is to have sex with lots of women. For women on the other hand, having a child is an incredible investment, not just socially and financially (that has more to do with our society) but physically and emotionally. Carrying a child takes a huge strain every day for 9 whole months, plus childbirth which we have evolved too large heads to do without incredible pain and physical injury in many cases. So women are a lot more picky about men and who they sleep with.
This biological explanation does makes sense to me, which is unusual because I usually advocate hard for social factors as being behind patriarchy and gender differences. Which I do believe of course, but science has obviously had success finding genetic and biological causes for things too.
Anyway, I truly believe in 'women's body, women's choice' when it comes to carrying or aborting a baby. I'm not saying it's fair, I couldn't imagine being a man in that situation and I have all the sympathy in the world for men that are but if there is a pregnancy that a man doesn't want, it is 100% right that the woman has control over that decision. And MRA campaigns with guys holding up signs like 'She murdered my baby', 'my ex girlfriend killed my little boy/girl' 'she aborted my child' make me sick. No one, no one, no one can force a women to carry a child. If a woman aborts a child that they do not want, the 'father' has no right to stop her. He cannot force her to be pregnant. This isn't the 16th century. Or the 19th. Or even the 20th sadly enough. Or the 21st in undeveloped countries.
Now lets move on to once the baby is born. This is where I'm focusing my research now, because of course, this is where my friend is headed. The father wants nothing to do with her/it. She is hopefully going to be working enough this summer to qualify for maternity leave, which would be a Godsend (and completely necessary), but I can't work out what the law is on child support. Or the rules on child visitation.
Maybe I'm just really selfish, but I can't imagine having an ex boyfriend father of the child butting in and trying to take my child out and away and spending time with it and trying to parent it. No, my child. Mine.
Mine mine mine mine mine mine mine mine mine mine mine mine mine.
I see myself as one of those really overprotective mothers that tries to do everything right and OTT but probably burns out by the time they get to primary school because in general, I'm such a lazy, non-detail orientated person. Then I'd turn into the 'do what you want' type.
Still, I would hate having to share.
I'd fight so hard not to let him have a relationship with my child. That's selfish huh? But if I brought a little bub into the world, I'd hate letting someone else touch them. I'd want to be the only parent. Can't we do that? I want to be a single mother. Daddy can stay out of the picture.
Now I'll just be a tad hypocritical and say Dad can feel free to pay child support. But no, if they want to see it and I say no, no child support. But if they don't want to be a part of its life, then they should have to pay.
Though this kills me to say, once the baby is born, both parents should have equal rights to it.
God, okay, I don't believe that.
I should. I think it's right, but fuck that. If I have a baby it's mine. Mine mine mine mine mine mine.
No, see that doesn't work. Women are only going to have babies that they want. Otherwise they'd of aborted or given it away. Men, they can do fuck all. They can be dicks and say they don't want it and try to convince their girlfriends to abort and have nothing to do with anything and then see the baby when it's born,. have the alleged 'a man becomes a father the first time he hold it in his arms' moment and then decide to get involved.
That doesn't rub with me.
If a guy wants to be in my baby child's life, they need to be there from the get go. You can't be a kid when you are expected to raise a kid. You have to buck up, be a man and face it. My friend's boyfriend didn't do that so honestly, I don't want him to come back and try again. I couldn't trust a guy like that.
Having been raised by a single mother myself since birth, and having gone through this whole "Should Dad be a part of my life?" thing, I just wanna comment from my own personal experience.
ReplyDeleteI agree wholeheartedly that the guy you talk about here is a complete pussy who bailed at the first sign of trouble, definitely -- my dad did the exact same thing and I think the same of him. To make a long story short, my dad has a wife, and has been married to her since before he met my mum. My dad 'separated' from his wife at some point before I was born, but for whatever reason, they still live together. My mum was told she couldn't have children cos of all these operations she'd had in her life, so they obviously fucked without worrying about her getting impregnated. Then I come along :P He obviously wanted nothing to do with me, so my mum was on her own at that point.
My mum refused to take any child support from him (pretty sure he never offered), and my mum had to quit the high-paying job she had because she didn't just want to stick me in child-care, so it wasn't like we couldn't have used the money. My dad's name isn't even on my birth certificate. She basically took a similar attitude to your hypothetical one.
I did, however, get to see my dad when I was a kid. I didn't know he was a lying asshole at this point; I just knew he was my dad and that it was fun to see him and play with him. We didn't have any father-son moments, but we did spend time together, usually once a week when he came over to our house, and I enjoyed it for what it was. The two of them still seemed to have some kind of relationship but I was obviously too young to know what was going on.
As I got older, I was told more about how he only ever came over to the house in the first place to try and get back with my mum, repeatedly telling her he'd leave his wife permanently and move in with us. That never happened no matter how many times he said it, so my mum grew frustrated and eventually cut off contact with him completely.
My mum asked me time and time again if I wanted to have contact with him myself, saying that if I wanted to talk to him or spend time with him, I was entitled to do so and that my mum wouldn't interfere with that, only insisting he didn't set foot in our house. At this point, knowing all that I did, I didn't want anything to do with him, but my point is that I was *offered* the contact in the first place. My mum also insisted that my dad did love me as his son, which I suppose is true, even though he was too much of a cowardly derp to sort out his life and actually develop that love mutually :P
I guess what I'm trying to say is that while I understand your position, I can't agree with an automatic "he runs away = he never sees the kid again" decision. I think it's less about the parents being entitled to the kid as it is the kid being entitled to the parents. You're seeing it from the mother's perspective, when in reality, the focus should always be on what the child needs, rather than what attitude the mother might want to take in terms of raising it.
Again, I do think that if a guy runs away from a situation like this, he's a fucking coward, no question about it. But personally, I'd rather have spent what little time I did with my dad then have never met him at all, only knowing him through my mother's stories. Even though I was being used by my dad simply to get closer to my mum, we did still spend time together.
Obviously, my scenario's heaps different to the one your friend's going through, with the age difference, relationship differences, etc., so I guess I'm saying it's better to look at each situation like this individually and make a decision from there rather than just go "he ran away, fuck him, no turning back, you'll never meet your dad while in my custody and that's final".
Such a complicated fucking subject, lol.
yeah it really is so completely complicated. I do think it is right to let the child decide, to an extent. It's a whole other issue, the 'when can a parent consent/decide things for their child and when not' that does have to be done pretty much case by case. Like, protecting the kid from a potential bad influence/relationship vs letting them decide for themselves. So, like while I was writing this entry, I was mainly thinking of it still as a baby, without opinions yet.
ReplyDeleteBut I'll admit I was mainly just having a mothers perspective rant with this entry. Your mum sounds really awesome though, like she did everything as right as she could for you as opposed to my stance which was just MINE. But in a less hypothetical situation where I'm not allowed to be as selfish as that, I do see that maintaining the relationship and being on good terms with the father would be a priority of mine so that the child could have that relationship as much as possible.
It's what my mum always did and she was a saint for doing so, even when my dad wasn't paying child support for years and was constantly just coming into our house because he didn't have anywhere to take us. I suppose it's one thing to say 'he's not a good father, fuck him' but yeah, as the child, a basic relationship can be better than none at all. It's a bad situation but you can't really do anything about it.
I suppose I was also thinking about situations when it went beyond the father being a coward or scared or just not prepared to be there, but when the father was actually violent or just someone scary or not someone nice. Like, what are a women's rights to keep them from claiming paternity and getting partial custody?
Or if it's a one night stand, you don't know the guy, but you get pregnant and keep it. Is it morally wrong to not tell the guy? Is it the wrong decision for the child? I don't think I'd want to tell the father if that was me. Like, I'd be scared to risk the baby which would be the most important thing to me to the whims of someone else. Who could be anyone, with any views on parenting that I might totally not agree with. I just don't share well with others.
It is so complicated though, with my friends. Like, i say all this bad stuff about him and I believe it, but it's so out of wack with the rest of his character, we're still friends. Even though I took the girls side of course and he knows that.
Thanks for commenting :)
Yeah, with all the variables you have to take into consideration, it's a fucking nightmare. My mum even spoke of emotional abuse (which is understandable given how long this went on for and all the lying and stuff), so it must have been like "How long do I make this sacrifice for before it's too much for me?" She is indeed a very strong woman; I take her for granted :P
DeleteI think part of my comment talked about if the father was abusive or a threat to the mother/kid, but the comment was too long so I had to trash that paragraph. I think in that case, obviously you're justified in going "nuh-uh, he stays the fuck away", but I'm not sure on the legal availabilities there either. I'd say there's some way to get a restraining order or something, or to simply take custody rights away from the abusive/threatening parent, but I wouldn't have a clue.
One-night stand is just... where do you even start :P Entitled to know? Willing to commit in the first place? Do you even know the guy that well? That would just suck having to go through that shit.
And I remember reading about the friend's pregnancy you talked about thinking "...wut? Why in the hell would you be having unprotected sex at that age? Why would it even cross your mind? Don't the possible repercussions kind of scare you?" Like, granted, I've obviously never had the experience, but it just sounds like a huge risk to be taking. It seems worth the extra time going to the shops to buy a pack of condoms and taking those few moments before fucking to put it on. Is unprotected sex just *that* good? :P I just can't imagine taking the risk in the first place, given the super-duper-long term repercussions. One of the few good things about not having any sexual partners: don't have to worry about this crap (yet :P).
It's not so much that people our age don't use protection, but especially in long term couples, lots make the decision to substitute condoms for the pill. And some people just aren't made for the pill, you have to take it at like, exactly the same time every day and if you miss a day, the whole month is pretty much screwed. But generally, people don't go back onto condoms for that month, they just think it's fine. Or if they're just 6 hours late etc, they think it'll most likely be cool. So there is some element of roulette there but not as much as just being like 'lol yolo, no protection.'
DeleteAnd though this experience is second hand, it has been explained to me that when couples get into it, it is very tempting to have sex even if they dont have protection with them.
Or they just have a higher risk tolerence. But this was always this couple mia and i always said would be the one to get an unexpected pregnancy. So it wasn't a total shock. Idk what you'll think when you find out who... I'm sure it'll be common knowledge soon enough.
Yeah, I didn't even think of the pill or anything. If I had a gf I wouldn't expect her to use the pill, I'd just use condoms. I guess in a hypothetical world I can make blazé decisions like that; can't really say shit till I've been in a sexual relationship :P
DeleteI went through your friends list to try and see if I could put a face to the pregnant girl, and as soon as I saw one particular face, I was like "yep, I'd say it's you".