The poorest men are most likely to be childless against their will

[Socktopusses]

Really interesting article on BBC News today - especially interesting points around wealth and demographics - the poorest men are most likely to be involuntarily childless

link: BBC article

I'm child-free by choice - but being female, I've always had the comfort of knowing that if I changed my mind, I could have a child by sperm donor, on my own and I'd solve my own problem. (Fertility dependent of course, but in theory). It's up to me, basically.

I've had plenty of discussions with my female friends who want children but are struggling to have them, both those struggling with physical fertility - and single female friends who haven't met the right person at the right time and don't want to do it by themselves.

But I'm ashamed to say that outside of the couples I know undergoing IVF, I've never really thought about childfree-not-by-choice men and what it must be like for them. Particularly single men - who in theory could become fathers but don't have the circumstances. They can't just 'do it by themselves', and they're also not even acknowledged in the statistics.

Do you know any single men who long to be fathers but aren't? Just thought it was interesting.

And I find surrogacy a pretty horrific practice.

Not really, given people only become surrogates if they choose to do so. These men are arguing that it's "unfair" if women choose not to bear their children and "disenfranchises" them. And they won't be paying them for the service like a surrogate is paid, either, given the article states they are poor and, therefore, they think they should be given everything they want even if they have nothing to contribute themselves.

No one is feeling sorry for the wealthiest women in society in the Norway study who were the most likely to remain involuntarily childless, are they? They are 'childless against their will'.

No-one feels sorry for the women at all!

The wealthy women presumably could have looked at surrogacy or single parenthood, and didn't take that choice. I would be interested in how the question was phrased.

Also the lowest 5% of earners are not on the minimum wage, they are on universal credit and unemployed or not working for other reasons (benefits). They would struggle to provide for a child full stop and as others have pointed out, are likely out of work for multiple reasons that make them less desirable partners.

I'm not even sure this survey holds true in the UK.

I font think it's even about ' childless against their will' but the first thing jumped on is ' women who don't want children' and ' men who are being denied fatherhood'. How about asking men in their 30's why they don't have families? Not just fathering children that they never see but why they don't want to commit to fatherhood. Not 45 year olds who thought they could get a 25 year old but find they can't but younger men with younger partners?

It was Finland, and the wealthy women were the least likely, not most likely, to be involuntarily childless.

As I said, hardly a surprising result given wealth is highly correlated to intelligence, being well-educated, having a stable life and a good career. All desireable qualities in a partner. More physically attractive people are also more likely to be financially successful on average. Wealthier people are generally also healthier and our evolutionary instincts push us towards choosing a healthy and successful mate, and wealth correlates highly with all of the characteristics that indicate those things. And in addition, most people wait until they are financially stable prior to having children and people become more wealthy as they progress through life, on average, so the effect may also be partially due to the simple fact that those surveyed who had children already were older, hence wealthier on average. Unless they were looking at all of these people in the survey when elderly and there was no prospect of them having further children, and looking back at lifetime earnings rather than current salary?

Ultimately life isn't fair. Throughout history it's been far more unfair on women in general than it is on men and continues to be so even in developed countries. For men to describe themselves as "disenfranchised" because women don't want a partner they have to carry financially rather than one who can match their earnings is a bit ridiculous. If they feel their earnings are holding them back why aren't they studying for more qualifications, progressing careers or starting a business to increase their earnings instead of moaning about it?

One suspects that it isn't only their earnings level that women find unattractive about them, rather probably some other factors that are likely to have contributed to their lower earnings as well as their rejection by women, for example laziness, poor conversational skills, unpleasant personality traits like narcissism, misogyny, or just generally being unimpressive, unambitious, boring and unintelligent. And having this victim mentality where their life being a bit of a failure is all someone else's fault and it's sooooo unfaaaaair. I suspect employers don't rate these qualities much, any more than women do.

I doubt they'd get far with demanding an employer give them a high paying job despite having no relevant skills or qualities to justify it, so it's unclear why they appear to think women should just accept their lack of any impressive or relevant qualities and be excited about bearing their children. Pure entitlement, in essence.

But there would always be low earning men just like there are low earning women. By definition half of the jobs out there would pay below the average salary..

I married my DH for love at 22 and I knew that he would always be a below average londoner in terms of wealth because he was born into a poor family. Indeed he earns 75k per year which isn't a great salary for a Londoner and we bought a 400k flat in our 20s (as he didn't have access to bank of mum and dad).. but I am 100% happy with my decision because even though we aren't rich, we can still save money now and have a relatively comfortable life because we were lucky to be able to live with his mum in our 20s to save a deposit and we were lucky to buy when we did, plus uk is still a rich country so someone with below average wealth/income in London still has a decent life.. so i can therefore afford to marry for love.

However as wealth inequality grows and we become more of an inheritocracy, marrying someone with some earning power and ability to save a few thousand quid per month from paye income wouldn't be enough to ensure financial stability if that is what the woman is looking for. It may just revert to a Jane austen marriage market which is hardly meritocratic. It hits the poorest men now and the 'average graduate men from modest backgrounds ' like my dh are spared for now but who knows for the next generation...

I think I a very weird way men are disadvantaged by not having the menopause. The menopause is a very obvious "wall" and, despite the regular newspaper articles (and YouTube videos) about how women are too ignorant of the fact their fertility will fail in time I would say women are actually really aware of the menopause. It forces you to confront whether or not you want children much earlier. Men on the other hand don't really have a wall they hit, but male fertility does decline gradually as they age. Plus women in their twenties /thirties wanting kids aren't going to choose a man older than 45. There are stories about older male celebrities having children - but they are never there first childen. It is really rare for a man above 45/50 to have children for the first time. But it really isn't talked about at all- in fact all the media targeted at me implies they have all the time in the world, so I can't blame them really.
It does.need to be discussed more, but in a non combatative way (ie not evil wahmen not letting men be fathers, not haha hah men you will hit the wall soon either). But there could be more awareness.

I think you're conflating some issues here.

I agree there is a huge issue in the UK regarding generational wealth versus income, with income having risen so far below the rate if asset price inflation for decades, and being taxed more highly, resulting in lower living standards and the opposite of a meritocracy in that it is now difficult even for highly qualified professionals to afford a decent family home and normal lifestyle when people with the same job roles a generation or two ago would have had large houses, wonderful holidays, probably a holiday home, children in private schools. This is the result of national decline, economic mismanagement in terms of industrial and international trade strategy, and idiotic tax policies, all sadly perpetuated by both major UK political parties as we saw yesterday again, very disappointingly. But that is another thread...

Yes, there will always be higher and lower earners, of course. My point was that this is one factor out of many that contribute to whether someone is an attractive prospect to the opposite sex. Some of them are interrelated and correlated and wealth/ income is correlated highly to a lot of others so it's understandable I suppose that many people (even subconsciously) use it to filter for people in their range, appropriate and realistic partners with whom a relationship might work because they are reasonably similar so more likely to have similar values, prospects, lifestyles and be compatible. That's not to say of course that someone might be very poor and have outstanding qualities in all other aspects which outweigh this.

Many intelligent people have few qualifications. Many bright and intelligent people end up not having successful careers/ businesses. Many rich people die young, and many poor people live long lives. Many poor people end up fabulously wealthy. Many people might have perfectly lovely personalities yet have not found a partner because there's some other problem in their life that prevented them doing so. There are always outliers and people generally judge people as they find them.

My point was that at a population level, when we look at the averages, it is not surprising that wealthy people are more desireable as partners than poor people given that wealth is highly correlated to health, stability if life, higher IQs, fewer social problems, lower levels of crime, higher levels of education, higher levels of career success, lower levels of relationship breakdown, longer life expectancy. More attractive people earn more on average, also.

It wasn't a judgement on anybody's individual choice of romantic partner. I was pointing out that it's not surprising that it's easier to find a partner if you are wealthier because at a population level it also means that you're much more likely to have those other desireable characteristics as well. Which factors are causal of each other is another debate again! But the correlation of lots of these factors with wealth is well-documented, hence unsurprising that wealthy people on average have a larger dating pool as they are likely to also possess many other desireable qualities as well, and that very low earners aren't a very attractive prospect on average because not only would they struggle to support 50% of the costs of raising a child but also have a much higher likelihood of having many other undesireable characteristics as well, from an evoluntionary point of view.

Obviously there will be exceptions, but in many cases I doubt that these low earning men could not find a woman prepared to have a family with them simply because of their earnings, and they were the perfect partner in every other way. Most likely, there are other "co-morbid" correlating factors that also made them a bad prospect as a partner and the correlation between the low earnings and not having children is being mistaken for causation, when it is probably more likely that there are other factors that are the actual cause of both their low earnings and unsuccessful personal relationships.

Your DH proves my point: his lower earnings alone were not a barrier because he had other attractive qualities that compensated. These complaining men need to have a long think about the real reasons women are rejecting them AND they are unsuccessful in their careers and maybe address why that has happened...

Sorry that was for @Opalfleur2026

And I say that as somebody who grew up extremely poor, worked extremely hard to build a better life, then made the huge error of marrying a man who earned 1/5 of my own salary... and sadly it didn't turn out like your live story. It was the most expensive mistake I ever made, despite all precautions (living together years before marriage, years of marriage before having children etc).

Raising two children alone now, with no involvement from him at all. We are very happy and all is well. But mine is a cautionary tale perhaps, that while there may be exceptions, the majority of the time the data holds true. And like hell would I let another man be involved in our life now, irrespective of income.

When I read articles like the one linked in the OP, these men just seem totally self-obsessed to me even though the man is now apparently in his 40s! Even his small reference to his now-wife was all about how she has facilitated his life.

Like I said, I think there are other reasons underlying both the childlessness and lack of financial success of such people. What would be very interesting would be a deeper study on the underlying factors in terms of personality that have likely caused both of those things to happen to the same person.

Absolutely.

The strong smell of entitlement coming off that article was unmistakeable.

What it boils down to is that women have choices now, and there are men who feel very sorry for themselves as a result.

There is evidence to suggest that in countries where women have the most freedom and choices they produce offspring that is more intelligent.

This is because they typically look for traits of intelligence and kindness (those two traits in particular) in males. Ultimately, biologically, women want to produce the healthiest children with the most chance of success.

So yes that means that some men may never get to reproduce. And I have much sympathy for the longing for a child, but equally, societies as a whole are dramatically better when women get to choose.

This is exactly what I was trying to say. Poverty often correlates with other issues and to just assume they don’t have kids cause their poor is such lazy journalism!

Ithink the lazy journalism was in the book that the childless man wrote - it sounds pretty whingeing "poor me," and resentful that women can manage perfectly well without men like him.

This isn't a new thing. Historically a relatively high percentage of men never reproduce.

But then plenty of men father multiple children.

What is an involved father? It’s interesting, we never use that language when speaking about mothers. I mean no-one says a woman has 3 kids and “has always been involved in their lives” It suggests father are by default bystanders when it comes to raising their children but can pitch in to help as a favour to mothers. They are then congratulated for being involved. The bar is depressingly low for men really.

Personally I think there are quite a lot of men who like the idea of fathering a child but are less interested in actually being a parent. And I still believe most men are pretty ambivalent about fatherhood or would rather not bother.

My ex told me that no man wants kids and if they say they do, they're lying. They only have kids to appease a woman.

I believed him until I met my husband age 39. I really feel that the vast majority of men don't want them. And let's face it, when they do have them, they burden their wives with EVERYTHING. They cheat, they slack and they don't do any heavy lifting, preferring to be a weekend Disney dad.

That seems to be the cultural norm with a few minor exceptions.

So I don't care about how a tiny minority of men feel about having kids. If they're good men, really good men then they won't have a problem finding a woman to start a family with. The rest of them can stay child free and unburden any woman from their bs.

@Eastie77Returns For millennia, women did do most of the active child rearing, though, didn’t they, so the idea of the father being “involved” is a very recent phenomenon, isn’t it?

I was born in the 1970’s and my Dad went out to work and did gardening. He did very little in the house and I don’t know whether he ever changed a nappy! I’m guessing that you’re younger than me-did your Dad do housework and change nappies?

That’s what’s changed for the better in the last 20-30 years, Dads are now expected to step up and actively parent, instead of leaving everything to Mums. Nowadays we’d be horrified if a new Dad didn’t do anything!

Yeah I’d agree with this, sometimes men may be poor because they lack the social skills to function in a workplace, same skills required to attract a mate.

Dh wanted a kid very much, he got one and years later I’m convinced that if he could throw petals in front of her feet wherever she walked he would do it. It was definitely his idea to have a child, I think he would have been ok if it were just him and me but he would have always felt like he had missed out. Some men do really want kids, I think some men like the idea of kids but not the work involved and some just go along with it.

I think it’s the way we think about poverty sometimes as something that happens to us, regardless of us. Sometimes people are poor because of character and choices (obviously circumstances come into it too). I look at my dad and one of his brothers, dad has a work ethic, his brother doesn’t, very different outcomes, both came from poverty.

Also think the focus has been so heavily placed on women and fertility that some men just don’t even think about it. They believe they have loads of time and tbh most men think they are better than they are and most women think they are worse than they are.

Even at school I remember boys who you would definitely not deem to be attractive in terms of personality or otherwise to be utterly convinced that they would be able to get “that girl” who was completely out of their league.

At the end of the day women can procreate with whoever they want to! That’s gonna be tough for some men but 🤷‍♀️

This has been an interesting thread - thank you! Slightly regret making the title relate to financial status as I was more pondering the general 'men who want to be fathers but can't' aspect but it's been very interesting to read. I know of one man desperate to be a father but he married a woman who doesn't so, sort of his own fault for thinking he could change her mind.