Posted on 09/29/2017 7:17:35 PM PDT by BJ1
Economist Marina Adshade is the author of The Love Market: What You Need To Know About How We Date, Mate And Marry. She teaches at the University of British Columbia’s Vancouver School of Economics.
Jezebel, the women-focused website with a penchant for feminism and cute animals, recently declared the beginning of a new era with the eye-catching headline: “New Trend: Men Wanting Babies, Women Wanting Freedom”. The article, and a similar one in New York Magazine, proclaims an end to supposedly long-standing paradigm in which maternally driven women have been forcing men into reluctant fatherhood. Men, apparently, are now the ones pushing for children.
Their story goes something like this. Back when women did all the work raising children and caring for the home, women wanted to have children, but men did not. Now that men are taking on a greater share of the workload at home, men want to have children, but women do not. In summary, the anticipation of more work is making men eager to become fathers and the anticipation of less work is making women more reluctant.
Perhaps that is not quite their argument, but it does hinge heavily on the relative contribution women make to childrearing, which, in reality, has only decreased over time.
This argument of a gender reversal in the willingness to have children is shakily supported by an anecdote about a married couple in which he is keen to have children, and she is still trying to decide, and a 2011 Match.com study of singles over the age of 21 which found that more men who had no children under the age of 18 living at home said they wanted to have children (24 per cent) than did single women with no children at home (18 per cent).
It seems to me, however, that if you want to proclaim a new trend, you should be relying on something a little more substantial than “conventional wisdom” from the past. And the evidence from the past suggests that there is absolutely nothing new about men being more eager to have children than women.
The Statistics Canada General Social Survey of the family has been asking Canadian men and women about their fertility intentions for decades with this question, “How many children do you plan to have, including the ones that have already been born or you are expecting at this time?”
When this question was first asked in 1990, more women than men expressed a disinterest in having children. Among childless men and women between the ages of 15 and 44, 15 per cent of women said they had no desire to have children in the future compared to only 10 per cent of men. Additionally, more men than women expressed a desire to have children in every age group and regardless of whether they were married, single, cohabitating, or divorced.
As expected, the share of women who wish to remain childless has increased over time, up to 23 per cent in 2011, but contrary what we are being told, the share of men who wish to remain childless has increased by even more, almost doubling to 19 per cent.
While the media seems fixated on women who are choosing to forgo motherhood, the trend in men is much more interesting. It seems that in an era in which women are making a bigger contribution to the household income, and in which men are expected to dedicate more hours to parenting, men are responding by acting more like women: they are willing to forgo parenthood all together.
Back in 1990, Canadian women out-earned their husbands in only one in five marriages in which both the husband and wife worked. Today, the share of those marriages in which the wife earns more than her husband has climbed to almost one in three. Economic theory predicts that when dividing the responsibility for childcare, the parent who has the lowest income should be the one who reduces their work hours when that is necessary. Relative to the past, today that person is more frequently the father and some men, like some women, are choosing not to make that sacrifice.
There is no new trend in which men want babies. Men have always wanted babies as long as women were willing to make all the sacrifices. Now that those sacrifices are more evenly shared between parents, no one should be surprised to learn that fewer men now want to have children.
“Go to work with a bad period and then let us know.”
Thank you for mentioning that! My mom had five kids and said that labor pains paled in comparison to cramps each month. I must’ve inherited her genes in that way and would pass out, hallucinate, etc., every month. Go to work? It was impossible. And I’ve had osteomyelitis, hip replacements, spinal taps — a lot of bad, painful stuff. Cramps are my baseline for pain, and nothing ever was worse.
Women can’t cope with pain like a man can.
‘Cause you read that somewhere.
Something is wrong with FR these days. So many men who disdain women.
Wow! And try that on a MONTHLY basis. I seem to have been luckier than you. But it can be very painful. Some men think women are imagining the cramps, lol!
Men having the ability to cope with more physical pain without emotional reactions is not a “disdain of women.” It’s an opinion based on observation over a long time that is backed up by recent scientific studies on the subject.
I’ve been treated like a leper by the SAHM crowd at my kids private school. Working outside the home is a sin in their eyes. Except I’ve been to their homes, trashed. My kids go to school with clean, ironed uniforms but some of their classmates look like they slept in their clothes. I pack at least a 5 course lunch, the Susie homemakers send lunchables. The only time I get included is when they need a donation.
We had 2 and twenty years later adopted 2 more from China
There is, increasingly, a disdain for women being expressed here at FR. This is a nonsense scientific report (if this report even exists) that hilariously assigns the sensitivity towards pain to some sort of “emotionality.” Pretty soon we’ll be back to childbirth pains being caused by “hysteria.”
Nonsensical on the face of it.
Any wife who has seen her husband get a tiny burn from touching a hot oven and watching his overreaction to it, is laughing up her sleeve.
Trump causes the vapors.
More studies upon studies studying the obvious that people don’t want to accept because men are supposed to be on the bottom the totem pole in modern society on the victim scale. Because big bad men suppress everyone else!
We just “can’t figure it out” these days that society knew long ago...
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“Study after study has shown that men have a higher tolerance for pain than women, according to researchers who seem to be making some progress in figuring out why. ...
Even giving women more of an incentive to compete with pain tolerance women can’t keep up.
“Here was our thinking,” Fillingim says. Men are motivated to suppress pain, and if women aren’t equally motivated, then some reward might boost the pain tolerance among women but not among men because men are already motivated. A little reward might sort of level the playing field.
So 81 folks agreed to stick their hand in a bucket of swirling ice water to see how long they could stand the pain. Some were offered $1 to keep it in the near-freezing water for five minutes, others $20, so the researchers could determine if a higher reward made any difference than the lesser, which amounted to just a nickel for every 15 seconds.
The researchers thought the motivated females would keep their hands in the water longer than they would without the monetary motivation, thus narrowing the gap between Tarzan and Jane because now the females were motivated to stand the pain.
But “we got the complete reversal of what we expected,” Fillingim says.
There wasn’t any difference for the females. But the men who were offered up to $20 lasted longer than the men who were offered just one lousy buck. “
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=97662&page=1
Didn’t say they were a burden, economics is a very common reason educated whites have fewer children, just a factor.
Memphis you see that in the smaller burbs, city is comprised of workers and tourist. A different world.
This immoral society allows women the freedom of not having children or spouses. Have a step daughter that while not amoral is a single 40 yr old with a dog and her own IT business, and won’t even date a man who makes less than her. Seen all her friends divorce over that. Since she is the only ‘employee’ she is married to the business.
Even as a poor person back in my time 4 was the average for children unless they were from farm families.
That is not the average population as I’m drawing on my neighborhood and family. 2 children are the rule, few have 3 they all want good schools and college for them, both parents work. Just had our 7th grand daughter 2 weeks ago, grandson turns 16 in 2 weeks he is an only child, G. Grand 6 is still pre-born and will be a #2 for that family and the in the last, parents are college educated business focused. Still have a couple not married, the male might, female who is the eldest and nearing 40 has 2 bi-racial a 13 and a 4 yr old, not planning on marriage and nature took care of her having more.
Neighborhood is a mix, and we have quite a few children in it all age ranges, but most are 2 children families where both parents work. The only race not here are muslims. Memphis is a different story lots of unwed births where the kids are just a pay check, Not cherished.
As much as Henry VIII wanted a son, his wives wanted one even more so.
(Or else!)
My mom used to tell the joke that if men and women had to take turns delivering children, no family would have more than 3!
Perhaps that study just shows women have more sense than men.
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