The most important decision a woman will ever make is

It’s who they marry / choose to spend their life with .

Sorry @Upstartledbeen there too so I do understand this but money/career still = choices/SHL. (Shit hot lawyer)

Many people don't get to choose whether to have children with someone or not.

I'd say the main things people have to consider is

• how to maintain their own mental and physical health
• how to maintain the mental and physical health of any dependents

For those who choose to have children yes I wholeheartedly agree.

Sometimes that isn't a decision we make though. At least for those who don't have children.

The best thing for choosing a father to your kids is to choose a kind and loving man.

All else is froth on the coffee.

Or fall back asleep and wet yourself...

I think for some it absolutely can be, can be life-defining/ruining/ending or life affirming/making. For other people, other decisions will be far more critical. One size doesn’t fit all in terms of life decisions, but I do think it’s up there in importance and we don’t tell are daughters enough how critical it is.

This!

Yep.

Wait…you one or the other? Live free and gorge!

It doesn't mitigate the fear and anxiety of having to send your child to a volatile father who has court ordered child arrangements.

Only a cursory glance at the relationships board offers a wealth of examples of how money only knocks the edges off the misery an unsuitable father brings.

Given its women who carry the burden of pregnancy, perhaps we should all stop having sex

She didn’t mean impact on those aspects of the child’s life. She meant the mother of his children doesn’t necessarily have a huge impact on those areas of the man’s life.

I think it's actually deciding to believe in yourself.

I see so many women who don't believe in themselves and then fall prey to being taken advantage of by family, friends, work and others.

If we can believe in ourselves then we can find the strength to get through a great deal, whether having kids or not, by choice or not, whether we work, whether we leave our job/partner/shitty situation, and whether to ask for or accept help.

We don't always know that the man who fathers our children is a good man, even if we believe he is, and we don't always get to choose the father or to choose motherhood. But if we decide to believe in ourselves, we can get through whatever else happens.

I would probably agree with this. Choosing the person who will join you in your lifelong (hopefully!) team of two, will have a huge impact on happiness, health and wellbeing.

But I agree, if you plan to have children, you should think is this someone who will make a good, calm and caring, parent?

And related to this, would I be happy to have a child with 50% of his genes and 50% mine. Discovering he is a third cousin or has a history of addiction (even if now under long-term control) would be a red flag for me here.

Increasingly I believe we have overestimated the influence of nurture (barring the terrible damage from truly inadequate parenting) and underestimated how important nature is.

A child isn't clay to be freely modelled by her parents. She is more a type of very valuable and precious plant, that can be nurtured to become strong, thriving and healthy. An acorn won't become a rose bush. Anymore, than a rose off-cutting can grow into an oak tree. I'm not sure if that is more disappointing or somewhat of a relief!

or: do I have that calming tea to help me sleep before bed so that I wake up multiple times to pee and not being able to sleep? Or not have the tea and not sleep anyway?

I also agree with this. So many women put their financial future in someone else's hands, or just don't even make any plans at all, it's like betting you're whole future on "red".

Choosing who to marry is peanuts compared with choosing who to have kids with. You can divorce and walk away from a shitty marriage, but you're normally stuck dealing with a shitty co-parent (who may also mess up your kid) for many, many years.

(Obviously there is always the option to stay single, and/or not to have children. But the decision to have kids with a person is the one with the biggest potential to go wrong.)

Absolutely. Not everyone wants kids, or can have kids, so how can who the father is be the most important decision?

No it isn’t. The most important decision women will make is about their financial independence and careers. It’s about putting those first. Because this mitigates most other shit decisions we might make. Money = choice.

No, I don't think that's true. You could have a ten minute shag with a random stranger, choose the keep the child and put a flame thrower though a peaceful life with surrounded by kind people.

Who they choose to share their life with (partner / type of people they are friends with / family members etc). Choice of long-term partner (or choice not to have one) is arguably the most important decision, regardless of whether you have children.

... is this the right man, or woman, for me to marry.

What follows on from that is touch and go but at least if you get it sort of right at the beginning it has a better chance of giving you a happy life.

I made the wrong decision nearly 50 years ago.

Well, I thought I'd found a decent bloke who turned out to be a shithead after our DS arrived, so it's not a cut and dried thing. My most important decision was whether I was going to keep DS or not. But I found out I was 13 weeks pregnant during an early scan and couldn't handle the idea of an abortion at that stage in pregnancy. He'd made it further than my first pregnancy, which I miscarried, so that was it.

ETA: Luckily the sperm donor isn't involved and I have full parental responsibility. So that's a blessing. DS has met his father five times, and I don't think he's ever going to see him again, or meet any of his father's side of the family, although DS has met his older half sister once.