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!

The only victims in domestic violence who are truly passive and hold no responsibility are children.

Are you saying women murdered by an abusive partner aren't victims and bear some responsibility? Cop on to yourself.

I'm also not interested in arguing with someone who is so entrenched in victim blaming they can't even see it. I really hope you can educate yourself about what is a very complex topic.

I think she means no male role model of what it is to be a father. i.e. boys growing up without fathers don't see what fatherhood could be. They think women do the parenting. They see no examples of men taking emotional, physical, financial responsibility for raising children securely and well in a loving home where effort is made every day to enhance the child's wellbeing. That's a job for women

@Éireannach I get what you are saying. My FIL was similar to your Dad. Abusive as feck. All his kids are NC but my MIL, his main victim who is still very much loved and very much part of the family has her own problems too. She has thrown all of her children under the bus many, many times to maintain her relationship with FIL over the years until police and SS more or less forced her to move out she was in so much danger from him. She has thrown others under the bus too.

She is like an addict where FIL and keeping up appearances is concerned and it has had a huge impact on everyone. She has responsibility for the dysfunction too. She was the only one who ultimately could change it except now she is so vulnerable that SS and police were able to step in. She’d go back in the morning if she could. It is complex for sure and FIL is an evil fucker there can be no doubt, but MIL actions have not been benign.

I think she means no male role model of what it is to be a father. i.e. boys growing up without fathers don't see what fatherhood could be.

Yes, but the mother is a role model for parenting generally. Boys who grow up with good loving mothers will likely be good parents, irrespective of not having a father.

And boys with mothers who fawn over them and treat them like little princes will probably be lousy husbands and fathers, even if they have fathers.

Strong username to post correlation. 😂

I don't think we can really say women take on all the work when they make up 75% of part time workers. We're disadvantaged in many ways but men defo work more hours and do more overtime. It'd be a lie to day otherwise.

Aren't the happiest demographic for women the single ones?
And for men the married ones?

No, I think it's unmarried women without kids (could still potentially have a partner).

It suggests that having kids is what makes a lot of women unhappy and I defo see this reflected on mumsnet.

Strong username to post correlation. 😂

😁😄 What can I say, I’ve been on a hunt of a decent one for long time.
They are not out there😉

No, I think it's unmarried women without kids (could still potentially have a partner).

It was both, single and childree women who are the happiest.

It suggests that having kids is what makes a lot of women unhappy and I defo see this reflected on mumsnet.

If we go by MN, it seems it’s the men who make women miserable.

I believe it is married, educated, no kids, oldish women who are happiest. Which almost certainly tracks onto the wealthiest women.

The article is confused, and the author seems to have watched the same video recently as I have:

...and then tried to shoehorn a pseudo-feminist argument in favour of single motherhood onto it.

The clip, and longer interview it's taken from, is very interesting and rather worrying.

Basically:

Birth rates are in precipitous decline across the developed (and developing) world, and this is Bad News (for various reasons, see longer video)

80% of childless women DID NOT WANT OR PLAN TO BE SO.

(10% childless through choice, 10% childless through medical incapacity)

Biggest reason why women who wanted to have had children haven't managed to have them? NOT FINDING THE RIGHT PERSON AT THE RIGHT TIME.

Interesting evolutionary-biological perspective on some of the reasons this is happening, also picked up on by @AnnieApple123, whom I quote:

"It is well-documented now that there is a mismatch between the educational levels of men and women, with a higher proportion of graduates being female. A highly educated professional woman and a blue collar man may genuinely struggle to find sufficient compatibility for a successful long-term partnership in which to raise children. Mutually so. So evening out the proportions of male and female graduates could perhaps be one step forward."

Statistically, women want a partner with an educational level AT LEAST EQUAL to their own, and preferably one level up (so if she has a BA, she'd like a man with an MA).

Given that significantly more women are now going to university than men, the above factoid = a big problem for women seeking partners with whom to have children.

@NumberTheory commented: "And yet, when hardly any women were graduates couples managed to find compatibility just fine."

This would suggest that men have different requirements to women for their life partners/mothers of their children. Which makes sense, for various reasons (but this post is already too long )

Really agree with this, waited as long as I could for a man who treated me just 'ok'
And my parents were very dismissive of me so my bar was too low.

I wonder if it's partly because many of us no longer live in extended family communities we expect more from the father's of our children. I mean if your family are there and actively helping you raise your children you can cope with a husband that doesn't pull his weight.

The comments on that youtube link 🤦🏻‍♀️

People really are small minded aren’t they!?
It’s like we haven’t mived on at all, only purpose women have is to be a wife and a mother!

So sad!

*moved on

Personally I think finance / lack of support in benefits and nursery etc costs, bothers men (who want to be the provider ) more than women and hence men say no.

We had first baby at 25 but at the time (2009) we got:
Child trust fund
Child trust fund top up
Income support for me as made redunant
Child tax credits (then up to salary of £70k)
Veg vouchers
Pram £500
Lots of free sure start centres and activities with food and snacks for kids for free and books for free

My husband was on £45k but we literally got about £1700 in other benefits and weren't hard up up at all

I worked it out before and he wouldn't have agreed if not this support.

End of the day if gov suddenly said 'it's tax deductible per # of babies born after 2022' you watch lots of people would have that 3,4th or 1st

At work men and women get 6'm paid off. Omg the number of men in 30/40s now having 3,4,5th child! Financial Inc entices 100% work

@HBGKC

I’d been being sarcastic when I’d said that with the educational advantage reversed women managed to find compatibility just fine. What has happened is that as divorce became more accessible for women, those with a mismatch have tended to get divorced. These were not compatible marriages, they were marriages where women had fewer choices.

Studies in the US have also shown that, there at least, the difference that AnnieApple123 considers well-documented now, is actually an historical one. In recent decades the difference in divorce rates between educationally advantaged (compared to their husbands) women and educationally disadvantaged women has disappeared. For men and women, higher education tends to mean less divorce (at least in the US - this isn’t universally the case but seems common in European countries) but this seems to be highly correlated to income rather than the simple fact of education (suggesting, again, that society could make things more stable for families as well as single mothers simply by ensuring they don’t bear too high a financial burden from having children).

The reason why men are so shit is because we live in a society that has abandoned all rules. Before the bad actions of men would of had some shame attached, and it was in their best interest to act fairly decent but not anymore.

Although women are partly at fault too. There are far too many women willing to date guys that have very young children. If it were me I would want to know why the mother of his children did not want him. Sorry but I struggle to believe that most mothers willingly leave a decent man when their children are very young. I would go as far as to say that most women would put up with a hell of a lot before ditching the father of their children in an attempt to keep the family together. Too many women are willing to believe the lies they are fed by these useless hapless men. They enjoy the dates and money spent on them, rarely giving a thought to the effect on the poor child. It is utterly selfish and unless women themselves start demanding better l can't see things changing anytime soon.

These women are not holding these men to account! I would say quite the opposite. The mens selfishness is actively encouraged by their new partner, because inevitably the new woman starts grudging the time their partner spends with their child (that's if they even do) and most stick their beak in about money that is spent on their own child (if that happens atol.) This gives men free reign to actually think doing the bare minimum is enough, if another woman of all things is telling him it is.

I agree @Bunbuns3 not wanting to go back to the old days but there used be shame attached to being a cad. There used to be a name for it.

Now, when a man met online treats a woman like shit, like one free prostitute in a shop of free prostitutes, she can say what happened afterwards and nobody she knows knows him and she is shamed for not having better boundaries or seeing through the lies quicker and better

The reason why men are so shit is because we live in a society that has abandoned all rules.

What rules?
It’s still very hard to live if you don’t want relatinship/kids, I can only imagine how horrible it was back in the day.
And men have always been shit. Always.
That’s why all the oppression towards women.

I also don’t think women are gate keepers or responsible of men’s behaviour.

The rules weren't legislation but in generations gone by, in order to have a sex life, men did need to behave better, show some commitment, show some respect, ''go steady''

I'm not saying i want to go back to the old days where pregnant unmarried mothers where shamed and left in a financial bind. But I can see why we are where we are at the same time.

I do blame men I guess, they want too miuch. They do not in today's world feel lucky that one woman is sleeping with them.

But rape in marriahe was legal until the 90’s.
So who knows how many of these men who had to ’behave better’ were actually raping their wives.
Even today, just read MN for start,how much pressure there is to have sex in a relationship.

And even aboit the start of relationship, it used to be ’romantic’ for man not to take a no for an answer.

I really do think some people have very rosy view of the men in the past.
They really weren’t getlemans some of you think they were.

Oh yeh, it's just different bad behaviour. As I said, I don't want to go back to the days where women were shamed and left destitute.

I think some women like being kept in the dark, because they don't need to face reality. I actually know someone that married a man with a young child. She never met any if his family, he claimed to have no friends, and there was no one but him at the wedding from his side of the family. Sorry that would sit very uneasy with me and be a huge red flag. If that were my daughter I would have serious concerns. But like I said no rules!

@xJoy and @Bunbuns3 . I agree that women are the losers in a society where sex is considered to have no intrinsic meaning or value and everyone is expected to make and enforce her own rules around it.
At a population level, men and women have always been incompatible. Women’s economic vulnerability used to provide the solution in that a small proportion were forced into taking up the slack by marrying the least eligible or selling sexual services.
We’ve gained a lot of ground economically, but not so on a personal level.

I agree that women are the losers in a society where sex is considered to have no intrinsic meaning or value and everyone is expected to make and enforce her own rules around it.

Do ypu mean you want society/ men to tell women how to behave when it comes to sex?
I don’t underrstand what you’re saying.
You don’t want women to make choice who or when they have sex?
What about women who don’t want to have sex, force them to?

It’s much better to have the little freedom that we have now.

Also, what meaning does sex have?
It’s just smashing some genitalia, it’s not that deep.
Going back in time and making it into some holy thing isin’t going to make things easier for women.