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.

Put the gin down and start again!

Would you suggest women stopped allowing themselves to be penetrated where consent was present?

I assume that you mean the consent of the man?

Yes, I would absolutely recommend that women don't have sex with a consenting man if they don't want sex themselves, are worried about STIs, or don't trust the reliability of their own or the male partner's contraceptive method.

Women have the right to use their own bodies to prevent a pregnancy. So do men. Abstinence is the most reliable option for this. Both sexes have contraceptives available to them if they are willing to take the risk of failure in return for the trade-off of sex.

Philosophically yes but practically no. So we need to protect ourselves. Because we pick up the consequences. Blaming him will be meaningless when you’re left alone to care for a baby with mounting bills and he’s blocked you on every platform.

subject to whatever behaviour men want to inflict on them.

Have you ever heard of something called "rape"? It's something that men literally inflict upon women, regardless of any assertions you make about our agency, and men who do so unilaterally choose to inflict the risk of pregnancy upon their female victims.

Telling women to predict the future is empowering?

Exactly😆

And for what it’s worth, the ‘gentle, left wing, feminist’ men I know are equally toxic. Every single one I know is TWAW and they absolutely expect women to fall on their sword with regards to taking the career hit to raise their kids. They’re just more subtle about how they do it. Do you really think Jeremy Corbyn had equal parenthood of his THREE kids while building his political career? Do you think he was there to pick them up from school, do homework, bath time, get up with them in the night, all while working as an MP and activist and hobnobbing with the anti-establishment?

Personally I’ve no time for knuckle draggers but equally I have no time for men who slyly patronise me with their faux feministic beliefs and sly agendas. So I wouldn’t bank on the anti-football types as being great men at all.

Teaching them to read risk and act on it is, yes.

For fucks sake it’s plainly obvious I didn’t mean being physically overpowered. Stop trying to slam dunk using straw men analogies because you don’t like what I’m writing.

It does not just affect boys whose fathers have not supported them or they did not know them, but boys who have lost their Dad/male role model through bereavement, often a traumatic or sudden death, I see far too many young men at work who have been impacted by this, incredibly sad and there is really not enough support for them. This is not something which just impacts them immediately, but can have an incredibly long lasting effect on their lives, including into adulthood.

So you claim that women have more control over who we marry, date, and have kids with than men and at the same time men have the power to leave us facing the consequences of having kids?

Women do not have the power and agency here. Women's entire decision-making on who to have kids with is based on trying to predict how a man will behave in the future. None of us have time machines or crystal balls and a quick review of the Relationships board will tell you that men are on their best behaviour at first and only let the mask slip in late pregnancy or after the first child is born, by which time it is too late for the woman to abort.

By contrast, men need no crystal ball to walk away or start abusing, because their decisions are made based on things that have already happened, not things that may or may not happen in the future.

But some women do have multiple kids with the same person even though they know the relationship has gone to shit after the first one. See it on MN every day.

How do you read risk when we are talking about behaviour that has no precedent? The best predictor of future behaviour is past behaviour, yeah? A couple is having their first child together, so there's no precedent for how he will behave when she starts showing or gives birth and goes into "mother mode" and suddenly he's no longer the important person in her life.

How can she predict whether he will start hitting her, or decide that fatherhood is just too much for him and walk away? She cannot because there's no "past behaviour" to base her prediction on.

Under those circumstances, I agree that the woman is being foolish. I think "sunk cost fallacy" clouds their judgement, plus fear of being alone and fear that the next man will be worse.

Yes we have far more agency.

First of all it’s a bit harder for men to get sex full stop, women just aren’t as desperate as they are.

Secondly we have the choice of 10 odd types of contraceptive which are free, highly effective, and long lasting (years at a time). They have 2 options - one is far from highly reliable and the other invasive and permanent.

Women then choose whether or not to have an abortion.

So yep, far more agency.

While you get the odd man that keeps up a ruse of good character for 7 years before changing, the vast majority of cases I’m aware of had red flags but she just didn’t want to acknowledge them. Then says after the split how surprised she is as he was the perfect man - despite the fact he was an unemployed bum, or that he only changed 5 nappies, or that he used to go off for days at a time after an argument.

Yes I always start reading thinking ‘please don’t be pregnant..’ but they always are.

Well ensuring if you don't think thry are a good person or will be a good father don't breed with them, get to know them first may help. It is well and good going 'I wanna baby I don't whose sperm I use' doesn't help

And the he has fathered 3 kids by different 3 different women but I am desperate for him to want one with me, good grief

the vast majority of cases I’m aware of had red flags but she just didn’t want to acknowledge them

Or wasn't able to recognise them at the time. Thinking about the men who wouldn't walk slowly enough for me to keep up without jogging, even when I asked them to slow down. It took 25 years for me to recognise that as a subtle act of contempt, because my parents wouldn't slow down when I asked as a child, so I didn't register it as a controlling behaviour (which it is, he's getting a woman to literally run after him) and a red flag for future controlling behaviour.

My sister thought she had a decent one. Luckily, one of her or him is infertile, but she pissed nearly a decade on a guy with no red flags at the start who treated her like a total bangmaid by the end and was rapidly turning into an MRA.

You might think you know someone, but you never can. You cannot ever know what they are thinking, nor what they will think in ten years time. And women don't have decades to check a guy out in because, one respect in which we do have far less choice than men in, is when to have kids because we get the menopause and men don't.

Do you know what would be even more empowering? Telling men to stop being selfish cunts. And it would also be empowering not put the onus on women to spot who is and isn’t a selfish cunt.

Prevention is better than cure

This. We don't empower women by making them responsible for men's shittiness. It's misogyny to blame women for what men do.

That seems sexist. “Nothing gets sorted” because it’s a men’s issue?

I do think as mothers of sons we have to promote good male role models. But this crisis needs me to sort it by stepping up and being better fathers

There is nothing new in that report. Ask anyone who has been working in social/ health/ police services for decades. The issue is whether anything can be done about it and by whom. I can remember reading similar reports in the 70s, 80s, onwards. Steve Biddulph published "Raising Boys" in 1997.
Until lazy, feckless fathers step up, nothing will change.

My ds sees his df for6 hours a week. They eat a burger together, have one short conversation and then ex spends his time snoozing or browsing his phone.

I taught my ds to swim, to cycle, to build dens. I am a good role model in terms of work ethic. He sees me do car and house maintenance. We practice karate together, I chase him to do his homework and don't let him wander the streets. Even as a 16yo he talks to me. We discuss anything from condoms to Donald Trump.

He has male role models of his karate Sensei, maths & PE teachers. I don't share my views on men with him, that would be inappropriate.

It was pretty obvious, soon after ds was born that ex would abdicate his responsibilities so I've worked hard to fill the void. Ds is a happy settled teen. Calm, good GCSEs.

I don't know what the answer is to the wider problem. So many men are selfish and lazy, completely unfit to be husband or fathers.

I have a relative who was widowed suddenly (in the 1950s)when her sons were aged 2 and 4. It was male relatives and various groups from church/ scouts/school who provided good mentors and role models. Nowadays we seem to be surrounded by predatory men who infiltrate those same organisations and how does anyone know who the good men are.