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Monday, Oct 6, 2008
Why do women get away with "accidentally" getting pregnant -- when if a man tried to pull the same manipulative stunt, he'd be Bobbitted?
Sep 23, 1998 | "In a relationship, you reach a point where the woman's going to get pregnant on you, unless you stop seeing her, and that's what was happening with Kim."
David, a programmer in his 30s, is a year younger than me, and we've known each other since infancy. But as I listen, I momentarily have to remind myself that we grew up in the same era. Throughout my sex life, aware that previous generations of women had almost no control over their fertility, I have taken comfort in the way technology protects me from the whims of nature. Yet David seems to think his sex partners are as untrustworthy as nature itself.
(Names and other personal information about sources in this story have been changed.)
David's assertion that sooner or later his girlfriend would "get pregnant on" him makes him sound like a throwback to the Eisenhower era. In some circles, the fashionable view is that males are responsible for unwanted pregnancies. A public service ad aimed at young women features a manipulative teenage boy pressuring his girlfriend to prove her love by having risky sex, but there are no Planned Parenthood posters warning young males about girls who say they're on the Pill when they're not.
These days, when a man blames a woman for getting pregnant, he is likely to be dismissed as a Deadbeat Dad. There's some reason for this: Prominent among the men who accuse women of "tricking" them into fatherhood are athletes and other celebrities who ignore their own kids while seeking to discredit the mothers who raise them.
But public health ads and tawdry headlines don't always capture the emotional nuances, the many things left unsaid, in people's relationships. These familiar stereotypes of low-life Lotharios and scheming gold-diggers don't always explain how males can become fathers accidentally by design -- woman's design.
When I was in my early 20s, a boyfriend informed me that his buddy -- a devoted father and husband, as far as I could tell -- had been "screwed": Apparently, he had become a father because his wife had lied about using her diaphragm. I was never sure what to make of this: If the woman had really done this, why did she ever admit the ruse to her husband? Was she an Amoral Supermom -- so determined to exercise her "fertility rights" that her partner's wishes barely registered? Did she ever feel guilty? These weren't questions I could ask her on our next double date.
A few years ago, Bill, a relative in his early 30s, told me that the woman he lived with, Lucy, had made a post-coital announcement: She wasn't using her cap anymore. She was playfully vague about revealing when she had stopped. I was astonished. Didn't she owe it to Bill -- and their potential child -- to make sure he was willing to be a father beforehand? When I bluntly suggested that she wasn't mature enough to be a parent, he said I was being ridiculously clinical, that this was Lucy's way of asking for a commitment. Bill was clearly touched, even flattered, by her behavior.
Yet imagine if the situation were reversed. Suppose Bill was in charge of birth control, and he informed his girlfriend that he had stopped using contraception some time ago, was coy about the exact date and chose to break the news to her in bed after a successful frolic. Lucy would feel violated; most women would regard him as a man so predatory as to be unfit for fatherhood. Bill's pushy bid for a commitment would look downright pathological.
The fact is that despite our egalitarian efforts to turn reproduction into a rational process, men and women don't always hold each other to the same standards. Women, at times, can get away with behavior that we wouldn't tolerate from men -- and many of us exploit the inequalities that are said to work against us. As the anti-suffragette feminist Emma Goldman said in a discussion about "woman's inhumanity to man," "woman is naturally perverse." Women can be presumptuous about deciding how and when to breed, and some women would argue that what we do with our wombs is nobody's business but our own. A woman I know was told by her mother that "men are never ready for babies," and that consulting the prospective father of her child was therefore pointless.
It's quite easy to play to a man's laziness or selfishness where sex and birth control are concerned. Often, men aren't so much tricked as they are led into fatherhood by women who take advantage of the fact that most males regard birth control as a hassle. Many feminists would say it's unfair that we bear the responsibility for birth control, but for a woman determined to procreate against her partner's wishes, it's a bonus. The Pill, in particular, gives women the power to plan behind a man's back. Factors that might make it "better" from a guy's point of view -- no bothersome IUD string rubbing against his flesh, no awkward pause to hunt for condoms and no raincoat-in-the-shower symptoms -- also make it possible for him to be deceived (or to deceive himself).
Why do some women think it's OK to plan parenthood without a partner's consent, while others -- like me -- recoil in horror? Why do some men feel betrayed by this strategy, while others excuse it? To find out, I asked a number of men to talk about their experiences with accidental fatherhood.
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