It is love, not sperm, that makes a great dad.
In a medium-sized city in the Midwest, there’s a boy who will turn 13 next month. He lives with his parents, who were wed three months before he was born. He is tall, with dirty blonde hair and blue eyes. His name is Alastair*, and he may – or may not – be my son. More on that in a moment.
No woman ever wonders if she’s a mother or not. (Egg donors are one possible exception.) But as the Casey Anthony trial vividly reminded us, it’s possible for a woman to be unsure about the identity of her baby’s father. And even more possible for a man to be entirely unaware that he’s a father – or to be unaware that the child he thinks is his is biologically another man’s.
♦◊♦
Do you have any kids?
No. Not that I know of, anyway.
That clichéd exchange has become a standard part of first-date conversation. When I was single, I got that question and gave that answer many times. I eventually stopped saying it, not because I had received hard evidence about my reproductive status, but because a woman I was dating called me out on it. “God”, she said, “you guys always say that. It’s such an obvious and cheesy way to show off that you’ve slept around. You think you’re being sly, but it’s just juvenile.”
That cured me of the habit, but to judge from what I hear from my friends, there are plenty of men of all ages still offering that same reply. And while for some it may indeed be a not-so-subtle way of hinting at a promiscuous past, for others it may reflect a sincere acknowledgment of the very real possibility that they’ve fathered a child. In my case, I have very real grounds for uncertainty.
♦◊♦
Fourteen autumns ago, I was casually dating a woman I’ll call Jill*. We had unprotected intercourse a handful of times in late October and early November. And just before Thanksgiving, Jill discovered she was pregnant.
She didn’t tell me until after New Year’s Day. While Jill and I had been in a “friends with benefits” arrangement, she’d also been growing more serious about another man, Ted.* She’d first slept with him for the first time two nights before she had last slept with me. It was that week that Jill got pregnant, and as she would later tell me, there was no way to know for sure which one of us was the father.
But there was no question which one of us was a better bet as a romantic partner. Jill had broken things off with me as soon as she and Ted had decided on an exclusive relationship (just before she found out she was pregnant.) Ted was several years older than I was, professionally and emotionally stable, and clearly falling in love with Jill. I was drinking, partying, with some time to go before I’d hit my rock bottom. Jill wanted to be a mom. Ted wanted to be a dad. I wasn’t sure what I wanted. In her mind, these facts settled it: the baby was Ted’s. Or it needed to be Ted’s.
They got engaged at Christmas, and were married in May 1998. Their son was born in August, and a few months later, the new little family moved out of state. I haven’t seen her, or Ted, or Alastair in over a decade. Except for a half-dozen short emails in the past few years, Jill and I have had no contact.
Jill never told Ted that she’d been sleeping with someone else the week their son was conceived. Ted and I were both about the same height with the same fair skin and the same pale blue eyes; she knew that without a DNA test, there’d be no sure way to know which one of us was the biological father. But there was a sure way to know which one of us was “dad material”, and which one of us wasn’t. Jill was clear that she preferred everlasting uncertainty to the possibility of discovering that her Ted was not her son’s father. As the one who carried Alastair in her womb, it was her choice to make.
I made a promise to Jill before Alastair was born that I’d never ask for a paternity test, nor reveal to Ted the possibility that I might be the biological father of his son. I wasn’t in love with Jill and wasn’t ready to be a parent: Ted was both of those things. From what little I hear, he’s been a great husband and a doting father all these years. He and Jill have had two more sons together. With all that in mind, it would be an act of destructive narcissism on my part to ever break my promise and barge back into Jill’s life.
I won’t lie and say I don’t wonder sometimes about this boy who will become a teen next month. But I’ve wondered far less since becoming a father to my own daughter in 2009. My role in Heloise’s conception was brief (but, um, not that brief); my roles as a devoted husband to her mother and a doting papa to her are my most treasured and important tasks. If I were to discover that I was not my daughter’s biological dad, I’d be hurt by my wife’s deception – but Heloise would be no less my daughter. (I have no reason to suspect otherwise, of course.) Fathering has everything to do with being present after conception and after birth, and very little with providing the sperm to fertilize an egg. Regardless of what a paternity test would reveal, I am still my daughter’s dad – and in every meaningful sense, Ted is Alastair’s.
♦◊♦
I only met this boy who might be my son once, when he was just eight weeks old. Ted and Jill were getting ready to move to the Midwest, and she and I met for coffee so that we could say goodbye. For a host of reasons I’m not sure I fully understand, she wanted me to meet Alastair, and I was eager to see him. I rocked him in my arms and smelled his baby smell. I studied his blue eyes and fine hair. Jill and I sipped our lattés and chatted; Alastair fell asleep in his baby carrier. After an hour, his mama kissed me on the cheek and I pressed my lips against his forehead. I said goodbye to my friend and her son and walked away with tears in my eyes. I’ve never seen so much as a photograph of Alastair since.
The specifics of human reproduction mean that men may have children of whose existence they are unaware, and they may unwittingly raise as their own children conceived with another man’s sperm. But women have it harder, and not only in terms of pregnancy, labor, and delivery. It is Jill, not I, who carries the burden of an unresolved question through her relationship with her husband and her first-born son. Perhaps that weight has become so light that she’s forgotten it altogether. I hope so.
I may or may not be Alastair’s biological father. I may or may not have other children “out there.” These uncertainties that I know many men share are part of the cost of a habit of unprotected heterosexual intercourse. But the solution to the problem isn’t suspicion or frantic demands for paternity tests, Jerry Springer style. The solution isn’t even the rigorous use of contraception (though that’s a very good idea.)
The solution is to remember that it is love, not sperm, that makes a great dad.
About Hugo Schwyzer
Vocalyze
There seems to be a gaping hole in this story and the comments. Maybe Jill did tell Ted about her relationship with Hugh. Maybe Ted is okay with it. Maybe Ted loves his son and doesn’t care if he’s biologically related. People adopt children all the time and love them just as much as biological children.
Kow a couple who are raising their grandchild. Their son and his wife lost custody because of drug use. There is a good chance that their granddaughter was fathered by a different man. Their son and their daughter in law were living very screwed up lives during the time she was conceived, and the daughter in law was sleeping around. The granddaughter looks nothing like her father.
You know what? My friends don’t care. She’s their granddaughter. They love her. She needed their help and they gave it by taking custody and raising her and her brother even though they were in their 60′s at the time. Their son, who is off drugs now and has cleaned up his act, has a positive relationship now with both his daughter and his son.
Love for children is way beyond genetics.
This is horrifying.
Cuckolding is the worst thing that can happen to a man. If my son would have the genes of another man my life would end. This is much worse than a rape and is accepted unpunished by the justice system. Rape can last for several minutes but this is years and years of deceit and lies. I despise all the men and women supporting \ understanding this. I am also really starting to despise the culture in which we live in. My stomach is turning from the comments and from Jill and Hugo. You must be held accountable, many years ago people were punished for this, today Jill and Hugo are applauded to deceiving a man.
I hate you Hugo, I hate Jill and all of people giving these sympathetic comments. Men have become a second grade humans. We are told to accept exploitation by women “for the sake of the child”. The hell with this, let this culture burn and die.
Men should act and be accepted based on what we really are, not what women want us to be. Even if it is uncomfortable to them. If a child is not my biological child than I am used and cheated to give my love and power to my real child. Reading the comments by the women here I truly hope that someday somehow you will be punished.
Ted, (in the remote possibility you are reading this), I which I could have help you and let you know the lies they told you. I hope the best for you and a revenge on the people who raped you.
I disagree. I don’t think the moment of conception is really that big of a deal for a dude. A kid isn’t physically as parasitic to a man as it is by nature to the mother for a short while. Relationships to the younger generation matter. But I agree with the writer, whether a kid is biological has the least amount to do with anything. It’s the relationship you make with your actions that matters.
Being told lies and stuff would be an issue between the parents and thought-to-be-parents. The article is only concerned with the connection between dad and thought-to-be-child.
Please don’t ever compare ANYTHING to rape unless you’ve personally experienced being a sexual assault victim. Unlike what you’ve said, the effects of being a rape victim DO last with lifetime, from permanent physical damage to the lifelong emotional and psychological damage of enduring such inhuman treatment. Please look a little further into this website for ways to become an ally against violence on women rather than banally throw around the R word because your masculinity is threatened by the concept of raising a non-biological child. I’m not in favor of non-consent (and that’s what it seems to me is happening here with cuckolding) but it is in no way comparable to being a rape victim. If you look at the horrible things that happen to women, LGBT persons, and children in the name of preserving masculinity globally, and your concern is cheating, check your privileges and feel blessed.
“your masculinity is threatened by the concept of raising a non-biological child.”
My god. The charge of ‘fragile masculinity’.
Whenever a man actually feels personally vulnerable to something, everyone trots out the ‘fragile masculinity’ excuse for ignoring their pain.
I don’t see any man objecting to consensually raising an adopted child or one conceived with surrogate sperm. If the objection really was due to ‘fragile masculinity’ you’d actually see this. You don’t.
What they’re objecting to is the deception, being forced into a role that requires providing intimacy and love through deception.
Also, turnabout is fair play is it not? The only reason women get upset over rape is due to ‘fragile femininity’; rape reduces their feminine value and if they weren’t so profoundly egotistical about having more value then men, then they would be about as bothered by rape as men are.
“f you look at the horrible things that happen to women, LGBT persons, and children in the name of preserving masculinity globally”
These things happen in the name of preserving a particular notion of how people conduct themselves otherwise known as culture. They also happen to men. Men are the targets of a significant minority of honor killings (plus you could argue that the role they are forced into under threat of being a victim of honor killing is also responsible for a significant number of murders, maimings and rapes of men.)
Huh? Women only get upset about rape because they are fragile? They are not upset about the physical injuries that result from being violently violated, beaten up, tied up, kidnapped, held prisoner for hours, days or weeks, etc.? Is Elizabeth Smart only upset about being held as a sex slave for 10 months and violently and repeatedly raped because she thinks she’s better than men?
Men who commit honor killings are the victims?
You have a strange perspective.
When I was a young man, I was raped. A person I thought was a friend drugged me and proceeded to have his way with me. It took about six months for me to learn to trust people again. Fortunately, I healed physically, and began to understand how to move past it.
About five years after that incident I got married. The marriage seemed great until about the eight year. She told me she had found someone else, and wanted a divorce. I didn’t fight it, and we decided to share custody of the boy. He was 3 at that time.
A couple of years later I started noticing things about the boy .his hair was an off color for the family, his eyes were shaped differently. I started to suspect and got a DNA test done.
After the results came back she told me that her the boyfriend she had left me for was really the child’s biological father. So not only had she been screwing around on me for years….but she also lied to me about the child’s father.
If that is not a form of rape…I don’t know what is. The boy has now distanced himself from me, calling the the ex’s boyfriend his “real father”. This is not something that heals physically, and it is not a one time event. This is not something that is going to go away.
To be a cuckold at a woman’s whim is no way to live. It is degrading and humiliating…..more degrading and humiliating than what I went through with rape several years ago. I have been shamed, and that shame will never get better.
Even now I am paying for the boy’s benefit…courtesy of state law, and an unfaithful, untrustworthy, and deceitful woman. How anyone cannot think for one moment that being cuckolded is not akin to rape? I have experienced both…..and I know there is no difference.
Daniel, you seem to be projecting a lot of personal insecurities here. While I am not condoning cheating or lying to an intimate partner, and deceiving a man into thinking he’s the father of your child is totally, absolutely wrong, I submit that having a happy, loving relationship with a child who you are not biologically related to is really NOT the worst thing that can happen to a man. It’s relationships that make our lives fulfilling, not common bits of genetic material. Do you even have children?
Susan,
You are not a man, so you cannot be cuckolded, so you just don’t care. Just like most women today, and many men, only women’s feeling are important to you (thanks to feminism). You just can’t identify with men and our pain and fears. Society today don’t give a damn about men’s problems and issues. Ted is every man in this feminist era. Nobody cares.
Rape (commonly male crime against a female) is considered the most horrifying crime with the exception of murder. If I just give a wrong comment to a women today I can be accused in harassment. However, deliberately deceiving a man and taking his entire love and commitment, using him like a slave to raise another man child, is not a problem. This is not even a legal crime. Many years ago this was punishable by death. I am getting resentful of our culture and frankly, reading your responses, I don’t want this culture to continue further.
Then leave. If you have an issue with something, then find a solution. Otherwise leave the problem. If you’re deceived, I agree it sucks. But find a solution to the problem, or leave. No one deserves to be deceived, and you have the option of making it clear to the other person that their behavior isn’t acceptable.
The problem with rape, however, is that you can’t leave the situation, and you can’t initiate a solution. A woman is forced by a larger animal, the male, to have sex. She is beaten, threatened to death, and there is nothing that she can physically or mentally do to stop it.
You can physically and mentally leave the situation if you’re not sure if your son is yours. You can take a paternity test–these are all solutions. Hugo himself sought out his own solution, as he even noted at the end, to just love his son.
You can NOT compare rape to being cuckolded. When a woman is raped, she has NO options. She is absolutely forced because she cannot easily physically or mentally escape the situation, and that lack of control could–and often does–mentally and physically her for the rest of her life. Why is it that women still, in our civilized society, need to carry around a weapon if she wants to escape from a situation of rape?
However, if you happen to not know if your child is yours, you do have control to escape the situation or seek solutions, as Hugo has.
typo: mentally and physically scar her for the rest of her life*
And I’m specifically using the example of rape to a woman since you had used it, but rape against men would also be equally uncomparable. The situation I speak about that you have little or no control over is being unable to escape a forced and violent attack upon your body by a stronger or more threatening person, whether you’re attacked as a male or female.
@Jo,
Thanks for your reply.
I use the term rape for two reasons. The first is to convey how terrible this is for me. I would basically kill myself if it was to have happen to me. And I definitely would have chooses to be raped over learning that my family is a lie. This is one of my biggest fears and of many other men and you, society and specially women needs to respect that.
The second reason is due to the genetic nature of this crime. I believe that rape is such a terrible crime (much more than just regular physical assault) and cause so much pain since it is a GENETIC crime. A raped woman loses the control over her own reproductive system.
I wan’t my son to live a place in which is safe to be a man and my daughter in a place in which is safe to be a woman. In my view of the world, rape and cuckoldry are crimes of the same caliber. However, crimes against men are often ignored and are even celebrated online as moral choices (just the see above article). And yes, you are right, there are solutions. Mandatory paternity-testing at birth can basically eliminate this problem and should be legally required to determine father-child relations.
This is a sad thought, but reading the responses support of some (but definitely not all) women to this I hope that the Teds of today will be wiser and less trusting.
Why does it matter if the son isn’t yours? Leave. You don’t own anoother woman, you can’t say what she does with her own body. She has deceived you, and that is sin itself, but if she has wronged you then leave. I don’t understand what the problem is. You can’t leave a situation where you are being physically forced down. This isn’t a situation where you’re stuck, because you don’t own other human beings and they don’t own you. It hurts, yeah, but if you want to fulfill that primal desire to procreate then make another zygote with a woman who respects you.
My God, Jo… I realize this is months later, but how can you not see it? Just leave? It’s something that happened, just as a woman who got raped can’t just “leave” that problem, a man who has been cuckolded can’t just “leave” what has happened to him.
Imagine this, Jo. Imagine you are in a car accident and suffer amnesia. You wake up in a man’s house. There is a wedding ring on your finger. You are undressed in his bed. The man walks up to you with breakfast in bed, says that he is grateful that you are safe. He has a matching wedding ring on his finger. You have sex. You have a child. Then one day, you are walking down the street and you see another man, with a child that looks so much like you that you are shocked. The man tells you he is your husband and that you have been missing for years. It then dawns upon you that you have been deceived, held captive by a lie to a life that you had never sanctioned for yourself. How would you feel? How would you feel if you woke up one day to realize that the family you think you know is not your real family… that the child you have raised for the past however many years was conceived through fraud?
What’s your solution to that? Just walk away from the problem? Just pretend it never happened? How do you get those years of your life back? How do you deal with that?
Since you will never experience paternity fraud or ever understand feelings of vulnerability to paternity fraud–yet men *can* experience rape and feelings of vulnerability to rape, perhaps you aren’t the best person to judge the relative horrors of both.
The best person would be a man who has experienced both. Perhaps such a man will step forward and give a more credible appraisal.
Also, happy, loving sex is consensual. Happy, loving relationships with your children are also consensual.
Men have a right to consent to fully informed parenthood. Let’s repeat that notion. Men have the absolute, inviolate right to consent to fully informed parenthood.
This is non-consensual parenthood.
Maybe we should take an opposite, horrifying example. Jaycee Duggard was kidnapped at age 11, held prisoner for 18 years, repeatedly raped by her captor, and gave birth to 2 children at age 13 and 15. She is without a doubt a non-consensual parent.
However, she loves her daughters and says she was afraid to try to escape because of fears about how she would take care of them. her greatest worry, after she was freed, was that her mother would reject her girls.
All I’m saying is that loving relationships between parent and child can trump a lot of horrible things. I think it’s terrible if a woman tricks a man into raising children that aren’t his but that doesn’t mean he won’t love those children anyway.
Susan, this is not a valid analogy since the children are her genetic children.
Why can’t you accept that such a deceit is a horrible crime and Hugo and Jill are criminals? All the social behaviors that hurt women are regulated by law, but when men are hurt we are supposed to just face it and think of the family.
Just look on the comments of the men here, yes, we have fears and insecurities and this is a MAJOR fear. Men should be protected from abuse just like women. This crime should be punishable by law. Hugo and “Jill” should face jail time and pay Ted for the fraud they committed as well as for 14 years of child support.
Yes, I have two children and an amazing wife (who by the way, thinks that women such as Jill belong in prison).
This article is 110 percent pure unadulterated bullshit.
If biology makes no difference whatsoever, then why do hospitals devote hundreds of hours and millions of dollars to implementing systems and checks to ensure that mothers get their biological children when it’s time to go home? If biology was irrelevant and love was all that mattered then what’s wrong with just giving any child to any new mother and sending them home together? Oh that’s right—biology is only irrelevant when men are concerned!! The whole idea is just so transparently misandric and illogical it makes your head spin.
Articles like this are just more proof that feminism really isn’t an equality movement (I’d bet my left nut the guy writing this identifies as a feminist). It’s really about enhancing women’s rights and alleviating the responsibilities that accompany those rights—at the expense of men.
This is revolting.
And also, a child has a right to know his genetic heritage. So many illnesses and health conditions we now know have a genetic basis, and we will soon have genetic treatments for them. It’s in the child’s best interest to know his or her true genetic heritage. The real question is whether a mother’s wishes trumps her child’s well-being.
Pretty soon, the feminists and their male apologists are going to run out of excuses and rationales for protecting women at the expense of men & children. We men have our own hopes and dreams, our own ideal of fatherhood. We cannot and will not be fathers on someone else terms. The billions of dollars in child support arrears prove that. Until we recognize that bio fathers are not disposable, and that it is safe for men to love THEIR children to the fullest extent that is consistent with our most deeply held ideal of fatherhood then you will never the get from us and will receive far worse from the many.
This is so disturbing.
He is basically telling men that your power to create life is meaningless, in men that is…
If I create a baby, don’t I have the right and responsibility to raise it? According to Hugo that’s inconsequential and it might as well be another man who takes that role. But even worse is that he is enforcing cockolding, whereby women trick men into thinking they are the father (before any bonds have been made) and that men like him can go about their live worry free.
That’s just sick and selling out men along with selling out kids who have a right to know!!!
This Hugo from the “good men” project is trying to sell the idea that your sperm and the kids you create aren’t important factors in parenthood. Imagine if we said biological mothers are trivial and replacibke and that its ok to trick women into thinking someone is their child.
Contrast the disagreement here with jezebel ‘discussion’ thread of hugo’s piece. Where most commentors dont even mention the cucking. It is a-okay in their world
You mindless moron lololol
“It is love, not sperm, that makes a great dad.”
But there wasn’t any bond before the poor guy was tricked into thinking it was his kid.
But its ok Hugo, use that rationality so you can continue peacefully enjoying your life without ever worrying about taking your responsibilities.
To the people sympathetic to the story, imagine reversing the genders. The man you’ve been dating comes up and says. “While I was dating you, but before we were exclusive, I slept with a girl I didn’t tell you about and now she’s pregnant. But she doesn’t really want a child and you’d make a better mom anyway, so I signed us both up as its parents. Oh, and you have no say. After all, all you should care about is the best interest of my/her child, and I decided that’s you being the mom.”
I guess he would have had say, all he had to do was assume she had been sleeping around without telling him and demand a paternity test. I’m sure that would have gone over well.
It’s ridiculous to force rights onto someone else without their consent. And to say it’s for the child’s best interest is to say someone else’s child is more important than you. At that point we might as well list people by how good of parents they will be, assign babies as they are born.
Although in this case I think the best interest of the child would be Ted as a single parent instead of being raised by someone who would deceive their own family for over a decade.
Actually something like this happened in my family. A couple had been married for a few years and one day received a knock on the door. One of the husband’s ex-girlfriends had discovered she was pregnant shortly after their relationship ended. She had the baby, but never told him. When the child was nine years old, the ex-girlfriend died. The authorities delivered the child to his biological father. The couple stayed together and raised the child. They are still married – the happiest married couple I know, actually. 30+ years later the child is all grown up, also healthy and happy with a family of his own.
I don’t believe this is a similar scenario — it does NOT involve more deceit than hiding the child from the biological father, It does NOT involve a scenario where the husband was sleeping around after marriage, and where the wife had NO say in the matter. I can totally understand why he would love the child afterwards, and honestly I don’t think any of these people are implying the child doesn’t deserve love (even if born out of infidelity). They are simply saying that the act of deceit that lasts so many years is pretty horrible, and humiliating to the man being deceived, when it comes out. You raise a child thinking he or she is your own blood only to realize that child wasn’t born out of love between you and your wife, and your wife was okay tagging you along like a useful tool to have in raising a child, not bothering to check whether raising someone else’s child would be okay with you, and even worse, implying that the child is a product of love between you and her. Again, I don’t think it’s the child’s fault in any way, and if a bond were formed between me and that child (and it probably would) I would not break it — but it would greatly, greatly disturb and depress me, and it would have pretty dire psychological consequences for me.
Here’s a better example of the gender inverted scenario. Note again that the deceit was slightly different — the child was completely hidden, rather than being presented as the mother’s child. I don’t think that made this example any better a scenario, just pointing out that it’s different, and the psychological implications may therefore also be somewhat different (better, worse, not easy to say).
http://lifestyle.inquirer.net/4329/how-should-she-deal-with-her-husband%E2%80%99s-child-by-another-woman
I hope you get raped.
“God”, she said, “you guys always say that. It’s such an obvious and cheesy way to show off that you’ve slept around. You think you’re being sly, but it’s just juvenile.”
Considering how its possible that a man may have a child that he does not know about the sad reality is that while it was mostly said as a joke in the past it may very well be true so she ought to come down from her moral high horse thinking she has business declaring someone else’s behavior as juvenile. Espcially considering that in cases where a man may really not know guess who would be responsible for such a deception, yeah a woman.
Jill never told Ted that she’d been sleeping with someone else the week their son was conceived.
That’s not good. By doing this she’s allowing the father/son bond between them to be possibly built on a lie. (Mind you if there was no child involved then yeah there’s be no reason to tell him.)
As the one who carried Alastair in her womb, it was her choice to make.
This is what I mean when people try to segway the nine months of pregnancy into claiming that she and she along should make all the decisions about the child now and forever. She was the one to carry the child but that does not give her the right to decieve the child about his paternity (unless there’s an actual reason like if the real father was abusive or something, and while Hugo may have been goofing off at that time I highly doubt he was so bad that to justify the deception). In this case I wonder if this was not her looking out for the child or Ted but her trying to spare herself some pain.
I made a promise to Jill before Alastair was born that I’d never ask for a paternity test, nor reveal to Ted the possibility that I might be the biological father of his son. I wasn’t in love with Jill and wasn’t ready to be a parent: Ted was both of those things. From what little I hear, he’s been a great husband and a doting father all these years. He and Jill have had two more sons together. With all that in mind, it would be an act of destructive narcissism on my part to ever break my promise and barge back into Jill’s life.
I can understand and respect you not wanting to know and to a point choosing not to tell Ted. But beyond that this is basically you and Jill deciding for Ted and Alastair that they don’t need to know the truth.
The specifics of human reproduction mean that men may have children of whose existence they are unaware, and they may unwittingly raise as their own children conceived with another man’s sperm. But women have it harder, and not only in terms of pregnancy, labor, and delivery. It is Jill, not I, who carries the burden of an unresolved question through her relationship with her husband and her first-born son.
You’re trying to compare the (mostly unavoidable) facts and hardships of pregnancy that are a natural occurence with a the possiblity that a person actively choosing to decieve another. Apples and oranges, one doesn’t washout the other.
These uncertainties that I know many men share are part of the cost of a habit of unprotected heterosexual intercourse. But the solution to the problem isn’t suspicion or frantic demands for paternity tests, Jerry Springer style. The solution isn’t even the rigorous use of contraception (though that’s a very good idea.)
The solution is to remember that it is love, not sperm, that makes a great dad.
Or how about remembering to be honest? For some reason you seem to want to take a situation and just magically say its not bad at all for all men based on your reactions alone.
The solution is to remember that it is love, not sperm, that makes a great dad
True but its not like they can’t both come from the same man, if he is told the truth. The fact that a child can recieve love from any man who wishes to be the father does justify decieving a child and another man.
So in the end its okay for a woman to lie and deceive as long as she has a good reason?
“So in the end its okay for a woman to lie and deceive as long as she has a good reason?”
Does she have a good reason? If so, I didn’t notice it.
Oh TB by that I meant a good reason in said woman’s mind. Not a reason tha others would consider good.
What you and Jill did was horrible and there are no excuses for it. You say Tim wanted a child. How do you know? You’re relying on the word of woman who never plans to tell the husband she supposedly loves that the child they raised might not be his. Of course, since she chose to confide in you and not her future husband, maybe you see her as trustworthy. You think maybe it’s possible that he was fooling around with this girl (just like you), being a little careless with protection (just like you… and her), and then decided to man up and take on the responsibility of raising the child when he found out (very much unlike you)? Worked out pretty nicely for the two of you didn’t it? Ever wonder if he had a few plans of his own? Things he wanted to do before he started a family? Very few guys, even financially stable guys who want to have kids one day, are ready to have kids after dating a girl for a couple weeks. I think deep down you know that.
You do have a chance to make it right. Break your promise to Jill and ask for a paternity test, it was wrong of you to make the promise in the first place. If she refuses, tell her you’ll tell Ted. If she still refuses, tell Ted. If the child is yours, Ted has to find out. Then he and Jill can work out how or when to tell Alastair. They WILL both find out one day. It’s better for Ted to hear it from his wife than to hear it from someone else. It’s better for Alastair to hear it from his parents than from someone else. For starters, assuming you’re using your real name, there’s no way to disguise the people in this story by changing names alone. You would have to change a lot of the facts of this story too, not just a few, and if you did that, the story is essentially a lie. Second, this isn’t the 1950s, it’s 2011. DNA testing is already easy, rampant and getting cheaper every day. In this kid’s lifetime, basic DNA testing for genetics research and medical diagnosis will almost certainly be universal, probably sooner than later. Be a real man. Hey, maybe the kid won’t be yours after all.
I am one of those children, now 49, and my real identity kept a secret. SO very complicated, however, nobody wins when there are secrets, and I knew as a toddler I wasn’t my Dad’s ( who raised me) because we are born intuitive.
http://www.lovechildstories.com for those who had us, or people like me Check it out.
E
Why did jill tell hugo but not ted, as far as hugo knows about the paternity uncertainty. in what way was jill compatible with ted if she feared the relationship would break up over this. Clearly jill and ted share very different values. Makes me wonder if jill is being deceptive elsewhere in the relationship for it to last so long
Now again I say an adopted child would be mine completely. And If I was in Ted’s shoes even if the child/children did not have my dna, I would still view the children as mine completely. Im always surprised at men that raise a child for years and then upon discovering the truth disown the child.
I realise emotions run uphill, however id like to think that most men would still see children as theirs in such a scenario.
But that doesnt mean that it is acceptable for devious mothers to abuse fatherly instincts.
Nor acceptable for feminists to condone or minimise it
If this is true Andrew (and i dont believe you, however i will walk along your argument). Then men have shown that being the genetic father was not a concern for much of human history. Then equally, after all feminism is about gender equality and not the privilege and supremacy of the female, being the biological mother should not be a concern for women. Thus, all babies delivered on a Labour Ward that day should be taken away from the mother into a central cot, from where they can be randomly assigned and returned to the mothers.
To channel hugo:
Then
The solution is to remember that it is love, not eggs, that makes a great mother.
“The solution is to remember that it is love, not eggs, that makes a great mother.”
Unfortunately for Alistair the woman who welped him (who will not be referred to as a ‘mother’) has the eggs but not the love.
typhonblue,
good to see you
ive seen youve been recently guiding the young ones on the ‘teh menz’ blog
good stuff
This is actually pretty outrageous. You should tell Ted and get a paternity test. It is not “narcissism” on your part and you know it full well. It would just complicate your life and hers, that’s all. In all honesty Schwyzer the more I read about you the more I’m convinced you are probably a full-on slimeball.
Hey look, a sleazy asshole thinks it’s OK to stick another man with supporting his kid (possibly), and the ‘Good Men Project’ prints it! Is this a ‘Good Man” Henry? Sleeping with women in relationships, and using legal fraud to stick another man with the bill? You ‘Good Men’ types are quick to throw out the ‘you play, you gotta pay’ ethos…gonna fry one of your own now? Somehow, I doubt you will pick now to grow some ethics…
I’d LOVE to see one of you display some real integrity and backbone for a change, and throw this jerk off your author list. Or refuse to publish man hating drivel like it.
But seeing as how your whole reason for existing is to try and blunt men’s desire for equality…I suppose this horseshit is right in line.
This kind of thing makes me glad I take the stance on feminists and their lickspittle sycophants that I do… The demise of hateful ideologies like yours cannot come too soon.
It’s unfortunate that the article’s positive message – that parenthood transcends biology – is tainted by this story of a possible paternity fraud.
The article concludes with the statement:-
“The solution is to remember that it is love, not sperm, that makes a great dad.”
This website clearly needs to consider ‘what makes a ‘Good Woman’ in the project of life ?’
An individual who considers the physical, emotional and social needs of other human beings perhaps ?
The shallow, inconsiderate, selfishness of the female featured in this article is highly depressing – but typically not confronted by many people living in a world presently hijacked by radical feminism.
The featured woman seems to have been granted free license to treat other human beings, her own offspring and the men she comes into contact with, as items of preference no more worthy of compassion than cars in a show room – using men’s sperm as fuel.
What makes a great mother is an equally valid question here?
How do people allow themselves to become so brainwashed by such one-dimensional nonsense which so clearly, and unfairly, deliberately dishes out to the human grouping to which they themselves belong with losers medals ?
Very strange. I oppose hatred of any sort. The hatred of others, as a consequence of exaggeration or misinformation, can be, if (hopefully) not shared, understood. But men supporting such causes as feminism – despite the evidence of its blatant lies – is utterly bewildering to me.
The motivation felt by white men like Michael Moore, for example, to write books entitled ‘Stupid White Men’ (and the many other similar such parallels) will one day be the subject of much examination.
As a Brit. I sometimes wonder if many Americans set up websites like this as some sort of spoof or satire. Can people really be so fooled as to think in this way ?
Very sad.
Why is this individual being given a forum on anything including the words “good men”?
This is a travesty.
So, concisely translated:
Jill settles for Ted because he has more money, and Hugo scurries off into the night panicking that HE might be the father. Meanwhile, a potentially explosive lie is fermenting that would devestate both Ted and most importantly, the child.
Sorry Hugo, despite the smoke-and-mirrors verbal diarrhoea, you come across as a grubby self-serving creep. Jill demonstrates she is a grubby, grasping opportunist.
Incidentally Hugo, are you absolutely sure your daughter was conceived by you? It wouldn’t matter if she wasn’t, would it? Remember, “it’s love, not sperm that make a great dad”.
Shame on you both.
Just how long to you all here at the Good Men Project think you can keep this up? Sooner or later your money will run out and then we MRAs won’t have you to laugh at any more. Seriously, this whole site is a joke and I can’t help but think that the people behind this know it.
It is really amazing that you expect people to buy this crap-and this is real crap I tell you.
If you people here think for one second that this pathetic organization set up by feminists to derail the Men’s Rights Movement is going to have any effect then you are simply advertising your own self delusion. You are, in effect, heaping hot coals on your head by publishing this stuff and you are becoming the laughingstock of all who read it that are either not a part of your feeble minded plan or happen to poses a brain.
You would best serve yourselves and the rest of humanity if you would just put down your pens and retire to your homes to jerk off. So for the love of God and certainly for your own sakes do it!
I’ve never been a fan of Hugo’s writing since he’s such a feminist apologist, but even for him this is a new low. As others have noted, how does this story encourage “Good Men”?
And for you, Hugo, you are not out of the woods yet.
A guy I worked with got served with 16 years of back child support ($130,000) for a child he did not know he had fathered. The mother had become pregnant and moved to California, had the baby and raised him without every telling the father. When the boy was 16, she ran into financial difficulties and appealed to the Family Court here in Washington state and got her financial payoff.
During those years, my co-worker had married, with two children. They had to sell their house to raise the back support and basically start all over, so the selfishness of the first mother affected the entire family of the man.
There is no time limit on back child support and the State of California will be only too glad to collect it, since they get matching Federal dollars and interest penalty. You better hope your little friend with benefits never gets into financial trouble (or divorces Ted), since you would be liable for the child support and associated interest.
Sleep well, Hugo.
This is the problem with selfishness of feminism, this tireless jihad to increase womens’ freedom of action at any cost. Ultimately, it harms other women—like the woman your co-worker married. Now SHE and HER CHILDREN have to suffer economic and emotional hardship.
You cannot mistreat men without harming the women who are near and dear to them. We are all in this together. This should be obvious.
What is this I don’t even…
You do know that there are serious diseases with either genetic causes or genetically-related pathologies that parents and kids need to know about, right? A kid has a right to know his genetic heritage for that reason alone.
Also, cuckoldry is disgusting from a moral standpoint in that it is the equivalent of raping a woman: in both cases, one party is abusing the other’s resources to achieve their biological imperative.
I hope that one day you will have to answer for your complicity in taking advantage of one of your fellow men.