Who’s Got it Easier: Childfree Men or Women?
I realized a little something last week – namely, that I had written a post about stay-at-home-moms and work-from-home-moms, but two of my first commenters were a childfree MAN and a work-from-home DAD. We hear a lot about Childfree women feeling marginalized by society, but jeez, what about the Childfree men? Even I’M marginalizing them.
Part of it may be that they haven’t kicked up as much of a fuss as their female counterparts; their voices just aren’t being heard. And I can’t say I blame them – it’d be nice to fly more easily under the radar and not be subject to a barrage of BINGO comments from parents. But how DO they manage to do that?
The Biological Advantage – or Disadvantage?
I have to believe it’s got something to do with the biology of the situation. Society views an aging childless woman with a watchful eye, ever mindful of the expiration date on our eggs. But with men able to father children into their seventies (eww), they’re given a fairly large length of rope. Rather than warnings about ticking clocks, they get jokes about settling down and “boys will be boys” type comments. Instead of being classified as cold or heartless or weird, they’re usually chuckled over as immature playboys or perma-bachelors.
At first blush, it may seem that women are getting the short end of the stick, but I’m actually not sure which gender has it worse! At least with most women, the needling wears off somewhere in the early forties. For men, it’s just getting starting. They’re getting the extended deluxe version of our old favorite comment: “Oh, you’ve got time!” Who knows how long that may go on for them? And commentary from friends and family is really the least of their worries when you take a closer look at…
The Childfree Man’s Dating Game
A friend of mine told me the other day that he almost exclusively pursues younger women now. Sounds like a trophy-wife-seeking cliché, right? But that’s not it – he says the women he meets that are his age (a ripe old 33) come on way too strong, have that Baby Rabies glint in their eye, and make it all too clear that they’re ready to be a mom, like, yesterday. It’s not really their fault – if they want to have babies in their mid-thirties, they truly do need to get a move on it, and don’t have a tremendous amount of time to waste on a man who won’t work out. My friend actually does want to have kids, but these overdrive female biological clocks make it impossible to tell if they’re actually interested in him, or just his fathering potential.
I can only imagine what dating must be like for the guys who don’t want kids. Though I know many guys who want to be Dads, I haven’t met any that I could classify as truly baby-crazy. Women, on the other hand…I know several who openly classify themselves as such, and quite a few more who could be diagnosed with Baby Fever by anyone engaging them in conversation for longer than a minute and a half. I have to imagine it’s rather frightening to be sitting on the other side of the speed-dating table from them. But imagine how slim the pickins are for the guys who tick off the “not interested in kids” option on eHarmony!
Speak Up, Boys
It’s funny that this is my first post that really brings in the male side of things. I keep thinking my audience is entirely women, but you fellas keep surprising me when you leave a comment or bring up my blog if I see you out and about, when I never in a million years would have guessed you’d be reading this. So, many thanks to my dude-followers* – particularly those of you adding to the conversation. I wish I could hear from more of you to make this a well-rounded dialogue.
So what do you think, boys? Do you have it worse than us ladies?
*An extra-special thanks goes to my favorite dude follower – happy belated Father’s Day, Dad! Thanks for not being one of the aforementioned Childfree men. Oh, and for working your ass off for the past 38+ years to give us a good life. But mostly Dad, thank you for having such an amazing mustache in our youth, and not teaching me to drive the John Deere. There’s no doubt in my mind, I would have wrecked it.
18 Responses to Who’s Got it Easier: Childfree Men or Women?
Leave a Reply
 |  |
   |
Hey, I’m a 25 year old guy and Childfree by Choice for about 2,5/ 3 years now. I’ve always known i didn’t want to have kids, but only fully realized it after a few relationships. Now, im going to have a vasectomy next year (i have my first docters appointment juli 2nd). It’s true that its hard to find a date. It’s possible to get a date when you mention that you ‘really dont want to have kids’, however those are the types that either think im not serious or think they can change my mind once i fall for their charms. When i mention that im going to become sterile in about a year from now things change however.. They realize im truly a lost cause/ crazy etc and give up on me. Being vocal about it decreases my hits on dating sites to like 10% or less hits from total subscribers. I think it’s considered normal for a guy to say he doesnt want kids, but that he will change his mind or get forced into parenthood and ‘adjust once he sees the baby’. A co-worker said this to me: ‘You dont want kids? well good luck finding a women then because pretty much all of them want kids!’ I hate getting bingoed, and i accept the fact that it takes longer to find the compatible partner (its a choice i cannot compromise on and i believe when i finally find that special someone it pays off in a quality relationship and not just caregiver of the family). I dont like ofcourse how difficult it is to find CF people like me.
Anyway, i dont think men have it worse then women, its just a little more hidden..
Well, I suppose the silver lining is that the 10% of women who ARE still interested in you after finding out you don’t want kids are probably much more likely to be compatible with you. It does narrow the field a bit. But you’re right – I could see how you might be wondering if they’re thinking they’ll be able to change your mind someday. But I guess that’s what dating is for – to find out who someone REALLY is. Best of luck with finding someone, and with your upcoming surgery!
It’s interesting you say this. It makes sense to me that it would be harder for a guy who doesn’t want kids to find dates because most women definitely do want kids. What surprised me the most was that as a woman who didn’t want kids, I also had a really hard time finding dates. I honestly thought it would be pretty easy to find guys who wanted to stay childfree, but it turned out to be pretty tough. In fact, my boyfriend and I started dating when he was about 38, and he’d sort of been on the fence about it all but realized that at his age, he was happy with the way things were and didn’t want to change. I think if he’d been in a really good relationship earlier, he’d probably have been happy to have kids if that’s what she wanted. I think a lot of guys fall into that category, where they’re not definitely yes or no. I just seemed to always pick the guys who were leaning more toward yes.
And I did date one guy who really wanted kids, and even though we talked about it on our second date (why wait longer than that for an issue so huge?), I think we both thought that the other person wasn’t quite as serious or might come around in the end. Obviously, that one didn’t work out. It was actually the primary reason we broke up. We figured there wasn’t any point in staying together since we’d never agree on that and it’s not something you can compromise on.
Anyway, as a woman, knowing so early that I didn’t want kids had a definite impact on my dating life.
I’m sure it must be tough knowing that when you’re younger. I didn’t truly start questioning things until I hit my late 20′s since I just assumed I’d eventually hear the clock ticking. I’m sure a lot of my earlier relationships would have ended more quickly if I’d been questioning kids since just about everyone I’ve dated now has them!
I can see what you mean about men having a much longer time in which they can father children, and it’s interesting to think about what that means for the differences between biological clocks. Cormac McCarthy, one of my favorite authors, was a bit of a douche in his younger life, failing to provide child support for his kid and ex-wife, and deliberately not taking on jobs that make money so that he could say, “I don’t have any money. How could I pay child support?” But then, he had a kid in his “older” age, and from that experience came his heartbreaking Pulitzer winner, The Road. things can change, I guess.
Still, while I couldn’t cite sources and therefore you’d want to be careful doing your own fact-checking with this, my understanding is that risk factors for the child increase with the age of the dad just like they do with the age of the mom. I vaguely recall that older dads have a higher rate of children born with autism, though again, you’d want to check up on that. So, in a “lets make a baby!” way, dads could probably double the fertile period that women have. But to have the healthiest baby possible, my sense is that their ideal windows may not be so different.
It’s an interesting dilemma to me. Had the sand in my wife’s hour-glass not been running out, I’d probably have been pretty happy to have a kid a decade later than I actually did. Presumably that would have allowed me to get a real solid investment into my career and really have a stable (even opulent?) nest for my baby to fall into, and not worry so much about scrimping and saving during the early years. But if you’re going to have a kid with someone your own age, it doesn’t seem to me that that is often a possibility. If you’ve hit 35 and not had kids yet, you’ve got to work fast. How many people have the perfect nest egg before 35? If you want to have kids with someone your own age, it’s almost like the deck is stacked against you to have your life in order before the kids come. There are obvious drawbacks to that reality…but I suppose there must be benefits too. It’s the way our parents and grandparents did it, for the most part. I’ll have to think about it more.
It’s also interesting that although men might not have the fertility issues that older women have, some men just don’t want to be older dads. If we have kids, my husband wants to be young enough to be able to do all the physical activities with them, and also not feel ancient by the time they retire from college. Which I completely understand. That’s some really interesting info on the risk factors with older men though – I’ll have to look into that.
Yeah, that’s true. I don’t think I’d want to risk a heart attack by going on a hike with my teenage kid.
In my world life was different for my two kids. My husband was the stay at home dad and he had it real good….especially once they were off to school! It took my being home for a period of time to realize exactly how good he had it! I worked full time, came home made dinner with two kids attached at the hip and took over full parental responsibilities for the rest of the night. Needless to say, his ‘real good’ world has come to an end and he is now among the worker bees! I do, however, give him huge kudos for raising the kids so well (well….aside from the fact that they can fart on command! I roll my eyes and remember that daddy raised them!). I am thankful that we had kids and I regret nothing about who raised them and how. Kids add joy and a sense of purpose….for me anyway.
Oh my, you still had to make dinner?! Your husband is lucky you kept him “on the payroll”.
Society certainly seems to still be at a point where the stereotypical childless middle-aged ‘successful’ guy ‘chasing tail’ will be lauded and its female counterpart vilified. I honestly think women have it harder than us when it comes to choosing whether or not to have a child.
However there is something that always bothered me: I’m a 25 year old man, a responsible adult, pay my taxes, have my own place etc and yet people (with children) always say something like “oh, you’re young, you’ll change your mind when you’re older” with a big smirk on their face as if they were talking to a 6 year old who didn’t know any better. Always made my blood boil. Now in the same situation, I think a woman’s words would have more weight, or at least they wouldn’t spawn that kind of moronic response.
It is quite frustrating that society would never argue that you’re not old enough to HAVE a child at 25, but if you say you don’t want one, you’re deemed to young to know your own mind. They can’t have it both ways!
Yeah, women who express their desire not to have children tend to be painted as cold career women who hate children, like Demi Moore’s character in Disclosure or something.
And I hate the condescending “You’ll change your mind” thing (I think that was the bingo I heard the most. Which kind of makes sense because I’m in my mid-20′s). Now it’s really funny to tell them I got my tubes tied. It’s like smirk-be-gone. Of course, then I get the “Well, you can have that reverse” response, which is both hilarious and dumb. It’s like they think I got drunk one night and stumbled into a 24hr Sterilization Hutt.
As for it having more weight when a woman says it, I’m not sure. Most people have a hard time accepting a woman who doesn’t want children, I think it makes us uncomfortable. But, I think they also assume that you guys will just learn to live with it when your partner “inevitably” has a baby. It’s kind of weird how we expect men to have no vested interest in their families.
I really think that both genders get it pretty rough, just in very different ways. Maybe men aren’t viewed as cold for not wanting children, like women are, but they still get the persistent questioning.
Also, HOLY CRAP about the baby-crazed women. I mean, I’ve known a lot of dumb girls who thought that having a baby would provide them with something exciting to do, or trap a guy with them (I don’t exactly live in a cultured area). It is really scary, though, to think of women hunting down a guy simply for DNA.
I imagine it like the scene in Jurassic Park where the T-Rex is chasing the jeep. Only the T-Rex is dragging a Bugaboo stroller.
That T-Rex image with the stroller is downright haunting. It seems like someone should make that and put it on Pinterest. I wish I were more talented.
There’s generally less pressure on men to become parents than there is on women. But, there’s still the idea out there that a man who’s not a father really hasn’t grown up yet or hasn’t really taken on any responsibility. He must be some sort of immature, selfish party animal. (There’s also the same stereotype about men who aren’t married, but that’s for a different conversation.)
So, it’s sort of acceptable for a man to express little interest in having kids, but not entirely.
I know many men encounter hostility from women on this front. It seems horribly unfair that men can be fertile so much longer than women, and some women take this out on the next childfree man they meet.
There are also many parts of the country where you can’t find anyone who will perform a vasectomy on any man under the age of 35 who doesn’t already have kids. (It’s probably still harder for women trying to find someone to do a tubal ligation.) In those cases, as a man you aren’t really trusted to make that decision until you’re older.
I know, I’ve heard from some very frustrated people wanting to have the surgeries but getting put through the ringer by doctors before anyone signs off. I find it strange that they think it’s their place from preventing someone from making a “mistake”, if indeed it might ever turn out to be one.
What was up with men with mustaches in the 80s? I have a very similiar picture of me with my Dad!
I don’t know how the women stood it!