Unplanned Pregnancies: Supporting Women by Involving Men

A vision for serving the family

For the last few years, I have been on the Board of Directors of Care Net, a national organization with a network of nearly 1,200 affiliated pregnancy centers. These centers and thousands of others have long offered very practical and emotional support to pregnant women. But in the last decade, many of these pregnancy centers have come to see the importance of supporting not just the woman but the father and the family.

As I’ve looked at the research and spoken with those who work with these often-overlooked, in-need women, I’ve seen just how crucial it has become to bring this solution into the light and make it mainstream: When a woman is facing an unplanned pregnancy, work to involve the man in her life as one of the most important ways of supporting her. Make it standard.

That means, if you’re a friend or family member bringing emotional support or care, reach out and pull the man into the conversation regularly. (“Marissa, can we take you and Paul out to dinner and talk about how we can support you?”) If you’re a pregnancy center leader, actively, deliberately, do what is necessary to welcome and enlist the father of the child and/or the woman’s current romantic partner—as long as it appears that the man is a person of reasonable health and goodwill toward this woman and this baby. Ask him to come to the ultrasound appointment, enroll him as a client of the center, and give him support and encouragement, too!

The results can be powerful—because of both the practical and emotional support that arises from it. The leader who has for years been the Vice President of Center Services and Client Care at Care Net, Cindy Hopkins, put it very well in a recent conversation: “What we see is that both the mother and father need the help of someone who casts vision. Who shows them hope. A way forward. That’s who our centers are. They are vision-casters and hope builders.”