Christianity Today has a fascinating discussion with sociologist Mark Regnerus about his latest research on young adults’ sexual attitudes and behavior:
You frame your research using sexual economics theory: Sex is a transaction in which men pay, via economic stability or education or as little as dinner, to get access to sex, while women pay with their sexuality to get goods that men can offer. Describing sex this way seems pretty cynical. Why use this theory to explain your research?
Because it’s accurate. There are lots of lenses to use to evaluate how people make decisions about sex and relationships. Some of them are far more idealistic than realistic. I find the economic theory [developed by psychologists Roy Baumeister and Kathleen Vohs] to be remarkably astute in its general description of how people make such decisions. My students—who can spot a pathetic argument on this stuff a mile away—almost always confess that this way of understanding relationships is consonant with their experience.
People will cringe to listen to it, but when they think about it, it’s remarkable how accurate it can be. It works because it’s rooted in basic differences between men and women and basic different interests in sex, marriage, and long-term relationships. As a Christian, none of it surprises me or discourages me. There’s an inherent good and functional tension between men and women in this domain. Historically, sex was a key motivator for men to marry. Try to reduce that tension, that function, and all hell breaks loose—which is what we are witnessing.
February 21st, 2011 | 12:51 pm
We shouldn’t forget why the cost for men has gone down, or why women give away their sexuality for much less. You’re article from last year, Bitter Pill, showed that one of the main causes was rampant contraception and abortion. Maybe we can change the abortion culture, though it will take much more work to change the easy sex/contraception culture. Perhaps we could at least start this change in the church?
February 21st, 2011 | 2:46 pm
Hmm. I seem to remember saying much the same thing as Regnerus only a week ago. See my comments in response to David Mills’ essay “Deconstruction Options”, here: http://www.firstthings.com/onthesquare/2011/02/deconstructing-options
February 21st, 2011 | 3:37 pm
The approach seems, alas, to be accurate. But then, how can I explain why my wife married a poor pastor?
February 21st, 2011 | 5:49 pm
I have to take issue with this prominent idea: “historically, sex was a key motivator for men to marry.”
Given the undeniable fact that in all societies throughout history, men frankly do not “need” a wife for sex and indeed exact it from women, willingly and not, in any of a variety of situations (see, frequency of prostitution and rape, etc.), this approach is so clearly missing a major opportunity to discuss how marriage is about so much more than sex.
Perhaps we could start to recognize how in a culture with such pervasive perversity as ours, and truly throughout history, it ought to shock us that people want to marry (albeit, with deeply flawed ideas and expectations).
As a woman, I’m also continually baffled that men can believe women do not enjoy sex and therefore wouldn’t engage in it pro se, but far be it from me to read too much into that.
February 21st, 2011 | 9:30 pm
Men do not need a wife in order to have sex. They never have.
Men need a wife to start a family.
I recently read somewhere that, among some particular statistical group of singles, the men were surprisingly interested in starting a family, while the women were not. Presumably, women who are interested in having a family are not having a hard time finding a partner.
There’s no advantage for a man in starting a family without any commitment from the woman who will be the child’s mother. Men want something in return for the considerable support they will be providing (as in, a real relationship, a commitment, a house together, the whole nine yards).
There’s not much incentive to have a baby if your role in the child’s upbringing is going to be limited to paying all the bills, seeing the kid two weeks every summer, and having a nasty, vicious woman turning the kid into a walking weapon, which is what having children out of wedlock pretty much is from the man’s point of view. (Just ask King Arthur. Or King Lear’s buddy.)
February 22nd, 2011 | 1:00 am
For someone who is supposedly “Neither a strong gender constructionist nor a strong gender essentialist, but a sociologist,” Regnerus “reports” quite a few over-generalized “essentialisms” in supporting/constructing his thesis. Even if “Most men want sex more than do women and have traditionally gained access to sex via marriage,” it’s certainly not true that women want no sex and all and therefore have spent no currency of their own in the sexual economy. Honestly, how does Regnerus even know that “most women have given sex for marriage, which has brought economic security and commitment”? How committed to marriage have people of either sex historically really been, outside of economic or social needs?
I won’t deny that women tend to give sex to get love, and men give “love” to get sex, but this is a different sort of economy than Regnerus is talking about. Women gaining more monetary-economic power should not, in my opinion, upset the entire sexual-economic apple cart. Actually, what’s being upset are certain cultural mores and the conditioning that’s accompanied them. Treating sex casually, valuing instant gratification, and viewing sex as a commodity are all more responsible for “hell breaking loose” than the supposed reduction in the basic economic relationship tension between men and women.
Regnerus’ view reflects the wrong sort of cynicism, because it in effect excuses manipulative behavior by crediting its source to “an inherent good and functional tension.” My eye! Men and women need each other, yes, but to say that they cannot meet those needs except to buy each other is worse than cynical.
February 22nd, 2011 | 9:32 am
[...] is a kernel, not the whole picture. Reductionism isn’t normally all that helpful in describing the human [...]
February 22nd, 2011 | 9:35 am
[...] is a kernel, not the whole picture. Reductionism isn’t normally all that helpful in describing the human [...]
February 22nd, 2011 | 10:43 am
Here’s Randy Newman on the economics of sex in his song KARL MARX:
It’s something that happened to me
I’d say, Karl I recently stumbled
into a new family
with two little children in school
where all little children should be
I went to the orientation
All the young mommies were there
Karl, you never have seen such a glorious sight
as these beautiful women arrayed for the night
just like countesses, empresses, movie stars and queens
And they’d come there with men much like me
Froggish men, unpleasant to see
Were you to kiss one, Karl
Nary a prince would there be
February 22nd, 2011 | 11:30 am
I’m sorry, the arguments in this are so full of holes it might have been written in a Swiss cheese factory.
February 22nd, 2011 | 12:10 pm
“I recently read somewhere that, among some particular statistical group of singles, the men were surprisingly interested in starting a family, while the women were not. Presumably, women who are interested in having a family are not having a hard time finding a partner.”
I am not a man who has any trouble getting dates, but I have found Blake’s above observation to be very true, among strongly Catholic and Christian women, no less. My brother had to fight a three year battle to convince his wife to have their first child. I don’t think she really knows how close they came to annulment. A Catholic lady friend who attends daily Mass had a kid outside of wedlock, but doesn’t want to marry.
Something is horribly awry in many of our Christian churches and families.
February 23rd, 2011 | 9:12 am
Craig
“We shouldn’t forget why the cost for men has gone down, or why women give away their sexuality for much less. ”
I think you got the price backwards. Why did women charge a ‘high’ price for sex in the past? Because in the past sex was quite expensive for women. There was the risk of disease (granted men share this risk too), there was the risk of violence (Fatal Attraction aside, jealous or angry men are on average more of a physical threat than women), the risk of pregnancy (which hundreds of years ago was very risky even for those who are well off) and the risk of being responsible for a kid (I do think that women are more inclined towards their children than men whether that’s a function of genetics or simply because women have to invest so much physically in producing children relative to men).
All of these costs go down dramatically once you move away from a primitive, pre-industrial society. Even without contraception, you’re not going to roll back the clock to a time when death in childbirth was common, a woman alone was subject to easy violence by men, etc. Since sex is now so much cheaper for women, it isn’t surprising that some of that savings will get passed on to men….
February 23rd, 2011 | 1:25 pm
All of these costs go down dramatically once you move away from a primitive, pre-industrial society.
Raising a kid out of wedlock is as unhealthy and destructive as it ever was.
You can change how these costs are distributed, but the costs themselves have not gone away.
What has changed is that we now have this myth – notice how myths always accompany people who demand that someone “compensate” them somehow for the unfairness of their own biology?
The myth says that since it’s not fair that women are women and not men, therefore to make it more “fair” we should make an arrangement where the woman does all of the raising of the child, while the man does all the paying for things.
This is like a parody of the traditional roles: men provided for and protected the family. Women have fallen for the comforting belief that they can have all of the benefits of a man, with none of the responsibilities – taking without giving back.
The problem with this belief is that men aren’t really inclined to support such a system, and so most women get exactly what they can extract and not a penny more – and in reality, it isn’t hard at all to make child support cost a buck fifty for every dollar collected.
So who is giving what away for free? A man gets “free” sex and with it comes the risk that the woman will rope him into two decades of child support for a child he will be allowed to have no real relationship with.
February 23rd, 2011 | 3:07 pm
Raising a kid out of wedlock is as unhealthy and destructive as it ever was.
Really? Bristol Palin has it as hard today as a hypothetical unwed mother from, say, 25BC Persia? There’s a reason why ancient texts speak so much in favor of aid to widows. A family that lost their man risked death unless they were taken in by the larger family or if there was remarriage. It’s also why invaders so often took the widows they created for wives. In the ancient world a woman without a man was in mortal danger, better to even be married to an enemy than to be alone….let alone be responsible for a child. Today we talk about ‘unhealthy and destructive’ in terms of people being depressed or not quite as ‘self-actualized’ as they could be. Not that this stuff is not important, relative to the big picture of history, though, many would loved to have had our worst problems.
The myth says that since it’s not fair that women are women and not men, therefore to make it more “fair” we should make an arrangement where the woman does all of the raising of the child, while the man does all the paying for things.
I’m not exactly sure what the myth is you are talking about. Most single moms are not single moms because they had no interest in a relationship with the father of their children. Most of the time the father’s are content to reduce their role to only child support and visitation.
So who is giving what away for free? A man gets “free” sex and with it comes the risk that the woman will rope him into two decades of child support for a child he will be allowed to have no real relationship with.
If your agenda is having sex without having children it really isn’t all that hard to achieve it. The idea that you’re ‘tricked’ into becoming a father is a bit like a guy claiming the bar tricked him into drunk driving. Right off the bat if you insist on always using condoms, it’s pretty unlikely you’ll ever have a kid to worry about. If you want to have sex without condoms, then you operate on trust that the woman either won’t get pregnant or is reliably using birth control on her own. How this makes you a victim of ‘free sex’ seems pretty perplexing. You know the risks going in, you weigh short term pleasure as vastly more important than long term risks and you reap the consquences. The risk isn’t coming from the woman supposedly offering you ‘free sex’, it’s comes from your own bad judgement.
If you’re talking about, say, a case like divorce where child custody is contested and one side wins and the other loses…..well the fact is any partnership carries a risk that one or both sides may in the future find that they don’t like the partnership and want out. Since we are wealthy enough to be able to raise kids with a single person, this is a risk both sides have to take. But then you’re not talking about being tricked into having a kid, it sounds like you’re talking about wanting to have a kid but then having it turn out being different than you wanted it to be. That is indeed a risk of parenthood but it’s hardly the worst risk that comes with parenthood. I’m sure there’s plenty of people who never broke up with their wives or girlfriends but who had kids who, say, died drug overdoses, who would give anything to trade places with a person whose kids turned out ok but because of a divorce or breakup raised them as only visiting parents…. Long story short getting out of bed in the morning is a risk to some degree. If you can’t take it then don’t do it.
February 23rd, 2011 | 3:37 pm
I have some questions. I read Mark Regnerus’ article. Porn was briefly mentioned. What sort is he talking about? He mentioned a new type, more “advanced” than Playboy. What is he talking about? I’m familiar with Hustler, Penthouse, and Playboy. Hustler and Penthouse seem from the covers a bit like going to a freak show that circuses used to have. You know, “See the man with alligator skin and the woman with a hairy face.” The current issue of Hustler has a section on Charlie Sheen, who is Catholic. Playboy is, in my opinion, a different story. I can’t decide if Satan is for that magazine or against it. He would be for it because it often demeans women and men. But he would be against it because it highlights women who are beautiful. Everyone knows a woman is Satan’s natural enemy. And a beautiful woman is even more his enemy. Seeing her makes people happy, and the devil certainly doesn’t want happiness. And she is one of the proofs of the existence of God. And the devil definitely doesn’t want that sort of proof.
I have other questions on this topic, but can anyone help me out on these?
February 23rd, 2011 | 9:21 pm
I’m on it Dan, I promise if they ever elect me Pope I’ll work to get Hugh Hefner cannonized as a saint….unless he starts putting really ugly girls in the magazine.
February 23rd, 2011 | 9:35 pm
Raising a kid out of wedlock is as unhealthy and destructive as it ever was.
Really? Bristol Palin has it as hard today as a hypothetical unwed mother from, say, 25BC Persia?
There’s actually a section of “feminist studies” that deals with this very question.
It’s called “motherhood studies”, or some such like that.
To summarize what I have read and heard argued:
Some cultures have very high expectations for mothers, but compensates by also providing very high levels of support (example: Hebrew culture).
Other cultures have very low levels of support for mothers, but also do not put a lot of pressure on mothers to be “good mothers” (think Europe in the Middle Ages).
The late 20th century is actually unusual in that it has extraordinarily high expectations of what is expected of a mother, while providing unusually low levels of actual support – a situation that is inherently unstable.
February 23rd, 2011 | 9:38 pm
A family that lost their man risked death unless they were taken in by the larger family
You mean, the way Bristol Palin has been taken in by her family?
Today it remains true that the single biggest risk for serious poverty – and death by starvation worldwide – is the lack of a father in the household, and broken family ties in general.
Even in third world countries, poverty is not shared equally: people in stable family units are more secure, less likely to starve, and more likely to recover quickly from a setback, than individuals who are severed or separated from normal family relations in some way (for instance, broken ties – and that includes all single mothers).
February 23rd, 2011 | 9:52 pm
I’m not exactly sure what the myth is you are talking about. Most single moms are not single moms because they had no interest in a relationship with the father of their children.
I explained what I meant by use of the word “myth”.
You might try rereading what I wrote.
I realize that women are frequently single moms because they want to limit a man’s involvement. Women frequently exhibit the same narcissism during divorce (always seems to be about the car, too, have you noticed? They want to keep the car, while the man gets to “keep” the payments). The “myth” in this case is to think this particular form of narcissism does not come with consequences.
It does have consequences. The idea that one can be selfish and “get away with it” is an illusion.
The idea that you’re ‘tricked’ into becoming a father is a bit like a guy claiming the bar tricked him into drunk driving.
Like the famous case of the man who wanted the right to waive his status as a father, citing that his girlfriend knew he didn’t want children and had lied to him about her fertility.
Women trap men all the time. Women cry about “choice” and “being punished by a baby” (boo hoo!) but men are the ones who can’t have sex without risk – short of sterilization. There are many reliable forms of birth control but none for men.
Of course, nobody outside of a few “men’s rights” advocates particularly care about this, but the double standard bothers me a great deal. Plus of course there are way too many men in the USA who are fathers involuntarily, and way too many social problems that are tied to the dysfunctional ways in which we devalue family bonds.
February 24th, 2011 | 8:37 am
Blake,
The late 20th century is actually unusual in that it has extraordinarily high expectations of what is expected of a mother, while providing unusually low levels of actual support – a situation that is inherently unstable.
What this ignores, though, is absolute rather than relative ability. Getting your kids to 21 with less than a 25% mortality rate certainly doesn’t seem like much of an expectation today. In another time and place, though, it would be a high one. This also seems to belie your previous assertion that unwed motherhood’s ‘costs’ are a constant regardless of culture or time. Now you seem to be saying that unwed mother hood is relatively cheap if mother’s either receive a lot of support to meet high expectations or have very low expectations demanded of them.
You mean, the way Bristol Palin has been taken in by her family?
Try as you might, it’s not anywhere near the same thing. Try to imagine a 9/11 widow marrying a leader in al Qaeda. Consider Trojan women marrying Greek soldiers or Alexander the Great’s men marrying women in the lands they defeated. The alternative for these women were death. The alternative for Bristol Palin is having to manage her own negotiations with reality TV producers. For single mothers, though, who can’t tap the fame machine for support it’s not quite as nice. Still section 8 housing assistance still compares pretty nicely to the fate of an ancient woman with a newborn baby whose seen her menfolk killed off by an invading army.
I realize that women are frequently single moms because they want to limit a man’s involvement. Women frequently exhibit the same narcissism during divorce….
This has not been my experience. Perhaps we should call this the Murphey Brown Myth because Murphey Brown was ravaged by Dan Quayle for ‘choosing’ not to have a father for her child while the reality was in the story line the father of her baby was indifferent. More often than not I believe single moms either started out in relationships with the father the turned sour or are open to the father having an active role in the upbrining of a kid, it’s the fathers who often seek to have no involvement at all, paying child support only because they can’t escape that by law. The case of the woman who gets pregnant in order to raise a child all by herself while the willing father has the door slammed in his face is not the typical single mom story.
Divorce is a different case. By definition the kids were not produced in signle parent households but two parent households that are now breaking apart. It’s not surprising that there’s a lot of bitterness and nastiness that goes on in cases like that but I don’t think it’s relevant to a discussion of single moms. I don’t think, though, it’s only about the woman seeking the resolution that best suits them.
Like the famous case of the man who wanted the right to waive his status as a father, citing that his girlfriend knew he didn’t want children and had lied to him about her fertility.
OK but here’s the issues:
1. This is an rare type of case. Most of the time if you are having sex with a woman of fertile age there’s a non-zero chance that pregnancy may result….a risk you can avoid as easily as she can.
2. The rules of the game are equal in both direction. There are plenty of women who have gotten pregnant by men who claimed to be infertile. Their legal responsibility as parents are not magically transferred to dishonest men. Like it or not, the rules are pretty clear legally. If you’re engaging in sex you bear the consquences. If you’re going to trust the claims of your partner about their fertility, you incur the risk that they may be dishonest or mistaken. Likewise “the bartender said I didn’t look drunk” is not a defense for a DUI. If you drink and you get behind a wheel it is your responsibility to make sure you’re not above the legal limit period.
Of course, nobody outside of a few “men’s rights” advocates particularly care about this, but the double standard bothers me a great deal.
You know I notice many critics of feminism seem to play this game. First they accuse feminists of refusing to recognize that men and women are biologically different. Then they accuse feminists of NOT treating men and women the same. Which one is it?
Birth control options for men are limited to condoms and sterilization for two reasons:
1. Biology. Women’s fertility is linked to a biological mechanism that switches on and off so there are plenty of ways to create an artificial way to keep the switch in the off position. Men’s fertility is more or less stuck in an always on position and the simple wiring has no off switch that can be easily exploited by a drug.
2. Economics. Women bear more of the cost of an unintended pregnancy starting with pregnancy itself which is a pretty big burden for a woman. Plenty of men have become fathers without even knowing about it, I doubt any mother became one without being aware of it for quite some time. Women then are willing to pay to seriously control their fertility. This payment can take the form of contraception directly or can take the more traditional form of demanding that men “compensate them” in the transaction for sex. Male contraception is not quite as valuable because unless you’re talking about condoms, women will have the issue of trust to contend with.
On the flip side, men have little economic incentive to demand ‘male contraception’. The risk of getting ‘tricked’ by a baby seeking woman can be cheaply controlled by:
a. Not having sex with women you don’t trust.
b. Using condoms which are cheap and easy to use.
Even if you do get woman pregnant, really the worse that happens to you is paying child support. It’s still the woman who has to bear the burden of pregnancy, the risks of birth and quite often the work of raising the kid. Relatively speakng child support payments are not some type of ‘jackpot’ for the woman. In terms of dishonesty, then, you’re still more likely to see a man pretending to be infertile to score sex rather than a woman doing the same to ‘score’ a child. What all that adds up to is less incentive for ‘male contraception’ to be developed much. Calling it a double standard seems to be unfair to real double standards.
February 24th, 2011 | 11:11 am
Boonton,
Thanks for your reply. Come on, I’m serious! Folks in discussions like these write endlessly with statistics and reasons, all of them good and accurate. And occasionally, someone like Jerry Falwell, James Dobson, or JPII gets something done. But most of the time, it seems to me, it’s a christiano-christianique argument.
Two movies illustrate my point. A Walk to Remember is a fine Evangelical Christian movie in which sadness happens, but in the end everyone learns and lives happily everafter. Except, of course, for the girl, but she’s even happier, since she’s in heaven. The other movie is Crazy, Beautiful. A very messy, full-of sin, Catholic Christian movie. Try to see both movies and compare them. Then write about them.
Thanks.
February 24th, 2011 | 12:21 pm
What this ignores, though, is absolute rather than relative ability. Getting your kids to 21 with less than a 25% mortality rate certainly doesn’t seem like much of an expectation today.
Outside of isolated pockets where nobody is allowed to starve, the children of single parents are still far more likely to live in poverty and die prematurely than children with intact families.
If you doubt this, the international NPO/World Bank community has lots of free information on poverty available.
February 24th, 2011 | 12:29 pm
This has not been my experience. Perhaps we should call this the Murphey Brown Myth
You know most activists, even on the left, have (quietly) admitted that Quayle was right about Murphy Brown.
The reality is that single parenthood is very, very bad for children, by all measures, and according to all but the most biased studies.
Children raised without a father in the home are more at risk for substance abuse, poverty, school dropout, crime, and mental illness.
Even in America, single parenthood is highly correlated with pathology and poverty, even though we heavily subsidize single parents.
Which is BTW what I meant when I said the costs remain the same, even if these costs are redistributed: for every single parent in the public high school who gets extra assistance, there’s that much less money available for other social needs, like education or tutoring for low income kids, or funding the local library.
The real “Murphy Brown” myth is the myth that single parents are or can be wealthy professional women who can and do work having a baby into their regular schedule without any hardship. The reality is that the overwhelming majority of single mothers are nothing like that comforting stereotype.
February 24th, 2011 | 2:45 pm
Well the Murphy Brown Myth I was talking about was the myth you’ve been pushing that the single mother who is such because she wants to raise a kid ‘all by her self’ somehow represents a serious portion of single parents. That actually wasn’t the case in the Murphy Brown storyline (the father wasn’t interested in his duties, Murphy Brown wasn’t keeping him from parenting).
As for the cost really being constant, well it isn’t. Don’t cry for Bristol Palin, she doesn’t have it that tough. Also don’t cry for Madonna who I believe has several kids by birth and adoption but isn’t married. They are perfectly fine.
And relatively speaking single parenthood today is nothing like it used to be. The Persian woman from 25BC who was a single parent was likely destined for a quick death as was her child (forced marriage, possible slavery and other bad fates were less pessismitic expectations). The increased risk of mental illness (aka ‘depression’, ‘low self esteem’) or poverty (i.e. 1/5 the Xbox games that Bristol gets) simply demonstrate the fact that the costs have in fact decreased. This is why you draw in world data when most of the world looks absolutely nothing like a developed nation and with something like 1+Billion living on $1 a day or so much of the world looks more like Persia in 25BC than America.
I don’t mean to make light of the problems of single parenthood in developed countries but the price is quite relative, not absolute. You talk about the lower odds children with both parents have of starving in the developing world but at the same time many who live dodging starvation would happily change places with a people who will never starve but may have a higher risk of ‘mental illness’. Poor in America trumps a super stable family in much of the developing world (unless your family also happens to, say, be running the country).
February 24th, 2011 | 4:39 pm
Well the Murphy Brown Myth I was talking about was the myth you’ve been pushing that the single mother who is such because she wants to raise a kid ‘all by her self’ somehow represents a serious portion of single parents.
There is no reason for anyone to be pregnant outside of wedlock.
Today we have birth control options that women could only dream of in 1980.
It remains as true as it ever was: if a man does not marry a woman, it is a clear and unambiguous sign that he is not interested in co-parenting a baby together with that woman.
As for the rest, you are welcome to believe what you want to believe. Denial does serve a psychological purpose, I’m told.
February 24th, 2011 | 4:59 pm
Which has nothing to do with a woman deciding to raise a kid ‘all by herself’. Why do you apply a double standard here? Why was Murphy Brown deciding to raise a kid ‘without a father’ rather than the father deciding to give his kid only a mother? It seems to me if the father declares himself to be ‘not serious’ about being a parent then he is the one being irresponsible. Your assertion seems to be that it’s up to the woman and only the women to find ‘serious fathers’ before having a kid.
February 24th, 2011 | 8:12 pm
Which has nothing to do with a woman deciding to raise a kid ‘all by herself’. Why do you apply a double standard here? Why was Murphy Brown deciding to raise a kid ‘without a father’ rather than the father deciding to give his kid only a mother?
I am sorry if I gave the impression of a double standard.
I believe that the most important principle is that rights and responsibilities be in balance.
I don’t care which way we go as far as granting men the right to choose whether they have a “choice” as to whether they wish to keep an unplanned pregnancy experience – I only think that it needs to be brought in line with what we expect of women: if they get choice, let men have choice; if men are expected to take responsibility, then force women to accept responsibility too. The double standard is a problem.
I also believe we need to stop subsidizing single parents. We do need to provide assistance as charity – with the understanding that we are keeping them from starvation because it would be inhumane to let them truly accept the full consequences of what they’ve wrought – but whatever help we give them, it needs to be clearly marked as charity, not entitlement, and we need to stop prioritizing our scarce economic resources such that those who misbehave get first dibs on the funds, while those who work hard and play by the rules get no assistance with education or other legitimate goals.
February 25th, 2011 | 8:39 am
I don’t care which way we go as far as granting men the right to choose whether they have a “choice” as to whether they wish to keep an unplanned pregnancy experience
Men don’t experience unplanned pregnancies. You complain that other people’s problem is insisting that men and women aren’t different yet you seem to glide over the most basic, most undeniable difference between men and women…women get pregnant and men don’t.
I only think that it needs to be brought in line with what we expect of women: if they get choice, let men have choice; if men are expected to take responsibility, then force women to accept responsibility too. The double standard is a problem.
You are aware that women can and do pay child support? If you are talking about the non-monetary responsibilities of parenthood, well most single mothers do not fight fathers who are seeking to be part of their children’s lives. Murphey Brown did not ‘trick’ some man into getting her pregnant and then slam the door in his face when he wanted to act as a father. Yet you base all your ire on the woman. Why carp about a woman being ‘entitled’ to welfare monies when she can’t support her child? Why should a man be entitled to put a baby on the welfare or charity rolls?
February 26th, 2011 | 9:09 am
Men experience unplanned pregnancy as a crisis.
Don’t try to take away their perceptions. Being thrust into the role of father, with all its expectations and demands, is a life-changing event.
To be thrust into this role when one does not want it, is in some ways not as awful as it is for the woman – because it’s not their body that will change, so they at least do not have that.
But in some ways it’s worse, because our expectations toward what they’re “supposed” to feel and how they’re expected to behave are thoroughly unreasonable.
We currently expect them to put aside all of their own true feelings to make a number one priority of “being supportive” – and they’re supposed to be okay with having no input whatsoever into how the fate of this newly formed family is to be decided. Their role is supposed to merely be to “support” the woman in whatever she decides.
So, for all that we angst over the poor girl who might have wanted to go to college or have a career, we get outright nasty if a boy even suggests he might have had plans that don’t include a kid. “You should have thought of that,” we shriek, before we turn our attention back to the poor innocent woman who is entirely victimized by…her own little mistake (oops – I didn’t think skipping one … well, no it was three … I didn’t think skipping a couple of days would really matter….….)
The days when women could play the victim sympathetically have been over for a decade. We must lose the farce, so that we can adjust and balance realistic, fair gender roles, responsible behavior, and well-cared-for children.
February 28th, 2011 | 8:03 am
Blake,
You do have some valid points, but I think you yourself admit in your last comment that pregnancy itself is unequal. What you describe later on is unplanned parenthood which is not exactly the same thing as unplanned pregnancy.
In terms of the ‘economics of sex’, a man may indeed have to worry about a woman coming to him with news of a pregnancy as an unplanned ‘cost’ of having sex. But ultimately there are men who can and have had lots of random sex fathering children they never even know about. Hence the joke when someone asks if you have any kids you may slyly say “none that I know about”. This is a joke that works for men because it has a core of honesty about it. When a woman says it, though, its pure farce because everyone knows a woman could never mother kids without knowing about it unless she was in a deep coma.
February 28th, 2011 | 11:02 pm
You do have some valid points, but I think you yourself admit in your last comment that pregnancy itself is unequal.
Pregnancy is not at all unequal.
Women carry more of the inconvenience of pregnancy, yet they also carry all of the control over when and whether they get pregnant.
What’s unequal is when we are unfair to men and hold them to double standards to compensate women for a “discrimination” that turns out to not be discrimination at all, but merely envy: it is not a man’s job to make it up to a woman for the fact that she wishes she had his biology instead of the biology she’s got.
Pregnancy is a blessing, not a curse. If you don’t want this particular blessing, then don’t get pregnant.
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