‘Fathering’ Does Not A Father Make

I had planned to postpone announcing my dictatorship until my son was grown, not wishing to embarrass him, but rampant stupidity makes such leisurely pace untenable.

To wit, a Supreme Court decision Monday upheld a $7.8 million judgment against an unwed woman who gave up her child for adoption against the wishes of the so-called “father.”

Dear old dad, who wasn’t married to the mother - ergo, under my dictatorship, has no claim whatsoever to the product of his enchanted evening - claims he always wanted the baby, if not the mother, and is entitled to millions in damages.

The mother, for the record, claims the father wanted her to abort the child.

Apparently, the Supreme Court justices had no choice but to let stand the lower court award given the lousy laws they were saddled with. Since 1972, the law says that unwed fathers can have a say in their offspring’s placement, which explains why we’ve witnessed so many abysmal rulings in recent years where happily adopted children were ripped from their parents’ arms and delivered to some stranger who lost track of his issue.

No one is more supportive than I of fathers’ rights and children’s need for their dads. I believe with every cell and fiber that fathers are as important as mothers, though in different ways and perhaps at different times.

I - and a certain Someone Else who gave women the equipment to bear and nourish infants - still subscribe to the belief that infants would choose their mothers over their fathers given a vote. Likewise, at different ages, children prefer their fathers for all the right reasons; they need to learn the lessons of fathers at those specific times. In any case, both parents bring something critical to the table and children shouldn’t have to choose between them.

My rules, nevertheless, are born of necessity and common sense. Simply, women who get pregnant out of wedlock have sole discretionary power as to the pregnancy’s outcome. Men who participate in a pregnancy out of wedlock have no say; they also don’t have to pay child support unless they’re just uncommonly decent.

How else can it be? How else can we sustain the family? How else can we preserve civilized society? Yes, sex outside marriage happens (a lot) and so do unplanned pregnancies. One’s called playing the game; the other’s called consequences. But in between are choices, among which are practicing birth control, marrying before conceiving children, or at least having sex with someone you know and love enough to sanely discuss pregnancy should it occur. Now there’s a concept.

In the current case, the mother, Anne Conaty Selvaggi, got pregnant toward the end of her seven-year relationship with John Kessel. The two were engaged a couple of times during their “courtship,” but finally called it off in January 1991. Selvaggi, now married, gave birth to a son in May of that year and placed him for adoption with a Canadian family.

Seven weeks before Selvaggi gave birth, however, Kessel went to court to try to prevent the adoption. The courts have ruled that Selvaggi, her family and the adoption attorneys - all liable in varying degrees for some portion of the $7.8 million - interfered with Kessel’s parental relationship with his son.

The courts are probably right, but the applicable laws are wrong and should be changed, regardless of Kessel’s professed sincerity in wishing to be a father.

It isn’t enough for “fathers” to claim parenthood (or for mothers to insist on support) on the sole basis of a sexual relationship. Commitment comes first, then marriage, then baby. This unfashionable chronology has a social, if not divine, purpose: It protects the institution of family and ensures the best possible environment for children.

Given that people will continue to behave badly, our laws must be rewritten to protect the unwed mother’s option of placing children for adoption without fear of interference or retribution. Otherwise, owing to this ruling and the punitive power it gives Johnny-come-lately daddies, future babies conceived out of wedlock are likely to meet a different fate. They’ll be aborted instead.