Once a pregnancy has occurred, says Farrell, "there should be a minimal level of involvement for both parties. If I am requiring a woman who does not want to be a mother to be minimally involved for nine months, then a man who does not want to be a father should perhaps be required to be involved for a year or so, to some degree. But if either partner makes a unilateral decision to have a child that the other partner does not agree with, then that person should have close to 100 percent responsibility."

The previous night, at the lecture, Farrell said that he makes a point to "never write more than two paragraphs that I think other people would readily agree with. After all," he mused, "if these ideas are already in the culture, why write?" Indeed, when reading Farrell's work, one sometimes gets the impression that he is merely taking unpopular stands in order to stir the waters up. When I suggest as much to him, he laughs.

"Well, the closest thing to that in this book is the section on reproductive rights. I care more about making men part of the discussion. I'm not sure what my final stand on that would be."

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So what exactly is Warren Farrell: Curmudgeon, rabble-rouser, neotraditionalist, feminist, masculinist or gender transitionalist? He is a masculinist who champions second wives as the strongest political force for getting parental rights for their husbands, a feminist who does not believe in the absolute autonomy of a woman's body, a man without children who has devoted 10 years to writing a book on fathers' rights, a man who would like to see women become breadwinners, but who also says, "The workplace benefits from women, but the family needs men." Who, exactly, does he see as his ideal audience?

"When I write, I have to admit, I'm writing to women in my mind more than I'm writing to men," says Farrell. "I've always been more comfortable with women than with men, ironically. For somebody who is one of the leading male advocates in the world, that may seem strange. My style, my method, my desire to listen rather than to dominate or interrupt conversation, my values are a lot more female-oriented than male-oriented overall.

"I've grown to like men," he assures. "But it's been much more of an intellectual journey, which has now taken on emotional components, than it was an initial attraction or feeling."

When I last speak to Farrell, he is in a hotel room in Seattle, surrounded by men. Seattle is the hotbed of the men's movement, with more men's organizations than anywhere else in the country. There are "wisdom councils" for men who want to look inward and fathers' rights groups that focus on legal advocacy.

Farrell sighs, and begins talking about "the irony and paradox" of being a father denied parental rights. The men who are the most nurturing, who most want to be with their children, are the ones who are the least likely to want to be embroiled in a legal controversy. "It's a very tough combination of qualities that eliminate the men for one reason or another. Either they're too introspective to get involved in the legal process, or they are so aggressive that you see why they got the divorce in the first place."

Is he ever afraid that his work will be misappropriated and used as a legal bludgeoning device by men who simply want to punish their ex-wives by taking their children?

"Every piece of legal ammunition will be used by people of bad will," says Farrell. "But fathers rarely fight for sole custody. And I make it clear in my book that shared custody is the preferred option."

"Now, if the father is a jerk enough to want to take the children to spite the mother -- hah! Let the jerk experience what raising children is like. This is no picnic! The payback is the kids. And if he's not good at this, the kids will ruin him! There's no form of abuse in the world that is greater than the abuse by children of parents."

Warren Farrell, masculinist, believes that there should never have been a women's movement that blamed men for the ills of society. There should not be a men's movement blaming women. There should only be a gender transitional movement that encompasses both genders. Sadly, he says, 30 years of feminism have made the men's movement necessary. "But as soon as things get anywhere near balanced -- if I live that long -- when men start blaming women, I will be on their backs just as hard and as strong as I am now that it's the other way around."

Order "Mothers Who Think: Tales of Real-Life Parenthood" from the editors of Mothers Who Think.