We’ve seen the biological clock movies, read the baby lust articles, debated the family friendly vs. child-free café and one thing is usually true: all eyes are focused on the women. So someone needs to alert Lifetime network to the results of a new long-term study on who is bothered more by an empty crib (and perhaps consider launching a man-station that exploits the emotions of guys who had it all, except the one thing they ever really wanted).
The survey shows that while the percent of childless women continues to climb – we’re at 20 percent of 40-year-old women have no children -- childlessness actually bugs men more than it does women. Also, the higher her education, the less the whole never-gonna-be-a-mom thing bugs her. Education, race, socio-economic status didn't appear to have influence the attitudes of the men.
I haven’t read the study, published in the November issue of the Journal of Marriage and Family, but the article about these results succumbs to an annoying weakness in mainstream discussion of science, which is experts being asked to comment on why these results may be true based on little more than guessing.
Still, a summary of what they guessed:
The author of the study said the reason more women are reporting being fine with the decision not to become mothers is the result of changing attitudes – there’s no longer the feeling that having babies is what you do.
Another professor of psychiatry, commenting on the counterintuitive results which showed men more bothered than women, said women know the overall cost of raising children, and the real challenge and near impossibility of “having it all.”
A psychologist agreed, and added that men may be bothered more by childlessness because they have been taught “growing up and having a child is what you do.”
Those are the “experts’” guesses, but you’re the real pros. Why do you think educated women are less bothered about not having children and why are men, overall, are more bugged? Did you grudgingly become a mom or have to beg and plead to become a dad?
More importantly, who should star in the Lifetime/Mantime network drama about the guy who can no longer ignore his biological clock?
