I just finished a contemporary romance that has lots going for it. It’s oftentimes hilarious, it has an appealing himbo hero, and an interesting locale. On those merits, I’d give the novel a B. But, when I finished it, I was shaking my head and thinking hard pass. Why?
Well, in the first sex scene in the book–there are really only two–the couple gets nekkid and ready to go BUT they don’t have a condom. So, they don’t boink–they do, ah, other things. Which is sexy and great. Birth control for the win! But then, in the next scene when they again fall into each others’ naked arms, they have traditional intercourse with no birth control. It never comes up!
This ticks me off on many levels.
For starters, it’s dumb plotting. It’s kinda the condom version of Chekhov’s gun. If you draw attention to birth control in your book, your leads will look irresponsible if later they forget contraception exists.
Secondly, it’s not great messaging. Romances do not–and often should not–need to be PSAs. BUT, if two grownups in a contemporary romance–she’s an MD for gods’ sake!–are going to have sex, it would be nice if they use protection or at least have a conversation about the risks of not doing so.
I know there are readers for whom any mention of birth control throws them out of the story (Dear Author had a great discussion about this a few years ago.) and I get that. And I don’t expect or even necessarily want birth control discussions in historical romances–especially not when it seems shoehorned into to make the leads more modern. But in contemporary romance, I’d like to see it acknowledged.
What are your feelings on this? Am I, yet again, too cranky? What romances do birth control well? Which do not?
I think the theme should be consistent with the story and the characters and seem natural.
As you said, there are many ways in which in a historical romance it could go wrong, in a fantasy one it depends a lot on the type of world in which the characters live or in a modern romance it is important that the topic does not seem like a kind of “commercial hour” where one second the scene or the conversation flows naturally and suddenly this talk appear:
“Oh John it is of utmost importance to have condoms if we don’t have condoms no woman responsible would have sex!”
“Of course, Betty, I’ll put it on right away because no matter how sexy you are, no self-respecting man would insist on having sex without a condom, especially when he’s not sure he doesn’t have sexually transmitted diseases and his girl doesn’t want to have children yet.” “Oh John you are so responsible and that’s why I love you.”
You already get the idea
I think that in a currently written contemporary romance, there needs to be a discussion of contraception and sexual history (last time tested and partners since then). If the characters got carried away and had unprotected intercourse then there should be acknowledgement of this and the discussion should be held afterwards. I can’t provide examples off the top of my head but I am seeing these discussions in almost all of the contemporary romances that I am reading nowadays, which really pleases me.
Yes! Few things make me roll my eyes harder than a quickly whispered, “It’s ok, I’m clean,” before the first penetrative sex scene. In contemporary m/f romance, there needs to be a discussion of birth control, health status, and (until these answers have been resolved satisfactorily) consistent condom use. In m/m romance, there needs to be a discussion of health status and, again, condom use. I have noticed some m/m romances, characters are on PReP, which is great, but I still think condoms should be used until the couple get new tests and decide to be exclusive.
PreP does nothing for any STD other than HIV and infection rates for STDs is unfortunately showing that maybe the romance novels have it right, people aren’t talking about it – m/f or m/m. I read a recent NYT article about CDC proposing providing doxycycline as basically an STD morning after pill in the LGBTQ community and was shocked. If that becomes policy, it will create bacterial resistance to doxycycline in a hurry. If you don’t like condoms, you’ll like untreatable chlamydia even less.
Interesting. I didn’t know about PreP.
PRep has been mentioned in quite a few of the m/m novels I’ve read. And condom use for penetrative sex (and oral occasionally) is the norm. Barebacking almost always happens only once a couple is committed – which is probably one of those only-in-a-romance novel things – and I can think of only one m/m author who omits condom use in his books. (Seems odd to me, but he explains his reasons.)
I assumed it is the norm too and it has been in novels I’ve read as well. I realize novels aren’t real life and I know my friends group is as middle aged as me – meaning not big risk takers and settled with long term partners, but it only makes sense so I was surprised by the article on STD rates and doxycycline.
i grew up in the “Let’s talk about Sex Baby” generation when AIDS was still a surefire death sentence, and got married ages ago. The idea of not using a condom when outside a committed relationship seemed very taboo to me.
But I think this is partly generational and also varies a lot depending on the subculture you belong to. I know a few people who are still out and dating in the gay scene now. Some are responsible. But a few see most STDs as equivalent to a cold — a nuisance but not really something you’d go out of your way to avoid. They take PreP, they might be willing to use DoxyPeP after a particularly wild orgy or something, but they’re also fine with getting chlamydia or molluscum twice or three times a year and see it as the cost of doing business.
I’ve seen various conversations on Reddit where people are offended if their new partners want to see test results and believe that anyone who has multiple partners should be taking it as a given that they’ll get an STD. I even saw one post where the OP was pilloried because they were in a poly relationship and were uncomfortable that their partner didn’t intend to use condoms with their other partners.
This makes absolutely no sense to me! STDs are not benign and there have been a growing number that are resistant to antibiotics. It’s absolutely crazy to take those kinds of risks with your life and health.
Right?!? One commenter literally said that anyone who has multiple partners should just accept that they’ll probably get an STD. I get the point of trying to destigmatize people with STDs, but this opposite extreme is no better. How is this not common sense?
The first time I read a book in which French Letters were mentioned I was baffled but then I had to look up what that means and got a very interesting education on birth control through the centuries. See, romance novels are learning tools 🙂
Here is what would be interesting in a contemporary story but I have not come across: the couple do have unprotected sex – face it, people get carried away sometimes – but the next morning they go to the local pharmacy together and get the morning after pill. It would be interesting to see how that would be part of the story without sounding like a PSA but simply as just another way of preventing pregnancy. It could be funny, embarrassing, lead to mistaken identity, all the tropes that are part of the romance world.
It’s quite easy to access that pill in many European countries; I am not sure about the rest of the world.
Obviously this only deals with the prevention of pregnancy, not the other issues of unprotected sex. I do sometimes get annoyed that the overwhelming majority of romance novels have the heroine decide to keep the baby and often raise it alone, therefore derailing her future plans or coming to love motherhood, rather than delve into the subject of women who do not want to become mothers or give birth. The only other way I have seen this dealt with is if the female lead has a miscarriage, which to me is somewhat of a copout.
I have been complaining about the coverage of abortion in romance for over a decade.
I stand by every word of this piece from over ten years ago (To Baby or Not To Baby: That is the question) and this one as well from 2021 (Can Romance Include Abortion?)
To add to the list of novels where a heroine at least considers abortion – in “The King’s Man” by Elizabeth Kingston, the heroine is a herbalist and when she leaves her husband at one point she starts collecting abortificants including tansy. She doesn’t use them and at the end when they are reconciled she throws them away, but she definitely makes sure she has the option. It’s not a big part of the book, and a reader could definitely miss the implication of those herbs but its there.
I like that as a plot point!
There’s a Katee Robert book in her mafia series that has this as a plot point. Condom breaks, they get morning after pill,it doesn’t work.
I read one by Laura Brown recently where they do get Plan B, but the heroine never takes it because she’s sure the timing is safe and the thought of potentially disrupting a pregnancy involving the hero’s baby seems wrong wrong wrong.
Besides the Katee Robert mafia book @tster mentions, the only other time I’ve encountered Plan B in a romance, the hero flips out and throws it down the sink, and the heroine is so happy because she didn’t really want to take it either. I think this might have been a Tessa Bailey?, but I can’t remember for sure.
Neither of these heroines gets pregnant, but in both cases, the experience makes them realize that they love the hero and want to have his baby someday, and in both cases, I wanted to smash something.
Wow, this stuff makes me Actively Angry.
I am at the point that if birth control isn’t mentioned in any contemporary romance, all I can think about are the possible repercussions of not using it. For me, it’s just a part of the whole sexual experience – either that it’s used or if not, there is a discussion about why not. I read and reviewed a book Rome where I gave a pass to the first instance of no condom usage but then really struggled with the book when it happened again. As far as historicals go, I’m totally okay with it not being used or mentioned. Suffice it to say, Dabney, no, you are NOT an old crank because if you are, then I’m one, too!
That review was fun to read. It’s interesting how 2014 that book sounds!
To me this is such a dealbreaker. I want it addressed even in a historical romance. Like, even if they don’t use birth control, they need to not be dumb-dumbs and realize that sex=babies and that a choice to have unprotected sex = likelihood of babies goes way way up. Someone needs to think about it or talk about it or just worry about it. Like even Cro-Magnon humans probably realized that sex=babies. Grownups in the 20th and 21st century definitely need to.
This drives me nuts in historicals where there’s lots of premarital sex. OK, he’s a rake and has bedded half the women in London without ever using prophylactics. I’ll suspend disbelief and pretend he’s never been exposed to an STD.
But when he starts having sex with the (usually virginal, well-bred) heroine and never thinks about pregnancy, he looks like a fool. On top of that, if she never thinks about pregnancy, despite being the one with far more to lose if there is a pregnancy, she looks like a bigger fool than he is. It’s not the premarital sex that’s the dealbreaker, it’s the characters acting as though they know the author has spread a safety net below them so that they can indulge in all the sexual acrobatics they like because the baby will only arrive in the epilogue or the sequel.
Don’t forget the HR heroine who Wants To Know Passion, but refuses to marry the hero after they’ve shagged, because (she thinks) he doesn’t truly love her and is only proposing out of a sense of duty.
Considering the problems bastardy created for the child, it’s not just stupid. It’s cruel.
Mary Balogh’s A Precious Jewel is on my keeper shelf, but I couldn’t believe it when I got to the end and the pregnant heroine refused to marry the hero because she thought he was proposing out of responsibility rather than the L word. Even if that’s the only reason he’s proposing, you do what’s best for the child! I could understand if there was a good reason she turned him down, but it was out of some misguided martyrdom, and she nearly dragged her child into that as well.
I hate that plotline!
“You must marry me!” Lord Deryk Carlisle insisted fiercely. “After our pleasure in the pantry, our tryst in the treehouse, and our rendezvous in the reading room, you have no choice but to be my duchess!”
Jasmine Taylor-Swift sniffed, tilting her chin skyward. “No choice?” she retorted defiantly. “May I remind you, sir, that this is 1820? Women have all sorts of choices now!” Besides, sooner than marry a man who was proposing to her only out of some misguided sense of duty, she’d continue with her life’s vocation of teaching prostitutes to take up respectable menial trades instead.
Deryk clenched his strong jaw. “And what if you’re with child?”
Jasmine rolled her beautiful green eyes. “However would that happen?”
“Well, with the number of times we’ve made passionate love, it’s an inevitability!”
Jasmine gasped in horror. “You… you mean… that could lead to…”
He stared at her. “Where did you imagine babies come from?”
“I assumed marriage had something to do with it.” Jasmine drew in a deep breath, struggling for self-control even though the masculine scent of his cologne, his very presence, set her senses reeling. “Very well.”
“You’ll marry me?” His mesmerizing dark eyes lit up.
“No, I mean that if the worst happens, I’ll bring the child up on my own.” She shrugged. “It’s not the end of the world.” No, marrying a man who didn’t love her simply so her child would have a father, now that would be the end of her world of independence and freedom. And what sort of life would that be for her child? No woman in her right mind would ever contemplate such a thing!
** wild applause **
Oh my. This is THE BEST. We might have to start an award for best comment. You’re winning!
There’s so many fantastic parts to this, but the fact that she doesn’t know sex can lead to a baby after working with prostitutes is an A++ detail.
Thanks! In every historical I’ve read where the heroine educates prostitutes, the story seems to take for granted that the prostitutes have nothing useful to teach the heroine (unless it’s how to dress sexy for the hero).
The one book that is not true for is Christina Dodd’s One Kiss from You which we gave an F to. (I like it but I’m a contrarian.) It’s a nutso book in which the heroine was kidnapped and lived in a harem and learned all sorts of helpful tricks sexually even though she was left untouched by the bey. It’s hilariously done.
Not the first romance I’ve heard of where the heroine was kidnapped and kept in a harem but remained pristinely virginal for the hero. At least Bertrice Small didn’t take this route.
In a weird way, that plot line is very “good sex is educated sex” which I am all for.
I’m laughing especially at ”May I remind you, sir, that this is 1820? Women have all sorts of choices now!” Was the author trying to make the heroine seem foolish?
Glad it made you laugh! And yes, I was absolutely trying to show how foolish it is to have premarital sex with zero concern for pregnancy at a time in history when illegitimate children and “fallen women” were looked down on and discriminated against. So many romances are set in the 1800s but have heroines behaving as though they’re in the 21st century, and not in a realistic, enlightened-for-their-time way either.
Its such a sad state of affairs in HR that I genuinely believed this was an excerpt from a published book .
“So many romances are set in the 1800s but have heroines behaving as though they’re in the 21st century, and not in a realistic, enlightened-for-their-time way either” This! They’re all running around saving prostitutes and poor children while bedding the rakish hero multiple times and don’t want to get married because they have brains (duh) unlike the other silly and vapid girls who participate in the marriage mart
Yes! I hate that story element. Heroine is completely ignoring the realities of her time. So ahistorical.
At that time (basically any time until 1950) heroines were religious and believed in sex outside marriage as sin.
This is a tangent, but there were no (nearly) women who did not believe that they would roast in hell plus be shunned by everyone including their own parents / family. Even prostitutes believed in their own damnation.
This angers me too.
For great star crossed love, yes, but for cheap sex thrills?
It is one element making books ahistorical for me – lack of these fears that were omnipresent in historical times.
Heh. I once read a historical romance where the hero attends church every Sunday, believes in God, and even quotes the bible at one point. But once he starts having extramarital sex with the heroine, he seems to forget all about Christianity, pregnancy and other such irrelevant matters.
I don’t mind characters being non-religious at all. But if they are religious, the story needs to show me why they ignore whatever their religion says about extramarital sex, or how they reconcile this with their actions. Otherwise it’s basically the author trying to eat her cake and have it.
I don’t think it was universally true that religious men of history lived their faith, especially when it came to sex and fidelity. In fact, I have absolutely no problem believing very upstanding men had mistresses and premarital sex. Maybe not so much with gently bred women, but seeing as there are scores of reliable accounts of “celibate” clergy having mistresses and children, I think it’s definitely possible to conveniently set aside those religious beliefs.
There certainly were plenty of religious men who set aside their faith when it came to sex, but I would have liked to see that particular romance make even a token attempt at reconciling this to the hero’s supposedly strong religious beliefs in other matters. Even a line like, “He didn’t think what he did with her at night was a sin, so he didn’t confess it” would have helped, because otherwise it seemed to me like an inconsistency in character/the author wanting lots of sexytimes as well as a devoutly religious hero. Just my take on it. I’m sure others feel differently.
Yes.
These two article support that:
https://www.thebristorian.co.uk/lgbthistory/18th-century-sex
https://lithub.com/sex-and-sexability-on-writing-desire-in-the-regency-years/
Thanks! I especially enjoyed the first article you listed. Very informative.
GIven the numbers of sex workers** estimated(anywhere from 50,000 to 80,000+ depending on what you read) to have been around in the mid-Victorian era, that’s easy to believe.
** studies indicate that the numbers include any woman who was having sex with a man she wasn’t married to (because any unwed woman having sex was automatically a harlot!), and numbers were extrapolated from the number of illegitimate births, so it’s hardly accurate!
And of course, there’s that whole thing of men not wanting to ‘sully’ their perfect, and angelic wives with their baser natures, so it was for their wives’ benefit that they went out and shagged other women (and probably brought home STIs).
You’re 100 percent right. People have been peopling throughout history.
Interesting article on out of wedlock births in Britain.
I didn’t know this:
Oh, god this is the single plotline that I hate the most in historicals. It is so, so incredibly stupid. Sure, I’ll doom myself and my possible unborn child to ostracism and probable poverty because “he must truly love me” or some crap.
I just read a spate of erotic historical novel retellings and this was utterly chronic during all of them.
I’m kind of amazed we still have contemp romances where we have surprise baby plotlines. I mean, it still happens in life, but…
Well, considering the direction the US is going in and the publicly expressed musings of certain Supreme Court members, it might not be long before a mention of birth control marks a book as historical rather than contemporary.
“weeps”
sad face emoji
I started whistling a song while reading these comments and just realized it was ‘Let’s Talk About Sex’ by Salt-N-Pepa (circa 1991) LOL
That song always makes me think about Pitch Perfect!