Waiting for the right guy equals no baby

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Well no, the most sensible option would be to accept they are not going to have a baby and focus on something else.

But you are clearly the uneducated one who doesn't understand a thing. I don't know why you would dig your heels in here.

But then I don't know anyone who'd get the ick because their partner plays a sport??? The opposite surely?

Depends on the sport and how obsessive he became about it. I'd get the right ick if my partner took up cycling and became a MAMIL. I also wouldn't be with the kind of football obsessive you read about here who'd miss his child's birthday to see a match.

I think your scenario is more like the received wisdom cliche. It doesn't bear much resemblance to people I know. Perhaps it doesn't help if you only think men fall into one of two stereotypes though.

Most mothers I know had their kids with partners they fancied AND who also wanted kids AND who are the type of men who, from what I can see and have been told, share parenting equally.

But then I don't know anyone who'd get the ick because their partner plays a sport??? The opposite surely?

The majority of women have custody because women tend to be the primary carers and seperating spouses tend to keep the status quo.

Not having custody does not mean you don’t love your child.

Depends on if the man you fancy is a terrible option and then you produce the kind of fatherless kids we see running wild all over the place.

Most of the married women I know are with men they love who are decent partners. Not the extreme scenarios you present.

Replacement level with controlled migration would be fine.

Yes, those are called toxic relationships! They're the kind of relationships we encourage our friends to get out of. They're not healthy for either partner to be in, let alone a child.

Me too. I'd rather have no children than go into a loveless relationship to use him to have kids (and then spend a lifetime complaining when he refuses to parent them).

No thank you.

@foghead 1000% agree, it's basic biology. Men desire women, many will leave their children behind if a new girlfriend or wife asked them too. If anyone disagrees, then why do the majority of women have custody?

Unfortunately, many men don't appreciate or desire family life.
It's going to be hard to deal with that.

@NoctuaAthene I'm not denying it, just saying that looking at the relationship boards on MN and my own experiences of listening to friends/ colleagues, there are a lot of put upon, unhappy women out there. Particularly after motherhood.
Like I said, the idea of someone being caring yet career minded, driven yet selfless, of being the sort of man who waves you off for a night out, holds your hair back when your sick, sits and reads with your children, yet you want to rip each others clothes off and he's amazing in bed. That is rare.
And if he is not those things, and you aren't either, it's also rare that you're also happy with that. We all desire or crave excitement, we also change what we want in a partner.
Sure monogamy was fine when we died at 45 but now?
The idea that one man can fulfil you throughout all the stages of your life. Career building, motherhood, menopause, the demands of teenagers, elderly relatives, then retirement, like I said it may happen but I don't think it happens for the majority.

I had a huge maternal instinct from age 16 but I would’ve remained childless had I not found the right man.

And btw the world is not suffering because of a ‘declining birth rate’ - we need two planets to support the current global population (to western standards as it is) and it’s increasing every day. It’s only the rate of increase that’s slowing down. The planet’s fucked. It’s doesn't need the offspring of any more inadequate useless men.

But that's the opposite of my point. He's not perfect at all, nowhere near it. Nor am I. Does this mean we settled?

What would I have done if I hadn't met him, like you say no-one can know but I suspect in all likelihood I would have married someone else, also imperfect but probably in different ways. Does that make me an inherent settler in your book? I promise I'm not miserable! I just don't believe there's only one perfect person out there to have a relationship with. Nor I do I believe all/any men are perfect, many of them are total shits. I'm very sorry for anyone that's only met the total shits and none of the average-nice ones but I think denying the existence of the average or that some women are quite happy with an average man (and indeed some men are happy with an average woman) isn't particularly helpful...

@NoctuaAthene yet only on Mumsnet are there so many women who apparently have found perfect men to father children with, and who have no sympathy whatsoever for women who don't happen to find someone equally perfect by the age their fertility starts to decline.
Can I ask what you would have done had your DH not arrived on the scene at precisely the right age? Would you have settled or remained childless? The answer is that you can't possibly know what path you may have chosen.

@Kitchensinktoday not necessarily. I didn't.

What a very sad world you live in where everyone you know is faced with a black and white choice of having a baby with a feckless but attractive idiot or settle miserably to a loveless and sexless marriage with a dull but responsible bore. These things happen of course and I do agree that I don't know anyone married to a 'perfect' man who is constantly highly attractive, virtuous, higher earning, a flawless father etc but then again nor do I know any women that are 100% perfect either, we are all human after all.

But in my experience most marriages/relationships with children are between normal/average women married to normal/average men, who have their flaws but who are well suited to one another and behave reasonably kindly if not always totally perfectly towards one another, sometimes the relationship endures, sometimes it doesn't but it doesn't mean either party went into the relationship making the conscious decision to 'settle' in the sense of choosing someone they find totally uninteresting and unattractive either?

For instance I'm quite aware my husband isn't Brad Pitt, I find some of the things he does annoying, I would love it if his salary was doubled. He is however intelligent, kind, as driven as I am , solvent and a responsible, equal parent. I don't think he's exceptional in any of that though any more than I am on any of those criteria (sorry DH, in the immortal words of Tim Minchin, I don't think you're special, well I do think you're special, but you fall within a bell curve 😂)

I think the real issue is here is that the 'ideal' situation is statistically unlikely.
It is unlikely that a woman (a financially solvent, career driven woman with her own house) will meet an intelligent, driven, kind, caring man who is also financially solvent, a home owner who is willing to go part time or make adaptions to his own career trajectory after children.

@somewhereinsuburbia excellent post! However wouldn’t the majority of women prefer to be the ones going part time,rather than the man?

I think the real issue is here is that the 'ideal' situation is statistically unlikely.
It is unlikely that a woman (a financially solvent, career driven woman with her own house) will meet an intelligent, driven, kind, caring man who is also financially solvent, a home owner who is willing to go part time or make adaptions to his own career trajectory after children. He also has to be hot so that the mythical 'sparks remains there. Oh and they both have to meet early enough to not have issues with fertility, but not too early to not have enjoyed enough years of solo travelling, nights out, festivals, time to grow a career and one night stands.
Ideally you'd meet each other between the ages of 29 and 35 and have a baby at 36 at the latest in order to be able to have a sibling for child one and not a mentally small age gap.
Do you see what I'm saying? Unless this is a Richard Curtis film, life is rarely like that.
I can put nearly all my friends into two camps. They either had a baby with the rock and roll man child and lamented the decision when he doesn't immediately grow up post partum. Or they choose Mr Safe, who they eventually go off and he begins to give her the ick when he starts playing squash after work. Plus Mr Safe may also cheat on you, or expect you to give up work, or begrudge looking after his own children so you can have a night out.
Life is short. Is choosing to procreate with the man you fancy a bad choice really? Rather than a life of mundane, sexless marriage to someone you chose based on his credit score and because he didn't seem like the type to run off with an escort?

I imagine mutual settling in order to co-parent together, amicably, might work, because both parties are on the same page. But that's hypothetical and I don't know any IRL examples.

its rather like a man and woman saying “if we’re both still single when we’re 30, then we’ll get married” but I’ve never seen that IRL either!

You have a daughter which is lucky but boys fare worse with lack of a father (and we all suffer the consequences.)

But then we cannot keep increasing populations indefinitely either.

@gldd

Did you read the links you googled?

An important criticism of studies of sex differences in sexuality and mate preferences is that there appears to be considerable overlap between males and females, and this overlap may be equally or more important than the strongest differences (Bixler 1989). In Buss and Barnes (1986), the trait “kind and understanding” was the top preference for both sexes. Women rated eight traits, including “healthy” and “physically attractive” as more important than “good earning capacity;” men rated three characteristics as more important than “physically attractive” (Bixler 1989). Sex differences also vary in content and magnitude in different phases of relationships. For casual sexual relationships, women are choosy about partners’ IQ and socioeconomic status (SES) and men are relatively indifferent, but both sexes value these traits when asked what they desire in a marriage partner Kenrick and Keefe 1989, Kenrick and Keefe 1992, Kenrick et al. 1990, Thornhill 1989.

Replacement theory is about different birthrates in different countries example is about 6 in Nigeria and below one in South Korea so it stands to reason in hundred or so years there will be way more Nigerians and way less Koreans than there currently is.
That's just an example a better example would be two countries closer to each other because you could see how one could overpower the other someone mentioned north Korea on this thread but I think their figure is pretty low too.
This is probably why in Russia they give medals to families with a lot of children