Baby Daddy

Ok, at the risk of sounding like an "old fart" (to borrow Dwight's term), I want to say something about the whole "baby daddy" thing. I know you've seen this in the movies, and on Maury and Springer, but I see it every day on my job...and I'm tired of it. The idea that it's ok to have multiple children, all by different men, unmarried, and many times having their medical care paid for by my tax money, irks me. It's not that I have anything against single parent families. I know there are situations where that can't be avoided, but to go from one man to the next, having another baby, and not being able to afford the maternity care or child care, just doesn't seem right to me, not to mention the fact that the guys seem to "get off" without any responsibility at all (no pun intended).

To make matters worse, this seems to be a very "American" phenomenon. I rarely ever see this behavior in my Hispanic, Asian, Middle Eastern, and Eastern European patients. When I ask my patient if the father of her current pregnancy is the same as her other children, she usually looks at me like she can't comprehend the reason for the question. The answer is usually a puzzled
"of course".

I can only hope that these "foreigners" don't become too "americanized". They obviously have the concept of family down better that we do, and personally, I am embarrassed by what I see in my white and black American patients who seem to be clueless about the importance of a cohesive family unit.

Even though my non-American patients are frequently viewed as second class people, perhaps we can learn some "family" values from them.