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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Men pretending they don't know how babies are made

29 replies

CoalTit · 03/07/2025 23:23

I met a clever, cultivated, caring man who is very open about wanting a relationship and is marvellous in bed. He has adult sons who he says are very pleased that he's Met Someone.
But he told me the other day how the youngest was conceived after only a week of sex and how the mother was just after a baby.
I'm getting old and outspoken, although I try very hard to be kind and tactful. I said: "Didn't you use condoms?" And he said, with a face of innocent surprise: "But it had only been a week!"
I said: "But you know how babies are made, don't you," and went on to tell him about my father getting angry with my mother for getting pregnant again after they'd finally got the all-important boy, and my mother telling the resulting child this after dad died.
New boyfriend thought that was very cruel of my mother, and we said nothing more about men acting as if they don't know how babies are made. But it's been bothering me. I looked for that Gabrielle Blair essay about how men are fertile all month long and so on, but it's behind a paywall now.
I suppose there is a lot of coyness and outright lying from both sexes about wanting children, and I'm postmenopausal, so too old to be personally affected by it now, but it still,
AIBU to be furious about this willful blindness?

OP posts:
GoAwayNaughtyPigeon · 04/07/2025 13:04

Anyone who is stupid enough to think that conception won't apply to them, or "it'll be fine this one time" or whatever similar in the 21st century do my head in tbh. Assuming they've had sex education and haven't been living under a rock. But you see it in both men and women - I mean if you want to have a baby go for it, but don't knowingly have unprotected sex and then act shocked when you conceive and say it was an "accident"! Its not really an accident if you had sex while not on BC, is it?! 😂

(Not talking about people who ARE on BC and get unlucky obviously)

CoalTit · 05/07/2025 07:15

User1786 · 04/07/2025 07:59

Was he saying he still didn’t know or that he didn’t know back when he was young? Many young men and women seem rather unclear on this. “We only did it once” or “he pulled out so how can I be pregnant” so I don’t think it’s a man issue at that age.

He was in his 40s at the time, so he was old enough to know better

OP posts:
CoalTit · 05/07/2025 07:17

Dinosweetpea · 04/07/2025 08:34

I've never met a man who doesn't understand how babies are made and that it can only take one time of unprotected sex. He's an idiot.

The thing is, there are loads of men who act as if they don't know how babies are made, even though they know the facts.

OP posts:
CoalTit · 05/07/2025 07:23

MiloMinderbinder925 · 04/07/2025 12:22

It's a weird kind of cognitive dissonance. You often get men complaining that they never wanted children but they didn't get a vasectomy or use condoms.

Yes, that's what bothers me.
This man was and still is delighted with the resulting child, but I met a man last year who said he'd pressured women into getting abortions after getting them pregnant.
And he wanted to go out with me! By comparison with that man, this one is a genius.

OP posts:
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