our conversations with each father, we explored the story behind how he became a dad, some for the first time like Andre, and some for the second, third, or even the sixth time. We asked each father about every pregnancy he claimed responsibility for. We wanted to know if he had wanted to have a child right then, if and when he had used contraception, and if he had talked about having a baby with the woman he was with at the time. We asked him to think back to the moment when he first heard about the pregnancy and to describe what went through his mind. And we inquired about the reactions of both his and the mother’s family, as well as any advice these kin gave.
REACTIONS TO THE NEWS
Men’s responses ran the gamut—from vehement and panicked denials of paternity to loud shouts of joy—when they first heard about the pregnancy.1 Only a handful outright rejected the news. A pervasive sexual mistrust—the conviction that women couldn’t be trusted to be faithful—featured large among men who responded this way.2 Another handful said they were either shaken or scared or didn’t quite know what to think when they heard about the pregnancy.3 Craig, a black twenty-eight-year-old day laborer was just fifteen, like Andre, and had recently been kicked out of the tenth grade at Camden High when he learned that his girlfriend was pregnant. We ask if he had felt ready to become a father. “No, no, I am not going to sit here and lie to you. No, I was not ready at all.” Craig then says, “When can you actually say that you are ready to have a child at a young age?” Lee, a black forty-two-year-old, part-time construction worker was already twenty-four when his girlfriend conceived. Thinking back, he says his first reaction was, “Run!” explaining, “I didn’t have no job!” Several others say they were unsure how to respond because the woman in question kept changing her story about who the father was.
For one pregnancy in five, men say they responded by “accepting” the news, a generally positive reaction but one tempered with a sobering realization of their new responsibilities. When Marie told Jack, the thirty-three-year-old white father we met in chapter 1, that she was expecting he says he was “excited.” Yet, he admits, “I was a little scared.” When we asked what had him worried, Jack replied, “Responsibility. Staying home all the time instead of hanging out with my friends, the financial costs—diapers, diapers, diapers. Formula! Ow! But I was looking forward to having a little baby running around my house. That’s what I focused on.” Jack took the news in stride, dropped out of college, and got a job. Alex, age thirty-six, was raised in Camden by the oldest of his six siblings; when he was three his mother died and his father abandoned the family. This black father of three was eighteen when he learned his girlfriend was pregnant the first time. Alex’s initial emotion—delight—was quickly overtaken by a second: an almost overpowering sense of duty to his unborn child. “The first thing that hit my mind was, I did not want to be like my dad. This is the summer between the eleventh and twelfth grade, and I said, ‘look ain’t no sense in me going back to school. I need a job.’”
Unadulterated happiness—even joy—was by far the most common reaction though; more than half of all pregnancies were welcomed in this way without reservation.4 Byron Jones, age forty-six, whom we met in the previous chapter, is clear about his response to the news: “Shoot! I was happy, man!” Thirty-nine-year-old Amin Jenkins, also from chapter 1, says that during a brief interlude in his late teens when he was not incarcerated, he fathered a son with a woman he was not even together with at the time. Nonetheless, he tells us, he reacted with considerable enthusiasm to the news that this mere acquaintance was pregnant with his child. “Even though I was not in love, I wanted a son.” Many fathers were surprised that we would even ask them this question. “I was glad! It was no major obstacle!” says thirty-three-year-old Steven, a black father of three who works as a casual laborer for a city contractor, describing his reaction to the news that he was going to become a father at age twenty, as if the answer to our question was so apparent that it could be assumed.
In story after story, happy reactions abound. Thirty-six-year-old Omar, perhaps the most troubled, violent, and criminally involved man we spoke with—a black hustler who had even pimped out the mother of his three children—was also puzzled by our query. He exclaimed, “I was happy! All the other girls killed my babies. They had abortions. I said, ‘She’s my first—I’m gonna give her everything.’” Joe, a white forty-five-year-old father of four who drives a horse and carriage for tourists, says simply of his reaction to the news that his first child was on the way, “I wanted a son, and I had a son!”
Forty-six-year-old Roger (who manages a thrift store), twenty-six-year-old Little E. (who works at a butcher shop in the Italian market), and Ozzy, age thirty-five, who does odd jobs and collects SSI (or “disability”) for mental-health problems—all white men—each claim a strong underlying desire to have a child that was galvanized by the news. “I always wanted one!” Roger tells us, to explain his ecstatic reaction. Calvin, who combines maintenance work with occasional jobs with a moving company, was twenty-five when his first child was conceived. He recalls a similar response: “I loved it. I love kids!” This white forty-five-year-old now has five children.
James says that he planned it all out. This white forty-year-old father of four has his own home business assembling computers. Although he was only nineteen at the time his first child was conceived, he claims, “I wanted to have a kid. I wanted to get my girlfriend pregnant and have a baby. Nobody made me that way—that is me, how I came up. I was a working kid. I thought I made a lot of money. I was ready for it.” At the time, he suspected that his girlfriend was having sex with several other men on the side, yet he says, “When I found out she was pregnant everything changed. I was like, ‘I don’t care if she is cheating,’ and at first I was so happy.”
WERE THE PREGNANCIES PLANNED?
Taken together, the happy and accepting reactions to a pregnancy comprise over three-quarters of all responses (see table 2 in the appendix). At least some of the men who were happy at the news thought that they were “ready to become a dad,” as James had, or said they had “always wanted” kids. Yet recall that Andre Green had clearly not set out to have a baby with Sonya. Nonetheless, when faced with the opportunity to embrace a pregnancy, he seizes it with both hands.
A critical ingredient to our story’s arc—high hopes, yet often failed ambitions in relation to fatherhood—is the fact that precious few pregnancies are either actively avoided or explicitly planned. We asked each father to tell us the whole story around each conception, whether he had talked about the possibility of children with his partner beforehand and whether either he or she was using any birth control at the time. We then sorted fathers’ answers into four categories: “planned,” “semiplanned,” “accidental,” and “just not thinking at the time” (see table 3 in the appendix).5 Planned pregnancies—cases in which men said they wanted to have a baby at the time and had talked with their partner about it—account for only 15 percent of the total.6
Accidental pregnancies—where the couple actively avoids a pregnancy (with birth control) or believes they can’t conceive due to infertility—are as rare as planned pregnancies. Note though that both condoms and the pill are highly effective at preventing pregnancy; thus “accidents” due to contraceptive failure are likely the user’s failure and not the product’s.7 When William, a twenty-five-year-old African American father of four who works as a dietary aide at a nursing home, is asked about the conception of his oldest child, he responds, “My girlfriend told me she was taking birth control pills every day faithfully. Somehow she just got pregnant. I don’t see how. I told her I didn’t want none, not yet, and she said she ain’t want none neither.”
Bruce is a white forty-five-year-old father of twins who occasionally finds jobs through a temp agency. Even though he didn’t particularly want children, he didn’t “believe” in safe sex either, because “every time I had any kind of relationship, there is no babies born.” Imagine Bruce’s surprise when after only two months with Debbie, she announced, “I am seven weeks pregnant!” Forty-two years old
