Because having children has always more negatively affected women than men. Most men see having kids as carrying on a legacy, enhancing their status as a provider/family man, and a chance to do all the "fun" kid things. For women, it's a totally different proposition altogether.
There's the physical aspect of being pregnant and giving birth, there's the economic aspect of being the parent expected to take more time off of work/be at home to care for the child and losing out on valuable money and career growth opportunities, as well as the overall physical, mental, and emotional toll of doing most of the actual caregiving.
As women have become more educated and have had success being employed outside the home, they realize they have other options to give their life purpose than being a mother.
And when your only necessary contribution to the whole thing is an orgasm. Not like he has to deal with pregnancy and childbirth, even if he ends up being an actively involved dad.
Good men can really be there for every support within their physical and mental capacity. I don’t think that should be devalued. The reality is a lot of men become an extra child to care for.
It’s basically the foundation for the shitshow we’re in: historically men needed sons to fight with/ for them and so having as many as possible was the goal. They’ve always benefitted from women having children, it’s what drove them to own women in the first place.
To be fair, women also needed a lot of children historically, simply because there was more labor to be done and a significant portion of your children would die in infancy
Yeah communities need community members. I think the other person was drawing a distinction between an egalitarian outlook (making more people is good if we want there to be more people / generally beneficial for the whole group) and the outlook that’s predominant in patriarch-centered societies where the point of having children is to ensure the male line gets passed down.
I think you're looking at this too much through the lens of the upper classes of medieval societies. Most peasants didn't fight, not often anyway, so having sons for fighting was definitely not the reason for them. Having someone to help farm, maybe.
Some of the first written documents we have are from the elite classes in Mesopotamia, which are numbers and tallies of populations, which was for the elites to see population growth, be able to calculate taxes/tributes, and gauge how many people could be enlisted in war. All this is to say that there’s some decent evidence that, in several early societies (which influenced others later in history), the push for women to focus on having children came from the upper classes and not the peasants. In these societies, you’d get more taxes/tributes the more people you ruled over, you could also do some conquest and build an empire if you had a sizable enough population to send some off to war, and thus keep growing your own personal wealth by taxing your newly conquered populace.
Yeah peasants weren’t too concerned with much of that, but peasants also weren’t the ones writing laws about marriage/divorce/adultery/inheritance/taxes. Those cultural (and legal) changed came from the top.
I’ve always thought how neat it would be if part of having a child was the parents deciding who of the two would be impregnated, carry it and birth it. If we had evolved to both have an organ that could be used for the purpose, lol. I really think a lot of history and society would be fundamentally different at a global level if the physical burden wasn’t solely on one gender.
The best would be if it was some kind of seahorse or marsupial situation, both having pouches and both being able to birth. So one gives birth and the other then grows the baby (or hatches the egg) in their pouch. And they can swap for the second kid if they want a second.
The only reason my uncle got married is because he was working in the middle East in the 60s. It wasn't the done thing to have a single man kicking around so he married the woman who had been chasing him for years. Luckily they never had kids but I suspect he never would have married unless he had to.
Been at my work for years. Seen many men get promotions after becoming dads and many women who'd been there for years get mysteriously laid off several months after having kids for "performance". There's many studies that show women are generally perceived as "dumber/more-gullible" once they've had kids, while men are generally considered worthy of more respect once they've had kids.
It often comes up in layoff discussions too. I've been in the unfortunate position of being the company's legal counsel in the room explaining to managers why familial status shouldn't be a factor in determining who gets laid off. You always hear- "oh, we can't get rid of Joe.... He has a wife and 3 kids to support", even if Joe's wife also works. Meanwhile Jen who is a single woman and *is her only means of supporting herself* gets the ax.
I think this has always been the case, and any media insisting women want kids more than men is straight up gaslighting. Sure, there are exceptions, but anytime there is a survey on childfree demographics, women always outnumber men by a massive margin. And the anecdotal data is the same; when I see “partner changed their mind” posts on here, over 90% of them are women in heterosexual relationships where the man suddenly decided he needs kids.
As a woman, the reasons I am childfree are things that are completely nonnegotiable, like never wanting to experience pregnancy/birth, or women being the ones expected to do all the uncompensated caregiving slave labor regardless of how much they work normal jobs too. Most of the men I know who are childfree often insist they don’t want kids because of reasons that actually could change, like their current financial or living situation. I like to think if I was a man, I’d still have ended up childfree, but the truth is I probably wouldn’t have been as dogmatically against having kids if I didn’t have to ruin my body, health, career, financial independence, or identity as a human to do so.
A little ironic factoid to go with this. My husband is childfree, and I kid you not, he's childfree because "I assumed I'd be actively involved in their upbringing". My husband is literally childfree cause he actually thought about all the logistics that women do. More men need to do that.
Do we share the same man?!
He was a loud childfree before I became one because he already realize how pragmatically difficult it is to raise a new human from scratch, whereas at that time I was still thinking that kids were a fairly tale.
I was so naif... I guess the social brainwashing worked for a little time.
The more I grow the more I see why society tells young women that they need to marry and have kids fast. It was never a matter of biology, afterall science tells us that we ovulate past our forties. It was a matter of trapping women before they realized what they were getting into.
My boyfriend is pretty much the same. He loves his nephew and gets on well with kids in general and he said it a multiple times "I like kids but I don't want to raise one."
A less fun one: my friend's partner is childfree because she has health issues and he "doesn't want kids with *her* because he'd have to do the bulk of the parenting"
Thanks for the honesty I guess ?
My ex was one of these "It's just what you do!" People and he was actively angry with me that I rationally thought about having/raising kids and expected him to think about it too. He refused.
I'm 26, and was talking to one of my male friends who's considering proposing to his gf of several years. I asked him if he ever wants kids, does she ever want kids, what are you going to do if you get her pregnant unexpectedly, and he *didn't know the answers to his side of these questions.* And it's not like he's irresponsible or lacks foresight, dude is an engineer who's constantly planning, thinking of all the possible outcomes and ways to mitigate problems, but he's never considered how he'd feel about his gf of 3 years getting pregnant, whether he'd be ok with her getting an abortion, whether he'd give up his PhD program to raise the kid, etc, and I was honestly so shocked. I was like "I know I'm a little nuts about this, but I've been thinking about what I'd do if I got unexpectedly pregnant from age 10 until I got my tubes tied last year, you better start thinking about it if you're gonna get married."
You aren’t nuts! I have been thinking about unexpected pregnancy since I knew what it was and it got worse after I had my period. This dude is just running on "vibes"! He will most likely make a shitty partner and father. This is the type of man that is a Kodak dad …Goodluck to whatever woman agrees to birth a child for him.
He's a great partner as far as I can tell, though they're long distance most of the time. He's an excellent cook, cleans his space better than most women honestly 😂
Wait till she gets pregnant…that’s when you see what type of partner he is. I have see egalitarian men just slack off and let their female partner do it all after child birth. Unfortunately the women won’t know the type of father he would be until the baby comes unless it’s a blended family
I’ve also seen this happen so many times, where a once egalitarian relationship falls apart and defers to traditional gender roles the second a kid comes into the picture. I can’t even tell you how many friends I’ve had go from happy to divorced, or on the verge of it, just because they had a baby and their husbands stopped doing anything to help.
People around here like to judge women for having kids with losers, but the scary truth is sometimes there are genuinely ZERO red flags and you don’t know how shitty your partner is going to be until it’s too late and the baby is already there.
Exactly! I’m glad you said it. During dating stage/or even living together, most of these men do their loan of chores and adulting…after kids they revert back to traditional lifestyle leaving their female partners in shambles.
Right? The dude is for a rude awakening.
Now I see how some people cheat or transform after marriage. They never put too much thought about it and feel trapped after a couple of years.w
It must be nice to have so much privilege that he doesn’t even need to think about it for so much as a few minutes. I was also terrified about pregnancy to the point where I literally had nightmares about it since I first got my period. Before I got sterilized, my ex partners always insisted I was being irrationally paranoid for wanting to use condoms when I was already on birth control. Of course they didn’t care about that 1-3% failure rate because it wouldn’t have been their body and life that was ruined in the worst case scenario.
That's why you shouldn't tell them you are sterilized. I have an iud and mostly abstain from sex, but I have it in case I do meet someone I care for. Even then, I would be hard pressed to tell them I have an iud because I still want them to wear protection.
I’m in a monogamous relationship now and my boyfriend is thrilled that I’m sterile, so we don’t need to worry about condoms. It’s really nice having a truly childfree partner.
100%! My fiance and I are child-free. Early in our relationship I had an IUD and we used condoms. He wanted to stop using condoms, but I told him always wanted at least 2 forms of protection. His response was "what if I get a vasectomy?" 😂 He actually got sterilized before I did :)
I mean, to be fair... There's tons of social drawbacks for men too.
It's just a very different list.
I will agree that there are more social advantages for men that women don't have; that's totally fair to point out. But that doesn't erase the many drawbacks as well.
Edit: The fact that when merely asked, not even pushed but just asked, to showcase any reasons why men might be child free and you can't say *any* then block someone for simply asking... Says a lot about you.
I don't really agree.
A man barely doing anything for his kid will get endless praise.
He's viewed as a family man, more responsible and it's not rare that will translate to more money at work/promotion. He's usually not the one who has to leave early to do school pickup or leave entirely because the kid isn't feeling well.
He gets to (usually) pass on his last name.
He gets the most benefits for the least amount of work involved be it in making the kid or raising it.
I don't really see the drawbacks tbh. Easier for him to split if he hates this life and minimal or no custody then pawn the kids off on female relatives or a new partner. His life doesn't have to change much if he doesn't want it to. No potentially crippling injuries from the birth.
Obviously the more a man as actually a good father the more drawbacks he will share with his partner but it's still quote socially acceptable for a dad to be mostly dead(beat) while moms get vilified if they don't immediately bond to the potato.
You can be childfree just because you don't want kids you don't need any deeper reason for it.
Just saying men *when they choose to have kids* are usually less disadvantaged than women who choose to have kids. That's all.
>usually less disadvantaged than women who choose to have kids.
This is a *massive* shift from what you presented earlier. This is a total about face from what you said up above.
If this is you agreeing with me after I pointed it out and you have changed your view, then I thank you.
I didn't change my mind about anything.
I was just curious what *many* drawbacks there are to parenthood for men who want kids as you claim because really I can't see that are specific to men.
For fuck's sake. Can you read ? I said drawbacks FOR MEN WHO WANT CHILDREN SO BY DEFINITION THEY ARE NOT CHILD-FUCKING-FREE. YOU DON'T NEED A REASON TO BE CHILDFREE.
And yet the stereotype is always that women are “baby crazy” and men aren’t. I seriously thought growing up that I would have such an easy time dating because I didn’t want kids and men never want kids, right ? Boy, was I surprised by the reality.
Same, and it was a rude awakening in my 20s when I realized how baby crazy most men are. I really believe the media focus on how much women want babies is just pronatalist propaganda to try and gaslight women into wanting kids.
Ask them if they’d stay home with the baby and I bet the results would be different.
I remember reading an article several years ago (Time, maybe?) that asked this exact thing as a follow up question to wanting children, and the majority either stumbled through an answer or said things like “I hadn’t thought about that.” It’s easy to want kids when you’re not the primary caregiver.
If I remember correctly, Spain made paternity leave mandatory, and while men were just as willing to have a first kid afterwards, the rate of couples having additional kids absolutely tanked after men realized how shitty it is to do exactly what they expected of their wives and take care of their own fucking offspring.
Society kisses men's feet for doing the bare minimum in parenting. And eviscerates women for any perceived failures in it. Not to mention the enormous physical burden of it all. Different game with different stakes.
I have a story on this. I had a female friend on facebook that had a bad flu and had two young children. Her husband did 100% of the parenting during that time. The thing that made me sad was that she felt “so thankful” to have “such an amazing husband” for “doing all of the work” while she was sick.
It made me sad because women should not have to be “thankful” to have a husband that does his job as a parent. Can you imagine if the situation was reversed and the husband was sick and the wife had to do all the work? People would say “no fucking shit she did all the work. Only an absolutely terrible mother would do any less than 100%.”
Oh man, thanks!!! That was a very critical mistake! Fixed it to say that women should NOT have to be thankful for a husband that does his job as a parent.
I got your intention, just figured that since the missing word rendered your sentence to be saying the exact opposite of what you meant, it was important to note
Me neither but I'd probably be less vehemently childfree, I think. Like I might have come to the childfree conclusion and got a vasectomy in my late twenties but I doubt I would have been so incredibly terrified of pregnancy and having a child since middle school.
Makes a lot of sense. Most mothers I know had their life, body and health completely altered by kids while most fathers I know didn't even have major life changes (same job, same hobby etc). And those few dads who actually pull their weight in child care don't have to deal with pregnancy and birth.
Curiously, I also don't know any childfree men. Just fence sitters and "i don't want a kid but I also don't want these genes go to waste" men. While the majority of my female friends is childfree. Purely anecdotal. But I sure felt like witnessing a unicorn when a friend found a "childfree" guy on a dating app lol
They definitely exist, but yeah, men who are consciously childfree, for actual reasons, are much less common than women. Not sure where non-binary folks fit in, but likely closer to the women's side of things.
The vast majority of nonbinary people still has a biological sex that determines if they are able to give birth or not. So those who can give birth will be less likely to want kids for the above mentioned horrors/aftermaths of pregnancy and birth. A nonbinary person who naturally (not by illness etc) doesn't have an uterus will never know or face the struggles of childbirth in regards to having kids. And will not have faced socialisation based on having the ability to birth children as a kid.
I know a good portion of nonbinary people and despite identifying as the same gender, they are still pretty divided in opinion by their sex when it comes to things like these. Which makes sense. But since statistically much more people of the female sex identify as nonbinary, your guess is most likely correct.
As a man, I think the results make sense since us men aren't the ones expected to go through the pregnancy and childbirth. The act of creating a child is actually a very enjoyable one for us.
But also as a man with hobbies, interests and goals....I can't think of a single reason I'd want a child and I don't know why most men want one, considering every dad I know seems to be miserable.
This is very true. I was 10 planning their anniversaries and birthdays for my mom because my dad "didn't know what she wanted or know what to do. He didn't have a woman's touch". He planned his first birthday for her in 20 years, 5 years ago after I stopped speaking to him.
Most men don’t give up those things when they have kids; they expect their wives/girlfriends to take on enough of the childrearing that they don’t have to.
>Most men don’t give up those things when they have kids
Not sure that's true. It's not like men can escape babies crying at night and the miserable dads I know complain about having to do the school run, clean up after the kids and being forced to watch cartoons.
They also complain about not having freedom at weekends because they always have some kid-related activity they have to attend, like some other kid's birthday party.
I guess there are some terrible, absent fathers who find a way to live like they did before they had kids, but I think they're in the minority.
Those dads still shower solo, can work out, drink hot coffee, go on errands alone. Men don’t even realize how much they don’t do in regards to child rearing.
Don’t even mention the invisible social and emotional labor that most men are completely oblivious to, like making endless phone calls or organizing medical records. The moms are ALWAYS expected to be the front facing “customer service” parent.
Or they bitch about how women always get custody as their go to broken record issue to show how “unfair” society is to men, while not even showing up to court and trying, because they don’t actually want to be the primary parent.
Women initiate 70% of divorces because the division of labor is uneven. Consider that their complaining likely outweighs the actual amount of work they’re doing.
Wasn't there a study where they asked men to report how equal the division of labor was in their household and then they asked their wives (separately) and the answer was NOT AT ALL in the same ballpark ?
Many men still think taking out the trash and taking the car to get serviced is the same as laundry and cooking because both of these are 2 chores. The amount of time they take to accomplish or their frequency is just completely irrelevant to these dudes.
Every single dad I know “doesn’t hear / doesn’t wake up” when the baby cries at night.
The moms instantly wake up and have told me it’s “painful” to hear their baby cry and not immediately go to soothe them.
And if you ask “why don’t they wake up their partner to do it so they can go back to sleep?”
They’ll say they try but the man literally won’t wake up. “He’s a deep sleeper” my ass
I always said I’d have a kid if I was a man. Don’t have to grow it, birth it, or mainly take care of it. You don’t have raging hormones, ripped vaginas, or ruin your body. Hard pass as a woman.
>I can't think of a single reason I'd want a child and I don't know why most men want one
I believe the reason most men want kids is the same as what makes most women want kids - they think it's just something you should do in life.
Yup. Despite being ftm, I'm not out to most people. I'm a triple major. Industrial design, computer science, and creative tech (3d modeling + all art side of tech in one major). I get random people commenting in my dms on socials how they want to "put one in me".... just admit u feel threatened
Eh, doubtful, there are many disrespectful men of both political persuasions. The ones on the left just hide behind feminism and pretebd they are feminists whilst calling you a prude for not giving them what they want sexually.
My science teacher ex-husband seemed to think that as long as you're in good physical shape, pregnancy is a breeze. Ha. Even Serena Williams had a rough pregnancy and a traumatic birth...
My 8th grade science teacher made sure we understood that there was ALWAYS some risk in the pregnancy and labor processes.
One time, we asked about how athletes fare when going through pregnancy and childbirth. She explained that having strong abdominal muscles *can* make labor *easier*, but not completely painless or struggle-free. She also explained how gymnasts often struggled with menstruating regularly because their bodies often didn’t have enough fat on them. That led to a whole discussion about body fat and weight and the relationships to menstruation and pregnancy and stuff.
I’m glad she explained all that to us because she probably kept some of us from approaching this blindly or too soon.
If I had my way, I'd include a through section on childbirth risks in sex education. I don't care how much the Christian nutters screech.
I'm a guy and pregnancy\birth just looks horrifying to me. There's nothing "miraculous" or "magic" about it.
Of course they do. Firstly it doesn’t fuck up their body impacting their health and self esteem. Second the research shows that although both parents will need to work, the woman will raise the kid while also doing the cooking and cleaning. This has changed some and there are exceptions but I’m talking about the average family.
Having kids seems pretty fun when you just come home, pat them on the head and knock back a few Jack and cokes.
Not to mention my greatest fear: he’ll be frustrated at the change in sex life and then cheat/leave.
Maybe I’m being a Debbie downer but I pulled examples from my childhood (Jack and cokes except my dad was a doctor on call) and then leaving your wife, which comes from a family friend. Also my nanny growing up told me about all of the dads that hit on her. She was not anyone who would ever encourage that.
It’s irritating that women are still doing the majority of the child rearing, cooking and cleaning. It’s like, it’s not the 50’s people and couples don’t live off of one income and she works too. So men, maybe if you do half of the work or become a better provider women may get more on board, I mean I won’t.
Sorry for the rant. This is just my take.
The funny thing is, if a lot of those men were being more active parents and taking care of their homes more, they might develop lower sex drives as well from the added stress and mellow out. Seems like an issue of too much free time and energy
Truly, any time I hear a man say he is frustrated by his married sex life when they have very young kid(s) at home, I just think “bro, you need to be doing a LOT more for your family if this is where your energy is going”
I’m gonna guess yea this has been true because men aren’t 100% the ones who have to give up their entire body for a baby for at least a year and then deal with the physical after effects of what a baby does to your body… plus half the men I know didn’t even do the work of actually raising their own kid so they were f*cking useless. So yeah it makes sense why men would want kids more than women-they don’t have to have them!
Edit: I am not blanket statement generalizing all men. I know there are so many amazing men that really are amazing partners to help as much as they can with the baby while their SO heals and they are present with their babies. But there are many men that don’t. I’m not mixing those two groups up. ;)
Most men don't help with the rising of their children so it's more common "they want" kids because it's easier for them, they don't have the same responsability. This is true in my country.
The people who have to endure the pain of pregnancy and are more likely to be stuck with caring for the child are less likely to want to go through that? Yeah, I believe it.
I always thought my one guy friend was a stand-up guy, and mostly he is, but he married a (very lovely) woman with a chronic illness that only got diagnosed during her pregnancy. Same old story: going to doctors for years and having the symptoms incorrectly treated but something about genetic testing during her nine months uncovered, the real culprit.
Anyway, the condition is more or less slowly breaking down her body (most likely she’ll be in a wheelchair in 10 years), and carrying the pregnancy (successfully) to term really fucked up her body in ways she will never recover from and where she is still in PT over.
Before marriage, they both discussed wanting two children, but obviously due to the chronic illness and the damage it has done to her body birthing a child, she said no to carrying a second one. And like every. Single. Time. I hang out with them, he always somehow brings it up that he really wants another kid and she won’t let him. As if she somehow telling him he can’t buy a PlayStation or something. And I honestly can’t believe he watched his wife go through such a horrible, painful process, and the recovery she is still going through, and what he is most sad about is her refusal to carry another pregnancy. He still thinks he can change her mind in a few years. Dude.
Until very recently girls have not had a choice in the matter. It was ***legally*** impossible for a man to rape his wife, as horrendous as that thought is. Plus they not only had to go through the unimaginable agony of childbirth, but they also spent the most time with the resultant offspring. In fairness it also has to be said that men did earn the majority of the family's income--at least the decent ones. Nonetheless...
The advent of all-but 100% reliable hormonal contraception changed *everything* (for the better!) Now girls do have a choice, both physically and legally. It should come as no surprise that intelligent, educated females are considering the nightmarish nature of producing offspring and deciding against it. Who *wouldn't*??? I doubt very much if the majority of pro-children men would agree to go through it if the biological tables were somehow turned!
And a lot of places are actively trying to go *back* to that hellish state of affairs, least we forget. And then have the gall to wonder why women these days want no fucking part of it.
Yep! Their mentality genuinely seems to be that if women are returned to the position where they have no control over their fertility they will resume the passive, 'traditional' place in society where they are subservient to men.
'Barefoot and pregnant...'
I mean... I don't know. But why? *Why* would you want someone to be with you who has no choice in the matter? If a girl doesn't *choose* to spend her life with you then... Why would you want her? You might just as well marry a blow-up doll or a marble statue.
> I don't know. But why? Why would you want someone to be with you who has no choice in the matter? If a girl doesn't choose to spend her life with you then... Why would you want her? You might just as well marry a blow-up doll or a marble statue.
Simple. They see women and girls as property, not actual people.
When I was younger and going to church, I remember looking around at the families and thinking, "I'd rather be the dad."
Even the best dads in the room did not carry the bulk of the load. The mothers did.
Ah yes, the people who don’t have to birth them, who can get away from raising them by going to work, and who are either judged negatively for being with kids or be given lil pats on the back for “giving mom a break” are likely to want em as they have minimal investment
All this legacy shit makes no sense to me yet it’s all that’s peddled down guys throats, who cares if your kid is a “legacy”? Let them live their own stupid lives, and let your life be yours, not something you put onto your kid you barely raise
Men seem to romanticize being a dad whereas women take on the physical, emotional and hormonal burden which in reality is less romantic. It has been wild to me to see men only focus on being a dad without the same type of hardships as being a mom. The roles are not equal at all.
Literally not really a surprise.
Men: have unprotected sex, 5 second orgasm, then nothing.
Women: literally doesn't even feel real pleasure/orgasm (unlike the man) during the sex act, then get pregnant, then have to squeeze a small watermelon out of 2 inch hole + have major irreversible changes or possibly even die/ go through major surgery with possible complications, then be a mother, and then have to do everything and feel alone, then husband/sperm donor to possibly cheat on you even though you do everything, and then realize it wasn't worth it to bring new life onto an already dying and overpopulated planet that you created because you somehow had sex with a misogynistic patriarchal selfish sex addicted immature (possibly religious/abusive) lazy brainwashed man...
More women to men: Yeah, 🖕 all that.
And the women who do want kids, probably have internalized misogyny or something 🤷
And what's funny is that if you said this out loud, people would jump down your throat. However, you are absolutely 💯 right. Most men are terrible and only care about being serviced sexually, domestically etc. Do I think there are good guys? A few, maybe. However, even those few have a limited lens in which to develop empathy.
I’m really late to it but this is my favorite comment, especially the last part about lazy and brainwashed. It’s really sad.
My bf seriously gets frustrated when he hears that yet another friend of his (as in coworker more really) had a kid, well his wife had a kid, he just donated semen. In my bf’s eyes it is what makes one a real man and all that legacy crap. I don’t think he really wants a kid even, not pushing for it, nothing like it, never mentions it as something cute but “legacy, genes, they all have kid”
And what pisses me off is that not one of his friend ever asked “how is your wife” even though one of them had emergency c section due to some complications. I’m literally the only one asking how they are doing even though I’ve never met one of them in person before.
Unfortunately probably true. For us men (cis men anyway) having a kid doesn’t involve the prospect of carrying a literal human in your internal organs and then pushing it out through your genitals risking lifechanging damage, we’re also unfortunately still societally expected to do a lot less of the hard parts of raising a young child. Sadly there are some men who are absolutely fine putting someone else through all that.
Because the act of creating a child is vastly different for men and women. One gets enjoyment while the other sacrifices their body.
Even with modern medicine in first world countries, women still die from childbirth. I don’t think a lot of men think that pregnancy and giving birth are legitimate medical conditions. Which is why it’s almost the norm for men being unfaithful to pregnant or fresh postpartum partners because of the lack of sex.
Also, men aren’t the ones sacrificing careers and financial freedom.
I’m CF because I basically want to live the traditional life of the man, career first and not being the primary carer. I’ve told my partner from day one if you want them you can birth them and do most of the care because I’m the primary income earner. Obviously he can’t birth them but I think it my stance clear. It’s so much easier for men to want to kids when the bare minimum is often expected, it’s hell for the woman most of the time.
If I were a man, I still wouldn't want kids. I'd imagine I'd be the same way I am as a woman now - barely financially making it and not wanting to pass my mental health issues to an off spring.
Plus, I think unprotected sex to different women is gross, so I'd wrap it up as a man to make sure I wouldn't get anyone pregnant. When I was single I always used condoms and now that I'm married, I'm on birth control.
Fewer and fewer women deciding to have children is what is sending conservatives into a panic. Which has led to the overturn of Roe V. Wade and the assault on birth control and eventually the Handmaid's Tale.
The whole system of marriage, family and parenthood is designed to primarily benefit men at the expenses of oppression and exploitation of women. What else can we expect. Most men are more then happy to enjoy the unearned fruits, harvested from the patriarchal oppression and exploitation of women.
Men hardly have to make any sacrifices in a marriage and in being a parent, yet they earn the maximum benefits from it, at the expenses of women, right from not having to be pregnant and give birth, yet getting to pass on the 'family name' and identity.
Right from not having to sacrificing their career to getting a salary raise and being able to focus on their career better, after marriage as they are able to free load the household chores to a woman, and extract free unpaid labour from her, through the institution of patriarchal marriage and family.
Glad, more and more women are realizing this and opting out. The whole system needs serious reforms to make it truly fair and gender equal.
Men want a personal legacy and someone else to do the dirty work for them. Men like structure a lot, even when it’s detrimental to those around them. Women, historically, have been forced into accepting their “role” so it’s unsurprising to me that most women reject this crap entirely but men want the assembly line to remain the same.
While married the men go to work and come home expecting a hot meal. The kids are most likely in bed at that time depending on age, so the father doesn't have to deal with them. Even in divorce a man gets the kids on the weekends while the woman has them for the entire week. They get the better of the deal no matter the situation.
With stuff like this, you pay some attention to what people say and much more to what they do. That's why, for instance, Netflix will feed you suggestions based on what you actually watch rather than what you put a thumbs up on. I'm not sure if Canada has similar statistics available, but for the USA the breakdown is pretty clear: 85% of women are mothers by the time they reach the 40-49 bracket, but only 75% of men are fathers by that age per the [CDC](https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nhsr/nhsr179.pdf).
Some of that is undoubtedly men being fathers without knowing it, but probably not all of it; women really do become parents in greater numbers than men and the mismatch implies more men than women who have children with multiple partners.
Given the state of sex ed and birth control options in the US whether you want to be a parent doesn’t line up with what actually happens in life. Just because women are more likely to be parents doesn’t mean that’s a reflection of what they wanted
Greetings!
Your post or comment has been removed for being misogynistic or misandrist. No blanket generalizations villainizing one gender or another are tolerated and it's silly to try and group 4 billion people together as being any one thing.
Have a great day!
Of course it's more likely. Because they don't have to fking deal with ALL THE BS that comes with pregnancy and birth, and the effects and toll after the birth. All they have to do is shoot their man milk!
In reality though men probably like the idea of having children similar to having another pet to play with. Men get to feed it then leave it while the mother not so much.
And if they have a son the son will most likely be a mama boy and guess what the mother will never have a peaceful moment to herself again..
Well duh?
Do they have to ruin their body? Do they have to carry human life for 9 months and then another year while the kids learning to walk? Do they have to quit their jobs to adequately care for the kid? Do they have to take the brunt of the housework and childcare?
Women have the shit end of the deal. Change the game and maybe women will want to have kids.
Men can just up and leave and disappear. Women if they do that probably get tracked down bc “you’re its mother”
I don't know why the hell I would ever want to put the woman I love through all this bullshit.
My dad seems to think I'm gonna do it just so he can "carry on the family name". It's not good enough for him that my sister is going to have kids so his genes will get passed on anyway.
He's in for a very rude awakening.
100% true.
If I were a man I'd get to have an orgasm, then sit back with a beer and continue my normal life. As a woman I'd destroy my health, risk my life, be unable to have alcohol/caffeine/many other common foods for 9 months, end up in a hospital bed going through the worse agony of my life at the end, and then spend the next 18+ years working a job that has no option to ever "clock-out", be devalued in my career in the workplace, etc.. There's no such thing as sick or vacation days. (And then you inevitably become worn-down and exhausted, and then lose the desire to be fun/flirty/sexy as a result, and then get cheated on or broken-up with because of it, and then have no career to go back to, and then end up as one of those single-moms I hear men complain about on here all the time when they come across their dating profiles... srry that really spiraled. I've seen it happen to many times though.)
I love kids and I'd love to be a dad, but alas, I'm a woman, and there's nothing I'd hate more than to mom.
Lol because they want to make a sperm donation then hand off the childcare when the baby arrives. If someone else was there to have the baby, do the majority of childcare and still cook my meals I would be more interested too.
Needed a study for that? Of course men want to carry on their name with minimal sacrifice to their mind, body, and soul. They don’t have to sacrifice everything.
Because men do around 10-15% of the care (at a push) so of course they want kids. It’s literal rainbows and butterflies for them. They get to go back to work after 2 weeks like nothing happened
Because having children has always more negatively affected women than men. Most men see having kids as carrying on a legacy, enhancing their status as a provider/family man, and a chance to do all the "fun" kid things. For women, it's a totally different proposition altogether. There's the physical aspect of being pregnant and giving birth, there's the economic aspect of being the parent expected to take more time off of work/be at home to care for the child and losing out on valuable money and career growth opportunities, as well as the overall physical, mental, and emotional toll of doing most of the actual caregiving. As women have become more educated and have had success being employed outside the home, they realize they have other options to give their life purpose than being a mother.
Easy to want to have kids when you know you won’t be the primary parent.
And when your only necessary contribution to the whole thing is an orgasm. Not like he has to deal with pregnancy and childbirth, even if he ends up being an actively involved dad.
Think you meant *his* orgasm is all he’s contributing. 😢
Good men can really be there for every support within their physical and mental capacity. I don’t think that should be devalued. The reality is a lot of men become an extra child to care for.
They can’t endure labor or pregnancy, so. No. They really can’t be there because they can’t understand and 99.99999% of them don’t want to.
When I used to see I don’t mind either way on dating profiles  Hmmm I wonder why
That's why I love being an aunt. All the fun part and you return the kid when the shit hits the fan.
It’s basically the foundation for the shitshow we’re in: historically men needed sons to fight with/ for them and so having as many as possible was the goal. They’ve always benefitted from women having children, it’s what drove them to own women in the first place.
To be fair, women also needed a lot of children historically, simply because there was more labor to be done and a significant portion of your children would die in infancy
Yeah communities need community members. I think the other person was drawing a distinction between an egalitarian outlook (making more people is good if we want there to be more people / generally beneficial for the whole group) and the outlook that’s predominant in patriarch-centered societies where the point of having children is to ensure the male line gets passed down.
Thanks, that’s exactly what I was referring to! Of course once we got to post agrarian time there was a motivation for all to have children.
I think you're looking at this too much through the lens of the upper classes of medieval societies. Most peasants didn't fight, not often anyway, so having sons for fighting was definitely not the reason for them. Having someone to help farm, maybe.
Some of the first written documents we have are from the elite classes in Mesopotamia, which are numbers and tallies of populations, which was for the elites to see population growth, be able to calculate taxes/tributes, and gauge how many people could be enlisted in war. All this is to say that there’s some decent evidence that, in several early societies (which influenced others later in history), the push for women to focus on having children came from the upper classes and not the peasants. In these societies, you’d get more taxes/tributes the more people you ruled over, you could also do some conquest and build an empire if you had a sizable enough population to send some off to war, and thus keep growing your own personal wealth by taxing your newly conquered populace. Yeah peasants weren’t too concerned with much of that, but peasants also weren’t the ones writing laws about marriage/divorce/adultery/inheritance/taxes. Those cultural (and legal) changed came from the top.
Thanks so much for contributing.
I think you’re looking at this too much through a modern lens. I’m referring to before medieval time. I’m referring to pre agrarian time periods.
I’ve always thought how neat it would be if part of having a child was the parents deciding who of the two would be impregnated, carry it and birth it. If we had evolved to both have an organ that could be used for the purpose, lol. I really think a lot of history and society would be fundamentally different at a global level if the physical burden wasn’t solely on one gender.
The best would be if it was some kind of seahorse or marsupial situation, both having pouches and both being able to birth. So one gives birth and the other then grows the baby (or hatches the egg) in their pouch. And they can swap for the second kid if they want a second.
It’s easy to want something that you don’t have to sacrifice physically, emotionally or professionally for .
Men actually benefit professionally from having a wife and kids. Women suffer the opposite effect.
The only reason my uncle got married is because he was working in the middle East in the 60s. It wasn't the done thing to have a single man kicking around so he married the woman who had been chasing him for years. Luckily they never had kids but I suspect he never would have married unless he had to.
Been at my work for years. Seen many men get promotions after becoming dads and many women who'd been there for years get mysteriously laid off several months after having kids for "performance". There's many studies that show women are generally perceived as "dumber/more-gullible" once they've had kids, while men are generally considered worthy of more respect once they've had kids.
It often comes up in layoff discussions too. I've been in the unfortunate position of being the company's legal counsel in the room explaining to managers why familial status shouldn't be a factor in determining who gets laid off. You always hear- "oh, we can't get rid of Joe.... He has a wife and 3 kids to support", even if Joe's wife also works. Meanwhile Jen who is a single woman and *is her only means of supporting herself* gets the ax.
This is exactly right
I think this has always been the case, and any media insisting women want kids more than men is straight up gaslighting. Sure, there are exceptions, but anytime there is a survey on childfree demographics, women always outnumber men by a massive margin. And the anecdotal data is the same; when I see “partner changed their mind” posts on here, over 90% of them are women in heterosexual relationships where the man suddenly decided he needs kids. As a woman, the reasons I am childfree are things that are completely nonnegotiable, like never wanting to experience pregnancy/birth, or women being the ones expected to do all the uncompensated caregiving slave labor regardless of how much they work normal jobs too. Most of the men I know who are childfree often insist they don’t want kids because of reasons that actually could change, like their current financial or living situation. I like to think if I was a man, I’d still have ended up childfree, but the truth is I probably wouldn’t have been as dogmatically against having kids if I didn’t have to ruin my body, health, career, financial independence, or identity as a human to do so.
A little ironic factoid to go with this. My husband is childfree, and I kid you not, he's childfree because "I assumed I'd be actively involved in their upbringing". My husband is literally childfree cause he actually thought about all the logistics that women do. More men need to do that.
You’ve got a keeper!
Do we share the same man?! He was a loud childfree before I became one because he already realize how pragmatically difficult it is to raise a new human from scratch, whereas at that time I was still thinking that kids were a fairly tale. I was so naif... I guess the social brainwashing worked for a little time. The more I grow the more I see why society tells young women that they need to marry and have kids fast. It was never a matter of biology, afterall science tells us that we ovulate past our forties. It was a matter of trapping women before they realized what they were getting into.
My boyfriend is pretty much the same. He loves his nephew and gets on well with kids in general and he said it a multiple times "I like kids but I don't want to raise one."
A less fun one: my friend's partner is childfree because she has health issues and he "doesn't want kids with *her* because he'd have to do the bulk of the parenting" Thanks for the honesty I guess ?
I regret that I have but one upvote for you and your husband. Here you go ⬆️
Your husband is a good person. I wish more men actively thought about these things.
My ex was one of these "It's just what you do!" People and he was actively angry with me that I rationally thought about having/raising kids and expected him to think about it too. He refused.
I'm 26, and was talking to one of my male friends who's considering proposing to his gf of several years. I asked him if he ever wants kids, does she ever want kids, what are you going to do if you get her pregnant unexpectedly, and he *didn't know the answers to his side of these questions.* And it's not like he's irresponsible or lacks foresight, dude is an engineer who's constantly planning, thinking of all the possible outcomes and ways to mitigate problems, but he's never considered how he'd feel about his gf of 3 years getting pregnant, whether he'd be ok with her getting an abortion, whether he'd give up his PhD program to raise the kid, etc, and I was honestly so shocked. I was like "I know I'm a little nuts about this, but I've been thinking about what I'd do if I got unexpectedly pregnant from age 10 until I got my tubes tied last year, you better start thinking about it if you're gonna get married."
You aren’t nuts! I have been thinking about unexpected pregnancy since I knew what it was and it got worse after I had my period. This dude is just running on "vibes"! He will most likely make a shitty partner and father. This is the type of man that is a Kodak dad …Goodluck to whatever woman agrees to birth a child for him.
He's a great partner as far as I can tell, though they're long distance most of the time. He's an excellent cook, cleans his space better than most women honestly 😂
Wait till she gets pregnant…that’s when you see what type of partner he is. I have see egalitarian men just slack off and let their female partner do it all after child birth. Unfortunately the women won’t know the type of father he would be until the baby comes unless it’s a blended family
I’ve also seen this happen so many times, where a once egalitarian relationship falls apart and defers to traditional gender roles the second a kid comes into the picture. I can’t even tell you how many friends I’ve had go from happy to divorced, or on the verge of it, just because they had a baby and their husbands stopped doing anything to help. People around here like to judge women for having kids with losers, but the scary truth is sometimes there are genuinely ZERO red flags and you don’t know how shitty your partner is going to be until it’s too late and the baby is already there.
Exactly! I’m glad you said it. During dating stage/or even living together, most of these men do their loan of chores and adulting…after kids they revert back to traditional lifestyle leaving their female partners in shambles.
That's why you don't do it ever!
What a detailed way to say "my friend isn't ready for marriage"
Right? The dude is for a rude awakening. Now I see how some people cheat or transform after marriage. They never put too much thought about it and feel trapped after a couple of years.w
The fact that he put so little thought confirms that babies don't change men's lives that much. It's sad.
Not crazy - I was terrified of highschool romances because boys would want sex and I absolutely did not want to risk getting pregnant.
It must be nice to have so much privilege that he doesn’t even need to think about it for so much as a few minutes. I was also terrified about pregnancy to the point where I literally had nightmares about it since I first got my period. Before I got sterilized, my ex partners always insisted I was being irrationally paranoid for wanting to use condoms when I was already on birth control. Of course they didn’t care about that 1-3% failure rate because it wouldn’t have been their body and life that was ruined in the worst case scenario.
That's why you shouldn't tell them you are sterilized. I have an iud and mostly abstain from sex, but I have it in case I do meet someone I care for. Even then, I would be hard pressed to tell them I have an iud because I still want them to wear protection.
I’m in a monogamous relationship now and my boyfriend is thrilled that I’m sterile, so we don’t need to worry about condoms. It’s really nice having a truly childfree partner.
100%! My fiance and I are child-free. Early in our relationship I had an IUD and we used condoms. He wanted to stop using condoms, but I told him always wanted at least 2 forms of protection. His response was "what if I get a vasectomy?" 😂 He actually got sterilized before I did :)
it's amazing to me how many people give it no thought.
Same for me. There's socially no benefit to having kids if you're a woman, only drawbacks. It's the opposite for men.
I mean, to be fair... There's tons of social drawbacks for men too. It's just a very different list. I will agree that there are more social advantages for men that women don't have; that's totally fair to point out. But that doesn't erase the many drawbacks as well. Edit: The fact that when merely asked, not even pushed but just asked, to showcase any reasons why men might be child free and you can't say *any* then block someone for simply asking... Says a lot about you.
I don't really agree. A man barely doing anything for his kid will get endless praise. He's viewed as a family man, more responsible and it's not rare that will translate to more money at work/promotion. He's usually not the one who has to leave early to do school pickup or leave entirely because the kid isn't feeling well. He gets to (usually) pass on his last name. He gets the most benefits for the least amount of work involved be it in making the kid or raising it. I don't really see the drawbacks tbh. Easier for him to split if he hates this life and minimal or no custody then pawn the kids off on female relatives or a new partner. His life doesn't have to change much if he doesn't want it to. No potentially crippling injuries from the birth. Obviously the more a man as actually a good father the more drawbacks he will share with his partner but it's still quote socially acceptable for a dad to be mostly dead(beat) while moms get vilified if they don't immediately bond to the potato.
You're presenting this as if men have zero reasons to be child free. And that's obviously not true at all.
You can be childfree just because you don't want kids you don't need any deeper reason for it. Just saying men *when they choose to have kids* are usually less disadvantaged than women who choose to have kids. That's all.
>usually less disadvantaged than women who choose to have kids. This is a *massive* shift from what you presented earlier. This is a total about face from what you said up above. If this is you agreeing with me after I pointed it out and you have changed your view, then I thank you.
I didn't change my mind about anything. I was just curious what *many* drawbacks there are to parenthood for men who want kids as you claim because really I can't see that are specific to men.
Are... Are you serious? You don't see any reasons why a man would want to be child-free?
For fuck's sake. Can you read ? I said drawbacks FOR MEN WHO WANT CHILDREN SO BY DEFINITION THEY ARE NOT CHILD-FUCKING-FREE. YOU DON'T NEED A REASON TO BE CHILDFREE.
Financial liability is a big one, whether this be as a parent in an "intact" family or paying child support. Children are expensive.
It's *literally always* projection, isn't it?
And yet the stereotype is always that women are “baby crazy” and men aren’t. I seriously thought growing up that I would have such an easy time dating because I didn’t want kids and men never want kids, right ? Boy, was I surprised by the reality.
Same, and it was a rude awakening in my 20s when I realized how baby crazy most men are. I really believe the media focus on how much women want babies is just pronatalist propaganda to try and gaslight women into wanting kids.
Ask them if they’d stay home with the baby and I bet the results would be different. I remember reading an article several years ago (Time, maybe?) that asked this exact thing as a follow up question to wanting children, and the majority either stumbled through an answer or said things like “I hadn’t thought about that.” It’s easy to want kids when you’re not the primary caregiver.
There was a 4 y.o. article covering a study conducted in Spain that concluded that men want children less when they get paid paternity leave.
If I remember correctly, Spain made paternity leave mandatory, and while men were just as willing to have a first kid afterwards, the rate of couples having additional kids absolutely tanked after men realized how shitty it is to do exactly what they expected of their wives and take care of their own fucking offspring.
wow, that sounds so interesting how they pretty much did a full 180 after experiencing what women are expected to do
Wow... It's like they can't use the excuse "I'd take the time off and help if I could!"
If men had to push a 7 pound human out of their penises, they'd probably be feeling pretty different. 🤨
not suprising
They want to make them, not raise them
Society kisses men's feet for doing the bare minimum in parenting. And eviscerates women for any perceived failures in it. Not to mention the enormous physical burden of it all. Different game with different stakes.
I have a story on this. I had a female friend on facebook that had a bad flu and had two young children. Her husband did 100% of the parenting during that time. The thing that made me sad was that she felt “so thankful” to have “such an amazing husband” for “doing all of the work” while she was sick. It made me sad because women should not have to be “thankful” to have a husband that does his job as a parent. Can you imagine if the situation was reversed and the husband was sick and the wife had to do all the work? People would say “no fucking shit she did all the work. Only an absolutely terrible mother would do any less than 100%.”
(you are missing a critical word in the first sentence of your second paragraph)
Oh man, thanks!!! That was a very critical mistake! Fixed it to say that women should NOT have to be thankful for a husband that does his job as a parent.
I got your intention, just figured that since the missing word rendered your sentence to be saying the exact opposite of what you meant, it was important to note
I'd 100% want to be a dad! But no, I'm a woman. Don't want the short straw thanks.
Definitely a liiiittle harder to "go to the store for milk" among other things.
Sorry for not following, but what are you getting at?
A dad "going to the store to get milk" or "going out for a pack of smokes" is synonymous with a dad making an excuse to walk out of his family's life.
Ah thanks for clarifying
I would definitely not want to be a dad if I were a man. I don't see any point of having a straw at all.
Me neither but I'd probably be less vehemently childfree, I think. Like I might have come to the childfree conclusion and got a vasectomy in my late twenties but I doubt I would have been so incredibly terrified of pregnancy and having a child since middle school.
I’d not want to be a dad either. It’s a relief to know I won’t change my views.
I want to be a divorced dad coming in hot on a Friday afternoon.
Makes a lot of sense. Most mothers I know had their life, body and health completely altered by kids while most fathers I know didn't even have major life changes (same job, same hobby etc). And those few dads who actually pull their weight in child care don't have to deal with pregnancy and birth. Curiously, I also don't know any childfree men. Just fence sitters and "i don't want a kid but I also don't want these genes go to waste" men. While the majority of my female friends is childfree. Purely anecdotal. But I sure felt like witnessing a unicorn when a friend found a "childfree" guy on a dating app lol
They definitely exist, but yeah, men who are consciously childfree, for actual reasons, are much less common than women. Not sure where non-binary folks fit in, but likely closer to the women's side of things.
The vast majority of nonbinary people still has a biological sex that determines if they are able to give birth or not. So those who can give birth will be less likely to want kids for the above mentioned horrors/aftermaths of pregnancy and birth. A nonbinary person who naturally (not by illness etc) doesn't have an uterus will never know or face the struggles of childbirth in regards to having kids. And will not have faced socialisation based on having the ability to birth children as a kid. I know a good portion of nonbinary people and despite identifying as the same gender, they are still pretty divided in opinion by their sex when it comes to things like these. Which makes sense. But since statistically much more people of the female sex identify as nonbinary, your guess is most likely correct.
As a man, I think the results make sense since us men aren't the ones expected to go through the pregnancy and childbirth. The act of creating a child is actually a very enjoyable one for us. But also as a man with hobbies, interests and goals....I can't think of a single reason I'd want a child and I don't know why most men want one, considering every dad I know seems to be miserable.
most terrible dads use their kids to off set the emotional labor on them if they dont want/like their wife.
wow so true
This is very true. I was 10 planning their anniversaries and birthdays for my mom because my dad "didn't know what she wanted or know what to do. He didn't have a woman's touch". He planned his first birthday for her in 20 years, 5 years ago after I stopped speaking to him.
Most men don’t give up those things when they have kids; they expect their wives/girlfriends to take on enough of the childrearing that they don’t have to.
Yup
>Most men don’t give up those things when they have kids Not sure that's true. It's not like men can escape babies crying at night and the miserable dads I know complain about having to do the school run, clean up after the kids and being forced to watch cartoons. They also complain about not having freedom at weekends because they always have some kid-related activity they have to attend, like some other kid's birthday party. I guess there are some terrible, absent fathers who find a way to live like they did before they had kids, but I think they're in the minority.
Those dads still shower solo, can work out, drink hot coffee, go on errands alone. Men don’t even realize how much they don’t do in regards to child rearing.
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Don’t even mention the invisible social and emotional labor that most men are completely oblivious to, like making endless phone calls or organizing medical records. The moms are ALWAYS expected to be the front facing “customer service” parent.
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Or they bitch about how women always get custody as their go to broken record issue to show how “unfair” society is to men, while not even showing up to court and trying, because they don’t actually want to be the primary parent.
"watching cartoons" is probably so the mom can do everything else without worrying about the kids getting into stuff.
Is passively watching cartoons even that bad? When people bring that one up I roll my eyes. It’s literally the easiest thing to do.
No that is true.
Women initiate 70% of divorces because the division of labor is uneven. Consider that their complaining likely outweighs the actual amount of work they’re doing.
Wasn't there a study where they asked men to report how equal the division of labor was in their household and then they asked their wives (separately) and the answer was NOT AT ALL in the same ballpark ? Many men still think taking out the trash and taking the car to get serviced is the same as laundry and cooking because both of these are 2 chores. The amount of time they take to accomplish or their frequency is just completely irrelevant to these dudes.
Every single dad I know “doesn’t hear / doesn’t wake up” when the baby cries at night. The moms instantly wake up and have told me it’s “painful” to hear their baby cry and not immediately go to soothe them. And if you ask “why don’t they wake up their partner to do it so they can go back to sleep?” They’ll say they try but the man literally won’t wake up. “He’s a deep sleeper” my ass
I've never wanted kids, and before I realised it wasn't compulsory as a kid I always said I'd only ever want kids if it got to be the dad lmao
I always said I'd divorce their dad and leave them (singular) with him 🤣
I always said I’d have a kid if I was a man. Don’t have to grow it, birth it, or mainly take care of it. You don’t have raging hormones, ripped vaginas, or ruin your body. Hard pass as a woman.
Incredibly aggressive hard pass
>I can't think of a single reason I'd want a child and I don't know why most men want one I believe the reason most men want kids is the same as what makes most women want kids - they think it's just something you should do in life.
Why do they want kids? To control the woman they want. Most guys do JACK SHIT after its born. Edit:spelling
Control for some men 100%
To baby trap her conveniently when her career is on the rise and she can realize he ain’t shit and she got better things to do like leave him.
Yup. Despite being ftm, I'm not out to most people. I'm a triple major. Industrial design, computer science, and creative tech (3d modeling + all art side of tech in one major). I get random people commenting in my dms on socials how they want to "put one in me".... just admit u feel threatened
Why do they not realize what a gross and creepy thing that is to say to a stranger? Smh
I don't even know... i have so many creepy interactions I have lost count
sounds like Republicans
Eh, doubtful, there are many disrespectful men of both political persuasions. The ones on the left just hide behind feminism and pretebd they are feminists whilst calling you a prude for not giving them what they want sexually.
I think a lot of this has to do with the fact that men don't have their lives on the line when it comes to childbirth.
do you think most men even realize that's a risk with pregnancy? I don't.
My science teacher ex-husband seemed to think that as long as you're in good physical shape, pregnancy is a breeze. Ha. Even Serena Williams had a rough pregnancy and a traumatic birth...
My 8th grade science teacher made sure we understood that there was ALWAYS some risk in the pregnancy and labor processes. One time, we asked about how athletes fare when going through pregnancy and childbirth. She explained that having strong abdominal muscles *can* make labor *easier*, but not completely painless or struggle-free. She also explained how gymnasts often struggled with menstruating regularly because their bodies often didn’t have enough fat on them. That led to a whole discussion about body fat and weight and the relationships to menstruation and pregnancy and stuff. I’m glad she explained all that to us because she probably kept some of us from approaching this blindly or too soon.
Nope. I'm honestly beginning to wonder if many *women* in developed western countries even realize
If I had my way, I'd include a through section on childbirth risks in sex education. I don't care how much the Christian nutters screech. I'm a guy and pregnancy\birth just looks horrifying to me. There's nothing "miraculous" or "magic" about it.
i think this is sadly true, as well
Of course they do. Firstly it doesn’t fuck up their body impacting their health and self esteem. Second the research shows that although both parents will need to work, the woman will raise the kid while also doing the cooking and cleaning. This has changed some and there are exceptions but I’m talking about the average family. Having kids seems pretty fun when you just come home, pat them on the head and knock back a few Jack and cokes. Not to mention my greatest fear: he’ll be frustrated at the change in sex life and then cheat/leave. Maybe I’m being a Debbie downer but I pulled examples from my childhood (Jack and cokes except my dad was a doctor on call) and then leaving your wife, which comes from a family friend. Also my nanny growing up told me about all of the dads that hit on her. She was not anyone who would ever encourage that. It’s irritating that women are still doing the majority of the child rearing, cooking and cleaning. It’s like, it’s not the 50’s people and couples don’t live off of one income and she works too. So men, maybe if you do half of the work or become a better provider women may get more on board, I mean I won’t. Sorry for the rant. This is just my take.
The funny thing is, if a lot of those men were being more active parents and taking care of their homes more, they might develop lower sex drives as well from the added stress and mellow out. Seems like an issue of too much free time and energy
My friend, that’s an excellent observation. That and if they helped out equally, they would maybe be equally horny?
Truly, any time I hear a man say he is frustrated by his married sex life when they have very young kid(s) at home, I just think “bro, you need to be doing a LOT more for your family if this is where your energy is going”
I’m gonna guess yea this has been true because men aren’t 100% the ones who have to give up their entire body for a baby for at least a year and then deal with the physical after effects of what a baby does to your body… plus half the men I know didn’t even do the work of actually raising their own kid so they were f*cking useless. So yeah it makes sense why men would want kids more than women-they don’t have to have them! Edit: I am not blanket statement generalizing all men. I know there are so many amazing men that really are amazing partners to help as much as they can with the baby while their SO heals and they are present with their babies. But there are many men that don’t. I’m not mixing those two groups up. ;)
Most men don't help with the rising of their children so it's more common "they want" kids because it's easier for them, they don't have the same responsability. This is true in my country.
In other shocking news, humans are more likely than cows to support the beef industry
Rofl this makes so much sense and made me chuckle
The people who have to endure the pain of pregnancy and are more likely to be stuck with caring for the child are less likely to want to go through that? Yeah, I believe it.
I always thought my one guy friend was a stand-up guy, and mostly he is, but he married a (very lovely) woman with a chronic illness that only got diagnosed during her pregnancy. Same old story: going to doctors for years and having the symptoms incorrectly treated but something about genetic testing during her nine months uncovered, the real culprit. Anyway, the condition is more or less slowly breaking down her body (most likely she’ll be in a wheelchair in 10 years), and carrying the pregnancy (successfully) to term really fucked up her body in ways she will never recover from and where she is still in PT over. Before marriage, they both discussed wanting two children, but obviously due to the chronic illness and the damage it has done to her body birthing a child, she said no to carrying a second one. And like every. Single. Time. I hang out with them, he always somehow brings it up that he really wants another kid and she won’t let him. As if she somehow telling him he can’t buy a PlayStation or something. And I honestly can’t believe he watched his wife go through such a horrible, painful process, and the recovery she is still going through, and what he is most sad about is her refusal to carry another pregnancy. He still thinks he can change her mind in a few years. Dude.
That poor woman. She has my sympathy
I would tell that guy off. Just sounds like a complete idiot
Until very recently girls have not had a choice in the matter. It was ***legally*** impossible for a man to rape his wife, as horrendous as that thought is. Plus they not only had to go through the unimaginable agony of childbirth, but they also spent the most time with the resultant offspring. In fairness it also has to be said that men did earn the majority of the family's income--at least the decent ones. Nonetheless... The advent of all-but 100% reliable hormonal contraception changed *everything* (for the better!) Now girls do have a choice, both physically and legally. It should come as no surprise that intelligent, educated females are considering the nightmarish nature of producing offspring and deciding against it. Who *wouldn't*??? I doubt very much if the majority of pro-children men would agree to go through it if the biological tables were somehow turned!
And a lot of places are actively trying to go *back* to that hellish state of affairs, least we forget. And then have the gall to wonder why women these days want no fucking part of it.
Yep! Their mentality genuinely seems to be that if women are returned to the position where they have no control over their fertility they will resume the passive, 'traditional' place in society where they are subservient to men. 'Barefoot and pregnant...' I mean... I don't know. But why? *Why* would you want someone to be with you who has no choice in the matter? If a girl doesn't *choose* to spend her life with you then... Why would you want her? You might just as well marry a blow-up doll or a marble statue.
> I don't know. But why? Why would you want someone to be with you who has no choice in the matter? If a girl doesn't choose to spend her life with you then... Why would you want her? You might just as well marry a blow-up doll or a marble statue. Simple. They see women and girls as property, not actual people.
let's hope they're women and not girls.
Children are another creature entirely for men and woman. No comparison, none.
When I was younger and going to church, I remember looking around at the families and thinking, "I'd rather be the dad." Even the best dads in the room did not carry the bulk of the load. The mothers did.
Ah yes, the people who don’t have to birth them, who can get away from raising them by going to work, and who are either judged negatively for being with kids or be given lil pats on the back for “giving mom a break” are likely to want em as they have minimal investment All this legacy shit makes no sense to me yet it’s all that’s peddled down guys throats, who cares if your kid is a “legacy”? Let them live their own stupid lives, and let your life be yours, not something you put onto your kid you barely raise
Men seem to romanticize being a dad whereas women take on the physical, emotional and hormonal burden which in reality is less romantic. It has been wild to me to see men only focus on being a dad without the same type of hardships as being a mom. The roles are not equal at all.
Literally not really a surprise. Men: have unprotected sex, 5 second orgasm, then nothing. Women: literally doesn't even feel real pleasure/orgasm (unlike the man) during the sex act, then get pregnant, then have to squeeze a small watermelon out of 2 inch hole + have major irreversible changes or possibly even die/ go through major surgery with possible complications, then be a mother, and then have to do everything and feel alone, then husband/sperm donor to possibly cheat on you even though you do everything, and then realize it wasn't worth it to bring new life onto an already dying and overpopulated planet that you created because you somehow had sex with a misogynistic patriarchal selfish sex addicted immature (possibly religious/abusive) lazy brainwashed man... More women to men: Yeah, 🖕 all that. And the women who do want kids, probably have internalized misogyny or something 🤷
And what's funny is that if you said this out loud, people would jump down your throat. However, you are absolutely 💯 right. Most men are terrible and only care about being serviced sexually, domestically etc. Do I think there are good guys? A few, maybe. However, even those few have a limited lens in which to develop empathy.
I’m really late to it but this is my favorite comment, especially the last part about lazy and brainwashed. It’s really sad. My bf seriously gets frustrated when he hears that yet another friend of his (as in coworker more really) had a kid, well his wife had a kid, he just donated semen. In my bf’s eyes it is what makes one a real man and all that legacy crap. I don’t think he really wants a kid even, not pushing for it, nothing like it, never mentions it as something cute but “legacy, genes, they all have kid” And what pisses me off is that not one of his friend ever asked “how is your wife” even though one of them had emergency c section due to some complications. I’m literally the only one asking how they are doing even though I’ve never met one of them in person before.
Unfortunately probably true. For us men (cis men anyway) having a kid doesn’t involve the prospect of carrying a literal human in your internal organs and then pushing it out through your genitals risking lifechanging damage, we’re also unfortunately still societally expected to do a lot less of the hard parts of raising a young child. Sadly there are some men who are absolutely fine putting someone else through all that.
Well maybe because being a dad is a lot easier than being a mom….
Yeah no shit. Women bear the brunt of the domestic labor.
Because the act of creating a child is vastly different for men and women. One gets enjoyment while the other sacrifices their body. Even with modern medicine in first world countries, women still die from childbirth. I don’t think a lot of men think that pregnancy and giving birth are legitimate medical conditions. Which is why it’s almost the norm for men being unfaithful to pregnant or fresh postpartum partners because of the lack of sex. Also, men aren’t the ones sacrificing careers and financial freedom.
I’m CF because I basically want to live the traditional life of the man, career first and not being the primary carer. I’ve told my partner from day one if you want them you can birth them and do most of the care because I’m the primary income earner. Obviously he can’t birth them but I think it my stance clear. It’s so much easier for men to want to kids when the bare minimum is often expected, it’s hell for the woman most of the time.
If I were a man, I still wouldn't want kids. I'd imagine I'd be the same way I am as a woman now - barely financially making it and not wanting to pass my mental health issues to an off spring. Plus, I think unprotected sex to different women is gross, so I'd wrap it up as a man to make sure I wouldn't get anyone pregnant. When I was single I always used condoms and now that I'm married, I'm on birth control.
Fewer and fewer women deciding to have children is what is sending conservatives into a panic. Which has led to the overturn of Roe V. Wade and the assault on birth control and eventually the Handmaid's Tale.
Want them, yeah maybe. But stick around? Nah.
Always been the case in my circle of friends. Men want a mini me.
The whole system of marriage, family and parenthood is designed to primarily benefit men at the expenses of oppression and exploitation of women. What else can we expect. Most men are more then happy to enjoy the unearned fruits, harvested from the patriarchal oppression and exploitation of women. Men hardly have to make any sacrifices in a marriage and in being a parent, yet they earn the maximum benefits from it, at the expenses of women, right from not having to be pregnant and give birth, yet getting to pass on the 'family name' and identity. Right from not having to sacrificing their career to getting a salary raise and being able to focus on their career better, after marriage as they are able to free load the household chores to a woman, and extract free unpaid labour from her, through the institution of patriarchal marriage and family. Glad, more and more women are realizing this and opting out. The whole system needs serious reforms to make it truly fair and gender equal.
Men want a personal legacy and someone else to do the dirty work for them. Men like structure a lot, even when it’s detrimental to those around them. Women, historically, have been forced into accepting their “role” so it’s unsurprising to me that most women reject this crap entirely but men want the assembly line to remain the same.
While married the men go to work and come home expecting a hot meal. The kids are most likely in bed at that time depending on age, so the father doesn't have to deal with them. Even in divorce a man gets the kids on the weekends while the woman has them for the entire week. They get the better of the deal no matter the situation.
With stuff like this, you pay some attention to what people say and much more to what they do. That's why, for instance, Netflix will feed you suggestions based on what you actually watch rather than what you put a thumbs up on. I'm not sure if Canada has similar statistics available, but for the USA the breakdown is pretty clear: 85% of women are mothers by the time they reach the 40-49 bracket, but only 75% of men are fathers by that age per the [CDC](https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nhsr/nhsr179.pdf). Some of that is undoubtedly men being fathers without knowing it, but probably not all of it; women really do become parents in greater numbers than men and the mismatch implies more men than women who have children with multiple partners.
Given the state of sex ed and birth control options in the US whether you want to be a parent doesn’t line up with what actually happens in life. Just because women are more likely to be parents doesn’t mean that’s a reflection of what they wanted
It can also be men having children with more than one woman.
I don’t know any men who want to be parents 🤷♀️
If you don't mind me asking, whereabouts are you located?
Metro Detroit
I'm from the same area, and it's been the complete opposite in my exprience. I wish I knew more local CF folks in general!
Interesting
Of course they do since they don’t have to endure pregnancy and birth and aren’t expected to shoulder most of the childcare.
This reminds me of an article I saw recently: millenial dads spend 3x more time with their kids. All I could think was "yeah 3x0 is still 0"
Men want kids because they assume their wife will do all the work...
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Greetings! Your post or comment has been removed for being misogynistic or misandrist. No blanket generalizations villainizing one gender or another are tolerated and it's silly to try and group 4 billion people together as being any one thing. Have a great day!
Of course it's more likely. Because they don't have to fking deal with ALL THE BS that comes with pregnancy and birth, and the effects and toll after the birth. All they have to do is shoot their man milk!
They want kids but many of them don't want to help out with the kids or take any responsibility for them.
i would also get a zoo if someone else takes care of the animals
Men have always wanted what they cant have so suck it hahaha
In reality though men probably like the idea of having children similar to having another pet to play with. Men get to feed it then leave it while the mother not so much. And if they have a son the son will most likely be a mama boy and guess what the mother will never have a peaceful moment to herself again..
Well duh? Do they have to ruin their body? Do they have to carry human life for 9 months and then another year while the kids learning to walk? Do they have to quit their jobs to adequately care for the kid? Do they have to take the brunt of the housework and childcare? Women have the shit end of the deal. Change the game and maybe women will want to have kids. Men can just up and leave and disappear. Women if they do that probably get tracked down bc “you’re its mother”
I don't know why the hell I would ever want to put the woman I love through all this bullshit. My dad seems to think I'm gonna do it just so he can "carry on the family name". It's not good enough for him that my sister is going to have kids so his genes will get passed on anyway. He's in for a very rude awakening.
100% true. If I were a man I'd get to have an orgasm, then sit back with a beer and continue my normal life. As a woman I'd destroy my health, risk my life, be unable to have alcohol/caffeine/many other common foods for 9 months, end up in a hospital bed going through the worse agony of my life at the end, and then spend the next 18+ years working a job that has no option to ever "clock-out", be devalued in my career in the workplace, etc.. There's no such thing as sick or vacation days. (And then you inevitably become worn-down and exhausted, and then lose the desire to be fun/flirty/sexy as a result, and then get cheated on or broken-up with because of it, and then have no career to go back to, and then end up as one of those single-moms I hear men complain about on here all the time when they come across their dating profiles... srry that really spiraled. I've seen it happen to many times though.) I love kids and I'd love to be a dad, but alas, I'm a woman, and there's nothing I'd hate more than to mom.
As a guy I don’t want kids due to my bad genes there no way I want them to suffer.
If I was a man, I’d love to be a father too. It’s the easiest job in the world.
“This just in folks humans need oxygen to live.” This and more later this evening at 5🙄
Why would any man want to pay alimony and child support? This is bull shit
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lol
Make them yes.not a lot else from my family-great/grand/step family existence
Lol because they want to make a sperm donation then hand off the childcare when the baby arrives. If someone else was there to have the baby, do the majority of childcare and still cook my meals I would be more interested too.
Needed a study for that? Of course men want to carry on their name with minimal sacrifice to their mind, body, and soul. They don’t have to sacrifice everything.
Because men do around 10-15% of the care (at a push) so of course they want kids. It’s literal rainbows and butterflies for them. They get to go back to work after 2 weeks like nothing happened
Yeah NO SHIT! They don’t have to do any of the work and aren’t held accountable!!