Waging the War for Marissa

This being Father’s Day, I thought we could entertain ourselves with a tale from the new frontier of fatherhood. I wish I could promise a moral from this story. But I can’t. I’m not sure it has one.

The story involves a man who faces problems in his marriage. He knows that no amount of counseling will save the situation. So he decides to leave, but not alone. He will take with him the couple’s only child, a daughter.

He plans his leave-taking in great detail. On a day when the wife has gone to work and suspects nothing, he absconds with the daughter. The kid is taken to a new house where all has been prepared in advance. Even the nanny goes with them.

Then the man informs the wife. Henceforth, he says, she will no longer be the child’s mother. He will raise the daughter entirely on his own.

In a fury, the wife sues, but the court agrees with the husband. You are no longer the mother, the court says. This kid belongs entirely to daddy.

This story is true. And this morning, Marissa Moschetta, age 14 months, will wake up at Dad’s house. As on most Sundays, Dad will make waffles and feed her some tasty bites. Marissa loves waffles.

Perhaps you recognize Marissa’s name. She is Orange County’s latest surrogate baby-in-conflict. And of all such babies-in-conflict, she has experienced one of the strangest outcomes.

As of today, Marissa has a legal dad but no legal mom. The dad is Robert Moschetta, a safety manager at Arco. The two wannabe moms are Cynthia Moschetta, ex-wife of Robert, and Elvira Jordan, who rented out her womb.

The courts ruled that Robert Moschetta could get away with the virtual kidnapping of his daughter because Cynthia Moschetta had supplied nothing in the way of genetic material towards Marissa’s creation.

Never mind that Cynthia Moschetta also yearned for a child, that she participated in the surrogate project, that she took care of Marissa over a period of six months. She was declared to have no custody rights. As a consolation prize, she was granted visitation privileges.

Elvira Jordan’s suit has yet to be decided. She wants full custody of Marissa but will have to contend with the fact that early in the drama she voluntarily relinquished her daughter to the care of the Moschettas.

So that leaves Robert Moschetta, temporarily at least, with sole custody. Most men, I suspect, would not regard this outcome as entirely desirable. Most men, I suspect, would see themselves as ill-equipped to become the only parent of a baby girl.

Most men are not Robert Moschetta.

Here is a man who clearly suffers from a powerful case of baby hunger. He concedes his marriage was going sour before he sought out Elvira Jordan for surrogacy. He wanted a baby anyway.

He concedes he lied to Jordan and to his wife on many occasions so they would do what he wanted. Which was to bring a healthy baby into the world.

And once Marissa was born, he concedes he snatched her with the specific purpose of leaving himself in the position of sole parent.

He wanted a baby and he got it, the only way he could.

This is not an accustomed role for a man. For the most part, baby hunger and the strategies employed to satisfy it have been the province of females. To put it most simply, men could not get themselves pregnant; women could.

But here we seem to have a male turning the technology of reproduction to his advantage. With surrogacy, there was a way for Robert Moschetta to produce a kid that was all his. Albeit with a few tricks along way.

Will Robert Moschetta’s maneuvering turn out to be bad for the kid? Who knows. Will all those career women of the ‘80s who decided to become single moms at age 35, will they be bad for their kids? Who knows.

But the outcome of the Moschetta case will be interesting to watch. As it stands, Cynthia Moschetta comes to her ex-husband’s house on Tuesdays and Fridays to exercise her visitation rights. Elvira Jordan gets Mondays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays.

A busy week. And then there’s Martha Ruiz, the nanny, who probably spends more time with Marissa than anyone.

Will Marissa eventually come to regard one of these as her “real” mom? Or will she see them as an endless parade of visitors, with her dad as the only constant? And will she care?

Her dad says she will not. “I will be the baby’s mother,” he said during one court hearing.

We’ll see. In the meantime, happy Father’s Day. And the best of luck to Marissa, who will need it.