Commitment-phobic men are often the reason that women 'delay' starting a family

[Petal02]

A lovely friend of mine is in bits because her latest relationship has broken down. She is 41, would love to settle down and start a family, but has been unfortunate to have a string of boyfriends who didn't know what they wanted, or wanted to keep their options open, or didn't want children now but might have wanted them in the future. You get the picture.

She was 'told off' by her GP about 6 months ago (when she mentioned the subject of conception) for 'hanging around too much and not getting on with it.'

Yet you read so much about women who allegedly decide to wait til their 40s before starting a family; I suspect some of them would have started far earlier if only there weren't so many idiotic men about.

Sorry, just wanted to offload. Makes me very sad.

I definitely see more women in their early 20's who, 15 years ago would not have even considered children yet, having children rather than waiting. They have been terrified witless by all the media about these selfish career women leaving it too late

www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/03/marry-him/306651/

Does this link work?

I'm not saying I agree with everything in that article, but it's definitely food for thought.

Totally agree honey22 working class men nearly always want children by early 20s

I'm a bit uncomfortable with the strong 'it's all themen's fault' narrative. Looking at my female contemporaries that left having children late or haven't yet been in a position to try I'd not say that they had been messed around so much as that they left serious relationships a bit late and also they looked for 'Mr Perfect'. So they had fun in their 20s (absolutely nothing wrong with that) and then they had this huge pressure to find a guy who was long term partner/father material in a relatively short amount of time.

I don't know very many single men (in fact most of the people I know are either couples or divorced) but they are either looking for long term relationships (just like the women) or they are confirmed bachelors, wanting neither a partner nor children (and being pretty obvious about it from what I can see).

When dh and I got together at university most of my female friends were slightly horrified that I was missing out, had compromised etc. To some extent they were right, maybe there were better partners out there for both of us., and maybe we should have had more singles fun. We've certainly had our ups and downs! I am glad however that we got to decide together when we wanted to have children with no pressure (and it was dh that was broody not me).

I suspect far more people are self-deluding than deluded by others. Or perhaps, there's a bit of both. it is hard to face up to the harsh reality of an imperfect relationship, your own issues, your chances of finding a good partner and all that. I can absolutely see why people do drift.

working class men (and women) typically dont have access to the level of material/economic success which is available to those of higher socio-economic status.

Therefore gaining a sense of self esteem and achievement from having a family is going to seem like a better option.

Not reallt suzanne I live on estate with social workers, teachers, armed forces etc and lots with careees but none are middle class, and most had children young. Working class people just are family orientated

I get a bit sick of the (not very) veiled mysogyny of the "ooh, left it too late and now look! You're all dried up!" brigade (not aimed at you nooka btw!)
The fact is, a lot of it is just luck, when you fall in love, and who with. I had a marriage proposal from a boyfriend at 24.
He was solvent, owned a flat, was the faithful type, and actually really head- turningly good looking. I just didn't love him.
A LOT of women would probably have overlooked that little detail, (he was that good on paper) but I couldn't. Do I regret it? Not for a second. The man I married later (also in my twenties) was abusive. Obvs I dont regret ending that relationship either.
I think a lot of people-not just women, get to 24 and think "OK, well, this is nice. I want kids, and the person I am with is a good person. Lets just get married. Don't want to be left on the shelf ".
Which is their prerogative, but it might also explain why the divorce rate is so high, and why so few people seem to have happy marriages.

I have one friend, and only one, who left a guy she had been with from 21, and who would have married her, and she is now dating and can't meet anyone at 37. He is married with 2 kids to someone else (someone older than her actually).
However, at the time she was with him he had a pretty serious drinking problem, and she made a decision based on what she could, or couldn't live with at that time.
And , yup, georgesdino most men where I live have kids in their early/mid twenties. My last boyfriend did. He still didn't want to settle down!

I agree luck plays a huge role. Also just the volume of men/ women that you meet. One thing I have observed is that you'll probably never meet as many potential partners through work/ leisure interests compared with university, and in the past for the middle classes that is where a large number of people did meet or connect with their future partners. My parents kept in touch with all their friends from university and they mostly married from within that set or with their connections (my godfather for example dated my mother and later married one of my fathers exs). But dh and I are as far as we know the only couple in our group.

I'm not totally sure I'd recommend marrying the first guy you seriously date as I did though, we did a lot of learning and growing up together, where it might have been much healthier to experiment on other people!

I think that waiting until the time is right is potentially another contributor, and an interesting side effect of birth control is that there is this illusion of control that perhaps makes it more difficult to take the decision to start a family. It's such a huge life changing decision that it's probably not surprising that some people are wary and others want to wait until everything is in place.

I fell pregnant unexpectedly at 23 to a guy I hadn't long met. I had a degree and a stable, if not terribly highflying job and he had a house and was self employed and doing well. I think people were nervous for me and assumed he would wander off at some point. A colleague actually called me a "silly girl" but some years later we are married with two children and a lovely life and they are eating their words.

Peers have overtaken me career wise but I have let them go. My youngest is starting school fulltime soon and we are comfortable enough for me to only have to work part time. I have had the time to build excellent skills and experience to go forwards with my career in a year or two. I didn't plan it this way and it was a big risk but overall I am very glad I did it this way around.

So the male pill and other forms of bloke contraception that's in research such as vasagel. What do we think? Will the birth rate plummet and would blokes use it?

"One thing I have observed is that you'll probably never meet as many potential partners through work/ leisure interests compared with university"
That is totally true, or put another way, when you are 21, there are a lot of single 21 years olds around. When you are 36, there are not many.

"I think people were nervous for me and assumed he would wander off at some point. A colleague actually called me a "silly girl" grin but some years later we are married with two children and a lovely life and they are eating their words."

The thing is DietCoke, that, in your position, if the love hadn't been there, your situation could have had a very different ending.
I fell pregnant unexpectedly at 28 (and it was no "oops" thing, I was devastated at the time) and I barely speak to the man who got me that way. (Still have the child though so not all bad!)

Nobody is perfect, but maybe one of the reasons so many of us are single into our thirties is because there have been, in our lives, certain things about past relationships that we just couldn't reconcile ourselves to, whether that was just lack of love, or a constantly drunk boyfriend, or even just the sex not being that great!

Dump bad men.

Absolutely. I didn't mean to sound so smug in my post, just wanted to illustrate that I was judged quite a lot by people who thought my situation was A Bad Thing and it worked out not to be so. I get quite defensive about some of the stereotypes young mothers get lumped with. Sorry.

I was just thinking about the statistics on this.

How often is it that women really are going childless without a partner? Is it a major problem? Is it any more frequent than it has always been?

Someone up thread mentioned the impact of war reducing the number of men available. I think a lot of women stayed childless after major wars as 'maiden aunts' because there were no unattached men.

The only childless woman I know is my sister. Although now married with husband who had children from his previous marriage. My sister used to go our with lots of 'baby men' and to be honest her husband now is one. Never really grew up.

All the other women I know have children who really wanted them.

Oh, no, I quite agree, and there does seem a very small window in which it is socially acceptable in certain circles (and in the media) to have children.
My Aunt was a mum at 19, and she hates derogatory comments about young mums, because, she says "I was married! He had a job!"

I hate that there are so many boxes that people are expected to fit into.
Equally, there are plenty of places where you would be considered past it if you were never settled down. I remember one playgroup where a woman I knew was bemoaning the fact that her daughter had told her she wasn't having kids until she was 30, because that was "so Old!"

Ifnot

do you not find it ironic that you speak about "veiled misogyny" in one post then post about how a man got you "that way" in another?

Birdinthebush

The male pill was discussed on here a while back and the popular trend was that men couldn't be trusted to take it.

But my view differs, I believe that most young men are now aware of the responsibility that comes with babies and would be proactive in preventing it from happening.

I wanted to be married and have children from a very early age, I'm from a working class background too.

I never thought I would be an unmarried childless 37 yr old.

But then I never thought I would date loser after loser because my self esteem was so low, never fall in love and have serious health problems.

You can plan all you like but life often doesn't work out the way you expect, and no we don't all fit into a stereotype.

"do you not find it ironic that you speak about "veiled misogyny" in one post then post about how a man got you "that way" in another?"

No, I don't Boney, as it was a tongue in cheek comment.

We were both to blame for me getting pregnant. I dont blame just him!

Two very important things to consider: Firstly, getting a man to marry you and agree to impregnate you before your fertility declines is no guarantee of a happy life. The man who is willing, on the second or third date, to marry and breed might very well be the man who is going to isolate you from all your friends, control all the money and impregnate you repeatedly whether you like it or not, because he thinks women are domestic animals.

Secondly, while I sympathise with any individual woman who regrets not having had kids, there's something about the current rash of boohooing over the Plight of the Liberated Woman that's just yet more backlash - there's a terrible fear embedded in the whole structure of the patriarchy that women will collectively stop wanting to have children and marry men if they are given the chance to do so - which is why they have to be frightened and bullied into accepting all the losers who want a woman to breed off and be serviced by.
A life without marriage or kids can be a perfectly enjoyable life, and an entirely fulfilling one.

Well said, SGB.

On the second point, I think something very important is that, as I understand it, one of the strong predictors for having children early/really wanting children in a woman, is that you had a disturbed or difficult childhood.

If this is even a little bit true (and it would be complicated to separate out the factors), then essentially, some women are going to be less ok with not having children because they are already on the receiving end of bad things.

Anecdotally, I know this is true.