Arnold Schwarzenegger

Daddy Issues: Junior and the Myth of How Women are Never Satisified

TV post by Diane Shipley on November 15, 2012 - 12:52pm; tagged Arnold Schwarzenegger, Daddy Issues, Emma Thompson, fatherhood, fathers, Junior, pregnancy, pregnant man.

The Junior DVD cover, with Emma Thompson smiling over Arnie's shoulder, him smiling, and Danny DeVito holding a stethoscope to Arnie's pregnant belly. The tagline is: Nothing is inconceiveable.

A man gestating and giving birth to a baby! Can you even imagine? Well, yes. But 1994 was a different time. A time when men having babies was science fiction but Emma Thompson snogging Arnold Schwarzenegger was all too real. I couldn’t write about dads as primary caregivers without considering a movie in which a (cis) man literally has a baby. Junior isn’t the only example of this, but it’s probably the best known.

It starts when the FDA decides not to approve the development of a new drug, Expectane, that scientist Dr. Alex Hesse (Arnie) and OB/Gyn Dr. Larry Arbogast (Danny DeVito) have been working on. The medication reduces the risk of miscarriage in chimps, and the men want to trial it with women. But having failed with the FDA, Hesse’s university withdraws his lab funding and installs Dr. Diana Reddin (Emma Thompson) and her ovum cryogenics project in his place.

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