Men: you’re the cause of our baby crisis

[reegee]

Interesting article in the Times today. It's surely a valid point that Young women should consider the contribution to parenting that a partner might offer when considering having a baby?

Men: you’re the cause of our baby crisis

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/men-youre-the-cause-of-our-baby-crisis-qgqq288db?shareToken=5ca2dd91b4d7a7d64672da6f3bacdf7f

From the article <She loves her child but realises she is the one making sacrifices. “All along I had believed I was equal when all along I was not,” she says as her husband heads off to his office>

We are not equal when it comes to children, we do need to face up to that.

Feminism has never really resolved the answer to the motherhood conundrum. It is all very well saying that men should be better around the house etc. they should be, but there are also the realities of bringing up a family and what I see with my own eyes is that biology really kicks in when you have children; a lot of women will choose family over career, they just will and they do so reliably. They don't all want to work 50 hours forever a week even if they have good childcare and the husband cooks the dinner; some might do, but most won't. I am 48 and I do not know one woman who would put their career over their children when they were young, they would now they are older but under 10's, none of them wanted the full-on career.

IMO we do young women no favours with this "if the man does the housework, everything will be fine"

@hamstersarse you must live in very cloistered circles if you don’t know a single woman who has maintained a career with children under 10. Most of my friends do. Many of us have had problems with husbands who seem think that you can have a career but you also have to be the default parent as the woman - it’s not just about housework, it’s about sharing parenting equally. The most privileged people on the planet are men with stay at home wives. See Jessica grose’s recent reporting in the nyt about the amount of time women and men spend on household labour relevant to their working status - the summary is that the ONLY situation in which men do more domestic labour than women is where woman is sole breadwinner, man is non working. In that situation, the couple does the SAME amount of work (!!!).

I think we can be equal when it comes to childcare. it takes more organization and effort to get things set up right but it can be done. For example, long paternity leave in Scandinavia and both parents in flexible jobs.

We have children under 10 and both maintain careers. It's a necessity. We need both our pensions when we retire and both contributions to the mortgage. Better for the kids to have a roof over their heads than a SAHP and live in poverty. Everything is a decision. I'm tired of people being passive and thinking that life just happens to them.

@stealthbanana I wrote most women chose family over career

So most women I know went part-time in some sense when with young children and have picked it all up again in the past few years. It is either part-time or not a job that involves a lot of travel and long-hours. The point being that women do tend to chose family before career, but not to say that they don't have a career. The data backs this up wherever you look.

I hate all this moaning from women about "calpol" spills and having to do messy monotonous work with children. I find it so devaluing to what motherhood is. Of course it has some messy bits, but that is not what motherhood is

And saying for men to pick up more, really doesn't solve anything if you are concerned about how our children grow up, the wellbeing of mothers (I think 25% of adult females are on AD's so something is going wrong) and whether our society is actually supporting healthy functioning families, per se. These discussions pitting parents against each other are fruitless.

And I’m saying that you live a sheltered existence if all the women you know downsized their career in the early years. Most of my friends work full time and have proper jobs. Can you not see how sexist what you’re saying is? Would you be comfortable saying to all the men that they have prioritised their careers over their children? Many men I know would bristle at the suggestion they are not good parents to their kids just because they work full time….

I think people are often just having children later (so fewer)/ not finding the right person to have them/ never wanted them in the first place/possibly having fewer after realising their husband has no intention of actually contributing equally. The women I know without kids did actually want them but wanted them with a husband and as part of a family. They just weren’t able to find anyone before they felt they were too old to have kids and they didn’t want to go it alone.

I think theres quite a lot of women who look at everything having kids entails and say “no thank you”. There has been a spike in young men getting vasectomies in the USA. I believe there are just fewer people who actually want children. The people I know who really wanted babies didn’t really let much stop them.

I agree completely. I think the main reason we have declining birthrates in the west are because women are having one baby, seeing how hard it is working and raising the baby with minimal or no help from partner and having experienced it, don't want to do it again. It's not the only reason, obviously, but I personally think it's a major factor.

Russian government offers women a financial incentive of 2 years salary to have a 2nd or subsequent baby and they have the lowest birthrate in the world. Go figure.

Im 50 next month. Ive been child free by choice since i was 21. i saw what a life of drudgery it was for my fellow working class women and thought no way.

But now we have the very same political party who kept telling women like me not to have kids that we couldnt afford now moaning at us for the falling birth rate. Gaslighting fuckers.

Children need their mothers. Especially in the first 3 years. That's really important. This shouldn't be surprising. We shouldn't be in s situation were mothers are forced back into work when they have small children. One wage should be enough to provide for a family but unfortunately we are not likely to return to that. Men and women have different roles, biologically. We are not the same, and that becomes abundantly clear when we go through pregnancy, labour and child rearing.
I support women doing whatever the fuck they want but we do need to acknowledge that being a mother is a whole role, its difficult, and it can't easily be put to the side for careers etc.

And I’m saying that you live a sheltered existence if all the women you know downsized their career in the early years. Most of my friends work full time and have proper jobs.

I think you’re being a bit obtuse here. I have a “proper job”, I’m proud of my career, I’m achieving a lot, I make more money than my husband. But every decision I’ve made about my career since I had my first kid has prioritised what’s right for my family. I work fucking hard… for the hours I’m in the office. I leave on time to make sure I’m home to my kids. It feels like you’re forgetting that “prioritising children” doesn’t mean throwing a pre existing career out the window.

I personally know plenty of women around me absolutely killing it at work… but none of them are doing so at the expense of raising their children the way they want to.

@ReeseWitherfork that was my point! The point of the original article was that men needed to do more to enable women to do that. The poster I was responding to said that ignored “biology” because all women wanted to prioritise children and step back in their careers until their children are 10. My point was that I know many women who don’t and who make it work - and men can do the same.

I agree with you. I don’t know any women that had children and carried on travelling the world in their career. I have a career but I’m not a MD or director which I could have been if I hadn’t gone part time for 14 years and downsized my career - both my choices. The impact now is that I have less pension. It wasn’t obvious when I was younger but now I’m 58 it’s bloody obvious that I’ve lost 14 years of investment. Being divorced this will have an impact on me when I finally retire.

There are some great statistics on what women do around working when the give birth. My LA published them for my area but they are pre covid so yhings might be different now.
Things women do in greater numbers than men.

Stop working
Work part time
Stop seeking promotion
Ask for flexible hours
Stop travelling
Seek out less stressful full time work
Seek out work closer to home or nursery.

There is only one thing men do in greater numbers than women on the birth of their first child.

Seek out higher paid work

Which does indicate that many women are making career decisions based on their children. I also think the men seeking higher paid work might have to if their partner stopped working or went part time, or took a lower paid less stressful job. But they might prefer that to stalling their career?

It woukd be nice to even it up.

So true, so difficult to really comprehend that at 28 or 30 or 32, it feels like it's " just for a bit", but that " bit" grows and grows and before you know it, it's 10 years or 15. If those 15 years are between 32 and 47 the pension and career impact is huge.....

I insisted DH take some of the strain, we have both " lost" between 2 and 5 years (We are in our late 30's with nearly grown children) but better that than one of us having lost 10 years.

My experience is that of @stealthbanana , I actually can only think of one female acquaintance who didn’t go part time when bringing up children.
I stayed at home for the first two years with each of my three, then worked part time in school hours.
I work in an area of child psychology so it was important for me that they didn’t have long hours in childcare. A personal preference.

I agree that the sex differences really show once child rearing is involved.
also, we noticed a massive impact from a change in financial policy, we often talk about it as having made a huge difference for the generations after us.

in the mid 1990’s, there was a very rapid change in mortgage borrowing allowance. Previous to then, you could typically borrow 3.5 x single income or 4 times a double income.
im not sure what changed or how but suddenly you could borrow 5 times or more. House prices soared and people borrowed more accordingly.

then, couples are stuck with huge mortgages that cannot be covered by a single income - or, perhaps ideally, two part time incomes.

I think this changed assumptions about childcare and working patterns and it cannot be reversed.

I think the trouble is that we live in a society that does not value the work the goes into motherhood. It's seen as a lifestyle choice, an optional extra, a hobby, rather than the incredibly important and vital job it is. Not just for the future of our species but also in an economic sense. Care work in general isn't really seen as important and until that changes nothing else wil. After all the work of a mother is hard, why would anyone do it if the pay off is at best ignorance and at worst outright contempt?

Ah yes and then there's other mps suggesting people who can't afford cheese on a sandwich to go without. What a wonderful world to bring children into

I think you’re all missing the point of the article. The point is that women do that because they have to! Thus increasingly they have fewer (or no) children because lots of women don’t actually want to be the only one in the couple making that trade off. Why can men not look after a 2 or a 5 or an 8 year old child? Why is it always women who go part time?

it is very possible to do - I know lots of women who travel for work with kids under 10. But your partner has to step up to enable it.

I think it's important to look at the real reasons why so many women decide to take a career break/go part time/change careers etc when their DC are small. I don't think it's as simple as 'women make that choice, it's just what they want to do and that's the end of it'.

I was the main earner when I had my DC and DH was SAHP once I went back to work after my first maternity leave. I only took 6 months maternity (for financial reasons and also to try to limit the impact on my career). Despite this I think I ended up at least 2 years behind male peers in terms of promotions/pay etc. As soon as I announced my pregnancy I was effectively sidelined- no point putting me on any major projects/meeting new important clients etc when I would not be around in 6 months time, chance that I might have to take time off at short notice if there were complications/baby came early etc. So I spent the 6 months before maternity doing jobs that were not really valued by the management. When I returned, I was slotted in to whichever team had a need at the time (standard with anyone returning from maternity) so had to get up to speed with a new set of clients, new staff and in the case of my second maternity a new location. To apply for promotion I had to demonstrate what I'd done in the business in the previous 12 months and a consistent plan for the next 12 months. I was told that I could not therefore apply for promotion once pregnant (can't demonstrate 12 month plan as I wouldn't be there for 6 months and no idea which team I'd be in after that), and also couldn't apply until I'd been back at work for 12 months. So I basically had 2 years were I could not apply for a promotion, plus time where I was sidelined so didn't get opportunities and also time needed to get up to speed in a new team and develop a plan. When I did return to work (full time) on quite a few occasions male bosses made decisions on my behalf about whether I would want to travel/work additional hours etc with a small child (not such assumptions made about male staff. On top of this school still called me first if there was any problem with the DC (despite DH being listed as first contact), teachers/nursery made 'joke' comments about not knowing if I existed as I was never at drop off/collection, friends and family made comments about how they would not have been able to leave their DC so young and/or how 'lucky' I was to be able to focus on my career. It really felt like I was being held back at work for being a mother and judged for having a career.

I have lots of friends who 'chose' to take a break or go part time because their DH's career was just taking off whilst they were on maternity leave and he needed to be able to travel/work late etc at the drop of a hat. As the mother was already at home/in the main carer role in most cases there was not even a debate- it was just what worked best for their family.

None of my friends took a career break, neither did I. My husband and I work full time and we have a 2yr old. We have a cleaner and share tasks (I cook, he cleans up). Both feel valued and respect each other. I don’t feel my career has suffered, we have both got promotions since going back after shared parental leave.

Most of the women I know took a step back career-wise once they had children.
I went part time once my first was born, and stopped when the third was born as childcare would have cost more than I was making.

For me the difference in parenting is the mental load, which between exH and I was equal before we had children and progressively all became my tasks. Dc3 is disabled and all that work ended up being mine, because I was at home all day and exH worked (he would emphasise this - “I need more help” - “well I work”).

Whilst my situation was exacerbated by dc’s disability and the extra work caused by that, it’s the same set up I see time and time again, mothers, whether they work or not, do the majority of the unvalued work at home. Men need to step up and be equal parents.
Had exH stepped up and taken a more equal role in parenting maybe we would still be together, as it is he plays an insignificant part in his children’s lives.
If I had my time again I might make different choices based on the fact that I was a single mother whilst being married and living with my children’s father.

It doesn’t help that some prominent feminists consider those of us who are mothers as domestic zombies and breeders. Wanting children is, for many, a biological urge, and anyone basing their feminism on denying that is missing a huge point.

Pretty inflammatory headline imo.

I almost stopped reading after the first three or four paragraphs as they had nothing to do with the headline statement, or indeed the meat of the argument being presented..... however....

In the spirit of the piece:

The cause (like the housework) is shared between both sexes. Men need to do more housework, because women wanted (in the larger historical context) or needed to work. Part of that was ideological and a great deal a result of the cost of automation and home convenience needed to be paid for.

As a result, we've reached a point, where, for most families, both parents have no choice but to work, which means the rest should be shared, but as others have pointed out there are burdens that biologically, can only fall on women.

There's still too much structurally in society that makes change slower and more difficult than it should be.

Going through some links I found this;

https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2023/04/13/in-a-growing-share-of-u-s-marriages-husbands-and-wives-earn-about-the-same

I found it incredibly depressing reading as the findings are almost verbatim those described by Susan Maushart in her 2003 book Wife Work. That regardless of a women's employment status they do the majority of the childcare and domestic work. The only exception being men who do no paid employment, those being majoritively very low income households.

I read Wifework whilst pregnant with DS almost exactly 20 years ago. Nothing has changed. No wonder young women are postponing or rejecting motherhood.

Quite frankly I’d only want kids if I can be the “dad”. I don’t want to take on the drudgery without an equal helpmate and partner and few exist. I also don’t want to bring children into poverty and inequality.