I would ask, however, how you would feel if someone told a woman that if she doesn’t want kids, she would have to be limited to those same choices, including abstention / permanent sterilization – and that if she did not, she would then be subject to the man’s decision on whether there would be a child and whether she would have to pay money to the man and the child for 20 years into the future.

It is unfortunate if your friends have husbands who would prefer to put their wives through a tubal ligation versus having a vasectomy. I can’t comment intelligently on the exact circumstances of their relationships, but all things equal, vasectomy is a safer and less invasive operation.

That, however, has little bearing to me outside a marital context where the couple has mutually determined they want no more children.

(Final Version)

I am amazed how Caroline and Virago won’t even consider the fact that this is unfair to men. We men are able to consider their side. Their opinion that men need to pay support for the kids no matter what, that the man knew what he was doing and should be careful, and that they have a right to control their body, in regards to abortion.
Virago and Caroline don’t seem to hear the main issue.
That men have less rights and protection under law, policies, and social dogma.
Women can have unprotected sex and if they decide they don’t want to have the baby, they can abort whether the man wants them to or not, even when there is no medical reason to abort.
However, on the other hand, if the woman says she will take precautions to not get pregnant, and will take responsibility for anything that happens, there is no obligation on her part by law, policy nor even social expectation, to follow through. She has no responsiblity to follow-up with abortion or to at least accept 100% financial and custodial responsibility to support the child, if she does become pregnant.
Of course, we are big boys, and if we lay down, we know we will be held responsible if a baby comes from it.
I think this post was making the effort to say we understand the situation, but that it is not fair and that men aren’t treated equally to how the women are treated in these situations. Its as if the woman has no responsiblities to live up to, from sex that creates a pregnancy, unless she wants to. However, the man will have responsibility whether he wants to or not.

What about kids in general, and women’s pressure on their men to insist on children. I bet if honestly polled, a vast majority of husbands, even happy fathers, will admit that they either never wanted even one child, or decided they didn’t want anymore children after one or two, but their wives strongly pushed for the children, and after arguing and saying no, you have two choices, divorce or say yes and deal with it. Many men are the rational ones and don’t want to destroy their marriage or existing children’s family, so they submit.

Men have become emasculated by our laws and their effect on our society/culture. It is supposed to protect the children, well it does, but at what cost. This forced fatherhood adds many more babies to the population, because we men are able to be trapped and/or controlled by women, using the children. And most of us learn to deal and love the children as it is not their fault.
We are subject to emotional, irrational women and their control on us.

Men, husbands, and fathers deserve better representation, and we need to fight our fear of fighting back and saying this is enough. We have a right to be protected. This, in some ways, reminds me of the slavery guilt. We are being punished by laws that were created because of men, who in the past did not take care of their responsbilities and treated people (women or blacks) incorrectly. Now, we feel guilty and allow the government to set morality laws on us that are not fair. Just like white men need to quit feeling guilty for crimes of our fathers and fight back on legislation, policies and social dogmas that are not fair, so too should men fight back on legislation, policies and social dogmas that are simply unfair and bad for our culture and society.
If we are all equal (and we are), then lets be equal. White, black, woman, man… EQUAL!

Now the reality of being put in this situation goes beyond any statistics or philosophical musing about the idea. It introduces problems and issues that completely alter my life forever, and puts an incredible amount of psychological stress on me. Paying child support or whatever is the least of my concerns.

After acceping what was happening, the natural thing I felt to do was to shower her with affection, and after the baby was born, I just tried to stay positive and make the relationship work. But any time she senses that I’m needing space away from her, she starts lashing in with these really hurtful remarks about how she doesn’t know if she can count on me. And I wonder what exactly she expected? She thought she could just force me into this and everything would just fall into the place the way she liked it? What about my life, my future plans, my hopes and dreams? All gone so I can help her have the future SHE dreamed of.

I don’t want to say my story is a catastrophe because I am still trying to live with it and make something positive out of it. But I do feel I need more emotional support. It is hard for me to talk to anyone, with the programmed attitudes people have about deadbeat dads, without any consideration of what it feels like to be forced into a lifelong responsibility that you made perfectly clear you did not want.

Thanks for the follow-up. I’ll agree with you that it is quite possible that “the condom was in his pocket and he didn’t want to wear it.” That is a scenario that is not unheard of.

But I will also say that stating that that was PROBABLY what happened in any given case is far from fair and probably inaccurate.

There are many other circumstances that could lead to the result of a man being forced to pay a large percentage of everything he makes for the next 18+ years and they also include the also possible scenarios of:

- his partner having misled him about birth control
- his partner having misrepresented her intentions if a pregnancy occurred
- his having used the condom but it having malfunctioned
- her having taken the contents of the condom without his knowledge and used them to cause a pregnancy

Or any other variety of circumstances. Some will occur more commonly than others. None of them are impossible. In all cases, regardless of how honest and responsible (or irresponsible) the man has been (or the woman) the end result if a pregnancy occurs is…

…she has complete control over the decision about whether to have a child and whether this man will be forced into parental obligations.

And she enjoys this right and he this forced obligation even if the circumstances were such that he was very honest and responsible and she was very dishonest and very irresponsible.

I certainly would not paint all or most women with a dishonest / irresponsible brush. But to say, without knowing any of the details of a given case, that “he probably was too lazy to take the condom out of his pocket” is to generalize and paint men with that very same brush.

There are a couple problems with your argument, as I see them…

One is that your attitude toward men getting a vasectomy if they want to have sex but aren’t certain they want to have kids is based on an inequality I doubt you would apply to women. Would you tell women to get their tubes tied if they don’t want kids, and then hope they can reverse it if they change their mind? Vasectomy is considered an IRREVERSIBLE operation. The vas tube can be reattached but the chances of a man becoming fertile after a vasectomy reversal is in the neighborhood of 50%.

As well, forcing men to pay 50% of the cost for an unexpected child the man doesn’t want to be a parent to isn’t holding both parties 50% responsible for “the outcome” — because the OUTCOME of having sex is a PREGNANCY. A CHILD is the OUTCOME of a woman’s unilateral decision to carry a pregnancy to term. As long as women enjoy this choice, they can’t also turn around and treat a child like the inevitable OUTCOME a man faces if he engages in the act of sex.

Anyway, thanks for reading and sharing your opinion.