Letters to the Editor
Bollinl
Published Letters: 17 Editor's Choice: 5
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I think I'd wait . . .
[Read the article: If he really loved me, wouldn't he beg me to go with him?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]to make any firm decisions about what the BF is up to here. I was 6 months pregnant with child #2 in a very solid marriage when my husband interviewed in a city almost 4 hours drive away. The job was so much better than what he had that he really felt he needed to look into it. He was offered the position, accepted--and it truly wasn't until he was in the process of resigning from the job he was in that he processed what it would mean to leave me and our children. Our plan wasn't permanent separation, it was a complex multi-year maneuver associated with significant uncertainty--but my point is this: I'd already looked on-line at housing, schools, places for me to work. I'd already begun steeling myself to raising our children alone for at least a year or two, including the difficult first year of a baby. (We had talked--and perhaps that's not what's gone on with the LW's BF.) But for my husband, not until he was halfway across the bridge did he start to look around and consider the cost/benefit picture (He opted to stay with the local job and used the offer to leverage a better situation, thankfully). I've talked to other women with similar stories. Not to generalize--there are men who plan, I'm sure--but there are also men who wait to start planning until they know more about their options. If he's really leaving for the job, and he really hasn't asked the LW how their relationship will be sustained, then of course, he's already made the decision and she'll have to let him go. But wait until he's gotten the offer and accepted it before deciding what he's doing. I'd bet that's what he's doing.
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Maybe an insurance policy instead . . .
[Read the article: Roe for men?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I am conflicted about this issue; I can understand a man feeling forced into a situation over which he has no control, and we are a society that likes to imagine we have control over our own bodies, our own lives. It's an illusory control, and quite likely none of the women involved feel they have control over their bodies and lives, but I certainly sympathize with wanting to feel that control.
Certainly if women have control over their bodies during pregnancy (a big "if," and only the case with a "normal", uncomplicated pregnancy), control over their lives is pretty much eliminated once the baby is born with its own agenda. Any responsible parenting she "chooses" will mean giving over a rather startling amount of control to the needs of the child.
So, men imagine women have choices, and that choices = control. To some extent, that's true--if a woman opts out of a pregnancy, she has controlled her body (again, assuming a normal, safe, legal abortion). Anything that means carrying the child means completely losing that control, once she's a parent if not sooner.
So, what if we gave men the "right" this group suggests they want, provided they carry an insurance policy that would step in to provide the child support (based on income as now, so as to eliminate concerns that this solution might mean a jackpot for the mom) if they signed away the responsibility to do so themselves? So, you carry this insurance, you can opt out if you wish. (Of course, like with auto insurance, I'd imagine your rates go up in a major way, so you probably don't get more than one "accident" of this sort.) No insurance policy--then you're stuck paying the support yourself. You have to be a responsible human being at multiple points in the transaction: you want no kid, you make sure that you use birth control or that you've had a conversation with a woman and you feel you can trust the answers you've been given. If that b.c. fails, you've got a back-up plan: the insurance policy. Plan B for men. Everyone wins. Guys get more choice and more control; children get the support to which they're entitled. If he signs away parental rights, the mom gets the $ but doesn't have to mess with the guy himself--but she also doesn't have to do the whole thing solo, at least financially speaking. Choices, control.
But not a free ride. That's what worries me about the option as the men's right group presents it. Lots of folks like a free ride. That doesn't mean, as responsible human beings, any of us really get that free ride.