At a hastily called press conference after a surprise appearance in
the courtroom, Woody again affirmed his paternity by donning a brand new
role: spokesman for his fellow unwed father litigants. "I think many
fathers will empathize with me," Woody said. He was referring to the
suffering Mia had inflicted by barring him from visiting his children or
buying them Christmas and holiday gifts. However, he neglected to mention
that many women doubtless empathize with Mia's emotional distress caused
by Woody's alleged non-fatherly sexual transgressions with the daughter
he admits having slept with and the daughter, Dylan, he denies having
abused.
With Mia battling to have Woody "declared not the father," and
Woody battling to "become the father now and forever," their desperate
struggles to oust each other from their parenting roles have ironically
left this quintessentially unwed, unconventional couple battling more
viciously over their children than most divorcing couples in conventional
families.
Yet Woody Allen isn't the only famous unwed father who has lately
battled an exlover in court over child support and other issues relating
to their desire to be, or not to be, a father. Other such celebrities
include Woody's mainstream Hollywood contemporary, the Academy
Award-winning director of Rocky and The Karate Kid, John Avildsen; as
well as actors William Hurt and Robert De Niro, and crooners Engelbert
Humperdinck and Julio Iglesias.
Newsweek recently dubbed this spate of sensational paternity suits
"the celebrity accoutrement of the 1990s." The cases show that many
real-life Murphy Browns besides Mia are not leading the life of Reilly at
all--without him.
Whether they bear their out-of-wedlock babies by choice or by
chance, these unwed mothers show a similar Murphy Brown/Mia-type
willingness to forego fatherhood's legal "befores"--like the wedding. But
after baby makes two, they too crave fatherhood's familiar, dutiful
"afters"--money and fatherly guidance.
Like Mia, they also seem to assume that their new right to single
motherhood carries with it an implicit right to receive paternal bonding.
Consequently, these women who once depended on their husbands to bond and
care for their babies now depend on the law to compel the bonding that is
no longer forthcoming in today's new family structures.
Although these other famous unwed fathers have resisted the
unilateral but ambivalent mothering urges of their ex-lovers as fiercely
as Woody, few do so with the seeming aplomb of Latino crooner Julio
Iglesias. Reportedly Iglesias merely ignores the non-stop demands for him
to face up to fatherhood. "If I had to take a paternity test for every
girl who says I got her pregnant, I would never have any time to sing,"
he was recently quoted as saying.
According to matrimonial lawyer Raoul Lionel Felder, the
increasingly high cost to men of paying today's court-ordered child
support under the law's new humane guidelines has driven other "putative"
fathers to go on the offensive. Some bring reverse paternity suits
against single mothers in hopes that negative paternity test findings
will keep them from being saddled with unwanted fatherly
responsibilities.
Others sue for custody, like Woody himself. And they are not
necessarily motivated to do so by love. Many are said to sue because they
fear custody could be cheaper than paying court-ordered child support.
And others file appeals and countersuits because they are wary of being
bled to death by today's "gold-digging" women who try to enrich
themselves not by marrying a millionaire, as in the past, but by
divorcing him, bearing his out-of-wedlock child, and cashing in on new
legal provisions that entitle divorcing women to sue for half a man's
assets.
The clashing interests of unwed mothers who want to dispense with
only part of paternity, and unwed fathers who either want no part of
paternity at all or who--like Woody-want only the kids he cares to pick,
show that the comparative rosy portrayal on Murphy Brown really is a
fiction. These real-life unwed parents are at war. Their battlefield is
the familiar old terrain of money and the new, still uncharted, turf of
the psychological bonds of fatherhood.
As we've straggled in the last decades from Father Knows Best to
Life Without Father, the law has struggled to reflect society's changing
views of families and paternity. The word "bastard" for example, was once
a legal definition rather than a defamatory epithet. But, as I was
surprised to learn, the law no longer differentiates between children
born in and out-of-wedlock. Today, rather than being shunned like lepers,
many illegitimate children are the publicly acknowledged, royally
supported, offspring of celebrities-such as Satchel O'Sullivan Farrow,
Woody and Mia's biological son.
And New York law now entitles all such non-marital" children to the
same amount of child support as legal, or "marital" children. Mothers can
also petition the courts for more money as a child's needs, or parental
circumstances, change.
But this proliferation of paternity suits is occurring when the
permissive mores of the sexual revolution have radically transformed our
families. As a result of rampant divorce, remarriage, cohabiting-and
science-natural and legally wed fathers have increasingly vanished from
homes.
Tags:
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