To wonder why relationship, marriage and kids are still seen as a ’ successful’ life?

[OnedayTwodays]

Reading here and also IRL so many people, still, thinks that this the ’LifePlan’ everyone not only wants, but must have.

Some thread about perhaps not so nice people, people say it brings them joy to know they end up alone and old - as in being single is seen as some kind of a punishment.

Single, or god forbid if your childfree, stilm have to explain why.
Say your single and when asked you say you don’t hook up or having casual arrangement or whatever, and people look at you like you have two heads.

Will we ever move on and stop assuming everyone wants/lives the same way?
Will the stigma ever go away?

Why is it that even now being in a relationship/kids is seen the proper, mature, right way to live?

@Defiantjazz

Well, we are fundamentally organisms so the sensible conclusion would be that it is a biological urge.

Your choice to not have children was a psychological decision. We are not simple organisms so I imagine this would would be enough to override the biological urge if you so choose.

Thing is - you're posting on mumsnet. Why?
They've only created a childfree board as it increases traffic

And, BINGO. We’re back to the ‘why are the childfree posting on mumsnet?’ comments. You missed an important bit tho, usually such posters capitalise the ‘MUMS’ bit to further the point they think they have.

FYI, people, parents or otherwise, post here because the discussion topics are wide and varied, the majority of them have sweet fuck all to do with parenting, and it’s one of the largest female-dominated spaces on the internet. And mumsnet HQ support the inclusion of all here, as long as they post within the guidelines.

"Instead of looking down on them?
Thinking they are less than."

I'm not looking down on anyone, who is choosing to be single or child free.

I know that, and I suppose it partly explains the belief or innate feeling that doing so = 'success'.

Biologically she is correct. As is the case for all living things. The sole outcome of every lifecycle is to have offspring and pass on genetic material.
Humans have socially evolved so that the urge can be overcome by our brains, circumstances and other opportunities.
The biological urge is very strong though.
For the survival of a species it’s imperative to assume that all females want to breed and produce the next generation

That's probably true at an all population level: enough women have to have a biological urge to reproduce to push the species forward. I'm not sure what you mean by this though:

it’s imperative to assume that all females want to breed and produce the next generation

Do you mean all women have a biological urge to breed? I don't think that's true, tbh. I've never felt an "urge": I was distinctly 50/50 about whether to have kids at all. A lot of my friends feel the same tbh.

Some definitely know they want to be mothers but I think it's quite hard to pick apart how much of this is a genuine "biological urge" and how much is psychology, conditioning and expectation.

ie if you're one of these people who is desperate to pop out loads of kids from the age of about 17: is that biology or conditioning? Or indeed if you're someone who knows they don't ever want them. Would love to hear from anyone who actually understands biology.

Well from an genetic/biological/evolutionary point of view it makes sense for most females (and males) to have a fairly strong urge to procreate. If they don’t, the species doesn’t survive.
Genetic variation and other factors such as upbringing and personality have meant that, in humans, it’s not uncommon for women to not have the urge to have a baby.
Don’t think you’d find many (any?) members of the animal kingdom actively choosing not to breed.

And if you have and urge to have sex at all then that is your body telling you it’s wants to have a baby!
Your mind, and the fact that we now have reliable contraception, is overruling your body.

Well said.

Again, though, what does this actually mean? Does this mean people actively want to reproduce? Or does it just mean they want to have sex?

Obviously males and females (when young) have a strong biological urge to have sex which is underpinned by an evolutionary drive to procreate. But how much of this is actively wanting to procreate as opposed to wanting to have sex because its fun?

Let's be honest the vast majority of young men aren't interested in having kids at all, they just want to have sex. Young women want sex too and in a lot of cases this is linked to a desire to start a family but in a lot of cases this may be socially expected or conditioned, as opposed to an actual bit of biological programming which says "I want to have children". I know a lot of women claim they have this strong urge to procreate and I'm sure a lot do experience it as such but I'm sceptical as to how much of this is biology vs social conditioning and want.

I don't know to what extent you can separate the two from an evolutionary standpoint.

I don't deny that this happens-because it's people's experience. And right wing politicians and newspapers have a repulsive "pro family" agenda because then they can be vile to lots of other people. But I had no children for the first 37 years of my life, and in general, women with children were regarded in the workplace as inconvenient- an issue to be managed. Successful women with children tended to try to act as if they didn't! And I have been to lots of social and work events in my life, and have very rarely been asked if I have children. The times I have it's just been a bit of small talk, akin to "Have you been on holiday this year?" I must have been lucky.

This is the nub of it really. Despite the massive advances for women in economic independence, society still largely sees it as the default setting for women to be at home caring for children and supported by a man.

We may have moved past the days where being a working mother is seen as morally wrong, but the whole infrastructure of society still assumes that a working mother is an inconvenience and failing both at being an employee and a mother.

Workplaces still regard the fact that employees have caring responsibilities as an irritant for other unencumbered employees (ie men) and something which holds them back in career advancement, something which is constantly reinforced by this bullshit "all back to the office" ideology and a myriad of other microaggressions against working mothers.

Obviously not all mothers want to work and that's absolutely fine by me. But as long as people continue to parrot out "family values": the idea that a marriage and children is the pinnacle of achievement for most women, these sorts of attitudes will continue to prevail.

Pretty sure humans generally have a desire to have sex. It is mainly societal influence about an urge to have children. That does not mean people don’t want children but that women throughout history have been fed a diet of motherhood being what is most desired for them, of the pitiable spinster etc etc.

What about those who are single and/or childfree not by choice? Do you consider them “less than”?

Exactly. The "biological urge" is primarily a desire to have sex which most human beings experience. The "urge to have children" is largely socially conditioning layered on top. IMHO.

@Thepeopleversuswork I don't think that's quite what I meant- I'll have a thing and rephrase.

Up until the last 100 years, having sex meant having a baby. The fundamental reason for sex is to produce offspring.
NOT having children is a product of scientific advances in medical contraception and changes in the role of women in our society. It has bugger all to do with our basic biology.
We forgot too quickly that we are just another type of animal.
Most women don’t want to have children because society tell them too. Some might. They have children because millions of years of evolution tells them to.

Yes the only reason we’re able to have this conversation is because of the pill and women being able to control their fertility. Before that, if you wanted to have sex you had to get married and babies would usually follow as a natural consequence.

I don’t look down on single or child free people.I feel sad for the people I know who didn’t want to be in that position, and they are all gorgeous, funny, clever, people who had lots of interest from the opposite sex, but they were just unlucky or didn’t meet the right person at the right time. They still have meaning and happiness in their lives and there’s always time to meet someone, but I feel sorry that the family side didn’t work out as they had hoped. It could just as easily have happened to me, sliding doors and all that.

However, I can understand why some people don’t want to have kids and if a person has actively chosen this and taken the necessary steps to achieve it, then great! I wouldn’t make any particular assumptions about which camp someone fell into unless we were close and they chose to discuss it with me.

I think I probably would assume that most people in their ideal world would want a good and loving relationship with a significant other, if that was possible, but I understand that relationships can break down, one might choose to prioritise existing children, partners can disappoint and fall short, and people can be burned by bad experiences, so it becomes an active choice to stay single in the circumstances.

You are being paranoid. There's no stigma to being single or child free. You do what makes you happy. Most people are not happy alone so that's why the majority want a relationship. Life is often easier with a partner. Children bring a lot of love into lives but are hard work. There's a biological imperative to procreate.

To be fair I think some women are also threatened by women who don’t need children to be happy.

I think things are changing particularly in this country (compared to many other countries where to be single and childless is seen as much more tragic and shameful) but yes there's still a long way to go.
I am married with kids but absolutely see the benefits of a single child free life! I often think my happiest life would be me living alone in the countryside with a couple of cats.
It has always really pissed me off when parents start talking about the future lives of their kids and they always say stuff like "The proudest day of my life will be when I walk my daughter down the aisle" (men) or "when I go wedding dress shopping with my daughter" or "hold my first grandchild in my arms" (women) Ugh!! I hate all that! It's like maybe your kids don't want to get to married or have children!! Why is walking someone down the aisle seen as the pinnacle of parenting, the happiest and proudest day in the life of a parent?! I don't get it! Half of marriages are miserable and end in divorce! I'd be far more proud if my children live their best lives, do whatever they find most fulfilling and grow up to be kind, decent people.

That was the result of sex which humans have an urge to have generally. Not children. Hence why even in the old days men and women who didn’t want children still had sex. The urge to have sex is what drives the continuation of the species. No we can stop the result and the birth rate has decreased wherever women have education and choice.

@ZenNudist

There's no stigma to being single or child free.

There definitely is still stigma to being single/child free in certain circles. You see it on these boards all the time. It's on this thread. There are posters on here coming out with this rhetoric: someone said upthread that single people are automatically lonelier and more unhappy than those in settled relationships (which for my money is nonsense).

Even if it falls short of actual stigma, there's still a huge amount of "soft" judgement of people who are single and child free: an assumption that their lives are somehow incomplete or suboptimal. It's in the conversations that people start, its in the ether in the way products are marketed to make you feel like you're more likely to find a relationship if you buy them, it's in the way our tax system is set up, in the way our politicians talk to us, the way our school system is run, its everywhere.

And in my view this accounts for a significant chunk of what is described as the "biological urge" to settle down and have children. I've no doubt some of this is genuine and innate and obviously people have been wanting to do this for millennia and will continue to do so. But it's naive to think that social conditioning doesn't play a part in this.

By the way I'm neither single nor child free so I don't particularly have a dog in this fight, but I think people are being disingenuous claiming this doesn't exist.

other members of the animal kingdom do not experience an urge to have offspring, only to mate. They do not connect mating with producing offspring. Most humans have a sex drive whether or not they wish to breed. The conscious desire humans have to have children is as much about social and cultural conditioning as biological urges.

But why do they have the urge? Sec has evolved to be pleasurable to encourage us to do it and have more offrpisng.
When women have ‘education and choice’ - what are they being educated in?
That they can choose? Good.
That having babies is limiting, thankless, anxiety ridden etc etc… Not so good. Opposite pressures from ‘motherhood is your only goal’ but pressures none the less.
Education and expectations go both ways, both for and against having children. No choices are made in a vacuum. I read here fairly often people being judged for having too many children. That’s a social thing also. In years gone by large families were a survival strategy.
Again, education and choice have nothing to do with our biology.

People lack imagination and do what they see others around them doing. It's the same urge that makes them park next to a lone car in an otherwise completely empty shopping car park.