Lads need dads - the Lost Boys report

[osotroo]

I read this BBC article and it struck a chord. I couldn't see a thread on it here, so thought I'd start one:

BBC News - Lost boys report: Young men are in crisis due to fatherlessness - BBC News
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cjd3jlee33yo

I have two boys, who are lucky to have a wonderful dad. I know many mumsnetters have sons who are not so fortunate, whether through bereavement, abandonment, relationship break-down, violence, or personal choice. In many cases, no father figure will be better than the default option. But what can society do to compensate? The obvious answer is more male teachers, more male sports coaches, and other activity leaders that can provide positive role models. What really saddens me is the "all men are bastards" attitude that is so common on these threads, because believing that can only make lives worse, not better.

The truth is that most men don't deserve children. Most aren't willing to do an equal share of the work involved.

Yes, women could be choosier about who they had kids with, but then the already low birthrate would fall to disastrous levels.

South Korea is quite a good example of what happens when a significant proportion of women judge that a significant proportion of men are not worthy of being husbands and fathers.

They are ahead of us. We are going that way.

Agree completely.

Benefits have enabled women to be very relaxed about who they have kids with, as they’ll always be housed and fed so it matters far less financially if dad buggers off.

Society is a bit of a mess, we reached this place trying to be compassionate but it’s backfired a bit.

The children being born in such chaotic homes will be far less likely to contribute in any meaningful way to society or the economy. It’s likely many of them will end up on benefits and requiring increasingly expensive support services to do basic things or keep them out of trouble.

Compulsory sterilisation for men after fathering children with one woman?

Would put a stop to berating women who have their first child with a man who already has children when they have any issue at all with the "step" children. There would be no more men with adult children and a second family.

I agree.

This is another problem brought about by men. It needs to be sorted by men.

Those decrying this point are just putting mens issues at women's feet.

Some women need to be better at recognising a complete waster before conceiving.

First Rule right there. Women are not to blame if we fail to recognise men's lies.

My estranged brother's ex is a case in point. He is a self evident walking car crash yet she CHOSE to have a kid with him, to add to the two she had already. She appeared to think that her nurturing could stop him being a selfish, lazy drug user who had never held down a job in his life. The kid was born and she kicked him out two months later. She child was a girl thankfully, but has now grown up and got pregnant (dad nowhere to be seen). It's a boy. I have absolutely zero optimism any of this will turn out ok.

This wouldn't stop men having second families. My ex H had a vasectomy. He has a young child with his very much younger wife, through sperm donation.

Yes. I concur. The only snag is that you can't tell when he's finished having kids with his first partner.

A better idea: mandatory Vasalgel at 16 and it's only reversed when he gets married.

And I put the "chose" in capitals because she did choose - she wanted a baby, and decided my brother was father material. She told me this herself.

Fuck me, at this rate, women won’t need to take responsibility for any aspect of their lives. I don’t think it’s reasonable to paint women as the eternal victim. We are not.

I have to agree.
It's true that women need to be more careful about the men with whom they have children. But when women do start to think carefully about these things we end up with a falling birth rate because women start to realize that it's not in their interests to be mothers.
Populations grew in the past because generally a woman's best option for getting on in life was to align herself with a man; defer to him and have children for him in the hope that he would provide for her and the children. The downside for the woman and the children was that they were at the mercy of the man.
When women can be financially independent and get on in life without men there is less of an incentive for them to be mothers.

There are plenty of very involved Dads who are no longer with their child’s mother.

Women already take huge amounts of responsibility: by taking contraceptives, trying to avoid rapists, making Clare's Law and Sarah's Law requests, booking abortions, and raising kids.

The kind of men who lie to and mistreat women seek out vulnerable women to mistreat because we (and I mean "we" because I am autistic and struggle to detect when men are trying to manipulate me) are easier to control. This is not our fault for being vulnerable, it's their fault for being predatory abusers. Vulnerable people don't choose to be vulnerable but abusers choose to abuse.

what's the relevance?

LTB isn't analogous to 'never see your child again'. Romantic relationship breakdown doesn't have to mean the loss of all familial bonds.

Unless there are huge issues with the father (and sometimes not even then) family courts will do everything possible to make sure DC have contact with both parents.

Even if you are imagining loads of horrible bitchy women leaving lovely hardworking men for no real reason just because a random stranger on a social media forum told them to, then surely said lovely man would still be invested in supporting his DC?

You don't have to live with your DC full time to be a good parent. If a dad cba to make the effort to see his DC just because he is no longer in the same house as them then chances are he wasn't the best father in the first place.

I do wonder whether what these studies are actually showing is that kids who come from families that have broken up do worse, rather than showing that kids without a dad do worse.

Studies of kids in LGB families, tend to show that kids being raised by two mums or two dads have exactly the same behavioural, educational, wellness outcomes as those from equivalent straight families, unless there has been a family breakup when the kids do worse.

https://whatweknow.inequality.cornell.edu/topics/lgbt-equality/what-does-the-scholarly-research-say-about-the-wellbeing-of-children-with-gay-or-lesbian-parents/

Also are these studies that show kids where there has been a family breakdown and they don’t have an involved dad are doing worse controlling for socioeconomic factors?

Men need to be better dads, better partners/husbands and quite frankly go into parenthood for the long term. Relationships sometimes breakdown due to horrible things but both men and women are guilty of not compromising, communicating poorly and quite frankly wanting to move onto “different things” I think we bore easier now. This isn’t all relationship breakdowns but I know too many men who have left the family home because they basically got bored and wanted a new woman, and bored of the constraints of being a dad - step up men! (And yes it can be reversed but less common)

my ex at least at the decency to stay until they were grown and to fund them through university (I could have a long moan but I’ll give him credit where it’s due here)

So women should just put up with it ? Instead of the men themselves learning to be a decent person ?

Yeah men’s bad behaviour - it’s all women’s fault isn’t it ?

I have been following the South Korean situation. I agree with them.

I don’t intend to have children regardless but I have also given up dating as, after having seen and heard so much bad behaviour from so many different men, I now find all of them repellent.

Re; LTB. There really need to be more options than putting up with terrible behaviours or not having a father in your childrens lives. But unfortunately for too many women, that is the choice. Until men are held more accountable, whether they live with their children or not, we wont crack this problem.

A lot of it is economic/conflict-related.

Single-parent families tend to have less resources and there may also be a high degree of conflict amongst separated parents. Both of these things lead to poorer outcomes for children.

It's difficult to isolate precisely what the impact of not having a father around is, as often it's tied up with material deprivation and/or high levels of parental conflict. It's interesting that children who have single parents due to the death of the other parent (rather than relationship breakdown) are often immune from these poorer outcomes.

Indeed. If the solution is for women only to have children with men who deserve them, then society needs to accept that there will be far fewer children.

I agree with everything you said.
BUT . . . some people are inherently predatory; it's not so much a choice to abuse it's just the way they operate. If they sense any weakness their immediate impulse is to exploit it, and they are people who act on impulse rather than thinking about what they do.

So many doughnuts confuse feminism with misandry (plenty of them on MN) probably is a factor.

My Mother said that in WWII with most of the Dads away the lads ran absolutely riot. I don’t know the exact answer though I see many have put forward succinct points.