The future of motherhood?

[futuregybe]

Ok, first time poster, and please bear with me on this (I don't have children).

I'm 42F, was married young, divorced, and I feel like I've never found the stability in order to bring a kid in to the world and be happy. I look at the situation a lot of women find themselves in when they do have kids (working hard in full time jobs, but also taking the majority of childcare duties). I divorced myself (partner cheated), and look at the fights over childcare with great sadness.
It's probably too late for me, but i'm absolutely curious what the future of motherhood looks like - if we look past the current status.
Women outperform men academically and have done for pretty much a generation at this point. We've made great strides, but women still have the majority of the burden of household and childcare - which is an opportunity cost women are paying, but men aren't.
If men won't step up to an equal partnership, what's in it for women? I've watched as friends have taken decisions to look for different than normal child rearing - choosing to have a baby from an egg donor so that there can be no arguing over child care arrangements if a marriage goes south. Another friend who is actively looking to set up co-living arrangements where children are involved so that dependence on one other person isn't a thing, and community can help fill the emotional void.

I've done well for myself in the tech industry in Silicon Valley and this international womens day I started poking and prodding to see what investments are being made in lieu of men just stepping up (it's not happening - where are all the house husbands? statistically they just aren't there).
What about robot childcare? If we can make cars drive themselves, surely there are elements that can be solved where women are burdened.

This is quite meandering, but I'm seriously considering helping/pushing for investments in tech to give women like me more options in the future - past the nuclear family option. I'm curious what others see as the future of motherhood because 'doing it all' is not sustainable, and men (not all, but on the whole) are not stepping up.

Side note: Why are childcare prenups not a thing? If I was walking in to a marriage that was hoping to have kids, I'd absolutely want to lay out terms if the union dissolved ahead of time. Yes the father is important, but the damage that gets wreaked with messy divorces is insane.

Lots of really interesting thoughts here.

It is a real shame that men aren’t stepping up but I really like your thoughts on where tech could come in!

To be honest, I get a sense of things moving backwards- women are realising they can’t ‘have it all’ ie work full time and also do everything expected of them at home. I get the impression that many of those currently in their 20s aren’t so career focused and are instead looking to have more of a family life. I don’t have any stats to back this up- more of a feeling!

As a professional woman though it does feel like a shame/that we are giving up!

edited for typo!

I think all the ideas are nice but the reality of the situation is you can’t be a full time parent and be a full time worker with a career that pays the money (as this takes time, attention and again time). There simply isn’t enough time to put into the career because children take up a lot of time themselves, so for women it is one or the other. That’s the reality. When you have a partner who pulls with you and it’s all 50/50 it’s a possibility that a woman can have both, but as you rightly pointed out, where are all the men who are happy to do this? There isn’t enough of them to go around. So women will have to choose children and sub par income/career or high flying career and no kids, or kids very late maybe. Why would men change? What’s their motivation too as I can see there is none, it’s not driven into men to have kids and get married like it is for women, men would be happy enough.

It’s going to be interesting to see if women of the future choose career over kids and if they do, what use would be left for men.

I couldn't get on board with robot childcare. Young children need positive human connection. Love and care can't come from a robot.

And forcing a man to do half the childcare isn't always best if you know he's doing the bare minimum because he's lazy and selfish. If you want the best for your child then you do have to take on the majority if he man is substandard.

I have kids. Fled abusive husband then had long term partner turn out to be a selfish lazy arse having talked me I to having another child. Common denominator is I was pregnant when they changed. Looking back at my life I waited years wanting a child but thinking I needed to find the right man- if I did it again I would have used a donar and stopped after one possibly two but would space them years apart not run myself ragged like I am now with them so close together. Financially I'd be no worse off I pay for everything anyway and my kids wouldn't be growing up with the trauma of a nasty manipulative man using them as pawns in his games.

I think the future of motherhood is there will be less of us. I think I read somewhere more and more women are choosing to not live with a man/get married etc.

The family courts are a shit show. Improvements need to be made there. It's more about what a man wants than what is best. I see it over and over on here people screaming leave him he's abusive stop all contact and people have no idea what a court will do to a woman who does this without undeniable proof the kids are already victims of serious injury or sexual abuse and that this will continue- this then means they will probably have supervised contact not no contact.... and the evidence shows abusive men often have a history of abuse in their childhood. So we are perpetually making this problem worse.

If tech could help me personally I'd have a robot that cleans and cooks. I'd use tech to facilitate home working for areas of employment normally denied this as much as possible. Use robots in care for changing beds and cleaning as carers have more time for the elderly/disabled. Better ways to lift and move would be good as women do most of this work and it's bad on our health. And I'd raise respect and acknowledgment of predominately female roles that society undervalues.

I would love to live in a female commune. I work in early years education and childcare and would happily do what I do now for work in a nice big communal property for the other women who live there. If im sick I'd probably still work unless im really bad as I have my own kids to care for anyway. No exclusion periods if one of the kids gets a bug, they would be home anyway so it not unkind sending to childcare. one of the other mums can take a day off if I'm really sick just like a husband would for a stay at home mum.

Communes like this would provide affordable reliable childcare and being a mother wouldn't hold a woman back at work (other than pregnancy/maternity leave and possibly birth injuries lasting effects).

Interesting thoughts.

My kids are 12 and 15 and I think there's going to be a lot less interest, especially among girls, in having kids - partly just because it's going to be a lot more difficult for a lot more people. We're very well off in the scheme of things, but we're not going to be able to provide a deposit to buy a home for both kids and at this rate they'll have to spend loads on rent and not have much over after that. I honestly don't know how anyone is expected to manage having kids now, let alone in the future.

AI and robotics could help with childcare, but gender equitable parenting would help even more. DH and I have failed to quite manage it - our kids have seen their father do infinitely more domestically and in terms of childcare than I ever saw my dad do (or he saw his dad do) but I still ended up the default parent!

I think women will demand a lot more from male partners and I'm not sure many men will be prepared for that, but definitely want to make sure DS is prepared. I also think quite a lot of women will choose not to have a male partner because I think women can cope much better on their own than men can - so men do have a shock coming.

I feel very lucky that I have a husband who does at least 50% of everything with the kids/house, so I have been able to pursue a good career. I worked hard for my career - I want to set an example to my daughters.

But on another thread on MN this eve there is a discussion about women who want to be bankrolled by a man!! I'm honestly surprised by the number of women who aspire to this. I was a teenager during the era of "girl power" - what happened to that??! Unfortunately this isn't helping our narrative.

I wouldn't be too harsh on women wanting to be 'bankrolled' if it's in terms of supporting a family (if it's 'I want to buy lots of designer shoes' that may be another matter, though each to her own) - women are emerging from literally millennia of being chattel at worst or at best being told we had to be mothers, we couldn't work (or later that became 'have a career') so we'd best partner with a man who can bear the costs. That takes a long time to shake off, especially with expectations from employers - my most recent one was actually really good about decent paid paternity leave and I saw a number of men taking that. I think it would be a sea change if this became normal.

I agree with you here. If you think what a homemaker does in terms of cost of childcare, chef, taxi, cleaner etc etc it's a job. And we don't look down on people who hold these jobs and get paid so being 'bankrolled' to stay home is still a job if they don't hire in all the help. Maybe there is social conditioning in there making a woman aspire to this but it's no so different to a child encouraged to go into the family business or following parents encouraging them to be a dr or a lawyer etc.

There was mention of £200 face serums so I'm not sure how much related to family support!

But I really don't quite get why so often it's still women that either don't work or work reduced hours etc. I guess I see so many mums around me who just seem happy to do that. It's not how I hoped the world was heading but, as you, say each to their own I guess.

All variables already have been explored by humanity. Nothing will be changed, there always will be the crooked propositions about designer babies, matrix babies in artificial wombs and who knows, may be they will make animals carry human embryos? LOL

This might be one direction! 😱

Interested by your comment that these ideas take a while to shake off.

Different perspective here: all I've ever wanted to be since being a little girl is a wife & mum. I did exceptionally well at school & uni, starting a professional career that I enjoy, but it's just deep down not what I want. It's like a biological driver (for me, not speaking for other women) & all the push I experienced to have a career first, keep up career with kids etc just hasn't changed that. Married young at 20 to a traditionally minded man who believes in providing for a family, marrying me before children, stability etc and hoping to be a sahm when baby comes.
I'm not saying this is for everyone, but there is a feeling that women like me are just brainwashed/ still need liberating when in actuality, everyone my whole life has pushed me into career/independence & all I want is a little life with my husband & kids where I can look after them and be at home.

I think feminism has failed women as much as anything else. Its all about shoe horning women, with our biological differences, into a capitalist male lifestyle.

Motherhood can look a bit like endentured slavery, so it's good if the new generation see that.

choosing to have a baby from an egg donor so that there can be no arguing over child care arrangements if a marriage goes south.

??

And robot childcare is a non starter. Robots are excellent at dealing with the predictable; children are rather the opposite of predictable - and need human input for their development.

Where robots could be useful is taking on other tasks, so childcare is less of a juggling act.

ah - opps - meant sperm donor 😁

I think one problem is women tend to want children more than men do, even with the disparity in workload. If there was a way to magically split everything 50:50 (including birthing a child) hardly any men would sign up for it. One could argue in such a circumstance it would force governments to pay their populations to have children (due to concerns over population collapse) which in turn would support mothers. That is a very disruptive series of events to get to that stage though.

Another issue I see in day to day life is many women don't seem to like the idea of their husbands being a stay at home dad. They typically don't respect and look down on men who would have that as an ambition (I imagine they would be called cocklodgers on the relationship board). Data from pew research seems to back that up although that isn't to say attitudes could change.

Your idea on childcare prenups is interesting, can you flesh that out more?

@NP101 I think one problem is women tend to want children more than men do

That is one big problem - doesn't bode well for sexual equality. Dudes dont do broody.

I don't think it's a problem if women want children more than men do - the crux is to move it along from this notion that 50/50 is the default. So in a relationship where the man wants a kid more than the woman, talk about it and write that shit down - like the expectation for the man to be stay at home (women are earning more than men in a lot of cases now).
If both parents are contributing equally, and are going to have kids - if there's an expectation of 50/50 - write that down and talk about what that really means.
If there's a non 50/50 solution in the relationship, what does that look like if you decide to split? talk about that too and agree what that looks like in principle. That's the root of the concept of a childcare prenup. I've lived in different parts of the world - whilst it's a thought experiment and nothing more, if I was to have a kid, I would want to continue to have opportunity to live in different parts of the world if a relationship didn't work out, so that would be reflected in childcare arrangements (you take the kid for a year, i'll take it for a school year or whatever that looks like. (like i said, this is a thought experiment and may or may not be practical once you have a kid, but at least think about it ahead of time). To be fair - in my situation the better solution is probably to just use a sperm donor if I was going to do anything), and seek out intentional communities where people want to raise children.

All this 50/50 stuff ignores the biological reality of having children for women. It is not and can never be 50/50 we need to recognise that instead of, as I said upthread, trying to shoe horn women's lives into the default male patten. Being like men isn't the optimum lifestyle and I don't think it should be the measure of a successful feminist.

This quote from the bbc article about women in south korea not having babies perfectly sums up a huge issue with motherhood and societies expectations. Clever linky thing

"Over the past 50 years, Korea's economy has developed at break-neck speed, propelling women into higher education and the workforce, and expanding their ambitions, but the roles of wife and mother have not evolved at nearly the same pace."

I'm sorry I don't understand your point. Women contribute more to the development of a foetus - so the man should contribute 50% plus the difference to household?
I'm not suggesting women do anything they don't want to - my post is simply recognising that many more women choose to be single or not have children because the 'default' doesn't work for them. And that those who choose the 'default' don't get equality / take more of the burden - which is fine if that's what they want (it's not what i'd want).

Maybe you're suggesting men who aren't interested in contributing effectively don't get involved in 'nuclear family' relationships and don't get married?

Project yourself to a future where a couple have a child by surrogate - what's the biological reality now?

If you have thoughts on the future of motherhood, please bring them, but take your biological nonsense somewhere else.

Perhaps for some women something like mum only developments say a collection of houses or apartments that are centred around child rearing, so walkable distance to creches and nurseries, playgrounds, clinics. Like a small village.

Child rearing is always going to rely heavily on people and a supportive environment is the one where mothers and children's total wellbeing is most likely to flourish. So maybe rethinking infrastructure around the needs of women with children is the way forward, so they can be around other mothers and have easy access to quality childcare.

This is what my friend is actively developing (in the US granted), although I'd say it's inception isn't to be women only - but an intentional community where child rearing is the focus - you can still live as a nuclear family in that context, but there is more help between neighbours. She's not planning on making it women only - and men wouldn't be excluded per say - but if they have no interest in child rearing and aren't willing to contribute, then they don't have to stay....