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Comment by KaoruAoiShiho | Hacker News Reader

Not convinced that this is down to women. In my personal experience women want to have kids wayyyy more than men it is the men who are refusing them or want to delay. In fact I would say this is basically everyone I know, the men are the ones being anti-natal while women want kids way earlier.

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Same boat. I know a number of women who couldn't find partners who both wanted kids and could pay half the bills so those women are now freezing their eggs or pursuing single motherhood by choice. Of the woman I know who are married, all of them had to talk their husbands into the first child and second child.

My sister is one of these cases. My take is the bar for marriage / life partner is really really high in modern relationships. Women aren't able to attract the mates they want, so they would rather try to do it on their own or wait, than "settle" for a guy that isn't meeting their standards.

The female dating coach Logan Ury wrote a book called "How not to die alone" which discusses this issue.

> Women aren't able to attract the mates they want

Women set expectation bar so high, only top 5% of men meet.

In 20 years, with more women than men going to college, a lot of women aren’t going to find partners if they want someone that matched or exceeds their education level.

There have been more women than men in college for 40 years — and this is already a problem, because women don’t date down.

No one tell my wife please.

Except that women with college degree are marrying around as much as in the past. It is women without college degrees who are not marrying.

> Women aren't able to attract the mates they want, so they would rather try to do it on their own or wait, than "settle" for a guy that isn't meeting their standards.

This seems like a rational decision to me. Better go it alone than risk becoming the sole carer of both a baby and a man-baby.

This tracts, but I think women are evaluating men in “TikTok” metrics, instead of qualities that make a man a great partner.

For example, being over 6ft doesn’t make you a good dad. Or being physically attractive, doest’t make you a supportive partner.

If anything, these characteristics make a man worse, as men in these categories tend to have the pick of the litter, resulting in many women frustrating and disappointed in men if they weren’t selected.

I've spent a ton of time around women and men and I can tell you men are way more likely to make a decision based on physical appearance.

That's not what the data says when looking at online dating for example.

I think it depends on age.

Men in their 20ies don't want kids because they still want to enjoy life without responsibility, but by the time they are in their 30ies they are ready to settle down and the idea of having a family becomes more and more appealing.

Yes and that is too late and in the meantime have wasted 10 fertile years of 2 or 3 female partners.

Oh good god! Get over yourself! Those 2-3 female partners were willing participants, not being led on. If you believe they were being led on, then you are not saying very much about women and their level of intelligence!

I don't feel as though I wasted any of the "fertile years" of my female partners who ended up not wanting to marry me!

I had a couple of different long-term relationships in my 20s before I found a woman to marry and start a family with, which we did just fine in our 30s despite having two miscarriages in between kid #1 and kid #2.

If 20-something women wanted kids at that age they could marry 30-something men who want to settle down if they were suitable marriage/mother material in the eyes of those men.

Even if that is true, I still observe that gender norms are strongly adhered to.

Anecdotally, I see many women who want to settle down but never take the initiative to ask a guy out.

> In fact I would say this is basically everyone I know, the men are the ones being anti-natal while women want kids way earlier.

This does not make sense. It's not men taking birth-control pills, plan-b and having abortions.

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