Theory vs. Practice

Young men are more likely than young women to want children. I wonder why?

Photo by Kelli McClintock on Unsplash

A very common gender stereotype goes like this: No matter how much feminism tries to convince women otherwise, nearly all women fundamentally desire marriage and children. Men, on the other hand, have to be dragged into marriage, and are routinely “baby trapped” or manipulated into having kids. Enough people buy into this theory — and enough women are apparently brainwashed enough to think it’s funny that their husbands might hate them — that there’s a whole cottage industry of wedding gear playing on the joke that brides are forcing their partners down the aisle. A similar dynamic exists with kids: Women hit a certain age and get baby-crazy; men are just along for the ride.

In reality, young men without children want them more than young women do.

The problem, though, is that while more young men may want children in theory, men with children aren’t doing their fair share of the parenting in practice. And that’s perhaps why fewer young women say they want to have children: They know they’ll be doing most of the work, and shouldering most of the judgment. For many men, it’s less complicated — because men are simply overall less engaged.

Mothers continue to spend much, much more time with their children than fathers, and the gap widens when the time spent isn’t “fun” time playing with kids but physically caring for them. While one in five children lives with a single mother, just 5% live with a single father. And while fathers who live with their children spend nearly 8 hours a week with them, fathers who don’t average 36 minutes (that’s 36 minutes per week, not per day).

Mothers are more likely than fathers to say that parenthood is harder than they expected it to be, and that they are tired and stressed out. No wonder: They’re doing much more of the actual parenting. They worry more about their children. They say that they feel more judged for their parenting choices, by friends, family members, strangers, and even people online (fathers, by contrast, are more likely to say they feel judged by their spouse — the one person who actually sees their parenting in action. Hmm). And while mothers and fathers alike generally concede that mothers do more when it comes to childcare tasks, fathers are more likely than mothers to say that they share tasks equally. Time use surveys, though, give us data over perception, and it turns out that mothers’ perceptions are more accurate.