Can we stop talking about men being trapped?

[ForRealCat]

Just from another few threads; we talk about women getting pregnant either intentionally, or accidently and carrying on against the mans wishes and how it "traps" the man. I can see how decades ago this may have been the case, women would get pregnant and any 'decent' man would be expected to step up and marry her. Thus securing a husband and a degree of financial security.

Nowadays I can see why a woman may get pregnant intentionally against her partners wishes, (maybe she wants more kids, feels like se is missing her chance etc), but can we stop talking about "trapping" a man. Very few men nowadays will wed a girl just because she is pregnant, and the financial support he is obliged to provide is to support the child and not the mother.

Very few women find themselves financially better off getting pregnant and claiming child maintenance. So AIBU to think the 'trapped' narrative has had its day.

I've grown to strongly dislike this logic.

If a woman is using contraception her male partner is not an idiot for assuming that they are protected against pregnancy. The majority of contraceptives are 99% effective and so it's a bit strange how many posts there are on MN that a woman is pregnant after a 'contraceptive failure'

There's a tricky grey area here that will never be resolved.
The argument is always "well don't have sex then if you don't want to risk it", but what sort of answer is that?

If BOTH parties do their best with sensible protection (say pill and condom) and the woman still gets pregnant, then should it really be on the man if she chooses to keep it? He took steps and made clear he didn't want that child, so by her keeping it, she IS tying him down. He has no say in whether she keeps it, so should she have a say in whether he stays (at this point)?

There will be both sides to this, I fully understand that.

Men are aware sex leads to pregnancy. If they don't want children, they need to take responsibility for precautions. If they don't take precautions, no one has trapped them. They simply need to pay the tiny fraction of the real cost of raising a child that is legally demanded, while the woman pays the true cost in time, energy, expense, career recession.

Except it is not a grey area. The man took a calculated risk. He now needs to face the consequences.
He could have chosen a partner who is willing to get an abortion in case the contraception fails. Did they have a conversation about the next steps? Or did the man just say I don't want kids? And hope the contraception works? The man has 100% power before doing the deed. Afterwards it is out of his hand.

Also, there are a lot of people who don't know how to use a condom properly for maximum efficiency.

@bifurCAT ,

‘If BOTH parties do their best with sensible protection (say pill and condom) and the woman still gets pregnant, then should it really be on the man if she chooses to keep it? He took steps and made clear he didn't want that child, so by her keeping it, she IS tying him down. He has no say in whether she keeps it, so should she have a say in whether he stays (at this point)?

There will be both sides to this, I fully understand that.’

I think this is spot on.

Those who glibly say ‘if you don’t want to risk having a child, don’t have sex’ are probably past the age of non long term relationships.

I imagine few women would stay in a relationship with a man who refused to have sex, far less respect him for it.

It is an argument that takes us back to the pre pill days, easy to write on a chat forum but entirely unrealistic in real life.

Does that apply to women getting pregnant.

You talk about staying as though that's the only way you're now in a far different situation than you were and tied to this person for life.

I think especially in the earlier years of your adult life, you can have relationships that are okay, but there are some differences that mean you're unsure if they will remain okay. One example I can think of is an Australian friend who fully planned to return to live down under. She was with a guy here and they had a nice relationship, lived together, but their long term plans didn't coincide. At the same time, neither of them were entirely sure they'd give up the relationship and not stay/move to Aus if it made sense in the mid to long term future. So they didn't split up.

Eventually they did move to Aus, but he came back a year later because jobs and things didn't work out and he missed his family and friends. They parted on good terms.

Now there was no baby involved with them BUT if either party had been a bit lapse with contraception (especially on purpose) and it resulted in a baby, I think both parties would feel tied to the other in a way that they couldn't have now moved on to more suited relationships. My friend would have had a young child right now and I really doubt she would have met her current partner as a single parent. She met him in Bali and he's from the other side of Aus to her.

They'd have been trapped together.

Well the only context it happens, and I have seen it happen more than once, is when a woman cons a man into thinking she wants a relationship but as soon as the baby is there, walks away with the child.
She then threatens all kinds of things including abuse claims to withhold contact but get financial support.

I've seen this occur when the woman was actually wanting a relationship with another woman or just wanted to live with her own family whilst maintaining sexual freedom.

Highly manipulation women are not that rare sadly am they do do awful things. But the above scenarios remain the minority.

All these poor men, living under the oppressive expectation that they have a conversation about 'what if this accidentally results in pregnancy' before satisfying their urges. I don't know how they manage, I really don't.

We should never have used it in the first place. Since the dawn of time men have had the choice whether to have sex with women, known that sex may lead to pregnancy and that pregnancy may have consequences for them. They were fully able to risk assess and decide accordingly. If their decisions had consequences in accordance with the conventions of the time, that was always on them.

Well, life isn't perfect is it? Not even for men. Pregnancy is one of the very few areas of life where a man's choices are restricted to a limited and specific window of time, after which he loses control of the decision making. I can see why men struggle with this, because its not what they're used to, but that's the way it is. And if you know this, and you are very invested in a particular outcome, ie not becoming a father, then you have no choice but excercise your control at the only point you have it. I agree with you, men will not see this as viable. But if they dont they need to accept the risk.

I think that there is a lot of feminist virtue signalling on this thread. I don’t believe many of you lived by ‘if a man doesn’t want to risk having a baby, he shouldn’t have sex’. How many of you brought up pregnancy before having sex with a new man throughout your lives? Vanishingly few, I would imagine. And insisting on a condom isn’t the same thing as actually discussing what would happen in the event of pregnancy.

I imagine that most would be having very different thoughts and conversations were their son at university to end up with an unwanted child, despite his gf saying that she didn’t want one until she accidentally fell pregnant.

There is the law, which is absolutely right to make a man pay for his child.

But then there are the ethics around it, which are far more nuanced.

The majority of pregnancies unwanted by men result from their own refusal to take responsibility for their fertility. So the 'problem' could be reduced to a very small number of cases, where somehow despite their wearing a condom a pregnancy occurs. In these cases, what is the alternative that would be 'fair'? A court order to force a termination? A child growing up without financial support from their father at the tax payers expense? And how would it be policed? How would we be able to reliably identify those men who took all necessary precautions and were still deceived into impregnating a woman from the chancers who'd claim to be part of that group?

I can only speak for myself, but as a young woman, prior to wanting children, the risk of pregnancy was a consideration every time I had sex. You're right, I never 'brought that up' with men because I saw it back then, which was somewhere between the era of the shot gun marriage and the expectations of men we now enforce, as something that would be my problem. I've had the conversation with my DSs. They, like me back in the day, accept having sex as something that comes with an unavoidable level of risk.

Well that's a very one sided take where only a woman is expected to shoulder the consequences of biology.
If both parties are using contraception then the woman has no choice, no say, but to deal with the pregnancy she didn't want, is that 'fair'? No, but it's biology, and that's why she has to then make the very difficult choice between abortion and having a child. It's not 'fair' she has to go through either of those things, they both used protection but shes the only one dealing with the physical outcome and the toll on her body. Men also have to accept that this is how biology works and why it is then her choice, however just like it doesn't absolve her of responsibility, it doesn't absolve him either.

But that's just how biology works though. It isn't like the guy can press a switch that means he can shoulder that burden instead. I suppose you mean that pregnancy is the cost of being a woman, and CM (at the very least) is the cost of being a man. So both parties have something unfair to deal with should the sex result in a pregnancy.

I've had an abortion and I've had both planned and unplanned pregnancies I happily carried to term. I suppose my empathy for men comes from the fact that I never felt like I HAD to prepare for parenthood (again) just because I was pregnant. I felt in control of what happened next. I mean, sure, it would have probably caused some ruptions if I decided to abort our planned children, but I never felt trapped into continuing the pregnancy even though their could be consequences. We could split up for instance.

So whilst I vigorously avoided unplanned pregnancy, especially in times of instability, I didn't fear it. It didn't feel like conception would mean a total loss of control over the outcome. And that's what it is for men. That's scary.

If men acted on that fear and declined vaginal sex until they were sure they wanted (more) kids with that person, I wonder where we would be. I think this site would be full of threads of women who feel very insecure that their partner won't have sex with them because they so fear being "trapped" with a(nother) baby.

Ok but if someone gets pregnant on purpose against the wishes of their partner, ie they’ve had a conversation about having DC and partner has said he doesn’t want them but she goes ahead anyway…can she then complain about a lack of support/maintenance/involvement etc? Isn’t that essentially the issue, the man becomes “trapped” because he is expected to do all that having expressly said no to having DC?

Obviously if I’m missing the point ignore me 😂

Men are aware sex leads to pregnancy. If they don't want children, they need to take responsibility for precautions.

This is also true of women, perhaps even more so, since they are the ones who will have to carry and give birth to the child and bear the brunt of its upbringing. Or go through a termination.

The thinking is that even if she did adhere to contraception, it could fail. So his mistake was not only trusting her to take it, but relying on its efficiency.

How many of you brought up pregnancy before having sex with a new man throughout your lives? Vanishingly few, I would imagine.

Why is it the woman's job to raise it? The woman knows her options. As a man, he doesn't have options once the pregnancy exists, so the onus is on him to ask the questions to establish whether he is comfortable with the risk based on her answers.

In my youth I had guys trying to sleep with me without a condom. They hadn't asked whether or not I was on contraception, they either assumed I was, or didn't care. If they were bothered about being "trapped" they had a funny way of showing it.

I struggle to understand why men are getting such a beating for being so irresponsible having unprotected sex (which os fair enough) but don't seem to judge women as irresponsible who end up having an abortion being they themselves were irresponsible.

Due to biology, women have a choice, men don't, but when it comes to criticising the lack of responsibility, it's not just a male problem.

Also I agree with posters who ask how women in long term relationships would react if their partners refused to have penetrative sex until they are passed the menopause in case they are lying about using contraception and wanting a baby! Doesn't make much for a healthy relationship!

It's the responsibility of both parties. I think a lot of men assume a woman wouldn't want to keep a baby that she had conceived with a near stranger unless it wasn't really unplanned. And to be honest I do assume that people who aren't in serious relationships are at least 50/50 on whether to keep the pregnancy. I think they think "we barely know each other, of course she would have an abortion if she accidentally conceived now, it would be madness not to".

The abortion happens to the woman so it's thought to be her solely on her. Her lapse of judgement is her consequence to deal with. She doesn't need judging for essentially harming herself

My point was originally around the fact that decades ago women might get pregnant and it was seen as a meal ticket. The man would often be expected to "do the right thing" and marry her. A woman would therefore trap a man into marriage and supporting her before he had made up his mind and he would be responsible for supporting the children and HER.

Now a woman might fall pregnant, accidentally or intentionally, but due to societal expectations he no longer supports HER. He will have to pay towards the children and have a family he didn't want. But the idea that a woman having a baby to provide her with a level of financial security is outdated. Yet so often when we hear of a woman getting pregnant people fall back on that narrative.

He maybe stuck with a baby he didnt want- but he is responsible for that creation. He isn't however trapped in the relationship with the mother, and the mother is invariably financially worse off despite his contributions.

I've actually been astounded on this thread how many people seem to insist that's how their friends or SIL got pregnant, rather than it being a surprise or and accident. There is no way these women are saying outright they tricked their husbands or partners; yet family members are still painting them as trapping their partners

The abortion happens to the woman so it's thought to be her solely on her. Her lapse of judgement is her consequence to deal with. She doesn't need judging for essentially harming herself

But still judged for being irresponsible with protection.

I personally don't judge either sex for mishaps in protection, but I can't see how one can be whilst the other is excused.