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?

How misogynistic to describe high achieving women as masculine.

See I don’t think you have to attack one side to support another. Being a good mother or wife is an achievement, being fertile is not.

Being high achieving is masculine?
Also I disagree more women are choosing to be child free and the more educated women get in any country the less children they have. In general that is.

The roles of protect and provide are masculine roles. The role of bearing the child is a feminine role. Society has been constructed that way forever. And it worked.

Now 45% of women 25-44 are projected to be childless by 2030. So that is almost half. Really concerning.

Why don’t you think devaluing the role of wife and mother is misogynistic?

Men inherently see it as masculine.

I disagree that women are choosing. They are failing to attract a husband. They have been told by feminists they’re choosing. But say to women would you choose to end up alone with no family and no grandchildren I don’t believe many would choose that.

And actually if middle class women fail to reproduce we will have a society where only the very poor and the very rich will have kids. So we do need to turn the ship around.

Perhaps men do but I think fewer women care tbh. Pretty sure there are some stats on this. It is actually men who end up lonelier when single and childless and unhappy but they would rather project this into women. Women are waking up. All over the world. Take South Korea for example where there is an active moment there.

What are they waking up to? You say waking up but I would say they’re asleep if we are saying that the demise of the family something to be celebrated now?
If having a family is so dreadful you would choose to be infertile, right?

What I would also add is that women arent happy. More women are on anti-depressants than ever. More women are overweight than ever. That doesn’t spell happy.

That life is what they make it. That they don’t have to settle for a man who won’t pull his weight earning money or in the house. That they don’t have to stay in relationships because they would be too poor. And this is privileged be wise even in this country many women have to stay in bad relationships as they can’t survive outside them. That they don’t have to risk their health to have children if they don’t want to. I saw my mum doing everything in the home and working and my father not pulling his weight, I decided that would never be my life.

Having a family isn’t dreadful if you want it. Women who want to be sterilised have to fight an uphill battle fly what I know.

Many women were unhappy in so called traditional marriages in the 50s/60s (of course these were not traditional but a blip in time) and were highly medicated.

Instead of always looking at women let’s look at men, they are more unhappy single than women do maybe they ought to step up to attract women instead of trying to guilt trip them and scare them? Or date each other if they are into that :)

It worked did it? Yes, it’s working really well in sub-Saharan Africa where lack of contraception is putting women’s lives at risk, or in South America where women are being locked up for miscarrying. Right wing countries like Hungary and Italy have plenty of governmental incentives to have a family but do the birth rate is dropping there. If it worked so well what’s happening? And S Korea as a pp mentioned, there is an active movement where women refuse to marry or have children. Not sure what “works” about a society that enables men to opt out if any domestic or parenting tasks either, and many women do feel unhappy with that set up.

As soon as a choice was given to women about what kind of life to lead many chose one that wasn’t staying at home being a mother. There is absolutely nothing wrong with choosing to devote your life to having children but until up until within the last 50 years or so in the UK it wasn’t really a choice - women weren’t permitted to work after marriage, own their own property or even have a bank account at one point. So women were forced into a certain lifestyle whether they wanted it or not. If society was genuinely structured to allow women to make a free choice that would be fantastic, but it isn’t, especially in other countries outside of the west. THAT is misogynist, decreeing all women must exist for one purpose only.

Believing in inherent masculine and feminine traits is also misogynist. They’re a complete invention. There’s nothing inherently manly in earning a lot of money, or female in being caring. It disadvantages men and women to subscribe to this crap.

As for people who are childfree by choice, yes, I know many would be relieved if we were in fact infertile.

@Siameasy

You see this is why I think feminism is misogynistic if this is where we are now.

Why has someone “achieved nothing in their life” if they’ve dedicated their life to being a wife and mother? That statement is so anti-female. Being a wife and mother is a wonderful thing.

To take up another point, high achieving women are not “choosing” to end up unmarried and childless. They are finding it hard to find a husband because men inherently don’t like masculine women. A high achieving woman’s dating pool will be reduced because most women want a man who earns more. The stats prove it. High achieving women are ending up childless.

To put this as kindly as possible: these statements clearly demonstrate that you don't have a basic grasp of either feminism or misogyny.

I see a lot of this stuff on here, people trying to reclaim traditional values as "feminism" on the basis of being "what I (as a woman) want". I'm sorry, it may be what certain women want but it's not feminism.

Feminism, according to the Oxford dictionary, means "the belief and aim that women should have the same rights and opportunities as men; the struggle to achieve this aim." By definition you cannot say that you're a feminist if you're arguing for a world view which separates roles according to sex.

Being a mother is indeed a wonderful thing. Few feminists would disagree with this. Being a wife can indeed also be a great thing.

The problem comes when being a wife and mother is the only goal or aspiration permitted for a woman and is seen as an exclusively female role which can't be performed by men. And that men can't perform these roles.

Your assertion that high achieving women are not choosing independence but settling for it because they find it "hard to find a husband because men inherently don't like masculine women" is, to be polite, complete bobbins. Hard to know where to start with this:

• Marriage makes far less sense when you have your own money. In fact if you're an independent, breadwinning woman marriage is an active negative.
• There's no evidence that men dislike high-earning women at all. You have only to read these boards to realise how many men seem to be actively looking for women to support them.
• "Men inherently don't like masculine women": define masculine?

As I've said I know a lot of people my age, late thirties, who are either married or have kids so really don't think that statistic will become reality. The only woman I know who has no kids is 39 but married. Everyone else married with kids. I am very much in the minority.

Speaking from my own experience, this is not at all what I was brought up to believe. I wanted to have my own family and be a mum since I was a kid myself, it's always been there as far as I can remember. Also, as far as I can remember I wanted to do exciting things, learn, see the world, go to University and do interesting things. Both my parents have always encouraged me to focus on my studies and profession.

To me, a successful is if you can be happy with your lot and manage to have fun and contribute to society and your communities. This can happen with or without the usual trajectory.

Generally speaking, people want to partner up and procreate because we are mammals, it's simply in our nature.

@Thepeopleversuswork I wish there was a "like" button! Feminism is much harder than people tend to think it is.

Honestly I'm so tired of reading on here "Feminism means choice". No it doesn't. The trad wives have done a real number of this.

Not a day goes by without a thread with someone banging perkily on about the "choice" to remain at home supported by a man and how its a "feminist choice" etc.

Choice is a logical output of feminism because feminism should (in theory) increase women's agency within society and thus their choice. And choice is obviously a good thing for women, whether or not they choose to make feminist choices. I'm all for choice and I support a woman's right to make a traditional choice as much as a feminist one.

But feminism does not simply equate to choice. It means equality.

Yea absolutely agree with this. It’s a total oversimplification to say every choice a woman makes is feminist and should be celebrated as such. Choices aren’t made in a vacuum.

Ok so firstly your mum made a bad choice of man. If women agree to procreate with substandard men then their children may, like you, feel jaded about having a family.

Yes having a child could impact on your health. Having a child does require an element of selflessness and maybe people are too selfish now?

Ultimately are you (collective you) choosing to be alone in later life with no family or grandchildren. We are social creatures biologically designed to pass on our DNA.

@Siameasy

Ok so firstly your mum made a bad choice of man. If women agree to procreate with substandard men then their children may, like you, feel jaded about having a family.

I was waiting for this from @Siameasy. It's only ever a matter of time. It's all our fault for failing to catch and keep a rainmaking man. Victim blaming at its finest.

If women are going to be blamed when it doesn't work out each time why bother? The fact is that my dad was a good partner in the beginning and after the first child but by the second he did a 180. When he knew she wouldn't leave.

Now is my mum unusual in her choice? No. Most women will do more housework than their male partners even if they work full-time! Even if they have a SAHD she will be doing far more housework than male counterparts with an SAHM. And yet instead of saying, blaming men we try to blame women for choosing them. Perhaps the reality is that there are not enough high-caliber men for each woman.

If we wanted to improve the birthrate then I think improving maternity services would be a great one. Black women for instance have worse outcomes in childbirth. I disagree, having a child also requires a great amount of selfishness or at least self-assuredness. You must believe you have something to offer a child. Why bring someone onto this planet who may not have a great life? Why bring someone into the struggle? I think it is excellent that people do not have babies unless they are sure they can care for and provide for them. Just having them for your later life would be very selfish indeed.

We are social creatures I agree but also thinking creatures. We are designed you could say to do many things but we choose not to do so.

Exactly! “Substandard men” only exist because the kind of society Siameasy is so fond of enables and even encourages them to be that way. It’s not women’s job to train and improve them either.

Thank you both. Not to mention that by society's standards at the time she "did well for herself." I remember her looking down on single friends who probably took more care of my younger sibling than my father did! And why did she look down on them? Because they had not managed to "catch" a man even if he was useless. They saw what was on the table and they were not interested either.

Working backwards - masculine meaning the traditional male role of protect and provide.

Agree, a breadwinning woman need not marry for financial security but it is better for children to have two parents as children of single mothers have less desirable outcomes.

The stats are saying high achieving women aren’t marrying and having kids. They are delaying motherhood when they do. Your experiences are the exception and don’t count because we note societal trends based on the rule, not the exception.

I’m not a feminist. The role of wife and mother is exclusively female because men cannot have babies. Feminism made women like you think that it’s a “problem” when being a wife and mother is a woman’s only goal”. That is misogyny. Why is it a problem? It’s the one thing a female can do that a man can’t yet you denigrate it.

Men have far more responsibilities than women so men and women can never be equal as we are not the same. Men are the ones who ultimately will go to war and on a day to day basis do the dangerous and physically tough jobs and I don’t see women fighting for “equality” there.

For thousands of years, society has been organised around men, masculine role-provide and protect. Women, feminine role-children and home. And it worked. You’re arguing in favour of a new model which I would say has less than a century behind it as evidence of how brilliant it is.

You call it victim blaming which shows me you enjoy victimhood. Feminism has encouraged a victim mentality. Stick with that mentality if you like but I don’t find it helpful. Where is it actually getting you?

I don't think it's a 'trend', I think people naturally want companionship.

I think more and more people are realising that practically, having children/marriage isn't always the best choice, but I think the natural urge will always be there.

I’d argue the opposite actually. Feminism has created substandard men. When everyone knew their roles the man knew he had to have a job if he wanted a wife.