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.

Yes I’d agree with this. I worked on a socially deprived social housing estate in one of the poorest areas and many of the men went from woman to woman having children with them. I couldn’t see anything that might make some suitable fathers, apart from the fact that they lived in the same road.

No, you shouldn’t have to pretend you don’t like train-spotting or do love romcoms or whatever it is. But if, like a PP’s friend, the issue is that you are sexually assaulting women on first dates and then harassing them over text afterwards when they don’t want to see you again, then yep that’s something you are going to have to change if you want any chance of a second date.

I certainly agree with you on that!

I think if you asked most women in an anonymous survey if they would have children with a man who earned NMW, even if working in a very hard & demanding job, honestly not many would say yes. You see it on her all the time, don’t have kids with someone who isn’t financially stable etc.

It’s naive at best to say that you’re not fussed about what a man earns if you are looking at him as someone you would have children with.

It’s not nice but thinking of it practically, mum’s take maternity leave, SMP is pitiful, the only way it’s possible to take maternity leave for however long you want to is if you have a partner who is able to cover the household bills with his wage until you return to work. Then there’s childcare costs/organising which often means mum’s reduce their hours at work, again that’s only an option if you have a partner who can take the extra financial burden to make that possible.

No not true I have carers they have kids they get help with uc a bit or not but get help towards womw nursery fees and thwie partner may not be earning alot it can be doable. Mind yiu I live up north a bit cheaper to live but there are families that do rely on uc and work but they make it work.

Plenty of women have kids with poor men for goodness sake. Women often look for partners in the same or higher social bracket, and there's plenty of poor women too.

Of course, my ex said he wanted 3 kids, but once the two I had with him arrived he really couldn't be bothered with them - so I also take 'I really want kids' with a massive pinch of salt - plenty of men don't take 50% responsibility for the kids or abandon the kids that they spent time planning with their partners.

Brings to mind that dude on reddit who persuaded an aquaintance who had an accidental pregnancy with him to keep the baby, on the understanding that he would look after it, and she would pay maintenance, then was shocked when she followed through on that.

I do know a man who is yearning for a child. He cries himself to sleep sometimes because of it..he is in his mid 30s with a good career and his own flat but has been unlucky in love sadly.

It is true.

There are lots of families who earn enough that they don’t qualify for UC but not enough to be able to pay all of their household bills plus paying £1500+ a month on childcare to allow both parents to continue working.

One of my colleagues as an example, both her and her husband work full time on above NMW would love to start a family however they don’t have £1500 spare each month for nursery fees, but they also have a household income that means they are not entitled to UC. There really isn’t any help for the many people who fall in the middle who earn just enough to not be entitled to any UC, but who don’t actually earn enough to be able to afford full time nursery fees or for one parent to drop hours at work. Not many families on average incomes have a spare £1500 to spend on nursery, plus all of the other costs that come with kids.

I see the results every working day of poor, inadequate, men with numerous children who they have fathered to several women and take no responsibility for. I deal with the consequences in terms of how badly these children often do at school- they often experience poor parenting from both parents, no encouragement in terms of how to behave, learn and achieve, they live in poverty or in near poverty, have no good role models or support.

If there are poor men who would like to be good fathers and who would take that seriously, perhaps we could have some system of linking them up with these children.

Is he fussy though . I mean dating apps are full of nice women wanting a man but so many of these men seem fussy

It's probably better that he not advertise that desperation. It would give a lot of women, me included, the instant ick.

I personally think that is the problem

Depending on UC and the goodwill of a private landlord isn't what everyone wants to do. I wouldn't judge a woman for only wanting to start a family with a man who earned enough for the both of them to be able to afford to get on the property ladder.

Knowing that other people are doing and coping with something doesn't always make you want to cope with it.

Far less fussy than a lot of men I know but most men I know who are currently partnered were in established relationships far earlier.

I don’t understand the stats.

If the poorest men have a rate of childlessness of 72%, then you’d expect women to be in a similar place? But somehow nothing is mentioned in that article.
So either the rathe of childlessness in women is much lower and those men ARE fathers. They just haven’t recognised the children/want to be involved etc….
Or actually women are affected just as much …

Of course, women can for it alone. But how many actually do so by choice?

It is a strange article.

It us a tragedy for anybody who really wants to be a parent and would be a good one not to become one. But it isn't a right, and life has some luck involved and is often cruel and some things are beyond control like medical infertility.

At the same time, much is influenced by the choices we make. Part if being a parent is providing for your children. People tend to be attracted to people of similar intellect, education, values, attractiveness and success as themselves. Ultimately, as many threads on this site demonstrate, a very large number of men are disappointing: unreliable, dishonest, lazy, misogynist, incapable of basic communication, lacking wit or humour or amibition, boring to talk to or spend time with etc. Even a not particularly physically attractice man presumably presumably attract a woman to have children with if he was exemplary in all of these qualities, given plenty of women are under-average (by definition!) in terms of physical attractiveness, also.

And why should a woman do most of the domestic work and marry a man who isn't her peer in earnings (particularly as studies show that women who earn significantly more than their husbands do an even higher percentage of domestic work on average than those with partners with comparable earnings or who earn less than their male partners, astonishingly appalling as that is). Perhaps if these men were so desperate to have children and insufficient earnings to pay their 50% of a decent life for a child is a barrier to them finding a partner who wishes to procreate with them they could do what everyone does when - for whatever reason - they want to earn more money: study more, work harder for promotions, build a career or a business and increase their earnings. If this is their life goal then surely they would do something about taking steps that might help them to achieve it?

Perhaps these figures are influenced partly by people who cannot afford to support children sufficiently to give them a good life choosing not to have them. Or, perhaps, choosing not to have them until they can do so (the article doesn't state whether the discrepancy in the percentage of people with higher incomes being more likely to have children is simply to do with age i.e. most people wait until they are older and have more money before having children hence average age of first time parents now being well over 30 for both men and women); or whether it is saying it has tracked me through to when they are elderly and have remained childless then looked at lifetime income and the poorer men were more likely to remain childless throughout life.

I also find the article's references to childless men as "disenfranchised" (from what? Access to women's bodies against their will and forcing them to bear their children?) or this situation as an "inequality" quite disturbing. This isn't a situation to be rectified by anybody but the individual. What could the remedy be? Force women to have children with men they find unattractive? Given the way that our whole society is still so enormously structured in favour of men I think this is a fairly silly complaint overall.

I expect there are some men who based on repellent personalities or very unfortunate physical appearance really struggle to attract a woman at all, and we should pity them. However, if the issue isn't earning enough then that is something the individual could work to change, not an immutable aspect of them as a person. Clearly the more negative factors about you, the smaller your potential dating pool will be, so like anybody they will need to improve those that they have influence over if they want to improve their chances. If they can't be bothered to do that then are they really likely to put in the huge and sustained effort over two decades to do 50% of raising a child?

Also let’s be honest.
He isn’t representative of the ‘low income men who struggle so much’.
He wrote a book. He went and research (how much is another story). That’s not your average ‘low income man’

A man can impregnate multiple women and perhaps some of these men who impregnate multiple women might not be 'poor'.

Oh, bless their little unwashed socks, they spent their 20s and 30s avoiding anything that felt like commitment, as there might always be a better/younger/prettier/prospect out there and now they're in their 40s and 50s, those 22 year olds they thought would be throwing themselves at the wise and worldly van drivers and admin assistants seem to have vanished.

A much more succinct way of putting what I was trying to say. 🤣

They don't seem to take into consideration the deadbeats that are always jobless yet bed hopping and impregnating women year in, year out.

But very clearly 10% of the world’s male population are not responsible for 90% of the world’s pregnancies. So that stat is a load of bollocks.

In which case these women end up single mum, not by choice….

And I doubt that any if those childless men who are so desperate fir a child would be happy to be in that position.

It reminds me of a couple of AITA where the woman doesn’t want a child but the man does. She relents but is very clear that if anything happens, she is off. WITHOUT the child.
And ofc, the man has an affair, is a twat, whatever and is then up in arms because the woman doesn’t custody of the child when they separate and they have to be a single dad.
Despite being the one who desperately wanted the child…..

I also wonder if abortion pills by post has been a factor with people who are more likely to enter motherhood passively through accidental pregnancy with an unsuitable partner. Even in a chaotic lifestyle if you've just got to make a phone call rather than travelling to a particular location maybe you're less likely to continue the pregnancy.

I've always found it a little...creepy when women talk about just removing men from the equation and going it alone deliberately.

But it's even worse coming from men.

Children aren't objects that everyone is entitled to, men aren't sperms doners, women aren't incubators.

I've every sympathy for people who are like 'I could never find the right person that I would consider starting a family with'. But people who talk about children as if they're an entitlement and you can just skip the partner and other parent step...give me the heebie jeebies.
It's sheer narcissism.

That makes no sense. How could an adult assess travelling to a clinic for abortion medication as being lower effort than raising a child for 18 years?