Baby? NO THANKS...

Everyone’s supposed to be over the moon at having kids, right? Wrong. What happens when your baby daddy is not doing cartwheels at the prospect of parenthood?

Few of a woman’s life stages are as mythologised as pregnancy. According to the fairy tale, you and he have rampant birth-control-free sex for three months, you pee on a stick and – cue the tears of joy – you’re pregnant! Now nine months of marital harmony and expectant excitement ensue. Most of us have long since stopped believing in fairy tales. What if, for example, your pregnancy was an accident? You’re not in a stable relationship with the baby’s father? Or even if you are, it turns out your man is not charmed at the prospect of becoming a parent? These moms share their stories with us.

KHANYI

Khanyi (34), the mother of 9-year-old twins, was living with her long-term boyfriend – and was on the Pill! – when she discovered she was expecting. She says her boyfriend was “excited at first but became more and more unenthusiastic as the months wore on” – until eventually, sensing a lack of support, Khanyi moved back to her parental home. After the birth of the children, her ex stopped contacting her, and she was “too immersed in the business of looking after twins to chase after him”. Contact between the children and their father was sporadic. Then tragedy struck, and he died in a car accident when the twins were 4. Khanyi says she regrets the absence of a father figure in her boys’ life. “I think they feel envy towards other children who have a father,” she says, but appreciates that some of the men in her family have become role models. She stresses that she spends a lot of effort trying to raise boys who can cook and do housework, and who take responsibility for themselves, in order to try to break what she feels is a ”cycle of male irresponsibility”.