But What About the Menz?!

[Trigger warning for reproductive coercion.]

This article, about men who desperately want to become fathers and the horrible bitches who won't bear their offspring on demand, is like a case study in privileged entitlement. If it weren't so painful, it would be laughable to read, for example, Neil Kirwan—a man married to a woman not ready to have children because she was just made partner at her job—asserting, "We're in an ideal position to have kids. Financially secure—we've even got a four-wheel drive family car," as if both of them wanting children isn't required before they are genuinely in "an ideal position to have kids."

With so little regard for his wife's agency, it's no wonder Kirwan is escalating to reproductive coercion:

Neil's continuing to hope that Fiona will change her mind.

"I'm putting pressure on her to stop taking the Pill and to leave the situation to fate," he admits. "I know it's a decision we've got to make together, but I don't want to be an old dad. A baby would make my world complete."

Financial security, a family car, a bouncing baby, and a wife who was bullied into parenthood by her abusive spouse—if that doesn't describe every little boy's dream of a complete life, I just don't know what does.

There's a lot more to parse here—from the single wannabe adoptive dad who resents even being asked about pedophilia, to the divorced wannabe dad who believes his ex-wife acted "selfishly" for not wanting kids, even though he married her without asking if she did, instead just "assuming" since he "thought that maternal instinct was something all women have"—and I'll leave it to you to dissect in comments.

What most struck me is that an article sympathetically presenting coercive and presumptuous wannabe dads even exists at all. Our culture is rife with negative narratives about baby-obsessed women who will go to any length to become a mother, even "trapping" men by "getting themselves pregnant." No one writes delightful articles about how charming their desperation is, intimating that every man should be so lucky to have a good woman willing to bear children for him, and any man who denies the fulfillment of a wannabe mommy's dream to become a parent is a selfish jerk who defies the very laws of nature.

Funny that.

[H/T to Shaker Selasphorus.]