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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Men who say they have unknowingly or unwillingly impregnated a woman are hard to pigeonhole. They're not all sexist jerks trying to evade their obligations. They don't all blame the woman, nor are they always to blame. A few had made an honest effort to ensure that contraception was used. (One man even said he sometimes inserted his girlfriend's diaphragm.) As for their reactions to the prospect of unplanned fatherhood, some propose abortion, some end their marriages, while many, as one put it, "swallow hard and decide to make the best of it."

Accidental fathers can't always be sure they were "set up." Ambiguous conditions can cloud the issue forever. But some have good reason to believe they were duped. Occasionally, a woman confesses her subterfuge to her partner -- believing, perhaps, that a first glimpse of the heir to his DNA will make deception forgivable. "It works often enough to give other women the idea that it will work for them," one man told me.

But women who set out to "steal a bit of seed," as a girlfriend of mine once put it, are engaging in a risky venture, one that can backfire disastrously. There's no guarantee that a man will stay involved with a woman simply because he is devoted to their offspring. One father told me that he lost respect for his wife because she neglected to tell him that she had stopped using birth control, after he had made it clear that he didn't want a child. The emotional rift led to a divorce, complete with shared custody. While he loves his child unconditionally, he judges the behavior that conceived his son harshly.

Not all men are able to draw this line in the sand, however. Another father, whose daughter is now in kindergarten, says he no longer passes judgment on his ex-wife's actions, even though he was initially angry.

Phillip, a public interest lawyer whose ex-wife became pregnant during a difficult break-up, decided that he "owed Rebecca some loyalty because she had been with me for a long time." Rebecca went off the Pill without telling him and, he feels, became pregnant "to get me to come back." When it became clear that she was having their child, he told her he would be "as present or as absent as she wanted me to be, within the constraints of not being her husband or lover."

Phillip's attempt to extract his parental obligations from the ongoing emotional confusion led to deeper complications. Rebecca's pregnancy didn't restore their marriage, but it meant that her presence would be acutely felt elsewhere. When Phillip told Ann, his new girlfriend, that he had agreed to attend Lamaze classes with his ex and to be present at the birth, she was initially pleased that her boyfriend was acting so honorably. This upbeat attitude lasted about a month: As the reality of Rebecca's pregnancy sank in, Ann's mood reversed. She came to see Rebecca's pregnancy as a declaration of war, and she retaliated. Phillip's new relationship didn't stand a chance because, in this emotional war, he was both coveted territory and despised traitor. The moral power of a pregnant woman can be as infuriating as it is formidable. Ann began "accusing me of disloyalty and was obsessed with how much of a hold Rebecca had on me," Phillip said. "I was always having to defend myself." Like other expectant fathers, Phillip wore a beeper so that Rebecca could contact him in the event of an emergency. Ann expressed her territorial rights by beeping him, then arguing about how long it took him to return her calls. "Nothing I did or said could improve the situation," he says, clearly upset about having to recall the experience.

The stereotypical gold-digger who puts her womb to work may certainly exist, but women who secretly plot their pregnancies don't necessarily do it for financial security. Phillip's ex, for example, was earning double his income when she became pregnant. Despite such stories as this year's Sports Illustrated report on deadbeat dad athletes, most men who say they were set up for fatherhood aren't celebrity millionaires or pro athletes -- and some aren't even close to being financially secure. A female friend told me she couldn't understand why her son, a 20-year-old with somewhat flaky employment habits, was viewed as suitable father material by a young woman who was also struggling financially. At the other end of the scale, I once dated someone who attended French conversation classes so that he could converse with a daughter living in Paris: She had been conceived during a casual fling at a ski resort with a woman he hardly knew, he told me. He sent money to Paris on a regular basis, and expressed a wistful desire to know his child. As a culture, we're more forgiving when a woman is driven by emotional need than we are when a woman's motivation is economically rational -- even though both kinds of women are playing with other people's lives. Some aspect of our official morality prefers a weak, deluded mother to a calculating one.

Like many women, I say that I wouldn't engage in one-sided planning because it's unethical, unfair to the child -- but the real reason is that I recoil at the idea of using pregnancy as a weapon. I enjoy the mating game's hunting rituals but, when it comes to pregnancy, I'd rather not play games. I'd like the father of my child to be my partner, not my prey. I also feel that pregnancy would make me helpless rather than powerful.

"I never wanted children, so I can't understand why a woman would use pregnancy to hold onto a man," says my female friend Sam. "Women who do this are members of a different tribe. Motherhood gives them 'moral authority' and they sometimes feel that having a child justifies their actions."

In many ways, women do divide into tribes over sexual and emotional issues. Like Sam, I never wanted to use my body to "get pregnant on a guy" and I doubt I could be best friends with a woman who did. But Sam and I are the kind of women who think it's OK to use our bodies -- even cynically, at times -- to exploit a man's sexual appetite, but not his tender feelings about babies and pregnant ladies. We have faked orgasms for money but we wouldn't fake birth control. We sometimes judge the manipulative behavior of mothers as harshly as other women judge the antics of our tribe.

Yet it's fascinating to meet a member of that other tribe, a woman who dares use her body in ways that you wouldn't. In my teens, I briefly knew a shy-looking 26-year-old who was living with an up-and-coming architect. She wanted to turn their informal engagement into something binding, and a pregnancy might, she conjectured, move things along. Condoms were his preferred contraceptive method, and she didn't want to arouse his suspicion by suggesting an alternative. Did I think a small pin prick, barely visible, would do the trick?

Looking back on this, I can't help noticing that my attitude toward pregnancy mirrors the archetypal good girl's view of prostitution. Am I being a prude about my uterus?

Conversations about unwanted fatherhood sometimes remind me of the arguments about date rape that polarized so many of us in the early '90s. Many women aren't eager to believe that men can be duped or manipulated into becoming fathers.

Suzanne Braun Levine, currently writing a book about contemporary fatherhood, sees deception about birth control as "neurotic behavior" and a sign that a relationship is "far from wonderful," but thinks men should be willing to take responsibility for their sexuality. "If you're talking about a marriage in which the man says he doesn't want children and she says she does, I wonder how clear these guys made it, or how direct they were," she told me. When a man doesn't wear a condom to bed, is he simply "asking for it"? Sending mixed signals about what he wants? Is he merely being seduced into fatherhood -- or is he actually being violated in some way? Should he have been more demurely dressed, as it were, when he ventured down that familiar alley? Accustomed to protecting ourselves against unwanted pregnancy and other sexual hazards, we sometimes wonder how men can be so naive. Levine, who is one of the original editors of Ms., recalls that when she was "single and living in Seattle, a lot of married men were hitting on me. They would say, 'Don't worry, I've had a vasectomy,' and I thought it was very funny." She asks why men "don't automatically use a condom" -- given that there are so many reasons to do so.

Contraception is the "housework" in our sex lives. If guys did more of it, many pregnancies, abortions and unhappy situations could be prevented. Men don't use condoms nearly as often as they could, but standard explanations about loss of sensation and sexual selfishness don't tell the entire story. Assuming that most of us aren't poking holes in condoms, why don't more men use a method that gives them more control over their lives? Perhaps some men don't want that much control in their personal lives. Perhaps the man who lets a woman manage the sexual housework is much like the man who lets his wife decide where to keep his socks or what brand of toothpaste to use. Many women discourage men from shopping or sorting the laundry because "we know best" how we like things done, because we're basically in charge of a man's personal life.

In the case of my relative Bill, who was informed post-coitally by his girlfriend Lucy that she had stopped using birth control, their relationship blundered on for two more years. He never made either a positive or negative commitment, leaving it to her to decide, after a heart-breaking miscarriage, that their relationship was finally over.

N E X T_ P A G E: Guys: Women don't act like you would if you were a woman