Since You Asked: "Whose Baby Is It?"

By Cary Tennis

May 23, 2002 | Read the column.

I read your column and really enjoy the advice you give. I'm a professor of ethics at a small college, and I love reading advice columns because they are the practical side of the theory I love studying and teaching. I often read them and try and pick out the Utilitarian, Kantian, or Egoistic undercurrents running through the question and response.

Most of the time I think your answers are spectacular. You have an amazing ability to balance the needs, desires and interests of the letter writer with those of the other people involved. Except now, or I wouldn't be writing this letter.

Your response to the woman unsure of her baby's paternity leaves the feelings of the husband and possible father by the wayside for the benefit of the wife (who you say will eventually get over it) and the baby. One way I teach my students to approach ethical situations is to simply put themselves in the shoes of another person and imagine how they would want to be treated (very Kantian). So can I ask you to do the same thing: Put yourself in the shoes of the husband and possible father who one day finds out that the child he thought was his is really not and, worse, stems from a betrayal perpetrated and maintained by his wife and friend. Can you see the look on his face as he rewrites all the years he spent with his wife? With this child? Everything that he thought was certain is going to be taken away from him in an instant. I just get the sense that aside from betraying her husband, she now stands poised to rob him of his time, something he might want to make use of for himself.

This man deserves to know the truth and the opportunity to make a choice about how he wants to spend his life. He could forgive his wife and raise the child regardless of who the father is. He could decide that the betrayal is too much and try to find his happiness with someone else. Doesn't he deserve that option?

The reason I feel so strongly about this question is that it raises one of the hardest questions about ethics and interpersonal relationships: When we discover an injury or slight from the past, how do we respond? Should we respond as we would have then? Can we know how we would have responded then? We're not the same person, and time has probably clouded our impression of who we were. Should we take into account all the intervening days, weeks, months, or years? It's not a question I have an answer to, but it is a question that haunts me.

Sorry, I just think your response was too one-sided this time. No injury will come to the baby if the parents hash this out now. In fact, the child might be better off if the parents get this one figured out before he or she arrives, and they can either rededicate themselves to one another without the pressure of a new baby, or begin getting on with their separate lives (not that this has to be the case).

By the way, my father is adopted, and we've recently established contact with his birth family. The desire and need to know who one's parents are is something not to be trifled with. I saw a 57-year-old man look at a picture of his mother for the first time. My mother was sitting across the table from me; it was a very familiar face. I can't imagine how my father felt, but I can remember the look on his face. Oh, the things we take for granted.

Please keep up the good work, and keep the interesting and thoughtful answers coming.

--Steven A. Benko

Cary Tennis has consistently failed to fill the shoes of Garrison "Mr. Blue" Keillor in the advice department lo these many months, but this week he has crossed the line into reckless irresponsibility.

I can't blame the guy for not writing as well as his predecessor most of the time, and I know that all advice column responses should be taken with a grain of salt (or a few pounds' worth, if you're reading Dan Savage). But this week's response to the woman who is pregnant with either her husband's or her friend's baby just reeked of naive, mealymouthed insensitivity. She clearly stated that the baby would be a financial burden, that she already felt ambivalent about it because of the questionable paternity, and that she was considering termination.

Tennis skipped right over these harsh but practical considerations and rambled on about the intricacies of revealing the true father to the child as an adult (good plan!), and about the mystical serendipitiousness of life, blah blah blah. Get serious! This woman should seek professional advice, starting with Planned Parenthood, to assess her realistic options. Tennis' advice was essentially "Go with it, have the baby, see what happens, isn't life quirky." Easy for him to say! This isn't another thirtysomething lonelyhearts crisis, this is a potential lifetime of agony for an entire family (on top of the pregnancy, labor, and delivery bit). Sic another copy editor on this guy finally, and get somebody with a less rose-tinted worldview to give the advice. Sheesh.

-- Emily Durand

Next Page: She has to suck it up and confess

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