All over the world, cleverer people than me are trying to work out why birth rates are shrinking in almost every country.
Theories abound. High house prices, the cost of living, feminism, impossibly high parenting expectations, career aspirations, dwindling fertility rates – the list goes on.
But one factor I haven’t seen any PhD types talking about is the one I run into time and time again when I speak to child-free women who want children: men.
Specifically, men who theoretically do want children, but who “aren’t ready” despite being fully-fledged, taxpaying adults, often into their thirties or even older.
A perfect example of this phenomenon is Noel Fitzpatrick, TV’s Supervet, who gave an interview published over the weekend in which he spoke candidly about various facets of his (very interesting) life and career. But there’s one quote from the interview which looms large over everything else.
Fitzpatrick told the Sunday Times: “I’m 57, and I would love to meet somebody between 30 and 40 and have a kid. Or a couple of kids. I love kids and I loved doing my book for kids. I think I’d be a good daddy because I’ve got good morals. I was never properly, emotionally ready, until recently.”
Now look, I’m sure Fitzpatrick is a perfectly nice man. But this quote is the absolute epitome of the kind of selfishness which men all over the world demonstrate when it comes to fatherhood and, at least in my anecdotal experience, the reason so many women who want kids aren’t having them.
It’s a sentiment which I heard repeatedly when I was dating stable, self-sufficient men in their thirties and forties who’d tell me over drinks that they were “definitely” going to have kids – just absolutely no time in the near future, as if waiting had no impact on their fertility, the women they were dating, or the proportion of their future child’s life they would still be alive to see.
Wanting kids, but just not now, is a blatant and unapologetic desire to have cake and eat it too. Worse, it’s a way of exploiting the fact that men can technically have babies up until their deaths, to avoid becoming a father while there is still so much feckless fun to be had.
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Yet that assumption completely ignores the inconvenient truth that there are negative health outcomes associated with older fathers, just as with older mothers.
And even if you’re not concerned about that, late life fatherhood generally relies (as Fitzpatrick makes clear) on co-parenting with a much younger parent, meaning that while you got extra decades to enjoy hedonistic fun, the mother of your children is giving up her equivalent freedom to enable you to do both.
Starting to consider fatherhood in your late fifties, a la Noel Fitzpatrick, is at the extreme end of the spectrum, but I’ve observed dozens of couples in my social circle where the male partner is totally up for having a baby. Just not yet.
Which is fine, except these men are generally married to or in relationships with women who are desperate to become mothers, and who see each approaching birthday as a death knell for their fertility.
Even worse, I know a handful of women who spent their thirties with men who were on the fence about fatherhood, only for them to break up and watch their ex have children with younger women, thus leaving their original partner without the kids they truly wanted. That’s the kind of betrayal I would find impossible to forgive.
I’m not unsympathetic to anyone who is nervous about becoming a parent. Having a child is a huge decision. It changes your life. In my experience it changes you as a person – for the better – but it does mean the end of spontaneity, freedom and lazy weekends. Those are big sacrifices to make, and I have boundless support for anyone who wants to remain child-free for the rest of their lives.
But having children requires you to become unselfish, and then remain unselfish for the rest of your life. A good rehearsal for that experience is opting to become a parent at the time which is best for everyone involved – you, your partner and the future child.
If you’re not willing to do it until everything feels totally perfect, then frankly you might not be cut out for fatherhood at all.
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