Where are the articles asking why men don't want to have children?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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).