‘She’s Having a Baby,’ He’s Having a Fantasy

“Three Men and a Baby” allowed us a view of three men bumbling their way from promiscuity to domesticity. It was “The Taming of the Hunk.” The female fantasy.

“Three Men and a Baby” looks at the man while “She’s Having a Baby” is a view from within the man. It makes film history by taking us inside the male mind from the birth of love to the birth of a child. Nothing in recent film history, at least, has taken us so deeply into the fantasies and fears that are born and die along the way.

Take what may become “She’s Having a Baby’s” most memorable scene, 10 men and their lawn mowers: Jake (Kevin Bacon), an advertising exec, feels alone and unfulfilled as he stands outside of his suburban home. A half-dozen men are mowing their lawn. “Are they really happy?” he wonders. As if to answer, the men began to dance; as if to signal their unanimity, they dance in unison.

The lawn mowers sequence is the male parallel to Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “Yellow Wallpaper” and Betty Friedan’s “The Feminine Mystique.” Remember how Friedan dared suggest a woman might want something more than better homes and station wagons, how raising children might not be the only option for femininity? Now in the lawn mowers’ sequence, screenwriter/director John Hughes dares suggest that men might want something more than better homes and lawn mowers, that raising money might not be the only option for masculinity.

In my work with over 100,000 men and women, one of the most common male fantasies I’ve encountered is to “write the great American novel.” So it was Jake’s fantasy in “She’s Having a Baby.” That is, to grow by exploring and creating rather than writing diaper ads. To not sell out to the dictates of money, but to retain integrity. He had pursued integrity in college--a BA in romance languages. Now he was learning that was fine for . . . a woman. That is, “integrity” of that sort was a female luxury. But it didn’t prepare him to make money. So it wasn’t fine for him.

As his wife’s father put it prior to Jake’s becoming an ad man: “She can’t have a baby on your income. Your income can’t support two people--to say nothing of three.” Jake becomes so desperate to be “mature” and “provide like a man” that he falsifies his resume, sacrifices his integrity and “grows up.”

Success, though, finds walls closing in around Jake’s “great American novel” fantasy. He confides his fantasy to a top executive at the agency. The top executive does not laugh--he had taken a year to try it himself. Every other executive had had the same idea. What had they concluded? Writing the novel happens so infrequently that it doesn’t warrant consideration as an option. . . . Those who do pursue that option end up so unhappy that they jump off bridges.

Jake’s Journey, unlike Alice’s in Wonderland, teaches him a different lesson: Maturity is economics and the satisfaction it brings--better homes and gardens and family circles.

Since Better Homes and Gardens and Family Circle are still, interestingly, the two best-selling women’s magazines, what Jake is learning is that marriage means forfeiting his fantasy and adopting his wife’s. In the process he discovers his wife has the freedom to work or “have a baby.” He, though, has the freedom to work or work.

Or, more precisely, when she has a baby, to work enough to provide her with the option of being at home with the baby. Meaning work enough to support himself, his wife, their child, their mortgage and their lawn mower. Which means that even working at a low-level job in the ad agency while working on his novel will bring the return of his wife’s father’s wrath: “The sign of a successful man is how little his wife has to work.”

If this is a literary man’s career fantasy, what is his non-career fantasy? Look at the best-selling men’s magazines: Playboy and Penthouse. Meaning: access to a variety of beautiful women without fear of rejection. Translation: Monogamist marriage also means the man forfeiting his sexual fantasy of variety. Yet monogamist marriage can satisfy his need for intimacy and love.

Director Hughes senses how this tension wreaks havoc in the Jakes of this world; he also senses the tension Jakes experience as they are bombarded with 10 million images per year of beautiful women (what I call “genetic celebrities”) and then deprived of these women in real life.

“She’s Having a Baby,” like “Fatal Attraction” before it, begins to undo a myth about men who are in love with their wives, but who nevertheless encounter an invitation from a real-life genetic celebrity. In both movies such a man makes it clear to the “other woman” that he loves his wife deeply and has no thoughts of leaving her.

This, I have found, is characteristic of men in love. In both movies the woman is incredulous: “If you love your wife, why are you here?” The male answer is not given. (The answer?: “I love variety, too” or “Sex with love is wonderful, but it is also wonderful without love when it’s with someone as beautiful with you.”)

“She’s Having a Baby” and “Fatal Attraction” are controversial and misunderstood because they explore the enormous gap between the male and female definitions of sex, love and integrity.

The Hughes film has been criticized for the lack of love--or couple identity--between Jake and his wife, Kristy (Elizabeth McGovern). In fact, it is not a lack of love that is portrayed in the movie but the incomplete nature of the male and female definitions of love--a point rarely, if ever, explored in film. The male version: the coexistence of love with ambivalence. Jake wants love so badly he is willing to forfeit acting out all of his fantasies in exchange for love. But the feeling that he may have to forfeit his fantasies does create ambivalence about his marriage. Hence the male version of ambivalence.

The woman’s version: While she appeared to have no hesitations about marriage per se, she did not identify with Jake’s dreams--or adapt to them. For her, “love” meant transforming him from an agent of creativity (his dream) to a provider of suburban homes (her dream).

For both sexes, then, sex-role training that precedes the marriage is really divorce training. How well can love grow in this soil?

Love, in the words of the movie, is to be made--it is not a given. It’s been my experience that a couple cannot expect real love without first working through their ambivalence.

The most controversial scene? Kristy’s decision to stop taking the birth control pill three months before she informs Jake. While it is debatable how frequently this happens, the scene brings to the fore the extraordinary trust men invest in women. Would a woman trust a man to take a pill everyday? Especially if having a baby were his fantasy?

The pill sequence also highlights the degree to which Jake--and men in general--tacitly accept being out of control, albeit with ambivalence.

Would she be ambivalent if men could abort the child that was half hers without her permission? Raise the child by himself while she paid the bills? Raise the child together while he chose to work full-time, part-time or not at all while she had only the choice of working full-time?

“She’s Having a Baby” stops just short of the after-the-birth sequence: Now, at the very moment he commits to intimacy, she gets paid for remaining at the scene of intimacy while he gets paid for being away from intimacy.

No wonder commitment means intimacy to women, and economics to men. It throws a different light on the male fear of commitment. But that, perhaps, is best left to a farcical French sequel: “He Paid for the Baby.”