Do men want kids the way kids want a puppy? This is a suggestion I have heard, repeatedly, from women recently. And the reason they say this? You guessed it – they feel that men have no idea of the reality of how a baby changes your life, and that they don’t really plan to be the one to look after them anyway.There’s been plenty of debate around how The New Statesman’s cover story last week, headlined “Angry Young Women”, showed how much young women differ from men politically. Less mentioned is how it showed young men and women to be divided on the question of children. And this matters because Britain is facing a fertility crisis. In 2024, the average woman in England and Wales had 1.44 children, the lowest level since records began. It prompted Reform UK’s Matt Goodwin to say women need a “biological reality” check.
According to the magazine’s polling, the proportion of young women between 18 and 30 who do not want children was 15 per cent, twice that of young men. For those in relationships, it was three times as many women (12 per cent) as men (4 per cent). This trend is borne out among my friends, generally in their early thirties. For most couples I know, the men would prefer to have kids, while the women are unsure or against the idea. Some couples have split up over it.
Contrary to the stereotype of single women in their thirties scaring men away because they’re baby-crazy, women I know struggle on the dating scene because they don’t want kids. One friend asked me to screenshot dating app profiles I see of men who don’t want kids, to give her hope they exist.
This shift is partly because women hear so much more honesty around the negatives of motherhood in the media. Last month, The Cut ran a viral piece based on interviews with women who regretted becoming mothers – the abiding theme was that they lost more from parenthood than their partners.
I hear similarly unflinching honesty from mums I know. Firstly, about the physical realities – some suffering difficult pregnancies, followed by the huge toll childbirth has on the body, and then the expectation to be a “good” mother meaning the baby must be breastfed.
And then there are the structural impediments: women take up to a year out of their career for maternity leave, men take a maximum of two weeks. On top of this, young women are more pessimistic than men about their economic situation – The New Statesman found women were 21 points less likely than men to say they were optimistic they’d earn more than their parents. So it’s no wonder women are less happy-go-lucky about the reality of what they face.
Earlier this week, I asked my Instagram followers for their views on this. I’m a single woman in my early thirties and planning to freeze my eggs later this year. But if I’m being honest, after the angry responses I got from women about the uneven division of childcare in their relationships, I experienced a moment of doubt.
Of course there were some whose partners really are the “good guys”. They do bathtime, bedtime,and ask about how to take on more of the workload. But they don’t end up doing half. This is because, as one woman described, they’re “not the default parent”. She explains: “My partner would 1,000 per cent make the World Book Day costume with enthusiasm, but not before I reminded him of the date. Or he’d take the day off to look after our kid if they were sick, no problem, but only if I said that I couldn’t.” It feels as though even once men have children, they are ignorant to the reality of them.
And men are certainly ignorant about kids before having them. The phrase that women used most frequently in reference to how men viewed children, apart from the puppy analogy, was “rose-tinted”. This was true whether couples were deciding whether to have their first child, or more children. One woman’s ex was supportive of her high-flying career ambitions and said he’d be happy to be a stay-at-home parent: “I think it would be so nice, pottering about and making bread”. She couldn’t help but laugh in his face – dirty nappies and tantrums weren’t even on his radar.
Of course, this is obviously “not all men” – plenty are primary caregivers or even single dads. But even the men I spoke to in this category were aware they were something of an exception, often surrounded by mums at pick-ups and play dates.
Just like my parents wouldn’t buy ten-year-old me a puppy because they didn’t trust I’d take it for walks or clean up after it, more and more women won’t have babies unless they trust men to be the co-parents they need. Addressing that might be more useful than giving women a “reality check” about their fertility.
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