Letters to the Editor
alarajrogers
Published Letters: 447 Editor's Choice: 87
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This is why...
[Read the article: Back-to-work blues for moms]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]...I started my own business after having my first baby.
Now, if I do choose to go back to the rat race when I'm done reproducing, I'll have years on my resume as a project manager, data analyst and maybe some certs I didn't have time to get when I wasn't working for myself. Meanwhile, I work from home in my pajamas with my baby breastfeeding on my lap. Aside from the crappiness of the health insurance, there's absolutely no downside to this.
This technique works for men, too. My husband got hired for a year after his own business folded; after totally burning out working for people who made mistake after mistake, now he works with me. Admittedly this makes our financial position less secure than if one of us had an outside job, but on the other hand, we're both home with the kids without taking any hit to our resumes.
You can't expect business to look out for you -- their focus is and always has to be the bottom line. You've got to figure out how to make your life situation work for you.
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I feel sorry for men, I do.
[Read the article: In the battle over choice, what about dads?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I'm serious. It would be horrible to feel in your heart that you had a baby, and have someone kill that baby. Men who are pro-life, or even who are pro-choice but feel a strong attachment to their own fetus, are in a very painful position. But until children can be gestated outside of a woman's body, it's the only position possible.
The argument that women can abort, but men cannot get out of having to make child support payments, is totally spurious. Yes, a woman *can* abort for financial reasons, but if she carried the child to term *she* is responsible for child support as much as the father is. Perhaps any woman who would have aborted a child for financial reasons might change her mind if the man a. pays for all of her medical care b. takes custody of the child when it is born and bears all of the emotional and time-related costs of child care, and all she is responsible for is whatever fraction of her income would be reasonable for child support. Okay, most women wouldn't go for that, but the point is, for women it's *not* usually a financial decision... because if it was, throwing money at the issue would help. It's a decision based on their physical bodies and what they want those bodies to be doing, for the next nine months and afterward, and if a child *is* born neither parent can be absolved financially unless they both agree to give it up for adoption, terminating their parental rights.
The reason it is morally acceptable to terminate a pregnancy is not that babies are a financial hardship. If that were the case infanticide would be legal. The reason it is morally acceptable is that a pregnancy is an imposition on a human body, and *only* the person whose body is so imposed on has the right to decide whether she will choose to bear that imposition or not. Once the child is born the parents' rights and responsibilities are exactly equal.
And there is a way for a man to take control of his reproduction. It's called a "condom", and for most people it's very reliable.