To want to shout from the rooftops PLEASE don't get pregnant..

[CurlewKate]

....until you are absolutely sure that's what you want and you have thought about it and planned for it. By yourself is fine but difficult. If you're doing it with someone else, make sure he is on the same page and willing and ready and free and delighted to be a father. Contraception is incredibly reliable these days-USE it! Accidents happen occasionally, but that's what the MAP is for. If your life is very complicated or your relationship is new or fragile or volatile a baby will NOT help-I promise. It will make things worse, not better.
And breathe.....

This! I know a sad amount of people who had kids thinking it would be fun and happy families, none of them are still together and one after 3 years of zero support dropped her kid off on the dad's doorstep and hasn't seen him or spoken to him now for 7 years. People see and think of a baby, not the actual raising of a human for life.

That would not be such a bad thing would it?

It is realistic whilst girls are growing up to hopefully (yes not successful in every circumstance) give them the tools to spot the obviously useless men - see ‘babydaddy of seven’ above.

Whilst in theory I broadly agree with your statement that it's best to be prepared for kids before you have them, that means very different things to different people. If there were a perfect time, age, set of circumstances, child-rearing theory etc then we'd all be doing it exactly the same, surely?

No, we’d be choosing the best time for us - and very frequently some people don’t choose at all. They just fall into having a child in difficult circumstances which now doesn’t need to happen with contraception and abortion. Cue MNer telling me that this isn’t true etc. But it is.

I think it’s less about people who have had long term relationships or marriage, are as financially secure and settled as you can be in these difficult times and have planned to have children, and more about short term or recent relationships, where the thought of children has not occurred, but the thought of sex definitely has.

What does provide mean? Food, clothes, childcare?

Or new car and driving lessons? Deposit for house? Maintenance for young adult in university?

Btw people have different ideas of what providing means

Surely don't get pregnant unless you're prepared to do it all by yourself because you can never guarantee that the father will be any use.

I agree. Just in my very small group of friends, 2 of their daughters got pregnant deliberately to trap their partners. Both are now really struggling as single parents and one has just been admitted to a MH hospital as she took an overdose.

Both were in their mid-20s and just wanted babies.

I am advocating for women making proper active choices about their fertility.

Would that life were so simple. I have been a social worker. Some people's lives are complicated beyond anything that those of us more privileged people cannot begin to imagine. Obviously the ideal is for every child to be a wanted child who is brought up lovingly; but life isn't like that. People face so many challenges: physical, emotional, health wise. Unwanted pregnancies happen for a multitude of reasons: ignorance, emotional instability, violence, poverty etc.

I long ago concluded that life is not perfect, and that we need to have compassion for anyone who cannot live up to our ideals.

Of course relationships break down but surely everyone knows that might happen. Why have more than 2 children with a man when you may well end up a single mother? Also women with men they know are useless and still have more than 1 or 2 children.

So many posts with women moaning they can't afford things and yet they have 3 or more children.

Unfortunately a lot of girls including myself had terrible male role models so we picked terrible males to father our children.

I didn't have a perfect family upbringing. My dad took drugs and committed crimes and was in prison and absent a lot. My mum tried but she had bipolar disorder and her self worth was linked to men. I got pregnant when I was 17.

It's a cycle sometimes. I hope that I've broken the cycle with DS, he's happy and bright and doing incredibly well at school with aspirations to go into the medical field.

I don't absolve myself of all responsibility of course, at the end of the day I did choose to have a baby when I was a teenager. But oftentimes children don't get the support they need when they're in difficult family situations so they go on to make bad choices. It needs to start there really. And as parents we need to try and be good role models to our children.

Why on MN does someone always have to raise the highly improbable possibility.

It seems better to me for women to have the opportunity not to have a child they don’t want rather than have to have it.

It takes 2 people to have sex without using contraception, there's no such thing as "trapping" someone with a baby. If a man doesn't want a baby he needs to wear a condom every time.

@MintJulia Far more important is that we raise girls to be able to support themselves. To expect to support themselves. To stop thinking that a man is an essential accessory and status symbol.

This x 100 ^

Is this a DM reporter by any chance! Honestly .So already deprived women should not have any DC, as they will all have a shit outcome in life? How classist can you get. These girls often have a wide family network and support .Many DC do not have a 100% lifestyle .They still love their DC .This is bordering on eugenics IMO

Unfortunately parenthood seems to be the default
You opt out, not in
Not much thinking and planning goes on in a lot of cases

It's one of either
1 it's what you do
2 rose-tinted aaawww wouldn't it be nice.
3 I'm battered and abused and need unconditional love

A lot of the posters her seem to have missed the OPS point. Any relationship can go wrong in the future with someone who starts off as the perfect partner. It's the women who knowingly get involved with some violent drug addled scrote with multiple kids and criminal convictions then wail that's he's assaulted them/ trashed their house/ buggered off with another gormless bird and starts the cycle all over again!!

I had my first in awful circumstances with (I later realised) a frankly awful human being. Anyone looking at my life in that moment would have advised me to abort. Plenty did. I almost did.

And yet... My son is my joy. We had some very tight years when he was young and I was a single mum on minimum wage. It was hard at times. But I pushed my self through degree after degree, I found a profession, I re-married, I bought a house, had another child... My son is a wonderful young man and my life is obviously better with him in in! I feel lucky to have all that I do.

So I would shout from the rooftops: have faith in your own ability to turn things around. Leave bad men early, don't wait for things to magically improve. Education and employment is key. Life is fluid and changeable and can also be improved.

That's my rooftop message

Similar here. Pregnant accidentally 3 months into the relationship, only the one child but happily married for over a decade now. These things don't always end badly.

@PumpkinsAndCoconuts

"that leaves me with condoms and fertility tracking. Which is definitely NOT incredibly reliable or particularly modern."

I am sorry your choices are
limited. But condoms are incredibly reliable. They do occasionally split or come off-that's what the MAP is for.

It's the latter by any logic, and its quite depressing that it even needs to be pointed out.

Social media (FB, insta etc) is choc full of women sniping at each other over shared baby daddies, men who are pitiful losers, the dregs. And these often tend to be the women who post and share all the empowerment memes! Its utter cringe - we should replace the empowerment memes with 'aim higher' memes 😂

Condoms are not 100%. And do you remember the thread about the woman who sabotaged her husband’s condoms? It’s astonishingly naive to think women never unilaterally decide to conceive without involving their partners in the decision. It happens.

Lots of issues are because "I can change him"
Yeah you should change him. For a different model

Didn't work I raised my dd alone no contraception is 100%

@dottiedodah " .So already deprived women should not have any DC, as they will all have a shit outcome in life?"

No. You can be "deprived" (shit word choice, btw) and also be ready and able to make choices about your own fertility.

I absolutely agree OP.