The Decrease of Women Wanting Children

 I saw a video recently in which a man proposed that more and more women wanted to have children, but were forced or felt like they had to get an education, get a job/career and prioritise that over having a family.

I talked recently about whether modern man were struggling to live with and have a relationship with the modern, empowered women.  What I said in that post I believe ties in to this question.

Is there is decrease in the amount of women who want children?  If you look at statistics, that answer would indicate yes.   But, statistics do not show context. 

Up until the last few decades, the question of whether you were going to have a husband and a child  was not so much of a choice, but an expectation.  Regardless of whether you worked on or, this was a presumption.

How many women went into marriage or a relationship actually wanting children and how many just did it because that was the norm?

Traditionally, women who chose not to have a husband and a family were ridiculed.  They were called old maids or spinsters.  “Left on the shelf” is certainly a phrase that I heard, even well into the 2000s.  In some places, this way of thinking is still in place.

An unmarried man has always been called a bachelor, a woman earns the title of spinster when she reaches an age where society believes that she should have married and had children, but didn’t.  She is then an old maid.  Left on the shelf.  As if she were an item to be bought in a shop.

The ability to use contraception solved problems for many women who did not want a child and wanted to prevent from doing so/were unable to care for another child etc.  But even when contraception was brought in, there was still the expectation that a woman would want to have a child.  That it was the female default setting.  That simply is not the case for all women.

So the question of has been a decrease in the number of women who want children is both yes, and no.  Because until the past few decades, the women who didn’t want children, who didn’t see themselves as being a mother; ended up being a mother anyway.

Let us not forget also the number of women who are on the fence about having children.  That they would be happy if it happened, happy if it didn’t.  Or those who want children, but want to do so once they have accomplished other things in their life first.  Education, career etc.

It is the women in the above two categories who are also affecting the statistics of the number of women who want children.  More so (I believe) than the women who know from an early age that they do not want to conceive.

As I talked about in my previous post, women have so many more options now than a simple goal or expectation of being a wife and mother.  Many women still want this, but they want (and are entitled to) a standard that was not afforded to women before them.

Some want an established career before they become a mother.  Others may want a child/are on the fence; but are wary.  I do not believe that this is because women are worried that they cannot care for a child, it is more because they are worried about losing themselves in the role.  Worried that their participation in the child’s upbringing and the house chores/cooking etc levels will be far in excess of their partner.

This is not an unreasonable expectation.

I am in the camp of “never wanted to have a child”.   Thankfully because of contraception, I do not have one.

But for those that do or those that are undecided, they are right to have those reservations.  They do not want to fall into roles of being the primary parent and primary person to take of and run the household, whilst also working.  

They do not want to become stay at home mothers, only for them to be the sole person taking care of the child/household when their partner’s only contribution is working and take out the bins once a week with zero evening/weekend participation.

They also do not want to have a child with someone, only for that person to change their mind or decide to leave the relationship, leaving sole care of the child to the woman, some of whom then struggle to get child support from the father.   

They do not want to become single mothers, a person who has always, and still is, looked down on in society.   Single mothers have always been named called.  From whores to scroungers.  Despite, as we know, it taking two people to make a baby.

These worries are real and valid.  Not all men by any means are going to be the kind of man that women need to worry about in situations such as above.  Many will participate fully in the home and upbringing of their children.  The majority will not disappear from their children's lives.

But there are enough men that do not meet these basic expectations, basic levels of what you can expect from a partner to worry women.  

Women who have worked for and have been given the advantages fought for by women generations before them, lives of their own.  Rights of their own.  An identity outside of simply being a wife and mother.

In short, we do not want to go back.

So yes, birth rates and the number of women wanting to/having children are decreasing.  Because until we get to a place in society where an equality of participation is the norm, birth rates will decrease, and divorce rates will increase.

We can do better and we have the tools to be able to do so.  Men and women.  All of us.