Most people would probably agree that looking after just one child is quite the responsibility. There are all too many stories out there of prospective families who really can’t actually handle childcare. So one woman asked the internet if she was wrong to call out her brother for having three kids from three different women, with a fourth on the way.
He was, as it turns out, particularly proud of his “achievements” and their family seemed to take his side. We reached out to her via private message and will update the article when she gets back to us.
It’s often easier to be critical of family than of one’s friends
Image credits: wavebreakmedia_micro / freepik (not the actual photo)
A woman told her brother that getting women pregnant should not be a “hobby”
Image credits: senivpetro / freepik (not the actual photo)
Image credits: dikushin / freepik (not the actual photo)
Image credits: Mountain_Cause2058
Some men insist that they have to have multiple kids
Image credits: pikisuperstar / freepik (not the actual photo)
There’s something almost comically transparent about the guy who casually mentions he has kids with five different women, as if he’s recounting his various gym memberships rather than describing a small village’s worth of progeny. From an evolutionary biology perspective, this behavior makes perfect sense, at least if you’re a peacock or a silverback gorilla. The biological drive to spread one’s genes as widely as possible was an actual survival strategy when infant mortality was high and nobody lived past thirty-five. Your genes had better odds if they were scattered across multiple baskets, so to speak. Some men seem to have missed the memo that we now have antibiotics, child safety seats, and the reasonable expectation of living long enough to attend our own retirement party.
The disconnect becomes apparent when you realize that human offspring aren’t fire-and-forget missiles. They require approximately two decades of intensive maintenance, emotional support, and explanations about why they can’t have ice cream for breakfast. Unlike many mammals where the father’s contribution ends at conception, human children need stability, presence, and someone to teach them how to ride a bike without crashing into a mailbox. Writing checks certainly helps, but it’s roughly equivalent to watering a plant and wondering why it isn’t emotionally fulfilled.
The psychology behind this pattern often involves some fascinating mental gymnastics. There’s frequently an undercurrent of ego validation, each child serving as a monument to virility, like biological trophies on a shelf. It’s the reproductive equivalent of collecting rare sneakers, except these sneakers need braces, college funds, and therapy. Some men genuinely believe they’re doing everyone a favor by sharing their spectacular genetic material with the world, apparently operating under the assumption that their particular combination of chromosomes is so remarkable that it would be selfish not to distribute it widely.
It’s hard to see it as anything less than an ego trip
Image credits: halayalex / freepik (not the actual photo)
Should we judge this behavior? Well, that’s where things get philosophically messy. Financial support is certainly better than abandonment, but it’s also the absolute bare minimum, like congratulating someone for not actively setting fires. Children don’t just need resources, they need consistent presence, emotional availability, and a father who knows their best friend’s name and what makes them anxious. When your offspring are spread across multiple households, you’re essentially running a franchise operation where you’re the absentee owner who shows up quarterly for inspections.
The mothers in these situations often get the short end of an already unfair stick, handling the daily grind of parenting while the father floats between families like a (hopefully) benevolent ghost. Even with financial support, they’re functionally single parents dealing with homework meltdowns, midnight fevers, and the inexplicable amount of laundry that one small human can generate.
Perhaps the real question isn’t whether we should judge this behavior, but whether the men involved are being honest with themselves about what fatherhood actually means. If you can’t attend most of your children’s important moments because you’re geographically and temporally spread too thin, you’re not really experiencing fatherhood, you’re experiencing a very expensive pen pal relationship with occasional visits. Biology might push us toward certain behaviors, but we also have these wonderful prefrontal cortexes that allow us to consider whether something being “natural” makes it wise, ethical, or conducive to raising emotionally healthy humans. Revolutionary concept, really.
She answered one readers question in the comments
Many thought he was out of line
Some thought she was too judgmental
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