Thought for the day
Woman wants child, her husband doesn’t. Eventually she stops taking birth control, gets pregnant, and claims to her husband that it was an accident. On a scale of one to ten, how bad is that?
(This is once more for a fanfiction: I’m curious as to how many people would lose sympathy for a character who did that.)
April 28, 2007 @ 9:06 pm
I’d say pretty bad – I don’t want kids, and the thought of my partner knowing that but then being so manipulative as to force it on me (biologically improbable as that is, considering I’m a woman)… ugh. I would feel sympathy for her, though, as one of my close friends had a sad breakup with a long-term boyfriend over the fact that she wants kids and he doesn’t.
April 28, 2007 @ 9:19 pm
I’d rate it an 8 at least. Besides being a dirty rotten thing to do, it’s a betrayal. It says, ‘I don’t respect your choices’, and when you get to that point isn’t it best to call it quits? I’d say it ranks up there (though not the same as, obviously) infidelity. Total lack of respect for someone who is supposed to be the one person who will never betray you.
April 28, 2007 @ 9:22 pm
Er, or the someone you will are never supposed to betray. It makes sense in my head, I promise. (I’m also coming at this from the POV of someone who doesn’t want kids. If, theoretically, a guy tampered with my birth control, I’d be so pissed. He’d *definitely* never be fathering any kids after I was through with him, let’s put it that way. How it’s somehow more acceptable to some people when the shoe’s on the other foot, I dunno.) If it actually *is* an accident, well. Those things happen.
April 28, 2007 @ 9:29 pm
Kind of depends on how the characters are written. If the woman’s got a history of doing underhanded things, then yeah, I’d kind of be a bit miffed at her, but if it’s just the one time, then no, I wouldn’t lose too much sympathy. Either way, she’s made it plain that she’d rather have the child than her husband by making that choice.
April 28, 2007 @ 9:31 pm
I think I would have some sympathy if I was outside of the situation ie. if it was a couple I knew, but if I was the partner who’d been betrayed in that way I think I’d be pretty hard pressed to be sympathetic. Assuming they both made the commitment not to have kids before they got married, and it wasn’t just something he suddenly sprung on her. I’d say pretty high in the ‘how bad’ scale. Interesting scenario!
April 28, 2007 @ 9:40 pm
I’d say 5 or 6. It’s dishonest but understandable. It would also be understandable if the husband left her and didn’t want to have anything to do with the child. They shouldn’t have gotten into a marriage without one of them having to compromise on it. So, er, yeah I’d be behind her decision but would have no sympathy for her if he left.