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!

[Thesystemonlydreamsintotaldarkness]

When I was in my early 20s, 20 years ago, pre DH etc. what I was looking for was romance and a shag with a man I fancied.

looking back: it’s not really the most sensible way of looking for a man: you should be looking for someone who is a life partner and pulling their weight.

I was lucky ans married an amazing man. But I can see that lots of other women haven’t been as lucky; there are so many useless men out there

[WhatWouldJeevesDo]

Do ypu mean you want society/ men to tell women how to behave when it comes to sex?
I want society to tell people how to behave, to have more accepted conventions around sex. Yes.

I don’t underrstand what you’re saying.
You don’t want women to make choice who or when they have sex?
I want women to feel they can refuse. If men and women feel some societal pressure not to have sex in certain circumstances, eg if one partner is in another relationship or because they’ve only just met, then so be it. Ultimately, if people want to then they can. I’m not suggesting legal restrictions.

What about women who don’t want to have sex, force them to?
I’m not proposing any changes to the rape law. As well as legal enforcement, a societal norm that sex should be consensual is a good start.

It’s much better to have the little freedom that we have now.
We should never be complacent.

Also, what meaning does sex have?
It’s just smashing some genitalia, it’s not that deep.
I feel that sex without commitment is
either dishonest or degrading.

Going back in time and making it into some holy thing isin’t going to make things easier for women.
Smugly looking back isn’t helpful either.

[xJoy]

@WhatWouldJeevesDo

@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.

yeh, and can't speak for everybody and not trying but every time I had sex with somebody who didn't value me (although, you know, they gave the impression they did for a while, I'm not a masochist) but every time I was passed over, rejected, played............. it took a piece of me. I've done some ignoring, passing over and rejecting too but usually not men I've slept with so I agree, something is out of sync with what suits (most) women and the norms today. Like I did (fool I admit it) feel pressure to sleep with men after 3 or 4 dates, dates that were fun, we clicked, but there wasn't much offered in terms of well I don't want to jeopardise this so you're the only one I'm seeing. I just hoped it, and I think it was true. It was just that after they had slept with me they lost interest. So many would reprimand me for not having had better boundaries et cetera but I think a lot of women without firmer boundaries are manipulated in to doing what suits men. I only learned all the harsh lessons when it was too late. Nobody is trying to shag me now! ha ha, I'm ok with that. What would suit women would be if the cultural norms were that you had gone on say 12 dates first. Imagine if that were the dating norm. Oh and before anybody attacks me, I KNOW that women don't have to do what they don't want to but I'm just saying that the so-called norms seem to be driven by men. I'm just opting out now. it's easier and better.

[chaosmaker]

Thought we'd recently hit 8 billion in terms of too many humans on the planet. Doesn't sound like falling both rates to me.

[NumberTheory]

@chaosmaker

Thought we'd recently hit 8 billion in terms of too many humans on the planet. Doesn't sound like falling both rates to me.

Birth rates have been declining pretty rapidly, globally in 1974 the birth rate was 4.2 births per woman, in 2021 that was down to 2.4. We’re still just over the repopulation rate - which is accepted as 2.1 births per woman - but the UN predicts it will be below that by 2050, some researchers think before then. Current population growth is largely down to increasing lifespans. That is also expected to tail off and the global population to start to fall before the end of the century.

But that’s globally. In the UK birth rates are well below repopulation figures and population growth has been down to increasing lifespans for some time. Hence the aging population, the pressure on the NHS and the need to raise the pension age.

[QuietlyConfident]

@chaosmaker

Thought we'd recently hit 8 billion in terms of too many humans on the planet. Doesn't sound like falling both rates to me.

We have, but that's because the women who are giving birth now are in their twenties (on average), born in the 1990s, and the people who are dying are (on average) in their seventies, born in the 1950s. Fertility rates were really high in the 60s-90s, so there's far more twenty-somethings around to have babies than there are seventy-somethings around to die.

What that means is that even if every single woman of childbearing age had exactly two children, the world population will still keep growing for a couple of decades.
www.bbc.com/news/health-53409521

[chaosmaker]

The planet would probably require us to stop breeding as much (or at all). In terms of not breeding due to crap men, that is irrelevanI. If someone wants to do it, there are many ways they can. I'm of the opinion that it takes a village, rather than 2 parents to raise a decent human. But then I'm of a generation that could be told off by adults other than the ones in the house with no come back on them for having the audacity to tell me off. The human population is too much for the planet and all the other forms of life that we think we're better than and are eradicating whether on purpose or by not thinking.

[JenniferBooth]

Im one of the 10% Im child free by choice I knew by the time i was 21 that i didnt want children I saw my peers have them early in life and IMO were leading lives of drudgery. Im 49 (50 this June) and no regrets about this choice.
Im working class and live in social housing so it wasnt because of a career Or a crap man. Parenthood just isnt for me.

[clarebear111]

@maddy68

There are plenty of good men. What a strange article. The failing birthrate will have more to do with economics and a shift in culture attitudes

Agree with this. And the astronomical cost of housing means that you either have to have a huge salary, family support or be in a partnership/couple with a good combined income to afford to pay for and run a family home.

[Littlepinkstarsbyradish]

It always annoys me that the burden falls on women to solve societal problems.
how can women raise better men? How can women support men to have higher aspirations? How can women choose better? Etc

maybe we’re all just tired of the extra workload and would just rather not? That’s where I landed, lol

i could put my effort into raising both a partner and a child, or I could get a dog, be richer, less tired and travel the world with my friends? I love my mates kids, but I also really love my child free weekends

With a mostly lgbt circle of friends, I’ve found my tribe with a lifestyle that some might find selfish but actually just really suits us and I wouldn’t change

[QuietlyConfident]

There seems to be an interesting J shaped graph with the interaction between how good a society is for women on the X axis and how many children they have on the Y axis.

At the far left hand side we have the countries where women have no education, no access to contraception, no safety or role in society without a man to protect them, no pensions when they get old, endemic levels of rape, and where their children often die in childhood. Those women have a lot of children. The worst case example is of course Afghanistan.

In the middle, women have physical safety, access to contraception, education and jobs, but no real equality. They are expected to work full time while also doing 90% of the housework and 100% of the childrearing. They are judged if they are SAHP and judged if they get someone else to look after their children while they work. They are expected to be slim and perfectly groomed throughout their lives, and failure to achieve this is seen as a moral failing. These women are able to opt out of childrearing - possibly at the cost of minor social stigma - and they do. The classic example is South Korea, where current fertility rates would reduce the population by 80% in two generations.

As you move towards the far right, where women have all the essentials and also a more equal distribution of domestic labour and childrearing- and greater state support for the latter - then the birth rate increases again, but not yet as far as the replacement rate. Is that because there isn't a perfect society is this world, or is it because even in a perfectly equal society women on average wouldn't want as many as two children? That's a theoretical question.

The priority for the world should be to get safety, education and healthcare to the women on the left hand side, and the priority for the governments of the countries at the bottom of the dip should be to work out why motherhood seems such a bad bet in their country and fix it.

[QuietlyConfident]

(That should say a mirror image J shaped curve - or perhaps a ski jump)

[hopelessmum1]

They need to support mothers far more than they do; legally, financially, emotionally and socially. I wouldn't have children now because men.

[MomentOnTheLips]

Falling birthrate is good. We can't just keep increasing the population to take care of existing inhabitants. That's like saying we can't move to electric cars because somebody needs to keep the fuel industry going.