I don’t have kids, but I know plenty of people who do. I can’t think of many parents who don’t love and treasure their children, no matter how they got them. There’s no need to feel shame for enjoying sex without contraception if one is doing so with full knowledge of and preparation for the consequences of such a choice. I don’t think there’s a need to come up with elaborate explanations or intentions after the fact––hey man, you like to raw-dog it, and you’re allowed to!
But I’ll forever be unimpressed with people––OK, I’m talking about men––who act like they intended to get multiple women pregnant in rapid succession in the course of a single year. Kids are a life-changing responsibility, and most people take that seriously enough that they at least attempt some kind of responsible family planning, but then we have dudes like Nick Cannon who can’t just sit in their hoeism and be secure with it. Cannon is a former child star who has become wildly successful in adulthood as a television producer, presenter, actor, TeenNick executive, you name it, and he seems to be punctuating each professional success with a new baby. In the last year, he became father to four children (bringing his grand total up to seven), and I don’t judge that at all. I can’t imagine that he has no idea how babies are made, so he has to be aware of the consequences of unprotected sex. But I do judge the completely wack-ass statements he’s made since this news went public. He was on the Aug. 9 episode of “The Breakfast Club” talking like Dr. Umar cornered by his baby-mothers, attempting to claim that family planning and sexual responsibility are “Eurocentric” concepts.
He went on to talk about the origins of marriage as a way to classify ownership and acquire property, and it’s been explained that way to me before by someone who wanted to bang without condoms, too. I mean, sure, marriage did originate as a way to establish family alliances and keep property amongst particular groups, but it’s 2021, and I haven’t heard of any modern family feuds quelled by making two of the young’uns couple up. He then went on to say, “Women are the ones who open themselves up to say, ‘I would like to allow this man in my world, and I will birth his child.’ It ain’t my decision. I’m following suit.”
Show host Charlemagne Tha God pretty much spoke for me and so many others by responding, “I respect that game you runnin’ on them ladies.” That may be the most fake-woke, manipulative take on unplanned pregnancies I’ve heard all year, and I take my bonnet off to Charlemagne for not letting such a statement go unchallenged. Marriage is an antiquated concept that plenty of people don’t ascribe to nowadays, and there’s no need to pretend that marriage didn’t exist until white people came along (the earliest marriage record is from Mesopotamia in about 3000 BCE). And anyway, what does marriage have to do with being a parent in this modern world? They are not inextricably linked. Implying that a bevy of women offering up their wombs to him in 2020 removes any personal responsibility he has for his clear distaste for prophylactics just feels like a classic f-boy manipulation. Come on, dudes, just say you hate condoms and leave it at that. You just have to accept what that means for your future and any potential kids that are brought into the world.
I know that there is still a stigma attached to parenting out of wedlock, and that stigma is usually attached to women more than men, since only 16% of single parent households are headed by fathers. Simply put, they can hide that fact about themselves way easier than most single moms can. Just weeks earlier, Cannon was comparing himself to a seahorse and claiming he was getting these women pregnant on purpose, but on Monday he described himself as a passive participant in these women’s desires to procreate. Dude is obviously talking out of his ass, but he should just relax because he’s rich enough to shoulder all seven of these responsibilities, and I’d bet you a dollar that none of them will be living with him full-time.
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