Being A Full-Time Dad Means Being A Husband
May 30, 2000
Q: I've just found out I am going to be a father. I
am not married to
the woman who is carrying my child and have no plans to marry
her. Still, I
want to be a part of my child's life. I want to be a
full-time parent. I am,
however, encountering much resistance from her.
I am looking for advice, something other than preaching about
marriage.
Can you help me out?
A: When I am in my car, I frequently tune my radio to Dr.
Laura
Schlessinger's radio program. I'm always amazed by the people
who call
her show.
You have to believe her radio audience knows
her views on such things
as premarital sex and "shacking up." Yet day after day,
people call
describing how they are living with someone or got pregnant outside
of wedlock and
want to know what they should do about it. Are these callers
gluttons for
punishment or what?
That's the way I feel about this
letter. Anyone who has ever read
more than a couple of my columns has to know my opinion on these
matters as
well. Nevertheless, I frequently receive letters, e-mails and
phone calls from
men who have gotten some woman pregnant outside of marriage asking
me for
advice on how they can be great dads without marrying the mothers
of their
children.
A couple of years ago, for example, one guy
called complaining that
he couldn't see a child that he had fathered out-of-wedlock.
As the
conversation proceeded, he stated that he had fathered another
child
out-of-wedlock by another woman who lived in another state and
he
couldn't see that child either. Soon he was confessing to the
existence of yet a
third child by a third woman in a third state, and he hadn't seen
that
child in over three years.
What, he wondered, could he do to be a good
father? My answer: If
you want to be a good father, stop having sex with women you're not
married
to. He was at least polite when he hung up on me.
Apparently, my answer
wasn't what he wanted to hear.
My guess is you're not going to like my
answer, either. Instead of
the "Ten Things You Can Do To Be A Great Unwed Father," what you
are going to
get is a little preaching about marriage.
When I was a kid, there was a popular
playground taunt we used to
employ to annoy other boys: "First comes love, then comes marriage,
then comes
Jimmy pushing the baby carriage!" Most young people today,
like most young
people through time immemorial, want all three of these things --
love, marriage
and babies -- for themselves. What is different today,
compared to just
about any other time in human history, is that young people no
longer believe
there ought to be an order to these three events.
No need to wait for love to have sex, just
hook up. If a baby
results, no need to worry about getting married. There will
be plenty of time for
that later. Besides, marriage is just a piece of paper.
It certainly
isn't necessary to being a good "co-parent." Why, there are
plenty of couples
in Sweden who co-parent kids just fine without ever getting
married. Why
not us?
For starters, as someone once quipped, the
reason cohabitation works
so well in Sweden is because a lot of Swedes live there. This
is America.
In America, things just don't seem to work out as well.
Oh sure, things may work out for a little
while. According to
research by Robert Lerman and Theodora Ooms, nearly six in 10 unwed
fathers visit
their children at least once a week for the first two years of
their
children's lives. By the time their children reach elementary
school,
however, that number drops to only two in 10 fathers making weekly
visits.
Children don't need involved fathers for just
the first couple years
of their lives. What they need is lifetime fathers.
Marriage may not be a
perfect pathway to a lifetime father, but it is a more certain
pathway
than any other.
My advice, then, is this: Think again about
marriage.
One reason the mother may be rejecting your
interest in being a
father to your child is that you are rejecting her. Perhaps
if you express an
openness to committing to her, she would become much more open to
your interest in
committing to your child.
I also encourage you to think more carefully
about what it means to
commit to being a full-time father. What children want and
need is a
father who is there for them day in and day out, not a guy that
comes around
just once in a while. Such everyday daddying is most likely
to happen within
the context of marriage. That's why children, if we ever
bothered to ask
them, would say they want their fathers to be married to their
mothers, even if
the marital relationship is less than perfect.
Moreover, if you don't marry the mother, you
can be pretty sure that
sooner or later, someone else will. When that happens, that
man, and not
you, will be with your child reading bedtime stories, eating
dinner
together, throwing a ball around in the back yard, and helping with
homework.
Being an involved father outside of marriage
may not be impossible,
but it is certainly harder. You're lucky. Your child
isn't yet born. You
still have time to think this through. I hope you will
re-consider the
marriage option -- for your child's sake.
Want to take the next one, Dr. Laura?
Dr. Wade F. Horn is President of the National Fatherhood
Initiative, a
clinical child psychologist, and co-author of several books on
parenting
including the Better Homes and Gardens New Father Book (Meredith,
1998)
and the Better Homes and Gardens New Teen Book (Meredith,
1999). Send your
question about dads, children or fatherhood to: The National
Fatherhood
Initiative, 101 Lake Forest Blvd, Suite 360, Gaithersburg, MD
20877, or
e-mail him at NFI1995@aol.com.
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