To think more people should be intentional about who they have children with?

Oh God - half the world's problems would be solved if this actually happened.

I get that women fall in love with horrible men (why, I can't imagine, but it happens). OK - you have bad taste and go for 'bad boys' (shudder). But you don't have to get pregnant by them!! If they're horrible, mean, selfish and unfaithful before you have a child, it's not going to get any better once a demanding baby has arrived.

Just have an affair with the Neanderthal and find a proper bloke to breed with.

I am blaming the women who wilfully get involved with useless men, have unprotected sex and end up with a child with a man incapable of supporting financially and unwilling to be a decent, involved, parent, yes.

Obviously I am not blaming vulnerable women or women trapped in abusive relationships.

But the ones who do it voluntarily, knowing full well that the man is unemployed, on drugs, just generally useless….well, yes. How could they not be at fault? They have free will and agency and yet choose to have unprotected sex with these men knowing the consequences. And it’s the resulting children who suffer.

Thats the whole crux of this. That is not the woman’s fault. Of course it’s not.

OP is talking about the men who are out and out dreadful, total deadbeats, and the women who have unprotected sex with them and end up pregnant. Yes, they are very much to blame for that.

Yes, but per my post below, this isn’t at all the type of situation the OP is talking about.

You chose a good man and started a family. He changed, you could not have predicted that.

The Op is talking about women who wilfully get involved with men who are walking red flags from the start, and very quickly get pregnant despite dreadful behaviour from the men.

This type of situation plays out time and time again and I agree with OP that it is very frustrating.

I do agree with you, that would definitely be the ideal scenario. But life just doesn't always work out in the way that would be ideal on paper. These well considered men sometimes bail, and the ones that are less desirable as a parent on paper someone step up and do a great job.

Would I make different decisions about who would be my children's father if I had the choice now? No, because I wouldn't have the children I do now.

Had I known how things would turn out before I got pregnant I would probably have made different decisions. But I regret nothing.

My mother had an arranged marriage- to a useless man who was an awful husband and father.

She only met him a few times so did not have the time to determine all of the above.

She was also 21, so did not have the benefit of age and experience to fall back on.

Her life would have been 100 times better with a different man in her life.

We all make mistakes when we are young.

Some never break this patterns well into their 50s.

Surely the advice should be 'don't have a child if you can't afford it'.

You have to be able to walk away if the worst happens. I cancelled our wedding but have raised ds without issue, by myself. What ex did or didn't do was irrelevant. I knew I had the resources and ability to raise my child. I didn't need someone financing me or holding my hand.

The problems arise when women allow themselves to be financially (or otherwise) dependen on someone else.

It isn’t this straight forward. People can do the ‘right thing’ and marry the man they have been with for many years but he cheats or has even been cheating for years unbeknownst to the woman. Or he’s a brilliant husband/partner for years but when they have children, he isn’t a very good father. There’s no telling how a person will parent before they actually become a parent.

Someone once told me that one of the most important decisions a woman will ever make in her life is whether to have children and if so who to have them with - because having them with the wrong man can ruin her life.

Being a bit older now, I can see that’s definitely true.

With that said, I know so many women who’ve done their due diligence and had children with men who looked and seemed like reliable and suitable fathers. And they weren’t.

It’s a bit judgy op. Nobody chooses to be with a loser. Often the person they met turns out to be someone else.

Can we also fix the plethora of women having babies with a man they want to marry, but aren't marrying yet?

(Spoiler: if he won't marry you pre-baby he won't post baby either)

🤦🏼‍♀️

Women need to be sensible for goodness sake. Before anyone comes at me for blaming women for men's bad behaviour, I'm not. I am saying women should be sensible with their own behaviour.

Generalising much?

New build house - I am more of a “find the house that suits our needs in an area we want to live in”. Where we live, those aren’t new builds.

Car on finance - do people actually want this? I’ve had a car on finance and will probably have one in the future but I’ve always much preferred buying my car outright. Never owned a car from new, finance or otherwise, because it feels like a waste of money to us.

Social media relationship - what even is this? My DH and I post maybe 3x a year.

Big wedding - now we did have a big wedding but it’s gone down as a great party by everyone invited. People still talk about it positively 7 years later. We considered guest wants and needs as a priority which definitely helped - plenty of food throughout the day, no endless waiting around for group photos, a great DJ playing songs people actually want to dance to and open to requests.

Two or three kids - I feel like you’ve chosen the “standard” amount here so not sure what point you’re trying to prove.

My sister is in a relationship with a man and:

• no new build
• no cars on finance
• neither of them use social media
• they’re having a very small legal wedding and then a lowkey party later
• they have no kids and don’t plan to have any

Really? What an odd generalisation. As a straight woman, I have not coveted any of those things.

My three houses have all been Victorian doer-uppers, I dislike housing estates intensely, my cars are always 2yo low mileage, and I have no social media except LinkedIn for work.
No wedding (I cancelled it) and only one child.

As coincidence would have it, DH’s friend announced tonight his girlfriend is 3 months pregnant. He walked out on his wife and 2 primary aged children (1 with significant special needs) a year ago, and has been with his new woman for 8 months. By all accounts he has little to do with his existing kids right now and is notorious for being regularly unemployed. The new woman knows this all, yet chose him to father her baby, after a few months of dating. He’s 51.

Isn't hindsight a wonderful thing, OP? I married a wonderful man. We were together as a couple for 5 years before we got married, and waited another almost 3 before having children. And he was a great dad, a great partner - until the children started being people with a voice instead of compliant little babies. Then the cracks started to show - he was parented in a deeply authoritarian way, my parents were authoritative. Then his parents died, he dived into the bottle and became abusive. Shit happens. These kinds of judgemental posts just boil my piss with their smug superiority.

I had a baby with my (now ex) husband of 10 years. Within 5 years we were divorced & I had pretty much been a solo parent for 4 years. DD is now 15 & has seen her father less than twice per year on average. Given as he raised 2 children from his first marriage as a single parent, I don't think that I could have predicted what happened!

That’s easier said than done! I thought my husband was great but it wasn’t until after we had a child that I realised he had terrible grammar. I thought he was mumbling all the time but I couldn’t understand him because of his grammar!

It’s not the worst thing in the world, but I stress about it all the time. I worry my son will copy him and be a dunce! 🫣

Obviously some things are huge red flags but this is just an example of things falling under the radar.

You are of course blaming women. That's precisely what 'its on them' means, is it not?
You think that if a man treats a woman badly when she has his child thats her responsibility for having children with him.
Whereas I think if a man treats a woman badly, it's always on him.
A woman can be vulnerable to ending up with a useless man for a variety of reasons, and just because he can treat her badly doesn't mean he should.

The more you think about this post the worse it gets.

exactly.

Yes you are being unreasonable.
Contraception fails more often than people realise.
Men (and some women) can be very good at manipulating people into thinking they're a decent person.
You can do everything 'right' and it still end up with a split and bad coparenting relationship.
It's not always as simple as be more careful ect. In an ideal world yes, but real world, it doesn't happen that way.

So many posters missing the point, but of course you have a valid point @WryJadeWren.

The OP isn’t talking about the women who are with men who portray themselves as decent partners and end up screwing them over.

And she isn’t talking about contraceptive failures.

She’s talking about the women having unprotected sex with red who are walking red flags and just being completely blasé about the consequences.

It does happen, and yes, these women are partly to blame. It’s nothing to do with “blaming women”. The men are dreadful but that’s their own problem. Why these women somehow get dragged into it, have children with them, and make them their problem is beyond me. And yes, that is on them.

There are countless threads on here from women who are either in the early stages of these ridiculous relationships, bewailing how these men are behaving and the overwhelming response on here is “LTB” “bin him” “run, don’t walk”.

But many of these women don’t. They have kids with these useless men. And that’s on them.

In an ideal world, of course. However, as we live in a world where the consequences of a bad co-parenting relationship are more likely to fall on the woman, surely it makes sense for women to be ultra careful.

I totally agree. You'll get pushback and you'll be accused of 'victim blaming' but you are quite correct

Yep, l think both men and women should be more mindful. A lot of the time people don't think it through enough or what a commitment it is. They will have to see that ex at birthdays, graduations, weddings etc. Plus the lack of effort, thought, financial support etc

I have a work friend who complains his children "aren't very academic". Their mother is not a reader and doesn't encourage them academically so lm not sure why he's surprised. He is academic and has 50/50 custody but there's only so much he can do to overcome it