to think a lot of men will not marry if they already get everything?

Please read my post again.
What I have described is a woman's part in the process of producing a child before birth, during birth and immediately afterwards - her responsibility, if you like.
Once baby is out of the womb hopefully she'll get some assistance, but many men just don't step up to the plate.

No, having children and bringing them up from birth is not solely a woman's responsibility. We don't see things like that because we live in 2026 and not 1956. Things have moved on and evolved, even if you're not aware of that.

Gives what away?

Oh no. You don't get to do that. You don't get to pretend that your awful sexism is down to men being men. Own your views.

That's not what I mean, and also again you're talking about cultural norms as if they're set in stone. What I mean is that you're talking about maternity leave and pay as though those types of parental leave are automatically and solely the responsibility of women. It's like when it's said that women are working for nothing because of childcare costs, like the expense and responsibility for all aspects of family life belongs to women by default. These unchallenged assumptions are how we end up with the gender career and pay gap.

I think this should be tge case for both genders. A lot of women have children ‘because that’s what you’re supposed to do p’ too.

But if I look at my own young adult dcs, I see people NOT wanting to have children. They’re fearful of tge future, not getting on the housing ladder, not getting a job that allows them to live.
They are mid 20s and can’t imagine to be stable enough financially to even be able to think about having children.

Id also want to point out that young adults have sex less and less. Much less than in 2000 (deoending what era you are from). I think the womaniser image's something that is dying down just because of that.

Well bringing a child into the world who will have no relationship with their biological parent is ethically dicey.

Well we live in a world today where women have the most opportunities, resources and access to information to make better choices so they need to do better and take responsibility.

Parents should raise their boys to understand that they don't have to have kids to count as a "good man". They arent a "player" or "womaniser" or "commitmentphobe" if they do not agree to conceive with someone who wants kids. If a guy goes into a relationship understanding that, then you can say he gave informed consent to conceive.

I’m going to say it depends a lot on the generation. Things change.
Im from the older generation on MN, menopausal, kids are adult etc…
And yes there was still a sa stitch about marriage that you dint have anymore.
There was a huge oressure to be at home with the kids because otherwise you’re just outsourcing bring a parent. Sounds crazy now? Yep but that’s what women told all the time. Along side studies on higher level of cortisol etc….

Nowdays, the younger women, those in their 20s, they have a very different attitude!
Theyre getting stuck on somethimg else though. Lack of jobs, cost of living. These are much more if a restriction than I was that age.

@LovelyCrocus also if the men who refuse the marriage part do it because they want kids, why do they not ask for at least 50/50? Why chosing to be a part time dad?
Or are you saying that once tge child is here, the need is filled and they dint care anymore afterwards?

An unmarried woman who wants a child can use the services of a sperm bank. There isn’t really a need to cultivate an intimate relationship with a man.

@LovelyCrocus on paler you’re right even though it’s very new AND you need the money first said IVF.
However, it’s very much frown upon. I’ve worked with women undergoing IVF whikst being single. They are judged rigut left and centre.
Much easier to have a ONS and say it was an accident fwiw

@Lexibletheflexible im assuming you’re aware that what you’ve described also applies to women rigut?
Maybe even more do in that men have always had tge ability to leave whereas women didn’t (historically men could divorce their wife but women couldn’t divorce their husband).

But otherwise yes, people, men and women, act depending what the culture/society is around them. Few people ask why.

Where I’m going to push back is that men might not have been asked if they want children (even though that’s not my exierience but 🤷‍♀️🤷‍♀️). However, once they have fathered a child they should not be allowed to not carry that responsibility in the ground of ‘I didn’t want to’. The child never chose to be there. It might not be quite what they wanted but I’m sorry, tough, they’ll have to live with it.

An unmarried woman who wants a child can use the services of a sperm bank. There isn’t really a need to cultivate an intimate relationship with a man.

If there isn’t a need then the reason women do it is because it’s a want.

Men cannot get pregnant, so if they want a child they need a woman. And they need that woman for 9 months, not the few minutes it takes them to donate sperm.

So it makes sense for a man who wants to be a father to find a willing woman. If they can’t find a willing one then they may consider adoption or surrogacy.

There are women who want children with a man. They don’t want to go it alone, they want the support of another human in raising children.

Occasionally these two humans meet. The man finds a willing woman and the woman finds a man who appears to want the same things as her. Unfortunately she doesn’t realise he wants her for her breeding potential alone. He knows that saying this isn’t going to get him far, so he keeps quiet about that and reassures the woman he’s in it for the long term. They discuss marriage - ‘no need’, ‘old fashioned’, ‘outdated concept’, ‘patriarchal nonsense’, etc. Or ‘not yet, let’s have kids / move in together / wait until we’re more settled / save up for the big wedding’ etc. The man has little to no intention of marrying, but the woman believes he does want to at some later point.

Kids arrive. They’re still not married. No need now, right? The kids are already here and they’re still together so why get a piece of paper to prove things are stable?

Only one person is committed to this relationship and it isn’t the person who knows where it really stands.

Eventually the man moves on, finds someone else and quite often marries her.

There are a lot of single unmarried mothers out there. Not all of them by choice. They’re the ones who take to MN distraught that they’ve been left holding the baby. If they knew in advance that their partner just wanted to procreate and that they came along at the right time, how many do you think would have willingly tried to cultivate an emotionally intimate relationship with their former dp?

They’d have saved themselves the heartache and registered for receipt of donor sperm. It’s basically what they ended up with anyway.

It's a cycle where the men are made to believe they have to tolerate a certain dynamic if they want a relationship because that's just how women are. The women around them reinforce that view by modeling those behaviours. They arent aware that they have a choice.

The same cycle prompts women to choose men who arent aware that they get to have a choice about their future and it doesn't make them a bad guy if they find they don't want kids, or to blindly appease the wishes of a female partner on things like where they live or how they manage their home.

It often takes men until their middle.ages to wake up and realise that all this has happened to them and that they are over not having a say in their own destiny. Then they walk out and leave to try and establish that liberty.

A lot of women have been made to believe that they should be getting what they want if people aren't being abusive to them.

We regularly have threads on MN where women complain that their husband is useless and won't help with their kids and generally won't pull their weight.

Was he ever asked if he wanted any, for a start?

And having found out he was a useless lump of lard with the first one, why did they go on to have more /

Also.

I had our child before I got married. It didn’t change whether we got married, we did marry a few years later.

We have always pooled money, my husband earned while I was on maternity leave and I spent it on groceries and bills and keeping house for that time. Then I got a full time job at the end of that year.

We earn the same (within £250 of each other annually), our pensions are the same value (again within a couple of thousand), and we still pool our money.

A lot (NOT ALL) who have a child before marriage and end up financially stuck have done so because they’ve picked bad men. Pick a good one and they’ll want the same things you do, love, happiness, respect, equal worth, and if you both want, children and marriage

If you want to get married to a man, find one that values marriage itself. A man who believes that marriage is a necessity. Probably will be for Godly reasons

And women are sitting there like poor little victims? They have no say in their lives, no choice of their own to make?

If a woman finds herself in this position, she had a hand in it too.

It's the women who has to physically carry the child for 9 months, have her body wrecked with all the problems that pregnancy creates and then go through a horrendous experience to get it out into the world.
If she's lucky enough not to have a tear and stitches, her fanny will never be the same again and she could end up with pelvic organ prolapse.
So, yes, the process is a woman's responsibility.if she chooses to have a child.
Hubby meanwhile is fed up with no nookie and a baby crying every 2 hours.

You aren’t answering it from the point of the original post. Your arguments about marriage are logical, better protections etc. But this isn’t what the thread is about.

The OP tried to say that a man wouldn’t want to get married if he could have all the perks without getting married. But I cannot see how withholding having a child is going to help get a man to marry you…

So do you think that in general men want to have children so bad that they want will get married just so that a woman will have them.

If they don’t want to get married they probably won’t really want children either so it’s not the carrot you think you are dangling.

My point has consistently been that if a woman wants marriage and a man is already happy with the relationship as it is, he has less reason to change the status quo.

So are you suggesting we make our relationships less happy so that a man marries us? You make statements that say why something is a problem, but offer no solution. And what you say is a problem really isn’t?

Yes. I would say it's obvious that - unless a woman has substantial independent resources - she would rather be married to the father of her children than not, so in the majority of cases it's reasonable to assume he doesn't want to marry her.

Of all the unmarried couples with children I know, the woman would marry him in a heartbeat if he was willing to marry her.

Some men do settle for a woman who "will do" until the "right" woman" comes along and - inexplicably in my opinion - these women are happy to accept this arrangement.

I think the reason some couples have children together and marry much later, is that the man eventually realises he has over-estimated his romantic worth and the "right" woman will never appear (or if she does, she won't want him).

He then starts to realise he is no better than the woman he settled for and he's facing a lonely old age. Then he'll marry her, if she will still have him.