To understand why some women have children within a a short time with multiple different partners?

Offer financial rewards for voluntary sterilisation to men and women.

Women are taught their value lies in attracting a man and being partnered up.

They are taught they are value-less without that.

I remember seeing Colleen Nolan on Loose Women saying about someone (can't remember who) "not being able to keep a man" as an insult. This was a few years ago.

In the 2020s.

When you are single, especially in more rural places or parochial places; you are on the outside of society to some extent. You have no place, because everything is built around couples and nuclear families. Society is still like that.

Quality over quantity!

That must have been so hard. I hope your life is peaceful now.

Lack of intelligence, lack of self respect, several reasons.

There is an element of pressure from the men in this too. In certain circles there is some ego boost and street cred in fathering multiple children, especially by different women. He is 'the man', he has physical proof of his fertility and desirability. Such men would not wear a condom or pay much towards their offspring.

There is also a type of man who will date a single mother, but expect her to have his child, to ensure she 'loves' him as much as she did her previous partner. When this relationship fails the woman now has 2 children with different fathers and is even more vulnerable to the 'have my baby if you love me' man, with the predictable result of several children by several fathers during her lifetime.

Yes, the woman 'should' see that this is unwise, but lonely people with hard lives will do a lot of unwise things for the promise of a bit of love.

I suppose I am one of these women, I have 4 kids to 3 different dads (I'm married to the youngest ones dad and we have been together 8 years) I had my oldest 3 by the age of 22. The two dads of the oldest 3 are not the most desirable of people and are not good dads. I can't even really say why it happened, I had a good childhood and I'm not thick or stupid.

It's not her kids choice though, is it.

Lots of those people are here on MN. You see it time and time again. Someone will post and say should I have baby #4, or am I too old at 46, or I want a baby with my "partner" who I met 6 months ago despite already having 3 and you will get pages and pages of dippy fools saying go for it.

So what's your answer?

Forced sterilisation?

Forced abortion?

But our cost! And pretty rubbish for her kids.

This thread is unbelievable. Having children young as a result of serial relationships isn’t a sign of psychopathy, ffs! It’s the result of growing up in a culture that teaches young women that motherhood is the pinnacle of what they can hope for in life. Of course they do it young. And then they do it repeatedly because looking after small children when you’re poor and emotionally immature is not conducive to a lasting relationship, so they split up and meet someone else and want to show that the new relationship is the one that’s going to work, and the way they show that is to have another baby. And of course they aren’t developing more experience of the world and obtaining the things middle class women build up throughout their twenties and then don’t want to give up to stay at home and look after children, because by the time they’re 25 they’ve got three kids and nothing else. It’s a crappy, horrible cycle that far too many women get trapped in, but it doesn’t make them psychopaths, and saying it does just makes you sound unhinged.

@DreadPirateRobots that's so tragic but so true. I believe wholeheartedly it's so much more complex than just being some feckless 'trollop' as your reference demonstrates.

It doesn't "talk about" any abstract moral concepts or solutions. It's a portrait of reality, written with insight and empathy and care. I came out of it humbled.

There are people in it who took lots of "personal responsibility". They worked hard, kept their kids as safe as they could, tried their very very hardest to live stable lives. Almost without exception, the rug got yanked from under them at some point by the police or the benefits system or their health or some other factor beyond their control.

I'd rather see it trialled on the men on a voluntary basis before any woman.

Our birthrate is very low and I am guessing it would be even lower without these women. I married at 22, own my flat but due to fertility issues don't have any children despite being really irresponsible with contraception and using withdrawal method since I got married plus have been ttc for 15 months.

I am being referred to a fertility clinic but I don't think I want to go through multiple ivf cycles to be a mother. I have been far more irresponsible with my contraception than these women despite having only 1 sexual partner. I just think of these women as women who are picking up my slack.

Maybe not her children's choice?

Does it talk about personal responsibility anywhere? That often seems to be lacking where poor choices are the norm

There are a couple of incidents in Random Family that I think about a lot. One is when one of the women's mothers gets a $30k windfall based on an injury lawsuit and she and her partner blow the entire thing within weeks taking cabs everywhere, ordering takeout for everyone, and so on. The author says people get really upset and frustrated about that one. But I think it's obvious that that's what they'd do. They have no context whatsoever for setting money aside. There's never been any money to set aside. There's never been anything realistically worth delaying gratification for. There's been survival, and, when times are good and there is a little extra, small comforts like takeout or a cab.

The other one, which deeply frustrates me, is when one of the women, Coco, get a job at a nursing home. She loves it and the residents love her, and if she'd stuck with it she could probably have got some nursing training and earned a bigger salary. But it leaves her dependent on her partner to get her five kids up and to school, and no matter how easy she makes it for him, he just doesn't. So her kids start missing school frequently, and she quits. And what else, realistically, could she have done? All the possible solutions rely on resources she doesn't have.

It's an incredible book.

I would offer a financial reward for voluntary sterilisation after the second child. At least 10k. It would save the country £££ in the longterm.
Same for men but it’s more difficult to know how many children a man has fathered.

@DreadPirateRobots that sounds like something I'd love to read. I'm going to look it up.

I think some people really struggle to understand that the opportunities for some are just so stacked against them, the playing field isn't ever even.

I have often found in debating this subject with people I know, the ones who had the most stable upbringing, two present parents together, middle class earnings, are the ones who will say people just need try harder and can't comprehend the forces against certain people, certain groups.

I don't think the care and concern for the unwanted children is driving most of the outrage unfortunately.

I am sure many would be in favour of forced sterilisation which would be a horror film beyond comprehension. I don't really know how one solves this problem.

To anyone who genuinely wants to understand, I would recommend the book Random Family by Adrian Nicole LeBlanc. It's an incredible work of journalism following two women across fifteen years. It's not the exact social context - it starts in the Bronx in the mid-eighties - but the drivers of poverty, of aspirations and emotions as well as money, are the same. Both women followed end up with five kids, although only one is raising them. For them, constant unstable relationships and babies is just... what happens. Flirting and men are often the only bright spots in long grey days. It also shows the grinding, unrelenting effort it takes to try and get out of that life even by "going straight" and working constantly, and how easily all that effort can be overturned by forces outside yourself.

All complaining about how they can't cope and how the government is failing them. Yet several of them were pregnant again - if you can't cope don't have another bloody baby. It's ridiculous behaviour that needs to be stopped.

Its a vicious cycle. If you grow in a family that consists of half siblings, absent or disney dads, a mother who rarely or never works but is housed by the state & provided with funds, you are not really going to understand about earning money. You are going to grow up with a sense of entitlement that money and housing are something the government provides, that a decision to have children doesn't require consideration of how it will be afforded. Your expectation of parenthood may well be that mothers do not work outside the home & the state provides.

Its very, very hard to break that cycle without it negatively affecting some children - you have to place conditions/caps on benefits to encourage work, but you'll have a minority of people who just don't, and their children suffer.

Attachment Disorder.

EUPD.

BPD.

Mania phase of bi-polar disorder.

And everyone else's financial burden. Great show of independence there!