To consider having a child without a partner

[RegretMisery]

To think having a male partner and a child is more like raising two children than being an equal partnership? Having a husband seems like more hassle than it's worth.

No I don’t agree op. This generation venerate women so there is this idea that women and mothers are better than men and fathers. Other generations said the opposite. A child needs both

You can end up as a single parent (my mum was widowed, for example). But to choose it is just selfish. No woman has a right to have a child just because they want one.

Hear hear. Beautifully put. A child is not a right like food or shelter. If you aren't in a position to have one, don't.

You seem depressed.

FWIW I don't think you're wrong - many mums would be better off just cutting out the middle stage of dealing with a useless, demanding burden of a partner and the stress of a divorce.

Lots of single mums have their own babies. Nothing wrong with a sperm bank, though I do think you owe it to any resulting child to choose one who is happy to be contacted. (Or better yet, somebody you actually know). The child deserves the option to know their genetic family.

To some extent I see where you are coming from, but having seen the threads on here about: cost of childcare, juggling FT work with kids, managing school holidays/childhood sickness with work commitment, managing parent sickness with single parenthood, unknown possibilities of SEN, managing children with sick elderly relatives… I think you’d need to think long and hard about whether you have a family support network and the financial means to do it alone.

I’m not sure I would knowingly take the risk in this economic climate and without any relatives close by who are actively willing to help. I know I would not have been able to support my kids (SEN) through the issues at school etc had I not been able to give up work, stay at home, and have the emotional and financial support of my DH (who is by no means a saint or terribly well equipped to understand half of it!).

A friend has just done this. She would have preferred to meet the right partner and have a more traditional setup but she understandably wouldn’t settle for a loser for the sake of having a child. It’s hard going doing the nights by herself but she’s blissfully happy. I’d go for it. Plenty of women are single parents with no help from the dad anyway. There is nothing wrong with going it alone by choice.

Hi, not true.
Kids with absent fathers- and I'll quote from the children's bureau of california

"Children who feel a closeness to their father are: twice as likely as those who do not to enter college or find stable employment after high school, 75% less likely to have a teen birth, 80% less likely to spend time in jail, and half as likely to experience multiple depression symptoms."

I mean there's many facts like this, but I think to say that fathers don't play a role is wrong and they are not the same as mothers.

I have a few single mum friends and they struggle. They are not single mums from choice.
I do have a friend who chose to be a single mum. And now her and her child live the with grandparents - she doesn't work or support her child... her parents do everything and she is basically waiting for them to die so she inherits their house. Lovely!

With a lot of kindness and respect, I don’t think you’re ready to be considering a baby yet. You’ve lost your partner in the worst way, you’re grieving, life feels shit and you hate everyone atm. That’s so much to deal with, it would break anyone. You’re not being daft when you feel like relationships are more hassle than they’re worth - the kind of pain you feel means your brain wants to protect you from further hurt and this is how it does it. You’ll hate the world for a while yet. I hope you find some peace and closure, and I hope you have your baby when you’re ready

How naive! We never get to hear the other side of any of these complaints from husbands, partners, mothers in law, I wonder how many men regret their involvement with their partner? MN is a one-way street of opinion.

Because those of us who are happy with our lot, have great husbands who are brilliants dads, don't feel the need to post about it.

If you post about your happy, long-lasting marriage and the children and the teamwork…you often get a lot of negativity and unpleasantness about ‘All right for some’ and ‘We can’t all be Mr and Mrs Perfect’
Having a happy relationship with a decent bloke who believes in equality is seen as unpleasant victim-blaming by many.
So after a couple of episodes like that, I don’t.
You do what you think will work for you.

I’d firstly look into the sources for this article and who it was funded by.

then I’d look at some peer reviewed articles and meta analysis within the past 4 years. The data from the article you provide is quite out of date.

I literally studied this as part of my PhD and realise that the issue of father absenteeism is multi faceted , and there are many factors that can cause negative outcomes for children . Correlation does not equal causation.

What you are experiencing is called confirmation bias.

Hi @Kateeeeuyyy , you're welcome to call it confirmation bias. If you think a single parent is equal to having both parents, it's your prerogative, but it doesn't make it true.
Even if you disagree with the articles that absent fathers cause these issues, there is still a difference in just the amount. There is literally 1 person vs 2. Just in social capital, that's a loss. So I don't get how you could make these 2 equal. It's literally one less person's life experience, family, knowledge etc for that kid to tap into.

And if you think the last 4 years of data isn't desperately trying to prove that single parents and same sex marriages are the same children, purely because the amount of single parents are going up, I think you're naive.
It's like the stats on daycare for children. When daycare first started for factory workers' children way back when, we all knew how bad it was for a 8-12 week old baby to be dropped of for 8 hours at daycare.
But as the amount of women who had to resort to daycare become more as more women entered the workforce, it became unpopular to say. Don't judge.

Same know, we all know the value of a father and a mother but other type of families are on the rise, so it's unpopular to say. So know we, lead by what I would indeed call information bias, we seek stats that prove all family set ups are equal.

I obv don't think I'd convince you, but for the odd person that might have been bowled over by your academic jargon and PhD, I'm staying my point.

Also "the issue of father absenteeism is multi faceted, and it's multi faceted what causes negative outcomes".
You don't say. .
No here ever said the only reason that children have negative outcomes are because their father is absent. We just said it's a contributing factor.
Don't speak to us like we're stupid

Dont do it

I know several teens with sperm donor (literal) dads raided by single mothers ot lesbians (ie from day 1 never a dad). All the boys are in trouble / distrubed/ anrgy. All the girls have low self esteem / anxiety: self harm issues

Its about the mental health of your baby- quickly a child, teen, then life long adult- not yourself. Sorry. Think of their wellbeing. Dads matter, alot.

I’m assuming that most parents aren’t alone. They have extended families, so to say that a child with a single parent has ‘less social capital’ is not entirely true, is it? In the grand scheme of things, there’s just one less family member.

re: previous studies, when you look at the wealth of data on absent fathers (because there are much fewer that explore absent mothers), you’ll notice that around 50 percent of them (you can just do a cursory search on Google scholar) study children of fathers who are incarcerated. This is to do with available data - it’s much easier to do retrospective studies on prisoners.

So, if a child’s father is absent because they are incarcerated , is the child’s outcome less desirable because their father was absent, or because of how the father was in the home leading up to this? This skews the data tremendously. And by data, I mean the body of knowledge on this subject.

on the other hand, if you look at children’s life outcomes in the realm of military fathers (who spend a great deal of their lives absent) you’ll find these children fare just as well as children with both parents living permanently together.

these are just 2 examples. I could go on..

feel free to continue with your views, I just wanted to show you where you data has come from.

Many articles with an agenda spout the ‘having a father is better than not having one’. Sometimes this can be dangerous (see women who stay in abusive relationships because they fear that without one, their child won’t have good life outcomes ) , sometimes it is misleading (see military kids) and in general, when you adjust for factors such a socioeconomic status and race, what ultimately matters is whether a child has a good, solid support network , with loving family members who are loving and attentive.

I mean, if you feel stupid, that’s on you. My intention was to give my educated opinion.

Wait so you think having a father in the military is the same as not having a father at all? In my opinion a military father prove exactly the opposite of what you're saying. A military father is maybe gone for 6 months, back for 2. Or however their schedule works. That child has a father whom they video call, is there to give guidance, is in their lives albeit less than dad who do the conventional 9-5. They're secure in the fact that they have a father who loves them. As opposed to a father who is gone from their lives for ever (in prison). You'll see many of the absent fathers in prison you speak about are not in a relationship with the mother anymore. They're completely gone from the child's life. (Obv the fact that your father is a felon would also impact your life, as you said, multifaceted.)
Anyway military father's is the prime example of the fact that a father is incredibly important even if he doesn't spend an equal amount of time with the children than there mother. As opposed to a child with NO father at all (as ops kids would be). Children have fathers sho are engineers and on site (ie away from the home) a lot or dads who work long hours as surgeons and are gone when they wake up and not back when they go to sleep. But yet, just like kids with military fathers these kids have better outcomes then fathers who are wholly absent in their lives and not married or in a in a committed relationship with their mother. So I am glad you brought up this point because it's exactly the point I'm trying to make. Having a father IS important.

Also as I've said in my initial post ( abusive dad's etc are not part of this, ) I don't know why you would even bring that up. If I say it's very important for a baby to spend time with his mom and bond and therefore there should be maternity leave as we should protect an infant's right to be with their mother. "Well what if the mother is abusive?" Well obviously then it would be better for said child to not be with mother. Is it the ideal to take a child away from their mother? No, but in this case it's the best option.
Is it ideal to raise a kid without a dad? No, but in the case of an abusive dad, it's the best option . That obviously goes without saying

Also @Kateeeeuyyy I can't decide if you're being deliberate or not. If a child has no father (sperm donor), you are saying they have one less family member?? Only one less?
Extended family are then obviously also smaller? How can you say there missing only the dad. Their missing their grandparents, aunt's, uncles, cousins, everyone on that side. It's halving their family.
Amy 's mom used a sperm donor.
Who is Amy's family? Her mom and yes her moms extended family. And her mom has a large family-4 siblings who each have 4 kids. That's grandparents plus 8 uncles and aunts and 16 cousins. Let's make that at least 34 people .

Okay but Lucy's mom is married. Both Lucy's parents have the exact amount of family members as Amy's mom.
That's 68 people at least?
How can you say it's one less person.

And genuinely this is not even a rhetorical or sarcastic question. I would really really like to know what you thought when your wrote that?
Did you make a genuine mistake and forgot that both parents have extended families or how did you come to that? Cross my heart, I really would like to know.

I totally am against people who deliberately choose to have a child on their own!
Totally selfish and child is at an instant disadvantage . I am aware that there are some situations when it is in the best interests of the child that a parent isn't involved in their lives but to choose to have a child as a single parent is wrong. I am sure I will be shouted down and I know many people who have raised children singlehandedly after relationship breakups/divorce/bereavement
FYI, I raised my child as a single parent

It is better overall if a boy has a male figure in their life in an ideal world.

Thing is, we DO NOT live in an ideal world, do we?

I'm a solo mum, since 6 months, he takes his cues from the men around him. Grandad, BIL, male friends, male teachers, employers, friends' dads.

He's 33 and turned out just fine.

It's the KIND of males you surround your son with as a solo mum that teaches them how to be a good man.

I totally am against people who deliberately choose to have a child on their own!

And who are you to judge?

Hope your fabulous happy marriage never breaks down or he leaves you for a younger model.

Hi, I'm not married and raised my son alone. And no-one is exempt from their marriage breaking down or being traded for a younger model!

What if single men started buying eggs, forming embryos with their sperm and hiring surrogate cause marriage is too much of a hassle?

The initial post seemed so man hating I just had to make a point. If you were to say I’m not cut out for relationships but want a child, go ahead and have one without partnering.