AIBU pregnancy with an unsuitable man ALL over this site

[SiriusBlack94]

It amazes me that EVERY day there are multiple posts with...

My DH is so lazy —— I’m 30 weeks pregnant
My DH is a narcissist how can I leave him —- I have a baby on the way
I don’t love my DH anymore - but I’m 28 weeks pregnant
DH drinking all the time/doing drugs/ controlling/ doesn’t help around the house —- but I’m pregnant.

Like seriously. Why are women so casual about getting pregnant with men that aren’t suited to them or who they aren’t in a loving relationship with. I know in some cases a man can turn abusive during pregnancy but in the majority of cases it’s things like ‘my DH drinks 4 times a week’ or ‘my DH never helps around the house’ which you would’ve KNOWN but still got pregnant.

I just don’t understand it and they are then tying themselves with often multiple children to these men.

@Nanny0gg

The OP quoted my post from this bloody morning! So don’t tell me the OP isn’t ‘about me’. 🙄🤔

Why is it always a ‘poor woman’ mentality?! Like I said not all these women are naive, abused and vulnerable, some are really just stupid and I think this is the ones the OP is talking about.

Not everything to do with women has to be about empowering them!

I see this happen around me, the women I know who're doing it seem pretty broken and feel like there is a very deep rooted lack of self respect and subconsciously they believe these crappy men are all they are worth.

It's sad and frustrating to witness. Sadly I think for many of them no amount of will power will fix it, the root causes run so deep.

I don't think we should be demonising women here. However, if people stopped breeding with useless men, I think humanity may work its way to extinction (which I sometimes think would not be a bad thing).

Some women also think that they will change the man and that he won’t treat them like crap, but when your 30 plus years old then you should really know better, if your abused then it’s different.

I dont get it either, never have...

they really dislike the man because of X Y and Z however then ties themselves to that man by having a child for the next 21 years....

Some men change when their partners are pregnant. You can't see that coming.

Some men are controlling and abusive
Not everyone can see those traits for a range of reasons.

Some men are feckless manchildren who don't pull their weight around the house and are highly unlikely to grow up and step up as long as the world wipes their arse. If someone doesn't do the dishes, doesn't clean the bathroom and thinks all weekend is time for his hobbies and drinking then don't be surprised when the baby is here and he behaves the same.

What annoys me is there's no winning when discussing feckless manchildren:
If you suggest women should raise the bar on what is acceptable then you're apparently blaming her for a man's behaviour (you're not though) and we should be questioning why there are so many feckless men around instead.
But if you question why there's feckless men and conclude it's because society enables them (including the women in their lives who pick up after them, excuse their laziness, make excuses for them) then that's blaming the women.

Ultimately, women are not responsible for feckless man children and we are not responsible for changing them. What we can do is decide we aren't willing to be in relationships with feckless man children who want us to play wifey and pick up after them and can make a decision not to have kids with them.

Foamrolling is right.

I think that a lifetime of childhood then repeated romantic partner abuse results in the death of hope. That absence of hope results in taking what affection one can get in the knowledge or experience that this is a "good" as it gets.

The answer to this isn't to castigated the psychologically fucked up victims women, it's to ask "why are so many men such arseholes to women"?

Is it medical? Is it genetically ingrained? Does some "Y" simply loathe the pregnant/dependent "XX"? If so, let's pursue a medical cure with as much passion as we stalk the plague of cancer. This disease blights 51% of the population (plus infant boys) and I'm fairly fucking sick of it, myself.

As a thought experiment, if women were to begin 'selecting out' those men who are clearly not going to be able to fulfil the role of father, wouldn't this be doing humanity a massive service?

Back in the day even in the 80s judging on my mum's experience, you had to get married to move in with someone. When you move in with someone and fall pregnant it's what you'd describe as sunk costs fallacy but what if describe as societal expectations of women having to have a man and men being allowed to get away with all sorts.

Obviously nowadays you don't have to be married or stay with someone as much as in the bad old days, but that societal pressure to be with a man is still very strong I think.

Looking at my mate that has a baby with a very unsuitable man and has stuck with him (she had a contraceptive failure aka 'the pill gave me spots so I wasn't really taking it'), she won't break up with him because he's the father of her child and he's all she's ever known (met at 19, baby not long after at 20, she's now 25) and she's terrified of going it alone, plus whenever she does try he makes it extremely difficult for her both logistically and by knocking her self esteem. He also has lots of the qualities that society values in a man - both physically but also he's outgoing, entrepreneurial, funny, risk taking etc (to people who don't know him well)

In her case she shouldn't have fallen pregnant within six months of knowing him, having never lived together so on that count you're right OP.

However i don't think you can blame women for falling prey to all the crap society loads on them about men, relationships and love. My friend I know had a terrible relationship with her dad and all she ever wanted was a baby which I think played into it too.

@PicsInRed I totally agree with you, great post. Men are allowed even expected to behave like crap and women are expected to make do to a huge extent.

This question pops up regularly and it is a lack of understanding on the part of the person asking the question.

What was expected of you as a child is just SO linked to what feels right when you're an adult.

There's no point going over it all again. If you can't grasp that then what is there to say.

I agree. You need to plan children and who you have children with is the most important decision you will ever make. I’ll be telling that to my daughter. Yes, things don’t always go to plan but if you get to know someone well, get married etc. it is far less likely to end in a dysfunctional family or broken home. I would also tell that to a son if I had one. I’ve watched family members have children with unsuitable partners after casual relationships and it’s ruined their life.

There is a factoid that goes around on social media saying that because the classical Greeks didn't have a word for blue, they couldn't see the sea as blue. I think that's an over-simplication for various reasons, but it's an interesting analogy.

All the behaviour that we discuss on MN that makes up an "unsuitable man", like habitual drug-user, lazy, immature, selfish, and so on? What happens if you don't have an image in your head for "unsuitable man" and just see a "man"?

Well, we know.

OBVIOUSLY the answer is to have a less sexist society that conditions daughters to be pleasing and never express anger and be giving, obliging, accommodating etc....

And yeh, my parents treated my like this and I had DC with a bona fide arsehole. But I didn't understand that at the time, I felt the same way I felt growing up of course, that if I could just somehow do it better, be a better version of myself and try harder then somehow I'd deserve his approval.

So much ignorance on the effect of family dynamics on the ''choice'' of partner.

Although for me it was less of a choice and more he just took me over and that felt familiar. I couldn't fight it.

I've few regrets NOW though. I'm in a better position now than a lot of women who married a more decent man. I'm single but everything I have is my own, I have a job, no worries that my life will disappear on the whim of a man. I've built myself up and I have a good relationship with my kids who see their father for who he is. The cycle stops.

This thread is about the responsibility that women have before deciding to have children, or do you think we have no responsibility

Exactly.

All I see here, is defensive from women who refuse to accept their part in bringing children into the world, with a piss poor excuse of a dad.

I think some of it comes from low self esteem and desperation.

My mum got pregnant with me in 1980 and back then she felt no need to marry, different strokes for different folks.

Also my grandparents had a good marriage, my grandad was a great father and my mum had a happy childhood and still she married an arsehole and put up with lots of crap, I don’t think the upbringing is always the issue and her 2 siblings married well.

SandyY2K agreed.

Because a lot of people, men and women alike, have dismally low standards for men’s behaviour.

But the reason you ‘can’t suggest it on MN’ and ‘people will shout you down for saying it on here’ isn’t because everyone thinks it’s great to have babies with useless men. Most of the shouting down I’ve seen happens when someone pipes up with “but WHY did you have those children with him OP?” to someone who has already done it and is asking for help with where she is now. Not much use then, is it?

@HaggardMumofToddler ha! instead of TELLING your daughter what to do which is what my mother did, you'd be better off telling your daughter to listen to her own voice, identify what it is that she wants to do, identify what it is that makes her feel good, content, at peace.

Telling her x,y,z is exactly what my mother did and I had committed that most heinous of crimes on mumsnet and had children with an arsehole.

I 100% agree with the OP. It's depressing reading some of the stories on here and what's even more depressing is when women stay with these arseholes because any man is better than no man at all, no matter how awful they are.

A woman is not less worthy of sympathy or support because it took her 10 years and three kids to realise she's being abused. Threads like this imply she is.

No, they don't.

It's about making choices at the beginning not 10 years into the realisation.

@TheYearOfTheDog 'for me it was less of a choice and more he just took me over and that felt familiar. I couldn't fight it.' I think lots of us can identify with this feeling. It's such a shame that women can't begin to think about having children in their 40s, by which point lots of things like this have come to the surface and been questioned.

@53rdWay Yes, but this is a separate thread on it, not a thread trying to help anyone.