T A B L E_ T A L K

Do antibiotics harm kids? Discuss the "pink cure" in Table Talk's Mothers area

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R E C E N T L Y

First Pick by proxy
By Carol Snow
A toddler fulfills her mother's gym class dreams
(09/22/98)

Time For One Thing: Fly-Fishing
By Karen Laws
Rollin' on the river with Dad
(09/21/98)

Who needs experts?
By Beth Kephart
"The Nurture Assumption": A controversial book makes headlines, not sense
(09/18/98)

In defense of parenthood
By Katie Allison Granju
Nature? Nurture? Whatever
(09/17/98)

Drama Queen
Cast your vote for the worst meal a mother ever served
(09/16/98)

BROWSE THE MOTHERS WHO THINK FEATURE ARCHIVES

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Mamafesto
By Camille Peri
Why it's time
for Mothers Who Think

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Often, men make bad decisions about birth control because their assumptions about women are based on what they think they would do in our shoes. My childhood friend David told me that when he and Kim began dating, they used condoms "for almost six months." When Kim encouraged him to stop wearing a condom, David "just assumed she was on the Pill, because I thought all sexually active women took the Pill." When he discovered, after a few months, that Kim was relying on the rhythm method -- "professing an 'expert' knowledge of her own body" -- David got worried and "brought condoms back into the picture." When asked how he could have been so uninformed, David said he "would have just gone to the doctor at 14, started taking the Pill, and never stopped" had he been female. "Wouldn't I be a fool not to?" It often turns out that one of the stupidest things a guy can do is to expect a woman to be as rational, self-interested or careful as he would be in her situation. During his late teens, Phillip's high school girlfriend quietly stopped taking her pills, had to have an abortion and later explained that she had become pregnant so that she would have "a piece of him" to hold onto. He didn't expect it -- though he knew she was troubled by their impending split -- because it was unlike anything he would have done in her place. Many years later, when his 35-year-old ex-wife quietly stopped taking her pills under similar circumstances, he didn't expect it "precisely because it had happened in my teens. I thought of it as something a high school girl does. If I had known that Rebecca was not taking her pills, I would have had oral sex instead of intercourse."

The prevailing assumption in the '90s has been that risky sex is imposed on women by men. But condoms can present a special etiquette problem for males, if they hope to keep getting laid. Frequently, men are discouraged from using condoms by the women in their lives -- a problem that most public health campaigns simply don't acknowledge. Andrew, now in his 40s, remembers telling the woman he lived with during his 30s that he would never want children. "Janet basically did not like condoms," he says, when I suggest that he was remiss not to use them. "She had tried the Pill and had to stop for health reasons. After a pregnancy scare, I went out and bought two or three different kinds of condoms along with some water-soluble lube, but she didn't want to use them." They relied on a diaphragm, which she may or may not have been wearing when she became pregnant during the third year of their relationship. After an abortion -- "the worst possible outcome, in Janet's mind, because she hoped I would come around to wanting a child" -- the relationship couldn't continue.

Should Andrew have insisted on condoms? Could he be expected to, when Janet objected? And how many reasonable men would impose a particular device on a woman? Telling a woman that you don't trust her to use birth control is not, in most people's minds, an option. More than once, I've been asked by a man how to deal with a girlfriend who urges him to stop using condoms for sentimental or erotic reasons. And David points out that, after dating for a while, "a lot of women are slightly insulted if you keep using condoms."

Pro-sex feminists who urge women to discard the Madonna/whore value system are surprisingly innocent about sexual reality. Before we think about discarding these values, we need to recognize that women impose them on men -- and we should be willing to question the assumption that these values are oppressive to women. Officially, men are encouraged by feminists and others to show their respect for women by wearing condoms. In real life, a man often faces pressure from a woman to show respect for her virtue by not using a condom. "A lot of women start wondering what you think they're up to when you wear a condom," David says. If, in the age of serial monogamy, men are supposed to wear condoms with "whores" but not with "nice girls," the woman who regards pregnancy as her goal may find these quaint Madonna/whore values useful. If a man must assure a woman that he doesn't regard her as a slut in order to have sex with her -- and if this entails forgoing condoms -- it would seem that a determined "Madonna" can drive a very hard bargain. The subtle exchanges that occur around intimacy mean that sex is often a "reward" that men can't take for granted. It is not polite to acknowledge this, but even or especially where money does not change hands, there is an informal marketplace in which men "get" and women "give" sex. An easy encounter -- "You don't have to go out in the rain or the cold," in David's words -- is like a free pass or a gift that most men will take on a woman's terms. "It's easy to set a guy up because, let's face it, when you're getting a piece, you don't argue about the details."

As with sex generally, there are "official" messages in our culture about condom use that differ from the unofficial messages men and women send each other. "The public health message is: Unless you are trying to have a baby with somebody, use a condom," says Debra Haffner, the president and CEO of SIECUS (Sexuality, Information and Education Council of the United States). In my conversation with Haffner, I encountered the currently fashionable assumption that men are at the root of the problem. "Men don't like using condoms, and a whole generation of men in their 30s and 40s didn't start off using them. We need to educate them in a new behavior." A tendency to speak of women always as victims, and rarely as the emotionally skillful aggressors we can be, may in fact prevent organizations like SIECUS from educating men effectively about birth control.

Sometimes, when words fail, our bodies argue for us. Andrew recalls that whenever Janet raised the subject of children, the conversation "went nowhere." Instead, Janet's body not only made, but escalated and lost, the argument they had been avoiding. After the abortion, Andrew resolved to have a vasectomy. He saved up $1,000 and, 10 weeks after the break-up, went to a doctor. There was a 30-day "cooling off" period during which his mind did not waver: He had been contemplating this decision since the age of 15. Andrew was more sorrowful than angry about the pregnancy. "I wanted to be with her for the rest of my life but, after helping to raise four sisters -- my parents were divorced -- I had no desire to raise children again," he says. "I was mad at myself for not having a vasectomy earlier, for letting myself be emotionally blackmailed." While they lived together, Janet had made it clear "that there would be huge problems between us if I went ahead with it," Andrew explains. After they parted, Janet was "genuinely and totally surprised" to learn about Andrew's vasectomy -- "which made me realize how deeply she must have been kidding herself about my desire for children."

Phillip thinks that "learning to get a vasectomy is missing the point" because the experience was really a lesson about women. "I had been involved with someone for seven years, and I thought I knew her. But your partner may feel imperatives about you, about children, that you are not even aware of." In his current relationship, he says, "I think more about what I'm hearing and I listen not just to the words but to the deeper meanings in a way that I didn't before. I don't take everything at face value." Andrew says "a vasectomy indicates you can make a decision and stick with it," and doesn't want to let anyone think his mind can be changed. In his efforts to be forthright, he sometimes appears to be swimming against the social tide. Female friends advise him to keep his vasectomy a private matter on first dates -- because many women in their 30s and early 40s are still pondering parenthood. "Some women tell me I'm damaging my potential for a serious relationship. They say a woman who now wants kids could ultimately change her mind if she gets to know me."

Why do women urge Andrew to reenter a web of confusing intentions? Emma Goldman, were she alive today, might cite this as proof of our natural and evolving perversity. Perhaps we feel that reproduction, intimacy and pleasure will be too clinical or brutish without some ritual subterfuge. Women can be oddly resistant -- when it suits us -- to the black-and-white logic of "No means No," especially when procreative lust gets the better of us.

A woman who dated Andrew after his vasectomy was oblivious to the deeper significance of his choice: "She told me, 'It can be reversed,' and I thought, 'She just doesn't get it, does she?' We had one date." Conversations about fatherhood are different now: Unambiguously reconfigured, Andrew's body now has the last, eloquent word.
SALON | Sept. 23, 1998

Tracy Quan is a frequent contributor to Salon.