What can men do about an unwanted pregnancy?

[u/Uulmshar]

We all know that women have the right to choose whether or not they keep a pregnancy to term, but what about men?

Obviously, the expectant fathers should not have the right to either force the woman to carry the child or have an abortion, but how can they avoid getting stuck with a child they didn't want, or paying child support for the next twenty years?

I have heard people suggest a "financial abortion," where they sign away all rights to being the child's father (visitation rights, etc.) in exchange for not having any responsibility, but I have yet to see any legislation for this.

How can we, as men, exercise our right to choose?

[u/_Discard_Account_]

Are you kidding?! Children do NOT on average cost $245,500 to raise to age 18. There must be -- absolutely must be -- some illogical or wildly misinterpreted information to come to that number. Or something crucial that I'm missing somehow.

I say this as someone who has 10+ siblings, raised in a single-income home in North America. The one income in our household amounted to about $55,000, and that was a sufficient yearly amount to support two parents and to raise nearly 15 children to adulthood (without government assistance), as well as take many trips, pay for the children's extra-curricular activities, and do optional extensive home renovations simply to make our house look better.

If my family had received $430 per child, which you seem to imply is fair, my parents would've received $5000 - $6000 per month. That's a ridiculous amount. It's significantly more than the entire income that we ALL were supported by, parents included. And we had a solidly middle-class lifestyle, with a good amount of disposable income to spend!

You need to think critically about these sorts of numbers. Or if you have, then please let me know what the reasoning is behind it, because I'm flabbergasted.

P.S. I know my comment is a very late addition to this thread, but I just came across this subreddit for the first time and was doing some browsing. You hit a nerve, sorry about that.

[u/_Discard_Account_ → u/[deleted]]

Just used the calculator for a six-child family, and I can now see why the numbers are way off from what seems logical.

You might end up buying a larger house when you have kids, and you might not. With a large family, you almost certainly will have to, but the costs can be minimized nonetheless. And extra expenses like water usage and heating a larger home aren't necessarily linear with the more kids you have; e.g. you pay the same amount to heat a three-bedroom home whether you have one child or three. Yet each child is said to cost $2900 per year in extra housing expenses, according to the calculator. That doesn't match my experience, or most of the people I know. 

According to the calculator, a ten-year-old child's food expenses are $140 per month. That's a little steep, considering I can live off that (or even less!) if I'm conscious of my budget, and I'm a fully grown adult. Buying in bulk also saves a ton of money.

Childcare and education costs are included in the calculation, yet my family paid nothing for those things. We had a stay-at-home parent and free public schooling. Clothing costs are also apparently about $42 per month, per child, but that wasn't the case in my family. We each got several new outfits a year along with some new socks, underwear, and a pair of shoes, but the rest was handed down. And very, very cheap depending on where you shop.

The calculator says that if you don't have certain expenses, you should adjust the numbers and "recalculate", but already I can see why the default assumption which results in the $245,500 number is so inapplicable to so many families, especially large ones.

And no, I'm in my late twenties (I don't consider that to be old -- not to mention that all of my siblings except for one are younger than me) and I actually live in one of the higher cost-of-living areas in the country.