The notion that a man has some say in the decision to have a child has been frowned upon for a while. "It's the womans choice" is the moral message in fiction that touches the subject, for like 40 years plus now.
Or even before in some cases. In the United States a woman has raped a male child and then later successfully sued that boy for child support when he reached adulthood.
"now 24 and living in Phoenix, graduated from high school, went to college and became a medical assistant.
"Then two years ago, the state served him with papers demanding child support. That's how he found out he had a then-6-year-old daughter."
24-2-6-9months seems to indicate he was at least 15 when the relevant sex happened and then it would have been legally consented. Also he wants to take up fatherhood(and he never pressed charges against her), so this case is not as simple as you stated.
Otherwise it is quite ridiculous and outrageous, that there are really 2 standards when it comes to sex with minors and the consequences.
I do not think it is an accurate description of facts or legal reality. Telling people who might just believe you stuff like that can be needlessly inflammatory.
Last I checked, you can't have a baby without unprotected sex. If you ejaculate inside a fertile woman, how do you not see that as a choice?
Except in cases of men who are raped, it absolutely represents a choice on the part of the man. The fact that you can't force a woman to have an abortion (or to not have one) after the fact doesn't seem like an infringement on your rights.
The failure rate of contraception in real life is quite high, and this is not even accounting for various methods of "baby trapping" (the old pin in the condom etc). If you're a well-paid professional in NYC, the negotiated market rate for an abortion is well north of $50k.
> negotiated market rate for an abortion is well north of $50k.
Ozer reportedly offered her tens of thousands of dollars to terminate her pregnancy, amid other messages, calling her “white trash” and telling her “I f***ing hate you.” ... He reportedly made the cash payment offer through a colleague. The Post reports that the colleague told Naymark, “He’d be willing to offer a lump sum of money to you . . . I’m sure he would have no problem with 50k-75,000+.”
That's a "negotiated market rate"? From your link:
The friend’s purported offer of “50k-75,000+” is not consistent with attorney-handled transactions
And just how is the man supposed to know if it's properly installed or not? Remember the GP was saying it's always the man's fault if the woman gets pregnant.
His point is that after that action, the man has no more choice. A pregnancy can be terminated at any point after that and generally men have no say. If a man chooses to impregnate a woman against her will, that of course results in an array of crimes. Men are also concerned that they may end up losing access to their children and on the hook for child support and there’s little to nothing that can be done about it.
It definitely makes some men anxious, and every time it’s mentioned, floods of people come in to trivialize these concerns while also saying men need to step up. Gets boring.
I mean, what's the alternative? Are you suggesting legally forcing someone to undergo a medical procedure? Or in the case of the man wanting to keep the baby, are you suggesting doctors don't perform the procedure without the consent of both parents? Both scenarios sound completely untenable to me.
What if we agree it's ultimately the choice of whoever has a baby growing inside them regardless of their sex?
Edit: but in general I care more about equality than about a particular solution. Either both men and women have a choice after sex, or neither. The current sexist solution is the worst.
It may be a choice, but there is still some validity to the notion the man is largely limited in the mitigations around that choice. For example, a woman could lie about being on birth control or in saying that she would get an abortion if she did get pregnant. Essentially, the way the laws are written prevent any sort of mitigation for the man, instead forcing responsibility, even for child support in non-clinical sperm donations in many states.
Let's say a man wants a baby and the woman doesn't. It seems the woman has control over: consent to unprotected sex, hormonal birth control, and abortion. The man has control over consent to unprotected sex.
Now, let's say a man doesn't want a baby. The woman has control over: consent to protected/unprotected sex, hormonal birth control (including Plan B), abortion, and whether to give up the child (some states allow for surrender which absolve child support obligations). The man has control to consent to protected sex only (all the mitigations like birth control can be lies and there's no way to legally enforce them like you could stealthing in CA).
As you see, the power dynamics are skewed heavily.
Lots of women can't take hormonal birth control for a variety of reasons, and abortions are not physically or emotionally pleasant.
Equating these things with condoms is pretty lame. Condoms are cheap, sold everywhere, are more effective than the other methods, and can be used with zero advance planning or side effects.
> Let's say a man wants a baby and the woman doesn't.
Find another woman ?
> The man has control over consent to unprotected sex.
Choice
>Now, let's say a man doesn't want a baby.
>The man has control to consent to protected sex only
Choice again
> As you see, the power dynamics are skewed heavily.
But the outcomes are skewed heavily too
In a tiny percentage of cases intercourse produces a baby
The woman has to carry the baby to term for 9 months, take care of her body, eat well, rest enough, don’t drink alcohol, stop working, go through a painful delivery that will change her body forever, doctors are involved, life or death situations then the baby needs food and clothing…
> Find another woman ?
If it were that easy, you wouldn't have dating websites being worth billions of dollars and with userbases skewed heavily towards men instead of women. There's also the fact that men outnumber women by single and even double digit percentages in some areas.
Men often take what they can get, because a significant number have well-founded fears that they might not have another chance.
I didn't say they weren't choices. My point was the man's choice is limited and only at the beginning of the process and they have no real mitigating power, or even a legally supported way to negotiate agreements on the terms of their consent.
Yes, unprotected sex has a relatively small fertilization rate. That is also true for the life and death situations you mention (unprotected sex could also be life or death depending on communicable diseases if we are looking at edge cases).
"then the baby needs food and clothing…"
Which doesn't only affect the mother. Child support is a larger burden on the non-custodial parent, which tends to be men. That lasts a lot longer than 9 months too. I know people who had to pick up second jobs, be subjected to more stress, etc to make those payments and it affected their health. So the costs may come in different forms, but they do affect both parents.
"that will change her body forever"
What are the scope, occurrence, and significance of those? In my very limited experience, I don't notice any significant, permanent, negative changes in the majority of cases.
The easiest way to demonstrate this skewed power dynamic is to understand that baby trapping only works for one sex, as they are the only ones with the post intercourse mitigations.
I'm not saying anything is necessarily wrong. What am I saying is that concerns about a lack of control over a life changing event are not trivial for either parent, and one of them is completely under the control of the other in the event their limited choice (condom) fails.
> What am I saying is that concerns about a lack of control over a life changing event are not trivial for either parent, and one of them is completely under the control of the other in the event their limited choice (condom) fails.
Ejaculations (can) have consequences
The only thing that makes it non-trivial for males is child support - and that is a recent invention
Social pressure and stigma on unwed mothers has been orders of magnitude stronger than for fathers
That’s where shotgun weddings come from, to preserve honor and enforce social norms, making sure two parents take care of the kid
Please, reread your argument. You claim that aside from child support, having a child is trivial for a man and that the social pressure is orders of magnitude higher for mothers. You then bring up shotgun weddings - where a man is forced under lethal threat to marry. That's sounds about as non-trivial as one can get...
You can have a baby with protected sex. No birth control except abstinence is 100% effective. It is much worse if you look only at methods that men have control over.
Birth control for men is still quite limited. There is not a single non-permanent method that has a effectiveness of over 90% per year per couple. The closest to that is the condom:
> Giving men equal rights in the decision to become a parent would mean giving them the right to legal parental surrender.
That’s the point people seem to overlook.
There is no particularly good reason why all men should not be able to surrender parental rights especially early on say during the first trimester and essentially be treated as sperm donors as far as the law goes (tho from my understanding in some or even many jurisdictions sperm donors aren’t protected from that either beyond their anonymity).
At that point the woman still has a choice if she wishes to continue with the pregnancy on her own or terminate it.
Basically it would turn the equation from do you want to have a child to do you want to have a child without any financial support from the father.
I am not sure what your point is. Is it, that a men should be able to decide, that a women shall carry a baby?
Well, that used to be the idea, when women were considered objects owned by men.
And yes, that idea is frowned upon in the west.
Otherwise of course men today have a say in making babies. But since they cannot make a baby themself, they can only convince a female partner to make one. But no, they cannot and should not decide for the partner. Just like the female partner cannot decide to just make a baby. Unless she chooses sperm bank and artificial means.
The phrase "it's the woman's choice" in popular use is made in the implied scenario where the man wants a child. You hear it a lot because men forcing/coercing women into things has been a problem that got a lot of attention after the sexual revolution, and this case is especially dramatic since bearing a child is a particularly unfair burden for somebody who doesn't want it. If the man in the theoretical situation doesn't want a child and the woman does, then of course his opinion matters. The idea that women should be allowed to force men to have children is not, as your are implying, a problem of significant scale in popular culture or media (though, as usual with cultural/social/political wars, anything can be cherry-picked).
Kathleen Kennedy would be an example of an outspoken misandrist in media.
But the existence of a few at the top is different than discussing the overall demographics of a field, and both of those fields are primarily female — from education onwards.
Let me get this straight, you think that just because PR is around 60% of women, women working in PR are able to completely control public discourse for misandry, even if they aren't personally in positions of power, whereas the 95% of CEOs who are men and dictate what PR is actually being created aren't able to counteract that?
Yes — a cursory review of corporate politics would indicate women in media/PR and HR dominate the discussion around sexism and keep men from being able to discuss their issues fairly.
Example:
How many businesses have an “affinity group” for women but not men? — why is it that only one sex has an organization representing their interests at the company?
That's not exactly what happened. It's one thing to "dare to disagree". It's another to do so in a public way that mocked and belittled her (a meme on Twitter) and that predictably lead to threats and copious and gratuitous misogyny directed at her. So what was Musk's intent here? Because he knew or should have known that would be the result of his actions. Isn't the directed use of mobs to harass and discredit people precisely the thing he bought Twitter to combat?
Musk criticized her male colleagues such as the CEO in the same manner. Look at what you’re saying:
That it’s “misogyny” to post a meme [1] critical of someone’s work when they’re in a powerful position paid millions of dollars a year!
That’s absolutely ridiculous.
The meme mocked her conversation on Joe Rogan, which was ridiculously partisan. She’s not exempt from having her poor performance as an executive criticized because she’s a woman.
I'm specifically objecting to the framing that musk "dared to disagree", as if anything he did took courage, or that Tweeting memes is how adult professionals handle workplace disagreements with subordinates. Probably this idea of misogyny is overselling it, but this seems to be an example of Musk attempting to engage in the very "cancel culture" he decries. There are a billion other ways to handle his disagreement that would lead to a better outcome than tweeting a meme.
Again I have to ask: what did Musk expect would happen? If he didn't think the result of tweeting that meme would be harassment of the person he targeted, misogynistic or otherwise (although that is the brand of backlash he produced), what was his actual goal in tweeting the image? What was he trying to accomplish?
edit: Again to reiterate, the basis of my objection to Musk's meme is not that it's misogynistic, its that the effect was a predictable (because it happens with great frequency so as to be expected) misogynistic backlash. So if Musk simply disagreed with this particular person, he could have handled that in a professional way. By tweeting a meme targeting someone in public, everyone knows that target is going to get a deluge of misogynistic hate if they are a woman. That is how Twitter, the company Musk just bought and of which he is a prolific user, operates. So he should know that fact.
If Musk has a simple disagreement he should act as adult professionals do and talk about that disagreement with that specific individual, instead of targeting them publicly in a way he should have known would cause her harm.
>>r that Tweeting memes is how adult professionals handle workplace disagreements
Clearly you have not experienced Teams or Slack where MEME's are pretty common in both even in professional discussions. There is even a built in interface for search for meme's / gifs to respond with.
>what was his actual goal in tweeting the image?
To convey a complex point in less than 180 characters by using a image which we all know is worth 1000 words far more than you can put in a text response
To believe the meme's goal was "harassment" furthers the stereotype that people on the political left just cant meme....
The meme was in no way targeted harassment.
>>predictable misogynistic backlash.
So if that is the foundation, does this mean women are never to be criticized at all because some 3rd party may respond to that criticism in a misogynistic way. Sorry I reject that premise
I have, but what Musk did here would be considered incredibly out of line in my workplace. The meme database doesn't have a category for memes targeting my subordinates (and yes to the other poster I know that Elon Musk is not technically her boss yet, but for all intents and purposes the pecking order has been established already). But beyond that, exactly 0 sentences of our disagreements happen over public channels in front of millions of followers.
> using a image which we all know is worth 1000 words far more than you can put in a text response
That's part of the problem. One thing I've noticed about Elon Musk (and similar people who aim to craft a cult of personality) is that his followers project whatever hero they need onto him. As public as Musk is, he has a wide variety of followers some of whom are in fact quite misogynistic, and very much enjoy to read misogyny as one of those 1000 unspoken words conveyed by Musk posting that image. They then act on those misogynistic thoughts by attacking the target of Musk's meme. The same kind of dynamic existed for Trump.
Is that Musk's direct fault? No, he doesn't literally cause people to post misogynistic things. But Musk's cult of personality does in fact have a power to move people to act, and depending on how Musk wields that power he can in fact predictably move people toward certain actions. Tweeting about spaceship launches gets his followers excited about spaceship launches. There's no explosion of misogyny against particular women after Musk tweets about a success at Tesla or SpaceX.
But Tweeting attacks against specific people gets his followers to attack specific people. Some of those attacks are legitimate argument grounded in logic. But a great many more of those attacks were the basest human thoughts imaginable. People also attacked her race, so that's why I'm not saying that the tweet itself was misogynistic, but it elicited misogyny. It wasn't racist, but it elicited racism. And that's the power Musk has -- the power to move crowds to do his bidding. Which in fact makes what he did all the more reprehensible, because he did it as he decries this very power being wielded by "woke mobs". He did the exact same thing.
So my problem with Musk's tweet is that he can't just tweet like the rest of us. He has a power, and as a fan of comics he should know that comes with great responsibility. Even the most misogynistic incels in the world posting the most hateful screeds imaginable can't move thousands of other likeminded people to similarly do so in a targeted fashion. Because they have no power. But Elon Musk with 0 malice in his heart can rain down hate and harassment on anyone through his followers if he's careless.
> The meme was in no way targeted harassment.
But it was targeted against an individual, and the predictable result was in fact harassment so....
Let me put it this way: if Musk really didn't mean for this person to be harassed, he could have posted a follow-up tweet expressing his concern that the harassment was happening and to defend the person he specifically targeted. That didn't happen so I think we know where he stands.
>The meme database doesn't have a category for memes targeting my subordinates
good news is that likely will be a short relationship, as he is likely terminating all over paid Twitter Execs day 1.
Hopefully Day 2 is looking for a relocation site for Twitter out of CA
>One thing I've noticed about Elon Musk
Or more likely Elon does not spend a inordinate amount of time over analyzing every damn thing he posts for every angle for which people could "take offense" or other such things, he posts what is on his mind as someone with a respect for free expression will.
Political Correct expression is killing society, and I find it refreshing and genuine, I liked 1990's internet... It was fun
I despise political correctness
>>because he did it as he decries this very power being wielded by "woke mobs". He did the exact same thing.
100% in correct. "woke mobs" direct, and excuse physical violence against their targets, "woke mobs" advocate direct action
It is difference between direct and indirect advocacy.....
For example "Punch a Nazi" with "nazi" being "anyone that disagrees with me politically"
>Musk's tweet is that he can't just tweet like the rest of us.
he absolutely can and should, I dont care if you have 1 or 1,000,000,000,000 followers, you should be able to post in the exact same manner, anyone that disagree clearly hates the very idea of free expression, and is the enemy of said principle
>>But it was targeted against an individual,
I would say it was more targeted at position, or a dept with in twitter, for which an individual had voluntarily made themselves the face of. This individual was/is proud of their censorship efforts, and wanted to attach their name to those efforts in a public way. That changes the metric IMO.
If this would have been just come random twitter engineer I may agree with you.
> Or more likely Elon does not spend a inordinate amount of time over analyzing every damn thing he posts for every angle for which people could "take offense" or other such things
That Elon Musk spends no time reflecting on how his words affect other people in the world around him is eminently clear.
> he absolutely can and should, I dont care if you have 1 or 1,000,000,000,000 followers, you should be able to post in the exact same manner
I guess this worldview is summarized: with great power comes no responsibility. Can't say the zeitgeist disagrees with you.
doesn’t really track, if that were the case then why are women ceos still generally paid less than male counterparts? if women were suppressing men in an effective way wouldn’t it show up statistically somewhere? where’s the data? most evidence points to the contrary
There’s no evidence that points to the contrary and your comment about CEOs is the “summit fallacy”.
It’s possible for men to both earn more at the extreme end and for them to face systemic sexism in other ways. Further, CEOs are a snapshot of the labor market 20-30 years ago and not as it exists for most people today.
You’re also ignoring clear evidence of male floundering, such as the abysmal college graduation rates.
> Discussing the problems of men, as a group, is intentionally suppressed by women
Don't make this into a "men" vs "women" problem. There are plenty of women who are on the right advocating for traditional family models, there are plenty of men on the front-lines of "woke" feminism.
This is a clash of ideology, not between genders. #AssociationFallacy
"Us dudes (assuming you are one) are also equally to blame."
Are we though? If women wanted children and most men didn't, then women could just use sperm donors. The constraints in reproduction are heavily on the female side. Meaning one sperm donor could fertilize many eggs in a short time. Generally speaking a surrogate would only be carrying one child at a time.
That said, the underlying reasons for not wanting kids are probably similar.
The premise of the article equating two things that are so obviously unequal leads me to believe it was written primarily for virtue signaling purposes.
I've never really understood what that "insult" is supposed to mean. What's wrong with signalling how virtuous you are?
OK, it is perhaps a little gauche to say "I donated more to charity than you" - but why shouldn't people talk about things which they think make them look good?
What's wrong with signalling how virtuous you are?
There are many things wrong with it. First, virtue is in the eye of the beholder. For example, watching a video of a lion chasing down a gazelle can be presented in a way to elicit sympathy for the poor gazelle or sympathy for the poor lion who is just trying to feed her starving cubs.
Second, it serves to divide people. It says, “Like me. I’m on your team unlike those other people that we don’t like.”
Third, it makes people waste time talking about non-issues. We’re spending time on a Saturday talking about the lack of articles about men choosing not to have children. We could be talking about something of actual substance but the OP was trying to score points with women so here we are.
Firstly, I'm not trying to elicit sympathy for anyone. I was pointing out an issue I personally found interesting.
Secondly, who is my "team"? Men? The child free? Women? People in the UK?
Thirdly, I think it is an issue. If you think the decline in the number of people procreating is an important issue, then you should approach it honestly. The data suggests it is the fault (for want of a better term) of women and men. That means only one side of the issue is being examined. And I think that's curious.
I'm still unclear on which virtue I am supposedly signalling. And even more unclear on why you'd choose to insult my virtue rather than my many vices.
I suppose this is where one accidental stumbles into incel justification. A man who wants to have a baby must find a woman willing to carry it for him, and then there’s all sorts of custody negations to be made. A woman who wants to have a baby can do so as easily as picking up a used condom off the ground at the bus station.
At least, that’s the most disgusting way I could have portrayed the liberty with which a healthy wanting woman could have a child. But that’s why the only reporting they could find are on men who want babies but missed their opportunity. It’s not journalistic sexism (against women or men), it’s just a recognition of the real reproductive power women hold: if everyone has batter but you’re the only one with an oven, you decide when cakes are made.
In the “relationship marketplace”, it’s women who decide whether to have children or not, and with whom (men don’t need to consent).
But men are perceived to generally be the gatekeepers of marriage (not legally/biologically, but maybe because of supply and demand?).
So instead of “why don’t women want children” you have articles “why don’t men want to marry” and “why are there no marriage worthy men”.
Rest assured, whatever the media can blame on men, they do blame on men, but blaming men for not having kids would be laughed off as obvious propaganda.
I disagree. I ended a relationship because i don't want to have children. A very good friend of mine ended two for the same reason. I don't know about others because it's really personnal and i wouldn't want to talk about it IRL with any friend, but i suspect another one of my friend to have done the same.
And we have way more capital and possibility to live a decent life than 90% of the people in my country.
So there is an issue where women's agency is actually at the forefront, where their preferences and decisions are considered paramount, and... it's an example of sexism. Does that word even mean anything anymore?
Who is the gatekeeper of sex? The woman. Who has to carry the child to term and has the option to terminate the pregnancy? The woman. Who can get a sperm donor and decide to reproduce effectively on their own? The woman. Oh why is reproduction seen as a female issue?? SEXISM!
As a 24 year old male, I’m surprised (and disappointed, internally) by how many of my female friends in college are outspoken about never wanting or having kids. They see little in it other than work, stress, loss of freedom, and money. I understand it’s all those things but there’s good aspects, perhaps meaning itself in raising kids as well. I think it’s related to a collapse in the belief in death-do-us-part marriage in America’s secular middle class. At the same time, those that are outspoken about these matters also always seem to lack meaning or direction in their life.
It’s seems a weird inverse to me, but I guess it makes some sense too: weak sense of purpose —> low expectations for the future —> disbelief in traditional customs, like monogamy and marriage, gender roles —> “I know I don’t want kids.” [*then proceed to some casual, horrible, judgy take about kids and people who choose to have kids]. —> The belief that everyone shares or ought to share this cynicism.
A lot of it has to do with my surprise that other 23-25 year olds don’t really see themselves as adults. Regardless of financial (in)dependence, no college graduate should see themselves as anything short of a fully capable adult. I wish I could snap my fingers and make everyone see this as a cause instead of a symptom of various flavors of mild- and medium-severity mental illness. Something that addresses a lack of a sense of adulthood as a root cause.
I feel like I may as well be described as a natalist for my beliefs, but it honestly seems like I have an “average” perspective on this until like ten minutes ago. I know things will change for myself and my friends as we get older. I don’t want kids right this moment, but will one day - and that day is not incomprehensibly far away.
This is incredibly rambly, and these are seriously my friends, their positive qualities innumerable outweigh their antinatalist takes, especially considering I’m going to be dating any of them for other reasons. Just wanted to throw this perspective out there, especially about the growing sense of common despair for the future and how that interacts with a growing sense of meaninglessness in a secular world.
Just sharing my experience here. These anecdotes come from other young college grads in my cohort (not-IT though).
> many of my female friends in college are outspoken about never wanting or having kids ... those that are outspoken about these matters also always seem to lack meaning or direction in their life.
So you're in your early 20s and in college, and you think the people around you lack meaning and direction? I mean, first of all 90% of the 20 year olds in college I know lack meaning in their life. That's why they're in college, to find purpose and community.
Secondly, the mere fact that they are in college or graduated college means they don't lack direction. They are on a path, and that path is a time-tested one that has repeatedly proven to lead to personal actualization. Also being enrolled in college I would say they have high expectations for the future, the most obvious expectation I think is they would hope to graduate with a degree and use that degree to leverage better opportunities for themselves.
Third, there is a such thing as a biological clock. It starts ticking loudly for women in their late 20s in my experience.
Finally, I will implore you to at least consider the political climate. For the last 70 years, abortion (which is healthcare for women) has been considered constitutionally protected and has been available and accessible for women. Now women are being told that if they get an abortion, they should face criminal penalties like incarceration. The former POTUS intoned that "There has to be some form of punishment [for women having an abortion]". Today, some women in America have to travel over 600 miles across several states to get access to abortion. States are passing laws creating bounty hunters and vigilantes to harass women and the people who help them seek access to abortion. Laws are being passed that even restrict abortion in the case of rape and incest. The Supreme Court of the United States has okayed these laws and are universally expected to completely gut Roe vs. Wade this summer.
All women are paying attention to this, including your friends. The message is loud and clear, and it's changing their relationship with men and the idea of sex. Ask your friends what they think about the pending loss of their right to an abortion. See if that makes them more or less likely for them to want to have children. For the women in my life, it makes them (more) nervous about the idea of sex altogether.
> "There has to be some form of punishment [for women having an abortion]".
trump immediately backed down from this 'intonation', and i would be very surprised to hear about any serious legislation meant to punish women, rather than doctors, for abortion.
if women are "being told they should face criminal penalties" then that is coming from fearmongering liberals and extremist protestors, not any cohesive western conservative platform.
> trump immediately backed down from this 'intonation'
When someone tells you two contradictory things, it's best to look at their deeds rather than their words for their true intentions.
> i would be very surprised to hear about any serious legislation meant to punish women, rather than doctors, for abortion.
Punishing doctors is punishing women. Again, abortion is necessary healthcare for women, and when you punish doctors for providing constitutionally protected and lifesaving healthcare to women, you create a situation where women must either forego care (because there are no local doctors who can provide them that care) or must incur great expense to get care (I will reiterate, driving >600 miles to do what you should be able to do lawfully in your own city is a very extreme punishment for women).
> not any cohesive western conservative platform
It's very clear that the GOP believes that women should face criminal penalties for having an abortion, as their vast and persistent legislative efforts are clearly trending that way. Month after month they get more extreme with the kinds of bills they are introducing. The message is in the actions not the words. The actions (the kinds of laws they're passing and the putative effects they're having on their intended targets) belie the "backtracks" and give truth to the original intonation that "there has to be some form of punishment".
I’m not in college, my peer group is 23-26, and I think that’s an important distinction.
I disagree strongly with the direction of your analysis, and I think you did a whole lot more assuming than is necessary or effective. See my comment downthread for a more concise summary of my little rant.
Most notably, I don’t understand how abortion relates so heavily to this discussion, because I’m clearly implying that I’m thinking about planned, not accidental pregnancies.
Simply put: I’m surprised that my peers seem to have a conviction that their mindset will never change. I’m not surprised that they feel a certain way at this age and that they project this into the future.
I worded this very poorly, because this is what I do expect to happen.
I’m just surprised folks don’t expect this change to occur? Something like “I don’t think I want kids but maybe that’ll change” is tooootally reasonable, but “I’ll never have kids, and I think those that do are selfish. I can’t imagine changing my mind on this,” is more what I’m referring to.
Wow. If the comments here are any reflection on the broader society, the US is in a weird place these days. Come to Latin America guys, the women here want kids and love engineers, you won't have any troubles at all.
A gentle, friendly reminder for people looking to soapbox here: In the same way the absurdity of /r/MensRights doesn't negate the validity and need for /r/MensLib, clickbait pop feminism doesn't negate the underlying legitimacy of issues taken to absurd extremes in popular discourse. I'm nonbinary as hell and have been accused of manspreading for being tired and not overthinking my crotch, so I Get It, but lay down some chillfire and try to follow the very wise guidelines of this space.
I read recently that scientists have discovered a way to artificially grow sperm-producing cells from any other cell in the body, e.g. skin cells.
If this hits the mainstream, then men will be reproductively obsolete. Women will be able to produce sperm cells in the lab, or eventually, in some home-based kit, to be artificially inseminated, from which only females will be born (due to the lack of Y chromosome sperms).
It will be very interesting to see what happens next, once women can be completely independent of any male, even for reproductive success.
Because you don't need to ask questions. Models like Lotka-Volterra were first proposed before WW1. The math is clear, you can't have infinite growth.
Our population is not at an equilibrium because we fully depend on industrialisation and a constant, unnaturally great supply of resources. Those resources are a shaky foundation - can I afford a car, can I afford a house, can I afford to move for a better job, can I afford college for my kids, etc.
Some people expect to have a better life than a european peasant. Sickness and hygiene aside, it was a given to own a house, work the field or raise animals, praise the Lord, and marry young.
You know why there are few articles about men not wanting to have children: because children follow nearly automatically from happy and stable unions, unless the women don’t want kids.
Men are irrelevant.
If a woman wants a child, she probably doesn’t stay with a man who doesn’t. And the men who never want kids therefore do little to suppress the birthrate.
If men could force women to have their children, only then would it be relevant to ask why they are opting not to.
I have one son. I don’t have more because my wife felt she couldn’t cope with more.
Why is it even a “problem”? There are more than enough people in the world as it is. Our economies are built as pyramid schemes, our overall consumption levels ever-growing. Better to have fewer people from choice earlier than from tragic options later.
Even amounts of men and women express not wanting children in surveys. Reasons behind this are presumed to be for lifestyle or economic.
In the stats though - about 25% of men today don’t have children. Less than 15% of women don’t have children. There are 50%+ more men without children than women. If you talked to these men though, you’d know it’s not because they didn’t want kids but because they never were able to have them. No woman wanted to have kids with them.
This is true for our history as well. Men had children about 40% of the time back in the old days. Women still hit the same amount as they did before - ~80%. We hit a recent phenomenon where men were catching up with women. I think we’ll continue to see a decline in men having children as the stats show this trend continuing to go down. This isn’t because men don’t want children - it’s mostly because the women don’t want children with the men available to them.
We can see this same pattern with sex for young men and women. The rate of sexlessness for young men is growing exceptionally fast compared to young women. It’s not because men don’t want sex - it’s because women don’t want sex with the men available to them.
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[ 5.2 ms ] story [ 172 ms ] threadAfter ejaculation, men have no more legal right about what happens with their sperm and resulting fetuses/children.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/09/02/statut...
"Then two years ago, the state served him with papers demanding child support. That's how he found out he had a then-6-year-old daughter."
24-2-6-9months seems to indicate he was at least 15 when the relevant sex happened and then it would have been legally consented. Also he wants to take up fatherhood(and he never pressed charges against her), so this case is not as simple as you stated.
Otherwise it is quite ridiculous and outrageous, that there are really 2 standards when it comes to sex with minors and the consequences.
I personally disagree with this state of affairs.
Edit: from Wikipedia
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sperm_theft
> In most jurisdictions, sperm theft is not illegal and usually has little bearing on issues like child support.
is that a real social problem or a corner case?
Except in cases of men who are raped, it absolutely represents a choice on the part of the man. The fact that you can't force a woman to have an abortion (or to not have one) after the fact doesn't seem like an infringement on your rights.
https://philip.greenspun.com/blog/2016/12/12/failed-abortion...
It definitely makes some men anxious, and every time it’s mentioned, floods of people come in to trivialize these concerns while also saying men need to step up. Gets boring.
Common bait&switch argument.
It’s not a choice as far as women are concerned (so women deserve another choice in the form of abortion) but it’s a choice for men?
You can’t have it both ways and claim to not be sexist.
What if we agree it's ultimately the choice of whoever has a baby growing inside them regardless of their sex?
Edit: but in general I care more about equality than about a particular solution. Either both men and women have a choice after sex, or neither. The current sexist solution is the worst.
Let's say a man wants a baby and the woman doesn't. It seems the woman has control over: consent to unprotected sex, hormonal birth control, and abortion. The man has control over consent to unprotected sex.
Now, let's say a man doesn't want a baby. The woman has control over: consent to protected/unprotected sex, hormonal birth control (including Plan B), abortion, and whether to give up the child (some states allow for surrender which absolve child support obligations). The man has control to consent to protected sex only (all the mitigations like birth control can be lies and there's no way to legally enforce them like you could stealthing in CA).
As you see, the power dynamics are skewed heavily.
Equating these things with condoms is pretty lame. Condoms are cheap, sold everywhere, are more effective than the other methods, and can be used with zero advance planning or side effects.
"can be used with zero advance planning or side effects."
You have to at least plan to have one, which can be more difficult if you or the partner have a latex allergy.
Find another woman ?
> The man has control over consent to unprotected sex.
Choice
>Now, let's say a man doesn't want a baby. >The man has control to consent to protected sex only
Choice again
> As you see, the power dynamics are skewed heavily.
But the outcomes are skewed heavily too
In a tiny percentage of cases intercourse produces a baby
The woman has to carry the baby to term for 9 months, take care of her body, eat well, rest enough, don’t drink alcohol, stop working, go through a painful delivery that will change her body forever, doctors are involved, life or death situations then the baby needs food and clothing…
Men often take what they can get, because a significant number have well-founded fears that they might not have another chance.
Then don’t
I was referring to the scenario of man wants baby, woman does not
What are you going to do at that point ?
Yes, unprotected sex has a relatively small fertilization rate. That is also true for the life and death situations you mention (unprotected sex could also be life or death depending on communicable diseases if we are looking at edge cases).
"then the baby needs food and clothing…"
Which doesn't only affect the mother. Child support is a larger burden on the non-custodial parent, which tends to be men. That lasts a lot longer than 9 months too. I know people who had to pick up second jobs, be subjected to more stress, etc to make those payments and it affected their health. So the costs may come in different forms, but they do affect both parents.
"that will change her body forever"
What are the scope, occurrence, and significance of those? In my very limited experience, I don't notice any significant, permanent, negative changes in the majority of cases.
The easiest way to demonstrate this skewed power dynamic is to understand that baby trapping only works for one sex, as they are the only ones with the post intercourse mitigations.
I'm not saying anything is necessarily wrong. What am I saying is that concerns about a lack of control over a life changing event are not trivial for either parent, and one of them is completely under the control of the other in the event their limited choice (condom) fails.
Ejaculations (can) have consequences
The only thing that makes it non-trivial for males is child support - and that is a recent invention
Social pressure and stigma on unwed mothers has been orders of magnitude stronger than for fathers
That’s where shotgun weddings come from, to preserve honor and enforce social norms, making sure two parents take care of the kid
Birth control for men is still quite limited. There is not a single non-permanent method that has a effectiveness of over 90% per year per couple. The closest to that is the condom:
https://www.plannedparenthood.org/learn/birth-control/condom
Giving men equal rights in the decision to become a parent would mean giving them the right to legal parental surrender.
That’s the point people seem to overlook.
There is no particularly good reason why all men should not be able to surrender parental rights especially early on say during the first trimester and essentially be treated as sperm donors as far as the law goes (tho from my understanding in some or even many jurisdictions sperm donors aren’t protected from that either beyond their anonymity).
At that point the woman still has a choice if she wishes to continue with the pregnancy on her own or terminate it.
Basically it would turn the equation from do you want to have a child to do you want to have a child without any financial support from the father.
Well, that used to be the idea, when women were considered objects owned by men.
And yes, that idea is frowned upon in the west.
Otherwise of course men today have a say in making babies. But since they cannot make a baby themself, they can only convince a female partner to make one. But no, they cannot and should not decide for the partner. Just like the female partner cannot decide to just make a baby. Unless she chooses sperm bank and artificial means.
Discussing the problems of men, as a group, is intentionally suppressed by women in positions of power and influence — such as in media and PR.
Organized misandry is real.
But the existence of a few at the top is different than discussing the overall demographics of a field, and both of those fields are primarily female — from education onwards.
Example:
How many businesses have an “affinity group” for women but not men? — why is it that only one sex has an organization representing their interests at the company?
The other commenter post a different example, I feel like there are TONS of such examples.
That's not exactly what happened. It's one thing to "dare to disagree". It's another to do so in a public way that mocked and belittled her (a meme on Twitter) and that predictably lead to threats and copious and gratuitous misogyny directed at her. So what was Musk's intent here? Because he knew or should have known that would be the result of his actions. Isn't the directed use of mobs to harass and discredit people precisely the thing he bought Twitter to combat?
That it’s “misogyny” to post a meme [1] critical of someone’s work when they’re in a powerful position paid millions of dollars a year!
That’s absolutely ridiculous.
The meme mocked her conversation on Joe Rogan, which was ridiculously partisan. She’s not exempt from having her poor performance as an executive criticized because she’s a woman.
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/JoeRogan/comments/ayiouz/it_do_be_l...
Again I have to ask: what did Musk expect would happen? If he didn't think the result of tweeting that meme would be harassment of the person he targeted, misogynistic or otherwise (although that is the brand of backlash he produced), what was his actual goal in tweeting the image? What was he trying to accomplish?
edit: Again to reiterate, the basis of my objection to Musk's meme is not that it's misogynistic, its that the effect was a predictable (because it happens with great frequency so as to be expected) misogynistic backlash. So if Musk simply disagreed with this particular person, he could have handled that in a professional way. By tweeting a meme targeting someone in public, everyone knows that target is going to get a deluge of misogynistic hate if they are a woman. That is how Twitter, the company Musk just bought and of which he is a prolific user, operates. So he should know that fact.
If Musk has a simple disagreement he should act as adult professionals do and talk about that disagreement with that specific individual, instead of targeting them publicly in a way he should have known would cause her harm.
Clearly you have not experienced Teams or Slack where MEME's are pretty common in both even in professional discussions. There is even a built in interface for search for meme's / gifs to respond with.
>what was his actual goal in tweeting the image?
To convey a complex point in less than 180 characters by using a image which we all know is worth 1000 words far more than you can put in a text response
To believe the meme's goal was "harassment" furthers the stereotype that people on the political left just cant meme....
The meme was in no way targeted harassment.
>>predictable misogynistic backlash.
So if that is the foundation, does this mean women are never to be criticized at all because some 3rd party may respond to that criticism in a misogynistic way. Sorry I reject that premise
I have, but what Musk did here would be considered incredibly out of line in my workplace. The meme database doesn't have a category for memes targeting my subordinates (and yes to the other poster I know that Elon Musk is not technically her boss yet, but for all intents and purposes the pecking order has been established already). But beyond that, exactly 0 sentences of our disagreements happen over public channels in front of millions of followers.
> using a image which we all know is worth 1000 words far more than you can put in a text response
That's part of the problem. One thing I've noticed about Elon Musk (and similar people who aim to craft a cult of personality) is that his followers project whatever hero they need onto him. As public as Musk is, he has a wide variety of followers some of whom are in fact quite misogynistic, and very much enjoy to read misogyny as one of those 1000 unspoken words conveyed by Musk posting that image. They then act on those misogynistic thoughts by attacking the target of Musk's meme. The same kind of dynamic existed for Trump.
Is that Musk's direct fault? No, he doesn't literally cause people to post misogynistic things. But Musk's cult of personality does in fact have a power to move people to act, and depending on how Musk wields that power he can in fact predictably move people toward certain actions. Tweeting about spaceship launches gets his followers excited about spaceship launches. There's no explosion of misogyny against particular women after Musk tweets about a success at Tesla or SpaceX.
But Tweeting attacks against specific people gets his followers to attack specific people. Some of those attacks are legitimate argument grounded in logic. But a great many more of those attacks were the basest human thoughts imaginable. People also attacked her race, so that's why I'm not saying that the tweet itself was misogynistic, but it elicited misogyny. It wasn't racist, but it elicited racism. And that's the power Musk has -- the power to move crowds to do his bidding. Which in fact makes what he did all the more reprehensible, because he did it as he decries this very power being wielded by "woke mobs". He did the exact same thing.
So my problem with Musk's tweet is that he can't just tweet like the rest of us. He has a power, and as a fan of comics he should know that comes with great responsibility. Even the most misogynistic incels in the world posting the most hateful screeds imaginable can't move thousands of other likeminded people to similarly do so in a targeted fashion. Because they have no power. But Elon Musk with 0 malice in his heart can rain down hate and harassment on anyone through his followers if he's careless.
> The meme was in no way targeted harassment.
But it was targeted against an individual, and the predictable result was in fact harassment so....
Let me put it this way: if Musk really didn't mean for this person to be harassed, he could have posted a follow-up tweet expressing his concern that the harassment was happening and to defend the person he specifically targeted. That didn't happen so I think we know where he stands.
good news is that likely will be a short relationship, as he is likely terminating all over paid Twitter Execs day 1.
Hopefully Day 2 is looking for a relocation site for Twitter out of CA
>One thing I've noticed about Elon Musk
Or more likely Elon does not spend a inordinate amount of time over analyzing every damn thing he posts for every angle for which people could "take offense" or other such things, he posts what is on his mind as someone with a respect for free expression will.
Political Correct expression is killing society, and I find it refreshing and genuine, I liked 1990's internet... It was fun
I despise political correctness
>>because he did it as he decries this very power being wielded by "woke mobs". He did the exact same thing.
100% in correct. "woke mobs" direct, and excuse physical violence against their targets, "woke mobs" advocate direct action
It is difference between direct and indirect advocacy.....
For example "Punch a Nazi" with "nazi" being "anyone that disagrees with me politically"
>Musk's tweet is that he can't just tweet like the rest of us.
he absolutely can and should, I dont care if you have 1 or 1,000,000,000,000 followers, you should be able to post in the exact same manner, anyone that disagree clearly hates the very idea of free expression, and is the enemy of said principle
>>But it was targeted against an individual,
I would say it was more targeted at position, or a dept with in twitter, for which an individual had voluntarily made themselves the face of. This individual was/is proud of their censorship efforts, and wanted to attach their name to those efforts in a public way. That changes the metric IMO.
If this would have been just come random twitter engineer I may agree with you.
That Elon Musk spends no time reflecting on how his words affect other people in the world around him is eminently clear.
> he absolutely can and should, I dont care if you have 1 or 1,000,000,000,000 followers, you should be able to post in the exact same manner
I guess this worldview is summarized: with great power comes no responsibility. Can't say the zeitgeist disagrees with you.
Also by powerful men. Harmful gender roles are usually enforced by both genders.
Meanwhile - the upper class is mostly sheltered from these issues that they themselves reinforce in the media.
It’s possible for men to both earn more at the extreme end and for them to face systemic sexism in other ways. Further, CEOs are a snapshot of the labor market 20-30 years ago and not as it exists for most people today.
You’re also ignoring clear evidence of male floundering, such as the abysmal college graduation rates.
ceos didn’t stop existing 30 years ago? what a strange comment
what is summit fallacy?
do you think men graduate college less because of sexism?
Don't make this into a "men" vs "women" problem. There are plenty of women who are on the right advocating for traditional family models, there are plenty of men on the front-lines of "woke" feminism.
This is a clash of ideology, not between genders. #AssociationFallacy
Are we though? If women wanted children and most men didn't, then women could just use sperm donors. The constraints in reproduction are heavily on the female side. Meaning one sperm donor could fertilize many eggs in a short time. Generally speaking a surrogate would only be carrying one child at a time.
That said, the underlying reasons for not wanting kids are probably similar.
OK, it is perhaps a little gauche to say "I donated more to charity than you" - but why shouldn't people talk about things which they think make them look good?
There are many things wrong with it. First, virtue is in the eye of the beholder. For example, watching a video of a lion chasing down a gazelle can be presented in a way to elicit sympathy for the poor gazelle or sympathy for the poor lion who is just trying to feed her starving cubs.
Second, it serves to divide people. It says, “Like me. I’m on your team unlike those other people that we don’t like.”
Third, it makes people waste time talking about non-issues. We’re spending time on a Saturday talking about the lack of articles about men choosing not to have children. We could be talking about something of actual substance but the OP was trying to score points with women so here we are.
I could go on but that’s enough for today!
Firstly, I'm not trying to elicit sympathy for anyone. I was pointing out an issue I personally found interesting.
Secondly, who is my "team"? Men? The child free? Women? People in the UK?
Thirdly, I think it is an issue. If you think the decline in the number of people procreating is an important issue, then you should approach it honestly. The data suggests it is the fault (for want of a better term) of women and men. That means only one side of the issue is being examined. And I think that's curious.
I'm still unclear on which virtue I am supposedly signalling. And even more unclear on why you'd choose to insult my virtue rather than my many vices.
I like you for that.
> Among parents and non-parents alike, men and women are equally likely to say they will probably not have kids (or more kids) in the future.
It doesn't say what those reasons are.
At least, that’s the most disgusting way I could have portrayed the liberty with which a healthy wanting woman could have a child. But that’s why the only reporting they could find are on men who want babies but missed their opportunity. It’s not journalistic sexism (against women or men), it’s just a recognition of the real reproductive power women hold: if everyone has batter but you’re the only one with an oven, you decide when cakes are made.
But men are perceived to generally be the gatekeepers of marriage (not legally/biologically, but maybe because of supply and demand?).
So instead of “why don’t women want children” you have articles “why don’t men want to marry” and “why are there no marriage worthy men”.
Rest assured, whatever the media can blame on men, they do blame on men, but blaming men for not having kids would be laughed off as obvious propaganda.
And we have way more capital and possibility to live a decent life than 90% of the people in my country.
Who is the gatekeeper of sex? The woman. Who has to carry the child to term and has the option to terminate the pregnancy? The woman. Who can get a sperm donor and decide to reproduce effectively on their own? The woman. Oh why is reproduction seen as a female issue?? SEXISM!
It’s seems a weird inverse to me, but I guess it makes some sense too: weak sense of purpose —> low expectations for the future —> disbelief in traditional customs, like monogamy and marriage, gender roles —> “I know I don’t want kids.” [*then proceed to some casual, horrible, judgy take about kids and people who choose to have kids]. —> The belief that everyone shares or ought to share this cynicism.
A lot of it has to do with my surprise that other 23-25 year olds don’t really see themselves as adults. Regardless of financial (in)dependence, no college graduate should see themselves as anything short of a fully capable adult. I wish I could snap my fingers and make everyone see this as a cause instead of a symptom of various flavors of mild- and medium-severity mental illness. Something that addresses a lack of a sense of adulthood as a root cause.
I feel like I may as well be described as a natalist for my beliefs, but it honestly seems like I have an “average” perspective on this until like ten minutes ago. I know things will change for myself and my friends as we get older. I don’t want kids right this moment, but will one day - and that day is not incomprehensibly far away. This is incredibly rambly, and these are seriously my friends, their positive qualities innumerable outweigh their antinatalist takes, especially considering I’m going to be dating any of them for other reasons. Just wanted to throw this perspective out there, especially about the growing sense of common despair for the future and how that interacts with a growing sense of meaninglessness in a secular world. Just sharing my experience here. These anecdotes come from other young college grads in my cohort (not-IT though).
So you're in your early 20s and in college, and you think the people around you lack meaning and direction? I mean, first of all 90% of the 20 year olds in college I know lack meaning in their life. That's why they're in college, to find purpose and community.
Secondly, the mere fact that they are in college or graduated college means they don't lack direction. They are on a path, and that path is a time-tested one that has repeatedly proven to lead to personal actualization. Also being enrolled in college I would say they have high expectations for the future, the most obvious expectation I think is they would hope to graduate with a degree and use that degree to leverage better opportunities for themselves.
Third, there is a such thing as a biological clock. It starts ticking loudly for women in their late 20s in my experience.
Finally, I will implore you to at least consider the political climate. For the last 70 years, abortion (which is healthcare for women) has been considered constitutionally protected and has been available and accessible for women. Now women are being told that if they get an abortion, they should face criminal penalties like incarceration. The former POTUS intoned that "There has to be some form of punishment [for women having an abortion]". Today, some women in America have to travel over 600 miles across several states to get access to abortion. States are passing laws creating bounty hunters and vigilantes to harass women and the people who help them seek access to abortion. Laws are being passed that even restrict abortion in the case of rape and incest. The Supreme Court of the United States has okayed these laws and are universally expected to completely gut Roe vs. Wade this summer.
All women are paying attention to this, including your friends. The message is loud and clear, and it's changing their relationship with men and the idea of sex. Ask your friends what they think about the pending loss of their right to an abortion. See if that makes them more or less likely for them to want to have children. For the women in my life, it makes them (more) nervous about the idea of sex altogether.
trump immediately backed down from this 'intonation', and i would be very surprised to hear about any serious legislation meant to punish women, rather than doctors, for abortion.
if women are "being told they should face criminal penalties" then that is coming from fearmongering liberals and extremist protestors, not any cohesive western conservative platform.
When someone tells you two contradictory things, it's best to look at their deeds rather than their words for their true intentions.
> i would be very surprised to hear about any serious legislation meant to punish women, rather than doctors, for abortion.
Punishing doctors is punishing women. Again, abortion is necessary healthcare for women, and when you punish doctors for providing constitutionally protected and lifesaving healthcare to women, you create a situation where women must either forego care (because there are no local doctors who can provide them that care) or must incur great expense to get care (I will reiterate, driving >600 miles to do what you should be able to do lawfully in your own city is a very extreme punishment for women).
> not any cohesive western conservative platform
It's very clear that the GOP believes that women should face criminal penalties for having an abortion, as their vast and persistent legislative efforts are clearly trending that way. Month after month they get more extreme with the kinds of bills they are introducing. The message is in the actions not the words. The actions (the kinds of laws they're passing and the putative effects they're having on their intended targets) belie the "backtracks" and give truth to the original intonation that "there has to be some form of punishment".
I disagree strongly with the direction of your analysis, and I think you did a whole lot more assuming than is necessary or effective. See my comment downthread for a more concise summary of my little rant.
Most notably, I don’t understand how abortion relates so heavily to this discussion, because I’m clearly implying that I’m thinking about planned, not accidental pregnancies.
Simply put: I’m surprised that my peers seem to have a conviction that their mindset will never change. I’m not surprised that they feel a certain way at this age and that they project this into the future.
I’m just surprised folks don’t expect this change to occur? Something like “I don’t think I want kids but maybe that’ll change” is tooootally reasonable, but “I’ll never have kids, and I think those that do are selfish. I can’t imagine changing my mind on this,” is more what I’m referring to.
My guess is they aren't.
If this hits the mainstream, then men will be reproductively obsolete. Women will be able to produce sperm cells in the lab, or eventually, in some home-based kit, to be artificially inseminated, from which only females will be born (due to the lack of Y chromosome sperms).
It will be very interesting to see what happens next, once women can be completely independent of any male, even for reproductive success.
Our population is not at an equilibrium because we fully depend on industrialisation and a constant, unnaturally great supply of resources. Those resources are a shaky foundation - can I afford a car, can I afford a house, can I afford to move for a better job, can I afford college for my kids, etc.
Some people expect to have a better life than a european peasant. Sickness and hygiene aside, it was a given to own a house, work the field or raise animals, praise the Lord, and marry young.
Men are irrelevant.
If a woman wants a child, she probably doesn’t stay with a man who doesn’t. And the men who never want kids therefore do little to suppress the birthrate.
If men could force women to have their children, only then would it be relevant to ask why they are opting not to.
I have one son. I don’t have more because my wife felt she couldn’t cope with more.
In the stats though - about 25% of men today don’t have children. Less than 15% of women don’t have children. There are 50%+ more men without children than women. If you talked to these men though, you’d know it’s not because they didn’t want kids but because they never were able to have them. No woman wanted to have kids with them.
This is true for our history as well. Men had children about 40% of the time back in the old days. Women still hit the same amount as they did before - ~80%. We hit a recent phenomenon where men were catching up with women. I think we’ll continue to see a decline in men having children as the stats show this trend continuing to go down. This isn’t because men don’t want children - it’s mostly because the women don’t want children with the men available to them.
We can see this same pattern with sex for young men and women. The rate of sexlessness for young men is growing exceptionally fast compared to young women. It’s not because men don’t want sex - it’s because women don’t want sex with the men available to them.