To think more people should be intentional about who they have children with?

[WryJadeWren]

I honestly don’t get how some people don’t seem to respect their own wombs or futures when choosing who to have kids with.
It’s not just about “accidents happen”, we all know contraception exists. And bringing a child into the world with someone who’s clearly not ready, reliable or respectful can have lifelong consequences.

AIBU to think that more people should think long and hard about who they’re parenting with, not just who they’re dating?

That’s easier said than done! I thought my husband was great but it wasn’t until after we had a child that I realised he had terrible grammar. I thought he was mumbling all the time but I couldn’t understand him because of his grammar!

It’s not the worst thing in the world, but I stress about it all the time. I worry my son will copy him and be a dunce! 🫣

Obviously some things are huge red flags but this is just an example of things falling under the radar.

I had a baby with my (now ex) husband of 10 years. Within 5 years we were divorced & I had pretty much been a solo parent for 4 years. DD is now 15 & has seen her father less than twice per year on average. Given as he raised 2 children from his first marriage as a single parent, I don't think that I could have predicted what happened!

Isn't hindsight a wonderful thing, OP? I married a wonderful man. We were together as a couple for 5 years before we got married, and waited another almost 3 before having children. And he was a great dad, a great partner - until the children started being people with a voice instead of compliant little babies. Then the cracks started to show - he was parented in a deeply authoritarian way, my parents were authoritative. Then his parents died, he dived into the bottle and became abusive. Shit happens. These kinds of judgemental posts just boil my piss with their smug superiority.

As coincidence would have it, DH’s friend announced tonight his girlfriend is 3 months pregnant. He walked out on his wife and 2 primary aged children (1 with significant special needs) a year ago, and has been with his new woman for 8 months. By all accounts he has little to do with his existing kids right now and is notorious for being regularly unemployed. The new woman knows this all, yet chose him to father her baby, after a few months of dating. He’s 51.

Really? What an odd generalisation. As a straight woman, I have not coveted any of those things.

My three houses have all been Victorian doer-uppers, I dislike housing estates intensely, my cars are always 2yo low mileage, and I have no social media except LinkedIn for work.
No wedding (I cancelled it) and only one child.

Generalising much?

New build house - I am more of a “find the house that suits our needs in an area we want to live in”. Where we live, those aren’t new builds.

Car on finance - do people actually want this? I’ve had a car on finance and will probably have one in the future but I’ve always much preferred buying my car outright. Never owned a car from new, finance or otherwise, because it feels like a waste of money to us.

Social media relationship - what even is this? My DH and I post maybe 3x a year.

Big wedding - now we did have a big wedding but it’s gone down as a great party by everyone invited. People still talk about it positively 7 years later. We considered guest wants and needs as a priority which definitely helped - plenty of food throughout the day, no endless waiting around for group photos, a great DJ playing songs people actually want to dance to and open to requests.

Two or three kids - I feel like you’ve chosen the “standard” amount here so not sure what point you’re trying to prove.

My sister is in a relationship with a man and:

• no new build
• no cars on finance
• neither of them use social media
• they’re having a very small legal wedding and then a lowkey party later
• they have no kids and don’t plan to have any

Can we also fix the plethora of women having babies with a man they want to marry, but aren't marrying yet?

(Spoiler: if he won't marry you pre-baby he won't post baby either)

🤦🏼‍♀️

Women need to be sensible for goodness sake. Before anyone comes at me for blaming women for men's bad behaviour, I'm not. I am saying women should be sensible with their own behaviour.

It’s a bit judgy op. Nobody chooses to be with a loser. Often the person they met turns out to be someone else.

Someone once told me that one of the most important decisions a woman will ever make in her life is whether to have children and if so who to have them with - because having them with the wrong man can ruin her life.

Being a bit older now, I can see that’s definitely true.

With that said, I know so many women who’ve done their due diligence and had children with men who looked and seemed like reliable and suitable fathers. And they weren’t.

It isn’t this straight forward. People can do the ‘right thing’ and marry the man they have been with for many years but he cheats or has even been cheating for years unbeknownst to the woman. Or he’s a brilliant husband/partner for years but when they have children, he isn’t a very good father. There’s no telling how a person will parent before they actually become a parent.

Surely the advice should be 'don't have a child if you can't afford it'.

You have to be able to walk away if the worst happens. I cancelled our wedding but have raised ds without issue, by myself. What ex did or didn't do was irrelevant. I knew I had the resources and ability to raise my child. I didn't need someone financing me or holding my hand.

The problems arise when women allow themselves to be financially (or otherwise) dependen on someone else.

My mother had an arranged marriage- to a useless man who was an awful husband and father.

She only met him a few times so did not have the time to determine all of the above.

She was also 21, so did not have the benefit of age and experience to fall back on.

Her life would have been 100 times better with a different man in her life.

We all make mistakes when we are young.

Some never break this patterns well into their 50s.

I do agree with you, that would definitely be the ideal scenario. But life just doesn't always work out in the way that would be ideal on paper. These well considered men sometimes bail, and the ones that are less desirable as a parent on paper someone step up and do a great job.

Would I make different decisions about who would be my children's father if I had the choice now? No, because I wouldn't have the children I do now.

Had I known how things would turn out before I got pregnant I would probably have made different decisions. But I regret nothing.

Yes, but per my post below, this isn’t at all the type of situation the OP is talking about.

You chose a good man and started a family. He changed, you could not have predicted that.

The Op is talking about women who wilfully get involved with men who are walking red flags from the start, and very quickly get pregnant despite dreadful behaviour from the men.

This type of situation plays out time and time again and I agree with OP that it is very frustrating.

Thats the whole crux of this. That is not the woman’s fault. Of course it’s not.

OP is talking about the men who are out and out dreadful, total deadbeats, and the women who have unprotected sex with them and end up pregnant. Yes, they are very much to blame for that.

I am blaming the women who wilfully get involved with useless men, have unprotected sex and end up with a child with a man incapable of supporting financially and unwilling to be a decent, involved, parent, yes.

Obviously I am not blaming vulnerable women or women trapped in abusive relationships.

But the ones who do it voluntarily, knowing full well that the man is unemployed, on drugs, just generally useless….well, yes. How could they not be at fault? They have free will and agency and yet choose to have unprotected sex with these men knowing the consequences. And it’s the resulting children who suffer.

Oh God - half the world's problems would be solved if this actually happened.

I get that women fall in love with horrible men (why, I can't imagine, but it happens). OK - you have bad taste and go for 'bad boys' (shudder). But you don't have to get pregnant by them!! If they're horrible, mean, selfish and unfaithful before you have a child, it's not going to get any better once a demanding baby has arrived.

Just have an affair with the Neanderthal and find a proper bloke to breed with.

In general - yes.

Accidents happen and people change.

But it’s inexplicable to me why people choose to have a child or additional children with someone who has already proven themselves to be awful.

And is this such a big problem do you think? Because I'd say that the number of women who deliberately choose the most unsuitable man they can find to father their children is so small it doesn't really justify being framed as a social issue.
Men who seem suitable dropping their mask or changing their behaviour once the children arrive is however a social issue, as this seems very commonplace.
Seems silly to be scratching round for the outliers and niche situations where women are to blame, when there's a widespread pattern of male behaviour that causes so many problems.

No, it’s really not scratching around the outliers. It is a big problem.

I see it in real life every day. If you don’t, you’re lucky, but you only have to look on here to see all the threads from women in the early days of relationships with dreadful men, looking for advice. The advice is always overwhelmingly “run”, but a big proportion of them won’t. And you the see the threads from women in similar situations with the same type of man, further down the line with kids….

The older I get the more I realise these things are a lottery.
You get pregnant and even if you are married and he states he wants a child it is a lottery as to wether you have one that stays, strays or leaves.
Some leave without a backward glance and there are little or no consequences for this.
If as much moral rhetoric was thrown at men who leave their children and don’t support them as there is thrown at the women who stay with the child and do support them then maybe there would be some point to your post.
As it is it’s just bait

I see plenty of real life relationships involving men ranging from inadequate to abusive, sadly. What I don't see is women deliberately choosing these men, and the solution to the problem being they should just choose more wisely.
The problem is the behaviour of men and the focus should be on changing that not expecting women to sidestep them and blaming women who don't. If there's broken glass on the floor is the solution just to leave it there are expect everyone to anticipate it and tread carefully, or to stop people throwing bottles?

Women do choose these men because they want children and don't want to risk leaving it too late and ending up childless. It's a common phenomenon. "He's not perfect, but I want children so he'll have to do".

But these women do choose these men.

Thats the issue.

They often turn a blind eye, or minimise their behaviour, telling themselves it’s not that bad, or they think they can change them.

In some cases, I don’t know what they are thinking, doesn’t seem to be much.

I have a close family member (step sister) who did just that. She was dating a drug addicted gamer when she was 18. She “fell pregnant” (wasn’t on contraception but viewed the pregnancy as an accident). She had the baby. Unusually, she actually expected nothing from the father, which is, of course, what she got.

The dad is in his 40s now and still an unemployed, drug addicted gamer. My nephew is early 20s and is in prison following years of crime. When not in prison he has contact with his dad a couple of times a year.

My sister married another man when my nephew was a young child. This man does have a job, but he was cruel, controlling and unwelcoming towards my nephew from a young age. They now have a daughter together who is 10 and is materially spoilt but gets little in the way of attention and has a lot of behavioural issues. Sister moved to other end of the country to be closer to her new husbands family when her eldest son was 16 and has had little contact with him since then, mostly due to her husband as he doesn’t like him. Sister is fine with this, doesn’t see a problem.

My sister had a good childhood, privately educated etc, has never been vulnerable or abused, and I’ve never understood why she let this man treat her son this way.

Do you think that a situation involving a privileged young woman with many options who for some reason chose a relationship like this is sufficiently common for it to be 'the problem'?
Do you know enough women in these circumstances who have made this choice for it to be a pattern of women's behaviour?
Because the premis of this thread is that there is a pattern of women being to blame for their poor relationships. I'm sure we can all think of situations where people have been the author of their own misfortune, but they tend to be individual and about the personality and issues of the person involved rather than something 'women do'.