Men Who Want To Be Fathers

On a few occasions I've blogged about the legal inequities that consign men to second-class citizens where their children are concerned. On a feminist blog I was even accused of being a mysoginist, among other things, for espousing my belief that men and women should have equal opportunities for "choice" when a child is conceived. You can read the post that sent me to that feminist blog here.

In today's Boston Globe is an article by a woman--and it makes some sense. It doesn't propose any solutions, but it does articulate how not level the playing field is. I especially liked these paragraphs:

You would think that, unlike men who seek to avoid their paternal responsibilities, fathers who want to be responsible for raising their own children would at least encounter societal sympathy and support. Sadly, that has not generally been the case. Unwed fathers who contest adoptions are often faulted for not taking affirmative steps to find out about the child's existence, and in some cases are blamed even if they were actively deceived by the mother. Often, they're suspected of being abusers whose real hidden motive is to control the mother.

The issues of men burdened with responsibility for unwanted pregnancies, and of men who are not allowed to be fathers to wanted children, are linked by a common thread. Biology has made men and women unequal with regard to reproduction. In recent decades, thanks to both technology and social change, we have made strides to alleviate the inequality for women, helping them avoid unwanted childbearing. But we have lagged far behind in equalizing the situation for men. We cannot ask men to be equal parents while giving virtually all the power in reproductive decisions to women.

I, too, was accused by one of the feminists of wanting to control women.