Women not having children as not enough good men

[AdamRyan]

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/feb/11/why-a-shortage-of-mr-rights-means-single-mothers-hold-the-key-to-the-falling-birthrate

Interesting article about the falling birthright.

Yet the conclusion isn't "how to encourage men to become more suitable candidates for fatherhood"

It's "support single motherhood".

I'm really interested why the author picked that angle. I'd have thought making men less shit would be a better answer personally!

@Valentinesquestion i agree with everything you’ve written. I think a lot of men think of parenting as bike rides, kicking a ball about and the occasional bed time story. So they want the general nice idea of kids.
whereas as women we see our female colleagues, friends and family doing school runs or coming in knackered from night feeds, hear horrific birth stories and the all around work of child rearing. We are also aware of the societal expectations of us as women being the ones to do this grunt work.
So our ideas of parenting are different to men. If they saw their peers knackered and doing the graft with the expectation that if they have kids, they too will do the graft then they may not actually want kids.

Why don't women pick better partners before they lie down with them and have babies? Why do women choose to stay with men if they feel "othered"?!

What a revolting attitude. Why don't men step up and stop fathering babies they have no intention of parenting?

If you were at all familiar with patterns of behaviour around domestic abuse, you'd know abusers will plan ahead and keep up a pretence until they have their partner in a vulnerable situation.

Anecdotally, I think actually there are more good men out there that were aware of, they’re just not seen as romantic partners by women.

The best dads I know are not conventionally attractive or particularly masculine.
One is very overweight but as hands on as any mother. He’s not lost weight after running around kids for years.
Another is quite camp and another disabled. They are all brilliant parents.
A bit like the guy from motherland who isn’t attractive per se but very hands on.

The amount of friends I have who’ve been on dates with really lovely men and potentially good fathers with no red flags but don’t ‘feel the spark’ or have chemistry so end it. But then have kids with a lazy partner who they had a spark with but is a dreadful parent so kills that spark.

I know it’s entirely anecdotal but I have observed this. That men with great potential are overlooked and tend to be friend-zoned for someone with little potential.

I am a perfect example of what this article is talking about I think.

Always knew I wanted children. Refused to settle for crap men and was still single entering mid thirties (or rather, single again after ending another unsatisfactory relationship). I was starting the process of becoming a single mother by choice (donor sperm route) when I decided to give OLD one last whirl and met DP.

We had 1 DC naturally when I was 36. Struggled to conceive again and a couple of chemical pregnancies and some health complications, we are now trying to be happy with one and done. Very grateful for fantastic DC but definitely would have had another if we'd got started younger. It just took that long to find a decent bloke!

Reasons for ending previous relationships- these men who seemed great at first ended because...

1. Macho anger issues, extremely tight and controlling with money
2. Violent when drunk, red flags for misogyny
3. Screwed up by boarding school- totally emotionally unavailable and insecure
4. Coercive controlling bully, misogynist, strange religious issues around women
5. Absolute sweetheart but emotional IQ of about zero

And in between these, countless hopeless ones met via OLD.

I have fewer children than I wanted because I refused to settle and start procreating with a crap bloke basically.

And if you know more than one, you can send one my way too, thank you!

I dont think men have got any worse but pressures are different from years ago. Men have opted out of responsibility because they are enabled to.
IMHO

Yes! To add to my above point about meeting not suitable men through OLD.. lots of them seemed very nice and probably some would have been loving partners and dads, but I just didn't fancy them. I would often wish that I did feel enough of a spark with a nice guy to give it a chance. Just can't force that feeling though.

In last 11 years the global human population increased from 7bn to 8bn and continues to rise. Overall our problem is more people, not fewer.

Being a single mum has become waaaaay more socially acceptable than it used to be. As pps have said a mum on her own will probably find one is enough.

Personally I don't think men have changed much. Maybe women's expectations are evolving faster than men can? I blame TV and romcoms for normalising OTT perfect men. (And often the actors playing Perfect Man are car crashes in real life.)

What a horrible article.
Completely ignores the problem is with men, and that the solution? Fine yeah let's just fuck assholes and then be perfectly happy raising their children solo whilst they have no responsibility.

Given the responses on this thread, why would I want to do something that would inflict so much stress and related issues on their lives?

If their good men, surely they wouldn’t be inflicting all that stress and what not!

Or are you now saying you donmt actually know decent one’s?

A lot of countries having aging populations, we are keeping the elderly alive for much longer due to medical advancements and people are having less children.
The population will drastically reduce.
Yes, Media portraying men as being good partners and fathers is totally the problem. Just not realistic, eh? Aren't women lucky we don't suffer at the hands of media. Every single thing it's just men pulling their weight and ijust want to scream 'men can't evolve that fast dammit.

I am saying that I wouldn't want to inflict the women on this thread on the decent men that I know.

I would have definitely had more kids if he hadn’t turned violent and murderous while I was pregnant.

Certainly not risking raising another deadbeats kid for them (not so much as a birthday card let alone child maintainance)

So one and done.

After what happened to me I wouldn’t trust even the nicest seeming guy. We were together for half a decade before we deliberately stopped using contraception. I did all the things ‘right’ but it still happened to me

Oh that's sad @FrippEnos ! My DP is chuffed to bits with me. He had several unsatisfactory relationships too, before we met, and now we are really happy.

I bet loads of the women on this thread are ace and men would be jolly grateful to pair up with us.

I think a decent man understands the issues on this thread and within men generally. They certainly wouldn't find a woman who is aware (are they any that aren't?) an infliction.
Those sort of comments are part of the problem. Women, being actual intelligible beings, aware of the problems they face and even daring to discuss it on an online forum? Yeah, can't afflict that on any 'decent' man.... clearly something wrong with those women.

To be fair Jordan Petersen who I find to be fairly misogynistic in many ways is pretty hot on the idea that men need to vastly up their game.

Oh, that’s odd.
And doesn’t make much sense…

What have the women on this thread done wrong?
Having standards?

They don’t sound so good men anymore, so the deal is off! 👋🏻

It takes two to tango. This attitude you have is why people don't take feminism seriously. Of course women are responsible for their choices and actions/inaction.

I'm a woman and mother and very familiar with domestic violence given I grew up in a household where violence was part of my daily life.

Why does the article assume that the birthrate falling is a bad thing? Perhaps if there were fewer people in the world we’d all be better off!

People who want the birth rate to rise are as clever as dodos

Capitalism likely.
The rich want workers to make them and their heirs more money.

It can’t be about people since they are making it harder and harder to get by…

I think the idea is we need economically productive young people to pay the pension and healthcare bills for the ageing population in developed countries.

If mothers had a huge influence on how their sons turn out, the general standard of men would be higher.