The hypocrisy of our society dumbfounds me. A serial murderer is afforded more rights than those of an adulterer. Our society is failing. We must stop kidding ourselves. We do not live in a free society. Freedom requires accountability and responsibility. The inconsistency of our law is appalling.<P>I am an adulterer. I failed my marriage. I failed myself. One inebriated evening spawned a child with an OW that should never have happened. Almost three years after this mistake the OW seeks financial support after communicating in writing the opposite. <P>What tools do men have to maintain freedom through accountability and responsibility? <P>Women are guaranteed the right of choice. Roe vs. Wade enables them to have children, to not have children, to offer children for adoption, to not offer children for adoption, to decide without the consent of the man. <P>I made a series of mistakes that our law prevents me from being truly accountable and responsible. Responsibility is more than writing a check. Responsibility is selfless decision making. Until we recognize there is more to this issue than identifying where support will come from in light of many inconsistencies of argument we are not free and I'd rather be on death row. Until we enable through law and the civic process equality of decision-making in this circumstance, marriages effected by this problem are not likely to survive. There is not a 20-55% solution that equally addresses the issue.<P><BR>

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Raskolnikov:<BR><B> One inebriated evening spawned a child with an OW that should never have happened. Almost three years after this mistake the OW seeks financial support after communicating in writing the opposite. <P>What tools do men have to maintain freedom through accountability and responsibility? <BR></B><HR></BLOCKQUOTE><P>I think the law should be changed. Men can't compel women to carry children they don't won't, take the children from them, then make them pay for them for the rest of their lives. Why should women be given that RIGHT and protection? <P>I think women should have the responsibility of informing the father of the pregnancy during the first trimester so that a MUTUAL decision can be made as to whether or not the child should be born, and discuss adoption option. If the father does not agree to be a father, I think he should have the option of waiving his parental rights. Should the woman still want to give birth, it is with the legal acknowledgement that she is on her own. I think a lot of this crap would be cut out if there were some acknowledgement of the man's rights. <P>This is a child protective measure. If a child can have two people who agree on having it, supporting it, and loving it, it has a much better shot in life and less chance of growing up as a pawn in a selfish person's game.

What tools do men have?<BR> <BR>Zippers and condoms come to mind...<BR>

Men can keep it in their pants.....

Bam! He's down for the count!<BR>

I am not surprised this is the response from the peanut gallery. These comments only reinforce the division between the tools available between man and woman. <P>The fact that man legally is limited in the decision making process … to adopt or not to adopt … to abort … or not to abort … is causally ignored by the posters and mocked. The zipper and the condom do not bring equality to the equation.<P>These tools only illustrate that man has two options: to bed or not to bed. Conversely, woman has any option she wishes to employ. And, this option may not be in the best interest of the offspring. In my situation, I want nothing to do with either, but pray with all my heart that she'd place the child for adoption. Only adoption will provide two loving parents.<P>I was silly to believe posting on this board would generate any real conversation. <BR>

Fear not! I couldn't figure out at first what you were trying to get at. I thought the first two replies were rather judgemental...you'll get that sometimes, though.<P>As far as your topic goes, it's too bad that, regardless of whether a child is concieved inside or outside of marriage, the father is seen as the secondary caregiver, and has almost no input in legal & custody matters. Ask any man who's been divorced. It's automatically assumed that the woman will be a better parent, and there isn't much a man can do about it.

I understand the point you are trying to make, and I agree.<P>I don't think that birth control prevention should just be considered something where men are the only ones responsible for. Remember that for females, there are female condoms, birth control pills, iud's, diaphrams...<P>I am appalled by the fact that when a MM impregnates the OW, that the betrayed spouse's income is also factored into the support that OW and OC will receive.<P>I am not in this situation but just knowing this, pisses me off.

I understand your point too, but let me ask you, what <I>rights</I> under the law do you think a man should have given the circumstances? I mean, being that the female is the one whose body the unborn child inhabits, what <I>rights</I> can the government guarantee to the male? Certainly you're not suggesting that the gov't be given the <I>power</I> to force the female to abort if the male wishes it? Have fun trying to convince a Republican majority senate to pass that one! Or are you saying that if the female decides to carry the child to term against the male's wishes, he can rightfully <I>forfeit</I> all parental rights henceforth if he so chooses?<P>Right or wrong, it's a simple matter of biology that we're dealing with here. And we all know how it works. Bottom line is, you men already know what the consequences and outcome <I>can</I> be if you bed a woman. If you go ahead and proceed, unfortunately you open yourself up to all kinds of things that may seem <I>unfair</I>, but you knew this beforehand. (Or did you forget what you learned in freshman health class?)<P>Is it fair? No. But lots of things in life aren't fair.

I sense that men are being slammed in this Post.<P>What about the OW? She knew what the consequences were...<P>There definitely are NO winners in persons who are involved in such an unfortunate situation.

Ever heard of condoms? <P>And an interesting comparison, serial killers and adulters...curious enough emotional death and physical death do not have the same punishments either.

I agree with new woman. If you don't want to get a woman pregnant then don't get drunk and have sex with her. You did that! You are responsible for the child that resulted just as much as her. And she is the one who carries the child in her body. Thats biology. Can you imagine any man out there who impregnates a woman being able to say hey! I dont want any rights to it! Handle it yourself! Where would this lead? Look guy. You got drunk and you had sex. You are responsible. You were and idiot and so was the OW. But now theres a kid that you both have to support. And its not disposable. A condom would have been.<P>Del

Good news! There is an organization which is lobbying for equal rights for men in "parental control". They are located at:<BR> <A HREF="http://www.mens-rights.org/" TARGET=_blank>http://www.mens-rights.org/</A> <P>Let's wish them luck and support their efforts!

Perhaps the reason why you have so many outraged responses from what you are calling "the peanut gallery" is because of the manner in which you phrased it!<P>I will apologize in advance because I can tell you I won't be very sympethetic to you...just chalk me up to being a peanut in that gallery you spoke of. This subject really strikes a cord with me.<P><BR>One inebriated evening spawned a child with an OW that should never have happened.<P>Spawned??? You make it sound as if this child is of the devil himself. How awful that sounds! <P>I'd rather be on death row.<P>Is this truly how you feel because you fathered a child? How sad....for the child.<P>This option may not be in the best interest of the offspring.<P>Offspring??? This child was not born among a litter of pups. <P>As far as informing the father within the first trimester...I do agree. The father has every right to know of the pregnancy as soon as it is discovered. But not for reasons of letting the father off the hook by saying "I don't think I am ready for this right now. You are on you own with this one". <P>A baby is not some old T-shirt you left at her house and you want the option of getting back or letting her keep it.<P>What tools do men have to maintain freedom through accountability and responsibility? <P>What exactly did you mean by this???<P>Freedom from what or to do what???<P>As far as showing accountability or responsibility, I don't think you have shown that yet. Correct me if I am wrong, but you are the one who said "I want nothing to do with it".<P>I believe every child has the right to be born. If the mother does not want the baby but the father does...he should get to keep the baby. If neither wants the baby, then adoption is a good choice. <P>I'm curious Ras...Why did you say <BR>"but pray with all my heart that she'd place the child for adoption. Only adoption will provide two loving parents".<P>Are you just trying to get out paying child support??? A child can be overflowing with love from just the mother if she is the only one around. Granted it would be better to have two loving parents but that is not always possible as you have just displayed. Matter of fact it is probably better for this child that you stay away if you loath the baby so.<P>I hope you change your mind about this baby and decide to be a part of that childs life. Children deserve that much.<P>Hmmmmm....I wonder who would be asking this question if Raskolnikov's parents had said "Well gee...I don't feel like being a parent just yet...I think I'll just get an abortion".<P>

Popeye,<P>I support mens rights to have equal opportunity as far as time off work, custody of a child...etc...etc.<P>But I think the rights in question on this thread is "if I don't want to be a parent, you can't make". <P>My response is the same for men and women alike as far as conception is concerned...<BR>You threw the stone that shattered the window in your house, it is your responsibily to deal with it. <P>

The woman is not off scot free if she decides to have an abortion. She gets to go to the clinic by herself (usually without the guy who is equally at fault), gets to spread her legs for some stranger, and have this stranger rip this life from her and live with that memory the rest of her life. Sound like fun? <P>If she decides to have the baby, she gets to carry it for nine months (at the very least) and put her life at risk to bring it to term. In this day and age, maybe people forget that bringing a child to term can be a life-threatening undertaking. <P>And you (the man) are out a few bucks. Poor you.<P>As quoted in the movie "Parenthood"--"any b**-reaming *sshole can be a parent, but not every man can be a father"<P>Popeye,<BR>when men start providing the majority of childcare (and more than just a paycheck), they will receive more consideration in custody. There is no other protection for women who have sacrificed career goals in order to care for children. In my experience, even women who work outside the home still do the majority of childcare and household work. Something their husbands "expect" till a divorce happens, then they get all irritated when things don't work out their way in court. <p>[This message has been edited by TheStudent (edited May 07, 2000).]

I can see your point. I do a lot of work with NCP's and hear this constantly. In a perfect world, people would talk rationally and make informed decisions about having children. But it is not a perfect world.<P>The fact remains that you made a decision, albeit a bad one, that will effect the rest of your life. It's called being an adult.<P>No one forced you to get drunk. No one forced you to have sex. Now you are forced to pay the consequences of your actions.<P>In my case, my wife decided to get pregnant twice without my knowledge. When she told me, she said "Oh, I must have missed a pill."<P>Well, she decided to leave. I got custody. So now the two kids that she lied and cheated to have, she is relegated to a visitor in their lives. Her chioce to leave. Behavior has consequences.<P>I repeat, it's called being an adult.

I can hardly believe it. This old song again. <P>Without even touching on the rights of innocent children, it’s too easy to figure this one out.<P>Gentlemen (<I>and</I> ladies), <B>you know </B><BR>1.) how babies are made<BR>2.) that in our society, women are recognised as, by default, the most likely custodial parent (mama’s “baby”, daddy’s “maybe”, eh?) She will have to pay for the life of any children she makes with the sacrifice, to a great extent, of her day-to-day life, her money, her love life, her sex life, and more (She could give the child up for adoption or abort it, but don’t fool yourself that these choices are anything less than life-altering.)<BR>3.) that if paternity is determined, the father will be ordered to sacrifice money - to pay support.<P><I>If you don’t like those facts, don’t make babies.</I> That means: do not have sex, within or without marriage, unless <B>you</B> have made sure pregnancy is not simply unlikely but impossible, or as close to that as you can arrange. The more seriously you believe a baby will mess up your plans, goals, and dreams, the more aggressive you will be about preventing pregnancy. Even if all women actually diligently used birth control, a man is not relieved of one speck of the responsibility for protecting himself. You cannot risk trusting someone else with your future. (This is especially to be considered if that someone has already proved that deceit, irresponsibility, and manipulation are most likely quite acceptable in their philosophy, as seems usually to be the case with people (spouse or lover) who get involved in affairs where one of the participants is married.)<P>Whoever doesn’t want to deal with pregnancies is the one who should prevent them. If you (man or woman) have sex without making sure there will be no babies, you are, ipso facto, indicating acceptance of both a pregnancy and all that it may entail. <B>You knew what you were getting into, to say otherwise is utter nonsense.</B> The condom broke? No excuse. The heat of passion blurred your judgment? No excuse. He/she begged you to do it without using anything “just this once”? Nope, no excuse. Drunkenness/alcoholism? Sorry, no excuse. How about the guy who claims he was trapped, or that she lied about contraception, or that it’s not fair that he has to pay child support when he didn’t get any say about whether to abort or give up the child? He got all the chances he needed. He chose, knowing full well how it works, to deposit his sperm into a woman. He was saying loud and clear, “Whatever happens after this is okay with me.” Don’t like that? Whine some more. I got a razor here. You can do us all a favor and use it on your throat. You aren’t looking for justice, you’re looking for an out. You messed up big-time and are shirking your share of the blame. Grow up and take your medicine. Within the framework of this forum, that is consenting adults choosing to engage in sex, there are no acceptible excuses for unwanted pregnancies. You put yourself on the hook and there you get to hang.<P>The bottom line is: creating babies, aborting them, having them, keeping them, giving them away, dumping them into dumpsters, single-parenthood, shattered marriages and maybe even worse – regardless of your feelings about what is morally proper – these are the most serious things that happen in life. They are just too devastating to blithely exonerate adult people when they are acting stupidly, doing precisely what causes them. (Would you hit your boss in the nose and expect no repercussions? Makes about as much sense! If you are a wife and your husband did it, would you deny his responsibility by saying since the boss was mean he asked for it? Maybe the boss <I>was</I> mean. That does not lessen your husband’s responsibility for throwing the punch.) All of these things happen all the time and anyone who thinks they are so special that it won’t happen to them should invite Santa, the tooth fairy, and the Easter bunny to join them at the unicorn races. Booze and cigarettes courtesy of those masters at helping others pull the wool over their own eyes, the tobacco and alcohol industries.<P>Raskolnikov, you say, "Freedom requires accountability and responsibility." Then you rundown the same old tired stuff that men who ditch their kids always do. Not that I'm weak, but I just couldn't help myself. The courts are out of whack. Why should I have to pay for the kid at all, let alone for so-o-o long? It was just a mistake. <BR>I'm surprised you didn't write that old favorite, you know, the one that denies that it costs her anything to provide for your child, "She's not getting any of my money!" Hey, all you are doing is reimbursing her (or the state if she's on assistance) for part of what your child costs.<P>"What tools do men have to maintain freedom through accountability and responsibility?", you ask. You miss the point, man!! Responsibility and accountability <I>are</I> the tools!!!<P>Women are not "guaranteed the right of choice" so much as they are guaranteed that they have to make one. Hey! Just like <I>you</I> made one when you had sex with her!<P>And I'm curious... You say, "our law prevents me from being truly accountable and responsible". That sounds just terrible! Please tell us, just what is the law preventing you from doing? What is this proper and decent thing the law won't let you do... for this kid you want nothing to do with...especially not to support financially...?<P>Before anyone starts in on how I don’t understand, let me say this:<BR>My spouse always relied upon the women he was with (many, many women including two other wives and who knows how many when he wasn’t married) for birth control. He ended up with two babies he didn’t want, by two women. Then he got a vasectomy. Neither child should have happened, but at least there wasn’t a third. I do believe that the second child was deliberately conceived by the mother. I do not believe that my husband was innocent in this. He was stupid. He is court ordered to pay child support, and we both pay it. Yes, <B>I</B> pay it with my earnings, too, not just through the loss of his. <BR>On the otherside of it, the conception of the first child was not a deliberate act, but the result of a foolish woman desperately in love with him going along with his desire to have sex even without protection, just once, since she was moving out of state (to get away from his promiscuity) and they wouldn’t see one another again. I found out about a month after moving that I was pregnant. (Yes, I am the mother of his first out-of-wedlock child. He was not married any of the time I was seeing him.) We went back and forth about what we were going to do. The upshot was that I was on my own. He got married to wife number one about 6 months after our daughter was born. And we had virtually no contact for about 4 years. I never asked for child support.<P>Obviously, there is a lot more to my story, but this isn’t the time. I am only illustrating that I understand the anger of having to do without so that this other mom can sit on her behind, living on my money. There is no excuse for her. And I understand being a woman in love left to raise a child alone. There is no excuse for me, either. And there is no excuse for him. We all pay for the decisions we made. And some of us get to pay because our choice is to stay with some one else who played. We all knew the job was dangerous when we took it. It’s the way it is. And it's the way it ought to be.<BR><p>[This message has been edited by dragantraces (edited May 08, 2000).]

dragantraces!!!!!!!<P>YOU GO GIRL!!!!<BR>Right on the Money!!!!<BR>

dragantraces,<P>All of what you said is true, it IS both partner's fault. There are no excuses. The current laws are, "you play, you pay." But that wasn't my point. <P>My point was that children deserve to have responsible parents that want them and men should have the same choices of parenthood that women have.<P>The man's choice stops with deciding whether or not to have unprotected sex. The woman can decide after that whether she wants to carry it, keep it, or give it up for adoption. I just think that men should have those options too. I don't think a court should be able to say that a woman MUST carry a baby that she doesn't want to carry and that the man's rights should be more than hers. But I don't think the woman's rights should be more either. If the man doesn't want to be a father, he should have a legal way of releasing himself of that obligation before the baby is born- the same option the woman has.<P>No responsibility was taken at the time of conception. That doesn't mean it can't be assumed later. Mutually deciding the child's future is certainly a better option than giving more rights to the woman simply because of biology. If unwed couples had to acknowledge the future they were creating for their unborn child in writing (who would have custody, who would be involved, who would pay what,etc), I think they would think more seriously about what they've done and realize the reality of the situation instead of fantasizing that something different would happen. <P>This is CHILD we are talking about. When people can't make these kinds of decisions BEFORE it is born, they are just plain selfish.<P>I am sorry that you have had to live with your situation. It isn't pretty when men walk out on their children, make more chidren than they can afford or want, and just behave like dogs in heat not caring for the consequences. But as you pointed out, BOTH people chose. If you had the option of knowing in the first trimester how financially involved he was going to be, would you have chosen differently? (He can promise to be more present, but can change his mind about that, so I didn't include that here). <P>When you are puffed up with hope that you, your baby, and "your" man are going to be together and live this white picket fence life that he somehow couldn't find with his wife, you have all kinds of hopes for the future. Seeing his commitment on paper, I think, would either solidify your dreams or burst them entirely. And isn't living in reality a better way to decide whether to have children right then with that person, or not?