Anyone intentionally got pregnant with someone they were seeing, when they didn’t know or care if the relationship would last?

[User72000]

I want a baby but I don’t really care about the support of a father. Obviously I would never block him being part of child’s life, but I would happily bring the child up alone, financially and otherwise, with minimal support.

Anyone done this instead of going down sperm donor route?

I realise this won’t be something a lot of people agree with, but I see it as better than sperm donation for lots of reasons and it is better for the child imo

As long as you're ok with the man potentially having 50/50 parental responsibility and the child staying with him a couple of nights every week. Or the man taking the child on holiday with his partner, leaving him or her with his parents when he wants to go out etc etc then yeah, go for it. And don't forget the child potentially choosing them over you.... whether it's to live with him/ spend Christmas Day with him or simply wanting him to pick her up from school / come to sports day etc.

Trapping a man into being a father against his wishes is an awful thing to do

Are you saying you'd:

A) tell a potential new guy that you are looking for a child with no strings attached
Or
B) not tell him your plan and "accidently" fall pregnant?

That's pretty key to any advice anyone on here can provide for you

Flip this around and consider if a man did this to a woman and pretended to wear a condom because he made the decision to have a child... and justified this by saying that the woman doesn't need to be involved in the child's life.

That’s not possible though is it? Women can’t have a child without carrying it, delivering it or having major surgery, risking their lives, experiencing long lasting physical and hormonal changes etc. You can’t reverse the situation.

One the one hand I don’t think it’s ever acceptable to lie about being on contraception. On the other, if a new partner told me he’d had a vasectomy, would I just trust that and think I didn’t need to take any contraception myself? Absolutely never. Unless OP is planning to harvest sperm from used condoms (unwise due to spermicide anyway), anyone who gets her pregnant should be taking precautions to protect against pregnancy (not to mention STDs) if they don’t want a child. If they don’t then they know it’s a possibility, one which they could prevent.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think it’s ethical to plan a pregnancy without telling the other person, it’s dreadful. But you cannot compare it to the other way round, and men have to take responsibility for contraception if they don’t want a child with someone. You cannot trick someone into getting you pregnant if they’re having consensual unprotected sex with you.

I'm unclear, are you suggesting "hey Bob, lets try for a baby!" or "hey Bob, i'm totally on the pill, lets not use condoms" mwahahahaha?

What if he decides to go for shared custody? Are you happy to give over your child half the time? Or conversely to have to admit to your child that there's no Daddy around as you basically lied to concieve them?

If he is rich and of good character and does not need to work and fights it again and again in court he could even get full care of his child.

How would you feel about that?

Sperm donation if you buy from overseas it's still clean and tested just cheaper and no family court to deal with

Massively selfish thing to do. It's not just your life and the "lucky" dads to be, it's yours and his whole family that are also effected.
I know someone who this happened too and whilst he stepped up and is an amazing dad it's not the way he wanted and he had no say in the matter.
Fucking horrible thing to do to a man.

What a vile selfish thing to do.

But I don’t see anything going massively wrong.

If you honestly think this you are delusional.

You're putting your own desires ahead of the interests of the hypothetical child and father. 110% selfish. Consent to sex is not consent to parenthood.

I know of a case where someone did this. It hasn't worked out well. Child was born with alot of additional needs. Dad was furious with the woman. She isn't really able to cope and is miserable-he provides the bare minimum of support and she's very bitter in spite of being the one that engineered the situation.

I think this is madness, but...if he doesn’t take responsibility for contraception and doesn’t ask if she has, then it’s neither deceitful nor selfish.
If he doesn’t want to become a father and asked her if she’s using contraception and she lies and says yes then that’s a different matter.

@deathgrip - I understand your perspective and it's a fair point. Fully aware of what woman go through to carry a child having just done it 7 months ago, but thanks for the reminder. Even now, still feeling the physical side effects of birth and still healing, I still think you can compare the two situations. Because even though, yes, it's physically different to carry a child - the point is you're still being forced into making an awful decision you never consented to make.

My point was that if you LIE about contraception, it's wrong. Quite clearly, no one should ever be deceived by a partner. It's morally wrong.

I only flipped the situation around to ask OP to consider how she would feel if a man did this to her. Because quite clearly she hasn't considered how it might feel to be on the receiving end of unwillingly being a donor. I don't think it's worth debating on whether that's physically possible or not because that's not the point. Assuming she doesn't tell the father, it's wrong to lie to anyone, regardless of whether you expect them to be involved or not.

Get a donor, OP.

-you will know donor and donor's family's medical history
-you won't ever have to fight for birthdays, Christmas, Easter etc
-you won't ever have to consider custody battles
-you won't have a child who decides they want to live with dad instead
-you won't be tricking some poor guy into fatherhood

My friend is expecting her 2nd donor child and is very happy. While it's easier and cheaper to just screw someone and have a baby, it will be the worse decision long term.

Harsh replies on here. Not quite a cross section of society.
Seems it's massively taboo now ??? but a generation back it was almost the done thing. And two generations ago sex meant babies.
Both my beloved, now grown up, children were not quite so accidental on my part.

Of course it's taboo, she's essentially suggesting picking any random guy and choosing to make him a father whether he likes it or not.

@Dragonembroidery
If you lied about being on contraception to the father to conceive them, then you are despicable as well.
HTH.

Setting morals aside for a moment (although I agree it would be wrong to intentionally get pregnant without the man's consent), sperm donation is much safer for you and the unborn child from a health perspective. Sperm donors are screened for STDs and the clinics undertake detailed health checks to establish family medical history etc. If you shack up with a random and use them for their sperm without their consent for all you know they have HIV or a genetic condition that may be passed to your child.

I am a child of this but also lucky.

My mum decided to get pregnant without letting my dad know very early on, when my dad found out he wanted an abortion, my mum refused and I was the result.

34 years later, my dad is my best friend and my mum I don’t talk to, neither do my brother and sister who are my dads step children but talk to him daily and all our kids refer to him as grandad.

So to be fair in the grand scheme of things he did alright, but would I do it? Nope, sorry. I was lucky, you need mutual understanding, love and respect.

Not all women end up with custody. You could be injured giving birth and end up disabled, and he could get granted full custody. You could have terrible post natal depression or puerpal psychosis and end up in psychiatric hospital (it's more common if you've never had mental health problems) and he could end up with baby, or baby could be taken into care. He might get married and the baby end up thinking his new wife is Mum and not you. There are so many ways this could not go to plan.

And it's horribly immoral to boot. Which might not seem a big deal when you are obsessing over being a mum, but down the line that's the shit that eats people up.

I don't agree that it's inherently bad to plan for a baby on your own. As long as you are properly set up for it and are ready for hard work it's a perfectly valid choice to make.

The problem with your plan is the level of deceit it involves. How would this work? I think it is wrong to intentionally set out to get pregnant by someone who believes you are both trying not to (eg if you lie about taking hormonal contraception, poke a hole in a condom, collect the semen from a used condom when he isn't looking etc).

I take the point that anyone who agrees to have sex with you is on some level complicit, because even properly used contraception can fail. But that doesn't change the fact that your idea is deceitful.

Also, what happens when you have this baby? Do you let the dad know it was intentional? Do you even tell him at all? Do you tell your child a lie to explain who/were their dad is? Or do you admit that you tricked him into it and then never even told him they exist? Once you've been so deceitful it seems like every decision after that would just cause even more hurt to everyone involved.

intentionally

Op you need to be clear here. Are you saying

1.Intentionally but covertly
Or
2.Intentionally and openly

1. Horrific idea. You just cannot lie about contraception - this is crossing a line into abuse
2. Two consenting people can have a baby and not be together

You could ruin someone's life.
What a mean thing to do.

If you start enough of a relationship with them to get pregnant then why are you assuming the relationship will be over as soon as you've got what you wanted?

Maybe they will be absolutely heartbroken that you want the baby but not them.

Maybe them having a child already will affect their future relationship chances.

Maybe they have a condition which is passed on genetically but they don't talk about.

SO many reasons to not do this.

So I presume you mean you're going to attempt to get pregnant without his knowledge or consent. That is fucking low. Imagine how you'd feel if it were the other way round and someone you were seeing sabotaged your contraceptive?

Also, are you not concerned about catching an std?