Waiting for the right guy equals no baby

No, we are not f##kd as a race because women wait for 'the right man'. We are fucked because we allow men to treat us like shit, get us pregnant and fuck off, or stay together and have affairs.
At least this is the case on MN apparently.

I do understand where you are coming from.

But the difficulty and stress of being a single parent is something you just cannot comprehend until you have done it.

Why?

There is more to life than reproducing.

I somewhat agree. I was born in less than ideal circumstances, out of wedlock, dad married and living with his wife, mum in mid twenties with no job or place to live. Yet I went to uni, got a good job, ended up a happy person, have two children who I hope I am doing a good job parenting. It's harsh that people just write off children not born to two parents who are married, middle class, professionals.
That said, there is a chapter in Freakonomics about the crime rate dropping massively due to abortion being legalised. But I would take that to mean no good can come from forcing women to be mothers. Rather than children who aren't born to two perfect parents. One good parent is enough. Although she is probably exhausted,

Where did you get your stats from that 30-40% of women will end up involuntarily childless because of waiting for the right man? The current rate is that 18% of women have no children by menopausal age, yes this is rising but you're assuming it will more than double? And that all of these women are childless (a) involuntarily and (b) because of waiting for the right man rather than because of medical/clinical infertility, lack of suitable donors or not wanting to use a donor for ethical, personal or religious reasons or the many other factors behind involuntary childlessness. I don't know that there are any reliable stats on why women don't have children, but I take a guess that it's a lot less than 40% that it's purely cautiousness about their partner or lack of a partner without there being many other reasons in the mix too...

Or is this '30-40%' figure purely anecdata? Because lots of people if asked by (rude, intrusive) acquaintances or strangers why they don't have kids will answer something along the lines of 'oh the time was never right' or 'didn't meet the right man'. That's often not the real reason, but they don't want to spill their heart out about their ruinous and horrible struggles with IVF and infertility, or their abusive partner, or their worries about the climate and the future for kids, or their inability to afford childcare or whatever other very difficult and personal things lie behind involuntary childlessness. Or indeed people don't usually give the more 'selfish' reasons like 'I just don't like kids' or 'I prefer to prioritise my career' because if you say the latter to people that do have or want kids you tend to get a patronising headtilt-y 'oh you just don't appreciate the magic of babies until you have them' at best or an angry/judgmental/misogynistic argument at worst...

@febmayjune87

Agreed. It's not just British men.

We have to accept women having babies in less than ideal situations, or we're fucked as a race.

Humanity is fucked because of overpopulation, the opposite of involuntarily childless women.

This

Women can still have babies alone if they want to via a sperm donor.

I sort of agree. I think if you want to have a baby , you, as a mother to be, need to be self-sufficent and have a steady income and be able to provide a safe upbringing for your child. You need to be able to feed, clothe and keep a roof over their heads without recourse to public funds /assistance. So if you wind up with a bad egg partner, you can throw him out of the carton and carry on. I think you need to wait for the "right man", if you can't manage alone and you are not independent.

Why are you singling out British men!

I don't think they are any worse than Irish men, French men, American men.

This.
And remember genetics
Your child could be just the same.
And if you divorced- could even go live with dad.
A friend of mine lost both her sons and she was lovely
Go it alone if you can afford it , but please don't settle.

And it will, if only because overpopulation is likely to lead to major wars and megadeaths.

I’m not sure really what you mean by “we have to accept women having children in less than ideal situations”, who has to accept it? And who doesn’t? And I’d argue that we’re potentially more “fucked as a race” if just having kids with anyone becomes the norm, lots of single parent households requiring UC or top ups to stay afloat, more children growing up not knowing or having a relationship with one of their parents, more women in vulnerable positions having children with men they don’t fully agree with or who may be abusive and are then tied to them, children growing up in households with parents who don’t even like each other half the time, or children growing up seeing dad twice a year for Christmas & birthday?

I think the thing is your point focuses really too much on what a woman wants and not enough on what is best for a child. That should really be your primary concern when thinking about a baby, the life & relationships a child should have.

But what about the baby? The baby isn’t an item he/she is a person in their own right who deserves the same chance in life as any other child.
Have a baby with someone who isn’t the love of your life but you expect will be a present father - fine
Have a baby with a guy you expect will be a deadbeat dad - that’s not fair on the baby

Think it depends on how much you want a baby

You're not wrong in what you're saying, children do need good fathers so I can understand the frustration with potentially ending up with nothing.

My advice is to find them when you're both young because they're often still kind, still believe in love and are not jaded so they can become good men, husbands and fathers.

How do you even have sex with / form relationships with men you don’t like to be able to create a child with them?

That’s unfathomable to me.

It doesn't need increasing.

So the woman’s desires are the only that matters. Not the child’s right to a good life without a sense of abandonment / being emotionally harmed by the shitty parent.

Look women can and will do what they want. I don’t even care about women having kids with shitty men / in shitty situations (unless they want others to pay for it.)

But don’t have kids in a shitty situation and then constantly whine about that.

You can have a perfectly good life without having children. In fact, more and more women are choosing to do so.

I very much doubt we'll be 'fucked as a human race'. There are already too many people on earth and the numbers just keep rising.

And fewer people having children does not mean we are “fucked as a race”. Most people will still have children - we have near 8 BILLION people on earth. We will not run out of people.

Do you have a source for you rather wild claim that 30% -40% of women will be involuntarily childless?

I dont think we need to worry about the earth being underpopulated. So I don't think we need to do anything except realise that breeding and parenthood is not a fundamental human right.

Why do we have to accept it?

I never had children because I never met the right person for me and I am fine with that decision.

A poor quality partnership just to have children always struck me as a very stupid thing to do. And there is no incentive for men to be better partners when most people think the way you do.