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He talked his wife into having a baby she didn't want, and now she's "a completely different person."
By John Sundholm — Written on May 02, 2023
Few things are as challenging to marriage as partners who aren't on the same page when it comes to having kids. One dad has gotten a first-person glimpse of just how sideways this situation can go, and as he shared in a post online, it's led to him considering calling authorities on his wife.
A dad is horrified that his wife is desperate to get rid of their three-month-old baby.
The dad was overjoyed to have his newborn son, but he is shocked and perplexed by his wife's response to motherhood, particularly after a recent incident in which he "came home from work to [his wife and baby] both crying and screaming, and my wife said 'get him out of my house' referring to our son."
The dad wants to call CPS on his wife because 'she's a completely different person' since their baby was born.
The harrowing scene he came home to when his wife begged him to "get him out of my house" has left the dad deeply disturbed. "I didn’t know what to do so I took [the baby] to my parents' house," he writes, and when he returned "my wife was still in the same spot, crying, telling me her life is ruined, and that she had thoughts of running away."
Her reaction didn't come out of nowhere, however—she's been distraught from the moment their son was born. "She cries more than he does, doesn’t seem to want to hold him, and refuses to let him nurse from her," he writes. "She used to be fun, bubbly, joking. Now it’s like she’s a completely different person."
He doesn't know what to do about the situation and is wondering if he should call Child Protective Services. "I feel my wife has a duty to our son to nurse and love him," he says. "Yet she is trying to abandon him. Should I call CPS to talk to her about what she’s doing?"
The dad's wife is distraught because she was 'child-free' and was coerced into having kids.
Harrowing as the mom's response is, it is in some ways unsurprising, because she never wanted kids in the first place. The dad writes that he and his wife, who are now 31 and 28 respectively, met when they were in their early 20s, and she made it clear she didn't want children. "She was always 'child-free' and told me that from the start," he writes.
But he didn't take her seriously. "I figured she was just young and free and eventually she would settle down," he writes, "like every other woman out there." That last bit speaks volumes, but that's the subject of another article.
In any case, he realized just how serious his wife was when she wanted to get a tubal ligation. He was "really bothered" by this and told his wife he thought he might be "upset" if she went through with it. Over time, he successfully coerced her into having kids. "Eventually I managed to get her to agree to have one kid," he writes.
The medical and mental health professions have a term for this—reproductive coercion—and it comes in many forms, including ones that are considered a form of sexual assault. It's also far more common than most of us assume. A 2010 University of California Davis School of Medicine study found that 19% of women 18-29 who visited family planning clinics—nearly one in five—reported having become pregnant after being pressured or coerced by their partner.
Disagreements over whether to have kids are so personal and monumental that as seen in the video below, therapist Emily Pardy calls it a "gridlock decision"—one in which there simply is no compromise. You can't have "half a kid," after all, and being coerced into having kids certainly isn't the answer. Pardy instead stresses that couples need to be willing to have difficult conversations about this topic.
Many people online were horrified by the dad's desire to call CPS on the wife he coerced into having kids.
"The number of men who hear 'I don't want kids' and think 'She's not serious, she'll change her mind later, I can marry her and make her change her mind' is alarming," one person on Reddit wrote. "My ex lied to me for nine years," another user said, "during which we had numerous conversations and always agreed that we didn’t want kids. Finally, at the end, he told me he’d been waiting the entire time for me to change my mind."
Another person added, "It's almost like when women say they don't want kids, you should listen to them and respect their decision." Some even theorized that the mom was suffering from post-partum depression. The most tragic part of this, of course, is the way it will impact the baby himself. It's okay for women to want to be child-free, and scenarios like this one prove that sometimes it's absolutely the better choice.
John Sundholm is a news and entertainment writer who covers pop culture, social justice and human interest topics.