Years ago, I wrote a childfree blog under the name Sylvia D. Lucas, and as I was looking just now at an old post of “hers” I came across a string of comments underneath that old post that illustrate how males are impacted by pronatalism.
It’s probably true that females get most of the direct hits, but those hits sure roll down…
The old blog post was a response to a man named Bart who’d commented on an earlier thing I’d written for The Good Men Project. Bart’s comment, in part:
Take this warning from me: never, I repeat NEVER agree to having a baby if you don’t want it, whatever pressure might come from whomever asshole out there, don’t listen to them. Just listen to yourself and if you want to stay free and careless and did I mention FREE by all means say NO! Here’s another thought: if men would really have a say in having babies or not I predict that world population would be 50% smaller.
Responses in the comments under the old post/response to Bart I found, a snip of which is No one strapped you down and forced you to impregnate the baby’s mother. Blaming your partner is a feeble attempt to deny your responsibility and, in this case, your own weakness, naturally included variations of “if you don’t want kids, get a vasectomy/don’t have intercourse.”
But I’ve learned a couple things over the last decade, and one of those things is that I was too harsh on Bart about his “weakness,” the ‘why’ of which is explained at the end of this post.
The other thing I’ve learned is how ineffective “if you don’t want kids, don’t have sex” is, no matter who you’re talking to. Obviously it makes scientific sense: abstinence/great distance between sperm and egg is the one true way to not create a pregnancy. But it doesn’t make practical sense. People will always have sex.
And not all people can afford sterilization procedures.
And birth control can fail.
Or, and this is where the pronatalist trickle-down happens, it can be manipulated.
A man wrote this in the comments under my response to Bart:
I didn’t want kids, told my partner dozens of times. Her friend persuaded her to stop taking the pill and say nothing. She got pregnant and said it was an accident. …We live apart in the same house waiting for the kid to be old enough for us to split. … We were both really happy before, now both miserable. It’s the most stupid thing a woman can do. You should only have kids when you both agree to have them, not for your own gratification.
Why would a woman trick a man into parenthood?
He went on to explain in a follow-up comment:
Her friend’s attitude is that it was her right to have a baby and I was being selfish not wanting one. She convinced her that I would come to terms with it after a while, like people who have cancer or are raped. I’ll never come to terms with it.
…I told her for ten years after we met if she wanted kids I was happy for her to leave me and find someone who wanted them. Even introduced her to my single mates who might want kids. She only wanted to be with me so wouldn’t leave.
I’ve heard girls say their partner doesn’t want kids so they’re going to get pregnant and say it’s an accident. It’s so stupid.
A woman’s “right” to have a baby.
He was being “selfish” for not wanting one.
He would “come to terms with it.”
These are all things pronatalism teaches us. Having a child is 1. both a “right” (strange to think of creating a human with feelings and agency as being a “right” the same way owning a weapon is, but okay) as well as 2. an obligation that you’d have to be selfish to resist, and that 3. anyone who has a child, willing or not, will “come to terms with” parenthood.
Does “come to terms with” mean the same as “come to love it,” or simply tolerate it with clenched teeth? Does it matter? To anyone?
It didn’t to the above guy’s wife, apparently, nor to this guy’s wife, who probably knew exactly what she was doing:
What am I supposed to do? I didn’t want kids. My wife got accidentally pregnant and when she told me I told her that I didn’t want kids and to get an early abortion. She said she doesn’t “believe” in that and refused. She took away my choice because she wouldn’t even listen to why would we shouldn’t have a child. I have really tried to warm up to the idea but she is almost due and I know, deep down, I don’t want a child. I’m really angry and frustrated with my wife and honestly want a divorce. The problem I have is we were not trying to get pregnant and when we did it seemed like this is what my wife was always after all along.
The point of this post (which should go without saying) isn’t to argue that pronatalism hits men harder, or that we should all turn our attention to the impact on those poor, poor men instead of looking at how many women are forced, tricked, and/or pressured into pregnancy, never mind parenthood.
It’s to say pronatalism hurts EVERYONE. It leads to bad assumptions being made about EVERYONE—the most damaging of them being that unwilling parents will “come around.”
Yes, some might.
The rest won’t, and they’ll be miserable, and many of their unwanted children will probably know it.
My childhood kind of sucked and my teenage years where [sic] the literal definition of hell (they were the "I planned my suicide" level of bad), and all because I was an unwanted child from day one.
If I had to draw a picture of my childhood, it would be a resilient indoor plant slowly dying from unwatering... And if it were my teenage years, it would be just one angrily made black and red crayon doodle.
My whole life experience is an argument in favor of abortion. Most unwanted children don't have a nice or even decent start at life, and I'm very well aware that if my mother had been able to make that choice for herself, she wouldn't have had me.
From childhood to teen age, we're absolutely dependent on uncapable or unwilling adults, and we're the ones that suffer the most for it. We live through truly terrible things and we're completely undeserving of them.
If life is sooo precious, why not ensure that every baby is born into a household that actually wants them and WILL take proper care of them?. No one deserves to be born into a family that's absolutely unwilling to take care of you.—Reddit user
I was wrong to berate Bart for his weakness, because however “weak” someone might seem for caving to pressure to have kids (assuming they knowingly and willingly create a pregnancy due to that pressure), none of us knows the full weight of any other person’s pressure. I think the pressure would have to be unbearably heavy to persuade someone to completely change—some might say ruin—their lives by taking on parenthood.
But to the pressured and not-yet-unwilling parents—yes, men too—the most important thing that can be said is that any pressure is easier to escape than is parenthood.
Rather than making a child you don’t want, rather than taking on the 24/7 role of a parent, break up.
Move out.
Leave the situation.
As the commenter who started all of this wrote, “Say NO!”
The pain will be temporary, but a child is forever. Even if you don’t stick around.
If you enjoyed this post, you might enjoy my novel The Age of the Child: When a pro-life amendment leads to life sentences for abortion and police investigations of “suspicious” miscarriages, politicians start finding babies abandoned on their doorsteps. That’s just the beginning.
“You will most definitely get a rise out of your book club.”—Amazon reader
“This book lingered with me long after reading it, and I'm going to read it again.”—Amazon reader
“Hilarious and twisted jabs at society.” - Goodreads reader
“The Handmaid’s Tale and The Farm, to name a couple, have opened the dystopian genre to questions about reproduction; however, The Age of the Child is one of the first I’ve read to really consider the issue of reproductive rights and attitudes so deeply.” — Rebecca Maye Holiday, author of The Beaches
“Scathing social commentary.” — Goodreads Review