Give Her Half or Go Half on a Baby? – Questions Of Being a Father vs. Being a Husband

August 5th, 2012 - By Brooke Dean

madamenoire.com

Most people associate a biological drive to have children with women. After all, we are the creators of life and natural-born nurturers, so it goes without saying that most women are designed to want kids, right? While this instinct isn’t present in ALL women, it can be argued that because of gender roles, most women feel the need to have a child simply because society says that’s what they’re supposed to do.

But men also have an internal, subconscious drive to procreate. However, while most women want to have children with a man who can provide for her and their family, a lot of men nowadays don’t feel they have to be part of a unit in order to make a baby. Not many women are programmed to WANT to be single mothers, yet the desire to be a father can be strong enough to override any sense of logic or commitment. Simply put, most men can see themselves as fathers, but not as husbands. While having a child with someone would seem to be a WAY bigger commitment than marriage is, some men feel they can be great fathers, but would make terrible husbands. Does this sound like broken logic, immaturity or honest truth? Look at these reasons a man may want to be a dad without being a husband…and YOU decide.

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  • http://blackonpurpose.blogspot.com/ gryph

    lol.

    1) what in the world would make you think i’d what to bring my reproductive organs any where near yours?

    2) nothing about someone wanting to be a father without being a husband has any thing do with wanting to impregnate half a city or;

    2a) not wanting to raise your child.

    nothing i said implied or made special space for that…gosh, it must be fun to be so gleefully silly, lawwdddd.

  • BW1615

    What if it were mother without a wife? Does a double standard apply?

  • Rah Truth

    If he can’t make a full commitment to me, he can’t make a full commitment to bringing a new life into the world WITH me.

  • MLS2698

    Lol! You went ” Sweet Brown ” on ‘em.

    • Angela

      ‘Nuff’ Said…!!!!!!!

    • http://blackonpurpose.blogspot.com/ gryph

      hey `sweet brown’ is that code for sh*tty argument?

  • jdeshae

    I have experienced someone pressuring me and getting too comfortable with the baby without the marriage idea before. I was scared sh*tless ! Here I am entering graduate school with a good job in my field, and I couldn’t let unplaned and unwed pregnancy happen. Not because I think Im better or i am super holy, but because I grew up with unmarried parents. I witnessed the uncertainity and the havoc it could wreak on child’s life. I am not perfect, but I feel like I owe it to myself to wait until I am stable and wed to start a family. I owe it to my children.

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Charmaine-Ross/512464027 Charmaine Ross

    Damn isn’t it crazy how the crappiest fathers wanted the baby in the first place? Maybe they just wanted something to look at or try and duplicate themselves… Bottom line#DONTHAVEABABYWITHSOMEONEWHOYOUWOULDNT MAKE UR WIFE

    • itty bitty

      But also, you would have to question the decision making skills of someone who would sleep with the man, unprotected, knowing that he is this way….so the same applies to the women as well!

    • MLS2698

      A reason to keep coming in and out of a person’s life, a cool place in the summer, and a warm place in the winter to lay his head.

  • ittybitty

    I can’t believe the excuses that are prevalent in the article. Is marriage for everyone? No, it isn’t, but if a man can’t make a commitment to the child’s mother, what makes one think that he’ll make a commitment to the child. If he has reservations about marrying/being in a relationship with the woman, why have a child with her? Most men think of the act of sex as just that, SEX. Very few men –even those who are married– go into the act thinking “I’m going to make this woman the mother of my child.” Women, in general, have an emotional attachment to sex, and to the idea of having a child.
    I just want to point out the contradictions too. To point out that, living together, a man gets all the benefits of a “wife” without the paper, then to turn around and say that men don’t want a “second mother…” So that doesn’t happen when people are living together? What’s the difference if you are sharing your life, love, and a child together? Yes, there is a 50% divorce rate, but the rate for “breaking up” after living together has been shown to be higher. And if you don’t want to pay up in alimony after a divorce…PRENUP! But that child support is going to get you either way.

    Why aren’t men/women marrying…the real reasons:
    1. Taxes….head of household/single parents lose the large tax break if they get married. So less tax refund.
    2. If you are married to the child’s other parent, no child support.
    3. Most governmental benefits (subsidized housing, medicaid, etc) are lessened or eliminated if the parents are married.
    4. Ability to raise your child by yourself/ability to walk away.
    5. People don’t want to be responsible TO another person (husband/wife), but don’t mind being responsible FOR another person (child).

  • Lopinot

    The so-called beliefs espoused in this article are sad and reflect a writer that is part of a broken and self-destructive culture. It seems to exemplify everything that is holding African-Americans back and saddling us with angry, lonely and self-destructive abandoned children that hate themselves.
    I am an African-American woman who has been married twice to black men who value and treasure marriage, family life, and commitment. Both of them were descended from Caribbean cultures with strong traditions of people who marry young, stay married NO MATTER WHAT, raise their children together, and grow old together.
    I waited until I was in my 30′s to marry and start a family because I couldn’t find any African-American men who wanted a stable family. Several African-American men offered to father children with me, but not marry me. Please note that I am attractive, kind, healthy, in shape, educated, and come from a wealthy family. Men from other cultures – white, Asian, Middle-Eastern, African and Latino – saw me as serious marriage material and could not understand why I was single for so long.
    It wasn’t until I stopped dating African-American men and concentrated on men from the Caribbean and Africa that I found a mate. The African-American men that offered to be my “baby-daddy” are still single and playing the field, and most of them have children with different women. Their children, without exception, live in the ghetto with angry mothers who go from man to man, looking for love and commitment that they will never find.
    My advice to African-Americans who want to do better is to leave the culture to find a life partner. You don’t have to find a white person, but a black person whose cultural values put family and mature first, as opposed to hedonism and self-absorbed procreation without commitment.

    • http://twitter.com/leah_m_abdin Leah Abdin

      Amen to that!

    • Vert

      I agree 100%. Many Black men like to say, ‘I want you to have my baby” like it’s an honor or accomplishment to bring a child into this world out of wedlock, then leave me after the baby is born to care for the child by myself. Well, that’s the story of my mother. I hope many women will start accepting they have an option to take responsibility of their bodies and not bring a child up in a dysfunctional environment. The option is protecting yourself, simply use birth control and not sleep around. As an American woman, I heard so many negative stories about caribbean and African men that I never paid attention to them, I only had eyes for American men even if it wasn’t what I wanted in a relationship, I would stick around. During my third year in college, I met a medical school student from Nigeria. We became friends but I was so skeptical because of all the negative stories of green card, controlling, stinking, etc I’ve heard about them. After three years of dating, we got engaged then got married a year later. It was so different because I didn’t have to push him about marriage . We’ve been happily married for eight years,, with two beautiful children. It’s done in the right order. The difference between black men and Nigerian men is, these men don’t play with their education, many of them are financially stable and have a sense of family. I’m so happy my two younger brothers saw a positive role model around them. He loves my brothers like his own and plays daddy role. My youngest bro was giving my mom a hard time, so he came to live with us. He put some sense into him, my bro went from always out kicking it to reading books in his room. My husband tutored him for his SAT, he scored high and got a full scholarship to a UC. Be open, if i wasn’t open, i wouldn’t have met this rare gem who has literally changed my life in so many ways.

  • Prevention Clinic Board

    condoms and birth control until marriage , after marriage too in some cases.

  • cashmere713

    Well dang, according to this article, men don’t want us, they don’t need us, we’re confining to their very nature, they’re gonna cheat and they just need us for incubation..What the heck is the point of love again?May as well start a service called “Wombs-are-us” and be done with each other.

  • Child Support Enforcement

    The point is people need to make better choices on both ends. Male and female. If you know you don’t want a child get birth control and don’t let any man convince you to have a child. There are some men who do this , for what I haven’t figured out. If you know you’re out for a good time (men) then so be it. Don’t do all this song and dance with the “i love you”, and “i will marry you next year”. Stop giving false hope.

  • passion

    We live in an “I, me, my” culture, and it’s really sad.
    What do I want? What feels good to ME? What will meet MY needs first and foremost? Whatever it is–if I want it, then I should have it.
    It doesn’t matter how I get it (because if I want it, it must be a good thing, so the end justifies the means), or whether it is right or wrong (because there’s no such thing anymore; if I decide it’s right for ME then it’s automatically “right”), or how it may affect anyone else (because what I want is the most important thing in life).

    To satisfy your desire to be a parent while at the same time intentionally depriving a child (who doesn’t get a vote) of having a father in his or her life full-time is SELFISH.

    #yepisaidit

    That goes for any hypothetical man described by this article AND any woman who purposefully gets pregnant while knowing that she will be raising a child without a father. I understand the whole ticking clock thing, but unfulfilled desires–including normal, natural desires–are a part of life.

    • dontdoit

      Is it selfish to have children with a man and woman who are married an extremely poor to the point where the child will have to do without?

  • KIR12

    The reason illegitamacy is so prevalent (72%+) in the black community is because the community has embraced “The Matriarchal Utopia Big Lie” (I don’t need a man). In spite of the fact that there is not one black community in this country with a high black illegitmacy rate that is stable, productive and raising and educating the majority of it’s kids to compete academically with kids of other races. NOT ONE! The overwhelming majority of drop outs and over 70% of male prisoners of every race come from baby mamma homes. The truth is there has never been a productive matriarchal nation in the history of civilization. Throughout history I have not seen any evidence that men, as a group, have ever embraced and nurtured their illegitimate kids. If the man does not love and make a commitment to the woman ie marriage, there’s only a 50% chance he’s going to love the child. That’s why you have so many black kids who don’t have a relationship with their fathers. Our ancestors understood this that’s why pre 1960′s illegitmacy was rejected in the black community. Black women had the highest rate of marriage of any race and almost every black kid had a father in the home. Because of this family structure the black community was incredibly stable and productive in spite of Jim Crow, segregation, discrimination and abject poverty (8 to 10 in a 2 bedroom shack or run down apartment).

    Unfortunately, black women have been brainwashed by White liberals and feminist into becoming human guinea pigs for their misguided notions and beliefs on “New familial structure” and the “Sexual Revolution”. After 4 generations, we now know that it’s been a disaster for black women and black kids. Interestingly, these same white liberals pushing this new family structure reject it for their own lives and kids. The illegitmacy rate for white women with a bachelors degree is between 4 to 6%. Which is as close to ZERO as you can get. I saw a study that showed 80 to 88% of sexually active UNMARRIED women in Western European industrialized nations are on birth control. Woman decide when to have sex and when to have kids. Men decide when to get married. The current UNMARRIED African American woman blames the man for her pregnancy. She explains her pregnancy by saying he should have used a condom. lol Condoms ALONE are good for preventing STD’s but have never worked for any race nor culture in preventing pregnancy. At some point when emotions and feelings are involved and or trust is built, the condom almost always comes off. All other races and cultures hold the UNMARIED woman responsible for her pregnancy. Not saying it’s right or wrong but it works! What blacks are doing does not work and has never worked with any race nor culture throughout history….. fact! Let’s put an end to the “Matriarchal Big Lie”.

  • KIR12

    The reason illegitamacy is so prevalent (72%+) in the black community is because the community has embraced “The Matriarchal Utopia Big Lie” (I don’t need a man). In spite of the fact that there is not one black community in this country with a high black illegitmacy rate that is stable, productive and raising and educating the majority of it’s kids to compete academically with kids of other races. NOT ONE! The overwhelming majority of drop outs and over 70% of male prisoners of every race come from baby mamma homes. The truth is there has never been a productive matriarchal nation in the history of civilization. Throughout history I have not seen any evidence that men, as a group, have ever embraced and nurtured their illegitimate kids. If the man does not love and make a commitment to the woman ie marriage, there’s only a 50% chance he’s going to love the child. That’s why you have so many black kids who don’t have a relationship with their fathers. Our ancestors understood this that’s why pre 1960′s illegitmacy was rejected in the black community. Black women had the highest rate of marriage of any race and almost every black kid had a father in the home. Because of this family structure the black community was incredibly stable and productive in spite of Jim Crow, segregation, discrimination and abject poverty (8 to 10 in a 2 bedroom shack or run down apartment).

    Unfortunately, black women have been brainwashed by White liberals and feminist into becoming human guinea pigs for their misguided notions and beliefs on “New familial structure” and the “Sexual Revolution”. After 4 generations, we now know that it’s been a disaster for black women and black kids. Interestingly, these same white liberals pushing this new family structure reject it for their own lives and kids. The illegitmacy rate for white women with a bachelors degree is between 4 to 6%. Which is as close to ZERO as you can get. I saw a study that showed 80 to 88% of sexually active UNMARRIED women in Western European industrialized nations are on birth control. Woman decide when to have sex and when to have kids. Men decide when to get married. The current UNMARRIED African American woman blames the man for her pregnancy. She explains her pregnancy by saying he should have used a condom. lol Condoms ALONE are good for preventing STD’s but have never worked for any race nor culture in preventing pregnancy. At some point when emotions and feelings are involved and or trust is built, the condom almost always comes off. All other races and cultures hold the UNMARIED woman responsible for her pregnancy. Not saying it’s right or wrong but it works! What blacks are doing does not work and has never worked with any race nor culture throughout history….. fact! Let’s put an end to the “Matriarchal Big Lie”.

    • deadbeat police

      most of this is true , there are some parts that’s questionable though. men need to be held accountable also.

    • Candacey Doris

      You’re wrong about there never being a successful matriarchy. Crete was matriarchal until they were massacred and colonized. The Hopi Indians were matriarchal (ditto on the massacre and colonization). As for the rest. All i can say is that i agree that women nee to take responsibility for their reproduction and not blame the man. It takes two to make a baby.

      • hmmmmm

        “Crete was matriarchal until they were massacred and colonized. The Hopi Indians were matriarchal (ditto on the massacre and colonization). ”

        You might want to pick better examples. The one this person is talking about seems to be heading the same way.

        • Candacey Doris

          My point is that they did exist, not that they lasted forever. And the people that massacre them were outsiders, their civilizations did not mysteriously implode.

          • KamJos

            Hopi culture is still going though. I know a couple and have visited their reservations a few times. The ills they are suffering now are a result of colonization.

            • Candacey Doris

              I know that they still exist but their cultures were changed to survive in the modern world and as you say, with those that colonized this country. They were killed both intentionally and through diseases they had no defense to. Very sad.

    • dontdoit

      So, what is the statistics on illegitimate pregnancy and black women with bachelors degrees? I’m guessing it is the same or similar to white women. This is probably more an issue of economics and education.

      • grateful

        ” I’m guessing it is the same or similar to white women”
        i seriously doubt this. quite a few black women attain college degrees but never gain common sense. a lot of them still have illegitimate kids.

        • dontdoit

          Well, what is the static then.

          • KamJos

            It was in the New York Times actually. Search “Unmarried Households are Increasingly the Norm.” There is a chart that lists the rates by education. If I post the link here MN will hold my comment. It’s actually higher than white women, and the highest of all the races. For women with bachelor’s degrees or higher the OOW rate is:
            Black: 32%
            Hispanic: 17%
            White: 6%

            Those numbers were taken in 2009.

            • dontdoit

              Interesting. Thanks for the information. Another interesting statistics I found while looking for the one provided is that in the early 1960s the illegitimate birth rate for whites was 1.9% and the illegitimate birth rate for blacks was 22%. There seems to have always been a large gap.

    • Hey

      Love your comment!

    • Pivyque

      *Sigh* Condoms don’t “always” come off. I hate it when people say that. At any rate, men and women are accountable for creating an illegitimate child. They both have a choice in condom/birth control usage. They can also make the choice to wait until marriage to have sex and only have sex with their spouse….that would significantly reduce the amount of illegitimate children. I’m just saying…

    • KIR12

      I think the conclusion about the economics of marriage reached here overlooks a major factor of having children and marriage, most people who chose the latter tend to plan the former. Too many seem to think there is something wrong with proactively planning who they marry or who they have children with as if its playing the lottery.

  • http://www.facebook.com/nikia.dshiznit Nikia D-Shiznit

    Reproduce, not procreate.

  • HOUSTON

    TIME TO STOP SINGLE PARENTHOOD.

  • http://blackonpurpose.blogspot.com/ gryph

    `Men see wives as second mothers or overbearing bosses who they have to check in with.’ or second children competing with actual children for ‘daddy’s’ attention. i think it is great that people in the mainstream are talking seriously about unbundling fatherhood and marriage. you can be a great father without being married to your child’s mother. hurray for diversity.

    • http://www.facebook.com/nikia.dshiznit Nikia D-Shiznit

      Funny, I feel the same about guys, since I’m further in education, success, money, etc.

      • http://blackonpurpose.blogspot.com/ gryph

        it is true. the black man child is a common trope. the black-woman child hides in the ‘strong black woman’s’ shadow. but there are very, very many immature women out there. being credentialled (educated) or moneyed isn’t really a sign of maturity, though. often some of them most entitled and immature people have such trappings.

        black male and female antagonisms make marriage a very volatile proposition. but, let’s not miss the fact that there’s an opportunity here to adapt social relations and family structure to the benefit of black children’s development.

        traditional structures (i.e. nuclear family) can be great but the way that we promote and invest in them some times creates unnecessary problems. separating the roles of father and husband can, for some, be as good as an idea as a country separating state and church.

        black women, on the low have been doing this for years (and then stand knowingly-by as black men get chopped up in the ‘absentee father’ machine). their reasons for seeking these sorts of reproductive rights are often wise – or at least practical for the conditions in which they been raised and the very real spectre of black men’s cruelty.

        similarly, some men might be better fathers if they don’t also have to be husbands. if that is so isn’t that a good thing?

    • Candacey Doris

      Some women feel the same way. While I agree that some men make better fathers than husbands, that is due to a number of factors, including willingness to try and make sacrifices on the part of both the man an the woman. Let’s face it, marriage is all about sacrifice and if no one wants to give anything up, it’s not working. As it is, if i don’t think a man would make a good father, i wouldn’t marry him. If i don’t think he would make a good husband, I’m not having a child with him. While some feel that it is a good idea to split up a family, the way my family has worked out, i can’t help but hold out for what my parents have.

      • http://blackonpurpose.blogspot.com/ gryph

        it is true not everyone will go for it, nor should they, but if as a social dynamic uncoupling fatherhood from being a husband might help people do family in more constructive ways, then is it a bad thing?

        • Candacey Doris

          I don’t know if it would be bad or good. I can’t see recommending it out of hand because African American men don’t want to marry. Men of different cultures that are still black have no problem with marriage (as a majority). I’m just going to go with advising people to o what works for them, as long as they aren’t hurting anyone. That’s all we can do, right?

          • http://blackonpurpose.blogspot.com/ gryph

            there are plenty reasons that afro-american men don’t want to marry some of the superficial some of them quite salient. but who benefits if we always bundle fatherhood and marriage? the idea isn’t to punish black men to failing to conform to today’s family standards or to disadvantage black women but to create or recognize family structures that can benefit more people. why are so many people suddenly against diversity?

            • Candacey Doris

              I’m not at all against diversity. Just against pushing for people to be any one way. Like i said, people should do what is best for them. But if that’s how you are, make sure that she’s alright with the situation before you put her into it. Let’s be real, a woman will say she’s down while thinking she’s going to change your mind. Happens to you all the time i bet. Don’t get involved with that woman. Find the woman that only wants a man in her life to be the father and not a husband. Only then can your model of the modern family work.

              • http://blackonpurpose.blogspot.com/ gryph

                that is true. one does have to be wise and selective regardless of the form the relationship takes.

      • MLS2698

        These so-called men who make better fathers than husbands don’t even take care of the children full time. So that still makes them 50% of a good father.

        • BW1615

          wtf?

  • Kayo

    Some men are very arrogant and believe they are the greatest thing ever and want to have children (BOYS) so that there is a little version of themselves.

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