to risk asking for thoughts on this?

[Givesyouhell]

I am very nervous asking this on here - I was mulling this over and really couldn't quite work out where I stood on it so thought I'd throw it out there...

If a woman gets pregnant (let's assume protection fails) and she doesn't want or feel ready for kids she can choose to have an abortion. The man is rightly expected to understand and support this. End of story.

If a woman gets pregnant accidently (assuming protection fails) the man would often be thought a bastard for saying he did not want the pregnancy to continue or for then denying the existence of the child if it were born. He would also be expected to provide for the child that he did not want/feel ready for.

I'm not asking this question from the 'woman's body is her own' position, more the long term life changes that a child brings.

This isn't a situation relevant to me, just something that came up in discussion. It seems pretty unfair to the man to me, in that he has no choices at all in something that will change his life and finances for decades and maybe his own view of himself if he steps away.

Please don't flame me for posting, I'm posting to get other people's views and to see if I need to revaluate mine!

Great post Bertie.

I think it is fundamentally unfair, on both parties on different ways. Unfortunately there are just no 100% 'fair' solutions. Biology is what it is. We have to do the best we can, as humans, with biological reality.

More than what the law says, I think every human involved in a situation like this just has to do a lot of serious thinking, consideration of the other party, consideration of their own bottom line and proceed accordingly. There are no easy formulas for decision making here.

Well its true thst life isnot fair
Thats why children die from cancer and people we love become ill or frail or demented.
Life does not have to be fair, sadly. There is no rule that says it ,ust be. If only.
But i cannot agree there is any "unfairness" in the event if unwanted pregnancy that is weighted in favour of womem.

It isnt fair so what can we do?

What we can do is make sure that our teenage sons are fully educated. Of course that isnt easy. How do you teach a teenager about consequences when for most things teenagers get into scrapes about dont really have consequences:

• didnt do your homework? - do it next week

• didnt study then failed exams? - actually you can re-sit

• fathered an unplanned baby? - you cant un-ring that bell

We need to make much clearer what the failure rates of different cotraception mean, The failure rate for condoms is between 2 & 15%. This means that in a year of 100 women using condoms as their method of contraception between 2 and 15 will get 100% pregnant

Can I just say that this reluctant parent/financial impact thing also applies to the woman who has a unplanned pregnancy.

She is pregnant, but hasn't planned to raise a child at that time. Yes, abortion is a choice, an option available to her - but some women cannot bear to do this, for many reasons- reasons that are not even necessarily at odds with a pro-choice stance on abortion rights.

So she is also a 'reluctant' parent, and it is pretty likely that the brunt of the childraising/childcare and financial impact will fall to her if the parents are separated - as someone said up thread, only 2/5 separated dads pay anything at all towards their children.