Quote:
Originally posted by KSig RC
H - lots of respect, stud, but this thinking is just as backwards as thinking the woman should, by design, do most of the child-rearing. Do you see why? (and it's not the uber-feminist view on child birth and the woman - I actually don't disagree with that)
Lots of 'seems like..' and 'I feel..' in this thread, as well as "well, usually.." - not really my style guys.
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No, I totally get this, which is why I've been saying in, say, abortion threads that people should not even have sex if they don't have similar views on the topic. I don't think a man should be forced to support a child that, if he were carrying it, he would have aborted, but the mother decided not to, etc. I think that many times we are too quick to say "oh, it's all her choice because it's her body." Now unless you failed sex ed, I think you understand that it takes two people to make a baby, so it's not entirely her choice. We need to have a better understanding of equality when it comes to pregnancy and so forth. But at the same time, men do not have an equal role to women when it comes to pregnancy, and until we can replicate "Junior" they won't. In this particular case I think that it's not just about sex. It's about respect for the other partner, which is how marriage differs from just sex in the above abortion example. It's her body that's going to get screwed up -- a body that (unlike most of the people who post on GC) is imperative to her career, and it is her career that is going to get put on hold when she gets knocked up. Not Brad's. To me, IF she doesn't want kids (which is still just an assumption at this point), and he is pushing for them despite what it will do to her body and career, it signifies a lack of respect for what she does.
Now, I know that's not exactly what I argued above, and I see what you're getting at, but I think accidental pregnancy and intentional pregnancy are kind of different animals. If it's just sex, more equality in choosing the outcome should be a given. But if it's tangled up in love and marriage and all that, I think that more weight should be placed on the intentions for pregnancy. And if what the article is claiming is true, it sounds like Brad just wants kids because he thinks they'd be fun, whereas Jennifer has some very good reasons for not wanting to be pregnant, which is why I'm inclined to say that this is HER choice. If he had a good reason for wanting to have children (like, I don't know, creating a small army of children to take over countries) and she was just saying no for the hell of it, then I would be more likely to say that she's not giving him enough choice in the matter. Clarified?
But then again, besides the whole army thing, I don't really think there are any "good" reasons to have children beyond the selfish ones, and as a woman I think there are plenty of reasons not to, so I'm probably biased in this respect.