When we Nine Naughty Novelists wrote our first serial parody, The Zillionaire Vampire Cowboy’s Secret Werewolf Babies, we knew we wanted to include the classic “secret baby” plot twist. In fact, we wanted to up the ante by making those secret babies twins (the mother was a werewolf, so multiple births weren’t exactly unheard of). But lately I’ve been thinking about the whole “secret baby” idea. Why do so many readers find it appealing? Because the thing is—it’s actually sort of icky. No, really.

First of all, what credible reason can you come up with for a woman to keep a pregnancy secret from her partner? I suppose if the partner were a horrible person, you might want to do that, but I’ve seldom run into that particular plot twist. Loretta Chase does something like this in Not Quite a Lady, where the impregnator is a rotter and the heroine must protect her reputation, so informing him is never an option. However, most of the unknowing baby daddies in romance are the heroes of the books—good guys, in other words. Or guys who could become good with the proper motivation.

I suppose the heroine could have no idea what had become of the hero and thus be unable to notify him. Nora Roberts does this in Honest Illusions, where the hero disappears without a trace because of a complex plot twist. But it’s hard to pull off unless the hero is declared dead or taken prisoner and kept incommunicado. I suppose there’s always amnesia, but that particular plot device usually stretches credulity to the breaking point. So it’s hard to create a situation where the heroine couldn’t let the hero know somehow.

Which means the heroine has chosen not to let the hero know because she’s, well, pissed. This seems to be the most common plot device. Hero and heroine have a major fight, break up, heroine discovers she’s pregnant but refuses to tell hero because he’s such a doody-head. Right. Now think about that for a moment. Heroine actually chooses to become a single mom, one of the toughest jobs around, because she’s mad. What kind of woman does this? Probably a doody-head. This particular plot twist requires you to admire a woman who’s behaving very badly indeed, and who’s taking the chance of hurting an innocent child because she’s too immature to get over it.

So now we come to the hero. He’s required to discover that a) he’s a daddy and b) he actually loves his baby mama. And he’s supposed to be really blown away by the baby and to want desperately to be her/his parent. Again, in real life the chances of this happening are somewhere around nil. Look at the number of baby daddies who demand paternity tests rather than becoming all dewy-eyed at the thought of having a little bundle of joy (I’m lookin’ at you, Eddie Murphy). But this is romance, and fairy tales are pretty standard in our business.

So why do readers love secret babies? Maybe because it’s the way we wish things could be. Women strong enough to raise great kids on their own (and the kids are always great, you notice). Men responsible enough to love both their children and the women who produced them.

And, of course, HEA. I just wish the whole idea didn’t make me feel slightly queasy.