It’s probably a bad idea to post this, because it’s late at night, I’m really tired (I just got done watching The Host with a couple of friends, and I highly recommend it—best. dysfunctional. family. EVAR) and I haven’t thought this through properly, but what the hell—I loves me some living on the edge. And by “living on the edge,” I mean “rambling half-cocked about something that just occurred to me.”
It was all inspired by Joanna’s comment about her (no longer especially) secret love for secret babies in our recent sheikh romance entry. To wit, she said:
However, I have my limits. I cannot deal with purist secret baby. It is just TOO wrong for the heroine to simply not to tell the hero about the baby because it’s “her problem†(argh!).
Now, much as I love to bitch about secret baby plot devices, I have to admit I’ve read a few that were decently entertaining. A couple are even on my keeper shelves. But that comment made me think about annoying ways to bring about (or exacerbate) a secret baby situation, and ways that don’t make me pull out my hair. Certain types of misunderstandings I can buy, if handled right, as well as situations involving one-night stands. However, pairing the secret baby with another groan-inducing plot device, e.g., amnesia, is right up there in the makes-Candy-feel-all-crotch-punchy stakes.
But I think the most distasteful way to create a secret baby is for the heroine be a stubborn ass and decide to not inform the hero for no particular reason at all. She instead staples a board onto her upper lip to ensure proper stiffness, and decides that All The Baby Needs Is Her. And what drives me right up the wall is how the heroine is often portrayed as doing something noble and inspired, when all I want her to do is make her figure out some sort of equitable paternity arrangement with the hero.
And that’s when it hit me: there’s a rather strange stigma that stains paternity payments. I have an impression that most unmarried women who pursue paternity payments from the father of their child are often viewed with a jaundiced eye—not quite money-grubbing whores, but there’s a distinct “Oh, she trapped him into it” feel to the whole business. Not only that, there’s a certain value placed on doing things the hard way—even when it’s subjecting the person to needless difficulty—that often lends a sheen of nobility to that sort of enterprise.
Am I wrong? Because I’m thinking that some of the authors who have the Intrepid Heroine Who Strikes Out Alone Like a Dumbass are reacting to that cultural assumption. Feel free to hash this out in the comments, and let me know how full of shit I am.
p.s. Sorry I made this entry live before I finished it. Heh. What’d I say about blogging while ass-tired?
…make her… what?
Ack! Don’t leave us hanging…
It’s a cliff-hanger ending! But so far, I agree, I can buy a secret baby plot if there’s some kind of reasoning going on, ie., the daddy ended up being a dick, she can’t find his phone number, she strongly suspects that revealing the secret baby would cause dickery, something. Some of these heroines, though are all, “Well, a baby, guess I’ll keep this under my hat for eighteen years with no real reason. Surely the kid will never ask, and if he does, I can just say ‘Oh, I never told him about you, didn’t feel like it.’” Of course this never happens, being that it is, after all, a romance novel, but that seems to be the plan.
I’ve always found the expression “secret baby” an oxymoron because once that belly starts showing…it isn’t a secret anymore.
Hm, I thought my browser was acting up. Glad it’s not just me.
I hate the secret baby device. A man should be told he’s sired offspring. If he chooses to be a peckerhead and run out on his responsibilities (he doesn’t have to marry her, mind you, but he does have an obligation to be a part of the child’s life and share in the care), then he isn’t much of a hero.
I hate secret baby plots – in books, movies, soap operas, and in real life. It’s an outdated idea that should be put to rest. It’s quite simple: fathers should know their children and children should know their fathers.
I hate cliffhanger endings.
Until next season?
Well, she did start out saying she was tired, but still…
What? Huh? Huh?
Make her pour bleach into her own eye sockets?
I loathe (stretch the word for amximum effect here) secret baby stories because it’s just another way for the heroine to Martyr Herself Since She’s Such a Goodly Person and All ‘Round Strong Feminine Type when in fact she’s acting like an irresponsible idiot.
Plus, as someone pointed out, there’s the thing about the belly, you know…
Ditto, ditto. There are very, very few secret baby plots that would work for me. Speaking as a single mother, I’m all for letting the father know about the Impending Blessed Event, even if you think he’s going to be a dick about it. If he chooses dickhead assholery and runs off, then she should take his ass to court and get loads of money in child support because people, kids ain’t cheap and they NEED things. Clothes, food, carseats, beds, toys, those outrageously overpriced school photos, massive quantities of socks, summer trips to band camp to do unmentionable things with flutes, etc… ain’t none of it free.
Women, be as strong as you want, and sacrifice yourself on the altar of martyrdom all you like, but do NOT let the kids suffer and miss out on anything because of it. Get that child support and use it to, you know, maybe support the child?
Argh! Yes, we’ve hit a pet peeve here. Anyone want this soapbox? I think I’m done with it for now…
The best “secret baby” book I’ve ever read was Rachel Gibson’s “Simply Irresistable.” The baby was conceived during a three day fling, ending with the herodaddy dropping the heroinemommy at the airport. Not a message that he’d want to be involved with the subsequent pregnancy/baby.
When the hero and heroine meet again five or six years later, the heroine has made a life for her and her daughter. Yes, the hero has money. But the heroine fears (due to some well developed insecurities) that he will take her daughter from her.
The secret wasn’t just a tantrum on the heroine’s part. Whether she was right in her actions is debatable, but they made sense from her point of view. That to me is what is important.
This is SO one of my pet peeves. Especially if he is uber rich and she’s poverty stricken but hard working.
She will work herself down to a nub of a waify woman, sleep in a run down, one room apartment with a kindly neighbor to help with the baby and her pride about money will prevent her from telling him about the baby, while she nobly tries ( and fails) to make it on her own without the big strong rich man by her side.
aaaaaargh!! Take that man for a paternity test and sit back and wait for Maury to yell ” YOU ARE THE FATHER!” And go cash the damn check!
I’ve written only one secret baby book—and it wasn’t *really* because the heroine was the adopted mother and didn’t actually KNOW that the father was her ex (who’d slept with her best friend back in high school, yada, yada…) but I never considered it a secret baby book. I just sort of used the device to my own ends.
BUT, the BEST secret baby scenario I saw was on TV, though I can’t remember the show. Might have been Judging Amy? I can’t recall. Anyway, the hero and heroine were very young—maybe just out of high school. They break up on very good terms because he’s decided to become a priest. He’d actually been fighting his calling and the heroine, though heartbroken, supports his decision. Then once he’s at seminary, she finds out she’s pregnant. The spirituality of the couple really brought another layer to the story. If she told him, she knew without a doubt he’d quit the priesthood and she also knew that she’d be destroying a spiritual calling. So she kept it a secret.
Then later in life (10 years, I think) she dies. He’s told he was the biological father.
Anyway, I found it a fascinating story and the first time a secret baby scenario really worked for me on many levels.
I think it can work in the right hands. But I do think that it’s getting harder and harder to pull off well nowadays when father’s rights are finally being recognized.
Agree, agree, agree…
… but what does Candy WANT her to do??? That, bitches, is not going to let me concentrate all day!
spamfoiler: taken26 hah!
Ha! Sorry for that. I forgot to make this a closed entry; meant to finish it when I woke up. Ooops.
Okay, moving momentarily beyond the cliffhanger ending . . .
What is so noble about a woman “martyring herself” (read, “needlessly depriving an innocent baby who didn’t ask to be conceived in the first place” – can anyone say “condoms”???) because she’s too proud to ask the baby’s daddy to hold up his end of the responsibilities? Hello – isn’t pride one of the seven deadly sins? Hardly martyrrific!
Since we now know what causes babies, it would seem that the more modern the novel, the less plausible the “secret baby” device, unless the heroine is a totally irresponsible sluttipants, which again doesn’t seem too, well, heroinic.
Having said (okay, ranted) all that, I have to bring up my all-time fave “secret baby” novel: The Thornbirds! (And having a young Richard Chamberlain play the priest in the miniseries has nothing to do with it. Yum!)
Oh, BTW, I’m new here. Hi!
“the hero and heroine were very young—maybe just out of high school. They break up on very good terms because he’s decided to become a priest. He’d actually been fighting his calling and the heroine, though heartbroken, supports his decision. Then once he’s at seminary, she finds out she’s pregnant. The spirituality of the couple really brought another layer to the story. If she told him, she knew without a doubt he’d quit the priesthood and she also knew that she’d be destroying a spiritual calling. So she kept it a secret.”
The Thorn Birds? I think I read this one. That’s the title that came to mind.
I think what I hate the most is these books start out implying the hero is an asshat in fact go overboard to make the hero seem really truly an asshet.
Then they try and switch it. I am going huh? Why would you want to be with him at all.
Get a court order and get money but but but…. him?
Yes, Teddy Pig, I agree. That kind of thing reminds me of the old, “Stay together for the CHILDREN!” thing that bugs the everlovin’ shit out of me.
Kids look closely at their parents’ relationship. Good, bad, or indifferent, that is their model for how relationships should be. If they see Daddy cheating on Mommy (and kids aren’t stupid, they’ll figure it out) or yelling at her or hitting her—or vice versa because God knows there are some fucked up and maladjusted women out there too—that’s what kids think is normal. Do you want your sons and daughters growing up thinking this is how they should be treated in their own relationships?
Broken home, whatever. When someone leaves a situation like that, they FIX their home.
Yes, hot-button for me. Parents should protect their children passionately, with all their strength of will and body and mind. I can’t stand the whole martyrdom thing when it comes to parenthood, not in any fashion. It’s always the kids who end up suffering, and it’s not admirable in any way to me.
I’ve got to speak up for this much-maligned plotline.
It’s the real life v romance split for me. Real life = people must think of the children first, be emotionally and financially responsible for their actions etc. etc. Romance = pretty much any old crap goes provided the characters work and it’s well-written.
I’m pretty happy to step into a fictional world where I heartily disagree with what the characters do provided they live and breathe on the page. So, for example, if the heroine is a one-dimensional martyr who is selfishly denying her child a father for No Apparent Reason, I fucking hate her and hate the book. BUT, if she is a well-realised character, with a some reason for not telling the father, then I can live with it (even if it’s a crap reason provided I believe the character would believe in that reason). I detest Pollyanna heroines so if said heroine actually admits that she was being a bitch to get back at the hero or just totally stupid, I’m happy with that. I love heroines with faults.
Let’s face it: a lot of romance novels are emotional pornography. Lots of angst and people being unable to live without each other and hearts clutching dramatically and so on. No-one really behaves like that in real life, but we like to pretend.
Someone (sorry can’t recall who) once explained that your standard fairy story usually follows the same happiness-blueprint. Imagine a graph in which one axis represents time and the other represents the heroine’s happiness. At the start of the story, the heroine’s happiness will be pretty low. It will then start to slowly build, perhaps suffer a few small peaks and troughs, then suddenly wildly dip into hopelessness before jumping back up off the scale at the end into infinite HEA. As a formula, it’s worked since Cinderella and in my view secret babies can fit the mould pretty well.
I read pretty widely. If I want to read something realistic and true that tells me about the human condition, I’ll do that. But sometimes I just want to read the equivalent of macaroni cheese. Y’know?
“the equivalent of macaroni cheese.”
Kraft blue box special? I love it!
Being a single mother of two children I detest most secret baby romances. I think heroines who know who the father is and know his address are stupid for not reaching out. Keeping the baby to yourself is just plain selfish. Children are wonderful, they make you laugh, they make you cry, and on certain days scream.
I can’t remember what book just turned me off, but the father who the mother had a one night stand with was her new landlord. It’s one thing for the guy not to put two and two together but throughout the novel the heroine lied about her child’s age, the child’s last name, and many other things so that he wouldn’t think the child was his. Her reason was that he was a family man and would want to marry her once he found out.
WTF?
Couldn’t she have said no to a proposal. Couldn’t she have buckled down and shared their child with him anyway. NOPE! The hero found out because she had put up the paper you get with the child’s footprints that has the birthdate on it. I cheered when he told her what a selfish bitch she’d been.
Because of this book I don’t do secret baby stories anymore. It’ll have to be one of my favorite authors who sneaks this plot by me for me to read it.
A well written character may sell a used and tired plotline, agreed. However, I do have trouble relating to characters who veer too much from common sense. [I may enjoy the book one time, but it’s not likely to become a keeper. And given my personal circumstances and preferences, it’s keepers I’m looking for, not ‘one time reads.’]
What does that have to do with anything? Well, when the heroine’s only reason to deny the child its father is “getting back at the hero” I can’t buy into that. I don’t want Pollyanna, but I don’t want selfish stupid bitch either.
And as far as the real life vs romance split? I must know people far off the mean then, because I’ve seen pretty fucked up choices (regarding their love life), from people who otherwise seem to manage their lives reasonably well.
Seems like in many of the secret baby stories I read, the heroine was convinced her Impregnator would take the baby away, and it would be a Bad Thing for the baby. I don’t know how in Romanceland (or IRL, for that matter) the courts would choose between the poor girl from the wrong side of the tracks and the wealthy, respected Impregnator from the right side of the tracks.
Like anything else in fiction, the secret baby plot can be made to work. (Of course it can fail spectacularly, and that’s more likely. But just because something is easy to screw up doesn’t mean it’s impossible to do right.)
I’m with TeddyPig on the asshat thing. A secret baby scenario where the biological father is truly an asshat, and that’s why mom doesn’t tell him about the baby, makes sense. Mom shortly thereafter getting together with asshat is stupid.
Argh, the plot bunnies are gathering… Say the asshat is being an asshat because he’s 18 years old and more than the usual amount immature. And he has stupid friends giving him poor advice (oooh! Rival girlfriend throwing a monkey wrench in the mix!). And now fifteen or twenty years pass, and he’s in in his 30s, and he’s ditched his stupid friends—maybe recently divorced from the stupid bint rival girlfriend.
A good writer could make me believe a turnaround there. But they would have to give the turnaround the time it deserves, not a mere single chapter of conversion that makes Paul on the road to Damascus look like a waffler.
Heh, wordver is “theory14”. This must be at least my 50th theory!
OMG! I must get some Kraft mac ‘n cheese for dinner. (Yes, sometimes I’m that suggestable.)
Since I “mostly” read historicals the secret baby sometimes makes a little more sense.
I tend to hate all secret baby plotlines, because I haven’t read one that worked to me. Secret babies seem to increase the likelyhood that the woman will engage in TSTL behavior (and I include not asking for child support in this list, if for no other reason than no book has had a convincing reason not to) AND often includes the “heroine has sex once, then never again for ten years” plot point, which I hate because the man is out sexing everything that moves AND doesn’t have a child to take care of. Arg.
I also hate when the now-grown child sets up her parents and I am supposed to think its the cutest thing ever, but I hate the presence of children in my romance novel as anything other than a warning to nearby heroines and heros to wrap it up. Whenever there is a child involved in the romance, it makes marriage more necessary, and dating less fun- because you can’t just bring home anyone and let the kids get attached, so there has to be a certain level of seriousness. Often its because the heroine needs money or a father figure for the kids, which also seems less genuine, even if she really does love him. Extra hatred points if said child is smarter than the grown-ups.
Heh, I sound like such a bitch here.
Anyway, a little more on topic- I think that in society in general, the women that seek help or refuse help from their child(ren)‘s father(s) are only seen as villians- regardless of which they pick to do- if they are poor. Then they are golddiggers or falsely proud. Its absolutely a class thing. I also think the public at large doesn’t realize how damn hard it is to get payments, in many cases, and they still judge women not realizing the women realize it isn’t worth it to try to get money from a guy in cash businesses, or who already has payments due to other kids.
I know this isn’t in all secret baby books, but why do the majority of secret babies happen to women with no money? In Romanceland, why are single mothers supposed to be uneducated and unemployed (or only has a McJob)? Is it because they only have a McJob that they can’t afford a condom?!?
However, if the father is (and he usually is) some guy with more money than Croesus, couldn’t he afford the condom?
Or do the residents of Romanceland have an usually high percentage of condom breakage?
(Or have I read too many Harlequin Presents in the past?)
Ellie M wrote:
Seems like in many of the secret baby stories I read, the heroine was convinced her Impregnator would take the baby away, and it would be a Bad Thing for the baby. I don’t know how in Romanceland (or IRL, for that matter) the courts would choose between the poor girl from the wrong side of the tracks and the wealthy, respected Impregnator from the right side of the tracks.
I agree. That does seems to be how the heroine reasons in sekkrit baby-plots and that’s the reason I can’t stand them.
If the eebil impregnator is such an asshat, then how the fuck can you plausibly get from there to an HEA?
Another common twist to this plot is when eebil impregnator finds out about baby, he promptly blackmails
dumbass
intrepid heroine into marriage and treats her like shit.
Of course, from there on it’s only a matter of time before she falls utterly in love with him and All Is Well Forevah.
Hmrf!
*Stomps off to kick silly heroine ass*
The only ‘secret baby’ plot that I can think of off hand that did NOT make me want to slap the heroine is “Nobody’s Baby But Mine” by Susan Elizabeth Phillips. The baby was a secret for about ten minutes, the mother was portrayed as a twit for wanting to KEEP it a secret, and the dad was suitably angry about the whole thing. A rather funny book. I think that’s what saved it – not taking the whole thing too seriously.
See, now I can handle the whole Secret Baby thing much better in a historical. Back when there was a huge disgrace attached to being a single mother or an illegitimate child. And there were a lot more of those than you might think. Working on family genealogy has been a real eye-opener for me. I have found fudged wedding dates, fictional disappearing husbands, and fifty-year-old women (with eighteen-year-old daughters) miraculously having children. Once the whole family gets invested in whatever polite fiction they have created to cover the ‘immoral’ behavior, it would be really hard to be honest about it.
In a contemporary? There better be a very good explanation for keeping the secret. It’s hard enough raising kids with two parents and two incomes. My first reaction is that any woman who wants to do it on her own should have her head examined. Particularly if it’s for vague noble and self-sacrificing reasons.
On the other hand, The Man of the House tells me he regularly hears men complaining about making child support payments. Apparently the standard rant is something along the lines of: “That greedy bitch just wants my money.†To which my husband’s reaction is to deliver a lecture that boils down to: “Were you not there when that baby was made?†So, yeah, there’s a certain stigma attached to wanting child support.
What they all said.
‘Secret’ babies work in historicals, but today, they just scream stupid.
‘nuf said.
today, they just scream stupid
My dislike of the secret baby is partly about teh stoopid and partly frustration that those “historical” issues are still with us. As you-all said, there’s still a stigma about single-mothering (tell the father = greedy biatch. don’t tell = selfish biatch). Meanwhile, who’s thinking about the child? And why isn’t mommy-to-be angry enough at the turn her life’s taken to go kick some daddy-to-be ass?
As soon as the seekrit baby is invoked, I go from Aw, it’s lurve straight to Yes she’s stupid, but even if she did things differently there’s no good solution, do not pass Go. How can you have a HEA with all that to contend with?
Bottom line, yes secret mommies make me roll my eyes. But worse, secret babies bring up a lot of anger and sadness over the state of society, and that kills the fantasy.
Secret baby plots are definitely not my favorites. The only reason I could think of in real life to keep the baby a secret is if the guy’s presence in the baby’s life would be detrimental or dangerous. But then why were you with him in the first place? Could happen though, but wouldn’t make for a good romance novel.
I don’t think that women who request child support are looked down on where I live. Not totally sure why but maybe partly because it’s seen as a man’s responsibility, no doubt about it, but also because you don’t personally have to go chasing them for money, you just register with a government agency which collects from him.
Here is the thing though… everyone says the secret baby plot is tired, outdated, in most cases silly but…
They still sell. H/S continues to produce them. Writers continue to write them. Why? Because readers want them!!!
The word “baby” appears in how many titles? I would bet a large percentage of those stories are secret baby stories. There is a reason why marketing does that.
As someone who wrote for Bombshell – I was told over and over again that readers wanted new, fresh, different. Not the same old story over again.
You know why I was told the Bombshell line failed… because readers didn’t like the “non-traditional” stories.
I’m not sticking up for secret baby plots. I’m just saying there is a reason why they are so popular. People may say they want change… until they get it.
Just my two cents anyway.
>>On the other hand, The Man of the House tells me he regularly hears men complaining about making child support payments. Apparently the standard rant is something along the lines of: “That greedy bitch just wants my money.â€
Yeah, I don’t think I know any support-paying dads who don’t blame the ex for the $$ or feel they’ve been screwed (in a non-literal sense). God forbid there be alimony involved for the SAHM who quit working 15 yrs ago to raise the kids. But I don’t have a large circle of acquaintances, either. Surely this (the complaining, not my hermitishness) has to figure in there somewhere?
Elizabeth Lowell has written a couple of secret babies, including To the Ends of the Earth, which is the very first thing of hers that I read. If I recall correctly, the baby is secret because the hero accused the heroine of only being after his money and they broke up acrimoniously. And then there’s tragedy. Stiff upper lip heroines frequently irritate me, but I tolerated this because, well, it was the first really saucy romance novel I ever read and it was hott. But the hero is still kind of an asshat.
One of her Westerns also has a secret baby. I wanna say it’s Warrior or Fever or A Woman Without Lies, but I can’t remember. There’s a scene with the pregnant chick sitting on a mountainside boo-hooing and it really pissed me off. Sack up, ho.
Just touching on Candy’s point, backed up by SandyW, re: the stigma attached to child welfare payments. I’m starting to think this is very much culturally rather than universally male. DH, who grew up east of the Iron Curtain, often relates stories of his education. He tells me it was drilled into their heads that, in fact, THEY were responsible for pregnancies due to higher teenage-male sex drives and subsequent pressure on the women.
Which would make you think that they put women up on pedestals, except all of J’s physics professors were women. And he says his smartest maths prof was also a woman. And most of the country’s legal judges were women too. And his aunt worked in a coal mine and, even after retirement, can still pick up and carry her husband across the room.
So, for me, the stigma is definitely cultural.
(I keep trying to mentally translate various plot devices to continental Europe sensibilities. Not all of them fit.)
Boo. One lousy quote mark and I eff up the hyperlink.
I read lots of those in my younger days- most historical. I didn’t mind them so much b/c of the attitudes of the times. What annoyed me was the dumb heroine who slept with the guy (usually the jerk-changed-by-love-of-a-good-woman varity) in the first place. They always get knocked-up the first time round. So predictable.
This comment sort of stopped me in my tracks for a little while, because from my understanding of the way things worked—legally and otherwise—it’s only fairly recently that mother’s rights are recognized. I do agree that the father has a right to know about his children, but the term “father’s rights” tends to make me pause and go “Whuh?”, the way “men’s rights” and “masculist” do.
Oh, man, somebody invoked Nobody’s Baby But Mine. That book makes me so angry. Not really the secret baby in and of itself—that part kind of blew right by me because it was utterly eclipsed by the awfulness of the heroine and the very premise of the book.
An allegedly smart woman wants to have a less-than-smart baby and tries to fuck somebody stupid to effect this. WHAT. THE. FUCK. First of all, the fact that she’d do something so screamingly stupid pretty much shatters the idea that she’s any kind of smart. She’s not a biologist, but she’s a scientist, ferchrissakes, so you think she’d do some kind of preliminary research and find out about the heritability of intelligence (answer: it’s really, really complex, and there’s no real conclusive evidence, though this recent article about praise is somewhat telling, in my opinion). Her motivation—she had an awful time in school, and she wants to spare her kid the same—is also as substantial as a stripper’s thong, and just about as savory. And picking a football player because, y’know, all jocks are teh dummmb? What in the hell kind of stupid stereotyping is THAT? Auuuugh.
In short, she’s one of the worst examples of the allegedly smart, geeky, feminist women in Romance who are pretty much nothing of that sort. We’re constantly told about what a powerhouse of a brain she has, but she shows little proof of it, other than an inability to talk without sounding like a stilted asshole. Just because somebody talks as if they were raised by speech recognition software doesn’t mean they’re intelligent, mmmkay?
Also, hate, with the heat of a thousand burning suns, the “I really want a baby, so I’m going to fuck some random dude and have his baby in secret” sorts of secret baby plots. Hate. HAAAAAAAATE. What in the hell kind of fucked-up thing is that to do to somebody? It’s not exactly rape, but it’s definitely a violation, and I find it pretty damn repulsive.
So, um, yeah. I realize it’s one of the most beloved books in Romance, and feel free to burn me in effigy for slandering it so, but…Nobody’s Baby But Mine: It makes Candy angry. *turns green, rips shirt, startles coworkers*
Y’know, that’s not my biggest sticking point with secret baby plots at all. If the woman has thought it out carefully and has discussed this reasonably with the father-to-be or opts to use a sperm bank, I say good for her. But heroines who try to use the unaware hero as some sort of ambulatory sperm bank tend to be viewed much less charitably by myself, because like I said, that shit’s straight-up repulsive in real life and in fiction.
I can also dig it if she’s unexpectedly pregnant and unable to contact the father, or the father should not be contacted for compelling reasons. It’s when she DOESN’T think at all about the consequences that I start contemplating throwing pieces of day-old clue-cake at her. (Everybody, baked goods have made it into the conversation! Drink up!) I can understand the initial panic after finding out and doing something stupid. But dude. It’s not like you have a span of days between finding out you’re pregnant and giving birth. You have MONTHS. And thinking about how to sort things out with the father should be at least one of the priorities, yeah?
Oh, yes, sorry I didn’t make it more clear in my article. I certainly meant cultural stigma, and not men acting like assholes because of their Universal Maleness (which is not the sort of assertion I buy into, anyway—barring pathology, people act like assholes because they were raised to be assholes, or because their culture and existing power structure tells them it’s OK to act like an asshole under certain circumstances or about certain things; their bits have very little to do with things).