Of Course Men Want Children. They Don’t Have to Be Mothers.

Imogen Fowler Steen
3 minutes ago
3 min read

I’m not sure if I want to have children. When I think about it, it makes me a little panicked. Because at some point in the not-too-distant future, the choice will become urgent.

I have so much love to give, and I can feel that within myself there is the capacity to adore beyond measure and carry out countless selfless acts for the objects of my adoration. However, we live in a world where women are disproportionately expected to shoulder the responsibility of parenthood.

This expectation is so deeply ingrained that it insidiously resides in our subconscious and rears its head in countless ways of real consequence.

The mother is the default parent.

This not only burdens her with a crippling mental load, endless demands on her time and energy, and what amounts to a never-ending, unpaid job for the rest of her life; it also drastically limits her personal, creative, and intellectual potential. Instead of achieving her wildest dreams and leaving a legacy that influences the world for the better, she is relegated to the mediocre wasteland of laundry, washing up, school lunches, swallowed despair, and exhaustion. We have all seen it.

Having children benefits men, and almost exclusively men.

Their genetic legacy continues, with comparatively little cost to their lifestyle. They have been exempt from the brunt of child-rearing for as long as our culture has recorded, with few exceptions. This is the terrifying norm. I don’t understand why women are not more terrified when men say, “I want to be a father.” Instead, our culture has encouraged women to turn a naive, blind eye to the ordeal and discouraged them from considering the sacrifices that are actually involved for them in having children.

Of course men want to have children; it’s not them who have the children. They do not physically bear them, they do not bear the mental load of managing a home, and they do not bear the emotional labour of raising decent humans who will all too soon enter the world and inflict themselves on others, for better or for worse.

Men, on average, cannot express their emotions (unless it’s anger), do not adequately respect women, and cannot communicate meaningfully, let alone begin to be equipped to have the sort of teaching conversations with their children that will arm them with the knowledge and skills they need to navigate the world.

It’s a sad series of realisations that has brought me to this point of disillusionment because, in an ideal world, I would love to have children.

The thing is, there is a whole lot I want to achieve too, and I do not trust that any male partner will truly take on enough responsibility to make both possible. There is a dangerous and doomed choice facing ambitious women.

My question to you is this: Looking around at your friends, family, and acquaintances, how many people do you know whose father was the main parent? The one who provided emotional support, the one who made the tough decisions, and the one who bore the brunt of the young person’s anger towards them? The one who was present and showed up time after time with solutions they pulled out of nowhere, not because they were inherently capable of it, but because they had to?

Truthfully, the buck stops with Mum. It’s always Mum who has to do the hard thing, who has to do the work, and who cops the blame. Mums are the primary parent, and that is the inequitable reality we must be aware of if we are choosing to have children.