“We just heard our baby’s heartbeat for the very first time.”
Under the ultrasound room’s dim lights, the doctor pointed to the monitor. A tiny heart flickered, beating. Soo-jin’s eyes welled up. Yoo-jun turned his head away, staring only at the glowing exit sign on the wall.
Why am I suddenly terrified of this child?
The very one I wanted.
The Thermostat of Desire
Men who once begged for a baby quietly turn down the bedroom temperature the moment the pregnancy is announced.
1. Libido—skin that can no longer be touched
As the belly swells, his hands travel upward, never downward. The once-scorching touch now collapses at the foot of the bed, shoulders hunched, spine turned away. In his gaze, “our” body is no longer an engine of multiplication but a line never meant to be crossed. The space between two bodies on the mattress cools degree by degree. No blanket can warm the chill that settles in.
2. Possessiveness—when the child is no longer “mine”
The baby reveals itself not as the miniature copy he sketched in his mind, but as a being separate from him. The family portrait he imagined slips off-center, already revolving around a child not yet born. On the ultrasound screen hovering above the curve of Soo-jin’s belly, Yoo-jun realizes, bone-deep, that he will no longer be the lead actor of his own life.
3. The urge to flee—escaping in a glass of something hot
By the sixth month, Yoo-jun’s overtime multiplies overnight. After-work drinks hide behind the alibi of “company politics.” What he is truly evading is home. The half-assembled stroller, the crib still in boxes, the tiny white hammer and nails—each a shard of dread. Bar smells, cigarette haze, loud music become soundproof walls that briefly drown out the breathing of pregnancy.
Stories that feel too real
Case 1: Eugene, 32, six months pregnant
Eugene practiced her unborn son’s name daily in a notebook. Min-woo, Mommy dreamed of your smile again last night. On the back pages, her husband Seung-woo left a small memo.
What if I fail at being a dad? Seung-woo barely speaks these days. When Eugene touches her belly, he slips into the bathroom. Once, she glanced at his phone search history:
- men who regret having kids
- sex after childbirth when to resume
- clinical term for not wanting to be a parent
Case 2: Na-young, 29, eight months pregnant
Na-young showed her husband Jae-hyuk tiny outfits. This one for the first house-warming, this one for the first Christmas. Jae-hyuk set the T-shirt down.
Honestly… I hate the smell of babies. Na-young laughed, thinking it a joke. His face stayed serious. She heard him spitting and rinsing in the bathroom for ages, claiming the scent of baby lotion on the clothes disgusted him. That night Na-young stood before the mirror for a long time, staring at her belly. Will his revulsion toward me pass on to the child? Am I the one who did something wrong?
Roots of the taboo
Men yearn for a child yet simultaneously picture the sins they might hand down.
Will the wounds my father gave me simply be recycled into this new life?
Pregnancy turns a wife into a protected vessel, while the husband becomes a transparent man—the expectant mother’s husband, nameless in the eyes of doctors and nurses. His anxieties are never charted. One study shows that by the fifth month of pregnancy, 38% of husbands exhibit depressive symptoms. Yet no chair in the obstetrician’s waiting room is reserved for them.
The gaze of guilt
Last week Soo-jin messaged Yoo-jun. Wanna do prenatal bonding together today? Thirty minutes later he replied.
I just want Sunday to myself. That afternoon Soo-jin flipped through an old photo album alone. She found a letter Yoo-jun had written on her birthday five years ago. I want nothing more than to hold you and our child. That will be my whole life. She folded the letter again. His desire had not vanished; it had simply gone underground.
Which embrace is left for me now?
I want to cradle both the body left behind and the child not yet born.