Conference quark::mennotes-v1

    
    Either its a genetic deficiency or else its a vestige of primate days..

    Embarrassment ?

    You don't see men going around displaying their emotions
    of sadness, disillusionment, despair, regret, bewilderment,
    etc, very often, do you?  So why would you expect anything
    different on *this* issue?
    
    If the man admits to his emotions in *private*, that is, to
    himself, he may well be miserable over having "left behind" 
    a child that he fathered.   
    
    Lots of men have bought the culture's message of being "tough," 
    so they don't even admit these feelings to themselves.  And the 
    price they pay for this is depression, and the anger that follows it.
    What most of us see is the anger, and the anger fits the "tough"
    image, and so we think that men are callous, unfeeling creatures.
    
    For that matter, a man doesn't have to have given up the child
    for adoption to feel miserable about his fathering (or lack of
    fathering).  One of the griefs of passing beyond mid-life for
    men is realizing how badly they screwed it up.
    
    Bill

    	Bonnie....
    
    	We hear more of men leaving children behind than we do of women.
    In today's society, more and more women are deserting the family
    than ever.                                   
    
    	To answer your question I think it needs to be addressed in
    two parts:
    
    	1. Men who leave children today. There are several answers here.
    In many instances men won't acknowledge children because they really
    have never had contact with them. A woman gets pregnant and the
    father may be young or unemployed and he splits. Divorces cause
    huge rifts and men just won't face ex-wives. 
    
    	2. Amerasian children aren't claimed because many men can't
    be sure that the children are theirs. I spent alot of time over
    there and I can say from experience that most of the women were
    looking for a better life at the time. Stories of women who were
    brought to the US by military personnel was cause for hope. Because
    Americans took a lot of responsibility, women would get pregnant
    for the support check. Many women (hookers) lived with different
    guys from different ships when they weren't working the bars. Even
    if a GI was in an area and had a relationship with a woman, she
    could have gotten pregnant the day after he left with a differnt
    GI. It's just that she had one guy's picture and not another's.
    Some have legitimit claims. They lived with a guy for 6-10 months
    and were pregnant before he left. Many guys made empty promises.
    A lot of guys don't even know that they left children behind. We
    left there 15 years ago............
    
    The easiest answer I can think of is that men don't carry a child
    for 9 months. Men don't give birth. That may be why some men feel
    it's easy to walk away.
    
    On the other hand, women walk away. The "new age" woman looking
    to "find herself" and pursue life, leaves her spouse and children.
    I guess we can reverse the question and say, "How can a woman just
    turn and walk away from her children?"
    
    Ken

>      <<< Note 485.0 by WMOIS::B_REINKE "We won't play your silly game" >>>
 
    
>    To me as a woman, it seems that men are very callous  about
>    children born out of wedlock. That they don't care about
>    the 'by blow' they left behind in Veitnam, or the kid they
>    engendered on a brief encounter one night after a party in
>    college or high school etc..
 
	Most of the men who had a child out of wedlock while
	in Vietnam, don't even know that a child exists. From
	what I heard from the vets is that the girls over there
	had sex with them for money or favors, which equates
	to prostitution.

	As far as a brief encounter in high school/college, there
	are the same amount of girls who gave the child up for
	adoption, without a second thought or aborted the child.
	
	There are many cases of young adults finally tracking
	down their natural mothers, only to have the mother tell
	them to leave them alone.
   
	And, what about the men who got a woman pregnant and
	wanted to marry her, wanted to be a father and the woman
	either aborted the child or went away to have the baby to
	give it up for adoption?    

>    for any woman, leaving such a child to adoption is a painful
>    memory, but it appears that to many men leaving a child behind
>    is quite easy.
 

	That is a very biased and unfair accusation. There are women
	who have left children behind without so much as a twinge
	of pain or regret.

	   
    	I feel there is an equal amount of non caring about a child
	between men and women.

	kits

    Well said, Kits!!
    I think there's very little to add, I'd say, but then again, I'm just a
    man with no children (known or unknown off).
    
    Charles

I know a woman in her 30s, who after her adoptive father died,
went in search of her birth parents.  (She did this with the
support of her adoptive mother.)  She found the birth mother, 
made contact, visited with her, the birth mother visited back, 
both of them got together with the adoptive mother, and they
all went public in a very joyful, tear-filled ceremony in the
church community of the adoptive mother.  The woman began to
visit with her birth mother...     In the process she learned
who the birth father was and contacted him.  He came to visit
her, visited with the adoptive mother, etc.  The woman and her
birth father were very close and loving to each other.  As a
friend of the adoptive mother, I got invited along on some
gatherings and can attest that the father was a nice guy, very
expressive of his love for his daughter and was happy to see 
her and to see how she had fared in life.

The birth mother was able to explain why she was given up for
adoption and was also willing to ackowledge this daughter in
her current life, introducing the daughter to her half-sister
and the birth mother's friends.  But after awhile, the woman 
realized that the birth mother was not "there" for her in the 
same way that her adoptive mother was there for her.  It was
not a matter of how far apart they lived, it was the personality
of the birth mother.  She did not "relate" (to her other
daughter, either) in the same way that the woman could relate
to her adoptive mother.

The birth father was much better at "relating" to the woman.
They became very close, in some sense a lot closer than she
had been to her adoptive father, who was not a very emotionally
responsive man.  However, the birth father never admitted her
into his public life.  He required that she write or call him
at his business address and he insisted on visiting her, rather
than having her visit him.  The woman realized after awhile 
that he was very much controlled by the women around him (his
mother, wife, sisters, etc) and it would have been impossible 
for him to bring her into his life with these women.

After a year or more, the woman began to see less of these
birth parents (the birth mother moved across the country) and
she began to see how different her life would have been had she
grown up with either (or both) of her birth parents.  I haven't 
talked with the woman for a couple of years, but I think the 
relationships with her birth parents have dropped off to an 
exchange of birthday/Christmas cards.

The other thing that happened is that the relationship between
the woman and her adoptive mother is closer than ever.

Bill

I don't know what goes on in the head/heart of the birth father...

	I never understood this either. My wife's parents seperated when
	she (my wife) was two. My wife has never heard from or seen her
	father since. This is amasing to me. I've been tempted to try and
	track this guy down just to ask why.

	On the other hand I know an other man who almost comes to tears about
	the baby he didn't have because the women he made pregnant had an
	abortion. There are all kinds. Of course for myself I have as much
	trouble understanding women who abort as I do men who abandon.

			Alfred

    I think that maybe one reason a man can more easily leave a child
    behind is because it may not seem as "real" to him as it does to
    the mother.  What I mean is, if a woman ends up pregnant, she is
    the one who carries the baby and goes through nine months of physical
    changes- the baby is very real to her- it is a part of her, in the
    very physical sense.  The man, however, has just deposited his sperm
    and moved on.  He doesn't have any sense of the baby as being *real*
    or *alive*- he just sees the problems this child may cause, and
    leaves.
    
    NO, I don't feel that all men are like this- it is just a theory.
    
    kkay

    
    1) I agree with most of what Kits said in .5.
    
    2) Some men are just plain jerks.  It makes it harder on the ones
       of us who *do* care about our children (not necessarily from Nam).
    
    3) For some men, there is just nothing they can do about it.  I've 
       seen reports on television about the difficulty that men who 
       *do* want to take responsibility for their Vietnamese children
       have in getting them.  Many who do try are just not capable 
       either financially or emotionally to keep up the fight.
    
    4) For some men, seeing their non-custodial children reopens some
       very deep emotional wounds.  For some, the only way to keep from
       going nuts is to just walk away.  I still recall how difficult
       seeing my own children was after not seeing them for over two years.
       Although I was extremely happy to see them, the emotional turmoil
       during that time was intense.  
    
    5) It is more 'socially acceptable' for men to walk instead of keeping
       up a turmoil (not necessarily of his own choosing) with the ex.
    
    fred();
    

    
    RE: .9
    
    I agree, KarenKay. Newborn babies weren't very "real" for me.
    
    It was a long time ago, but I remember my kids (three) growing inside
    my wife and all the changes that she was going through, and basically
    I was far more concerned for her, than for the kid.  She almost died
    (heart stopped) on the delivery table with the first one (badly administered
    anesthetic, but we didn't know that until much later) and then had
    a kidney infection, so my anxiety during the gestation of the next 
    two was much worse...  And then when each baby was out, my wife and
    other women would all be cooing and oohing and aahing and deciding
    whose nose the baby had and whose eyes, chin, etc...  They all 
    looked exactly the same to me (and I still have baby pictures to prove
    it) and the "same" in this case meant blobby, blotchy, squinty
    "baby."  I did not start to bond to them until they began to look 
    more like what I thought a human being was supposed to look like and
    until I saw them doing "human" things (grasping, looking, gurgling,
    and all the normal bodily functions, etc).  And then when they 
    started "smiling", crawling, standing, and of course talking.
    
    I'm not saying this is "right."  I think I'd be different these
    days and I'd credit the changes in the culture that encourage me
    as a man to be emotionally involved with kids as well as other
    things.  So, if I were having kids these days, I'd probably be
    more "attached" at an earlier time.  But if my experience from
    years back is anything like other men's experience, I'd agree that
    the woman's privilege/burden in carrying the baby to term gives
    her the advantage/disadvantage of bonding earlier, with the
    joy/grief of having a healthy baby or losing it (through miscarriage,
    abortion or giving it up for adoption).
    
    Bill                                  

    re .9, I think I agree with you.  I've wondered about this before.  I
    can't understand how either men or women can just walk away from
    their own children, and sometimes live their entire lives without ever
    knowing what became of their own kids.  I do think that more men than
    women have done this, and think the main reason is that it is easier
    for men to just walk away.  I've noticed that usually men only love and
    care about the children they have with women they are in love with,
    whether it's their wife or not.  But, most women seem to love and care
    about all their children regardless of who the father is.  If a man has
    a brief fling or one night stand and later finds out the woman is
    pregnant he is likely to wonder if it is his kid, and he can't be
    expected to really love and care about a child if he doesn't even know
    if it's really his.  But, even if a woman doesn't know who the father
    of her child is, she obviously knows that *she's* the mother regardless
    of who the father was.  Also, as .9 said, women have to be pregnant for
    9 months, regardless of how well she knew the father, and women still
    have to give birth, and these are very bonding situations usually. 
    
    It has also been easier for men to walk, in the past, because society
    has traditionally placed more expectations on mothers than on fathers. 
    In the past, people didn't seem to think it was that unusual for
    unmarried fathers to abandon their children.  But, it there has always
    been more censure placed on women who abandoned their kids.  They were
    considered unnatural, horrible people, etc.
    
    Personally, I've always felt that I could never give a child up for
    adoption because I couldn't stand to know there was a child of mine
    somewhere in the world and I didn't know where it was and how it was
    doing and acting as it's mother.  I'm also not sure if I could ever
    have an abortion either, although I will always be pro-choice for other
    people.  (I think I could only have one if I found out the child would be
    retarded.)  But, if I were a man, and I were very young, and I didn't
    like the woman, and I really didn't think there was much chance the
    child was mine.....  I don't know, maybe I'd walk away, too, in that
    situation.  But, as a woman, I would *always* know it was *mine.*
    
    Lorna
     

    Many times the man has no choice about whether to walk or not.  With
    today's divorce laws and the Court's attitude towards men and custody,
    a father can find his children in another state when he comes home
    from work and there isn't *&^% he can do about it.  By the time
    he finishes paying "child support" there may not be much left
    financially to maintain a long distance relationship whith his chidren.
    
    This kind of *&^% was supposed to have gone out with the Emancipation
    Proclamation, but today it's called No Fault Divorce.
    
    fred();