WHEN news emerged that Hugh Grant had fathered a love child during a "fleeting affair", a familiar old archetype resurfaced in the press: that of the philandering rogue who goes round getting women pregnant against their will, leaving them holding the babies.

The actor announced that he “could not be happier or more supportive” of former girlfriend Tinglan Hong. He visited the baby in hospital. Given the media frothing, however, you’d think he had coerced the 32-year-old mother into sex, before running off into the woods to deflower a few virgins.

There were reports of a date between Grant and a burlesque artist, 21 hours before the child’s birth. The Daily Mail’s Amanda Platell wrote of the “tawdry, inexorable decline of Hugh Grant” and declared that “the announcement did not reveal one iota of shame about the fact that the actor had fathered a child – by mistake”. Platell reminded us that following Grant’s arrest with prostitute Divine Brown, he confessed that what he’d done was “dishonourable, shabby and goatish”. Having “an unplanned baby”, she writes, could also be described this way.

What era are we living in? Is this the 18th century of Robert Burns’s Ye Flowery Banks, when many a woman might have complained: “An my fause lover staw my rose. But, ah! He left the thorn wi’ me!” Or is it the 21st century when any adult, educated woman has access to birth control? Technology may have enabled women to decide when and if they have babies, but we still like to roll out a narrative from when women’s fate was decided by the fickle sexual desires of men.

We don’t know much about the circumstances of Grant’s daughter’s conception, but we do know that Hong is 32, old enough to know about birth control. Perhaps she wanted this baby. My own first child was the result of an “accident” in the first year of a relationship. Briefly, I wondered what I would do if my then boyfriend, now husband, didn’t want the child. I decided I would go ahead anyway. Luckily he did, and I’ve often thought my son was an accident borne out of the meeting of two people’s subconscious desire for a baby. That, and a dodgy condom.

There are, of course, victims of irresponsible male desire: women who are vulnerable, drunk, coerced, cajoled into child-bearing; teenagers who have had little advice. Nor do I deny the subtle pressures that we women can feel under, in the heat of the moment, to give in to a lover’s urge to risk not using a condom, or not to worry when the latex splits.

But there’s no evidence Grant’s behaviour belongs in any of those categories. Indeed, this caricaturing of the actor as a wanton, amoral commitment-phobe looks very much like the media enjoying a pop at a man who has become one of the most vocal critics of phone-hacking. After all, even his supposed commitment-phobia is hardly off the scale. His relationship with Liz Hurley lasted 13 years; another, with Jemima Kahn, lasted seven years. In spite of the tawdry blip with Divine, he appears to have some staying power. Then there’s the fact that he’s managed to reach the age of 51 without becoming a father. While this could be further evidence of reluctance to commit, it could equally be a sign of a man who is rather careful with his seed.

Grant is one of a growing number of men who choose to play a role as father and supporter to children they live apart from. Earlier this year, Kimberley Stewart gave birth to Benicio del Toro’s first child amid statements that they were “not a couple” but that he planned to be “very involved”. Ken Livingstone claims to have been an “involved father” to a number of children. Andrew Marr managed to pay £80,000 of maintenance for a child that in the end turned out not to be his. Many of these mothers, far from being victims, have chosen these situations, even if they are not ideal.

When David Cameron declared war on “run-away dads”, he suggested we should “make them feel the full force of shame”. Certain sections of the media seem to view Grant in this way, rather than as someone who is in many respects sticking around. Hong has moved into a house in Fulham close to Grant’s home. Of course, this set-up is an affront to our notion that it takes a cohabitational couple to raise a child.

So just how accurate is the stereotype of the callous rake and the deserted mum? The monotone picture of villainous men and victim women does everyone an injustice. A woman can be part villain too, choosing to have a child when she knows her lover is unlikely to stick around.

We ladies don’t like to talk about that, though. There are reasons the fathers’ rights movement exists and it’s because women don’t always give men the opportunity to parent. So before we start labelling fathers who live apart from their children as “shabby”, we should remember that part-time dads don’t have a monopoly on tawdry behaviour.